I noticed (and recognized) the avatar a few days ago. I just noticed the new title when I read this though.

Edit -- The runes idea is a good one. If you can equip different runes to different parts of the body, that opens up lots of possibilities, such as affecting body parts (i.e. you can lose function of an arm).

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

The four outcomes of an attack could be

Miss/Evaded - 0% damage
Glancing Blow - 50% damage
Normal Hit - 100% damage
Critical Hit - 200% damage

The default weighting can be something like this:
Evade: 0% chance
Glance: 10% chance
Normal: 85% chance
Crit: 5% chance
Average = 0*0 + 50*0.1 + 100*0.85 + 200*0.05 = 100% damage

So as chances are manipulated, we can take this average as low as 0%
-- Evade: 100% chance; Glance: 0% chance; Normal: 0% chance; Crit: 0% chance

or as high as 200%
-- Evade: 0% chance; Glance: 0% chance; Normal: 0% chance; Crit: 100% chance


//edit
All dungeon monsters could fall into one of three classes: Living, Undead, and Magical beings.

Living beings would include feral beasts and evil aligned races, like orcs, trolls and ogres.
Undead beings includes zombies, skeletons, mummies and ghosts.
Magical beings include elementals, golems, and animated armors.

Rather than having too much randomness, there could be some logic to what monster drops what rune:
The Living beings could drop Blood runes.
The Undead beings could drop Shadow runes.
The Magical beings could drop Holy runes.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Nice, I like the way the monster types tie into the runes. I'm not sure about binding the runes to 3 different parts, that could lead to a lot of cases that would need balancing. Off the bat, I would say that the blood rune is over-powered, more HP and damage are almost always better choices in dungeon crawlers where you need to be able to soak up damage and kill monsters quickly. How about having the runes as stats instead of buffs? Blood rune gives +HP, Holy gives +armour (divine protection), Shadow gives +damage. We could also introduce another monster class Demonic, dropping an ethereal rune, giving +MP.

Losing all the runes upon completing the dungeon seems really cool. We could probably tie that into the story somehow, with a ferryman character who demands your runes or some such. I also like it because it'll mean we have more control over the balance of each level.

Along the same vein, keeping control over the balance: instead of an experience system with XP per monster, we could have the dungeon boss drop an item which stays with your character to the next level. Then we can have a system where you choose which of 7 dungeon bosses you want to fight, each one would have a certain type of character and attack, and when you defeat it, you get it's power by collecting its artefact. If we arrange these 7 bosses so that each one's artefact is another boss's weakness, then players can brute-force a victory by exploiting the weakness. If players are skilled enough then they can do the bosses in any order - ordering should not be important. The artefacts would give different power-ups to suit different play styles.

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Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve

Hmm... just throwing an idea out here (based on Magic: The Gathering's WUBRG color system *proceeds to laugh maniacally*)...

In MTG, you have five colors that basically "oppose" each other (but can also be mixed together to form a deck):

White: Represents goodness, holiness; focuses on healing, protection, and generating *tons* of warriors (usually weak ones)
blUe: Represents manipulation, trickery; focuses on screwing with your opponents' heads with counterspells, spell manipulation, and so on
Black: Represents death and corruption; focuses on mass destruction and monsters that are primarily there to deal damage than to protect its master
Red: Represents haste and destruction; focuses on killing things, and blowing stuff up -- fast.
Green: Represents nature and strength; focuses on powerful creatures, creation, and nurturing.

White and Green are (usually) considered complementary to each other, while Red and Black might be considered complementary. Blue is generally thought of as the "neutral" faction.

Like I said before, you can build your deck with a complement of different colors from the WUBRG system to give yourself features that suit your play style. Nothing is really "stronger" or "better" than others. It is all a matter of style. Of course, mixing colors has consequences -- if you dilute your deck too much, the features of each color becomes less potent, very much the same way life goes: "Jack of all trades, master of none."

So, consider giving your characters power based not only on *what* they have, but *how much* they choose to have of what they use.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

But when we add in healing potions, evasion becomes more powerful, because it's easier to heal a small HP bar, than a big one. So does that mean shadow runes are overpowered too?

The way I was thinking about it:
-- 25% more HP will allow you to survive 25% longer.
-- 20% chance of evasion will allow you to survive 25% longer.
-- On average, (100*a)% evasion is equivalent to 100*a/(1-a) % HP bonus.

But when we add in healing potions, evasion is stronger, because potions go further when you have a smaller HP bar.
But on the flip side, the bigger your HP bar is, the faster your health regeneration is, so it's swings and roundabouts.


Also, I experimented with some procgen last night to produce Hex based dungeons:

The dots represent rooms, the lines represent doors between rooms.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Yeah, Jasmine has a good point. Say you have a "Barbarian" class with a high damage-dealing rate combined with the ability to sustain a lot of damage -- it's not only balanced, but a basic staple of RPGs.

Of course, adding runes that augment a character in similar ways isn't much different. Think of it this way -- three blood runes == Barbarian. One blood rune + two shadow runes == Assassin. Two blood runes + holy rune == Cleric.

I'm not sure if attaching runes to different parts of the body has different effects (for instance if a blood rune has a different "added" effect when attached to an arm as opposed to one's armor), but either way, it opens up lots of possibilities for customization. Maybe a "weld" system would work, where runes can be permanently attached in order to boost the effect in lieu of having the ability to change it later (I've seen such mechanics used, though I can't recall any specific game titles off the top of my head).

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Regarding the artefacts: surely the first boss will be harder to kill because you don't have any artefacts, and subsequent bosses are easier to kill because you do have the artifacts.

If we want to game to be open ended, there would have to be an unlimited number of dungeons with an unlimited number of bosses.

One option is to have an infinite set of normal dungeons, whose bosses are stronger versions of the normal monsters.

Then have a finite set of seven special dungeons, whose bosses are all dragons: White, Brown, Blue, Gray, Black, Green, Red.

Gain XP in normal dungeons and level up until you can take on the next dragon. The dragon drops a special artefact which you will use until you defeat dragon number 2, and so on.

Once you've defeated all 7 dragons, you'll probably have reached max xp level, but you can still play normal dungeons.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Missed this earlier -- but that's exactly how the Mega Man series is set up. In the start, you have eight (or so, the number varies from game-to-game) enemies, and you choose one to fight. You play a level, get to the boss, beat him, and acquire his weapon -- each boss is weak to another boss's weapon (though it doesn't come out and tell you which, so it's a bit of a guessing game).

Also, art-I-facts is a cool word.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Character Attributes

For simplicity, let the three primary attributes be Attack (ATT), Stamina (STA), and Magic (MAG), corresponding to the three places where runes can be assigned.

Base Weapon Damage = ATT
Base Health = STA * 10
Base Mana = MAG * 10

An average level 1 hero might be -- Human Mage: ATT = 17 ; STA = 18; MAG = 26

HP = 180
Mana = 260
Melee Damage = 17
The hero will have access to all level 1 mage abilities. The abilities will become more powerful and diverse as the hero levels up.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Combat Mechanics

Here is an attack outcome calculator.

(1) Calculate level difference D
(2) Add any hit/evasion chance modifiers.
(3) Use formula below to calculate average damage factor F(D)


where k is a constant determining the relative strengths of player levels.

(4) Use F(D) to interpolate the Miss/Glance/Hit/Crit curve.
(5) Output chances of each attack outcome

(With k=10)

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

I don't know how you managed to win so many! I played another 6 games and didn't manage to win any of them. In 2 of those games I died vs the boss.

Played 6 / Won 1
Played 12 / Won 1
played 18 / Won 2

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Maybe it's a meta-game issue? (In other words, stacking the odds in your favor by doing things like beefing up just the right stats and the like.)

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Is 6MB too much for you to download theraje?

Most of that is sound effects and extra tilesets. If those are cut out, the rest will zip to <1MB. I'm not sure we're allowed to distribute modified zips of the game though.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

I can handle that, assuming my connection doesn't get grumpy over my audacity of thinking I can download something. What's the URL to the download page?

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Direct link:

http://www.qcfdesign.com/Files/DesktopD ... s_v021.exe

See you in about half an hour

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Ah, thanks Jasmine.

I'll be back in half an hour or so once the download is (hopefully!) complete. Then I'll give it a go and report my experience.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Thirty-six minutes. Not bad*.

BTW Jasmine, I just noticed (while I was staring at this topic due to the fact I can't browse pages while downloading ) you called me theraje a bit ago... If "rotInMilc" is too unwieldy to type (I admit that it takes me some effort to type it correctly), just call me Clint. I don't expect to change that name anytime soon.

*In terms of my specific connection to the Internet.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Just got through my first play... here's how it ended: Sooooo close!

I managed to defeat every monster on the map BUT the boss -- and I was just one hit away from killing him before he trounced me.

Some observations:

• Don't explore unnecessarily. Uncovering new areas restores HP/MP. Use that to heal after tough battles, rather than just to uncover more map. Focus more on finding monsters, so that you have an overview of which ones you can handle -- and when.
• Roast your enemy. If you can get a fireball glyph, it helps -- especially if you can bag an enemy of a higher level than your character. If your next-hit prediction is DEATH, and you have the enemy on the ropes, blast him -- he can't fight back when you're shoving a fireball up his nose.
• Note first-strike. Goblins hit first, so if you're close to death, avoid goblins. In fact, avoid goblins in general if they are of a higher level than your character.
• Get religion. This saved my hiney mid-game... I managed to get fully healed worshiping at the altar at a point where attacking *anything* would have meant saying to my enemy, "Here's my ass, sorry I have no platter". It brought my piety down to almost 0, so I was worried about ticking off my divine ruler, but in the end it paid off (at the time).
• Leverage experience. You get more experience from fighting enemies of a higher level, so be sure to fight some now and then, as much as you can... then, when you're near leveling-up, fight an enemy that's much weaker than you if possible in order to gain a level safely -- and restore your health in the process.

But yeah, it definitely takes some thinking to survive long!

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

By the way, after that game, I noticed I got the "Parched" award, for not using any health potions. (Truth be told, I didn't even know the game *had* health potions. )

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Hexagonal shaped rooms looked cramped, so I don't think we should do them.

Procgen algorithm easily converts to rectangular rooms.



Aa mockup of an opengl 3D square room with hand drawn doors, and an action toolbar at the bottom.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.