Introduction

Chapter I: Summoning Gone Wrong

A crazy, inexperienced, necromancer tries to summon an undead, but the spell fails and the undead is released from the necromancer will.

That undead is you!

You set out to explore your surroundings, and to conquer the world, because somehow deep down you feel that it is what undeads do.

So you start collecting souls.

Current Version

The current version is 1.0.8, and here is the changes list:

Bone to be Wild 1.0.8 aka "Bone to be Bad"

Misc changes:

Download

Engine version: 3.0.0alpha14b at least

You can download the game as a module for the T-Engine3 there: http://modules.t-o-m-e.net/module.php?id=56

Or you can simply run the T-Engine and select to simply download the module from there.

Documentation

You have no experience, no level, no nothing.

This only power that a true undead needs are souls!

Souls come in many types and shapes, weak, strong, innocent or .. not, and all have a purpose for the undead.

The spell that summoned you to this plane was quite unpleasant for you and reduced your power quite a bit. The only way to regain it is to kill people and take their souls to improve yourself.

Uses of souls

Souls have two main purposes:

This means that you must be careful not to blow all your souls casting spells because you wont be able to improve yourself.

Starting tips

You start with only two abilities at level 1:

As soon as you get your first souls you should start improving yourself, but always try to keep some souls raedy in case you need some healing.

Later on you will learn new spells that can do both damage and healing.

Other abilities you can learn

You start by being able to learn some abilities, but those are not the only ones you may learn. During your adventures you may encounter ways to gain new powers.

Each power is documented in game with the cost to learn and cost to use(when applicable).

Bug Reports

Add Bug Report links this way: ["/BugReport1"] Thank you!

Chatter

cm: hmm, i killed everyone i could reach and went up to 3d level of wizard tower but i can't

Zonk: This is...enjoyable! I got to the village and slew everyone there, I hope that the Wizard's Tower is already implemented. I like how the game is quite simple but still very pleasurable, and I only found two somewhat weird things: since the Dwarves axe-throwing is done as a spell, I could sometimes read 'the Dwarven axe-thrower fails to cast Axe at you' - a different fail message could be in order. Also, would be cool if Death Armor actually reduced damage instead of making you harder to hit , by using the ABSORB flag(it would have to cost much more, though), but still that's a trivial thing, something I mostly thought because, as you know, I prefer having armor handled like that. Anyway...good work! It's really a polished and nice game.

DarkGod: Thanks :) And death armor does reduce the damage you take, try it ith goblins, raise it, they can hit you but not damage you. As for the axe .. oups silly me :)

BucketMan: It looks adorably cute...no wait, I mean 'evil and sinister and dark!' :P Unfortuantely I haven't been able to entirely reverse engineer it for alpha7, so I can't play it past the first level. I look forward to it though. :)

DarkGod: Why not just download alpha9 ? :) And thanks :)

NerdanelVampire: I have now killed several characters. The best of them reached the level in the wizard tower with all the demons and died because she ran out of normal souls. She would have been able to flee the level, but with permanent levels and no new monster generation that I could notice, she would have been unable to ever get past the demon-filled level... I don't particularly like permanent levels; they make my normal cautious playing style impossible.

I have come to hate melee-avoiding monsters with ranged attacks, such as goblin archers and crazed imps. They are really nasty to deal with from soul-gain perspective. With a limited number of souls available in-game, you don't want to waste any of them if you can avoid it. It is well-nigh unavoidable to lose some hp to a ranged monster, and hp = souls. From my experience, the most cost-effective tactic for dealing with ranged attackers is to just melee them while trying to use terrain as much as possible. That way, the hp loss is usually worth less than one soul of healing.

Blood grab is very nice in theory, but it costs a lot and appears genuinely superior only in the unpleasantly-open town.

Raise dead is of questionable utility, as it costs a soul and deprives you from those further souls that your pet kills. It could be nice against demon groups, though.

Netherblast is a very nice spell for tough situations, such as being swarmed upon by dwarves. It is also the only use for demon souls, so the soul cost isn't that bad for the utility.

Anyway, I love playing on the evil side, particularly as you can't go slaughtering townspeople in ToME anymore...

NeilStevens: Goblin archers and imps do not have an intelligent AI. Exploit it. I hear you on the resource issue though. Part of me wants demonic souls to be usable as regular souls...

NerdanelVampire: Goblin archers and imps may not have a complex AI, but their AI is still noticeably tougher than the traditional ToME 2 one.

This is the best way of handling them in the room dungeons that I have discovered: 

#......# 
#....o.#
#......#
##+#####
#..@...#

The goblin will open the door and then step on the square, allowing me to hit it before it hits me. Of course this doesn't work too well if there is another goblin on the other side of the room, and before I open the door and open myself to a free arrow shot I don't know if the room has goblins at all or on which side of the room they are.

But if the goblin in question is frightened, there is no way of getting at it without getting hit, since it won't open the door. And monsters never ever regain their courage. I don't know if that's a bug or not...

DarkGod: Not a bug, you are death incarnate for them, they have no reason to recover their courage :)

NeilStevens: It still makes them very hard, though. But fortunately archers DO give two souls, so it's not a losing proposition to blood grab them.

NerdanelVampire: Perhaps the ranged monsters could get so frightened that they cannot shoot straight. :)

Orvin: A few more trees in town for coverage would be great :) I made it through the first group of axemasters with nether blasts and blood grabs, but ran out of demonic souls when the second group attacked - too many flying axes at once got me.

NerdanelVampire: It would be great to be able to go inside those "boring" houses, slaughter the inhabitants for souls, and face the dwarves in a better terrain. :)

Orvin: Incidentally, this is great! The dual useage of souls as mana and skill points makes the game interesting, and I encourage you to create even more scenarios within the game forcing the player to choose how to use souls. For example, using a large number of demonic souls to grant invulnerability for a short time.

DarkGod: There are more, but they are in the wizard tower ;) Let's pray I can fix it soon.. Anyway, thanks :)

Remuz: Really enjoyable, I made it as far as the level in the Wizards tower with all the elemental. I died because I ran out of normal souls, which is bit annoying because I had 50+ demon souls at the time. Maybe make spells use demon souls when there is no normal soul available would be nice. I did not use many habilities, by the way, and went the melee route : Death armor (at 10), Death touch (at 11), and Undeath (at 10, all at time of death). Netherblast was used a bit in the town, but not much.

DarkGod: Why did you run out? All used up against the elementals ? Or were you running low before ?

Remuz: Well, the level just before is a demon level, which means that I came into the elemental level fully loaded with demon souls, but quite low on normal souls (~10-15). This comes from the fact that I gained 0 (or so) normal soul on the demon level, but still had to heal a bit. I find it quite normal to run out of souls at some point, actually, considering that it was my first take at the module. My remark highlights the fact that I still had plenty of demon souls available, but alas useless at that time.

Gamer_2k4: Not really a bug, but worth pointing out. On the third level of the Necromancer Hideout, there are two mispellings when you walk over the book. "Interesting" is spelled "interersting" and "is" is spelled "his". Just thought you'd like to know.

ShrikeDeCil: The tower is working for me now, looks good. I had enough normal souls that I thought "Excellent, let's buy skill"... and overspent. 30 normal souls seems like a pile, but there's a couple of levels that scream 'ouch'. Appearing in the square next to the Captain sucks - and there's been several times where the entrance & exit are in the same room. The knockback effect is cool, but I think being knocked through walls may take a little fixing. The damaged guys don't yield a soul even if you kill them. The tough battle after the tall grass level seems to crash me though. I'll see if I can reproduce that. (Though I can reproduce the "nothing" squares). Note that the "Re-entering a level" fix means that you remember _across_rebirth_. And saves. And I'd like to request a fourth option on the 'you are dead' screen, "Get resummoned". As opposed to 'exit, scores, dump character'.

ReenenLaurie: OOOOHhh... I only downloaded the it today for the first time! It's excellent. It's simplicity is it's beauty! I second that you must be able to restart from a death screen.

Anon: Add an option to turn off sound (doesn't work in the menu). Add a pathfinding algorithm, walking around is a chore (you should also consider adding more doors to the low levels). I can see doors open even if my character can't see the door. The doors being wiped out by blood seems fixed, but I've had two occasions where a door, when splattered, becomes a red wall. I've been thinking of these walls as impenetrable piles of slain corpses, but my mood towards them will surely spoil when they end up blocking a critical path. The bunnies level is pretty easy, it'd be much more exciting if you couldn't stand at the door and take them one at a time. Where are you putting the saved games? I really don't want the game's files to be all over my computer. Back when the game crashed at the tower, I'd saved right before going into town. The game crashed, but my save was still there. My character was exactly as he was when I'd saved, but when I climbed the stairs into town, I found myself at the wizard's tower entrance and the level was already cleared. The "gives about 0 points to a level 1 player" should probably be removed from the monster description. Generic "is healthy/is hurt/is severly injured" descriptions would be nice. I think someone mentioned this, but I don't think that axethrowers should be shooting past their allies so often. When they're right behind an ally, yes. When I'm basically hiding right behind an ally, the chance of them hitting that ally should increase (the further away the ally is, the easier it is to miss and hit them). The town is too spread out or... random, and the houses are all the same, which is somewhat unrealistic. The implementation of that "cut the level into two repeatedly" level gen makes for tedious and somewhat unrealistic underground levels. The description of the daughter/wife as "happy" as opposed to "terrified" is a bit odd. It'd be neat if people could trip and fall etc. when running away, like in the movies. The boss guard is a girl, but the game says "he hits" etc. My biggest gripes are the lack of pathfinding, and an inability to shut off sound. Fun game, good work.

ShrikeDeCil: Thought of something interesting. What if you could 'unsell' your skill in, say, Death Touch? You're just manipulating those souls back into their normal form - souls - and it adds a little flexibility.

JohnGilmore: Are those bunny rabbits supposed to have no souls? or is that a bug?

DarkGod: They are supposed to

JohnGilmore: Oh. Darn. I was hopping that I could justify giving them souls - it would make winning a great deal easier. I certianly don't have enough soul without harvestable bunny rabbits. Guess I'll have to find something else to feast in an unholy orgy upon. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to save the townspeople from the dwarves?

Oh, btw, what use is an innocent soul?

ReenenLaurie: I have a suggestion. I guess it is engine related. How about highlighting the game that just ended when you die... I dunno which game I played, as all my characters have the same name. (my stupidity, but I don't like to have the whole menu full of characters).

NerdanelVampire: TOME_BABY_INTERFACE = nil in tome.cfg is a must. I find the new interface highly unintuitive while the old one was a model of spartan clarity and IMHO prettier.

NeilStevens: Intuition? The only intuitive interface is the nipple. All else is learned. Yes it's different, but that doesn't make it inferior. Of course, you're free to turn it off for yourself, though there's no guarantee the old interface will stick around. Not sure if it even still exists actually...

NerdanelVampire: Yes, the old interface still exists and I have to keep turning it back on with every new alpha that I install. I think the baby interface goes fundamentally wrong in that it puts character before module. In my opinion, you don't start up game intending to play Zoraida (who incidentally happens to live in Bone to Be Wild), you start intending to play, say, Bone to Be Wild (the current character in which incidentally happens to be called Zoraida, or did that one die already?), and then you'll have to wait a moment while you try to remember if you have already have a valid savefile in the most recent version of Bone to Be Wild or not. Also, if you want to keep the savefile between characters, which basically EVERYONE wants to do, you must not start a new game with a new character with an old savefile by choosing a new game but instead load a game even if your old character is dead. And then the baby interface insists on naming the savefiles after the first character, so that even if your current character is Zoraida, the savefile is named after the unlived-for-three-minutes Darkness, making the savefile names even more useless than if they were all named PLAYER by default. You can pretty much zone out PLAYER, but it takes mental energy to scan through various arbitrary names in the list of savefiles.

Oh, and I think the round fat ascii art letters are ugly. (You can take a look at the Zothiqband load screen for a style that's prettier in my opinion, although seriously limited by asciiness, of course, even though that load screen is just a very basic version that will probably be improved eventually.) I think the T-Engine should be plain and professional, as tastes can differ considerably.

NeilStevens: Ah, yes, 'professional.' Code for 'What I think looks nice.' Takes me back to countless KDE arguments.

NerdanelVampire: In this case, I intend professional as a neutral kind of theme that doesn't draw attention to itself. You want the equivalent of a boring bland radio station that plays familiar pop rock hits over and over and strives to irritate no one. Not the equivalent of the eclectic experimental drone doom internet radio channel that has a handful of devoted followers and a lot more people who would absolutely hate it if they ever were exposed to it, even if the drone doom channel has a vastly higher level of artistic merit.

Or you want a choice of skins/several radio stations all playing different music stykles. But the structural problems of the baby interface can't be fixed with mere skins. I would quietly ignore the problem if it was only skin-deep.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to forbid weird and unusual game stuff. But T-Engine is a platform for modules and not a module. You want everyone from Hello Kitty fans to gothic horror fans to be able to look at it and not scream in frustration while they load the module they like.

TFoN: Just downloaded the game a few hours a go, played a couple of times, reached the Guardian Golem with 2 souls and kaput.

No complaints, really; seems great, although I'm expecting more, err, meat on these bones :)

I've got very high expectations for this one - I've always wanted to play the uber-undead! Although its simplicity is, as someone here already put it, its charm, I was thinking maybe you could add a few classes/races/"races" (between the wraith-wolf, gobliniod wight and human lich (or, dare I say, demilich? Muahaha!)...) or something of the sort. Maybe even only as you get around the game world (possession of the living, inhabiting corpses, bargains with hi-err-lower powers!). But, then again, I have no idea what you've already in mind :)

I like not having to worry about a carried weapon or worn armor, favouring personal might, and the ability system's a refreshment from the norm.

PLEASE don't give up on this one anytime soon - it's sad to see good roguelikes perish under such mundane things as the need for food and warmth, or payment of the electric bills! <<muttering>>

PS: who's got ideas on how I might start studying programming (please note I've few, um, material resources...). I've basic pascal knowledge, and that's pretty much it.

DarkGod: It was meant to be simple to "get in the mood" :) Now as I've said if I get enough praises/requests I'll probably do chapter II which should contain some .. new interresting ways of being evil :)

NerdanelVampire: There is a problem I've had all along with this module. Namely, it is possible to lose the game and still stay alive for several levels. There is an invisible line that the player must stay ahead at all times, or else hope for something like that all of the monsters on the next levels trigger their 5% miss chance 95% of the time. What's worse, I'm not even sure if the player starts the game above that line, considering that as far as I know nobody has yet managed to win the module. It certainly helps a lot to find a rare orc cluster full of yummy out-of-depth mainly-melee souls in the necromancer dungeon... My most promising character got far on the basis of that, prior to dying a very stupid and completely avoidable death, very much unlike the character who got the farthest but ran out of souls on the demon level... In games like ToME there are infinite resources so that if you get hit by a setback you can recover and go on to win the game, which is the way I like it. Even something like Ancient Morgothian Curse doesn't necessarily doom a character who doesn't die of it, as all of the affected equipment can be replaced, but in Bone using a few too many souls to heal from unavoidable arrow shots can doom a character to a slow death. I'm probably repeating myself, but anyway...

ReenenLaurie: Yes, I found that too... but if there was somewhere infinite amounts of souls to get... then the game would probably be too easy. Except *maybe* if they are all archer units, who comes and hunts in packs.

BucketMan: I've found that I can make it a lot farther by avoiding battles. There are some pockets of monsters that there's just no way to come out ahead, so I just go around them. Even so, though...I agree, I'm not sure Bone to be Wild is beatable. I've never even made it to Gromush legitimately, but to put things into perspective, try to beat the game even in wizard mode. It's still difficult. Even with everything maxxed, and starting with twice as many souls as I've ever been able to get, I still can't defeat the wizard and his girlfriend.

NeilStevens: It wouldn't surprise me, honestly, if the game weren't winnable. Mentally shifting gears from designing a game of unlimited resources like ToME, to one of finite resources like this one, can't be easy. Tuning it would be expected to take some time.

ShrikeDeCil My two best runs were likewise by avoiding the maralith & zipping through the elemental area. Then using terrain to assist me in the final combat. Another potential bug is the placement of the stairs. I made it to the last level of the necromancer's house once in about 15 moves - both the level entrances & exits were that close together. On another note - there are some training patterns that just seem to completely suck. I've been boosting armor first, then dark touch - it doesn't take too much to guarantee you'll come out ahead in any encounter with orcs. Then you run out of orcs :D

NeilStevens: Yeah, and then you get dwarves, and it's cheaper to kill them with combat + unhealth than it is to use ranged attacks, I think.

ShrikeDeCil: A 'Detect Blood' spell (aka: ESP-food for 50 turns) or something might help this. I really don't need to 'explore' an area just to discover a room filled with three flame throwing demons. But figuring out how to get to a room with three orcs is worthwile.

DarkGod: "You run out of orcs" AHAH lol that made my day ;> Mhh the detect blood stuff could work yes. Also I really believe not doing the marilith is a mistake, the spell she gives can REALLY smooth the latter battle(especialy the last one). Same for gromush, take the option to give him precise targets and then unleash it on the right targets in the last battle this can help a lot too.

TFoN: Wait a moment - before you start changing what might be a great challange!

Now, not to say this is out of experience, as I've not yet managed to put my plan to use, but: it seems that the secret is NOT maxing things.

If you do your best not to waste souls as a rule - it seems you can usually make it to the elementals with about 40-50 souls (not to mention too many demon-souls and 3-4 innocents), with life, armor and attack at lvl10. 2 armor, 2 damage and 10 life+5 pot.heal aren't effectively worth the 40 possibly wasted souls out those 50 (and with life at lvl9, that's 17 souls more) - those you can use with "quench life" (from the marilith), which I can only hope insta-kills something. Otherwise, I take most of what I've said back. If it does insta-kill (or the like), then the mortals after the bunnies (what's their damage, BTW? I've avoided being hit out of fear of being beheaded :) ) can be managed systematically.

Even if they can be managed as so, I haven't reached the areas after them, though, so as I've said, I may be terribly wrong.

As for the elemental area, on the other hand - if you're put near an earthy it can make for rather un-fair, unavoidable crushing damage, leading to an untimely demise...

DarkGod: I ain't easing it until I'm *SURE* it's unbeatable don't worry ;) Quench life severs the life force of beings, doing 50% of their current HP in damage.

Orvin: How about allowing the user to specify how difficult the game should be, so that the easier the user wants, the more orcs there will be available later in the game. This difficulty setting would not change hp of monsters or anything else, just make more orcs available, on a sliding scale. Then, winners can report the difficulty setting used, and you can get a better idea of how many, if any, "extra souls" should be available for the game to be as beatable as you would like.

BucketMan: Sort of ironic that adding monsters would make a game easier...but, yes...

NerdanelVampire: Great idea about the difficulty rating...

Anyway, I'm posting about the 64-bit compatibility issues. Bone to Be Wild appears to be the single most playable module in 64 bits. It doesn't crash right away! But if you shut down the game and restart, your hp changes... into a value in excess of four billion! (American billions, though.) Overflows are a miraculous thing... I think I'm going to see the end game this time. :)

NerdanelVampire: A link to the so-called winner's character sheet: NerdanelVampire/Draco. I think his real hitpoints didn't fit the screen...

Guest: Basically, this module is a nice idea. Using your exp (what "souls" basically are) as a common skill point/mana/healing potion/ammo currency is a nice idea and worked well enough, for the most part. However, the fact that enemies just don't respawn, equipment doesn't even exist and levels are static after generation pretty much limits the ways you can go in any given playthrough. The necessity to use your souls in the most economical way possible basically forces you to rely on passive skills and healing wherever possible, since that's the only way to get the most mileage out of your limited resources.

Basically, it's like playing ToME as a Sorcerer (for the no equip), but only with X amount of spell points in any playthrough (for the no active spell casting). You use that up, you're fucked, and I don't like losing at a game for not being psychic. Running out of souls right before a demon level usually means you can scrap that character, since even maximum strength Death Armor isn't going to substatially protect you from damage. Or at least not enough to not have to heal about twice in most every fight.

Considering that you don't want to remove the resource management, you've basically made a module that amounts to a puzzle game. Find the exact right combination of skills for any given stage, find out if it contains any non-demons, and then either power through or scour every regular level for every last single smelly goblin, since you won't have a chance to survive the NEXT demon level if you don't. I'm not quite sure which of these is more annoying.

So, in conclusion, there has to be either a way to heal yourself without regular souls (maybe through combat), through non-regular souls, or a way to get a higher return-per-soul for your healing spells. Either that, or there's going to be a lot of people who will be very frustrated every time they reach a situation they didn't expect. Dead ends you can't avoid without resorting to spoilers haven't been fun since Nethack.

NeilStevens: That's the price of innovation. I think most of us agree, but I wish you'd have elaborated more on suggestions for improvement.

Guest: Yeah, me too, but I couldn't really think of much that wouldn't require completely throwing the "restricted resource" premise out of the window. The problem is that this kind of gameplay works well enough for shooters or story-driven action-adventures, the kind of game where you aren't supposed to backtrack or even play the game more than once - coupled with an unrestricted savegame feature, there isn't overly much of the frustration I was speaking about. However, in a freeform RPG like ToME (or Roguelikes in general), most of the motivation to keep playing comes from the ability to go back and do stuff differently or to cut your losses when you get in a pinch, then retreat to safe ground and try again with different gear. In short, a fair challenge, the kind you can get around with a good overall strategy.

Thinking about this again, I don't think there's much you can do at all. The module IS a combat-oriented adventure game when you think about it, just in a roguelike engine. There isn't really much to do except going on and finding out what plot-bits you will find next. So you more or less have two choices:

One, to make it more RPG-ish, by introducing some elements that keep the player motivated to try more than once; just make sure he won't have to believe he is being punished for not using spoilers. That could require a major restructuring of some elements of the module, up to and possibly including impermanent levels.

Two, the one that would be more in keeping with the established style, would be to go all-out adventure game: Make it clear from the very beginning that the player is NOT supposed to go through the module more than once. Introduce depletable health fountains in every other room, written clues about what lies on the next stage, NPC interaction, a way to opt out of permadeath, that kind of stuff. Make it less tedious to retrace your steps, not less difficult.

So there you have my take on the whole thing. Of course, a lot of that might be technically rather difficult and probably won't get implemented, since BtbW is more of less a tech demo of the new engine and I guess DarkGod doesn't really care that much. But what the hell, this was still more fun to write than my paper about Assembly Language, so there ya go :D

ShrikeDeCil: This is just yet another crazy suggestion, but the LUAfication has made everything _very_ flexible. So what about allowing re-entry to some areas with a spawn... that is based upon an estimate of the efficiency of the character? Effectively changing the ratio away from 'easy-to-gather souls' towards 'nasty-to-gather souls' as the character becomes more vicious. So the player might be able to "gather more resources" to gain a needed skill/spell... or they might explode trying to do so as the area is more difficult than the first trip through.

Sirrocco: Personally, I figure there's two different perspectives to look at. First is, what kind of a game *is* Bone? What is is trying to be? Is it successful? The thing that it does, does it do it well? Second, what sorts of interesting things does Bone do, and might we want to transfer them to other games?

BucketMan: It's worth mentioning that Zombie Horror also has limited resources. There are a fixed number of bandages, a fixed number of armor absorbtions in the game, and no way to rest or repair anything. If you take damage beyond what the available equipment allows...you lose. But, it's realistic to beat the game using only about a third of available resources, so a few mistakes here and there are not fatal. A simple solution for Bone to be Wild could be had simply by adjusting the available resources, and/or reducing the need for them. Add more goblins, and reduce the damage potentials of the end game monsters. The last room in Bone is difficult even in wizard mode.

Some guy: Why can't I skip my turn with button "s"? It's really irritating! The Caps isn't on and the version number is 1.09. I have Windows XP.

NeilStevens: Because this module doesn't have traps and hidden doors, so there is no searching!

Modules/Bone to be Wild (last edited 2008-06-26 15:14:47 by NeilStevens)