The Caspian Adventure Game
Darband is a horror-themed fantasy role-playing game set in the underworld of dungeons carved into stone and earth. It is a roguelike game in the tradition of classics of the genre like ADOM, Nethack, Angband and others. As you play the game, you discover various creatures in the halls and dungeons hidden from the world above. Your goal is to choose a deity to worship and attempt to do his or her bidding. You can abandon your god and convert to other religion later in the game and have the objective of the game changed, as well.
Darband is a game where you enter the world different from your own. Ultimately the game is about about your return journey. All the questions you may have asked about your own world can be asked in the world of Darband as well - where does it start, where does it end? Why are you there? Unlike your native world, Darband can have specific answers to these questions.
You start your game at level 16 of the dungeons. There are lower levels that you can go to if you choose so, but your way should be up. You are never fully prepared for the bottom levels. It is way easier to die by chance unless you are prepared and resistant of at least most of the common hazards, in bottom levels than on the top ones.
The objective of the game is to go up the level 0. But there are many paths leading upwards. Only few out of very many possibilities will take you to the surface. The rest of the paths upwards are dead ends.
The levels below 16 are linear, i.e. at any level below 16 there is only one staircase leading downwards and only one leading upwards. You have a more conventional game on levels below 16.
While the objective of the game is to climb to the surface, which makes the top 16 levels of the dungeons to be the only ones that are needed to be covered in order to win the game, many players will choose to explore the bottom levels of the dungeons as well.
The main challenge of the game is to figure out the correct sequence of staircases to take to reach the surface.
Inspiration from Sirens of Titan climb up from caves on Mercury. You could be reaching dead ends unless you figure out the pattern on the sequence of staircases to make.
- Inspiration from The Neverending Story!!
- The fortress is the character.
- The fortress doesn't want you to leave.
- Sometimes maybe it does.
- Players can create new monsters and items and they may remain in the game if more players use them
- Field of view
- Barehanded combat
Work in progress
- Inventory and picking items
- Simple weapons, wielding, blowing
- Hostile monster AI
- Intelligent (hostile or not) Monster AI
- Confused AI
- Weapon classes, armours, clothing
- Ranged combat
- More variety in map generation
- Elemental magic system
- Colors and themed dungeons
- Better organized data files
- Portals
- Hunger and time
- Lighting
- Quests
- General religion system
- Terrain and heights
Rotjs comes with lots of features that are useful, but it also has its own weaknesses. For tihs reason I want to do use it in a way that it's possible to easily migrate the project to a different library.
Facticius Feigned
Darband is the Persian name of the ancient fortress town by the Caspian Sea, present day Derbent, Russian Federation. It is the oldest city of Russia. It is translated from Farsi as Closed Gate. Darband is also, admittedly, a reference to Angband.
The game is not set in a particular time period. It doesn't even have a clear "psychological time". It only has "clock time".
This is a detailed manual for players. For information on how to contribute to the game, see the Tasks section.
-
Player races
-
Monsters
-
Items
-
Quests
The game is set in the world deep in the past in which magic reigned. Not even rudimentary civilization was yet conceived by most races. Writing wasn't invented and songs were known but to the cleverest of race.
In the age of Third Sailing, the brinks of the world saw tempests and havoc that, devastating the surface, uncovered the depths that nobody saw before. Common folk called it Inner Darkness, the realm from which nothingness radiated. It was dreaded by all but some of the bravest races. They believed that the Lower Dominion resembled the World Above in many ways and was a foreboding to what was to become of the world. Thus they called it Shadow of Tomorrow.
Little was known of the structure of the dark realm but some speculated that it consisted of 16 layered dungeons.
You start your adventure on the highest, level 1 of the dungeon. On each floor you find several staircases leading to higher or lower levels of the game. The exiting staircases on the highest (Level 1, staircase leading upward) and lowest levels (Level 16, staircase leading downward) serve as Portals of Random Blackness and Portals of Deathly Chasms respectively.
The world consists of dungeons of various levels and portals that are accessible from them. There are many rules by which portals appear and where they take you to. This depends on various factors, such as character race, playing style, religion but it does not depend on character level, experience or skill set, so it isn't always easy to tell whether a particular portal will take you somewhere you are good to survive or not. Apart from arbitrary portals, there are some that have more important role in character development and game progression; such portals are very few and easy to identify. You should know when to enter them and in what order.
-
Chamber of Sorrow
One special dungeon is accessible from one of the main dungeons between the levels 3 - 5. It is the first thematic dungeon that you will encounter. It is devoid of pickable items and monsters in it die most unnatural deaths, as they do not leave you edible corpses. The place, though, is guaranteed to train your magic and fighting skills, as it will be much more challenging than anything you saw that early in the game.
-
Dungeons of Fate
Some dungeons do not follow the pattern of increasing difficulty typical for the main 16-level dungeon stack. You know that you are in a Dungeon of Fate when you have made some god angry or extremely pleased. This also happens when you have done something of importance on larger scale.
Portals and Dungeons of Fate are often the places to seek the artefacts and creatures that are crucial for winning the game. Some portals permanently leave you away from the main dungeon which makes it impossible to complete the quests given by some gods, thus you lose.
When you have been in the game for long enough, you will have probably cleared around ten levels of the main dungeon and most of special areas. It is then time to start exploring the branches. Before doing so, you should you have learned enough about the world to have some feeling of what to expect of different monsters and most importantly, that you are comfortable with your god.
Advancing far enough in the game to be able to choose among branches, you face the choice of biggest strategic importance. Unlike some games, branches aren't primarily different based on difficulty. Only two branches, Dwarf Caverns and Searna Cave are decisively more difficult than the rest and should probably be saved for later. All other branches appear different to each race and religion in terms of difficulty. It is important to see branches not as different levels in the game, but as different paths to your victory or peril.
-
Mythic Menagerie
If the Underworld itself is a shadow of the World Above, the Mythic Menagerie is a mirage of the oldest world in which gods, goddesses, demigods and other heavenly creatures walked among men. This branch presents extremity in both, fatality of your mistakes and reward.
-
Dwarf Caverns
This branch is the most obvious side-quest in this game. You enter this branch for earning the greatest loot, to strengthen your place under your providence and vigorously train your skills. It is the dominion of the dwarfs, dungeons and caves filled with innumerable treasure, artefacts of ancient magic and matchless weapons.
-
Barbarian Temples
-
God-King Palace
Realm of the Immortal King. Human beings in this domain are broken and bent.
-
Searna Cave
Dark elves are the most mysterious of the lot. Seeing their innate stats, it is difficult to foresee where they would thrive and where they would perish. They can be outstanding ranged combatants with their mastery of archery and spell singing. They are, however, hated by many creatures and feared by yet more.
Dwarves are the most typical melee fighters with high health points, good defence and high damage. This doesn't mean that they have much lower ability in other stats, but this advantage in melee fighting drives them (or the player manipulating them) into further developing this skill and therefore neglecting some other skills. This makes them stand out in early to mid game but facing significant unforeseen challenges in late game if overly specialized.
In many games humans are typically the most generic species with stats closest to averages. In this game, however, human species are treated specially as well, but in a slightly different sense. Humans have the highest learning capacity and they are more flexible in what talents they develop. This makes them generic in a similar sense to other roguelikes. The difference lies in that humans are the most prone to corruption and most vulnerable to mutation. This can be both, helpful or hindering based on playing style, situation or strategy.
Huttlers are distant relatives of humans, possessing similar intelligence, person and susceptibility toward mutation and corruption (and other conditions of living) but have vastly different workings in learning and interaction with non-player characters. The difference between them and humans becomes more evident as the game progresses.
Some say that Huttlers parallel hurthlings or hobbits in other media. It hasn't been confirmed, however, and despite the fact that they indeed live in holes or huts, they are more inclined to barbarism and wilderness than to farming and agriculture. Neither are they oblivious to the tidings from the larger world.
If some areas of this game have relatively more limited choices, like weapons, shields, clothing, the skill set and religion systems is where abundance can be enjoyed.
Some skills are general and basic, like Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity. Others are more specific, like Spell Casting or Flying. They are technically the same. If some specific skill overlaps with one of the aspects of a more general skill, you can think that the latter is used as a basis from which the other, more specific one is calculated.
Some skills are passive, i.e. they are permanently activated. Others are active, which means you use them by invoking in just the same way you evoke spells. Most skills are passive. Active ones are marked as such and are accessible from the Invoke menu (press a.)
In the most primitive sense, Strength is the skill that determines your constitution and standing. The aspects of play that depend on Strength attribute:
- Max health points.
- Health point regeneration.
- How big weapons you can carry.
- How much damage you deal if you hit the target. Weapon-related. skills use this skill to calculate the final damage value.
Primarily, intelligence is memory and learning. Intelligence determines:
- How many spells you can learn (Remember).
- The limit of spell difficulty that you can learn.
- Spell casting accuracy.
- Monster memory (This skill only determines the number of monsters you can remember, not how you use this memory.)
Another basic skills in that it determines your agility and performance in everything requiring movement, speed, and accuracy. Many other skills are strengthened based on this. More specifically, dexterity is:
- Speed. More definite skills use this attribute to calculate the final speed or precision of action.
- Your chance to deal critical attacks.
- Your chance to blink in critical fights. The chance decreases as your health points lower.
- Number of turns it takes to perform basic actions like wear/take off, wield/unwield, quaff, drop, etc.
Evasion is the ability to evade, dodge attacks. When highly developed, it makes you very hard to hit. Train this skill by fighting with high health points (i.e. have high chance to blink) and by getting out of the field of view of monsters that notice and chase you.
Strength and Dexterity alone determine much in how you perform in the most basic fighting situations. The Fighting attribute itself speaks of the following:
- How effectively you use monster memory.
- The base value of attack dice.
- Certain fighting skill thresholds uncover cleaving, piercing and stunning attacks (largely depends on character race and weapon used).
- Your defence skill. (n.b. defence is different from evasion)
Spell Casting is an extension of intelligence. By traning this skill you get:
- Lower hunger cost of spell casting.
- Increases range of some spells.
- Lower time it takes to cast spells.
- Lower chance that the spell will backfire.
There is no scroll of identity in this game.
Divination is an unusual skill in that most of its effects are seen only when you have developed it to very high levels.
- You might sense some danger when you enter some areas.
- Your monster memory has new sensing.
- It's easier to identify some items.
Flying is perhaps the hardest skill to master. When reached full mastery in it, though, you are practically invincible when facing monsters that can't make ranged attacks. The early stages of flying allow you high degree of Dodging and Evasion but are also ridiculously heavy in nutrition.
- Fight monsters in water.
- Cover large distances in shallow or deep water.
- Hide in water.
- Dive in and pick items from the water ground.
Dodging is your ability to slip out of sight of monsters. It also depends on Dexterity. It is both, passive and active - when invoked, if there are more than 5 (4, 3 on high skill levels) monsters in the field of view, they all stop tracking you.
Resistance is a family of technically similar but unrelated skills of resistances to various harmful effects. Please note, that there is no single Resistance skill, but the following, independent skills:
-
Cold Resistance
-
Fire Resistance
-
Poison Resistance
-
Mutation Resistance
Mutation comes into play later in the game. If other threats are more deadly to you the weaker you are, the lower your HP, XP, etc, to this particular effect you are the more vulnerable the larger you are.
note: For Humans, mutation resistence merely delays the effects of mutation.
The game offers a rather limited selection of ranged weapons, and even these are hard to come by. Instead of ranged weapons, though, you will more often rely on throwing various objects.
This skill affects your ability to throw items accurately, to do damage if hit, the maximum distance you can reach, the size of items you can throw with reasonable accuracy.
It is an active skill. It is a skill of looking scarier than you are. Usually you will want to activate this effect when you want to get to some destination fast without being distracting monsters that are well weaker than you and wouldn't pose a challenge to you anyway. When activated, such monsters get out of your way.
NOTE: This is a general overview of the combat system. For information on skills in various aspects of fighting and weapon use, see the skills section.
Winning the game isn't primarily about killing monsters and becoming as strong as possible. Nevertheless, the dungeons present the player with various kinds of danger. It is crucial to be able to defend yourself as you do not always have a chance to escape. There is also much that can be gained by visiting some places that are particularly well-defended and only the strong fighters can venture into.
This section covers more basic forms of combat, i.e. barehanded or weapon-based fighting. For magic spell casting and divine help, see the Religion section.
Religion is important in the game not only in providing more advanced mechanics and diversity, but also as the most crucial area of the game as the goal is directly determined by what god you worship. More advanced spells also are learned by practising religion. This becomes even more important as the world is in its early days and magic-less races haven't yet learned enough technology, and but the crudest and simplest weapons are easily available.
-
Aronkhar
Aronkhar is the god of tribal warfare and barbarism. Until the most recent ages, his grip on the world was undisputed. It favours bravery and honour, and his reign over the world is remembered as The Golden Age of Heroes where the honourable thrived.
The untainted domain of Aronkhar has known little of darkness and corruption that is brewing in the farthest rims of the world and fast approaching with advancing civilization. His calls for his faithful warriors is at its strongest, defending the integrity of the blissful world.
-
Marmrhak
-
Utor
-
Searna
Searna is the god of wisdom and providence. The arcane knowledge he offers to his followers is the last sure link to the Old World. Searna is the only deity in Innfin that you can meet in the dungeons.
-
Sazanas
Even in its merriest days, the world remembered of the shadows told by Lost Generations, when Sazanas first tried to bring domestication, servitude and contempt to the world.
Sazanas is said to be generous in granting brilliance and knowledge of different machinery to his followers. His first coming showed the world primitive form of town settlements that were centred around High Temples. Such areas indulged inhabitants with powers unheard of in the older, Aronkhar domain.
-
Thiorharl
Most of the magic spells are learned by divine help (Divine Magic), save for some more basic forms of magic which require nothing but a wand (Arcane Magic). A wand, indeed, is the basis of all spell casting, be it divine calling or arcane magic.. There aren't wands of many different kind, they uniformly differ by size - which determines spells of what order they can cast. Casting difficult spells with mediocre wands can either succeed, break the wand or even miscast, which can be dangerous with certain spells.
You don't do magic by reading scrolls. You remember spells and there is a limit to how many of them you can remember. Certain conditions affect your memory. Every time you grow agony, you forget a random spell (some spells are exception to this).
Unlike many other roguelikes where most monsters are immediately your enemies, in this game your playing style determines what other characters see you as. There are, however, some monsters that are inherently aggressive toward your race or to anything at all. Such monsters are often cursed.
Wizards possess similar abilities as the player in that that they can use magic, weapons and have advanced tactics in wars. They are often in the most important parts of the world.
Specials are non-natives of the dungeons. They have entered the dungeons just like you have. Like wizards, they are users of magic. Specials have more personality to them, like names, stories or quests. They are often of very intelligent races.
Orcs are by far the most dominant species in most parts of the dungeons. They seem to have been in there longer than most races. They have developed rudimentary society and have several Orc Heroes and Wizards. They worship Sazanas.
-
Intelligent animals
Some animals possess rudimentary form of intelligence that makes extremely powerful if combined with their immense bodies and wild temper.
-
Cursed animals
Cursed animals serve some fell purpose in the game. Typically they are cursed to serve some other monsters or gods. To a player, this means that such an animal can pose significantly more threat than others. Not all animals can easily be identified as cursed.
In the underworld hunger, lack of light and sanity is another instance of immediate danger you have to cope with. You can escape or avoid most monsters, but you can't escape hunger. Though scarce and deficient, the dungeons offer you some stores of it if you look in right places. You will often be facing hunger and the stores you can carry with yourself are limited, so you can only survive if you learn that the world you are in is vastly different from the one you come from, you will eventually learn that the luck lies in how fast you learn what you can eat and how often you should do it.
If fell monsters of the dungeons want to take your flesh, the dungeon itself wants to take your soul. Your sanity is as vulnerable to darkness and terror of the underworld as your skin is to the claws of fiercest animals.
Some aspects of your character are monitored, like remaining health points, items it is wearing or whether it is hungry. Level of corruption, though, affects your play in ways you cannot easily check.
Any character can be affected by blindness. None are exempt. When a player character becomes blind, the field of vision becomes a gray cloud of nothingness in which no monster, door or item can be seen. Blindness can be temporary that heals itself in several turns or semi-permanent, when it lasts until you sing a Bard's Song, drink potion of seeing, invoke a spell or drink a potion that cures blindness or ask your god.
Agony affects characters of different race differently. Your skills, level, items are all irrelevant. What your character does in agony depends solely on its race. Agony cannot be cured immediately by drinking a potion, singing a song or invoking a spell. It doesn't cure at all sometimes but its effects become less strong when other states increase or decrease, such as corruption or mutation. Typically, there is nothing that effectively reduced agony. But you can definitely grow your agony by any of the following (depending on your race) - resting, mass killing other monsters, invoking actions that harm you, excessively drinking potions (not waiting a single turn between drinking potions).
When you are deaf, you stop sensing danger when attempting to open doors or initiating combat with a monster that has its allies nearby. You rarely become deaf but it can be very dangerous if it happens in a critical situation.
The game offers several kinds of items that can be found in different parts of the dungeon and other areas. The most basic items are food, weapons, clothes, shields/armor, jewelry, wands and some thematic artifacts.
This is the main entity. All items and creatures on the map are actors
Certain items can be stored in a backpack. Other items can be held one at a time, and when you pick up an item that you cannot store in the backpack, you drop the other.
This header file contains all the functions related to the actors,
including NPC and items (potions, scrolls, books, etc). All of this is
implemented as a single actor structure (struct actor) which contains
pointers to various helper structures, such as pickable (an item
that can be picked and used, life (an actor that can be
harmed when attacked, attacker, (an actor that can
attack. Intelligently or with random motives). There is also an
important ai helper structure, which, if the actor possesses it,
gives the wearer the ability to have intelligence, perhaps even
increasing one, such as capacity for learning.