OSSUARY A Simple Roguelike Dungeon Crawl Copyright (C) Damian Gareth Walker 2013, 2020. Contents: The Story The Game Running the Game How to Play Using the Menu Your Inventory Understanding Your Hero Items and Their Effects The Enemies Licence Acknowledgements The Story The villagers were quite proud of their ossuary. Centuries of custom and practice dictated that at the end of their lives, the people of this village, like all the other villages and towns in the land, would inter their dead in grand, uderground vaults built for the purpose. At special times, like birthdays and holidays, the living would descend into the ossuary to visit and make offerings to their ancestors. But things have been a bit different recently. Every age has its social ills, and today was no different. Though magic had often been used in medicine, religion and war, a new breed of sorcerors made it less welcome. A craze for necromancy took hold in the towns, and many young sorcerors developed an addiction for communicating with, and even raising, the dead. Senior practitioners of the magic arts needed a good reason to disturb the sleep of the dead, but their younger colleagues were often caught doing it for the sheer fun of it. This had to stop, and in a short time the more irresponsible students of magic were banished from the towns and the colleges in disgrace. Did this stop them? Of course not. Off they went into the country to find other places to practice their dark arts, and what better place to raise the dead than in the vast burial chambers built across the land? And so, periodically, along with the wolves, the goblins and the occasional dragon, villagers now have necromancers to put up with too. While the necromancers are happy to confine their activities to the underground chambers, making pets out of wild creatures and friends out of the dead, the intrusion of spirits and animated corpses adds nothing to the dignity of the funerals and other ceremonies the villagers are still trying to hold in their grand, centuries-old cemeteries. They want it stopped. The villagers want their Ossuary back. The Game Ossuary is an adventure game for the IBM PC and compatibles. You play the hero who has agreed to rid the ossuary of its unwanted visitor, the necromancer. You must fight your way through the twenty-four levels of enchanted creatures, animated bodies and summoned spirits with which the necromancer has filled his adopted domain. And on reaching the final level, you must defeat the necromancer himself. Your prize is all the gold you can carry. And being an adventurer, you can carry a lot. Every game is different. The layout of the dungeon is generated each time you play. While things get more difficult the further down you go, the manner in which this happens varies from one game to another. In some games you encounter spirits early on, while in other games it may take longer, but the very animals themselves become more vicious. Sometimes you will encounter a great variety of creatures on a single level, while at other times the enemies seem to come in waves, one kind succeeding another. Your character will also be different each time you play. Attack strength, defensive skill and intelligence are all randomly set at the beginning of the game, though every hero whose role you take on will be of a similar overall ability. In some games you might have a strong character suited to physical attacks; in others a physically weaker character might be better suited to magic; in some games the abilities are finely balanced and you need to see how your character develops in order to decide how best to deal with the various enemies. In the manner of dungeon hack games everywhere, there are objects to be found on the way which will help you in your quest. Some things sustain your health, there are weapons and shields to be found, magic wands and amulets may come in useful if you have the ability to use them, and there are incantation scrolls to keep evil spirits at bay. But with all this, your chances are still slim: all these things were left by previous, failed adventurers, who now add to the numbers of the wandering dead. Running the Game The minimum specification to run Ossuary is an IBM PC with an 8088 processor and CGA graphics, running PC-DOS or MS-DOS. The game will run at an acceptable speed on faster machines, and its graphics will display correctly on any CGA-compatible card with an RGB colour monitor. Clarity and legibility are not guaranteed on monochrome or colour composite monitors, but the game will run. The game can be run from a floppy disk or from a hard disk. The following instructions assume that you have the game installed to hard disk C: in the directory OSSUARY. To run the game, type the following commands: c: cd \ossuary ossuary The first thing you will see is the high score table. This lists the players who have made it back after ridding the Ossuary of its necromancer, and shows how much gold they collected. You will be asked under what name you want to play. Note that if you omit to type in a name, you will not be entered on the high score table even if you collect enough gold and beat the necromancer. Once you have entered your name, you will start your first game. How to Play The interface for Ossuary is very simple to pick up. You see the dungeon from the top down, in the form of a level plan. The four cursor keys move your hero around the map. You only see part of the current dungeon level at a time; the view is kept centred on your hero as you move around. You might notice that enemies move only when you do. Ossuary is a turn based game, in which careful thought is more important than fast reactions. To attack creatures, simply move so as to push into them. There is no specific attack command, nor is there ranged combat in the game. This much exploration and attacking can be done with the direction keys only, but the menu system and its shortcut keys give access to more of the game's features. To start playing the game properly, let's look at the screen in a bit more detail. The screen is split into four parts. The least important part is the bottom: this is purely there for decoration. The part you will be looking at most is in the middle: this is the map view on which you move around. The cyan bar underneath the map is the message bar. It is used to show brief messages, and to show the menu. To the left are your hero's statistics. These are his strengths, and the additions to his natural abilities which are affected by the things he is currently holding. At the bottom of this panel is the amount of gold collected, which functions as a score in the game. It will be listed on the high score screen if you beat the necromancer. On the right is the inventory, the items your hero has collected and holds in his hands or in his bag. You'll need to understand this and the statistics panel to play the game effectively, but first let's look at the menu. Using the Menu The SPACE bar activates the menu. The current option will appear on the menu bar, and pressing SPACE again will select it. Pressing LEFT and RIGHT will allow you to select the other options that are available to you. The game will normally try to select the most appropriate option when you first press SPACE, so for instance, when standing at an item you can pick up, PICK UP ITEM is the default option. This means that much of the time you can take the most appropriate action at any given time just by pressing SPACE twice. The menu options are: SHOW GAME KEYS WAIT A MOMENT... VIEW INVENTORY PICK UP ITEM DESCEND STAIRS EAT A NICE APPLE QUAFF A POTION START NEW GAME EXIT THIS GAME CANCEL MENU If no appropriate action suggests itself, the default option will be VIEW INVENTORY. From this you can see how to pick up items, and to descend the stairs to the next level. You can, by the way, go downstairs leaving monsters and objects behind, but trying to rush headlong down to the last level without fighting or collecting anything is a recipe for failure. All of these options have shortcut keys which can be used to activate them with or without bringing up the menu first; those shortcut keys are given as each option is discussed. SHOW GAME KEYS brings up a list of in-game shortcut keys. Space is cramped, so where alternative keys exist for a function they will not be listed. ESC returns to gameplay when viewing that list. The WAIT A MOMENT... option makes the hero stand still while allowing the other creatures to move; useful if you want to wait for an enemy to come to you or move out of the way. The shortcut key for this is the dot (full-stop, or period, depending on where you come from). VIEW INVENTORY enters the inventory subsystem, which is explained in detail later. The shortcut key for this is I. PICK UP ITEM picks up any item in the square where the hero is standing, and puts it in the hero's bag. The shortcut key is T (for "take"). DESCEND STAIRS will take the hero down the stairs to the next level. The shortcut key is S, but players of other roguelike games will be pleased to know the > key also works. EAT A NICE APPLE selects an apple from the hero's hands or bag, and eats it, restoring four health points. the shortcut key is E. QUAFF A POTION selects a health potion from the hero's hands or bag, and quaffs it, restoring the hero to full health. The shortcut key is Q. START NEW GAME abandons the current game and starts afresh with a new hero in a new Ossuary. You are asked for confirmation, then given an opportunity to choose another name for your hero, before the new game begins. The shortcut key is N. EXIT THIS GAME abandons the game and returns to DOS. The shortcut keys are X and ESC. As with starting a new game, you are asked for confirmation in case you pressed the key by mistake. CANCEL MENU lets you exit the menu without choosing an option, in case you entered it by mistake. Its shortcut key, while viewing the menu only, is ESC. As promised, it is time to look more closely at the VIEW INVENTORY option. Your Inventory The panel on the right of the screen shows the items you are currently carrying with you. The top two items are separate; these are the things you are holding in your hands, or wielding as the game puts it. The other items are in your bag, not currently being used but available for you at any time you need them. Usually you would wield a weapon and a shield or a protective amulet. When you select the option VIEW INVENTORY from the main menu, a cursor appears in this panel. The action in the game is suspended, and your movement controls instead move the cursor around your inventory. The message bar identifies the currently selected item. Pressing SPACE when viewing the inventory brings up another menu: WIELD ITEM PUT ITEM AWAY CONSUME ITEM DISCARD ITEM CLOSE INVENTORY The CLOSE INVENTORY option returns you to the game without any other effect, allowing you to move around again. The shortcut key is ESC. All the other options, when used successfully, cause time to pass as with the WAIT A MOMENT... option on the main menu. The relevant shortcut keys are available while moving around the inventory or while browsing this menu. They are not available from the main menu or while moving your hero; you need to enter VIEW INVENTORY first. WIELD ITEM will put the currently selected item into your hand. The cursor needs to be on an item in your bag, and one hand needs to be empty. Ossuary doesn't care whether your hero is left- or right-handed, so it doesn't matter which hand your weapon is in. The shortcut key is W. PUT ITEM AWAY will return a wielded item to your bag, and is only useful when selecting an item in your hand. The shortcut key is P. CONSUME ITEM, useful only for apples and potions, causes you to eat or drink the currently selected item. You can do this directly from the bag; you do not need to be wielding the item. This differs from the EAT/DRINK options available from outside the inventory; here you choose the apple or potion, and it allows you to be fussy about the layout of your inventory. The shortcut key is C, but if you are pointing at an apple you can use E, and if you are pointing at a potion you can use Q. DISCARD ITEM drops the currently selected item on the ground. This cannot be done where there is already an item on the ground where the hero stands, and you cannot drop items down the stairs! The shortcut key is D. Understanding Your Hero Your hero is described by the statistics panel on the left of the screen. The four statistics are Attack Strength, identified by the fist, Defence Skill shown by the raised hand, Intelligence shown by the quill, and Health shown by the heart. The first three statistics are generated randomly at the start of the game. Under each is a modifier, preceded by a + sign. This shows how much that statistic has been augmented by objects the hero is wielding. Weapons modify the attack strength, shields modify defence skill, and magical items modify intelligence. The fourth statistic, health, is calculated by adding together the other three. This calculates a maximum; health is depleted by enemy attacks, but can be restored to this maximum. The current health level is above the bar, the maximum is below. Items and their Effects The following items are available at various points in the game: Gold. The purse of gold contains 20 gold pieces. The casket of gold contains 50 gold pieces. These are added straight to your gold total when you pick them up; they don't take up any space in your inventory and have no other use apart from score. A nice apple. These refreshing snacks restore four hit points to your health when you eat them. They will not increase your health beyond its maximum limit. They are more common than potions. A magic potion. Potions restore your health to its maximum. If you have only slight injuries, it is better to eat an apple than to waste a potion which could be used to restore a greater amount of health. Weapons. These add to your attack strength when you wield them. The dagger adds +2 points, the broadsword adds +4, and the battle axe adds +6. It is possible to wield two weapons for added effect, like the sword and the axe for +10, but it is only advisable if you have a high natural defence skill. Shields. When wielded, a shield will add to your hero's natural defence skill. The wooden shield adds +2, and the iron shield adds +4. It is possible to wield them both, but is not recommended as your hero is more effective when carrying a weapon. A magic wand. This has two effects when wielded. Firstly, a +2 modifier is added to intelligence. Secondly, all attacks are magical, and use the modified intelligence rather than physical attack strength. A magic amulet. This needs to be wielded to be useful. Wielding it has two effects. Firstly, a +2 modifier is added to intelligence. Secondly, all defence is magical, and uses the modified intelligence rather than physical defence skill. The amulet is often combined with the wand to give a +4 intelligence modifier, as this combined modifier affects both attack and defence. A banish spell. When wielded in place of a weapon, this spell can banish a spectre or daemon. Chances of success are a little under 50%. There is a small chance that the spell will crumble to dust on failure, so it is advisable to carry a few spells. As spectres and daemons are immune to physical attacks, the banish spell is the most effective way to deal with them for heroes without good magical abilities. The Enemies Bats. These giant bats have little attack power but their agility gives them good defence skill. They are also the only non-humanoid enemies that can pick up and carry objects. Still, they are the easiest creatures in the game to beat. Other creatures. Other enemies from the animal kingdom become progressively more difficult to beat: the vermin are giant rats, arachnids are giant spiders with a nasty bite, and serpents have a scaly hide which gives them great defensive ability. These creatures cannot carry items, but are often found guarding them. Corpses. There are two kinds: cadavers, whose decomposing forms are still dangerous foes, and skeletons whose bleached bones are all that remains of these centuries-old warriors. Both of these enemies can carry items with them. Spirits. These are also of two kinds: spectres and daemons. Neither can be hurt with physical weapons, though shields might be useful against their attacks. Spectres are often found guarding valuable items, while daemons are able to pick things up and carry them. The Necromancer. This is the ultimate enemy, as strong as any daemon, he sits in his lair awaiting your arrival. Only the stoutest hero will make it to face him, let alone defeat him. Licence You are welcome to copy Ossuary and share it with your friends. The source code is also available for inspection, modification and distribution under the GNU General Public Licence, a full copy of which is included in the source code distribution. Acknowledgements Thanks must go to Phil Cooper, Ricky Walker, and discord users bananaboy, Epona142, DethroTull and Kimdol for their help in testing the DOS release of this game. DGW, July 2020.