another one IVAN fork

tbh, i doubt that mana concept fits to IVAN, at least as i see the game. even if i'll ever implement "wizard training route", it will only allow the player to direct their wands in more than 8 directions, that's all. as Yancakes wrote: "Our hero is a schlub! A fast learning one, but a schlub nonetheless." there are more than enough games with classes, magic systems, and such. i don't think that we need to follow them.

IVAN is a complex game which hides its complexity under relatively limited number of options, so let it stay as that. new players need not to think which class to choose, which traits to take, and so on. and this is the first of many traps IVAN prepared for unsuspected players, lol. "look, this game is so easy!" the limited number of stats helps to better setup this "metatrap", i believe.

moved all quest-related talks to `TryQuestTalks()`, and gave Kaethos his love to sci-chat back. now any NPC could have high sci-talk chance, and it won't interfere with quests.

also, i can't see why smith and tailor could not upgrade your items. hey, they definitely have their whole houses filled with different materials! so let's try this: the harden check is the same as for the player (Int), and the price is like `Item->GetPrice() * 2 + Item->GetFixPrice() * 4`. both of the conditions looks prohibitive enough to not allow player to get super-durable weapons or armor.

of course, it is usually possible to buy SoHM from librarian, but PC Int might not be high enough to use them. and of course, SoHMs are usable on any item, while s&t will only upgrade weapons and armor. let's put our gold to some use!

p.s.: ok, Attnam smith is able to harden things up to meteoritic steel, and tailor up to ommel hair. looks legit for me. they also want big enough amount of money for their work, so it is hard to abuse this. need to check Aslona NPCs too, and other smiths/tailors. but i think that i'll keep this so far, i like it.

…and while i am at it… tried to teach NPCs to drink healing potions and vodka.

the code needs further testing, but basically, if some vital body part is in danger, or hp < maxhp/2, NPC will try to drink some healing potion (if it has any in the inventory, of course).

and if NPC is paniced, and has some alcohol, it will try to drink it too.

in theory, you can now give some healing liquid to your allies instead of throwing the bottles at them. note that dumb creatures (like puppies) simply cannot open the bottle, so they will not drink in this way.


ok. after some fixes i observed mistress drinking healing potion i gave to her, and growing a new arm. yay!

currently, NPC will always drink the whole potion. this prolly should be fixed later: intelligent NPCs could taste just enough to be healed. but even in it's current form it is much better than throwing healing potions to allies!

also, there is now a reason to give healing potions to spawned monsters: they know what to do with them!

by the way: if you'll manage to befriend Kaethos, and give him a healing potion, he'll drink it, and grow a new leg. this is because intelligent monsters will check if they're missing some limbs, and consider this as "need healing" situation. (yes, just checked this. it works.)

...and made intelligent monsters refuse to eat zombies. my mistress eat a zombie corpse, and got leprosy. she definitely should knew better!

also, NPCs can drink antidote (if you're stupid enough to give this valuable thing to them), and water if exhausted.

I completely agree, the player should not be able to learn spellcasting. However, in vanilla I used Mana as "magic item affinity". Basically, higher Mana lowers cooldown of all magic items you have, or otherwise influences their effects. I reasoned that while the player cannot use magic actively, their magic items are drawing their energy from somewhere (from the user), so a latent talent for magic will still help.

But yeah, I don't think the player should ever be able to learn "real" spells.

Similarly, Will in vanilla is used as a saving throw against many detrimental effects - like sirens. Though it might be currently a bit too weak and should be rebalanced.


Yes!

yeah, "mana" is prolly just a bad name. and i think that it can be merged with willpower, because what is magic if not the art of bending reality with your own will? so the player with high Will can just order the item to cooldown faster.

as for sirens, i used sound resistance and ESP items for that. full helms has some sound resistance, so sirens have less chance to charm the player (sound quality is very bad inside, definitely lo-fi! . as for ESP items, the rationale is that siren song is mind-bending, and ESP gives some protection against that. so our beloved tin helmet helps, full helmet helps a little less, and ring/amulet of ESP helps too. wear all that, and you prolly kill the siren before she manages to charm you.

by the way, i think that royal wizard of Aslona should have some additional uses too. maybe i'll allow him to create flaming weapons for PC. i love flaming swords (and flaming katanas in k8I, because why not? , so i want to have some way to get one besides PRNG good will. there is no fire system in k8I, but wielding a flaming weapon (or holy banana, for that matter) automatically burn webs (with a chance, of course).

and maybe imprisoned necromancer in Attnam should do the same if you accept his quest? after all, he wants you to succeed, so why don't help a little?

Is run command gone, or am I completely blind?

Crash when entering UT1 for a second time:

Can't open dungeons/level_4_0.dat for input!

Repeatable: Immediately after starting the game, go down to UT1, up again, and down again. Crash!

Is this supposed to happen with save file names? Also see the player's name in picture 2.

Vampires should be able to drink potions of blood.

@red_kangaroo: wow! thank you! something is VERY wrong there. "_new" is a temporary thing, it should never be like that. as k8I keep saved games in the special archive, it is first writing new archive with "_new" suffix, and then replaces old archive by renaming. here comes the problem: in *nix, renaming will perform atomic replacement. in windows it will fail instead. i do delete the old file first in windows, but it looks like it's not enough.

the problem is that Wine still mostly uses *nix file logic, and with Wine everything works as expected. it looks like windows for some reason locked the old archive, renaming failed, and the chaos begins.

i'l try to check the code, but this one is really hard to debug: there is no bug on my system, so i can only guess what's wrong… T_T

as for "run" — it's there. `"u" — toggle running`. it took me some time to find it in "?" help too (i know that it's "u", that's how i run away from hengehogs after all! . i should prolly make a better description for it.


p.s.: the problem is prolly due to old file somehow being still opened when i'm trying to delete it. in *nix it's not a problem — deleting opened file will make it anonymous, and OS will delete it for real when it is closed. in windows, it is immediate failure. so old file cannot be deleted, new file cannot be renamed, the game is confused, everything is broken.

p.p.s.: i think i found it! i really did forget to close the old file. here, for once, windows logic would be better — with *nix silent deletion, i would never notice it!

interesting idea. not that we have many such potions now — mostly troll blood, blood of various frogs, and spider blood, i believe (too lazy to check right now). we need at least human blood too, which should have a healing effect on vampire (and work as a good nutrition for humans). and of course, vampires should spawn with several bottles of human blood in their inventory.

also, just thought about mana more, and i have another idea. why it's a regular stat at all? for me, it belongs to "weapon expirience" stats — the more PC is using magic items, the more "magic weapon" expirience he get, just like with other kinds of weapons. and applying (breaking) wands should slightly decrease it, because that's not how magic wands are meant to be used!

this is very sweet. excellent addition.

I like the idea of magic skill, but I still think that a stat for natural affinity for magic is good to have - just like you have both Dexterity and weapon skill.

this is prolly where we can agree to disagree.

i need to think about it for some more time, but currently my rationale is: PC has absolutely zero magic abilities. magic items for him is just like another kind of weapon — "press here, and it will make BOOM". just like with guns, PC can learn slightly better aiming, more hand and breath control for better shooting, but that's it. and it prefrectly fits to "weapon categories" this way. because from my PoV any kind of "magic affinity" inevitably leads to questions like "ok, why can't we learn some spells then?" of course, nobody is obliged to implement spellcasting even if some kind of mana stat is there, but putting it to "weapon kind" clearly indicates that spellcasting is not ommited by accident, it is conscious balance decision.

of course, i'm not insisting that i am the only one who's right here. both visions have their pro and contra. maybe my vision is biased, because to be fully honest, i am sci-fi person, i HAET magic with passion. so i see magic items more like some hi-tech artefacts, which require Int and skill to operate, not some special "magic ability". and this leads to "weapon skill".


p.s.: one of the reasons i love IVAN is because there are no stupid spells, "schools of magic", spellbooks, and all that. i know that you aren't going to introduce that… but i want to drive the game even further away from it, if it is possible.

Yeah.


See, while I like sci-fi, I definitely 100% prefer fantasy. Though science fantasy is pretty great middle ground.

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Yeah, this is one aspect of IVAN I hope is preserved. IVAN is one of few games that feel like true swords & sorcery - there's a lot of magic in the world and it will be used against our hero, but never by him (at least directly). Our protagonist is like a barbarian filled with awe when he sees the wonders of the world he can never fully graps. This felling woul dbe lost if we could ever learn to use magic unaided.

"high enough tech is indistinguishable from magic".

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

I like the lack of spellcasting for the protagonist in IVAN. The Idea that a former slave on errand for the capitalist can suddenly become a master magician in the 8 elasped days of average game time it takes to play the game. It makes sense that you can figure out how to swing a sword or activate a wand, but it always seemed farfectched that the PC would pick up a book and suddenly be able to harness all the powers of the arcane arts.

If there were an alternate stroyline available in the game where you started from a more privledged postion, I could see it making sense. But honestly the gameplay without it is part of what makes IVAN so unique. Again just my $0.02

yeah. and our hero is not even very proficient with swords, even after training. just try to go without various ommel boosts, prays, wands and scrolls (i just described most of my runs, lol. very short runs.)

btw, i remembered one old topic, and reduced stamina penalty for blocking with shields. also, character will try to block with shield first, instead of always using the right hand, then the left hand. currently i simply divided penalty by 5, but i think it should be more sophisticated.

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

I'm on your side. I ALSO like the lack of ranged weapons though.

At most a stat can affect how spells are cast from scrolls, even though I did talk previously of an quest that let you learn a bit of magic. I think the game benefits by having magic be limited to scrolls/wands/equipment. It both makes it play differently from other roguelikes and impacts world building.

Also, please, NEVER implement unidentified items. It's my least favourite part of any game where it's a mechanic lol

Anyways I finally got around to playing the newest build, if I leave the UT and return the game crashes. I can enter the UT no problem but as soon as I leave and come back it crashes every time.

I'm fine with not knowing how magic works. Especially as a slave in IVAN. I dislike in, say, D&D that people know WHY magic works because it removes pretty much any chance of spiritual philosophical speculation from gameplay. There are no atheists in the forgotten realms. The prospect of atheism in IVAN is actually quite funny when we know the gods are there and you can contact them directly, if anything I'd make that more obscure.

That being said, mellis is the goat and one of the gods I've lifted for other fiction and world building when I play D&D. Mellis makes empty cans and bottles worth toting around since once you're in his favour he'll fill them up for you, sometimes with troll blood and healing potion!

it would be interesting to use IVAN engine for some postapoc RL, though.

and we now have some kind of ranged weapons — we can throw things! this is more than enough, i believe. especially considering that in k8I you can throw armed mine or bear trap. throwing mines at Jenny is fun!

your wish is granted! is was easy wish, tho, because i haet this mechanic with passion too. the only thing that reminds it in k8I is "Look"ing — if you never ever stepped on a square, and revealed it by some other means, and there is a scroll, the game will not tell you which exactly scroll it is. but it hardly affects anything, because there are almost zero situations when you can Look at the square you never visited. and if you visit it, the scroll automatically became "identified".

and i may remove this mechanic again anyway, it doesn't add much to gameplay.

yes, it is known bug with saves, sorry. the current build is totally unplayable due to it. i think i fixed the bug, so the next build should be ok. this is one of the bugs you won't catch witn Wine — everything works with Wine, but fails on real windows system. once i'll be sure that it is fixed, i'll upload new build.

btw, there is Solicitus temple in k8I, inherited from… CLIVAN, i believe. Solicitus is the god of Atheism. having god of atheism (by the way, the only god with a physical presence in the world) is so… ivanesque, that i simply couldn't omit it.