Bardess

Bardess
Beta Project
Developer	Jordan "Deepshock" Thomas
Theme	High Fantasy, tactical
Influences	D&D 4th Edition, ADOM, Dragon Quest IX, Elder Scrolls Series, Diablo, TOME, various fighting games
Released	2011 Jun 13
Updated	2012 Jan 21 (0.5)
Licensing	Closed Source, open pending
P. Language	C Sharp
Platforms	Windows
Interface	ASCII/Windows Forms hybrid, Keyboard, Mouse
Game Length	Short (Caverns al-Azar/Combat Demo modes)
	Official site of Bardess

Bardess is an ASCII based rogue-like game set in the continent of Nexus.

Description

The game is written in pure C# via Windows Forms and features mouse support, remappable keys and parties of up to six units, with one controlled manually and five controlled via AI.

System requirements

The game requires XNA Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 Framework (Redistributable).

Story and World Context

Nexus is the largest continent in Mundi. Its two regions, Quinzia and Catorce, have recently been thrown into war. Catorcians say that they invaded as a response to a Quinzian attack on the trade hub of Catorce. Quinzians insist that Catorce wants to pillage their land and take its heavenshard reserves by force. As this senseless battle rages on, the continent cries out for a hero. Many cry out to the Resonant Voice for an end to the fighting. Could it be time for Her to call on a new ascendant Bard to write a new tale for this land?

Modes of Play

Combat Demo

This mode, from the infancy of this game's development, squares any number of allies (up to 6) against any number of foes in a 1 floor, 50x50 dungeon. Victory comes when all enemies are routed.

Caverns al-Azar

Here, you choose between one and six characters to brave the 20 floors of the randomly generated Caverns al-Azar, to challenge the Ascendant Bard and prove yourself/selves worthy as defenders of Nexus.

Game Timing and General Play

Party Control

When running multiple units, you use one manually while the others are AI controlled. The unit that you control directly is called the 'active' unit. You can change which unit is active with the appropriate keys (Z/X/C/V/B/N by default, can be changed in the keybindings menu). If the active unit is incapacitated (dead or dying), then the active unit switches to a random usable unit in the team. If all units are incapacitated the game ends in defeat. Allied units are color-coded by class. Bards are purple, guardians are blue, rangers are pink, mages are orange, hunters are green and pugilists are red. The active unit is depicted as a '@' while his or her inactive allies are '$'.

Timing System

The timing system of Bardess is based on 'recovery'. Every action has a recovery cost, which determines how long you stay inactive before your next action. This is measured in what the game calls 'frames'. Speed affects the recovery costs of each action. If a unit is immobilized, recovery doesn't count down until the duration of the immobilization expires.

Interface

The Unit Card

The unit card lies to the left of the playfield and displays all data specifically associated with the active unit. From top to bottom, it displays the unit's name, level, HP, stamina, power, items, status conditions and technique availability. Items can be used from this section of the field, either via the item use key (M by default) or by clicking an item from the drop-down menu and clicking use. Technique descriptions can be accessed by clicking once on the name of a technique on the availability chart. They can be used by either clicking the use button while highlighting a technique, double clicking the tech name on the list, or pressing a hotkey (1-0 for lesser techniques, Y/U/I/O/P for greater techniques by default).

The Stage Display

The stage display merely shows the player's current location and (for dungeons and other indoor areas) his or her current floor. In the Caverns al-Azar mode, it merely shows the current floor.

Ally Health

This displays the names of your inactive allies in their appropriate colors, with current and max HP. In dire situations, use this in order to rush to the aid of a unit in distress or even take control of that unit.

The Message Box

The message box tells you everything about the flow of the game that the rest of the field does not. One can filter messages to tune out ones that they lack interest in.

Combat and Tactics

Fighting in Bardess is simple and straightforward on the surface, but there are lots of things that must be considered. Randomization is generally removed from combat, with damage and numerical effectiveness of attacks and abilities being solely dependent on one of the five primary stats and, for techniques, the potency of the ability.

Attacking and Damage

Weapon damage is based on the attacker's Combat value and is always consistent. Damage dealt to a unit also affects maximum HP at the rate of 1 for every 5 HP dealt. This max HP damage can't be healed by the life surge. It must be restored via techniques or items. Techniques and even some weapons can affect enemies at a distance, based on range (determines how far you can place the point of origin) and area (how many squares away from the point of origin you can affect using this weapon or ability). Ranged weapon attacks are activated by the R key (By default. This can be changed in the keybindings menu).

Healing, Dying and HP

HP can be restored via items, techniques or Makura's Life Surge trait after 500 frames without damage. If a unit runs out of HP, they are dying and must be revived either using a Revival item (Herb, Extract) or a technique such as Revival Hymn. Dying units lose max HP at a rate of 2 per frame, and if that reaches 0 the unit is dead. Dead units are beyond any help.

Stats

Primary Stats

The six primary stats are Combat (governs attack damage and the effectiveness of weapon-based status ailments), Vitality (HP and Status resistance), Speed (Governs the recovery cost of movement and action), Technique (Governs technique effectiveness in general), Energy (Governs technique cooldowns and power gain), and Level (Affects gains of other stats and what abilities the character has learned). All of these except for Level can be directly affected by techniques and abilities. Characters gain levels as they complete primary objectives.

Secondary Stats

Secondary stats are HP (Damage tolerance), Stamina (Capability to use unique abilities), and Power (Capability to use greater techniques). Every 4 levels, your maximum power increases by 10000 (to the amount required by your most recent Greater Technique).

List of characters

NOTE: When referring to characters in the game, their names and classes can be used interchangeably for description's sake.

Makura von Muir, the Bard

The Bard. She is the healer and the primary support character in the team. Over time she learns debuffs and advanced healing and protection abilities to further aid her team without having to go too far into the fray herself. Her ability to concentrate allows her to speed up the recharge rate of her techniques. Only a rare few of her techniques cause damage.

Lyon O' Brien, the Guardian

The Guardian. He is the defensive melee character of the team. He possesses high durability and learns lots of abilities that further protect himself and his team, and some that immobilize and push back the enemy. His ability to guard allows him to endure for longer than normal.

Shade Norquist, the Ranger

The Ranger. She is the speed-based melee character of the team. She moves and attacks quickly and learns abilities that allow her to debuff opponents while causing them damage. Her sprint allows her to move even faster as long as it's in one direction. Her class title refers to her training in survival in quickly traversing difficult terrain. She actually has few ranged abilities.

Volcane Mulana, the Mage

The Mage. She is the indirect ranged attacker of the team. While her initial spell (Flame Burst) only targets one unit, she quickly learns spells over time that attack multiple enemies at a distance and over a fairly wide area. She also has limited debuff and buff ability. She can use her stamina to invoke her spells in addition to the standard cooldown system, if so desired.

Jochannan Burkhard, the Hunter

The Hunter. He is trained in the use of mundane ranged weapons and he learns techniques that either alter his stats toward a specific focus or charm, scare and mark monsters and animals specifically. He doesn't excel at any one attribute, but he is decent with all of them. His Mark ability will make it easier for his allies to damage and minimize damage from the foe closest to him. His greater techniques summon powerful beasts to fight on his side.

Vigoro Harnax, the Pugilist

The Pugilist. He is the offensive melee character of the team. He fights with his bare fists, uses techniques that damage enemies on a line, and like Lyon he also learns a few techniques that immobilize, rush toward and knock back the enemy. He has the lowest Technique value of the six characters but his Extend ability allows him to double the damage and overall power of those techniques.

Abilities

Unique Abilities

Each character has one unique ability that can be described in one word. These abilities always have some kind of support role. Unique abilities require Stamina to use.

Bard- Concentrate

Bards can concentrate in order to quickly recover their power and recharge their techniques. At a recovery cost of 100 and a stamina cost of 200, they cause all spent techniques to cool down 200 frames and gain 1000 units of power.

Guardian- Guard

This toggled ability immediately puts the Guardian in a defensive position. As long as the guardian holds that position, he moves at half his regular speed and any damage dealt to him or her is subtracted from stamina instead of HP. Overdamage to stamina affects HP normally.

Ranger- Sprint

This ability is toggled, and as long as it is active the ranger moves at doubled speed, spending 50 stamina each step. If he or she moves in a different direction or does something other than move, the sprint ends. If he or she exhausts their stamina, they end up in recovery for 100 frames.

Mage- Invoke

This ability primes the next lesser technique the mage would use to spend stamina equal to the cooldown that normal use of the technique would incur, instead of the cooldown.

Hunter- Mark

This inflicts the mark status on the nearest opponent within 10m of the ranger, for 1000 frames. Marked units take 25% more damage, deal 25% less damage and can be identified even without line of sight. This requires all 1000 stamina to use.

Pugilist- Extend

Once the pugilist uses the Extend unique ability, his or her next lesser technique will do double damage and have doubled potency. This requires all 1000 stamina to use.

Traits

Traits are passive abilities that are either always-on or dependent on a secondary condition. They are learned at levels 2, 6, 10, 14 and 18.

Lesser Techniques

Lesser Techniques are moderately powerful regulated by cooldown timers. After using a lesser technique, the cooldown time on it is based on the level it was learned at and the user's Energy stat. On the unit card, they are displayed in green.

Greater Techniques

Greater Techniques are highly powerful techniques regulated by a power gauge that builds as the unit takes damage, receives damage, and uses abilities. Each greater technique uses power equal to 2500 * the level it was learned at (always a multiple of 10000). Finally, every greater technique learned increases the owner's maximum power by 10000 (up to the power cost of the most recent technique). On the unit card, they are displayed in red.

Glyphs

Glyphs are accessories that can be attached to a weapon based on its number of slots. These have minor, positive effects.

Weapons

Each character can use one of three weapons based on his or her class. These weapons are primarily balanced around base rate of attack, range and glyph capacity. All weapons are meant to be equal in overall power with the differences between them being tactical in nature.

Screenshots

Screenshots:

Preparation:

Character selection and item purchasing (with 1 unit/100 enemy dungeon) Character selection/item purchasing with 6 units and a 400 enemy dungeon The intro/mode selection screen

Gameplay: 1 2 3 4

Future Plans

0.6 Tutorial and Challenge Events (Self-contained scenarios that explain and explore the concepts of the game.)

0.7 Endless and Wave mode (Fight various waves of monsters until you beat them or they beat you)

0.8 I will respond directly to feedback about the game and apply it as best I can.

0.9 Campaign (The main story. Explore the land of Nexus and end the war between its two regions)

1.0 Final bug testing, rebalancing, feedback response, and the addition of tiles, a french-language mode, and a command-line version for multiple platforms.

Past Development Notes

Jan 21, 2012- 0.5 (complete) version here

Bugs fixed and changes made:

LOS issues

1) LOS problems with inconsistent blocking of sight (air blocking) (Solved)
2) Some visibility through walls (Edit: Visibility radius still 15m) (Solved)
3) Visible stuff made more distinct to explored stuff (Solved)
4) 'E'xamining now shows the target marker but not the range markers, which obscure the data (Solved)

UI issues

5) Healing Song (Makura's lesser technique learned at level 1) now updates the active unit's HP. (Solved)
6) Hotkeys are now placed before techs in technique availability (Solved)
7) GTs have their power costs where LT cooldowns are, and are highlighted red. LTs are highlighted green. (Solved)
8) More visual representation added.

   *Bars for life, stamina and power (Solved, could do a two layered bar)
   *Black or dark grey messagebox with white text (Solved)
   *More/better options with window sizes, for a wide variety of monitors. [Solved]

9) Found some way to make the mouse usable on the playfield itself, for targeting and one-shot examining [Solved]
10) Items on the character select sheet given descriptions. (Solved)

AI issues:

11) Monsters used to get confused between walls, this was exploitable. [Presumed solved unless somehow proven otherwise later on in testing.]
12) Some monster movement used to be counterintuitive and exploited by zigzagging. [Solved]

Older versions:

Jan 16, 2012 - 0.5 peer review candidate here (revision 4, fixing compatibility issues with 64 bit computers)

In this peer review, I'm specifically looking for information on any bugs I may have missed and any balancing changes that need to be done. E-mail me at deepshock no@spam live no.spam com or IM me at deepshock01 on AIM and Yahoo or my E-mail address on MSN. Somethingawful goons with platinum can private message me instead if they so choose.

Minor revisions:

-Set the build to specifically target x86 architecture. This should solve any problems for 64-bit computers. -Clarified the version number and the nature of the early-version combat demo.

- Added a detailed help and information menu
- Eliminated the following bugs:

Terrain showing up under walls Colored dots Different-colored levels Burkhard's pets don't swap places when I try to sidestep them. Monster stacking in some cases (knockback/rush trigger this.) Some minor invalidation/refresh bugs regarding the HUD Some minor timing bugs regarding enemy positions (anyone also at 0 recovery moves if the active unit performs an invalid action) Enemies don't move after loading from the main menu Loading from the main menu is buggy, defeat crashes the game with a null reference exception, enemy placement and map layout differs inexplicably.

0.4.20120108 Jan 8, 2012

- AI and overall speed have now improved significantly thanks to proper A* pathing.
- Enlarged the main part of the field to font size 8 (done)
- Made it so that dead players are 100% unaffected by anything (One guy managed to find a case where a dead character was a legal target for healing song)
- Replaced Absorb (gain power when Volcane is hit with magic while doing this) with Invoke (use stamina for the next lesser technique instead of cooldown) for Volcane's unique ability
- Made Bloodlust so that you gain HP equal to half an opponent's HP when he or she goes down
- Removed the tech dropdown list, make the 'use tech' button compatible with the current cooldown list
- Gave more information about items, possibly with a namechange
- Allowed for sidesteps/displacements if I bump into an ally
- Color coded character names
- Allowed immediate feedback after using a tech or item via the mouse and button.
- Made it so that panels have character/wall data directly in them to minimize 'for' and 'foreach' loop use (Still needs to be thoroughly verified. Causes the side effect of not being able to pass over downed/dead units.)
- Allowed cancel key in keymapping
- Allowed OK to autosave in keymapping
- Fixed stair up/down inconsistencies, any remaining terrain glitches
- Expanded usable key range
- Made it so that squares are visible permanently once uncovered, but enemies are not visible, with the view range being 15 for squares at all times, and the greater of 15 and weapon range for enemies in a viewed square
- Improved LOS, fixed bugs with the uncover() method
- Allowed the AI to use unique abilities.
- Included a look command
- Added file save/load dialog for game saves
- Changed Mark to also allow one to view a marked enemy even beyond the view range/fog of war. Useful if Burkhard's using the hawkeye.
- Gave players 10000 Fari (the currency of the game) and a list of items to buy with it before setting out. Then, remove the random items on the ground to compensate.
- Implemented extra terrain types and rules for them
- Implemented a new A* system, eschew the botched dotnetperls one

I'm within a few balance patches and debugging sessions of 0.5 now.

0.4.2 Sept 30, 2011

Changes:

· Implemented a much faster timing system. · Moved minibosses (capital letters) to the last four floors of the Caverns al-Azar. · Fixed a number of bugs involving techniques, movement, player health state, interface updating, and game win/loss state. · Imposed a game-wide rebalance of nearly every mechanical aspect. · All AI functionality has been added except for unique abilities. · Added a modified version of dotnetperls.com's A* pathing scheme.

Rebalancing:

· Removed level from HP and base weapon damage calculations. Max HP is now Vitality * 40 instead of Vitality * 20 + Level * 250. Base damage is Combat * 4 instead of Combat * 2 + Level * 25. · Level only affects base stat gains and abilities learned. · Level 1 Stat range has been narrowed, from 30-70 (+10 per interval) to 40-60 (+5 per interval) · Weapon rates of attack have been narrowed: Slow is now 2500/speed instead of 3000/speed, Fast is now 1500/speed instead of 1000/speed. · Enemy stats (except for speed) are half of player stats, except for minibosses (capital letters) and the ascendant bard.

0.4.1 (Aug 30, 2011) Rogue Temple announcement revision

-Wider main form design (with data on each side of the playfield rather than above and below it. -Loading can be done from the intro form -Save/Load are menu items rather than buttons on the main form -Extraneous, unused forms removed from the project -Fixed dark screen bug where the screen wouldn't show unless a button was pressed.