Roguelike on Erebus

[Jarrema]

Well, It is too young right now, and lot of things are hidden.
Can you tell what type of description are needed? Ingame popap help? Maybe manual? It is hard to do everything in one moment, but I can focus on something important!

If I have to choose one, I believe the stand-alone manual would be the best. With some tips for begginers, and clear, nice tables with, for example, weapon statistics, lists of spells, etc.
Manual is also quite easy to extend, upgrade, correct etc.

In the long run, nothing else than full in-game help AND something akin to 'wikihack' would be sufficent for me.

 

[civ_king]

every time I try starting a game Windows says it stopped responding

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I believe this is standard procedure in roguelike games.
You can cope with this by saving game and manually coping a save to another catalogue (if not, the standard roguelike game will remove save after loading it).
But hardcore roguelike players consider this cheating. It is called "savescumming" if I remember correctly

Well I call it way unfun. I mean, save files are there to make sure you don't die like I did and lose a game.
If some madman wants to be all hardcore let him just not use the save function.


Dam... that just completely removed any and all interest for the game from me.

 

[Copper Golem]

I believe this is standard procedure in roguelike games.
You can cope with this by saving game and manually coping a save to another catalogue (if not, the standard roguelike game will remove save after loading it).
But hardcore roguelike players consider this cheating. It is called "savescumming" if I remember correctly

Totally right. But for alpha-games, It is allowed if games are not stable or unbalanced.

I just noticed something that really, really, really upset me beyond any words.
When you die, the game deletes your save game. Hence your character is dead, forever.

That just ruined a game for me... 2 hours of work down the drain...

Well I call it way unfun. I mean, save files are there to make sure you don't die like I did and lose a game.
If some madman wants to be all hardcore let him just not use the save function.


Dam... that just completely removed any and all interest for the game from me.

Sorry, It is permadeath. But, there is a secret. Game, for now, doesn't delete files, just make note for itself, that char is dead. So, you save&exit, then copy saves.dat, you can savescum. Well, or simply copy hole save folder.
If you didn't start new game you can save you char for now.
Copy slot_1 folder, then start new game and save it, and the copy slot_1 back. It would kill new character, but revive your old one. But don't tell It anyone, some sort of developers spoiler.
Ups, It looks like, It doesn't work.

And, well, I was always savescuming, when playing mostly all roguelikes.

every time I try starting a game Windows says it stopped responding

Disturbing news!! I thought that fixed all crashes. It simply don't start or say something?

If I have to choose one, I believe the stand-alone manual would be the best. With some tips for begginers, and clear, nice tables with, for example, weapon statistics, lists of spells, etc.
Manual is also quite easy to extend, upgrade, correct etc.

In the long run, nothing else than full in-game help AND something akin to 'wikihack' would be sufficent for me.

Of course not one, but for the begin. Frankly speaking, I must do it some time ago, good I try it now.

 

[Jarrema]

Well I call it way unfun. I mean, save files are there to make sure you don't die like I did and lose a game.
If some madman wants to be all hardcore let him just not use the save function.


Dam... that just completely removed any and all interest for the game from me.

I agree. When i play roguelikes I try to play without savescumming, but almost always it is unbearable temptation... I put some restrictions on myself and try to save only at predefined locations in the game.

In defense of this system I can only say, that massive reloading destroys some aspects of roguelike games. For example, typical for this games is something called "randomized apperance". It means, that items look differently in different game instantions. Super-extra "boots of gaining speed" could be described as "low boots" in one game, and as "elf shoes" in another; and if you think that "low boots" are always boots of speed, you will very likely end in the boots of fumbling.
With saving... You can save, try all your items, reload, and use only beneficial ones.

of course, you can use saves and not doing this kind of "discoveries", but it is hard; you have a chance to identify something almost at every move (for example, you can watch as monster drinks potion, and now you know that "purple potion" is, in fact, lethal poison.

 

[Copper Golem]

Well, I have wrote this small gameplay manual. Wish it would be helpful!
It would be the beginning of normal one.

GAME CONCEPTS
FACTIONS
When you start the game you can select the race or your PC and his/her (sex doesn't play any role now, and It would be selected randomly) faction.

Keep in mind, that not all races are avaliable for every faction and selection of professions may be different.
It is better to say, that faction selection is more important and act like race selection in most games.
Check classes below.

BODYPART
All creatures consists from bodypart, such as legs, hands and so on.
It doesn't affects gameplay greatly for now (but you can chop away enemies hand), but later would be very important.
NOTE: PC, for now, are immune for bodypart sewerage, because monsters chops both his hand away in no time. This need some fixing.

MISSILES MAKES TURNS
Magic and ranged weapons doesn't hit its target instantly. When you shot the bow or cast aggressive spell, It starts Its travel and make turns as everybody else. Of course, it moves very fast, but lightning fast creatures can outran spells or missiles.
NOTE: There was bug in first versions, when missiles were moving very slow, so you can shot the arrow, then outran it, stay on its way and hit yourself.

ATTRIBUTES

Strength
Determines how many item your PC can carry.
melee and bow Damage.

Agility
Speed and dodge chance.

Intelligence
Mana focus, mana focus regeneration and small bonus in Skill Points for smart guys.

Endurance
Determines the beating your PC can endure.

Note, that attribute of 10 is middle, corresponding with untrained human.

Every additional point are really valuable.
Creature with strength 12 is, at least, 40% stronger then 10!

ITEMS, MATERIAL, QUALITY and TECH LEVEL
You will find lot of items in your travels. They would be of different quality and materials.
From real junk to great semi-artifacts.
Lets see.

Quality
greatly modifies every aspect of item!
crude sword is nothing more that a bit sharpened stick, great sword is a real masterpiece and deadly blade.

There are six stages of quality:
crude
cheap
mediocre
fair
great
exceptional

crude - well. Have you ever tried to do something for the first time without real knowledge? Thats it!
But, in the beginning of the age of rebirth, everything would be helpful, if not fail its owner and lead him to fierce death.

cheap - well, cheap is cheap. When you need quickly to arm few thousands of solders you rarely would care of great quality.

mediocre - is, somewhat, middle level of items quality.

fair, great - keep looking for them, even not for you, but for sale. It is like, for example, you travel in the dungeon populated by rotting undead armed with rusty swords and then you will find shiny sword in pile of rusty blades. It survived ages, because of great work.

exceptional - when you see them, you will love them. Nearly semi-artifacts, nonetheless.

And one more thing, don't bother bringing items worthier then fair to merchants, they wouldn't buy. It is easy to obtain such items aboveground then buy it from dungeon crawlers. They would happily buy items of good quality, but would you sell it to them?

Material and Tech Level
Lets use weapons as example.
shortsword can be made from copper to mithril and it is simple: more advanced material the better.
But you can say, why I can't find anything better than bronze?
It is simple, you searched places when lives or lived not very advanced people.
Tech Level goes from crude to divine.
Smelly cave goblins has crude metalworks level, so you would find only copper and brass items.
Dwarven miners are limited to advanced, so you can buy(or steal) wrought iron or even bronze items from them.

Item Rigidness
Items can be rigid and flexible.
Now, it used only for armor. Flexible armor can be lighter but can't completely absorb really strong blow, especially from blunt weapons.

Item Fragility
explains how fragile and easy to destroy this item is. Doesn't used in game for now.

Encumbrance:
If PC wear too many stuff, It would slows him, and decrease dodge.
NOTE: Items you wear affects less encumbrance, then items you carry.

COMBAT, WEAPONS AND ARMOR
So, you take some heavy stick and want to hit this smelly goblin very hard, aren't you?
Then read how It would happen.

First of all, some basic concepts.
Every weapon has:
*Damage type.
It is piecing, slashing, firearms or crushing.
It determines now how it shown in the game and there relations with flexible armor.
*Armor piercing rating
It is not to-hit or damage. It means only how good this weapon in piercing armor or creature hide.
Accuracy determines by your skill with weapon (and later by weigh of it).
* Required Strength (RS).
It determines two things. First, if your strength are lower that Required Strength, you will get significant penalty for every point.
Second, damage, inflicted by this weapon limited by double Required Strength variable.
For example:
We have two creatures: ogr John (20 str) and goblin Bob (8 str).
Both of them armed themselves with shorts word RS - 7.
Bob would inflict damage limited to strength 7. For example 1D-2.
John is very strong,20 strength gives raw damage, for example, of 3D+5. But this sword has RS -7, so maximal used strength to count damage is 14 for this sword.
* Damage bonus. Some weapons have damage bonus. It is added to calculated damage.

*Balance
Melee weapons
Determines chance of parring enemy strike with your weapon.
Check parry section in COMBAT chapter bellow.

Ranged weapons
Affects accuracy. Doesn't implemented yet.


There is good selection of different weapons and skill for them, of course.
If you have at least few points in any weapon skill, you can learn weapon skills of same class (except for staves) later by distributing skill points on level ups.

You can arm yourself with weapons of different classes:
*sword or bladed weapons, such as swords, of course, daggers and knifes.
*Impact. Warhammers, maces, axes, crowbills.
*Polearm. Spears, pikes, staves e.t.c.

They are different, even in the same class. For example, crowbills has great armor piercing rating, but axes has good damage bonus and RS.


And now, combat begins.
*to hit stage.
It passes skill check for strike attempt.
If It was successful, defender tries to dodge the attack, dodge chance modified by defenders dexterity, encumbrance, special skills and attackers weapon skill.
*Parry.
If you failed to dodge the attack you can parry it!

Totally unbalanced weapons can't be used for parring.
Unbalanced weapons can be used for parry, if you didn't attack this turn.
Balanced and Perfectly balanced weapons can be used for parring, even If you already attack this turn. Perfectly balanced weapons are so good, that gives you bonus for parring.
Also some weapons has parring bonus, because they can keep enemy at bay. Mostly all pole weapons, such as glewe, partisan e.t.c.

*armor penetration
If all this dodging and blocking doesn’t help, armor comes to play, It can absorb the blow completely (There is no DV) or lower attacks penetration rating (not damage!).
Then, if armor can’t help, creature’s natural armor comes to play. It is not important for mortals like humans or elfs, but some nasty creatures can have strong hides.
Also, if armor absorbed the blow, but It wasn’t rigid armor (like platemale), but flexible (like chainmale or leather breastplate) and damage was really mighty (blunt weapons needs less damage rating for that) defender would be damaged a bit. Still, flexible armors are really lighter then rigid ones.

*damage.
If nothing helps, defenders bodypart suffers damage.
Weapon damage depends on attacker’s strength, weapon bonus and limited by weapon damage limit. It means that very strong person with knife will inflict more damage them weakling with battle axe, but can’t chop defender in two. (Check Required Strength part for more details )

Critical damage to torso or head means death for any creature now. (no bleeding or pain yet)

RANGED COMBAT
Nearly the same.
But you must set container with ammo for your weapon.
For the purpose of debaging, you need only one missile for your weapon right now. It would be cloned on reload. After debaging, It would be set back to normal.

There tree types of ranged weapons:
Bows,
crossbows
and firearms (they are too advanced for this moment, don't look for them.)

Bows don't need specified reloading, PC will arm arrow when shoot.
crossbows must be reloaded before you can shoot somebody.
So, crossbows are very fast at the moment of shooting, simply aim and press trigger, but need reloading.
Bows shot is a bit slower than crossbow one, but don't need sspecified reloading.
Also damage by arrows determined by bow RS and Creature strength, when crossbows has fixed strength rating.

MANA AND SPELLCASTING
Spellcasters don't have mana pool inside of them. Remember, all mana on Erebus comes from other planes and mages focusing already existing mana. So, there casting pool named MANA FOCUS. If mage has fatigued himself and fburned all his focus, he cant cast any spells.
You can think, that there is no difference from standard mana system, but no.
For example, you are not fatigued and have lot of mana focus poins and very good in elementaism, so can cast mighty firewave, but, sorry, there is no firemana flow in this cave, for some reason. Maybe you has gone too far from nearest firemana node or death mana wind storming here that blocks all other mana, who cares.
So, every good mage needs some selection of different spells to be always ready for battle. Arms training also would be helpful.
There is a selection of mages skills, determines power of every spellcaster.

Casting consists from two part: first you need to focus mana, then to wave spell.
It need different skills, see below, and calculates separately. For example, experienced elementalist tried to cast divination spell. His mana focus is great, so he focused mana instantly, but divination skill is low, so it takes lot of time to wave spell.

manasense
Mana doesn't manifest itself in visible world without help of somebody or something. You can understand that, for example, low mana is strong if don't have this skill or, well, somebody cast unusually strong low spell. Person with this skill can sense presence of mana and its power.
Mana flow can change from small breeze to raving storm. It is better to know what is going on, if you want to cast spell.
Mana flows aren't only mages trouble. Even, if you are not the spellcaster It would be not wise to stay for a long time in the places where, for example, raving death mana storm irradiating everything, until you are not undead or necromancer, of course.

manafocus

This skill determines ability of mage to collect mana flows from surrounding, control and prepare it to wave a spell or safely free power, if you decided to abort the spell.
If your manafocus skill is too you can't focus weak mana, strong mana can run out of control and burn the spellcaster and focusing would take considerable time.
NOTE: the stronger the mana wind the faster focus would be.

Spell skills
elementalism, divination and so on. you don't have, you can't cast specified spells. Simple. Also determines efficiency of that spells and speed of spell waving.

SPELLS
there is 3 spells right now.
Heal self - strong life mana spell. It focus energies of life mana in the body of caster forcing them renew in a rapid rate. Casting this spell by undead creature is some sort of painful suicide. Please note, that life mana can't damage living beings, it is against its nature, but if you will use this spell too ofter its efficiency fails, because your body can't endure any more. More natural healing for living creature would be in body mana spells.

Firewave - firebased spell. Caster focuses firemana and throws it at any direction.
Efficiency of firewave lowers with every target it hits.
Firebolt - you can target place, where firebolt will explode (some sort of fireball for poor).
Well, It is easy to kill yourself with this spell. Would fix it soon!

Deathwave - It is test spell, made to check undead immunity to death magic.

SPELLCASTING
If you have mana focus skill and some spellcasting skill. you can try magic.
Press Z to open your spell book and select spell to cast.
You also can set two fast spells, It is better to do so, because would not need to open spellbook every time.

FACTIONS
For now, starting faction determines:
* Starting mana affinity. (doesn't do anything in 0.0.4d1, but would be VERY important later).
For example balseraph would gain some chaos mana affinity and so on
* Selection of classes and races you can play.
* Starting perks and free/bonus skills.
For example, Amuretis people start with Kylorin blood perk. So, even warriors of Amuretis can sense mana flows and so on.

CLASSES
All factions would have selection of standard classes or special variants.

WARRIOR
His power is good selection of heavy weapon skills, both impact and blade.
Also, warriors has “beast of burden” skill, This skill allows them to wear heavy armor and making them less dependent of dodge.
Calabim moroi has less selection of starting weapons, but has, for now, some vampiric abilities. Such as soul hunting (every time, when you kill enemy you force there souls to stay here, a bit of time for your unclean desires) and soul drinking (rush to hunted soul and absorb it (S-key), it would restore some health, depends on skill).

THIEF (harlequin for Balseraph) have lockpicking skill, allows them to open chests in dungeon.
You need lockpickes for this.

Thief has Dodge skill, that gives them bonus to dodge. This bonus doesn’t depend on encumbrance.
Harlequin has Evade skill, It give harlequin additional chance to dodge enemy attacks. This skill is really powerful, but It works limited number of times per turn (number depends on skill) and heavily depends on encumbrance.

HUNTER
This class has access to ranged weapons, but ranged weapons.

ELEMENTALIST
Only class for now, who can cast this 3,5 spells

LEVELUP and SKILL POINTS
PC will gain experience points for killing creature and doing some different things (like picklocking e.t.c.)
Quantity of skill points depends on difference between PC level and target level (locks also has levels). You will gain more exp, if PC has lower of equal level then target.

When PC acquire enough exp for level up, you will receive some Skill points and occasionally perk points. Don't care about perk points for now.
Number of skill points determined by level, every fifth level you will gain additional skill point, and you Intelligence. Well, at least, you would have guarantied 2 skill points per level.

Spent you skill points to increase your skills. The higher your skill, the more skillpoints you need.
Note that every skills has different difficulty.
From easy to very hard. Harder skills need more skillpoints to have a gain.

 

[Jarrema]

Great!
the last thing that I would like to have is a list of commands, with associated keys...

Also, if factions give important bonuses, list of them (with descriptions) will be useful

 

[Copper Golem]

Nearly every key can be changed in keyboard.cfg, except system.
Also, I tred to keep all active key on side panel.

Default settings:
Num Pad keys 1- 9 (num lock on) - moving. Bump into creatures to attack it or talk if it is of friendly faction.

l - look around. Use move keys to explore squares around your PC.
v - item info, must show item info everywhere you see item. Please note me, when It doesn't work.
c - creature info. It is used only in look arownd command. Shows small info about creature.
i - open inventory.
g - grab first item on the ground.
G - select items you want to grab.
o - open container on the ground.
d (in the inventory) - drop item.
Enter(in the inventory) - equip/remove item.
< - move up or leave region.
> - move down or enter region.
q - read item.
` - open big log screen.
+ - switch to ASCII mode.
Z - open spellbook.
z, x - cast fast spells.

Wish I didn't forget anything useful.

 

[Copper Golem]

Heh. Lowing agility speed bonus made rotten corpses to become immobile.

 

[Copper Golem]

every time I try starting a game Windows says it stopped responding

Well, game doesn`t work well if started on flashcards, making big dump of wordgen files.

I wish that I`ll finish update this year.

 

[afoninv]

Ow... please DO continue! ADOM, Nethack, Zangband and later Dwarven Fortress are just the best game experience I've ever had; no Quake or (whatever)craft could ever compete. FfH is the closest mainstream game to the mentioned indie roguelikes - I'm talking about spirit, not genre here.

I'll try to snatch some time to play your project, despite my heavy dislike of unpolished products. I understand that's a matter of time, please don't take it personally =)

 

[Copper Golem]

Ow... please DO continue! ADOM, Nethack, Zangband and later Dwarven Fortress are just the best game experience I've ever had; no Quake or (whatever)craft could ever compete. FfH is the closest mainstream game to the mentioned indie roguelikes - I'm talking about spirit, not genre here.

I'll try to snatch some time to play your project, despite my heavy dislike of unpolished products. I understand that's a matter of time, please don't take it personally =)

Well yes! You are right about FFH universe, It is great for roguelike!
Yep, FFH roguelike is unpolished, I realized it, just because need feedback for inspiration (yes, I confessed, at end of all. I think that feedbacks is a fuel for indie development projects) and cutting down sharp edges.

And, If you didn’t played this before, I think, that It would be good idea to wait for the next version, major fixes and changes planed and already coded.

 

[Jarrema]

I am waiting for it. I had not nice experiences with this game at begginning (being killed by first monster), but I will give it another try

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I agree. When i play roguelikes I try to play without savescumming, but almost always it is unbearable temptation... I put some restrictions on myself and try to save only at predefined locations in the game.

In defense of this system I can only say, that massive reloading destroys some aspects of roguelike games. For example, typical for this games is something called "randomized apperance". It means, that items look differently in different game instantions. Super-extra "boots of gaining speed" could be described as "low boots" in one game, and as "elf shoes" in another; and if you think that "low boots" are always boots of speed, you will very likely end in the boots of fumbling.
With saving... You can save, try all your items, reload, and use only beneficial ones.

of course, you can use saves and not doing this kind of "discoveries", but it is hard; you have a chance to identify something almost at every move (for example, you can watch as monster drinks potion, and now you know that "purple potion" is, in fact, lethal poison.

I could not disagree more.

Removing save games does nothing to benifit a game. In fact, I can't even play this any more. When ever I die I get so frustrated that I ended up deleting the entire thing in a fit of anger.

And I will tell you something else. Just becouse a mechanic allows for abuse does not mean it should be removed. Hell by that logic we should ban swiming pools becouse people can drown in them and cars becouse people get into accidents. Or say, we could ban knifes and forks becouse they can be used to stab people.

It is not the mechanic but the person that does the abusing.


Furthermore, the fact that death is permanent puts so much more strain on every decision as every mistake is fatal. Many people want to play a game to relax and not to suffer from stress fallowed by rage quiting and fits of crying after every single mistake.

Hence, as far as I and every other person that is not a hard core fanatic player this game is unplayable.


I rest my case. You will not hear from me again.

 

[Jarrema]

PPQ
I agree with your line of thought in general.
But I can speak about myself taht when I use saved games, I tend to abuse it. Maybe my will is just too weak?
For me it seems to be a better thing not to 'play' with the seves. But I am NOT one of those persons who say "people who are savescumming should not consider themselves real players". I am far from such a statement.

 

[Copper Golem]

You know, ones I have seen goooood realization of save-system.
You can choose between ironman and standard mode. Think there is no need for explanation and it would be implemented in to next version(but drain some hard disc space ).
And there would be only one special save for death situations, you must reload save if died AND save the game normally if you want to continue later. It means some sort of save point for hard situations, but not full save-system.

 

[afoninv]

Great!
the last thing that I would like to have is a list of commands, with associated keys...

Also, if factions give important bonuses, list of them (with descriptions) will be useful

I second this.

List of commands and some manual both would look great inside the game; my first intention after start was to press '?' key and see available commands =) Since I had experience with half a dozen roguelikes and many of them do not share commands, I could never learn them all by heart =)

***

Now, what can I say. First impression is - GREAT. Winter start. Reminds me of The Unreal World roguelike by some smart finnish guy... ah, sorry, that's irrelevant =) And ah, fog of war! It means - exploring the unknown! Better than whole global map visible from the start. Exploring, maybe buying maps, maybe buying incorrect maps... damn it, I am full of useless shiny ideas =)

That was for first impression. I quickly killed myself while fireballing city guard, and that felt totally OK!

As for concept thingies, evidently there are not many other ways than to invent a bicycle - to hit/damage pair is classical, armor penetration and softness of armor are introduced in Dwarven Fortress in a great way, fragile items are not anything new at all etc etc... that's clear.

But.

There's THE single most brilliant concept.

Magic system.

When I have read your description my mind exploded. I always felt magic systems were primitive in 95% games, and in other 5% they were logical puzzles, funny, interesting, but not really magic. You have pronounced what I always wanted to see.

First, there is mana sense... what? SENSE?
Great! Mana is exogenic at last, place and situation dependant. When you are playing a character in other games, you get bored because you carry your magic with you so it is constant (more or less), it changes rarely and is under control. You can PLAN your magic. No exploration and no mystery to this, other than 'read manual to learn the spells tree'. You say - no, let's make mana be a part of the world, we need to sense it first, we must not be sure of it, we can make mistakes such as relying on fireballs when winds of mana change and in the middle of an adventure we find an urgent need to quickly invent ways to kill other than burning. Or ways to escape, perhaps =)
Also, 'mana flow' phrase you used inspired me to think about gigantic currents in the aether, trapping of flows in some places, etc etc - something big and important, not really predictable but somehow manageable... Global map of mana flows layered on terrain map - flows that really exist, interweave, mutate. Events which are scripted and which are not: big battles with many deaths, storyline things, or particular rituals you can make anywhere - they all can change global mana flows which are real (not hardcoded). And change the way you spellcast. Small ritual involving five candles and a knife at the cave entrance - and you temporarily increase death mana presence in the whole location. Easier to kill monsters, but they have higher chance of turning to zombies/skeletons after you kill them, so you have to repeat =) After all, rituals are important in FfH, would be waste to use them only superficially in storyline.

Second, you divide focus and waving (BTW, what do you mean by 'waving'?). This, if not used oversimplifiedly, can lead to great magic system I believe, for exa... hmm, I think I talk too much. That's my problem =)

Anyway, I will play some more later, to see more of the game. Maybe I will have more useful comments about the real product and not my dreams =) but - so far so good. I was charmed by a spirit, not by functions. Visuals are accounted for much of this charm: font, tiles, winter start, small details like fireplaces...

So, keep it up!

 

[afoninv]

Ah, one last thing... I like saves being deleted. It's an essential element of the legend around roguelikes, I think. That's just an opinion, though.

 

[Jarrema]

You know, ones I have seen goooood realization of save-system.
You can choose between ironman and standard mode. Think there is no need for explanation and it would be implemented in to next version(but drain some hard disc space ).
And there would be only one special save for death situations, you must reload save if died AND save the game normally if you want to continue later. It means some sort of save point for hard situations, but not full save-system.

It is a very good idea, it can work well

 

[Copper Golem]

Ah, one last thing... I like saves being deleted. It's an essential element of the legend around roguelikes, I think. That's just an opinion, though.

You are right:

Normal mode:
One emergency save, if PC died you can reload it and continue, If you quit when PC died it would be deleted (you can save the game if continued play). Just, let me try again option.

Ironman
You can save only on exit, PC died - game finished.

2afoninv
Thanx! I'll try to fix magic, even If it would delay the realize!


List of commands and some manual both would look great inside the game; my first intention after start was to press '?' key and see available commands
Gods! I`ll do this today! It is essential!

Global map of mana flows
My Gods! That the end of the puzzle! I was thinking how to finish the system, to make it balanced! Thats the answer! Just secondary map of mana on global map transfered to local one. It would make local play more stable, and some REAL fun for global gameplay!

Second, you divide focus and waving (BTW, what do you mean by 'waving'?). This, if not used oversimplifiedly, can lead to great magic system I believe, for exa... hmm, I think I talk too much. That's my problem =)
If you can find better word than waving, you are welcome!
This is very important part of gameplay!
When you push cast spell button, you PC do lot of things! He focusing raw power of used mana, for example for firebolt, it is fire mana. It is like to grab some snow for snow ball (it is focus skill, essential for any spell).
then spellcasting comes to play, for fireball - it is elementalism, It is a skill to use already focused energy (you form snowball and throw it!). Fail on every point of the process can hurt the caster, severely if mana wind is strong!


Anyway, I will play some more later, to see more of the game. Maybe I will have more useful comments about the real product and not my dreams
It looks like we share same dreams.