MnemonicRL

MnemonicRL
Talkie-Talkie Project
Developer	Da-Breegster
Theme	Steampunk, Surreal
Influences
Licensing	Open Source
P. Language	Perl
Platforms	Linux, Windows
Interface	ASCII, Keyboard
Game Length
[There is no Official site of MnemonicRL]

MnemonicRL is an ambitious 2009 project by Da-Breegster. Its notable features include ASCII art sprites for the static town, animation (snow, fire, smoke, etc), and its multiplayer capabilities. It has an increasingly intricate plot; players arrive in Cyphen, the Land of Nowhere, a purgatory where they await their memories in the river. However, the factories seem to be affecting this process somehow, and it is up to the entire community to decide what to do.

Release

I'm having problems creating a Windows port, which prevents a general release. Perl and Curses are not playing well together. Here are the things that I have tried:

• Strawberry Perl with pdcurses - Curses.pm (the Perl bindings) would not compile against pdcurses)
• ActivePerl - A Curses ppm exists, but POE::Wheel::Curses (POE provides the multitasking and networking) needs a proper event loop, not the Win32 one.
• Cygwin + pp - Cygwin provides a Unix environment for Windows, and the game runs fine within it. However, redistributing a Cygwin environment is difficult because of technical restraints (when you install it, it not only adds entries to the registry but also sets up some special path links, which is difficult to reproduce). I have tried creating a standalone exe from within Cygwin using pp/PAR, but the result has some PAR cache bugs.

Is anybody familiar enough with Perl and Curses on Windows to help me out?

Multiplayer

MnemonicRL's base engine, PerlRL, supports both a singleplayer and multiplayer mode. Players will congregate in Cyphen, form parties, and enter a set of dungeons with a particular theme and rank. Nobody may join a party once it is created, but anybody can leave the dungeon and forfeit. Permadeath in a party dungeon is implemented by a severe penalty: losing a few levels and some significant items. The rest of the party may choose to help the weakened member level up again, or they may abandon them, leaving them to forfeit the party and go try an easier dungeon set. MnemonicRL will also feature a traditional singleplayer mode and a free-for-all area open to every player. PvP (Player-vs-Player) and PK (Player-killing) will be allowed in controlled, segregated arenas.

Dungeons

Party games will occur in a set of dungeons that have a specific rank/level of monsters and also a theme. Everything except for the puzzle set would be randomly generated. Ideas thus far:

• Factory with a sewer system of pipes, machinery, conveyor belts. I might be able to try out some experimental 3D dungeon stuff for overlapping pipes or catwalks.
• Puzzle set - A friend of mine draws extremely elaborate mazes in various shapes. If I scan these in and convert them to ASCII, they'd make for some great levels.
• A celestial area. I'm not sure what role heaven and hell play relative to the purgatory Cyphen, yet. But a focus on the Chinese zodiac is a must -- they constitute a sizable chunk of the monster populus, currently.
• Snowy wilderness - tough to pull off and make it interesting. Dunno yet.
• Traditional room/hallway mazes -- but with the river running through it. Again, a large point of the game is to track the river upstream and discover the source of the strange happenings in Cyphen. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that the river runs both ways depending on whether Cyphen or Uben dominates reality at the moment.
• Some sort of lush underground forest with bioluminescent lighting. The Vernian theme appeals, somehow.

Trailer

A cinematic trailer is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQC9reFbdQ. Source quality can be found at http://rapidshare.com/files/240104738/mnemonicrl_trailer.avi.

Status

A full CHANGELOG is included with the code, but I wanted to keep people updated on what I'm working on.

• 6/6/09 - ~50 monster concepts finalized
• 6/7/09 - ~50 monsters coded with stats; nice stat # scaling and rank-based spawning
• 6/10/09 - leveling/experience bugfixes, projectile targeting+animation+attacks+chains
• 6/11/09 - items have same monster-like spawning code and tables, perfect FOV using shadowcasting
• 6/12/09 - conveyor belts, working on attack patterns
• 6/13/09 - 2 new "building" dungeon styles
• 6/15/09 - AI state machine, misc fixes, speed (realtime game != mash-fest)
• 6/16/09 - names & messages much better, range attack improvements, player abilities
• 6/17/09 - random content and proper tile layer system, which also fixes the name banner issue
• 6/18/09 - tabulated items and attacks (monsters were already done) and scaled numbers (making gameplay balance a matter of fiddling with overall ratios and individual stuff's properties)
• 6/19/09 - configurable keymap, affinity system to replace skills for now, choosing a default melee attack

Currently:

• Trying to produce a Windows port
• Coding monster attacks, class abilities, and all items
• Adjusting combat formulas to make a simple, balanced system / playtesting

Tentative alpha release: June 22