JOB: Ighalli's Experimental God System

To make an interesting start of it, I'm proposing a little challenge.

When he came around last time (it was on jconserv, you'll find no record of it here) Ighalli let us play with an experimental god system. The DEVs have acknowledged it, and it is to be in IVAN (eventually). It did two things:

1. Let you choose what effect/gift to get when you pray to a god, the list getting longer with better things as you gain favour
2. A timer for prayers

What appears to be the code for the timer is here:

http://ivan.13.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=75

Your challenge is to try and recreate the system based on the information above. Sharing information with your fellow coders is encouraged.


Good luck!

//EDIT: AGAIN ADDED "JOB". SORRY! - EM//

Is there anyone working on this?

I got ahold of Ighalli. He gave me this:

festring god::GetCompleteDescription() const
  114 {
  115   festring Desc(game::GetAlignment(GetAlignment()));
  116   Desc.Resize(4);
  117   Desc << GetName();
  118   Desc.Resize(20);
  119 
  120   if(game::WizardModeIsActive()) {
  121     Desc << "Timer: " << Timer << " Relation: " << Relation;
  122     return Desc;
  123   }
  124   else
  125     Desc << "You have ";
  126   if (LastPray>-1)
  127   {
  128     int Hour = LastPray / 2000;
  129     int Day = Hour / 24;
  130     Hour %= 24;
  131     int Min = LastPray % 2000 * 60 / 2000;
  132     Desc << "last prayed ";
  133     if (Day>=7)
  134       Desc << "over a week ago.";
  135     else
  136     {
  137       if (Day>1)
  138 	Desc << Day << " days, ";
  139       else if (Day)
  140 	Desc << "one day, ";
  141       if (Hour>1)
  142 	Desc << Hour << " hours, ";
  143       else if (Hour)
  144 	Desc << "one hour, ";
  145       if (Day || Hour)
  146 	Desc << "and " << Min << " minutes ago.";
  147       else
  148 	Desc << Min << " minutes ago.";
  149     }
  150   }
  151   else
  152     Desc << "never prayed to this god.";
  153   return Desc;
  154 }

I suspect it belongs in gods.cpp.

I have been thinking about where to go with the gods system for the past few days. The thing I had before was a menu that let you pick an effect each time you prayed and the list of possibilities got longer and longer as you gained more piety. The more powerful the prayer, the longer the prayer timer would be (time until you could pray again). I think some of the prayers also drained your piety. The system was only a proof on concept; I don't think anyone wants to gods to be as bland as that system ended up being. It was basically a menu of common effects (angels, randomly generated gifts, new limbs, harden aligned material) along with their signature effects they have today.

Right now I think Mellis is the most powerful god and the reasons why are informing my plan for how to revamp the religions. Let's talk about Mellis for a bit while I continue to ruminate, so that I can be more confident that I'm not just a strange player who doesn't like pets enough or something.

1) Mellis prayers are always useful. You don't have to be in special (probably dangerous) circumstances (monsters adjacent, low on life, etc.) to get the most out of him. Just hoard all the containers you find and pray every 2.5 hours on the dot.
2) Mellis does not require any micromanagement. I love Loraticus, but to get the best use out of him you have to do things like unequip your boots, make sure they don't have blood on them, and wield them, then pray. Then put your weapons back and put your boots back on. Incidentally, I fixed this before so that he attempts to harden all of your equipment if he can't do one of his current actions. But that code is gone, so he's annoying to me.
3) Mellis prayers are better at many things you want than other gods. Some gods heal you, but Mellis lets you save up as much healing as you care to hang on to by giving you healing liquid and troll blood. Some gods can feed you, but I guarantee you'll never be hungry if you have cans and are pals with Mellis. Sometimes he'll even give you on demand (possibly permanent-able) ESP through cans of floating eye. Sometimes he'll even give you Ommel food and beverages! No extra cost, just pray a lot!
4) Mellis can substitute for effects that other gods surpass him in. I've read about Legifer being useful for knocking down walls. Mellis gives you sulfuric acid, so you can pretty much always break a couple of walls by splitting a bottle of that. How often do you really need to make a bigger hole? Throw poison on enemies with Nefas? Just dip your weapon.

The uniting theme is that Mellis lets you save up power for when you need it and burn through it as rapidly as you need to. Other gods can give you good things, but you can't save up haste from Cleptia or be teleported repeatedly from Sophos.

I think they prayer system either needs to nerf Mellis hard or allow you to get useful effects from your gods always. I'd like to hear other peoples thoughts on this before I try to address any of the issues. Powerful gods? Useless ones? Mellis isn't as great as I've made him out to be, because of X?

(BTW, I've gone through the source code of all of the gods and I think I've updated everything on the wiki https://attnam.com/wiki/Gods.)

It is absurdly simple to nerf Mellis without breaking the balance.

Increase the weight of cans and bottles so you can't hoard two dozen of them in your pockets.

While that would work, it's not really in keeping with the fairly realistic volumes and densities that give rise to weight. Already, a "potion" is an entire liter, which already strikes me as an unusually large amount of material to be carting around. It's hard to imagine a bottle having close to as much volume than the contents, and the contents are already very large.

If we want to nerf Mellis, we can make him stop giving out awesome potions by the truckload. Maybe only 1 or 2 per prayer, for a start? I could probably make him "trade" things based on their price, so that he would rarely give useful material, but then he'd remain the king of feeding the player with oodles of banana flesh.

I'd rather make the other gods viable rather than only weaken him, but I am open to doing both.

No ideas but I would agree that Mellis is much too powerful. There's a reason all my good characters have ever been devoted to him + Loricatus.

Simply increasing object weight would not really hamper the power hoarding, as you're not required to carry the items with you everywhere. Stashing things in a chest on the previous stairs (level above or otherwise) already gives a nigh-foolproof way of keeping your things safe from hungry bunnies, explosions and the like. You'd simply keep a smaller portion of your supplies with you, which hardly ever actually becomes a problem.

I do like the idea of dropping the amount of trades per prayer, but even that fails to properly address the problem given another good source of food like polypiling or Seges. You'd still be capable of amassing a pile of healing and ommel substances with time. In addition, making the better items too rare could highly detract from his actual feel of usefulness especially for newer players. Simply put, trading empty bottles for ones full of water or poison isn't exciting.

To be frank, right now Mellis does not really match the description of being a god of trade. Filling an empty container hardly counts for trading. While walking to work this morning, I came up with two solutions to both nerf him and giving him more of a trading aspect.

1) Instead of simply filling a container you have, trade it for a full container of a different kind. In addition to making the effect more like a trade, this would also slow down the process of stockpiling power by not letting you simply keep using the same containers over and over again. You could also make this cyclical instead of random. Trading an empty bottle could give you a can of stuff, which could then be traded for a banana and further back into a bottle. With only the three containers currently in IVAN this doesn't make too much of a difference, but new containers could be added. Even more, by restricting certain substances to specific containers, the effect itself would become much more interesting by allowing you to trade items for a specific subset of results.

This should probably be combined with a lower amount of trades per prayer as well to slow down the cycling and to keep the effect power down.

2) A more radical approach would be to abandon the current effect of getting full containers completely. Instead, let Mellis trade your items for prayer effects of different gods based on the alignment and value of the traded item. For example, standing on an iron dagger and praying to Mellis could consume the dagger and give you haste if you're at favourable standing with Cleptia. Offering a very valuable item could even let you gain the effects of gods who currently hate you, like trading an arcanite staff of wondrous smells +6 for Infuscor's ESP effect at Lawful++. This again would be much more interesting of an effect than the current container filling. The prayer should still only affect your standing with Mellis to prevent essentially getting two prayer's worth of standing combined with a normal prayer every 3 hours for the god in question.

These two effects wouldn't even necessarily need to be mutually exclusive.

So while Mellis is getting a good think-trashing from the rest of you, I thought about adressing the on-demand problem of other gods.

Firstly, I would divide the prayers into three or more categories. These could be for example Pray for Protection, Pray for Growth and Pray for Help. Protection would aid you in combat, Growth would beef you up in equipment or stats and Help would give you necessities like food and heal you.

This kind of system gives the player more control but still allows for gods to have their say, and for the effects to still be somewhat surprising. It boosts other gods and weakens Mellis' effects, allowing the programmer to set the balance wherever he wants it. It allows all the current effects but calls for a few more for variety.

Protection would basically make the god watch over you, and save you on a tight spot. The game already calculates danger levels, and it should be possible to compare these when you engage enemies. If you encounter something dangerous to you, the god will aid you, be that enough of not. The better pals you are with the god, the more he will help, and ultimately he will send you an angel.

These effects could be stacked for a bit, allowing for more help on one go.

If a prayer goes unfulfilled, you lose favor, but gain a little if the god feels useful.

This allows for lots of room to accomodate the quirks and habits of the gods. While other gods harm the enemies in nasty ways (direct blows, friendly ghost mistresses), other gods choose to enchant the player with unique or traditional effects (HUGE one shot damage boost, haste) instead.

Here are some examples on Protection:

*You pray to Legifer*
"You feel that Legifer is watching over you and smiling"
*some time later you encounter the Enner Beast which pushes the danger level over a certain treshod*
"A Hammer of pure light smites the Enner Beast! The Enner Beast is knocked unconscious!"
"Your prayer of protection fulfilled, you feel Legifers attention drift away"

OR

*You pray to Legifer*
"You feel that Legifer is watching over you and smiling"
*nothing dangerous happens for ~4 hours*
"You feel Legifers attention drift away from your boring adventure"

OR

*You pray to Legifer*
"You feel that Legifer is watching over you with contempt"
*here comes Jenny!*
"Jenny slaps you. Jenny Slaps you. Jenny slaps you. Legifer slaps you. Jenny slaps you."
"Logifer looks for enterntainment elsewhere"
"You die of embarrasment."


Growth comes into question when you want to get stronger but aren't aware of any imminent threats. It will give you better(?) equipment, ommel fluids or enchant your equipment, all based on your overall danger level, gods judgement and favor. The effect is immediate but it might take a while to find the reward.

It's easy to make this prayer effect reflect your favor of the god: Depending on your relation, the item granted might appear at your feet or in the room you just left because of the zombie horde. Or if the god is having a bad day it could even be accompanied by a bear trap...

There is the problem of potions and foods being consumed by hedgehogs and such. I would add some form of protection to these items, either by having them inflict harm to creatures that try to touch the item, outright killing the weaker creatures. Or simply making them impossible to pick up by anyone else than the player. Or hide them in a container - not many monsters open those right? It might be fun if some more dangerous creatures were able to overcome these barriers.

To make finding and identifying the prayer items easier, they could emit an aura of light until picked up by the player.

If we want to keep Mellis' effects unique, I'd go for trading. Mellis will take a random item from your inventory and replace it with a similarily valued beverage. An bronze dagger will be replaced by a vial of troll blood (new container type?), while the wand of cloning will grant you ommel fluids. If the god is angry, he might touch your equipment too.


Help is needed when you have a negative condition, are missing limbs or equipment, or are simply low on HP and don't want to waste time resting. Because of the dire flavor of the prayer it could have a lower chance of triggering a negative effect with a god. Asking help from an angry god MIGHT get you help, but the favor rating wil plummet / you need to make a sacrifice sooner rather than later or BAD THINGS will happen / there is a catch to keep the god entertained (traps, hidden rooms, healing potion mixed with poison or disease). Again, lots of room to make these effects unique to any god. Othervise this prayer is pretty similar to Growth.

Example:

"You beg Loricatus for help"
"You feel Loricatus is angry and requires your devotion"
"You grow an iron left arm!"
*some time later*
"The booming voice of Loricatus requires a sacrifice"
*some time later*
"You hear a chant, as if a god was cursing at you"
*a few minutes later*
"You feel a divine anger flush over you. Your iron arm disappears. Your flaming adamantine longsword +5 turns to banana flesh!"

I like the idea of trading with Mellis as a prayer effect, and trading for prayer effects of different gods is novel. There really has to be a catch to praying to Mellis, no such thing as a free lunch and all.

I was already thinking somewhat along the lines of Ernomouse, except for his protection idea. I was thinking of giving all of the gods an effect when (powerful?) enemies are nearby (adjacent?) and another effect for when you're relatively safe. Ernomouse, were you thinking of giving the player the choice of which type of prayer to ask for, or let the game try to determine what's suitable?

My idea for Mellis was to make him function kind of like a store when you pray. You choose something from your pack to sell to him and then you choose something to buy from him (skipping either or both).

I was also thinking of redoing the system so that some or all of the gods grant you spells as in most RPGs when you pray to them. The spells they give you would improve with your relationship and wisdom. Mellis could grant a midas touch effect to transform something into silver / gold if it's under some weight limit. He could also grant a spell to sell an item to him from your inventory, or give you a temporary boost to charisma. Legifer could give you the explosion effect as a spell, and you could later cast it on demand. Limit the total number of spells granted and balance how often a given god will give you a new casting of them, as balance dictates.

Hm, I don't like the idea of being able to communicate directly with the gods to ask for a specific type of prayer or a specific item. I just don't think the gods would have enough time to deal with all these puny mortals and their requests.

Plus if you're panicked and about to die, you're probably just desperately praying without having the time to think it through carefully. (by "you" I mean the character, not the person controlling the character)

The game could determine if you're panicked, hungry, have low HP, etc. to give protection.

I was thinking of the player chooses from those three but it's a good idea to let the god decide what kind of help you actually get. The more chaotic the god, the less reliable he should be in complying with the prayer. =P After all you CAN choose what escapes your mouth - unless we decide there is a "Lord's prayer" kind of set prayer which is the only one that reaches the god you're praying to... Which I find unfitting in a pantheon.

As for gods getting overwhelmed of all the noise, well, I don't think a god would either experience time as we do, or have to deal with that shit alone. Why do you think they all have angels? Do you get overwhelmed by all the noise you hear outdoors, and yet you're still aware of them and react to those that are important? A god is by definition superior to a man, so you shouldn't compare the two too closely. =P

Spells might be nice, but if we make the gods too powerful with all this fancy stuff it'll shift the balance greatly until you practically must be religious to win. Communism is a key theme in IVAN, and atheism is a key theme in communism. Maybe we should give believers some drawbacks to conteract the powers gained?

You know, this might be an opportunity to give some character to the named archangels.

Good points Erno. Yeah I would be fine with the player asking for something specific as long as it's not 100% guaranteed that they get it. Although I don't think that should be based on alignment, more based on your favor with that god.

Perhaps we should put together a few detailed proposals for how the pantheon should function and then put it to a community vote? We need a list of all the common behaviors (today, things like angel summoning) and unique features of all of the deities before someone can do the development, in any case. It would be preferable to have as much information as we can easily put together and then debate the finer points and cherry pick the best parts from the proposals. I'll write up my ideas and link to them here.

Edit: Ighalli's Clerical Spells Ideas

I've never played D&D or other pen & paper RPGs.

But from your notes it sounds like rather than praying and having the god take an action immediately, the god would grant the player a "spell" which they can save and use later when they want to. Is that right?

That's right. That way the player could make the most use of what they're given, as with Mellis. I hope it will be more easy to have interesting effects the player can use without becoming unbalanced.

That said, it's quite a departure from what we have today. Some of the dev notes reference Wisdom as being important for casting priestly spells, but that never happened. It would be interesting if the eventual magic system was at odds with priest spells, to give athiests/communists something special that they lack now.

Will there be a relation system as there is today?
What renewed role can altars play?

Frankly I'm not a huge fan of the idea of bringing D&D-style cleric spells into IVAN. While they're not something commonly seen in roguelikes, they definitely are in found in other RPGs. If magic is implemented in IVAN, it shouldn't follow any established system IMO.

Aren't prayers and divine intervention we have now (and what we've discussed) enough of an alternative to spells already? I like the idea of finding balance between controlled spells cast by the player vs. more power from the god(s) you cannot really control yourself, you just have to believe in it...

I agree, and I like it that the game decides I need a banana flesh leg.
I think some of the motivation behind Ighalli's original system was aimed at allowing the player to determine what kind of assistance to receive from the god. For instance, Seges has a lot of abilities but sometimes I just want the flames put out instead of being fed a delicious meal.
The list Ighalli put up is roughly a rebalance of what is the present system, which is needed. I've run out of hours in the day to go through point by point, but it's more or less complete.

I want to know if there will be changes to the mechanics. I read there will be no cooldowns; will there still be negative effects? Punishment?
I'm not really into the idea of banking a a favor from a god for later use, that's possibly what made Mellis overpowered.

I think the gods should not get immediately angry should you pray very often. Rather, based on your Wis, relative alignment to that of the god and the time between prayers, you could lose some piety. Let’s say you pray several hours apart, have high Wis and matching alignment – you get the prayer effect and raise your piety. If you, however, spam several explosions of Legifer in a row to kill some badass monster, or if you’re only L while praying to him, you lose piety instead, but he will not become angry until you are in negative piety. That would allow you to use some of the tactical prayer effects more freely, making them more powerful/reliable, but still costly if you overuse them.

BTW, I'll add several prayer ideas I had:
* for Atavus, I was thinking:
** Greater Gift – gifts random powerful item, but only for a limited time (mirrored items); eg. may grant flaming valpurium sword, armor of great health +7, amulet of life saving etc.; never grants any item that may be used for permanent boost (no enchanting scrolls, ommel fluids or wands of cloning, but healing liquid, scrolls of teleport and attack wands are okay, because if you don’t use them quickly, they disappear)
** Lesser Gift – gifts random item, similarly as a result of polypile; mostly gets you junk, but this prayer could be cheap even when spammed and may give you bananas/carrots/wands etc.
* Dulcis is rather musical, so she could sing a lullaby to put nearby creatures to sleep, or maybe scream for sonic damage?
* entombing for Silva, as she already deals with earth - it could create solid rock walls on all free adjacent squares, basically giving the player a rest from any monsters (except those already next to him or ghosts), the downside being you have to dig yourself out (maybe earthquake yourself out if without pickaxe?)
* golem smithing (I'd say Loricatus, but might be Sophos as the god of knowledge, including the writing of shems)
* brown gas would be interesting as a prayer effect - Scabies could surround you in farts, so no monster will get to you
* life draining would be appropriate as Infuscor's prayer, plus it's interesting effect, leeching health from your enemies.

I'm pretty amused by the idea of Scabies ripping a fat fart right on top of you.

By golem smithing do you mean making golems out of materials (similar or not similar to the scroll of golem creation?) or rather having loricatus harden existing golems?

I was thinking SoGC-like effect, as this scroll is rather rare (in my experiences) yet with interesting effect. However, hardening existing golems sounds very nice!

I see two possible ways of making golem smithing special - either it's rather cheap prayer* that gives you temporary golem from selected item, giving you boost in the form of an ally for a short time at the cost of loosing the item; or its a more expensive prayer that let's you pick only items of Loricatus' materials and creates a permanent golem for you that can be hardened by subsequent Smith Golem prayers. New golem can only be created if the old one is destroyed and must be hardened again.

* Assuming prayers will have different piety/cooldown costs.