itch.io

Thanks for taking the time to consider my late night rambling thoughts :P

1)Eeeenteresting.

2)If you do go this route, I think abstracting the zombies gained into different power tiers is probably important for striking a satisfying balance there without crazy overhead work. My main reasoning for this is that it's already underwhelming raising anything stronger than a boar because you know the zombie you get out of it is going to be strictly weaker. I dunno, could be just careful tweaking of the zombie stats over time could relieve this, maybe I'll tinker with that some on my next run :P

3)I agree with this reasoning and on reflection, I might have just been itching for more birds in the game in my sleep deprived state >_>

6)I suspected but I appreciate your confirmation, maybe I have a next tinker project or two :D

7)It's a small thing from player perspective but honestly one of my favorite things from immersion point of view about DF and cataclysm.

It's premise has hooked me in the same way :) There's a long road of dev time ahead though, I personally agree with dev's approach here as  steam's general audience can be brutal. I'd say stash a little money here and there if possible for when one of the big updates drops like the upcoming destruction update in a few months or modding (probably) after that. This is one person's project so things are gonna be slow :)

Check out the conversation had at the bottom of the devlog

https://wizardsofthecode.itch.io/soulash/devlog/89001/soulash-release-cycle

TLDR: Probably at some point after this year, but no promises being made at present.

This is a complex topic so I figured it could use it's own thread. After having done a couple of runs with necromancer here are my thoughts and experience. Please feel free to add your perspective as well :)

I mostly played a vampire necro, and I think the dynamic between keeping bloodthirst sated and zombies is interesting and tense, but led to a situation where I was keeping very few zombies around because they were pretty weak anyway, mostly useful as a distraction until you have an army. I probably played super sub-optimally, but I felt like I never wanted to "waste" corpses, so I was in this weird self imposed position of not raising anything until mostly drained of blood which got much more manageable when I finally crafted a goatskin.

Once I grabbed vampiric touch at level three the class felt almost traditional warlock with the benefit of followers as meat shield. Sylvira was a constant thorn but I finally managed to kill her when I used the interior corner of a building to chokepoint her with dropped bone zombies in the doorway then vampiric touch as very long back and forth whittling her down finally dropped her.

There's a really tough dilemma with balancing the zombies with numerical potential and player character power itself but I have a few ideas, some light touch, some heavier and probably needing iterative approach if implemented:

1)Keep a mind to add (when appropriate) piles of bones to areas both secret and out in the open. The small stash of bones behind the waterfall was a welcome reprieve :) I also think it'd make sense to add pile of bones to occasionally randomly generate in the environment like rocks (but rarer). In the future with new maps, play up places like sewers and graveyards to be places where a smart necro could find stashes of corpses or bones.

2)Instead of balancing zombies out on like a sliding level or stat scale which seems like it could quickly become a massive headache, would it be possible to spawn a different tier of zombie based on the weight of the corpse? I think it would make sense if critters like rabbits and fox corpses gave appropriate critter zombies, humanoids made the ghouls we know, and beasts like bears and dragons produced a third tier of monstrosity. Personally I think the zombies you get should in some way be relatively proportional to the creatures you killed for them

3)Some extra weakling critters to pad out dealing with challenging enemies generally and the food/corpse balance would be a welcome thing. I noticed a few cats, dogs might be a suitable enemy for a couple of races as a "swarm" type.  I almost have decided myself to add some irrationally hostile chickens somewhere :P 

4)Possible to give raise zombie ability command functionality of zombies when used on something other than a corpse? Thinking things like

-used on self calls zombies to player(Wake up! lol)

-used on target focuses on enemy or sends zombies to wait for a bit at empty tile

-any action with it senses unlife (of just your own zombies)

These would I think alleviate some of the first "lighthouse syndrome" I got from trying to manage these guys and train enemies into them by manipulating the pathfinding.

5)Small one, but I'd mistakenly assumed Winds of Decay didn't damage your own zombies, it'd be quite nice if it either didn't or if the tooltip reflected that it damages everything in its path (the tooltip currently says it "damages all enemies" in a cone)

6)0.3 related specifically: Special Explosive/acid/burning zombie ability :D Totally not inspired by Cataclysm, I would never. Abilities that buff existing zombies or raising them as special types I could both see as interesting. Exploding corpse ability potentially?

*7)Bones and/or corpses might be interesting to explore as being throwable. I'd like to be able to toss either/or to raise one at a distance rather than dropping from inventory and scooting back. Bonus points for hitting Magnus in the face with a bloody rabbit corpse.

Sent!

I think I just ran into what DeadStack did, it was a miner in the dwarf fort with no dot facing indicator, I shift-looked and it didn't say sleeping or any status other than what's in the tooltip by default. I reloaded the save and the glyph for the miner entity was gone, but was now appearing in the spotted creatures list on the left no matter where I looked. Artur I'll zip up the save, let me know if you'd like me to send it to you.

I'm not sure if I totally got across what I meant :) This is the best animation from Dwarf Fortress I could find briefly to illustrate it:

https://preview.redd.it/ai5hgyod89211.gif?format=mp4&s=a67a2970be0a1941c4c6e53b2db9496bf321f836

Blood flung off from those "k" creatures (goblins I think? Or kobolds?) flows down in the direction of the river flow. Not suggesting anything as crazy as the fluid dynamic systems DF has, but would it be worthwhile to have something like assign a directional flow to river tiles maybe on a per-zone basis, and have bloody or otherwise covered entities appear to release said liquid downriver and eventually dissipate? Would love to see corpses and other bloodied objects dumped in a body of water to behave the same way. On the other hand I also figure you're probably more amenable to complex additions when they actually effect gameplay mechanics :P

So for all our sanity's sake, I guess we should sometimes play other games. Trying to get into Tales of Maj'Eyal but it's not quite scratching some itch for some reason, I wanted to make this thread for bringing attention to games big or small that share even just an inkling of the same presentation or inspiration as what we've seen so far from Soulash. 

In interest of that, I'll go first. Below is a small one called "Chomp!" done for a 7DRL challenge which I've had in the back of my head but couldn't remember the damn name of until recently. I would call it a roguelike Rampage-clone if I had to tag it on the spot. You smash and burn the city, level up your kaiju monstrosity, evade cops and hide from increasingly dangerous responses to your actions by using the city environment to your advantage.

https://kitchsitch.itch.io/chomp

In a similar but more complex vein, anybody that likes Soulash that hasn't played Cogmind yet please grab it at some point, even the free 7DRL version to see if it's up your alley. The visual presentation alone is so strong for what it is.

Alright so whatchu folks got? Weird, obscure, difficult, or beautiful in it's own right and maybe hasn't been mentioned on /r/roguelikes recently? I wanna hear about it.

It didn't have the grey dot in the direction it was facing? Looking at the tooltip of the archer with shift, did it say it was sleeping, or anything unusual? If your character had a high enough dexterity, you may have been able to walk in front of them in the dark caves without them noticing you at all.

Apparently this is still an issue though the first time I've run into it since a couple versions ago. Hiding upstairs in Mansfield like the wuss I am, I walked back and forth in the hallway to pass some time. It seemed like when I was directly on top or adjacent of where Sylvira was underneath me, she was able to cast a freeze ray and land a hit. Sometimes the next step would get one off, sometimes it wouldn't.

 My necromancer is still upstairs tending to his wounds as of this writing so I may have updates :P

Curious as to what's the upper limit of unique object id's?  As more mods from more people are added can the id sequence be skipped without an issue? e.g. if next I added some demon with "id: 666" skipping 588-665 would it cause a problem? Just thinking ahead (perhaps needlessly) for compatibility if other people join in.

Not a simple ask I'm sure but, could blood pool or stream from the character until cleaned, depending on the type of liquid flow around the character?

I keep forgetting you've teased that :P I must say I'm most excited about mapping eventually, but probably least capable of it under current circumstances/understanding. Think I've gotten a slightly clearer picture now though :)

I figured that's how you're debugging and testing critters :P

The intention is to make it a high priority and not let the fight drag out, else those scissors will likely get used as a backup weapon and rendered less useful ;)

:D Indeed, I figured it'd be fitting considering I lifted Silvyra as the template :P Stats and health probably need careful tweaking, she was an easy kill for the orc fallen knight that I rushed straight to Mansfield to confirm everything was working lol.

So I made a thing! It's a very simple thing, it adds a leader to Mansfield: Lorelei who has a guaranteed chance to spawn with scissors ;) Can verify she works in 0.2.5 :D Here's the instructions. Please back up these files before editing them!

1)go to Soulash Directory, Data folder open entities.json with text editor. Add a comma to the last "}" bracket at the bottom of the file and add the following lines

    {
        "ability_user": [
            11
        ],
        "artificial_intelligence": {
            "allies": [
                1,
                2,
                7
            ],
            "enemies": [
                5
            ]
        },
        "components": [
            "actor",
            "ability_user",
            "artificial_intelligence",
            "collidable",
            "equipment",
            "experience_gainer",
            "fighter",
            "glyph",
            "health",
            "humanoid",
            "moveable",
            "name",
            "position_2d",
            "sight",
            "stamina",
            "statistics",
            "tags"
        ],
        "corpse": "Elven corpse",
        "description": "Lorelei is a younger elf than would be commonly encountered. She issues orders to the tradesfolk with a resolute calm that betrays any prior impression of her age and experience.",
        "equipment": {
            "backpack": [
                {
                    "chance": 1.0,
                    "name": "Scissors"
                }
            ],
            "cape": [
                {
                    "chance": 1.0,
                    "name": "Cloak"
                }
            ],
            "head_cloth": [
                {
                    "chance": 1.0,
                    "name": "Hood"
                }
            ],
            "right_hand": [
                {
                    "chance": 1.0,
                    "name": "Dagger"
                }
            ],
            "torso_cloth": [
                {
                    "chance": 1.0,
                    "name": "Dress"
                }
            ]
        },
        "experience_gainer": {
            "exp": 10,
            "level": 1
        },
        "glyph": {
            "color": [
                95,
                105,
                15
            ],
            "id": 188,
            "tile_type": 0,
            "tiles": [
                0
            ]
        },
        "health": 90,
        "id": 587,
        "moveable": {
            "speed": 1.0
        },
        "name": "Lorelei Ertoris",
        "sight": {
            "infravision": false,
            "range": 10
        },
        "statistics": {
            "dexterity": [
                12,
                15
            ],
            "endurance": [
                10,
                12
            ],
            "intelligence": [
                11,
                15
            ],
            "strength": [
                10,
                13
            ],
            "willpower": [
                10,
                14
            ]
        },
        "tags": [
            7,
            9
        ]
    }

Make sure the "]" end bracket is at the very end of the file still.

2)Go to "Data>Organizations.json", ctrl+f for Mansfield and change the "Leader" value to 587, by default it is -1

You will need to start a new game for the character to spawn in. Lorelei should now be wandering somewhere east of the starting area. If you take your time be aware she could wander to the neighboring zones. If you're not sure you did it correctly, check the Json linting tool Artur linked in the devblog, selecting the entire file and ctrl pasting it in.

I haven't verified yet that she will use her ability of bless weapon, if someone could I'd appreciate it!

*Changes: Buffed to 90 health, glyph changed to "L"

Thank you for the write-up! Between playing with the new patch and digging through this, it may take me some time to share something worthwhile, but the documentation should be incredibly useful. Already have had a few questions answered by this, just now need to think of some critters worth adding to the space available :)

Thanks for the patch! :) Your work is not done yet however! *Cracks whip* 

Wanna get this one down before I forget the details:

Butchering from within the inventory (selecting corpse and pressing butcher) lowers both the durability of the "Cutter" item wielded, and non-identical Cutter items stashed in the inventory. 

Reproduction/Example:

-Wield Primitive Bone Knife, have a hare/fish, stone knife, and additional Primitive Bone Knife in inventory

-Click creature corpse and butcher from within the inventory

-Durability of wielded Bone Knife and Stone Knife in the inventory will both lower, the Primitive Bone Knife in the inventory will not.

Secondary: I also think I saw you catch that drinking blood from corpse within inventory bug on the Talamann stream? Neither pressing r or the icon from within inventory worked for me either.

Ah that makes perfect sense. For some reason I thought you were going for having an abstract number of casts on an item, after uses spent it would behave only like a normal equipment item. Reducing durability sounds like best of both worlds and keeps with the theme :)

You're on the most recent version of the game 0.2.4.1? There were issues in previous versions with items under certain conditions causing crashes but I haven't encountered them again since. Did another copy of linen pants happen to disappear when you salvaged? Was your inventory full? If it's possible more details are helpful :) but I know it can be difficult when you aren't expecting something to go wrong

Would charges for said items be able to regenerate? I'm trying to get more into ToME inbetween your updates and I like how they handle item charges like this. Basic example:

Recall Rod (Teleports player to world map) has 400 charges, using 201 per use. 1 Tick I think regenerates per turn. 

Sounds like could have some headaches associated for this game, maybe if charges only regenerated when the item is held by the player, it'd alleviate some of that? 

Whatever direction you go I'm excited to start playing with whatever you've got coming down the pipe :D

If additional categories of consumable items are coming in 0.3 and beyond I can see this adding some tedium to inventory management. It's not so bad with just bandages and food/drink right now but even the present situation could be improved. My suggestion is to avoid adding a "quick slot" for them (saving precious screen space) and instead work consumable items to be interactable within the hotbar, and eventually iterate towards having shift+1,2,3,4... and alt+1,2,3,4... as alternate keys to bind things to, as more abilities and items become available.

So you mean when you've moved a decent distance, the map isn't centered on you and have to pan it to find yourself? I will say it is hard to see the pixel sometimes especially in a forest (Maybe intended? :P) that is your character on the map, it'd be nice if it maybe cycled through another color to give it some pop or had an icon to represent.

If you've got ideas join us on the suggestions sub-board :) This is the best time to influence direction of the game and the dev is very responsive and generous with time when available :)

Some more abilities, some creative, some more stereotypical rpg fantasy, because I just haven't thrown enough words at you yet:

Trail of Fire: Leaves fire path behind player as they walk (hopefully self-explanatory), alternatively

Fire Dash: A charge that leaves a line of fire in its wake (could forget this and have it work as a synergy Between Trail of Fire and Bull Charge/phaseshift/lunge etc)

Ice Cage: Will freeze enemies inside its path and block those outside. Can be knocked down with attacks and slowly melts.

Geomancy: Pull a set of walls towards player, then away from player, damaging enemies in the path. Or maybe pull a wall from a location into the ground and reposition under target, crushing enemy if under ceiling, throwing them into the air and repositioning in random location if outside, dealing damage in either case. Trying to think of some others like these that aren't too obvious for a potential earth/magic based pseudo-category. Generally they're difficult to envision based on how selecting abilities and targets work, is it possible to select multiple targets in a queue or sequence for an ability?

Telekinesis: That sword over there? Mine now. Pull items from a distance towards player, damaging entity if in its path. Partly inspired by D2 and one of my favorite C:DDA synergies, "Magneto" setup of bionics making it possible to magnetically pull metal objects into the player's hand and fire them at enemies with the strength of a gauss rifle. Not sure how something going anywhere near that would fit mechanically but it would be entertaining to throw items not located on the player at enemies somehow. I see issues handling how items stack and players selecting individual items versus the entire pile.

Lol this explains some things, like the crafting/materials system being as fully realized as it is this at this stage. Trading gets messy fast, I think of DF trying to do currency exchange and my head hurts. Maybe one day we can crash a market on the way to total destruction? XD

Oh we're going to break much more than the forests and the fires I assure you :) Related to that, I'm not sure if you've seen it before or even have the time with everything on your plate, but I think this blog post from the creator of Rimworld concerning storytelling and emergent complexity in game systems might be interesting to you:

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TynanSylvester/20130602/193462/The_Simulation_Dream.php

Sometimes I disagree with Tynan's conclusions but I think it has some particularly relevant considerations with what you're working on now.

Ahh cool, I hadn't even considered glyphs moving freely and being emitted like particles. Brain still leaning towards being stuck in traditional ASCII representation mindset :P Quite the interesting engine you've built already, I expected a lot more of the thoughts that have been thrown at you overall would be outside of viability.

I've seen you've been elsewhere concerned about telegraphing to new players their context in the world. I'm guessing as the engine is basically now you'd be able to, on game start, render some animations before the character can input actions? Thinking an intro in some variable order of

1)Meteor/Godsoul crashes towards ground/character's 'host' 

2)Crater is created, depending upon race/class combination influence spreads out in the immediate zones area, e.g. necromancer kills trees in radius from impact zone, physical classes get a shockwave that knocks trees over, inquisitor/warlock spread some form of fire/magic

My 'head canon' imagined that above was happening already :P The main problem I see with this is first impressions for new players. If anything actually manages to get killed in the shockwave, would they get exp? If fires start spreading or something otherwise creates a hazard, I could see this leading to a quick information overload and an "ahhh what's happening???"

I see. Wondering if making small adjustments to fire tile height (like in the case of Fire Pillar) over slow intervals (when animations would play anyways?) if it would have a satisfying effect. Essentially Height and Color representing intensity of "environmental fire". From a post you made earlier it sounds like you could be grappling with that question already :P 

In my experience I tended to use Earthquake in the exact same spot repeated times, it'd be neat if it caused a progressively deeper/bigger crater the more you use it in the same location.

Interesting, could you combine those properties? Something like "Mammoth Walk", lasting a certain duration the tiles around the character would shake and break as they move around.

Question about engine limitation related to abilities: Possible to make ability animations persist past activation into subsequent turns? May be more of a 0.4 or beyond thing. Thinking for things like elemental shields (Fire, Ice, Bone Shields that orbit the player and hit an enemy that enters radius, or block a projectile from entering for example), giving Warlock's Light some kind of persistent animation for the light to emit from (thinking about it, not sure how that'd work), and zone abilities that persist like Circle/Wall of fire. I see Fire Pillar was a kind of way of working around this :) Realtime manipulation of tile height and dimensional perspective seems to at least be a thing as seen in earthquake?

Oh sorry that might have been my vampire not noticing on the flame sword XD Just for clarity though I mean as a fire starting source, not necessarily just light. *The Flame Sword maybe could have a junior Dragon Breath, and the candle hat could drop maybe a teeny tiny ember to keep tabs on a dark area you expect an enemy may come from

Exciting!

Creatures that are Bleeding or covered in a liquid material leave a trail of that material behind them. Would love to see particularly strong melee attacks leave a blood spatter on surfaces.

Dismemberment/Hacking off enemy body parts might be interesting, could see difficulty in balancing between enemy/player interaction. Would the player be in danger of being dismembered as well? I think Qud handles this in a way that fits closest to Soulash's vision (DF's style of dismemberment might be too permanent for it occurring to the player to be fun), where axes and serrated weapons dismember limbs, and there are a variety of way to restore them or... 'obtain' new limbs to compensate. Could see how extra limbs wouldn't necessarily work with the equipment system without a rework.

Flaming Sword and equipment like the Candle Hat should be able to be used like a torch in a pinch as a fire source.

I'd like to also further encourage you in this direction, however you decide to go about it though is okay by me. Might selfishly just be a sucker for steam achievements :P

You may be interested in how Bay 12 is handling this for Dwarf Fortress for example:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

Happy to help :D

My hope is to spread as much skill around with the game as possible so that Artur can get the best possible audience to test his game against :D

I will say, probably the most important thing in my writeup after having read what you already caught in your reply, is Intimidate at level 2. It maybe is too powerful, but I think there's a lack of other panic buttons at the moment to take it's place, especially in fitting the thematic direction of a warlock. With it, you only really only have to be afraid of anything that can hurt you outside of it's range. It also has a very short cast time (.30) which means you can use it on a group of three faster than some characters can move, or cast it on an enemy one tile away that would normally be able to close the gap and hit you before your spell finished.

The movement speed+ ability would be useful if you missed intimidate, the backflip(?) ability on poacher might also be enough to save your life but I haven't sprung for that one yet. The level 2 AoE fireball isn't worth taking imo IF one of these utility abilities is available instead. There are way better AoE attacks later on, early on your priority is going to be surviving and escaping danger, not taking on groups of enemies.

This all said though, it might still be a bit punishingly difficult. I suspect the next minor patch will effectively iron these things out, but we'll have to wait and see :)

Ooh, reminds me of how DF and C:DDA handle tree felling. Trees would have to be reworked so that they expand outwards from direction of the player rather than transforming into a single "Chopped tree" tile and some kind of check/force to crush anything underneath. Generally, I feel like there'd be a place in this game for using the environment cleverly to literally crush enemies :D

Yeah this is many many months down the line towards 0.5 that I'm thinking of but here's a general outline for base building I'm arriving at:

1) craft portable altar or something that when used in any chosen location creates the origin point for your base and the first node in waypoint network

2) Go out and clear existing altars of hostiles to claim them and add to waypoint network. "Forward Base" extensions to network should also be readily available/relatively cheap for expeditions further.

3)Feed Crafting materials or some resource to connected network. When requirements are met, select and place building parts/modules which teleport or fall out of the sky into chosen location

I'm not attached to any of this btw and teleporting whenever wherever as long as I'm not fatigued is cool by me too :P

Kinda feel like outline I've got here is maybe leaning too heavily on a Diablo 2/3 vibe (can that be a bad thing?), or something else is off with it, not sure.

This thread will be primarily intended for collecting ideas and brainstorming (hah) on environmental interactions you'd like to see in the nearest big update, or fits the general theme but is too large an idea to include soon. Things like abilities that interact with the surroundings in some new way to create hazards or unique situations, behavior you would expect or enjoy seeing from interactions between various combinations of different skills, objects, tiles and creatures, and new/modified objects and items that would fulfill various functions to flesh out the experience. 

Please feel free to chime in regardless of how outlandish or minor the idea is :)

Some to start;

Characters in wet tiles such as the river or in heavy rain being more conductive to electricity. Increased damage or increased range/likelihood to jump between wet targets? *Maybe an additional stun effect?

Water when hit with sufficient enough heat can blast a plume of steam

Lava manipulation abilities that when interacting with water creates obsidian, lights fires on grass and other flammable materials, 

Casting Fire Pillar on top of a tree slowly turns it into the center of a fire tornado

Abilities like Earthquake that disrupt tile formation create cracks in wall tiles, shatters nearby glass and can cause debris to fall if there is a ceiling overhead.

Tiles should have a realistic amount of resistance to force I.E. Dragon Breath seems like it should effectively funnel through a tight alleyway if started inside of one but be directed to the sides if targeted straight at a wall. On the other hand solid and strong enough projectiles should be able to penetrate certain materials with enough strength. Abilities that create blasts should leave progressively more of a crater with debris strewn from the center. This sounds hard lol, here just develop a whole simulated physics system by October :D

Back to basics: Throwable pots, tables and chairs! Other improvised weaponry picked up off the ground or salvaged from destroyed furniture. I'd like to be able to hit something with the leg of a table or chair if the tooltip is going to mention it :P

I'd also like to be able to move furniture around somehow to create obstacles and barricades in a potential desperate situation, and for enemies to surprise me in how they might break through said obstacles.

Ability to drop a torch on flammable surfaces to get a fire going 

Bombs. Bombs. Dynamite acceptable. But bombs.

Slow to arrive idea on fast travel, using the forgotten god altars as a waypoint system for it. "You smash your fists into the altar claiming this place as a conduit for your mortal vessel". Or do you have other plans for them? :3

One way or another, running across those felt to me like they should be a special tiny area, offering some kind of relative refuge, or something to be converted and defiled. Once made a trip specifically to smith something on it to see if anything special would happen 

Have you thought about further down the line working more on the enchantment system? I've been thinking along the lines of being able to collect different enchantments from the magic items you salvage and being able to pick them somehow when crafting. Something to give a little more control in the kind of gear being consistently worn would be a welcome benefit, though would probably have minimal results with some of the early game issues people are having.

In regards to necromancer stuff, maybe would be neat to eventually get a single champion type zombie that sticks around a little longer. Perhaps an abomination golem type creature that requires multiple corpses, thread and extra time to conjure up and as a benefit comes with an ability or two it can use. I love me a zombie horde as much as the next person but might need something also to properly deal with some of the tougher individual named enemies

Big fan personally of all things Warhammer so I'm a happy camper seeing even vague inspirations in regards to style setting or mechanics :D

Ah I see on those skills lol, haven't gotten poacher or necro very far.  

*Grass tiles sprouting legs and walking away sounds like the kind of acid trip gameplay you find in Qud, I say feature!

Excited to read to read your stuff and start poking at things :D

And yes, I noticed salvaging items was returning a chance percentage of the crafting components put into it, that telegraphed well for me :)