Boohu Versions Save

Bug fix and quality of life improvements release.

• Some improvements for the browser version based on Harmonist code.
• Fix rare crash in Tk version at startup.
• use simpler math/rand, because we don't need crypto secure random numbers, and this works faster, specially on some platforms.
• Fix unintuitive interaction between dancing rapier and tiny harpies blinking.
• New tile for doors, backported from Harmonist.
• New tile for “magical stairs”, now more like a “real” monolith, backported from Harmonist.
• Update wasm version to latest API.
• Do not print rod of lightning message when no targets.
• You can now use arrow keys in menus too. Backported from Harmonist.
• Fix interaction between har-kar gauntlets and tiny harpies in a pathological case.
• Improvements in character dump. Mainly ideas from Harmonist.
• Allow (x) to close/continue as well as an alternative to space and esc, and hint to that first. Backported from Harmonist. More portable for browsers.

Bugfix and minor improvements release:

• Winged monsters produce wing flapping noise instead of footsteps noise, and there's a distinction between heavy and normal footsteps. This way you still cannot be sure what kind of monster it is, but you can have an idea.
• Add a message when a monster falls asleep because of rod of sleeping or night magara.
• Make fireball do a little more damage to account for the fact that it is somewhat more difficult to use than firebolt.
• Fix colour scheme when there is no config file. Fix windows 8-colour scheme.
• Fix spelling of “cyclops”.
• Allow Page Up/Down as alternative scroll keys in log messages window.
• Allow “z” and some other keys as alternatives to “.” to select target.
• Make layout toggle automatically resize the window in Tk backend.

Bugfix release:

• Fix colour handling issue in replay for the termbox-go backend.
• Get the starting log message back (it was removed during the dungeon structure overhaul).
• Make replay exit properly with the termbox-go backend.

Gameplay:

• Overhaul of dungeon structure. The main dungeon is shortened to 8 levels, from Depth 1 to 8, and there are 3 optional levels as before, now from 9 to 11. This is to make the game more coffee-break (as intended), and also more dense: each level now should feel more special. In particular, weapon/rod/armour distribution is a little less random than before, and excluding some occasional permutations because of some sane randomisation, one will in particular find a rod in Depth 1, a weapon/shield in Depth 2, and an armour in Depth 3. Levels that do not get a weapon/rod/armour will get extra consumables. Monster band distribution and special levels have had various adjustments too.
• Made confused monsters smarter.
• New tree stone: any creature hurt while standing on the stone is lignified.
• New aptitude: you occasionally teleport your foes when hurt.
• New aptitude: you occasionally lignify your foes when hurt.
• New aptitude: light-footed when hurt.
• New rod of lignification - it works on monsters in a similar way to the player potion.
• New rod of last hope - the damage it does is inversely proportional to your health.
• New projectile: teleport magara - it teleports monsters in a square area.
• New projectile: slowing magara - it releases a bolt slowing monsters.
• Darts of confusion always hit. Less of them generated as a result, and removed “unusually accurate” aptitude.
• New potion of accuracy that makes you never miss for a few turns.
• Berserk status now forbids rod usage instead of potion usage.
• New monster: mind celmist - uses a smitting attack and avoids melee.
• New monster: tiny harpy - can blink when hurt, appears sometimes in place of goblins.
• New monster: vampire that has a nauseous spit and can regenerate by drinking your blood.
• New monster: tree mushrooms - slow, big clunky creatures that can lignify you by releasing spores.
• New weapon: vampiric dagger, that heals you a little when hitting living monsters.
• New weapon: hopeful sword - it hurts harder the more you're injured; two-handed.
• New weapon: final blade - it can kill in one shot ennemies with less than half HP; two-handed; your maximum HP is reduced.
• New weapon: dragon sabre - it hits harder against big monsters with lots of HP such as dragons or hydras.
• Renamed sabre into assassin sabre.
• Removed berserk sword.
• Removed plain chain mail, leather armour and buckler.
• Make shields a little less useful when surrounded: you can only block once per turn.
• Reworked stealth: now hunting monsters may return to wandering mode when not seing you. The effect is much increased by wearing the harmonist robe. This gives more depth to stealth (the wandering/hunting difference matters now more).

Other:

• A new native Tk backend with graphical tiles.
• A new replay feature: automatic recording of playthroughs. You can play ASCII and then replay with tiles (and vice-versa).
• Many other minor gameplay and user interface fixes and improvements.

Gameplay:

• New map feature: 4 distinct magical stones, static objects on the ground that have a special effect when a creature is hurt while standing on them. Magical stones have only 1 charge. Some special levels can get more stones.
• New instable level: temporal walls can appear inadvertently.
• New fire shield: it can burn nearby foliage after a successful block.
• New potion of confusion: it confuses any monster in your line of sight.
• Rename ponderousness plates into turtle plates, and scintillating plates into shiny plates (shorter).

User Interface:

• Many grammar fixes (by kilobyte).
• No more need to refresh the page to play again in the browser version.
• Change the color of some statuses when they are about to expire.
• Avoid clash between browser and Boohu keys when the canvas is focused.

Items and Monsters:

• New monster: winged milfids that can make you swap positions.
• New monster: mad nixe, that can throw an attracting magic bolt to you, moving you to a square adjacent to the monster (the one corresponding to LOS ray).
• Now hounds can smell you in a short range: this means that fog and dense foliage are not always enough to flee from them.
• New weapon: har-kar gauntlets which you used “unarmed”: it is a (weak) two-handed weapon that has a particular attack patern: if there is a free cell after monsters in a given direction, you hit every monster in the path, move after them, and hit another monster (if any), which can be very useful in corridors, as well as for escaping.
• Double sword got renamed into berserk sword, which occasionally makes you berserk when attacking while severely injured.
• Sword got renamed into sabre, and its mechanics were changed too: now this weapon has better accuracy the more injured the monster is.
• New dancing rapier weapon: it makes you swap positions with monsters you attack, attempting a hit to any monster behind in the same direction, with extra damage.
• Axes now deal 1-2 extra damage in open areas - actually when neighbor cells common to you and the monster do not have any walls. The idea is to make risky non-corridor fights potentially optimal with axes.
• New defender flail weapon: it hits harder the more you keep attacking without moving; moreover, moving toward a monster moves the monster to you instead.
• New robes: speed robe, celmist robe and harmonist robe. These armours give you no physical protection. The first make you speedy. The celmist robe makes you better at using rods (better recharge rate, more mana and an extra charge), and harmonist robe makes you better at being stealthy (slightly reduced LOS range, stealthy movement and a less good version of Frundis staff noise mitigation). There has been some work for rebalancing stealth.
• Old plate armour got renamed into chain mail (which is gone).
• New ponderousness plates armour appeared that gives great protection at a movement speed cost.
• New armour: smoking scales that leaves a short-lived fog behind you each time you move. It really is useful to escape from monsters in corridors, less so in open areas.
• New armour: scintillating plates, good protection but +1 LOS range.
• New shields: bashing, confusing and earth shields that occasionally on block have a special effect. Bashing moves the monsters several squares away in a direction. Confusing just confuses the monster. The earth shield gives much more protection than the others, but impacts produce a noisy sound that can destruct nearby walls, which sometimes can be bad (for example in a corridor) or good (due to the resulting fog).
• New rod: rod of lightning, an electricity attack to every monster connected to you (similar to lightning whip, but for a rod). A little less strong per monster than fireball, but probably stronger overall.
• New rod: rod of sleeping, that makes monsters sleep in a 1-radius square area.
• New potion of shadows: LOS range of 1 for a short time.
• New projectile: night magara that produces sleep inducing clouds
• Reduced duration for potion of swapping, it was OP.

Other gameplay changes:

• Three new optional levels up to Depth:15! Each of those has normal downstairs, and magical stairs leading you out (except Depth:14). This way on good runs you can chose to go for more challenge.
• New aptitude: “you have good ears”. It makes you hear monster footsteps with higher probability and with range improved by 1.
• One or two levels per game get special fauna, with monster bands related to a particular monster or theme.
• Sometimes some lonely out of depth monsters can appear in early levels, for more diversity early on.
• Now there is always at least two weapons generated per game, so that you have a choice before the last levels.
• More game statistics.

User Interface:

• New web version with 16x24 tiles, and much improved mouse support.
• There is now a setting in-game to change default LOS color to a dark one, for less contrast.
• Now in compact 80x24 layout you see a log line even in target mode.
• Improved the settings menu: now you can toggle normal/compact layout and tiles/ascii mode.

Game related changes:

• No more automatic HP and MP regeneration: now you have to rest. This is inspired from TGGW, but adapted to Boohu's fast-paced flow and DCSS-like short temporal effects: you have to wait for your status to wear off before resting (the first attempt waits for this), and then you attempt to rest and are successful at it if you are not interrumpted by monsters during a few turns. You replenish HP and MP, monsters do too, and some monsters might awake when you rest, so that you want to avoid doing it too often.
• Reworked cyclops: less accurate, rocks do never confuse, but the rocks create temporal obstacles (walls) for the player. The placement of the rock depends on whether the player dodged (rock behind the player), blocked with the shield (rock in front of the player), or got hit (the rock takes player cell if possible, and the player gets 1 cell moved backwards).
• Renamed worms into farmer worms: they now furrow and help foliage grow as they move.
• New potion of digging that lets you walk into walls for a few turns.
• New potion of dreams: you get the current location of sleeping monsters.
• New potion of swapping that makes you dance with monsters (swap positions) when you move or are hit by them.
• Explosive magara and nadre explosions now can occasionally destroy walls.
• Removed javelines: some of their damage integrated in darts of confusion, which are more funny and versatile.
• Improvements in dungeon generation: new town-like map generator, special rooms and/or foliage in most maps.
• Improved morgue files. They now show some miscellaneous statistics at the end, including some per-depth statistics.

User interface:

• Improved mouse support: now there are several buttons for the more common actions (screenshot), instead of one huge menu.
• New compact alternative style for 80x24 terminals (screenshot.
• The game tries to display several log messages in one line when there is enough room for it (the algorithm could still be improved).
• Improved animations. (e.g. fireball) Animations can be disabled with -n option.

A few bug fixes and many other little improvements.

Bugfix release. Fix a crash with “G” when no safe path to stairs.

User interface:

• Animations: combat, explosions, magic mapping, menu selections …
• Better usage of screen for menus (try to show as much of the map at any time).
• Rebindable key bindings.
• Many little look improvements.

Game:

• New narrative: you're searching medicinal simella Underground plants for your village.
• Gold replaced by simella plants.
• Foliage and doors can be burned by fire explosions and lightning. Fire spreads. As a result, terrain is now fully destructible.
• New projectile: explosive magara. Similar to a nadre explosion.
• Simpler and more correct system for zone exclusion.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements.

Bugfix release : fix an information leak in position description.