README.md.backup

# darband
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 about entering the world different from your own and and 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 such questions. 


# Ideas

## Game Mechanics

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.


## Some points for further study

- 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

# Plan

-   [X] 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



# Components and aspects

## rotjs

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.

## Barehanded combat

## 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

# Words and names

Facticius
Feigned

# Story

## About the name

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.

## Setting

The game is not set in a particular time period. It doesn't even have
a clear "psychological time". It only has "clock time".

## Darband Player's Manual

This is a detailed manual for players. For information on how to
contribute to the game, see the [Tasks](#orgca2b312) section.

### Introduction

### Getting Started Guide

### User interface

### Game components

1.  Player races

2.  Monsters

3.  Items

4.  Quests

## The World

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.



### Main Dungeon

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.



### Portals and Special Dungeons

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.

1.  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.

2.  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.



### Branches

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Barbarian Temples

4. God-King Palace

    Realm of the Immortal King. Human beings in this domain are broken and
    bent.

5. Searna Cave



## Character races



### Dark Elf

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.

### Dwarf

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.

### Human

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.

### Huttler

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.

## Skills

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.)

### Strength

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.

### Intelligence

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.)

### Dexterity

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

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.



### Fighting

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

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.



### Providence

There is no scroll of identity in this game.



### Divination

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

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.



### Swimming

-   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

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

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:

1.  Cold  Resistance

2.  Fire Resistance

3.  Poison Resistance

4.  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.



### Throwing

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.



### Petrification

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.



### Foresting



## Combat

***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 <span class="underline">Religion</span> section.



### Weapons



### Armor



## Religion

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.



### Deities

1.  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.

2.  Marmrhak

3.  Utor

4.  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.

5.  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.

6.  Thiorharl



### Magic

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).



## Totemism



## Monsters

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

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

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

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.



### Goblins



### Trolls



### Dragons



### Animals

1.  Intelligent animals

    Some animals possess rudimentary form of intelligence that makes
    extremely powerful if combined with their immense bodies and wild
    temper.

2.  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.



## Conditions affecting living



### Food

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.



### Health



### Corruption

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.



### Confusion



### Blindness

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

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).



### Deafness

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.



### Mutation



## Pickable Items

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.

## Developer's Guide

### Source code structure


## Main entities

### Actor

This is the main entity. All items and creatures on the map are `actors`

## Items

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.



# License