I was relatively busy this week after work, so I was happy to get a good update out for you all. The new cave biomes worked out pretty well, and seem to be working.
The issues with the chasm I left last week were very easily resolved, so I started working on the ability to be knocked down chasms. I think this is a fun feature, and more importantly, it's going down the path of more dynamic combat. One problem I have with a lot of traditional roguelikes is what I call the "noodle fight". Noodle fights happen when you attack an enemy and get locked in combat for several turns where the only rational move is to hit the enemy. While there is a time an place for hitting an enemy, a few features could be added to spice this up a bit. One of these for me was knockback. Knockback temporarily disengages the fight, and gives the player a bit of space to make a choice, which may involve running away, using a ranged or thrown weapon, waiting, or re-engaging. The new knockback behavior I added in '72a adds another element of randomness to this, so that you may have new opportunities or dangers when attacking repetitively. It also makes knockback more likely, so these choices will come up 150% more often.
Careful.
Since I was in the neighborhood, I changed around some sign behavior. Now, signs spawn not only in intersections, but in "exit" grids of towns and all the new biome features. These will help you orient yourself better and show you what is nearby. I also played around with the display code and made them fit what was written on them.
A much nicer sign.
And my goal over the next week is to restore a lot of lost functionality, particularly around towns, and provide some additional visual updates. I started on a new paradigm for generating stores and stuff in towns, which should be more stable. Now towns are guaranteed to have at least one food store, and depending on the number of houses they have, they can have a few more. These stores will also be guaranteed to be different kinds of stores.
In the time since I made the old store interface a long time ago, I developed a lot better ways to display interactions, so I started working on creating interesting-looking but functional interfaces for store. My goal for these are to make them appear more as I imagine them to be rather than an abstraction. It will take a lot more time to work on these panels, but I think they will be worth it. They'll allow me to better guide the player's imagination when exploring the world.
The new inn interface. The third bottle from the left is canonically Bombay Dry Gin.
Next week I should have updated interfaces for all the other shops, as well as a few other buildings added back into towns, and in the near future, I am going to add back in some quests. Remember to email any questions, comments, and prayer requests you have to [email protected], or just leave them in the comments below.