The Cataclysm of Chaos, V9 by lordpalandus

Work in Progress
Quest
The game is a hybrid of an old-school dungeon crawler and a text adventure. There are four sections, with a boss in each section. There are 7 tiers of spells and a variety of options for players to build their characters. There is about 4-6 hours of enjoyable gametime, for each of the playstyles. There is a tutorial in the game and a fairly thorough help system, to help new players enjoy the game. The game is unfinished, but the development has been terminated; reason below the double lines.

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GoG, and likely most distributors, are uninterested in the game, mostly because its a text adventure; I make this assumption for other distributors as GoG caters to gamers that prefer older titles and if they don't want it, its unlikely anyone else will either. GoG liked the game, thought it was fun, the mechanics were good and the text descriptions were well done, but they are not interested in selling a text adventure, as they do not believe their userbase would buy it. Its understandable, as most of their best sellers are turn-based rpgs, but with graphics, sounds, music and GUIs.

So, as GoG liked the game concept and mechanics, I am going to refocus my efforts in translating (right word?) to an ASCII roguelike, and eventually into a tile-based game with sounds, music, and a GUI. For those that want updates on the progress of the ASCII game, they can visit the Outpost Universe site, as I will keep them in the loop with my progress. I'd like to thank everyone who has played the game, and given me great feedback. I appreciate it, and have learned a lot about development and creating good gameplay experiences.

I apologize to anyone that is upset that this will never get completed, but as I had started on this journey to make a commercially sellable text adventure and as that is clearly a pipe dream, I see no value in continuing to develop the game. I will not make any money off of it and I've learned as much as I can about coding, bughunting, developing, designing, and s
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Comment lordpalandus
27 Nov 2017
Hi, all. An update = I'm finishing up some details for Section 1 and working on the tutorial at the moment. Once I have the tutorial in and Section 1 monster descriptions addressed, I'll release Hotfix 2 and work on Hotfix 3; Hotfix 3 will address the monster descriptions for the rest of the Sections.

I'm working on polishing up V8 to show off to GOG to see if they'd be interested in selling the full build; V8 isn't the full build and will continue posting public beta updates until I'm close to the actual release. The actual release will have a few features that the public beta won't have... so that there is still stuff to see and do for testers that have been playing the game thus far.
Comment lordpalandus
05 Nov 2017
I'm continuing to work on V8. I've had a few issues with my new Monster Description system, but I've managed to address all the problems now, and thus hope to have all of the new Descriptions for monsters into the game by tomorrow. Then after that, I have a bit more work to do, before I can release V8. I'm hoping to have everything done by Wednesday (Nov 8) and thus release V8 on Nov 8.

Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up on development!
Comment lordpalandus
23 Oct 2017
Working on finishing off V7, and should have it out today (Oct 23). It will include lesser debuffs, greater debuffs, and monster descriptions, as the major new features.
Comment lordpalandus
17 Oct 2017
Third hotfix released. Should solve all the bugs/issues you raised Zenaire. Thanks again for the valuable feedback. It really helps me a lot!
Comment lordpalandus
17 Oct 2017
I'll be releasing a third hotfix.

1. It will make deeper levels much more dangerous, in line with the amount of rare items, SS, and boss items the player finds, so it should still remain fair and consistent challenge level.

2. Fixed a rare edge case with the Spellcasting system. If you miss-type a spell name, it will activate a flag called "NotASpell" and aborts the spellcasting. However, it wasn't been cleared after aborting the spellcasting and thus would produce the error that the spell isn't a combat spell and do nothing.

And address the other feedback/bugs Zenaire has raised.
Comment lordpalandus
17 Oct 2017
Thanks for the valuable feedback, Zenaire!

I'll look into a way of providing greater challenge the deeper the player goes and look into making traps consistently dangerous for V7. I want the gameplay to feel fair, but at the same time not feel like a cakewalk. I also don't like nerfing things, so I'd prefer to add greater challenge than to reduce the rate of progression.

Hmm, interesting bug with the spellcasting system. Which attack spells in particular were problematic; I might have made a typo somewhere which caused the issue. However, spells are case-sensitive and need to be written verbatim, otherwise it fails, as it requires very specific input to properly work. Regardless, I'll spend a couple hours with a human wizard type and cast a wide variety of spells and see if I catch the problem with my own testing.

I'll rest relocate as well. What it is supposed to do, is that when in combat it teleports the player out of the current room, to a new one. But, I'll definitely take a look at it and see if I did something wrong. I notice that with my V5 refactoring of the codebase I did inadvertently add in a few hard to find logic errors.

Interesting on Iron Maiden. I'll see what is going on with them.

Interesting on investigate orb. I'll see if it is possible to create a generic loot sequence with random text. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Well, in order to combat some of the extreme progression I had taken them out of the loot lists and replaced them with the player finding soul shards more often and in greater numbers, so that the player could decide what they wanted to buy and still gain the same amount of SS if they had found orbs/kits. However, I may not yet have increased the SS to a sufficient amount.

Yes, another friend commented that the ambience system is annoying as well; they like the ambience events, but don't like the timer and the way it annoyingly posts the text at random intervals. Will look into ways of providing ambience withou
Comment Zenaire
17 Oct 2017
Just played through the V6 update, and i love the improvements! I enjoyed the feel of the new levels and the new bosses. The traits and phobias system is awesome, and the rare boss items have some pretty cool abilities. However, i found i did not need them. After the first boss, the game becomes too easy. I was able to one-shot any opponent, traps were no longer dangerous, etc. So it could use some more difficulty scaling in later levels; you can get too strong, too quickly. The newly-added lore is really cool, too. The journal entries reminded me a bit of what you might see in TES: Skyrim.

This new update did seem to add a bunch of bugs, however, particularly with the spell system; any time i tried to cast an attack spell, it gave me a message saying that it is a non-combat spell, and would not cast it. The "relocate" spell didn't do anything in or out of battle. The iron maidens in the lower levels are bugged so that i could not investigate them. Also, (not sure if it's intended or not) but i accidentally typed in "investigate orb" instead of "inspect orb" and it allowed me to generate a random investigateable sequence for loot (also, do enhancement kits and enchanting orbs no longer drop from random looting?). The new "ambience messages system" is pretty cool, but also kind of annoying, especially when i scroll up to re-read something and it takes me back to the bottom of the text.

Overall, it's shaping up nicely. Can't wait to see where it goes from here. Hopefully more people will give it a try!
Comment lordpalandus
08 Oct 2017
A quick update. After trying out a few methods of implementing bad traits, I've now figured out a solution and have implemented the first set of bad traits = Arachnophobia (arachnids), Aichmophobia (sharps), Mycophobia (mushrooms), Ophidiophobia (snakes), and Xylophobia (wood).

Currently, they only prevent you from interacting with specific interactables, but do intend to make it so that you suffer combat penalties when fighting creatures associated with a trait; ie if you have Arachnophobia, you will suffer combat penalties when fighting spiders and scorpions.

I know I haven't posted much lately, on game updates, but this system proved more complicated to implement than I original surmised. I'm still at it, just taking longer than anticipated.
Comment lordpalandus
04 Oct 2017
Hi, jmnevil54

Well, to get into the dungeon proper you would type = descend. If you looked at the Command List in (display info -> commands) the command = explore; would help you find a stairwell leading downwards if you are on the surface level (Old Empire's Capital City). If you failed to read that command at the start of the game, you can always type in = help; to get help, and in help, it would advise you to look at the commands list. If you are in the dungeon proper, explore creates a new room once it is empty of threats.

In the future I will add the actual tutorial but for now, there is more pressing things to address.
Comment jmnevil54
04 Oct 2017
I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I got stuck at the buying things screen.
Comment lordpalandus
03 Oct 2017
Uploaded v5 release! Enjoy!
Comment lordpalandus
23 Sep 2017
After trying a few different methods, I've devised an elegant solution to my spell purchasing system. I've tested it out on just my first level spells, and seems to be working flawlessly. This new system will also make it significantly easier for me to add new spells to it and also allows the player to keep buying spells if they are inclined to do so.

Once I've gotten the system fully rebuilt, I should be back on track for V4 release. Thought I should give everyone an update on my current progress.
Comment lordpalandus
22 Sep 2017
I'm currently working on fixing my spell purchasing code. As mentioned on the game description, something broke, and now it won't allow me to use the spell purchasing code. So, I'm looking into a few alternative ways of implementing the spell purchasing system to replace it. Unsure how long this will take. Thought I should provide an update here to keep everyone up to date though!
Comment lordpalandus
21 Sep 2017
Dunno if you'll see this but putting it here regardless. Thanks Zenaire for the kind words.

I'm currently working on V4 release (this is V3 release of the beta), and in V4 there will be two more sections: Caverns (section 3) and Dark Cathedral (section 4).

Each section will have 20 new monsters, another boss, three new artifacts per boss, three new investigateable objects, and a completely different feel to the room generation. Caverns has a feel of the underdark to me, and I hope I've managed to create that feeling. Dark Cathedral has a feel of a necropolis, filled with a wide variety of undead critters.

Also coming to V4 will be the 7th tier of spells, in particular Power Weapon II and Force Shield II. I also have a new storytime system in the works. Storytime will be broken up into three categories; backstory, journals, and artifacts. Backstory is basically what storytime is currently in V3, and will have a few more entries to read for those interested in the backstory of the game. Journals are found off adventurer corpses, and will give the player the opportunity to get to know some of the people who came into the cataclysm of chaos and died here, to give character to the dead NPCs. When you defeat a section boss, you will unlock the artifact information for that boss, regardless of the choice you make. It will hopefully give some idea of the origins of the artifacts and how they came to be found in the cataclysm of chaos.

Once I finish up section 4 (need to do boss loot and the three new interactables), and finish up a few smaller features, I'll release it... hopefully today (Sept 21)!
Review Zenaire
20 Sep 2017
This game is amazing!!

Although it is still relatively short and unfinished, what it presents is remarkably well-polished and plays flawlessly. The variety of monsters, spells, and items is incredible; I can’t even begin to imagine how many hours went into creating the game up to this point. I’m giving a full 5 stars because it definitely deserves it! There are a few areas that have room for improvement, but the biggest thing I can say is that it just needs… more; more monsters, more abilities, and more lore. There is a lot of potential here, and I’m really looking forward to where it will go in the future. Well done.

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Written by
lordpalandus
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Quest 5.5
English
Added 14 Sep 2017
Updated 19 Jan 2018

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