This is cool! I can test it out on my Olivetti M28 using EGA 25khz connection to the monitor. I'd assume that is an edgecase test for compatibility.

Is there any plan for real Soundblaster support? I don't own a PI-XT serial audio adapter.

That would be great, you'd be hitting a few edge cases at once with that Olivetti!

I'm currently looking into adding Adlib support, my thinking is that it's less CPU intensive than Soundblaster, easier to implement, and Soundblaster cards are Adlib compatible so I'll be covering all of my bases.

The digging-through-walls mechanic is interesting, I can see it possibly causing unintended gameplay changes though. How fleshed out is it? Does it work everywhere, or are there, say, buried, impassable rocks later? I noticed I could even burrow into the first line of the status bar, but not the second - might that be an off-by-one error? Seeing JRPG-style battle screens in a roguelike is refreshing too. The difficulty seemed to ramp up pretty fast, but that may have been down to RNGesus, dunno. Overall, I like it a lot. I did, however, turn of the music immediately. Maybe it's a better experience on real hardware; in the browser version I found it a bit grating. And one thing took me by surprise - you start with a bunch of basic gear, but none of it is equipped. What's up with that?

Hey thanks for the feedback glad you're enjoying it so far!

I plan on adding impassable terrain in the next major version. Currently all walls are diggable, but it's easy to flag a new terrain types as being undiggable. Currently more monsters have the ability to dig than I think is reasonable, I'm planning on dialing that back a little bit because I want it to feel surprising, and a bit intimidating when all of a sudden a monster starts breaking down a wall of a room your in.

There is definitely a degree of RNG to each play through, you'll have runs where the dungeon conspires against you and you die on the second floor, and runs where you get over powered and find yourself down on the fifteenth floor. Most of my runs land squarely in the middle however, and I can make it down five to eight floors because I get killed.

Digging into the status bar is definitely an off by one error. I pretty late in version 1.5 made the status bar 2 lines to accommodate adding in gold, and to make room for the alignment system I'm putting into version 1.6.

Honestly I play with the music off too, the PC speaker is very limited in what it can do. I'm actually playing around with Adlib audio as we speak. I will say it does sound better on a real PC speaker, the browser version of DOSBox seems to have some trouble with the sound emulation, probably a timing issue, but you wind up with a strange off key warble that doesn't happen on the real hardware (or on the desktop version of DOSBox-x for that matter)

Equipping the starting gear is a great idea, I'll go ahead and make that happen!

I really appreciate all of the feedback, incredibly excited to finally have people checking this game out!

So I tested the game now on my Olivetti M28 (286 system) and it worked fine (MS-DOS 3.1)! Except everytime I hit the ESC key the game seemed to crash back to DOS prompt. The textmode displaying the game was still present, but I got D: prompt on the bottom of the screen and no other way than to restart by typing deeper15

I got to lvl 2 and I fought some enemies. Got RNG on "Sing" by going to sleep and then I by mistake hit ESC key and had to restart.

- Is there any way to bring up the instructions while in the game play? Only method I found was through the main menu
- As mentioned by elszgensa, would be awesome if the start gear would be equipped

So hitting escape is currently setup to kill the program, that worked very well for me for rapid development but clearly an issue for people actually playing the game. I'll have to double check my exit function it should clean up the screen entirely but I may have broken that functionality along the way. I'm going to change it so control escape quits immediately and just escape is mapped to cancel/back in menus.

Currently no way to bring up the instructions while playing but I can easily change that and put it into the menu.

> ESC key - crash back to DOS prompt

[ninja'd but I'll leave this bit in anyways:]I noticed that in the browser version too. If it's not a crash but intentional then using the opportunity to offer to save, or at least ask for confirmation would be nice.

> bring up the instructions in game

Understandable request, but hear me out. Consider moving them into a separate manual instead, or a keyboard reference card. That'd feel about right for a non-shareware DOS game imho. (Okay, it is free-/shareware... but feels like it predates that model.)

Speaking of controls - I meant to mention it in my previous post but forgot: I intentionally went into my first run completely blind, and most of the key bindings came natural enough, which was nice. Since there aren't too many of them, maybe add a few alternatives mimicking other popular titles? For example, PD uses (e)quip but could also accept NetHack's (w)ield/wear to open the same menu, </> for ladders, etc, as long as there's no conflicts. Don't even document them, throw them out if there ever is an better use for one. Just a thought.

Appreciate the escape feedback. I think I'm leaning towards escape to quit, with a save/don't save/cancel dialog.

I like the idea of creating an authentic keyboard reference card PDF to distribute with the game or perhaps a full blown 80s style black and white manual with some hand drawn artwork (would have to find someone to do that because I'm no artist), I think I'm also going to keep the instructions page in the main menu, and also a lightweight controls reference in the game play menu.

W is currently open so I could bind both E and W for equipment. I think if I was going to bind a second key for stairs without the interaction selection menu I might go with Rogue/Nethack/ADOM/Angband choice of > because hitting that is core childhood memory territory from so many of the classics. If you haven't seen the interaction selection menu if hitting enter would trigger multiple actions it pops up a little menu showing you what you can do (talk to NPC, open chest, go down stairs, etc).

When you say PD, is that Pixel Dungeon?

delinthe wrote on 2025-11-20, 23:05:

Appreciate the escape feedback. I think I'm leaning towards escape to quit, with a save/don't save/cancel dialog.

I was using ESC key as a natural way to try to exit the menus, not expecting the game to quit. I think ESC should do that if you're inside a menu, and as you suggest, show save/cancel dialog if not.

For the instructions, the controls were fine/easy to remember and use. It was more the icons/legend for the map/overview which for new players you need to check maybe more than once.

Hey everyone thanks for all of the feedback over the last few days. I just put up version 1.5.3 which has numerous changes and bug fixes.

On another note I made a lot of progress on the Adlib / Soundblaster front and have a solid workflow for building tracks using Furnace tracker and a test program that allows me to load and play them perfectly. I've added Adlib / Soundblaster support into the 1.6 roadmap. I might try to pull my friend into this project who is way better at composing music, and building cool FM synth patches.

=====1.5.3=====

[X] CHANGE - Start game with equipment equipped
[X] CHANGE - escape in menus goes back and if at root menu exits menu. In dungeon it puts up save, quit, cancel dialog. In battle it goes back in current menu, and if at root menu does nothing.
[X] CHANGE - add abbreviated instructions to dungeon menu 1 page, icons, and keybindings.
[X] CHANGE - W as additional keybind in dungeon exploration equivilent to E
[X] CHANGE - > keybind in dungeons goes down stairs immediately, no action selection menu like enter would have if there were multiple options
[X] CHANGE - Moved monsters and npc arrays into new module
[X] CHANGE - Save game overwrite confirmation
[X] CHANGE - escape menu should be save and quit, quit, cancel.
[X] CHANGE - escape menu should have a main menu option letting you go back to the main menu
[X] CHANGE - rename quit option in space menu to Main Menu
[X] CHANGE - Control Q to immediately exit program at any time

[X] BUG - can dig into status bar
[X] BUG - Escape in fight menu makes you attack slot 1 monster. you attack slot 1 monster even if they're defeated
[X] BUG - player fog of war illumination overwrites top status bar in dungeon exploration mode
[X] BUG - Merchant and trader wares change if you leave without buying and come back
[X] BUG - Escape in items menu in battle gives message you cannot use this item in battle. Slot 1 had a health potion so i'm not sure what slot it's trying to use, maybe a negative index
[X] BUG - Escape menu save and quit resulting in corrupt save file
[X] BUG - Escape menu save and quit option sometimes freeze game execution
[X] BUG - Save and quit option doens't prompt for confirmation to overwrite save
[X] BUG - Merchant and trader wares now change when they move because wares seed is based on x and y. once generated they should be set permanently for that NPC.

That was quickly delivered! I'll check it out and give it another go tomorrow on my Olivetti 😀

Gotta say, I couldn't help myself going back and playing a couple more times. It's just as addicting as the next roguelike.

As for 1.5.3 - I haven't poked at it too much yet, but I already noticed that savegames are still a bit buggy: they don't seem to survive program restarts. Saving and loading works as long as it's the same program instance, but if you quit to DOS, restart PD, then try to load, it says the file is corrupted. Not sure what's going on there, or if you even want to look into it at this stage.
Fwiw, I also tried some combinations of saving, moving the savegame away (from outside the DOSBox instance), starting a new game, saving that, moving an old save back, then loading that - but all while keeping the same PD instance running - and saw no issues there.

The handful of runs I started, all dropped me off without any equippable gear (RNGesus again?), so I've yet to learn whether auto-equip works.

Other than that, I noticed nothing but progress. 👍

edit with additional notes/observations after more playtime:
- right after talking to an npc, they disappear for a frame. actually, make that [i]all[/i] visible npcs disappear for a frame. I couldn't see any monsters at the time so idea whether they're also affected.
- actually, above happens every time certain dialogs (e.g. equipment) are closed. and yes, monsters are affected too. stairs aren't, not sure about chests. not sure whether this entire thing might be intentional or not...
- the character name accepts all sorts of nonsense (e.g. punctuation, or nothing but a space). but why not - that's on the player, if they want it
- unlike some other games, items dropped from the inventory onto the ground disappear altogether. generating a chest with them in it could allow picking them back up without too much extra work, I believe. that said, I have no opinion either way - game designer's choice.
- I like how stairs can end up generating not just in rooms but also somewhere along a tunnel.
- building on that, since it sounds like terrain generation is still somewhat in flux, how about expanding on this? e.g. small "caverns" (like, simply some small rooms, 2 to 3 tiles tall/wide but without walls around them) along the paths, widening them slightly for some variety. moves the focus away from the classical rectangular rooms a bit and leans more into a caving/digging theme.
- npcs are easily attacked on accident, a way to back out of those fights might be nice. or a confirmation before attacking non-hostiles. or maybe i just need to git gud.
- tried the "gta hooker trick" - killing them afterwards to retrieve the money - on an innkeeper, and later a thief beggar, and got back less than I paid. fair enough, wouldn't wanna keep too much state, considering the target platform.
- while equipping a "Ring of Defense": in the "Equip to Accessory" dialog, its name was truncated -- seems to be a pattern, e.g. "Greater Health Potion" doesn't fully show in the inventory, so probably intentional.
- stairs back up might be nice to have, but i can also come up with enough reasons to not allow that.
- come to think of it - since we're not fetching an amulet - what even is my in-game justification to go in there and down (but never up again)? seems suicidal, but it can't be a simple death wish, since that could be taken care of on level 1 lol. kinda looking forward to seeing that fleshed out eventually.
- [spoiler warning] monsters hiding in chests, opening triggers a fight? nice. that could also be built upon as the base for a "mimic" monster, if that isn't in already (haven't encountered one).
- now that i actually paid attention to them: some of the going-down-a-level messages are pretty good ("forth wall god voice", lol)
- undecided on how i feel about merchants being only usable once. and not only do they only sell you a single item, they stop buying too?
- some visibility calculations seem a bit off. sometimes i can see 1 tile ahead, sometimes i can see all the way around the corner at the far end of a tunnel?
- still haven't had a single start with this version where equipment was provided

Thank you for pointing out that Save Game file corruption issue. Most of the change I made were actually trying to address that issue I thought I had actually fixed it but likely my last test just didn't involve restarting the program because I didn't realize that was the catalyst that would break the save file. Since the corruption only happens if you exit the program and then restart it that almost certainly means it's something resident in memory thats being lost and should be captured into the save file, or something to do with the functions loading the state back into memory. That really helps narrow it down a lot!

So one thing to note in the options menu you have three difficulty settings. Easy gives you some equipped starting gear, a health potion, and a starting stat boost that's equivalent to 1-2 extra player levels and reduces enemy stats by a fixed percentage. Normal gives you a health potion to start. Hard gives you nothing to start and increases enemy stats by a fixed percentage. If you're not seeing equipment is it possible you're just playing on normal or hard difficulty?

-I've never noticed the NPC flicker after talking I'll take a look thanks for catching that!
-Yea I think I'll allow the players to use any characters in their name. Maybe someone wants to be .'"'.-Mike.-'"', or something on the high score list. As long as the characters don't cause any actual crashes or corruption doesn't bother me.
-I have been considering dropping items spawning a chest, I like the idea but hadn't remembered to put in on the roadmap. I just added it to the 1.6 roadmap.
-I like the caverns idea! I had been thinking of doing some more varied terrain maybe once you hit certain making it feel like you're progressing down through different levels of the dungeon. Kind of like Diablo 1 tileset changes every few levels. I was also thinking of some tightly packed maze rooms, I think they did that in rogue or nethack I can't remember which.
-The NPCs used to be a lot more easily attacked because they wouldn't intentionally avoid walking into the players and would trigger battles all the time and I'd be like "Damn I didn't mean to kill that healer I really needed a heal". I think my issue with confirmation is just if you want to have a chaotic NPC murdering run the constant dialogs will get a little annoying. Two thoughts I had on that were an option to turn them off, or once you drop below a certain alignment it stops prompting you.
-I have thought about giving some persistence to beggars, inn keeps, merchants/traders so if you kill them you get back what you paid, or steal the inventory they had available but I think for the merchants and traders that would give you way too much good gear early, maybe if I make them way more difficult to fight. I have thought about having beggars drop what they took plus a little bit.
-One of my to-dos for version 1.5.4 is to rename items so they're not truncated in so many places.
-I actually have a cool story arc in mind that would explain your justification but there are some technical hurdles like static levels and named NPCs that I need to implement to pull it off.
-There isn't a mimic monster but I like the idea!
-Haha yea I like the breaking the fourth wall pun for the point where I ran out of story.
-The visibility is one of the most complex systems in the game, especially trying to get it to run quickly on period hardware. I definitely still need to do some tweaking. Currently chests and stairs block visibility which I need to fix. Also based on the volume fill algorithm I'm using sometimes entering into NPC tunneled tiles can cause a delay in triggering the calculations. I've also noticed when an NPC and monster party fight that it sometimes shows the location, a bug I thought I fixed awhile ago. Generally when you enter a room or tunnel it should light up the entire room or tunnel (not because it's realistic but because it's very efficient from a CPU and memory perspective) if you're standing in a door way the 8 adjoining tiles should be visible assuming their walkable so that you can see a little bit into the room and not mistakenly walk into a monster or NPC.
-Starting equipment is available on easy. Let me know if you think there should be something on normal too. Definitely don't want to give the player anything on hard mode.

Oh, thanks for explaining the gear "issue". I had switched to using the default difficulty at some point. I didn't notice anything getting significantly harder, didn't pay attention to my inventory, and ended up forgetting.

Maze levels, now my knee-jerk reaction to that would usually be "ugh not a fan" but I'll hold off on that this time since it might work out if it integrates well with the breakable walls mechanic. But hey, maybe other people are really into them, by all means don't listen to just me.

I like the sound of the "alignment" approach for npc killing. Though, how would you get back to the good side? Could you? Of course the cop out way would be to tie it to the difficulty instead, say "easy" asks for confirmation, "hard" allows them to walk into you like before (though I have no way to tell how obnoxious that used to be, really. Can you tell? 😉) Fwiw, I don't hate the idea of guards or beggars charging at you (mistaking you for a hostile, or just being assholes in general). Merchants would be harder to justify.

First off, great game! I found myself messing around with it for quite a while, and wanting to go back to it. Can't wait to see where it goes!

I only have one pure DOS machine to try it on (6.22/Cyrix PR166/S3 VirgeDX), and it runs perfectly. Used Screen Thief to take the screenshots below.

I don't have much to add just yet, beyond what others have already said. I'll be messing around with it more and if anything pops up, I'll post it here.

Keep up the excellent work! 😀

On a side note. Put it on a floppy, had fun with AI and made myself a label for it. Have some extra images I managed to get to turn out good while creating my label. I included them just for fun. Used Seedream 4.0.

Now it has a place in my floppy games collection. 😜

Fun fact, this game started off it's life as Emily Quest a game I made for my girlfriends birthday. Every floor had scavenger hunt clues hinting at where presents were hidden around the house. I also had it on floppy disk at that point though it's outgrown single 5 1/4 floppies.

Really cool seeing your artwork and seeing it on a 3.5" disk!

Would everyone be interested in seeing the feature roadmap, or do you think it's more fun for it to drop as a surprise version by version?

I've been playing around with it in my browser, and it reminds me a lot of the games I used to make in Basic on the CPC 6128.
This one's interesting.
I thought of digging up the whole screen, and it's very strange to see the lonely doors in the middle of the void.
Maybe the walls of the rooms shouldn't be so easy to dig up.

delinthe wrote on Yesterday, 16:35:

Fun fact, this game started off it's life as Emily Quest a game I made for my girlfriends birthday. Every floor had scavenger hunt clues hinting at where presents were hidden around the house. I also had it on floppy disk at that point though it's outgrown single 5 1/4 floppies.

Really cool seeing your artwork and seeing it on a 3.5" disk!

Would everyone be interested in seeing the feature roadmap, or do you think it's more fun for it to drop as a surprise version by version?

Now that's a really cool idea! I love it when you can use your skills to do something unique for those you care about.

For me personally, I'm a lifelong electronics/computer hobbyist, and I've gotten pretty good with Arduino (ATmega/ATtiny) and Raspberry Pi. My wife loves all things paranormal. So, I've designed and made her some of the tools investigators use on TV. They're all pretty basic. EMF detection, REMPOD = Theremin, Spirit Box = Radio Frequency Scanner, SLS = XBox Kinect, Ovilus = Environmental Sensors + Dictionary. Nothing all that complicated. I may be a paranormal skeptic and man of science, but I can build these devices for my wife so she's assured there's no TV shenanigans going on when she goes on the hunt. Happy wife = a win in my book.

Back on topic. I personally like seeing roadmaps, so I'll cast my vote in favor. 😀