[v1.2.0+] Semi-Roguelike Mode

[Zizzo]

And I think this may be a new record for first bug… See, the names of our new descriptors were longer than the Permadeath drop-down on the character creation dialog, and to widen that drop-down, I had to pretty much rebuild half the dialog from scratch — but that clobbered the default settings for difficulty, campaign and permadeath, which means you could accidentally end up playing the wrong game. That's fixed in v1a, just pushed out.

[Zizzo]

See, this is why I declared this a beta test. v1b, just pushed out, has two fixes:¹

• We were accidentally clobbering the user's default difficulty and permadeath settings.
• More to the point, we weren't properly detecting the actual quests that we're keying the extra lives on.

--
¹ Okay, technically, the first of those was in v1a, but I forgot to announce that one…

[Zizzo]

So it occurred to me recently that this addon is pretty much useless for the Embers campaign, since none of the events we condition on happen in it. I don't really have strong opinions on what Embers events to attach extra lives to; any suggestions? [Of course, first I should probably find out whether it's possible for an addon to add descriptors that are only used in a particular campaign…]

[Zizzo]

Well, with no obvious choices, here's what I've settled on as the extra-life events for the new permadeath descriptor Semi-Roguelike (szechuan) in v1c (just released):

• Securing a path to the mainland (I'm willing to spot the player one extra life for those @#$%ing ritch randbosses in Ritch Cave… )
• Freeing each of the four Orc Prides
• Destroying the Sunwall
• Defeating the Atmos Tribe leaders in the Palace of Fumes

If I've done this right, this mode should only be available in EoR, and the other four should now only be available in AoA, as none of them make sense in Arena or Infinite Dungeon.

[Zizzo]

I'm fiddling with adding an achievement for winning the game in Semi-Roguelike (or Adventure) permadeath mode but without dying. [There was a suggestion at one point, I think (which I can no longer find), to make that count as an actual Roguelike win, but general consensus was against it IIRC; I figure this is a decent middle ground.] I'm assuming that an empty or absent game.player.died_times{} will be sufficient to detect this condition, and I can watch for the Falling Toward Apotheosis quest to go to DONE state to apply the achievement.

The question, then, is what to call our new achievement. I've added a poll with the ideas I've thought of so far; if you have better ideas, suggest them here.

[Zizzo]

And the runaway favorite is "Honorary Roguelike Win"; that's going out as v1d. [Disclaimer: I haven't actually fully tested this, as that would involve, y'know, winning without dying, so if this doesn't work out right, let me know.]

[Zizzo]

Quickie release v1d.1, fixing a small bug in checking for the "Honorary Roguelike Win" achievement (I keep forgetting to 'require "engine.Quest"' before checking a quest's status... ).

[Zizzo]

v1e.2 fixes a bug reported on Steam: got a bit overzealous with my localization changes and tried to look up the Male/Female birth descriptors by their Chinese names. Which obviously didn't work. We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™

[Zizzo]

Pushing out v1e.4 to fix a small bug reported on the Steam page.

[Zizzo]

Small bug in v1e.5: One of the events that will grant you an extra life in the Semi-Roguelike (sweet&sour) mode is clearing the Shadow Crypt, which we detect when you gain the Clone War achievement — well, in theory. Turns out we were detecting that wrong; we probably would have missed it if you were playing at anything but Normal difficulty. That should now be fixed; We Apologize for the Error.™

[AstralWanderer]

...The proverbial camel-back-breaking straw that got me started on this was a test character that got blindsided in Reknor by AFAICT something invisible or stealthed that got literally four critical hits on me in a row, which is why I put all the lives after that...

How about an alternative approach?

If you get killed, you are resurrected (and possibly sent to a "safe" location courtesy of the Eidolon) and then a timer starts (for say, 1000 turns). If you get killed again during that time, game over. Once the timer has expired, your resurrection ability returns.

This avoids the "when to add lives" debate and it covers accidents/RNG blindsiding/stuck keyboards while ensuring that the game still remains a challenge.

[Zizzo]

How about an alternative approach?

If you get killed, you are resurrected (and possibly sent to a "safe" location courtesy of the Eidolon) and then a timer starts (for say, 1000 turns). If you get killed again during that time, game over. Once the timer has expired, your resurrection ability returns.

This avoids the "when to add lives" debate and it covers accidents/RNG blindsiding/stuck keyboards while ensuring that the game still remains a challenge.

(shrug) It's an interesting idea, but kind of outside the scope of this addon, I think…

In the meantime, since we have a special semi-roguelike permadeath mode for Embers of Rage, we ought to have ones for all the new addon-provided campaigns too. Here's what I've got in v1f:

• For the Q.U.I.C.K. campaign, Semi-Roguelike (vanilla) is pretty simple; you gain lives for completing each of the first seven "missions" Zemekkys sends you on.
• For the Hammer of Urh'Rok campaign, we add two modes: Semi-Roguelike (habañero), which gives you lives when you:
  • Secure the invasion portal to Maj'Eyal
  • Recover water imp records from Lake Nur
  • Stop the caravan between Iron Throne and Last Hope
  • Defeat Urkis in Derth
  • Clear the Scintillating Caves
  • Defeat the Thaloren counterattack
  • Defeat the Forgotten King
  and Semi-Roguelike (ghost pepper), which gives you lives when you:
  • Defeat Urkis in Derth
  • Clear the Scintillating Caves
  • Defeat the Thaloren counterattack
  • Rescue each of the three Old Ones
  • Defeat the Forgotten King
• For the Light from Below campaign, Semi-Roguelike (dark chocolate) gives you lives when you:
  • Claim power from each of the four Places of Power
  • Reclaim the piece of Light from the Thief of Light
  • Complete the Light and escape from Old Mythrescar
  • Take the runestone from Rodrosk in Field of Flesh and Steel

Now, I haven't played enough Hammer or Light characters to be intimately familiar with their respective plot progressions, so some of my event choices are a bit arbitrary; if anyone has better ideas for those campaigns, we can easily add additional suitable descriptors.

And entirely unrelated to the preceding… I play without sound, so I never noticed that the game plays a sound when you gain a level — which, in Adventure mode is also when you gain a new life. It thus occurs to me that we might want a similar "announcement" when we gain a semi-roguelike life. So we also add new game option "[ZOmnibus] | Semi-Roguelike announce gain life". You can choose to have it play a sound (same as the level-up sound), pop up a "big news" message, or both; the default is pop-up message if you're using the addon stand-alone, or no announcement if you're using it via ZOmnibus or ZOmnibus Lite (principle of least astonishment, after all…).