H-World:Reviews:Jeff Lait

The game played was The Jungle module of H-World 0.2.2.

I played The Jungle for the first time, and managed to ascend. Thus:

YAAP: H-World/The Jungle 0.2.2

I killed the Skeleton Captain by first taking out his minions one at a time & healing, then, using the Shattering Light War Hammer one of his minions dropped, charged him.

I've tacked on various RFEs, text problems, and what I think to be bugs. Please remember we wouldn't complain if we didn't play :>

Gear:

Shattering light war hammer, +19 impact!! Lantern Steel Helm Traders bag. Containing a backpack and a chest. The chest containing yet another chest. And my hinderance was 21 :> Bronze Amulet Battlesome Torso Plate (+1 hp) Glowing Sheild (+1 light) Expedition Belt Leather Pants Leather Boots

Score: 5252

As the skills were recently added, I'll list those. Hopefully this will help with balancing the distribution property.

First, I think it is rather unusual that after an entire game ONLY using blades, I should end up with only twice the blade skill as unarmed skill. Second, I presume defense isn't exercised properly yet, as I had a shield for the entire game and saw no few block messages, but still had 0 base points on defense.

Abilities: (Amount over 100000 shown) Overall: 1060/1060 Physical: 2120/1590 Combat: 4240/2473 - Offense: 8480/3975 - Unarmed: 0/3180 - Blades: 16960/6572 - Clubs: 0/3180 - Polearms: 0/3180 - Defense: 0/1855 - Unarmed: 0/1484 - Armed: 0/1484

Mind: 0/530 Social: 0/530

Cool Things

Bump doorposts to close doors is clever! I'm all for reducing as many actions as possible into bumps.

I like the barter based trade! I found myself carrying a chest of torches in order to be always able to make exact change, though :> Maybe if it didn't give you the exact numbers of what they think it is worth? Way too little, almost enough, too much, etc. And the items also thus said: "Estimated value: Little, Expensive, Kings Ransom"? As a min-maxer, it just hurts to see the 15 gold I lose as I didn't have enough torches :>

I like the instant-pop-up on mouse hover. I also like the fun item descriptions!

Bugs:

Note that as this is an old version, most of these will have been fixed

readme.txt is in unix format, so when Windows users load it in notepad they don't get any line breaks.

The Birth Options menu has a radio button for male/female. When I click on Male, it toggles whether it is male or female. I would think it would make it male, so would be a no-op if the gender was already male.

I presume the correct thing on Birth Options is to hit the Close Window button. I would have been more comfortable with a "Okay" button.

It maybe a windows only thing, but I find when moving over the inventory items, it often doesn't bring up the popup for the new item I'm at. It took me a while to realize my shoes were non-default :>

Why can't I put a chest in my hands? Can't put it in either hand...

When I put my belt into my backpack, it disappears from the inventory list? Is this an intentional attempt to reduce bag-inside-bag exploits? I can still keep stuff inside it, it just becomes awkward to access. There doesn't seem to be a time penalty for swapping belts, so it seems just an inconvience.

When you choose open, it says "Direction..." There doesn't seem to be 5, for opening the chest I am standing on.

When I try to open a chest, and choose 5 (or 6, where there is no chest) the Available Actions menu toggles between Kick/Punch/Swing. Hitting an invalid key (like .) prompts me again and doesn't toggle.

Choosing "Esc" in the open chest prompt stops the open process, but gives no indication that the Direction chooser is now old news. Maybe "You think better of it." or something, so I know that I have cancelled.

Does the hindrnace of chests include the contents? It seems not to, the chest hindrance is 25 even if there is stuff in it. Similarly, I put a chest in my backpack and get a total hindrance of 8! I've now got the starting chests stored, one inside each other, in my backpack, and total hindrance of 8. When I want to get at my chest, I can drop it on the ground, and then open it. This seemingly gives me infinite carrying capacity.

Hmm... Got into a state where the screen stopped refreshing. Movement keys were accepted, but I wasn't getting redraws. Only the section underneath my old map window was redrawing. According to the map window, I was still moving around - I left & reentered the home and got a screen redraw, but them it would be back to boring.

I can reproduce this now - bringing up the map window causes only the screen underneath the map window to refresh.

Hitting an invalid key, such as z or k, seems to force a refresh.

One time my house was built with a chair on top of the jungle portal.

After using an identify scroll in my belt with my inventory up, the belt doesn't redraw with the missing identify scroll until I try and change something on it.

Chests seem to be 6x6 spans (at least, I can't use that last row) but the graphic only looks to take 6x5.

When the "Traders Bag" is on the ground, it shows up way at the top of the list. In general stuff on the ground seems to be misaligned, the traders bag is just the most extreme example of it.

The attack mode keeps being reset to Kick! I don't know what it is I'm doing (swapping weapons doesn't seem to do this). Maybe it is the open chest that I keep doing as I'm carrying all my stuff in a chest? Annoying to find out I've been kicking that rock lizard rather than stabbing it.

If I have my exchange with chest window open at the same time as my inventory window, and the contents of the chest overlap my right hand, clicking on the chest contents can actually select the sword in my hand behind the inventory window. I think I managed to pick up two things at once this way :>

I won the game. And: "Help text 'help//../html/winner.html' not found" Fortunately, as you saw above, I've already snuck into that directory and read the win message :>

Text Problems:

Game over message should be: "You died. Now no one can stop the evil from conquering this world." I also think it should have an okay button on that dialog. Or maybe start again?

Backpack: should read: "Who wants to travel without one?"

Torso Plate: "Iron makes wimps of heros" maybe?

Swords are described as "A standard military sabre", yet there are also Sabres which are described as "A standard military sabre."

RFEs:

I like the help/html docs. However, the root document is "help.html", which I didn't clue into. Perhaps name it "index.html" and have the other docs have a "Back to Index" link?

Resizeable windows! The main window should resize, giving more white space for me to keep inventory windows up in. I found the screen-size command for start up, but it just seems to give more zoom on the play area.

Mini map is cool. I'm a big fan of these.

It seems that you are a red dot. Other stuff is also red dots, making it hard to determine which red dot is you :> Can there be scale settings? I find the one pixel-one tile a bit too small at 1280x1024. Can it be made resizeable?

If hitting 'i' brings up inventory, it would be cool if it also put down the inventory. I think I picked up this mechanic from Diablo II where it proved really cool.

Mention you can only add ingredients to potions that at least have water in them already. I tried adding bitter leaves to empty bottles and was confused, until I clued in.