Umbra

(c) Copyright 2001 by Mark Hughes <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

All Rights Reserved

• Installation and Usage
• Options
• What's New: Version 0.11, released 2002Sep16
• The Future, Coming Sooner Than You Think!

Installation and Usage

1. Unzip umbra##.zip anywhere on your hard drive, which will create an "umbra" directory.
2. Download Python 2.1 from <http://www.python.org/>
3. You can now run it:

   Unix:

   cd umbra; chmod 700 ./umbra.sh; ./umbra.sh

   OS/2:

   open the "umbra" folder and double-click on umbra.cmd

   Windows:

   open the "umbra" folder and double-click on umbra.bat

   These are all equivalent to `python -O UmbraTk.pyo`.

   Mac users:

   Please tell me if you're running it on a Mac, I'd like to hear about your experience of it. I don't have one handy to test it on.

4. Send me email at <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>, letting me know that you played and what you thought of it!
5. Check back at <http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/Umbra/> every week for new versions and news.

Options

You can use the following options on the command line:

umbra.sh/bat/cmd <OPTIONS>

-hack

If specified when you start a new game, you will start at the door of a temple, one sector west of the usual starting town (so head towards the sunrise to get back to town), with some minimal equipment instead of cash.

-viewdist {distance}

Changes the number of grid squares (2m*2m) ahead and to the sides that you can see. The default of 8 is just barely acceptable on my own machine, so you might want to lower it if you have a slow video card, or increase it if you have a fast one. (The default used to be 16, but the lighting slowed things enough that a lower default made sense).

-nolight

Disables lighting, which requires some heavy processing at present; as soon as I can optimize the lighting code, this option will be going away.

-nolightlos

A less drastic solution, this disables line-of-sight checks for lighting, so that light sources work through walls, doors, etc. This option will also go away when the lighting code is sped up.

-timing

A debugging tool, if you're not sure why it's so slow on your machine, this shows exactly what's taking up all the time. "turn" includes updating other creatures and your map. "redraw" includes, among other things, working out the lighting. "showMap" is the actual drawing of everything, "showSky" is just the sky-based part of showMap, and "update" is the redrawing of the player status bar. If your showMap is the largest part, your video card is not up to snuff. If your turn or redraw is higher, you need a faster CPU.

-size {pixels} (UmbraTk only)

Changes the size of the view window; the default is 480 now.

-fog (UmbraTk only)

Turns on distance fog, which makes objects "popping" into visibility more acceptable for some people.

Or for a text-only version:

python -O UmbraText.pyo <OPTIONS>

A typical text-mode map looks like this:

West:
                                _S9 A_S   _S9 B_S8                         
                                _S9  _S9  _S9            #S6               
                      ..2  #S  C_S9 D_S8 E_S8  #S8                         
                           ..2  ..8  ==7  ..7  ..7                         
                                ..7  ==6  ..6  ..6                         
                      #S6  #S6 F_S6 G_S5 H_S5  #S5  #S5                    
                                ==4  ==4  ==4                              
                                    @==3                                   

@=Jack; Killer; Sneak; Techie; Arcanist|G=a door
A=a lamp; Boss Uxaru Fnuw              |H=a door
B=a window                             |#S=Stone Wall
C=a window                             |..=Grass
D=a door                               |===Road
E=a window                             |_S=Stone Floor
F=a door                               |

Each grid shows a 'map key' (@, A..H on this example), which is defined below the map; then a two-character terrain type, also defined below the map; then the light level, 1..9 indicating 10-90%, ' ' indicating fully-lit. Any empty grid is not visible, either because it is blocked by a wall, or because it is too dark to see.

It's not pretty, but it's usable if you don't have a machine fast enough to run the Tk version.

What's New

Version 0.11, released 2002Sep16

It's been a while since I last worked on Umbra, and there are several bugs or quirks that need to be fixed. So, I'm releasing it as open source - you should read the license if you're interested. Also take a look at the history.txt file to see what I've done and what needs to be done, if you want to follow my course.

I'm perfectly willing to host enhanced versions of it, and even maintain it somewhat, but I just don't have the time to work on it, and the frustrations of getting speed out of Tkinter or making a user-friendly Pygame game distribution are too much. If you want to get into that, set up a mailing list and I'll help as much as I can.

• Reduced cost of teachers.
• Fixed bugs with the tavern.

Version 0.10, released 2001Jul15

I worked on the magic system, but it's not available yet, so there's not much new this release (thus the restrained tone of the bullet items), but there are some significant bug-fixes.

• Improved the start and other town generation.
• Locksmithing costs fatigue to use; if your fatigue overflows, you gain wounds.
• You can now Get All, instead of having to pick up each item one at a time.
• Improved treasure and monster mix for the ruins.

Version 0.9, released 2001Jul08

• Summer school! There are now a handful of teachers in each town who can improve your skills - but make sure you have plenty of cash, because they don't accept American Express. You can find them by the signs out front of their houses.
• As seen on Miami Vice! Well, rowboats to allow you to cross lakes and oceans, anyway, and there's no more "land border" around the outside, except near land. Half of the beaches have a dock, so keep looking...
• Pre-Apocalyptic Cities! Now you, too, can shop on 5th Avenue, or what's left of it. The ruins are not for the weak-hearted or ill-equipped, however.
• Faster game and sector load/save - it should be a lot more tolerable now going between sectors.

Version 0.8, released ?

Version 0.7.2, released 2001Jun17

• Everything's going dark, boss! There are now light levels, determined by the time of day if you're outside, and the presence of light-emitting items. There are lamps inside every building in town which you can [T]rigger on and off, and equipping a flashlight turns it on.

  Because the lighting is fairly slow right now, you can turn it off with -nolight on the command line, or simplify it with -nolightlos - see the explanations of both in Options.

• Hey, I've been here before! Your characters now dutifully record everywhere they've been, and you can view that map with [M]ap on the main menu. It will eventually be made more attractive (with little terrain icons), but it should be adequate as-is.
• Ooh, it is a roguelike! Text-mode is more usable now, as it now shows a key of all visible things on the map, and hides grids you can't see.
• Crime does pay (if you don't get killed in the process)! There's now some minimal loot in townsfolks' homes, if you're willing to go take it from them. But they may not be not happy about you breaking and entering...
• Gratuitous Property Damage! You can chop down trees, bushes, doors, and altars now; just [A]ttack [M]elee [1]Ahead... You'll have to use a melee weapon to get any cutting work done, and you have to do a certain amount of damage in a single blow. Maybe a chainsaw would be useful, huh? Clear-cutting the forests sure does make exploring easier.

Version 0.7.1, released 2001Jun03

I'm almost out of alpha, so I spent the weekend cleaning up the code, fixing bugs, and not adding much new functionality. Thus the version number. I don't know how much I'll get done next weekend, as I have other plans, but I'll see what happens. This would be a good time to really start playtesting it, if you're interested; if you can get above level 10, I'll be very impressed - email me, and I'll put you up on a hall of fame!

• Dungeon Hacking! If you specify `umbra -hack` on the command line when you start a new game, you will start at the door of a temple, one sector west of the usual starting town (so head towards the sunrise to get back to town), with some minimal equipment instead of cash. The bright side is that there's often some good loot in the dungeons. The dark side is there's a lot of nasties in the dungeons, and you don't have much food. It is possible to be placed in an enclosed canyon, with no way out. I plan to fix this, but currently it happens on about 25% of the maps.
• Fixed a vast number of bugs in dungeon and wilderness generation - no more of those weird airlock-style double doors! Really powerful monsters don't hassle you if you're a newbie! Plus, skills don't start at -4 now!
• Locksmithing! Doors may be locked and/or trapped now! Just have your Sneak (or any other character who's learned Locksmith) "Use [S]kill", and it'll probably pop right open;

Version 0.7, released 2001May28

• Hidden temples of Mogth cultists! In the remote wilderness, the cultists have built their underground temples where they perform unspeakable rites to awaken Mogth... The only trace of their temples is the unholy chanting echoing across the land, and the cultists wandering around everywhere (though sometimes they do that even when there's no temple). So really, they're not hidden at all. They're insane cultists of a mad god, what did you expect?

  The dungeons are pretty shallow right now - at most 2 levels each. That's because A) they're insane cultists, not burrowing cthonians, and B) the dungeon generator is fairly slow, as I haven't had time to optimize it yet, so 1 or 2 levels is long enough to wait.

  I love dancing around the blood-stained obsidian altars until my entire party goes mad...

• The vicious sting of gossip! Creatures now react to any actions they can see - if you attack their friends, they hate you; attack their foes, and they like you more. They even tell their friends about you! So you can no longer safely mug children for their lunch money... At least, not while anyone's watching. Nor is it entirely good for your mental health to hurt innocent civilians. I'd stick to assaulting acolytes, but do as you will.

  This, by the way, is one of the central design concepts for Umbra: to allow you to do anything you like, but then carry out the consequences. If you assault civilians for their money and possessions and the flesh on their bones, there is a high price to pay for this. If you're uncivilized, you'll eventually go crazy and turn into a Mogth cultist. There will never be a "You refuse to do that!" response, and the game will never take away control of your character unless you die or go mad.

• If you can see both sides of a fight between NPCs, you can now tell who's fighting whom.
• You can now shoot over water and through windows, and small critters can go places you can't.

Version 0.6, released 2001May20

• Ranged attacks now use a proper target-selection menu of all legal shots. Entities no longer block line-of-sight, but that produced too many false hits, as if they filled an entire grid...
• Many new critters: new townsfolk, various cultists, more risen dead, and some really big spiders. I've got 69 more critters named and roughly worked up, but so little time to put even my usual highly-artistic models in place for them and balance them in the game. There are now critters on every kind of terrain, so it's at least interesting to explore now. If you're playing it semi-seriously, you should to stick to the plains and deserts until you have some decent equipment and skill levels. The forests, hills, mountains, and marshes are all hotbeds of cult and criminal activity. Don't come crying to me when a Baron or an Assassin blow you away. Oh, and the other 8 towns on the continent aren't very nice places, either - they're too much like Sin City (Frank Miller's graphic novels kick all available ass; and the Genetorturers song based on them is really damn cool, too - I've been playing that album a lot lately).
• The terrain generated for forests and mountains is much better now; it actually looks fairly natural.
• NPCs with guns get to shoot back at you (and at other critters they don't like)! I was, ah, a little surprised myself at just how deadly some of those NPCs are now. Like, having my entire party blown away by an Assassin before I could get in pistol range. However, A) there's no indication of what kind of gun you're being shot with yet, and B) you can't really tell two other entities are fighting (except when one dies all of a sudden); man~ana, man~ana.
• Sam Pekinpah, eat your heart out - the guns now have smoke trails instead of those red tracer lines, and you get a bloodsplatter on the screen when you get wounded (one dripping splat per wound). The status display is also somewhat better, with color-coded text and bars showing percent of full capacity.
• FDA warning! Not every corpse is quite so yummy now. Really, do you go around eating rats to get healthy? And zombie flesh... that's right out if you ask me. And you know, chowing down on your fellow man may not be such a great thing for your social skills; look where it got Jeffrey Dahmer. "Good food, good meat, good god, let's eat. Ladyfingers, they taste just like ladyfingers!"
• "From hell's heart I stab at thee, with my last breath I spit at thee, for spite's sake, I curse thee..." When you die, you now get one last chance to act... As long as you don't do anything to advance the turn (like waiting, attacking, etc.), your "dead" character remains active, so you can try to pass some food around and recover - "all right, who ate all the emergency chocolates?". This should make it much more survivable for smaller parties. I playtest with three different parties: a 9-character combat squad, a 5-character group (my main one), and a solo character. It ain't easy to do much with less than 5, but it is possible, especially since you don't have to share your ammo. With more than 5, there's just not enough guns to go around; plus, you can't really empathize with them at all by that point.
• By the way, shops aren't just one-shot places; they restock every day or so.

Version 0.5, released 2001May13

• New color theme! Eventually this will be customizable, but for now you have to put up with my black and neon-green fetish. At least it's consistent, instead of having bits of icky bland Windoze-like grey. Great Cthulhu, Windoze has the most awfully drab color scheme imaginable, and why anyone would want to imitate it is a mystery to me.
• Guns and Ammo! You can now fill little critters and your fellow townsfolk full of lead.
• [ Note: No, I'm not thrilled with the "Firing angle" dialog either, and that will be replaced with a proper target selector in a future version; it's there for technical reasons (i.e., I ran out of time because I saw _The Mummy Returns_ and went to a Terry Pratchett book signing - for _The Thief of Time_, no wonder this weekend seemed so short). It's not really fair to make you guess the angle, since your characters can still miss on the Ranged skill check. But until then, it's not that hard to guess the right angles, since you can count grid squares. Think of it as harking back to David Ahl's classic "101 Microcomputer Games in BASIC". Speaking of which, if anyone wants to sell me a copy, I will gladly pay a fairly outrageous price for it (and the other two in the series). Those books are to a large extent responsible for me becoming the deviant game designer I am today, but I've lost several copies over the years to THIEVING BASTARDS WHO SHOULD HAVE THEIR BOWELS CUT OUT WITH A SPOON!!! Ahem. Where was I? ]
• Food, glorious food! You are no longer trapped in an Akallabeth(r)-style endless death spiral of wounds, you can now eat food (see _Repo Man_ for what a "can of food" is like; "Put it on a plate, dear, you'll enjoy it more." "Mmm mmm, couldn't enjoy it any more, Ma.") to recover your health. You can eat corpses, too, if you're willing to risk it. Mmm. Yummy rat tart. And every box of chocolates contains nougat (extremely nasty), Crunchy Frog, and Spring Steel Surprise.
• Shopkeepers will now buy your worthless junk off you! If you've recently upgraded to a 9mm submachinegun, no need to keep that old staplegun around!

Version 0.4, released 2001May06

• Combat! You can now kill and be killed, hunt and be hunted by rats and other assorted fauna of the world.
• Shops! You can now fulfill your wildest dreams of consumerism, purchasing mirrorshades, digital watches, leather jackets, chainsaws, and other staples of modern living, yes, even stapleguns.
• Skills! While many are of little use yet, the combat skills do work.
• New Professions! The latest fad is to be a Jack (or Jill) of all Trades, master of none.
• Interaction! Yes, people now talk to you. They don't have much interesting to say, but you can have branching conversations with some of them (go talk to a Boss to see this effect).

Version 0.3, released 2001Apr22

• Full town generation, though the doors still don't go anywhere (this is the top of my TO DO list for next week).
• Critters! There are now Citizens, Bosses, Lunatics, Rats, Rabbits, and Bloody Bones wandering around (in the town and plains only right now); they don't do anything except wander and get in your way yet, but that's second on my TO DO list. Man, that town has a lot of rats. Shame I haven't made any cats yet, huh?
• Put in a (primitive but functional) sprite model system, so it's easy to add sprites for items, critters, and terrains. So why is my world still so silly-looking? Someday I'll get around to the texture-mapping, but don't hold your breath for it. The polygon art is easy enough to create, and I kinda like it in a weird abstract way. As long as you can tell what everything is, it's effective art IMO.
• Added -size command-line option and moved "Get Item" to main menu in response to user feedback - YOUR COMMENTS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! (as long as they're polite and focused on the game...)

Version 0.2, released 2001Apr16

• Improved pre-alpha release
• More world generation - all terrain types, but still only one "town" and no dungeons.
• Faster and smaller game load and save
• Sun, moon, and stars are visible - this is more important than you think!

Version 0.1, released 2001Apr11

First pre-alpha release

The Future, Coming Sooner Than You Think!

2001May20

• Better NPC interactions; you should be able to influence their reactions with gifts or saying the right things to them.
• New commands: "party reorganization" and "pool cash".
• Give you more info on what NPCs are doing to you, not just the damage.
• Ability to see into other sectors, instead of the current Thirteenth Floor-like wireframe; I need to boost the speed of sector load/save before this is a practical idea.
• Customizable color themes.
• Skill training and use.
• Sound effects.
• Ruins of ancient cities and wilderness caves, all chock-full of treasure and nasty things that leap out at you with big sharp teeth.

2001Apr22

• Real names for all the humans, and probably no names on the critters. Then again, maybe I'll leave the latter alone for now; it lets you tell individuals apart, and "Shivu, a Rat" and "Xaa, a Rat" are better than "Rat A" and "Rat B".