=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Legend of Saladir V0.26 A Shopping release (C) Erno Tuomainen 1997/1998 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ********* INTROITUS ********* Notice: I must apologize for my bad english. I've received a couple of messages with a great concern about my bad english language. These messages came from FINLAND from finnish people. :-) Long time no see. :-) This version has much better town shops and now also shops inside dungeons. They can't be robbed so easily now, I've spent countless hours in shopkeeper training fields as a drill sergeant. They're starting to learn the basic behaviour needed for shopkeeping. Tell me if the game works faster now. I did a bit of optimizing with the line of sight code and atleast in my system it boosted the speed up quite a bit. Try to steal something, and PLEASE INFORM me if you can. (I know atleast ONE way). -Erno Comments can forwarded to me via email: ernomat@evitech.fi P.S. This document will eventually evolve into Legend of Saladir Manual. Hopefully. ***************** STARTING THE GAME ***************** Requirements: This version of the game needs atlest a 80386 processor equipped with a math co-processor. Starting: Start the game from the same directory where files SALADIR.EXE and OUTWORLD.MAP are located. When starting, Saladir will make a temporary directory called TEMPDATA under the same directory where SALADIR.EXE is located. The game will use this directory to store some temporary data it needs. Do not delete files inside this directory when playing the game, Saladir will eventually delete all files it has created. After the game has loaded, you will be prompted for a name. If you have difficulties thinking names for your character, like I do, you can just press enter and let it create a unique name for you. Try my "Name-o-Matic". :) ********************* ABOUT GAME PLOT/GOALS ********************* There isn't any, YET! This is under development. The plan is to make this game very much QUEST based. In the future there will be many types of guilds where you can get quests and missions. But before that, I have too much to do with the main game engine and RPG-system. Spells and skills are another major thing to concentrate first. Please join my mailinglist (check below) and we can discuss everything closely. ******************** FIGHTING AND BATTLES ******************** During your adventures you will be faced with many angry and hostile beings whose only aim is to chop that ugly head off your shoulders. So you must either fight them or try to run and flee away. Sadly life is not so easy, some monsters are faster than you so most probably you're forced to fight. Picking up a fight ------------------ To fight, just move towards the position of the creature you want to attack. You will get a message telling if you succeeded or not. In this version all creatures have a fighting skill of 50 (out of 100). So you are equal. But in later versions you and (hopefully) other beings have a list of real skills. When you fight, you will attack the different bodyparts of the target. This game uses a system of five bodyparts, all these bodyparts have their own hitpoints. It's natural that the smaller bodyparts are harder to hit, this is the case in this game. Decision of hitting or missing is made out of these two values, your weapon skill (50) and the probability to hit certain bodypart. These added together sum to a number between 0...100. An example: If the monster has legs probability of 30 and you have a weapon skill of 20, then this will be calculated as follows: (20+30)/2 = 25 out of 100 If your roll (1d100) is below this calculated value then you hit. If your roll is in maximum 5% of that calculated value then you get a hit bonus. If you roll exactly the same value as calculated you get a critical hit which doubles the damage rolled afterwards. (If someone knows a better system, then tell me). In this version you can't yet select a tactic to target some specific bodyparts. I hope to have that feature soon in the game. ******************** STATS AND ATTRIBUTES ******************** Your character has several attributes and stats. Stats in Legend of Saladir are: STR Strength TGH Toughness DEX Dexterity CON Constitution WIS Wisdom INT Intelligence CHA Charisma SPD Speed LUC Luck I'll add the stats section here later. ************************* ABOUT HITPOINTS AND ARMOR ************************* Legend of Saladir has a "specialized" way to handle the hitpoints. Player has five slots where these hitpoints are located. These slots are, Head, Left hand, Right hand, Body (chest) and legs (both legs in one slot). From V0.25 on, ALL the creatures in Salmorria will use this same hitpoint system. So it may be a bit more fair game now since you are equal to the other beings. Of course, there're some creatures which have less bodyparts. Some of them might not have legs for example. Ie. spiders don't have hands and worms and snakes have only body and head. Creature will die if the Head or Body hitpoints go below (or to) zero. Also he/she will die if the total hitpoints, all slots calculated together, fall below (or to) zero. So DON'T get confuzed if your adventurer dies when the HP-value on the left side of the screen displays value above 0. Beware in combat, it's good to watch your slot hitpoints (ehm, slotpoints?) because if your hand hitpoints fall to zero you will not be able to fight anymore. Also walking is impossible with broken feet. Protect your head and body properly, they are the most vital parts of your body. Armor will aid you in this. Some armor slots will protect many parts of the body. For example, if you're wearing a magical cloak it will protect your whole body and gloves with other hand armor will protect your hands and arms. This system is really in experimental phase, let's see if it works and what modifications it will need. Press 'A' during game to get your armor status. Press 'H' to get your hitpoint status, detailed Hitpoint regeneration happens when enough time has passed. Regeneration happens randomly on the damaged bodyparts. You can set a hitpoints alarm from the configuration menu. There you can set a percentage value between 0 and 100. The game will alert you when the hitpoints on some of your bodyparts fall below that percentage of the maximum hitpoints. It has been preset to 50%, and you can disable it by configuring a value of 0. ******************************** ABOUT TIME AND CALENDAR AND FOOD ******************************** This version has a time and calendar built in. The calendar measures the time passed in the world of Salmorria (The land where Saladir takes place). Every move your character makes takes a certain amount of time. If you are adventuring in the wilderness then time goes faster when moving around the map. This is because one dungeon/town grid is much smaller than one grid in the wilderness map. So, beware also that food will be consumed faster when you're hunting wolfes in the wilderness. You can access the calendar and passed time with 'T' and 't'. Food usage can be watched with 'f'. In Saladir, your food usage is measured in remaining time counter. When you eat, you will get some more time to the counter. When the counter reaches zero you will die. Simple. When you are absolutely full and can't eat anything, you are BLOATED and then you have 12 hours until you starve to death. OKAY, I know that in real world almost everyone can last MUCH longer, but there has to be some considerations on the game balance. This is something I need your comments on. Please, how does it feel in game play? ******* WEAPONS ******* If you have equipped two weapons, a one handed weapon in both of your hands, remember that the RIGHT hand will attack first and the LEFT hand weapon will be used if there is enough time left for your turn. This might be changed in the next versions by introducing a feature "left handed" or "right handed" person. At the moment you are right handed. If you equip a two handed weapon you will not be able to use your other hand because the weapon reserves it. If your hands gets enough damage during the combat, your weapons will drop and you can't use your hand until it has healed. ************* SHOPS & MONEY ************* Money ----- Money, in Salmorria, comes in three flavours: Gold, silver and copper coins. Money can be founded from all around the dungeons where the most unfortunate adventurers have died or forgotten something in a hurry while running away from something big'n ugly. Gold coins are naturally the most valuable of these three. The relationship of these coins are like this: 1 gold = 4 silver = 8 copper another approach: 1 copper = 0.125 gold 1 silver = 0.25 gold You don't need to worry about this, the shopkeepers all around Salmorria should have enough knowledge to bill you the right amount of money from your purse. Report the authoritatives immendiately if you observe a shopkeeper cheating you. There're laws set up against this kind of behaviour you know. Shops ----- Cities usually have shops of several types. Some of the most popular dungeons can also have shops in them. Most common types of shops to find are general stores, armour and weapon shops and the food markets, libraries and magic shops are rarer. Every shop has a shopkeeper who also is the owner of the shop. He will assure that all customers will also pay their bills and he will also alert guards for thieves if necessary. Shopkeepers are generally very unhappy people, they're always complaining about something, someone or just nagging. Don't care too much about them. Just pay your bill and everything is fine (from the shopkeepers point of view). There're so many thieves around on these days, you can almost understand some of the anger carried by the shopkeepers. Buying stuff ------------ When you walk around the shop, you will see descriptions of the items stored in the shelves. The description is always followed by a price tag, this is the amount you must pay to have that item for yourself. To buy an item, just pick it up (with ',') and pay for it with 'B' if you don't want to try stealing it. However, stealing might be quite difficult since the shopkeepers are keen to guard the door area when a customer is inside the shop. (anti-instruction: To steal something you just have to get the item outside by some means.) Selling stuff ------------- Use your drop key ('d') to sell items inside the shop. When you drop something the shopkeeper will ask you if you want to sell the item. During this question (s)he also makes you an offer on the item in question. Some shops accept only the specific types of items. Ie. You can't sell food inside a weapon store. General stores generally accept everything. Prices ------ Shops usually define their prices in gold coins. So when you pay your bill your purse will be checked if the total sum of your gold, silver and copper is enough to pay your bill. Shopkeepers will always take the gold first then go to the silver and last (but not least) take the copper away. As a free service, the shopkeeper will at this time also exchange your smaller coins for bigger ones. Copper will be changed to silver and gold if you have enough for the exchange. Bill ---- You can check out your current bill (unpaid items total) with 'B' and pay your debts with 'P'. Currently you can only pay for ALL collected items at once, so collect only those items you want to pay for before pressing P. Later there might be a new feature which allows you to pay items one by one. Note on shops ............. To make stealing a bit harder, shops are usually designed so that diagonal movements are not possible towards the shop entrance area. You must pass through the cash register to get out. ********************** DISPLAY AND VISIBILITY ********************** Your adventures will always be displayed from the overhead map. You can always see the areas you've already visited but not the items and creatures located in them. The reason for this is your characters visibility, the sight range. Your character has only a limited range of visibility and (s)he can't see behind the corners in any cases. This visibility is simulated with a Line-of-Sight system. Basic idea is just as simple as it could be, you can see monsters and items if there are no obstacles between you and the item and if the distance is low enough. Creatures are not handled as an obstacle in the current state of the game. While you walk, items will pop up from the border areas of your sight range and disappear from the another border. ********* MATERIALS ********* In the Salmorrian Mountains there are many caves and dungeons, and those are filled with many types of items. Every item has been made out of some material (well almost every item). Some of the materials are better, some are worse. Some materials are more valuable than the others and some materials are better in combat, lasting longer and giving more protection and damage, maybe even speed. Naturally, most valuable materials are found less often. So when you find something special, take it away even you don't need it right away, it might not be there next time you pass by and you could earn a few gold pieces by selling the item at the nearest general store. ***************** TORCHES AND LIGHT ***************** Some areas in the world are dark and unlit. You must bring the light with you because unlit rooms can be very dangerous places for careless adventurers. (I can say that with experience) Using light items ----------------- You must be wielding a light for it to work. The lantern or torch must be in your left or right hand. In this version you don't have to light the lantern on, it will be done for you. And another gimmick of this version, light doesn't burn out. ******** MONSTERS ******** This version doesn't have too many types of monsters, but I hope they still give you a good fight. All current monster races have a description. You can see that by looking at the monsters with 'l'-command. Monsters can't currently use any items. However, all creatures in the game DO have a similar inventory as the player has. So if you give something to someone, it usually will be there later. Ie. if you pay 100gp to the shopkeeper he will really have that money with him afterwards. In the future this will allow some nice behaviour, but currently they can only pick items up. Except animals which are not that smart. Some animals can (in future) use some items as their aid. You can get some information by looking at the monster with 'l'-key. ***************** CLASSES AND RACES ***************** In this version you can select a class, but it doesn't have ANY effect other than the name of the class is displayed in the bottom of the screen. Class modifiers are yet to be done. You always play human race for now. ***************** KEYBOARD COMMANDS ***************** The action keys are: c Close a door d Drop item from your backpack e Eat something from the ground or from backpack i Inventory of items in backpack l Look around the visible area o Open a door p Show the last displayed message w Walk mode, press direction to start moving q Equip items, also equipped item list t Show current Salmorrian time. z Cast a spell (is not working properly for now) A Show armor class for body parts (hitpoint absorb) B Check your bill. (unpaid items) C Chat with monster E Show experience needed to raise a level H Show hitpoints for body parts P Pay your debts (bill). Q Quit game R Redraw screen T Show playtime V Show version , Get ? Online command help \ Configuration options (Also ALT+O) use ? or LIST to get configuration info :m Show all messages in the buffer < Go upstairs > Go downstairs 5 wait/stand still . wait/stand still Direction keys (cursors) and the keypad numbers can be used for movement ****************************** LEGEND OF SALADIR MAILING LIST ****************************** My brother has kindly put up a mailinglist for my game. If you are interested in the development of this game, want to give some feedback or just chat with others playing The Legend of Saladir then please sign in. Write message to saladir-request@japeteus.keltti.jyu.fi And in the message body use this sentence with your email-address of course. subscribe saladir Include 'digest' if you want to get one days messages in one single package. ********************************************** WHERE CAN I FIND LATEST VERSIONS OF THIS GAME? ********************************************** Check the public (anon) ftp at: japeteus.keltti.jyu.fi /saladir or go to my homepage, downloads section at www.evitech.fi/~ernomat/index.html ****************** THANKS AND CREDITS ****************** This part is to be a place for thank yous and credits for this game. Currently it's not very big but here are the persons I owe much. More personal thanks to the following persons (and cats): o Thomas "The very corrupted adventurer" Biskup Yes, dude, it's you who helped me when I was starting this game. Remember those awfull questions about some particular coding stuff. It really helped a lot. Also, I think it's VERY noticeable that my game looks similar to ADOM in many parts. I've tried NOT TO COPY anything but I really like ADOM very much and I play it very much too. I want to make some things like ADOM does. Thanks for making such a great game like Ancient Domains of Mystery is. o William Tanksley For providing a really great random number generator for my roguelike game. Life would be a pain without your routine. o Darren Hebden, the roguenews guy. Thank you for posting announcements of my game to your news page! Also thanks for many nice ideas you posted on the mailinglist. o Jarno "da lil'bro" Tuomainen For being my wictim in the test process. Countless times I've sent him new versions of Saladir and countless times has he tested them with his NT-machine. Thanks, and please be my victim in the future too. o Suvi My girlfriend who doesn't get mad even I stay up almost the whole night with my computer. o Inka and Natasha My two female cats who have accompanied my lonely coding nights by sitting on my lap. Meoww.. Thanks for nice ideas and other suggestions for Saladir: (in alphabetical order): Chris Allcock. Douglas Goodall, Rune Jarnęs, Michael R. Taylor, Jarno Tuomainen. (list hopefully growing...) *********************** HISTORY - Is there any? *********************** Shopping release V0.26 29.01.1998 --------------------------------- This version doesn't contain as much of new features as the couple last releases I've made. Main focus was on shopping and shops. Changes include: - Line of Sight code optimized a bit. I hope the towns are working faster! - You can buy and sell items in shops. - Shopkeepers will now guard the shop for thieves. - Armour, weapon, food and general stores are available. (also in dungeons!) - Money routines for handling the 3 types of money. - Rooms and shops are now saved in tempfiles. Update release V0.25 26.01.1998 -------------------------------- Changes include: - Some levels look better, generates some corridor types better. - Monsters have an ability to get past of player/other monsters in some situations. - Monsters are in the same 5-slot hitpoint system as the player! Not all monsters have all bodyparts! (ie. spiders doesn't have hands) - Attacking is handled (hopefully) a bit more nicely. - Some animals can open doors. - Food items added. - Towns, however they are pretty empty currently - Basic shop and shopkeeper code. - Flying creatures now have wings/vanes instead of hands and for now. They can't move if hitpoints in wings are fallen to zero. - Special plot/quest character can be created to predefined places or dungeons. - Few optimizations done with the line of sight routine! Bug fixes: - Doors cause walk mode to end (You can set that in options) - Stair generation bug fixed, generated WEIRD connections when a lair was generated to the level. - Monster regeneration bug fixed. - One bug causing random crashes (pagefaults) debugged out. Noticed bugs not corrected: - Shops do not work! Shopkeepers don't have eyes. :) - Town levels get up staircase generated (you can get to the wilderness from that) - Towns look dull and empty Urgent bugfix version V0.24 22.01.1998 --------------------------------------- These SHOULD be fixed now: - You can now fight when your legs are in bad condition. - Hp regeneration now generates damaged parts semi randomly. - Hp regeneration restores the damage condition of damaged bodyparts to OK when hitpoints raise above 0. - Configuration variable HEALTHALARM now acts as a percentage value for EACH bodypart which has hitpoints. When hp goes below this percentage of the maximum hitpoints of that part you will get a warning. - There were several output leaks in Equip screen when bodypart was damaged. - Items should be dropped correctly when hand damages. - Monsters should not be generated to players location. - Tempfiles should now be deleted when game exits. Version 0.23 22.01.1998 ------------------------ This version has a lot of new stuff and bugfixes. - Currently pretty limited, but working Monster inventories similar to the player inventory system. Currently they only pick the items up, and they can sense the level for items, think something about items value etc. - Level memory, already visited levels are remembered! including monsters, items and level for now - New speed system with SPEED attribute for each being! - Separate materials for armor and other stuff. - Terrain effects, like how terrain slows your movement down etc. Some terrain can even make your movement faster (like road) - Weapons get older in use, different behaviour with materials. - Levels are no more so populated with rare items. - New dungeon level types and room templates (ie Lairs/Zoos) - Random name generator. - 2 weapon combat (player only for now) - Armor now works see the next place - New hitpoints system, eventually this will be for all monsters also, but for now only player has this: Hitpoints are "divided" into five slots, Head, Left/Light hand, Body and Legs, body has always the greatest hitpoints. Player will die if the total hitpoints (all five slots calculated together) or HEAD or BODY will fall below or to zero. It's not very good at the moment but I will try to make it better. Regeneration is a bit dumb for now, but I will think of something. - Light items added, they can be used too. - Line-of-sight got some bugs bashed while I was making the darkness - effect. - New improved LOOK command (l). - Level advancing works somehow, currently it uses the experience system, but I will try to think something extra for that. (only hitpoints get upgraded from level advance for now) - Monster race descriptions for all races currently in the game. - Output has been tidyed up a bit again - Some new items and monsters - Dark rooms and darkness generally - More configuration options and other minor tidbits. - And finally, the save-feature is nearing completion :-) Version 0.20 - 16.01.1998 ------------------------- - Some of the new features added to this version are: - Online help - Female or male players and monsters - Equipping items - Gold, silver and copper coins - World time and calendar (including timers:) - Player and monster regeneration (hitpoints) - Piled items can be taken and dropped one by one - Game configuration options (not saved yet) - Food usage, starvation - Equipped weapons are used in battle now... - Dragonscale weapons are not possible anymore :-) + many bugfixes Version 0.17 - This was the first public release. - Nothing much to say, it's prehistoric **************** IMPORTANT NOTICE **************** Although this program is NOT developed to be harmfull, I must state that I am not responsible for any damages caused by this program. If you execute this program, you take all the responsibility. ****************** AUTHOR INFORMATION ****************** Legend of Saladir is being programmed by Erno Tuomainen and I can be contacted at the following addresses: Homepage: www.evitech.fi/~ernomat/index.html my email: ernomat@evitech.fi snail mail: Erno Tuomainen Serkustentie 1 G 62 00430 HELSINKI FINLAND -------------------------------------------------------- END OF LEGEND OF SALADIR PRE-MANUAL