Fall From Heaven

Fall From Heaven the Roguelike
Alpha Project
Developer	Jolly Roger
Theme	Fantasy
Influences	Fall From Heaven II
Released	2010 Jun 15
Updated	2010 Nov 08 (0.0.4d3)
Licensing	Closed Source, Freeware
P. Language	Delphi
Platforms	Windows
Interface
Game Length
[ Official site of Fall From Heaven the Roguelike]

Download

v. 0.0.4d3

older versions

Link to v. 0.0.4d1
Link to v. 0.0.4d
Link to v. 0.0.4c1
Link to v. 0.0.4c

Description

Fall From Heaven the roguelike based on dark fantasy mod for Civilization IV, Fall From Heaven.

GAME CONCEPTS

BODYPART

All creatures consists from bodypart, such as legs, hands and so on. It doesn't affects gameplay greatly for now (but you can chop away enemies hand), but later would be very important. NOTE: PC, for now, are immune for bodypart sewerage, because monsters chops both his hand away in no time. This need some fixing.

MISSILES MAKES TURNS

Magic and ranged weapons doesn't hit its target instantly. When you shot the bow or cast aggressive spell, It starts Its travel and make turns as everybody else. Of course, it moves very fast, but lightning fast creatures can outran spells or missiles. NOTE: There was bug in first versions, when missiles were moving very slow, so you can shot the arrow, then outran it, stay on its way and hit yourself.

ATTRIBUTES

Strength Determines how many item your PC can carry. melee and bow Damage.

Agility Speed and dodge chance.

Intelligence Mana focus, mana focus regeneration and small bonus in Skill Points for smart guys.

Endurance Determines the beating your PC can endure.

Note, that attribute of 10 is middle, corresponding with untrained human.

Every additional point are really valuable. Creature with strength 12 is, at least, 40% stronger then 10!

ITEMS, MATERIAL, QUALITY and TECH LEVEL

You will find lot of items in your travels. They would be of different quality and materials. From real junk to great semi-artifacts. Lets see.

Quality

greatly modifies every aspect of item! crude sword is nothing more that a bit sharpened stick, great sword is a real masterpiece and deadly blade.

There are six stages of quality: crude
cheap
mediocre
fair
great
exceptional

crude - well. Have you ever tried to do something for the first time without real knowledge? Thats it!
But, in the beginning of the age of rebirth, everything would be helpful, if not fail its owner and lead him to fierce death.

cheap - well, cheap is cheap. When you need quickly to arm few thousands of solders you rarely would care of great quality.

mediocre - is, somewhat, middle level of items quality.

fair and great - keep looking for them, even not for you, but for sale. It is like, for example, you travel in the dungeon populated by rotting undead armed with rusty swords and then you will find shiny sword in pile of rusty blades. It survived ages, because of great work.

exceptional - when you see them, you will love them. Nearly semi-artifacts, nonetheless.

And one more thing, don't bother bringing items worthier then fair to merchants, they wouldn't buy. It is easy to obtain such items aboveground then buy it from dungeon crawlers. They would happily buy items of good quality, but would you sell it to them?

Material and Tech Level

Lets use weapons as example. shortsword can be made from copper to mithril and it is simple: more advanced material the better. But you can say, why I can't find anything better than bronze? It is simple, you searched places when lives or lived not very advanced people. Tech Level goes from crude to divine. Smelly cave goblins has crude metalworks level, so you would find only copper and brass items. Dwarven miners are limited to advanced, so you can buy(or steal) wrought iron or even bronze items from them.

Item Rigidness

Items can be rigid and flexible. Now, it used only for armor. Flexible armor can be lighter but can't completely absorb really strong blow, especially from blunt weapons.

Item Fragility

explains how fragile and easy to destroy this item is. Doesn't used in game for now.

===Encumbrance===: If PC wear too many stuff, It would slows him, and decrease dodge.
NOTE: Items you wear affects less encumbrance, then items you carry.

COMBAT, WEAPONS AND ARMOR

So, you take some heavy stick and want to hit this smelly goblin very hard, aren't you? Then read how It would happen.

First of all, some basic concepts.
Every weapon has:

• Damage type.

It is piecing, slashing, firearms or crushing.
It determines now how it shown in the game and there relations with flexible armor.

• Armor piercing rating

It is not to-hit or damage. It means only how good this weapon in piercing armor or creature hide.
Accuracy determines by your skill with weapon (and later by weigh of it).

• Required Strength (RS).

It determines two things. First, if your strength are lower that Required Strength, you will get significant penalty for every point.
Second, damage, inflicted by this weapon limited by double Required Strength variable. For example:
We have two creatures: ogr John (20 str) and goblin Bob (8 str).
Both of them armed themselves with shorts word RS - 7.
Bob would inflict damage limited to strength 7. For example 1D-2.
John is very strong,20 strength gives raw damage, for example, of 3D+5. But this sword has RS -7, so maximal used strength to count damage is 14 for this sword.

• Damage bonus. Some weapons have damage bonus. It is added to calculated damage.

• Balance

Melee weapons Determines chance of parring enemy strike with your weapon. Check parry section in COMBAT chapter bellow.

Ranged weapons Affects accuracy. Doesn't implemented yet.

There is good selection of different weapons and skill for them, of course.
If you have at least few points in any weapon skill, you can learn weapon skills of same class (except for staves) later by distributing skill points on level ups.

You can arm yourself with weapons of different classes:

• sword or bladed weapons, such as swords, of course, daggers and knifes.
• Impact. Warhammers, maces, axes, crowbills.
• Polearm. Spears, pikes, staves e.t.c.

They are different, even in the same class. For example, crowbills has great armor piercing rating, but axes has good damage bonus and RS.

And now, combat begins.

• to hit stage.

It passes skill check for strike attempt. If It was successful, defender tries to dodge the attack, dodge chance modified by defenders dexterity, encumbrance, special skills and attackers weapon skill.

• Parry.

If you failed to dodge the attack you can parry it!

Totally unbalanced weapons can't be used for parring.
Unbalanced weapons can be used for parry, if you didn't attack this turn.
Balanced and Perfectly balanced weapons can be used for parring, even If you already attack this turn. Perfectly balanced weapons are so good, that gives you bonus for parring.
Also some weapons has parring bonus, because they can keep enemy at bay. Mostly all pole weapons, such as glewe, partisan e.t.c.

• armor penetration

If all this dodging and blocking doesn’t help, armor comes to play, It can absorb the blow completely (There is no DV) or lower attacks penetration rating (not damage!).
Then, if armor can’t help, creature’s natural armor comes to play. It is not important for mortals like humans or elfs, but some nasty creatures can have strong hides.
Also, if armor absorbed the blow, but It wasn’t rigid armor (like platemale), but flexible (like chainmale or leather breastplate) and damage was really mighty (blunt weapons needs less damage rating for that) defender would be damaged a bit. Still, flexible armors are really lighter then rigid ones.

• damage.

If nothing helps, defenders bodypart suffers damage.
Weapon damage depends on attacker’s strength, weapon bonus and limited by weapon damage limit.
It means that very strong person with knife will inflict more damage them weakling with battle axe, but can’t chop defender in two. (Check Required Strength part for more details )

Critical damage to torso or head means death for any creature now. (no bleeding or pain yet)

[b]RANGED COMBAT[/b] Nearly the same.
But you must set container with ammo for your weapon.
For the purpose of debaging, you need only one missile for your weapon right now. It would be cloned on reload. After debaging, It would be set back to normal.

There tree types of ranged weapons:
Bows,
crossbows
and firearms (they are too advanced for this moment, don't look for them.)

Bows don't need specified reloading, PC will arm arrow when shoot.
crossbows must be reloaded before you can shoot somebody.
So, crossbows are very fast at the moment of shooting, simply aim and press trigger, but need reloading.
Bows shot is a bit slower than crossbow one, but don't need sspecified reloading.
Also damage by arrows determined by bow RS and Creature strength, when crossbows has fixed strength rating.

MANA AND SPELLCASTING

Spellcasters don't have mana pool inside of them. Remember, all mana on Erebus comes from other planes and mages focusing already existing mana. So, there casting pool named MANA FOCUS. If mage has fatigued himself and fburned all his focus, he cant cast any spells. You can think, that there is no difference from standard mana system, but no. For example, you are not fatigued and have lot of mana focus poins and very good in elementaism, so can cast mighty firewave, but, sorry, there is no firemana flow in this cave, for some reason. Maybe you has gone too far from nearest firemana node or death mana wind storming here that blocks all other mana, who cares. So, every good mage needs some selection of different spells to be always ready for battle. Arms training also would be helpful. There is a selection of mages skills, determines power of every spellcaster.

Casting consists from two part: first you need to focus mana, then to wave spell. It need different skills, see below, and calculates separately. For example, experienced elementalist tried to cast divination spell. His mana focus is great, so he focused mana instantly, but divination skill is low, so it takes lot of time to wave spell.

manasense

Mana doesn't manifest itself in visible world without help of somebody or something. You can understand that, for example, low mana is strong if don't have this skill or, well, somebody cast unusually strong low spell. Person with this skill can sense presence of mana and its power.
Mana flow can change from small breeze to raving storm. It is better to know what is going on, if you want to cast spell.
Mana flows aren't only mages trouble. Even, if you are not the spellcaster It would be not wise to stay for a long time in the places where, for example, raving death mana storm irradiating everything, until you are not undead or necromancer, of course.

manafocus

This skill determines ability of mage to collect mana flows from surrounding, control and prepare it to wave a spell or safely free power, if you decided to abort the spell.
If your manafocus skill is too you can't focus weak mana, strong mana can run out of control and burn the spellcaster and focusing would take considerable time.
NOTE: the stronger the mana wind the faster focus would be.

Spell skills

elementalism, divination and so on. you don't have, you can't cast specified spells. Simple.
Also determines efficiency of that spells and speed of spell waving.

SPELLS

there is 3 spells right now.
Heal self - strong life mana spell. It focus energies of life mana in the body of caster forcing them renew in a rapid rate. Casting this spell by undead creature is some sort of painful suicide. Please note, that life mana can't damage living beings, it is against its nature, but if you will use this spell too ofter its efficiency fails, because your body can't endure any more. More natural healing for living creature would be in body mana spells.

Firewave - firebased spell. Caster focuses firemana and throws it at any direction.
Efficiency of firewave lowers with every target it hits. Firebolt - you can target place, where firebolt will explode (some sort of fireball for poor).
Well, It is easy to kill yourself with this spell. Would fix it soon!

Deathwave - It is test spell, made to check undead immunity to death magic.

SPELLCASTING

If you have mana focus skill and some spellcasting skill. you can try magic.
Press Z to open your spell book and select spell to cast.
You also can set two fast spells, It is better to do so, because would not need to open spellbook every time.

FACTIONS

When you start the game you can select the race or your PC and his/her (sex doesn't play any role now, and It would be selected randomly) faction.

Keep in mind, that not all races are avaliable for every faction and selection of professions may be different.
It is better to say, that faction selection is more important and act like race selection in most games.
Check classes below.
For now, starting faction determines:

• Starting mana affinity. (doesn't do anything in 0.0.4d1, but would be VERY important later).

For example balseraph would gain some chaos mana affinity and so on

• Selection of classes and races you can play.
• Starting perks and free/bonus skills.
  

For example, Amuretis people start with Kylorin blood perk. So, even warriors of Amuretis can sense mana flows and so on.

CLASSES

All factions would have selection of standard classes or special variants.

WARRIOR His power is good selection of heavy weapon skills, both impact and blade.
Also, warriors has ????beast of burden???? skill, This skill allows them to wear heavy armor and making them less dependent of dodge.
Calabim moroi has less selection of starting weapons, but has, for now, some vampiric abilities. Such as soul hunting (every time, when you kill enemy you force there souls to stay here, a bit of time for your unclean desires) and soul drinking (rush to hunted soul and absorb it (S-key), it would restore some health, depends on skill).

THIEF (harlequin for Balseraph) have lockpicking skill, allows them to open chests in dungeon.
You need lockpickes for this.

Thief has Dodge skill, that gives them bonus to dodge. This bonus doesn’t depend on encumbrance.
Harlequin has Evade skill, It give harlequin additional chance to dodge enemy attacks. This skill is really powerful, but It works limited number of times per turn (number depends on skill) and heavily depends on encumbrance.

HUNTER This class has access to ranged weapons, but ranged weapons.

ELEMENTALIST Only class for now, who can cast this 3,5 spells

LEVELUP and SKILL POINTS

PC will gain experience points for killing creature and doing some different things (like picklocking e.t.c.)
Quantity of skill points depends on difference between PC level and target level (locks also has levels). You will gain more exp, if PC has lower of equal level then target.

When PC acquire enough exp for level up, you will receive some Skill points and occasionally perk points. Don't care about perk points for now.
Number of skill points determined by level, every fifth level you will gain additional skill point, and you Intelligence. Well, at least, you would have guarantied 2 skill points per level.

Spent you skill points to increase your skills. The higher your skill, the more skillpoints you need.
Note that every skills has different difficulty.
From easy to very hard. Harder skills need more skillpoints to have a gain.

Keys

Num Pad keys 1- 9 (num lock on) - moving. Bump into creatures to attack it or talk if it is of friendly faction.

l - look around. Use move keys to explore squares around your PC.
v - item info, must show item info everywhere you see item. Please note me, when It doesn't work.
c - creature info. It is used only in look arownd command. Shows small info about creature.
i - open inventory.
g - grab first item on the ground.
G - select items you want to grab.
o - open container on the ground.
d (in the inventory) - drop item.
Enter(in the inventory) - equip/remove item.
< - move up or leave region.
> - move down or enter region.
q - read item.
` - open big log screen.
+ - switch to ASCII mode.
Z - open spellbook.
z, [b]x [/b] - cast fast spells.

HOW TO START

FFH using directX, so it works only with windows, as you can understand.

Game would automatically detect resolution and sprite size. If you wouldn't be satisfied by results, you can set it manually in config.cfg file.

Resolution configuration looks this way:
SCRX:1024;
SCRY:768;

Sprite config is a bit more come complicate, but allow you to tweak game screen as you like.
It looks like this
GRID_UNIT_SIZE_X:26;
GRID_UNIT_SIZE_Y:28;
For example, If you set resolution to 1024x768 and sprite size to 26x28, you would have:
1024/26 = 39 sprites on X line and 768x26 = 27 on Y.
Smaller sprite size would give bigger screen and so on, combine and find most comfortable combination.

You start game in the global map, in the big snow region with few objects of interest. To the North you will see small hamlet, its friendly, until you are not playing Doviello.
When you enter local map (> key), You can turn on left side screen with keys help (TAB key), do it, if you play for the first time (you can also set SHOW_SIDE_INFO_SCREEN_ON_START:YES; in config.cfg)
There you can buy some stuff and talk to locals.
There are also 4 dungeons on the map, two goblin cave, nearby, doviello hunters fortpost, and, the most important, Broken Sepulcher dungeon, Southwest part of the global map.
There is Avatar of Death, his destruction means ????win???? for this version.

Modification

Font changing

You can change font, used in the game.

Open Config.cfg file and put the name of new font here: FONT:Graph\font_Default.bmp;

Also, change size of single symbol in pixels.
FONT_FILE_CHAR_SIZE_X:10;
FONT_FILE_CHAR_SIZE_Y:12;

Sprite size auto-detection

Check files X_TABLE.txt and Y_TABLE.txt in
folder Graph\ you will see there something like this:
RES:600;
SIZE:10;
RES:700;
SIZE:12;
Game checks number in RES line, if current resolution higher then this number, game reads next line, if not, game uses last selected size (default 10).
When game meets SIZE line, it sets this number as last selected size. It looks easy and allows setting sprite size for almost every resolution.

New sprites

Every used sprite has its own name in the game.
For example we have bmp file in Graph\ folder named Sprites.bmp.
In folder Res\Graph\ we have file Sprites.txt. This file holds description for every sprite used in the game, It looks like this:

FILE:Sprites;
SIZE_X:32;
SIZE_Y:32;

[BIG_GOBLIN][1][1]
[SMALL_GOBLIN][1][2]
[SWORD_BIG][1][3]

FILE – means filename of bmp file in graph\ folder. SIZE_X and SIZE_Y, as you can understand, size of single sprite in pixels. Then follows lines when we link name and sprite. [SWORD_BIG][1][3]
SWORD_BIG is name of sprite, I think, it must be some sword or something like this, and numbers 1 and 3 means it absolute coordinates in the grid of sprites in file. (Note first number is 1, not 0).
So, then, when we linked name to special part in bmp file, we can use it in item or creature description.

Medals