another one IVAN fork

basically, the whole IVAN code.

also, added console commands to manipulate states and edit attributes. yes, this is totally cheating without wizard mode, i know. yet the console is disabled by default, one need to use CLI arg to enable it. i prolly won't bother to introduce "console cheater" flag — after all, anybody (lol) can recompile the code with any cheats enabled. or just edit the scripts. and i sometimes want the game to believe that i am not a cheater — strictly for debugging purposes!

by the way, frying pan is great starting weapon. i wonder how far i could go if i'll take two frying pans, and enchant them to +3/+4. it would be a shame for Elpuri to be killed with a frying pan, isn't it? maybe the game should somehow record the fact that some boss was killed with… let's say, unusual weapon…

That is because ghosts are humanoid in vanilla. They are generated just like zombies and skeletons. Spooky scary ghost face is no longer used.

For the record, I am still partial to the old spooky ghost face, and think it should make a comeback. Just my $0.02.

oh, i read about it, and then forgot. prolly because one of the decisions i am not fully sold to. i mean, if original devs wanted it to be that way, they could easily implement it, just like they implemented zombies. yet ghosts stayed ghosts. i now remember that i thought about it, and decided to not follow. i mean, i have no sane arguments for "old ghosts", and had to resort to "The Original Devs…", but… eh. maybe i just love the ghosts as they are, that's all.

p.s.: just realised… The Devs prolly made ghosts non-humans simply for them to use less RAM. they have that… how it is called… "distorting animation", and internally the game is not rendering such distortions in realtime, but creates cached animation frames. devs prolly deided that it would too much to create 16+ frames for each possible character. not a problem these days, but… i just love ghosts as they are.

btw.
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There should be a wand of teleport that works like a fountain - teleports you to a random level. Super Dangerous, but a good last chance when you are cornered. High Risk High Reward. Maybe have it transport you to a level you have been on 90% of the and 10% someplace nasty.

I had an inspiration for the teleport system, all the way back from oldschool Elite where hyperspacing had something like a .01 % chance of getting you interdicted by Thargoids:

Tiny chance for teleporting (via any method except divinity) to take you to an eldritch location with strange items, creatures, limited visibility, slow-but-steady HP loss and potential danger at every step. You get poofed back after a set amount of turns there if you don't have any other way out.

vertical teleport, like NetHack cursed scroll of teleport does? hm…

as for strange places… it is harder to implement, because adding a level to a dungeon in runtime is not trivial. have to think about that.

Would it be easier to make it a permanent dungeon that you can randomly go to instead of made on-the-fly?

yep, i thought about that too, and it definitely looks easier to do. there is no need for a dungeon to be on the worldmap, those squares are simply entrances (and dungeon configs). and it doesn't even need to be permanent, i can regenerate it each time (i.e. it would be a kind of random encounter).

yes, this definitely looks like the good way to implement it.

eh, this way we may end up having more content than vanilla. i have some… uncertain feelings about it. it somewhat looks like i waited for red_k to create some great content, and then simply pull it into k8I. unfair competition.

but vanilla works on 64-bit systems, and k8I not. ok. fair competition.

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

made it so smith can open locked chests and boxes. sadly, the only tool the smith have is a hammer, so he simply STRIKES THE CHEST WITH EXCESSIVE FORCE!!111 usually it works.

p.s.: it's sad that the game doesn't have broken configurations for chests and boxes. anyway, one day i'll prolly allow the smith to shatter the whole container to pieces.

also, started to fill ticket database with ideas and such. it is quite boring to move all ideas there, so i'll prolly keep putting things there at a slow pace.

Wow, yeah, I completely forgot about the fishing dialogue. Having said that, was that the original 0.50? I feel like giving him a rod and bucket was discussed after the picture, so I'm wondering if that line was the inspiration for the picture, or if it was added after the picture.

even earlier. what i quoted is 0.43. and "fishing is fun" is actually all way back to 0.301 (just checked it).

slightly changed status panel. if you don't see anything wastly different, then i did my work right.

Any other unusual sprites I could write text for? The "steel chariot" was a fun creative exercise.

k8I has Alien Queen. you can try at it — one-line flavor text for worldmap when Alien Vessel dungeon is generated (currently it is "You heard rumors about some strange creatures roaming the continent..."), flavour text for Alien Queen level, and maybe description of Alien Queen herself. currently there is no special texts for "Look" command, but it is easy to implement them, so the more — the better. ideally, we should have "Look" descriptions for all unique monsters.

p.s.: i am storing your texts in Fossil wiki (with links to the posts), so they won't be forgotten!

Thanks for checking, appreciate it.

So if the fishing rod and bucket are added, do you think the fishing rod should work like a misc item or a polearm? Should it be a zappable dud like a banana (a.k.a. casting)? Buckets will probably be like lanterns, unrealistically good at blocking due to being so round?

i think the rod should be just like a wooden stick. but… if you use it near the water, you could get a fish. as for buckets… dunno. prolly yep, good for blocking. but i believe that the bucket should have some other use too. just can't think out what it should be yet.

p.s.: and the bucket should be wearable as a helmet, of course. blocks vision, lowers Int permanently (because the hero should be very dumb to try this .

…and now we need medusa monster, which can be approached only with a bucket on your head.

What I see is that you are not showing Will, Mana and weight.

yeah. willpower is useless in k8I. mana was hidden in 0.50 too, and i always felt that it is something devs are not happy with. it is not used in original code (althrough it is modified by new ommel blood code, and 0.50 equipment bonuses). tbh, i am thinking about completely nuking those stats from the codebase: i don't believe that i will be able to properly balance them.

as for weight and height… it's fun to see, yeah. but most of the time they are not useful. inventory weight can be seen in inventory screen, and character weight currently doesn't matter. "Siz" (height) is useless too, i simply forgot to remove it. ok, height can be useful for polymorphed chars, but i'd better introduce special "character info" screen instead, akin to stethoscope.

the idea is that useless or mostly useless info should not clutter stats panel. and numbers should be slightly brighter than labels, it is easier to catch them this way. shading on all text was introduced for the same reason: it is easier to read.

IVAN font is quite ugly and small, it doesn't give enough space to break monotony even with 10-px line height. text shadow doesn't help much too. that's why i added shading.

also, there is another fundamental typography flaw in IVAN font: digits are of the different width. this is common flaw of many monospaced bitmap fonts, and it bites when the code tries to use such font for proprotional printing. so i had to uglyfy some numbers to fix this.

p.s.: and changed blue color of stats to greenish/purplish. blue is almost unreadable on my display.

Perhaps Mana could be used to cast spells which you learn from an nPC or expensive scrolls?

They could work similarly to a scroll of immolation.