p.s.: btw, there is another change i forgot to mention — paperdoll panel now has hunger and stamina "indicator bars". because why not? we can feel how hungry or how tired we are, there is no reason to hide this info from the player. IVAN is a strategic game after all, and having that info with better granularity than we currently have will allow to better plan your actions.

and i will prolly turn health bars on by default in the next build. this is the easy way to tell how badly monster is hurt — which is something we can see most of the time IRL (well, more or less . and it helps to plan your actions too.

…or take k8I as new vanilla. it basically has almost everything vanilla has — the main difference is that i haven't added new materials to items (because i feel that it results in too many item variations without much sense). but materials themselves are there.

to make myself clear: new materials are great. but i feel that random items with too much random materials aren't adding much to gameplay. it is prolly better to add a way to tie some materials to game time and dungeons/levels. i.e. the deeper the player goes into, for example, imaginary dwarf fortress, the more items made of dwarven steel are there, but such items are very rare in other dungeons. i'm not sure how to implement it yet, though. i.e. i know how to code it (just recalc coefficients for weighted random), but i'm not sure yet how to specify it in scripts to make it manageable.

and if i'll ever finish the scripting part, k8I will get the ability to load various modules with new items and characters, and without recompiling the code. that is something i always wanted to do, to allow people to experiment with the game without messing with C++ compiler. this is my Ultimate Goal, because i believe that IVAN engine is really great, and it can be used to create many of different games. we have material system with many predefined materials, a lot of items to reuse, and with easy way to create new unique items and charcters the possibilities are virtually endless.

not that i am expecting a lot of people to come and create new content, but hey — we'll never know the number if we won't have the easy way to do it!

published the new build, because i don't know how long scripting may take before i drop it.

brief changelog:
* added option to control popups opacity.
* added optional NPC health bar (i'm not sure if i'll keep it, though).
* fixed bug with new Attnam hostility hierarchy: Petrus should summon guarding angels.
* reworked team system. shop guards are in their own team now, and shopkeeper will not intervene if there are guards around.
* death from the trap now adds "set by the player" if it was set by the player.
* gas trap now has recharge time.
* replaced built-in regexp engine with another regexp engine.

i still think that k8I needs scripting. most special character/item code should be scripted, not done on C++ side. so, scrpting, take 2. i fully expect this attempt to fail too, but cannot resist the temptation. this time i'll try to create a proper compiler and VM, and use automatic API generation. at least that's the plan.

the thing i haven't decided yet is language syntax. making it C-like will allow easier code transition… but i HAET C, i prefer Oberon. i will prolly go Oberon way, just to make it more annoying to everyone, because i know that people love to learn new scripting languages! of course, whatever i choose, it will be strongly typed.

tbh, this is just an excuse to write yet another compiler. because i love writing compilers.

let's start with something simple: i replaced built-in regexp engine. the new engine doesn't support captures (we don't need them anyway), but it is not prone to exponential explosion.

it's hard to predict. but i really want to implement several more things before going into cryostasis again.

i have some hardware problems, and i cannot even properly build k8I for now. so i'll try to build the win binary with the latest fixes, and then there will be some hiatus. sorry. i will return when/if i'll be able to fix everything (or at least to fix it enough to be able to go on). i still want to implement at least random encounters, so it's not like i lost motivation again.

yeah. when i got bored of that, i implemented "start with no pet" option.

it is quite easy to get a mistress in UT too, and she's even more annoying than a puppy.

death from the trap now adds "set by the player" if it was set by the player; gas trap now has recharge time.

UT vault spawned on Jenny level should have limestone walls, otherwise it looks out of place. i implemented simple way to replace content script tiles according to level; this is a dirty hack, but it does what i need. i might extend this feature later, but for now it is enough.