Release #4 of The Ground Gives Way is mostly a bugfix release, but with some new content. Some highlights:
- No more crashing related to winning, traps on the bottom floor or eggs in inventory.
- New amulets, monsters and monster abilities.
- The likelihood of deadends has been decreased.
Save compatibility is broken with earlier versions, unzip the new release in a new folder or delete old save games before playing. Full changelog here.
Enjoy!
Been playing this since release and thought I’d drop by with a few notes and to say that I’m also excited about my current character 😉 After seeing one of the other previous winners use it I thought I’d try a stealth-focused character, so I played several quick early games looking for a good start for a stealth build and found TWO rings of stealth in the first few levels! So I went with that, and what luck: Managed to get a velvet robe shortly after, and by only level *five* I had 0 noise. Wow. Right now I already made it to -1 base noise (so I can still silently carry something slightly noisy), this after finding light boots of skill (-1), combined with digging for gems and some further jeweler *and* armorer upgrades that gave a spectre shield of cold resistance (-3, plus 125% resist cold!), a ring of silence (-2), and a ring of pacifism (-1, can get benefits beyond original ring of stealth). I feel like a ghost with this gear. Well, I guess I pretty much am. This better result in a second win–this time without the crash 😉
So, back to my notes:
-The text for blocking a swinging log trap text contains a typo.
-TGGW still really needs to resolve the limited number of Monsters/Features that can be listed, since some rooms are so large they contain too many to see them all (same issue if you have many active scroll/potion effects that allow you to see/know objects outside your FOV). With monsters you can target them if necessary to figure out what they are, but with items there’s no way to know until you pick it up (which can be important if you need to decide whether a fight would be worth it to get something guarded by monsters).
By the way, I know you don’t want to introduce additional key commands, but at least allowing the Monsters/Features content to be scrolled by ‘[/]’ and ”, respectively (or something like that), and leaving this feature undocumented in the game itself (i.e. it’s for the “advanced players”) would be better than nothing. At least as a temporary solution.
That is some really good equipment! I don’t think I’ve ever managed to be on negative base noise, that is really cool! The main thing is to not be over-confident which easily happens when you can simply walk past everything… an alarm trap or squeaking door can quickly get you killed if you are not careful. Look out for a wand/rod of sleep which would be extremely helpful to have here.
Thank you for the notes! Yes, you are very right about the monster/feature windows. The reason I’ve been postponing it is that I haven’t yet come up with a good solution. I wouldn’t have that much problem with introducing scrolling keys, the problem is that there are many of the windows that needs scrolling (feature, monster, items AND the target windows…). Instead I might use something like a menu option where you can browse everything in the large map window or similar. I’d appreciate any suggestion for solutions. I will make this a priority for the coming releases!
Ah, the idea for an alternate full page listing objects is a pretty good one. Not needed too often so it could be more out of the way, like accessed from the menu with the possibility of a direct hotkey for convenience (‘o’ for objects?). Maybe it’s divided into multiple sections, and you can switch focus between them (like the inventory screen) and scroll them separately using up/down arrows (if there really are so many that they don’t fit on a single screen).
Thanks for the reminder on the alarm trap–that could lead to a surprise death 😉 On level 8 right now, and when I get far enough I’ll be sure to buff up on potion/scroll effects since they should stack nicely for a long time, seeing as I don’t really have to rest (few to no confrontations). Right now base noise is -2 =p. And I found a mage who I used to boost my speed to 9. I had over 2000 gold early on, so happy to be finding so many places to spend it in the same run!
I was hoping to find a wand/rod of sleep (would be incredibly useful for moving blocking monsters), but haven’t seen much in the way of magic yet–only have a single wand of disease so far…
Interestingly I noticed with this stealth character that apparently jellies are always awake. Nice touch. Fortunately they’re also the least deadly enemy, and I have a bow with blunt arrows in case I need to get them out of the way.
I also thought of another idea yesterday, maybe the scrolling keys simply would scroll all the windows at once (I don’t really see any drawback in that). In the future I also plan to make it possible to target features and items not only monsters.
About your character, yes, buffing a character with temps are an excellent strategy for the end game (actually with any character). With speed 9, -2 noise and cold immunity you are pretty much safe, but anything can happen 🙂 And for the wand/rods of sleep: I guess you can’t have everything…
Yes, there are a few monsters who never sleeps (you can also see that in their desc): jellies, eyes, fungi and a few others. The most threathening non-sleepers are probably floating weapons, so that’s something to look out for. Good luck! And if you win, it’d be nice to see a screenshot of your gear 🙂 (btw, I have now finally implemented character dumps, so they will be available in the next release!).
Yeah, I’ll do a screenshot of the gear even if I die ;). It’s already pretty epic, though it could be more so if I find neat stuff to fill the few remaining empty slots (neck gear is notably rare). I’ll try to finish it up some time later today.
I think a single key scrolling all windows is the best idea yet. Switching screens is always best avoided if possible. Targeting features and items on the other hand seems like it would be overkill, unless you can interact with them in some way, e.g. cast spells on terrain for other effects.
Character dumps will be really nice; make sure there’s lots of juicy stats in there!
Yeah, it will be interesting to see how it goes!
Targeting items and features would still be convenient if you want to check something about before you decide to grab it/step on it (although for items you can browse all discovered items in the menu), so it is still something I think I will implement at some point. And yes, I am also considering adding magic effects that can interact with items/environment as well. However, I am going for the scrolling ability first, have started implementing it already in fact.
The results will have to wait, since instead of finishing right away I decided to write up a little story using the screenshots I already took, so as of now I’m still only half-way through. And I’ll be leaving for a two-week vacation today, during which I probably won’t have any time to mess around with games. So, there will be a wait, but the results will be better 😉
Ooh.. can’t wait for the story, that will certainly be interesting! 🙂 Have a really nice vacation!