Labyrinth of Reptoran

Labyrinth of Reptoran
Beta Project
Developer	Gamer 2k4Talk
Theme	Fantasy
Influences	ADOM, ToME, Nethack, GearHead
Released	2006
Updated	2008
Licensing	Freeware
P. Language	C++
Platforms	Windows
Interface	ASCII, Keyboard
Game Length	Short
Official site of Labyrinth of Reptoran

The Labyrinth of Reptoran is the first in a series of roguelikes planned by Jared Brayshaw. It is going to be a dungeonhack, with a large town on the surface and 100 levels of random dungeons underneath. This game is different from standard roguelikes mainly in how it approaches skills, magic, and combat. The homepage is here.

Story

Long ago, only the Gods existed, each an incarnation of one of the ten elemental forces. Each God created for himself an elemental realm and denizens to populate that realm. Most of the Gods were content with this arrangement. However, Guroth, the strongest God and master of Earth, proposed that they combine their powers. First, the Gods created a world that was a combination of all the elements: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Nature, Light, Darkness, Storm, Ice, and Death. The Gods were pleased with this new land and its inhabitants. However, Guroth pressed, they had only mixed their powers, not truly combined them. Guroth suggested that they fuse their elemental energies. This was done, but the outcome was of an evil nature.

They had created Shadow, the strongest element, one that seeked corruption and death. The consensus was that this power must be locked away, and hidden in the newly created world. A gem was forged to contain this evil, and buried deep underneath Reptoran, the new world. All was well for many thousands of years. Unfortunately, the Burvaks and Dwarves, both mining races, came across the Shadow Crystal. It was sent to the mages of Xaltrir for examination, and soon the relic was placed in a mountaintop temple.

Most of the travelers to the temple were content to merely look at this gem, but one wizard took it upon himself to study the crystal and learn its secrets. The wizard became extremely powerful in the shadow magicks, which corrupted him and turned him against the people of Reptoran. Belatedly the Gods, concerned with their own realms, became aware of this menace. They aided the king of Reptoran as he ventured to the mountain to combat the wizard. In the battle that followed, the once dormant volcano the temple was on awakened, and erupted mightily.

The king could not contend with the powers of the wizard. Finally, amid showers of fire and ash, the fallen king raised his sword to attack the Shadow Crystal. His last action was a powerful swing at the crystal, which shattered. Immediately the shadow energy, no longer contained by the gem, joined itself with the other source of shadow - the wizard. The stress of the energies flowing into him was too much, and the wizard fell into a coma.

Guroth took this opportunity to imprison the wizard deep inside the earth so as to never harm the people of Reptoran again. The shards of the crystal fell into a ring of lava around the now destroyed temple, which cooled to solid obsidian. Each God took a piece of the crystal to their own realm to prevent the reunion of the elements in the future.

Many peaceful millenia passed. The inhabitants of Reptoran had no way of knowing that the wizard was slowly attuning himself to the shadow power now within him. Finally, he awoke with a tremendous burst of shadow energy. The earth tore asunder as the shadow energies made their way to the surface. Tunnels and passages were carved underground, and strange monsters came from those tunnels.

Many heroes have tried to stop this threat but all have failed. Now you must face this evil and destroy it, before all of Reptoran is lost...

Innovative Features

Skills

The skills in the Reptoran series are increased based on usage. Like combat where a player gains experience as he kills monsters, skills gain experience with each successful use of them. I believe this creates a more realistic game, unlike games such as ADOM and ToME where the player increases his skills each time he gains a combat level. Also, the game will have skills that allow for item creation, such as smithing and crafting.

Magic

There are five types of magic in this game: attack, protection, movement, divination, and control. There are also five elements: fire, water, nature, earth, and air. Obviously this setup is common to many roguelikes, but mages in my game have a special class power called 'Fusion' which allows spells to be combined. For example, calm monster + bend will = tame monster, stone skin + dark armor = steel skin, water aura + air aura = water breathing, and invigorate + bloodlust = battlemind. Ego-items (magically enhanced items) can also be created using the 'Power' ability. This applies a spell to a weapon, so using flame aura on a long sword would create a flaming long sword.

Combat

Combat will involve much more than merely slaying monsters. Adventurers can learn various combat techniques that will improve their capabilities depending on the situation and their equipment. Also, there will be many available tactics to use, including blockading and non-lethal tactics. This game will take an innovative approach to armor, evasion, bleeding, shield usage, and kills; however I don't want to give away everything at once. You will have to wait until the release of the game or some demo of it.

List of Rewrites

• TI-83 Plus Calculator - A text based game that never really got off its feet
• QBASIC - Had an overworld and that was about it
• QBASIC - Different code, different overworld
• QBASIC - Decent dungeon generator, items, inventory, monsters, LOS. Nice, but was too limited by the language
• C++ - A rough version using the windows.h console functions. Coded without design and ended up being too limited.
• Euphoria - I was briefly checking out the language and got some movement code going. Nothing ever came of it.
• Java - Map and movement code; held back by poor knowledge of input and output.
• C++ - This version had a solid design. I learned about pointers while coding this version.
• Java - A rewrite with about the same results as the earlier Java one.
• C++ - I redesigned the code to use a body part system like Gearhead. My code was too buggy and I didn't bother to fix it.
• C++ - One of my better versions. I reverted back to the standard hit point system. LOS worked, along with items and inventory. The scope of the game was too large, however. There was no dungeon generation, AI was terribly bloated, and the game would crash randomly. This was the version where I decided that skills, not combat, would be the core of the game.
• C++ - The first version to use PDCurses. The scope of the code was still too large, and I gave it up. This was the version where I learned about saving and loading.
• C++ - The current version. I started small and worked up, and am pleased with the results. It has everything the earlier versions did with much better coding, nice dungeon generation, and full save files.

Current Version

The first public beta demo has been released; you can download it here. More information is in the readme file.

Version 0.3.6M

Gamer 2k4^Talk