itch.io

Wait, I MIGHT have just fixed it.  Truth is, I've been dicking around with the code, and I just changed something that might have been the cause, but I'm not entirely sure I didn't add that something previously while dicking around with the code.  So...  MAYBE fixed?

I've been searching for the slide from grease into stalagmites bug.  I cannot find any loophole that would allow sliding from grease to put you into stalagmites in the first place...  I'll keep looking, but I'll be up front and say I'm not sure how to fix this one right now.

I suspect there's nothing missing because it's been downloaded dozens of time and no one's said anything - must be some weird error in the general transfer to you.  If you send me your email at stopthesaturnians@gmail.com I can WeTransfer you copy I'm playing - hasn't been updated much, I don't think.  Just let me know here if you've done so, because I never check that email and might forget otherwise!

Ah - BOTH of those are bugs!  I thought I'd fixed the sliding into Stalagmite deal a while back, but evidently not...  I'll have to look into them.  Thanks for the bug report and glad you're enjoying the game!

Alright, officially:

- Another Face in the Crowd will now check once before increasing racial hatred for the killing of a single monster rather than once per monster-type of that monster. This will prevent the incongruity of receiving a message that Another Face in the Crowd kicked in, for instance, when you kill a Were-rat (which is both a Person and an Animal) and then receiving a notification about hatred for one of those aspects rising.

- With the Blink spell, Anywhere But Here perk, Weapons of Dismissal/Eviction/Banishment, Pantos’ Dismissal Miracle, Allumas' Unpredictable Outcome Miracle, the Blink Trap, the Stay Sod Event, monsters on a Friendly Blink Trap or you accidentally setting your own Friendly Blink Trap off, it is no longer possible for the subject of the random teleportation to be teleported back to the exact same square it started from.

I'm leaving the Berserker, though.  Both it and the Pooka (which has the same ability) are meant to be impossible to predict, and I like the slot machine effect of their ATT and DEF flickering.

Actually, I probably will change the Another Face in the Crowd situation.  It's not technically a bug, but I can see how it would be received that way.  Hopefully fixed for the next update

The Berserker situation is intentional.  You can't predict what their Attack or Defense will be as they're randomized moment to moment. 

The Blink spell I'm aware, too...  might consider changing it, but I'll have to think about it...  it's pretty overpowered for its cost as is, and a 1 in 3600 chance that it returns you to your starting point at least compensates a little for that. 

The Another Face in the Crowd thing is news to me.  I'm checking out the code based on this report and I can't see any way that could happen.  I'll keep an eye open, but it literally leaves the increaseracialhatred() function via a return command before increasing hatred when it kicks in, so I'm not sure how it could happen.  OH... unless the monster had multiple monster types.  A were-rat, as an example, is a Person/Animal, so it could pass the Another Face in the Crowd check for the Person half, but not the Animal half or vice-versa (in which case it would still benefit you, of course).  Thanks for bringing it to my attention.  I'm not sure if I want to change it or not, but am very, very swamped as I head toward a release in the next week or two and am trying to wrap up all loose ends as is...

AND congrats on the victory as the Human Paladin :)

As an aside I also encountered an error in the casting of Demonic Assistants yesterday (and the same would apply to the Demonic Congress spell).  If you cast it and it fails, taking your spell points, it still leaves the little Demonic Assistants icon up...  literally forever, unless you're able to cast it again.  Doesn't hurt anything, but it's irritating.  It's been fixed now!

Fixed it so only wall variants move now, while everything else stays put.  You can still get trapped if you aren't careful/lucky, but should be substantially less deadly now.

Ooooh, I see.  Everything that's NOT Empty Space becomes wandering...  Shit.  I could make minetracks not wander, and water not wander, but how extensive would the list be of things I'd have to make not wander?  Maybe I should change the event to only allow walls to wander, and only into empty space.  That seems safest.

Demonic Assistants I caught the other day.  But thanks for bringing it to my attention!  Copied and pasted from the code to provide you the full text:  "Casting this spell gives an instant 10% chance that your Spell Points drop to zero.  If that doesn't happen, you'll have a 50% chance to regain 1 Spell Point each turn for the next 60 turns.  Casting it angers Good gods."

Reality Breakdown - shoot.  And interesting.  I get why the scenario would be problematic, but if the walls can't wander onto Mine Tracks, then how did they block the Mine Tracks in the first place?  As far as I recall they should only be allowed to wander into Empty Space, so shouldn't have gotten onto those tracks or water in the first place.  Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I'll look into it immediately!

Congratulations!  (Out of curiosity, what race/class/religion combo won it for you?)

Xaskazien could have been missing health from passing through dangerous terrain, falling in a pit, etc.

Immediate combats on descending should be quite rare, but aren't a bug.  It would be easy to put in a catch to ensure it doesn't happen, but I don't really see a reason to do that...  I like the possibility, at least.

Enchanted Arrows do exist!  (As do Armour Piercing Arrows).  They're not toggleable - if they're in your inventory and you're using a bow, they automatically take effect.

Best of luck with your next go around!  I'm about to dive into another playtest, myself

Hmmm...  Do you happen to know if it said, "You jolt awake!" or "You've been startled awake!"?  Having trouble tracking this down...

Please do!  The Max Trainable Skill Level with the ring was recently addressed when someone else reported it.  The Combat Output one I'll have to look at it, darn it!

Next update is currently targeted for the first half of October.  It's going to be HUGE.

Thank you for the comments and thanks for the bug report!  That boat query bug I've already addressed behind the scenes recently.  We're still about 2 months out from the next release, but it's already going to be ungodly huge in size, including a lot of major QOL improvements.

You're not the first person to mention the desire to use items from the ground...  I'll have to think about it.  It's doable within the framework of the existing code, but it might be tricky to implement...  I'll have to give it thought.  Re-centering on the character after a mouse move, on the other hand, shouldn't be hard at all...  after I've finished today's workload, I'll look into it.

There are 2 magical trunks that can appear in the game:  Melgrim's Teleporting Trunk and Yorick's Dimension Hopping Trunk.  Melgrim's has a 10% chance of appearing on any level, though Yorick's only has a 1% (and can be purposefully conjured via a Vestonian miracle, too).  With Melgrim's, anything you drop in the trunk will still be in it if the trunk shows up again later in your game - so it's a way to set aside things you don't have space to carry but which MIGHT come in handy if you're lucky later.  With Yorick's, anything you drop in the trunk will still be there when the trunk appears, even in separate games.  So if you find something awesome that's not of use to your current character, you can drop it in there in the hopes that some future character will find and benefit from it.  (Yorick's also includes whatever items I've dropped in it before uploading here, so if you want a pure game that only contains your own stuff, you can reset it via the high score screen by clicking "Reset"). 

If you're using an older version of the game, there was a glitch where you could open the Recharge screen from a Recharge Station and then walk away, leaving it open, and that could cause all kinds of problems.  Fixed that in the last version (or perhaps the one before) though.

Huh.  That's a weird glitch!  Thanks for letting me know.  I'll take a look at Recharge Stations and see if I can find anything...  Not sure what would have caused this though!

Thank you so much for sharing this!  I'll check it out as soon as I'm done work today!

Yikers!  Bad luck!

Yeah, you do have to actually start a game first.

Yes.  Fire the game up in full screen, go into the Options menu, and left click the Windowed/Full Screen toggle.  When you leave the Options it will save your preference so next time it will launch in Windowed.

It does!  I'll make all the files available again then.  Thank you so much!

I've had one of my games up on itch.io for years and finally decided to add the donation option. That's worked fine, but on the site I host both the core game as a fresh download, and all kinds of patches that you can use to upgrade from earlier versions of the game, if you don't want to download the whole thing anew. Previously, if you wanted the game, you clicked the download button beside it, and if you wanted a patch, you clicked the download button beside that.  Since adding the donation option, I now only have 1 central download button, and if clicked, this button offers to download you all the files on the site. This would mean downloading gigabytes of useless, redundant data if you just wanted to download the game for the first time. As a stopgap, I've hidden all the patch files - if you want to patch your game to the latest you are now out of luck. I still want each file to be separately downloadable for free, but prompt you for the donation if you're interested. How can I make that happen, so I can make the patches visible again?

This has been fixed in today's update.  Thank you so much for pointing this out.  Can't believe I missed it

Oooooh.  Yeah, you updated, skipping steps.  Absolutely that'll cause mess ups.  Just download the full version.  If updating, you have to update step by step.

Huh.  I'll have to look into it...  never seen that before, though.

Weird - it was just a stack laying there?  Or did you do something and then they appeared?  Never seen that before.  The one potion you drank was probably a Sleeping Draught.

Glad you're enjoying it!

When you step on stairs, it prompts you with a y/n to descend (as do all interactable squares).  Not sure what you mean by comma to turn next page in books.

Gah!  You're right!  WASD was implemented (though I never use it), and since I FORGOT it was implemented, I rewired the s key for stealth to be mnemonic, instead of the y key which used to be stealth.  Sigh.  I'll fix it on the next pass!  In the meantime, you can, however, still use the mouse to move - click any square that you can see a path to to move there by the shortest, most direct and safest path.  Or click any square horizontally or vertically adjacent to your character to move to that square.

All versions of Caverns 1 are included in the bonus folder that comes with Caverns II.  So if you've downloaded this, you've already got it!

Game released a few days ago.  Forgot to post here!  Again, thank you so much for your incredible artwork!  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1785100/Stop_the_Saturnians/

Thank you, so much!  I've used a modified version of one of the green nebulas as background title page art in my upcoming game, Stop the Saturnians!  Fantastic work :)  (Will post a link when the game is publicly available).

No.

Awesome!  Thrilled to hear it's working out! Hope you continue to enjoy it :)

Did it work?

Wow!  Thank you, so much!  Really appreciate it :)

It runs in a straight 1024*768, 4:3.  Any scaling would be done by your graphics card.  I know, for myself, I have an NVidia graphics card.  If I go into the settings, under Adjust Desktop Size and Position, there's a scaling setting with 3 options: Aspect Ratio, Full Screen and No Scaling.  I leave mine set to Aspect Ratio, to ensure that 4:3 games/videos play at that format, otherwise it stretches the game to fill the full screen.  Unless you're playing on a 4:3, the game should appear centered, with black, empty space to either side.  Could it be something to do with that?  If that doesn't solve it, the other option would be to play in Windowed mode, but that option can only be set in game, though it saves the preference thereafter - so if you're still having problems, PM me, and I'll generate and mail you a new preferences file that would default to Windowed mode.

(I suppose the other potential culprit would be if your computer is set to a lower resolution than 1024*768 - the game runs only in that resolution, so your environment would have to be at that resolution or higher).

I'm just guessing that there must be something different in the processor of a portable machine.  But truthfully, I have no idea.  I've coded it on a Windows PC (desktop), seems to work on most Windows desktops and laptops, but I have absolutely zero knowledge about why it would or wouldn't work on one machine vs. another.  Sorry, man.

Unfortunately, no.  It's designed for a Windows PC only.  There must be some aspect to a handheld device that it just can't grasp.   

Having watched the full video (found it here: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Caverns%20of%20Xaskazien/videos/all), I think you're right - maybe I'll try doubling their hesitation to enter dangerous squares.

Also spotted 8 errors in the game via his stream!  Free playtesting!  Hopefully I can repair them soon.

Thanks for calling my attention to it, and thanks to Dynast for playing and recording!