Road to Return of the Forsaken

We've apparently got a working Mac port for
Incursion now, which is great, and I'll be updating
the website this weekend with the binaries. I've
also been brainstorming what I'm going to do on
the next dev cycle (which might start a little bit
later than I planned, since I'm behind on research
-- we'll see).

  I'm breaking up the development path from HotGK to RotF
into modules for my own sanity, so that I know what's ahead
of me. I figured I'd share it for feedback and response from
you folks here, but this document is mostly for the sake of
my own "goalposting". There's about 13 modules, the way I
break things down; the two I plan to start on next are the
content pack and encounter gen rewrite.

  Everything here is vapourware at this point. I know the
supposed folly of "everything under the sun" roguelikes,
but I also know long feature lists give me enthusiasm to
keep coding, so I'm just going to keep the game steady
and do one thing at a time, and if I do half the things here,
I'll be quite proud overall. :)

  The modules are in rough chronological order, though that
is subject to change.

------

New Content Pack
  New prestige classes (Celestial Initiate, Bladesigner, Inquisitor,
Duelist, Crimson Adept, Elementalist, Undead Slayer, etc.), as
well as a few spells (including elementalist spells), items and
several new monsters and room types. Possibly also thrones as
a dungeon feature, time depending.

Encounter Gen Rewrite
  Full-up rewrite of the encounter generator code to generate
encounters based on specific encounter tepmlates (i.e., an
'orc raider group' might be a themed group of orcs with a
single chieftan, and then shamans, archers and bandits,
with only a small chance of other things, while a diffierent
encounter might give a mated pair of dragons, or a well-
balanced adventuring party with compatible alignments).
This will also lead to a dungeon where monster theme ends
up matching room theme much more closely.
  Having had a break, I am enthusiastic about doing this,
whereas I was dreading it before. :)

Psionics System
  Implementation of the psionicist class, reworking of the
wild talents to fit the new system, implementation of many
more psi powers, power checks, power crits, power use
botches, mental combat system, psionic monsters and
templates and possibly 1 or 2 psi prestige classes. Fun!
I am very enthusiastic about this, and I may do some of
the "back code" this devcycle and leave it #ifdef'd out, since
I certainly won't be able to finish it.

Subraces
  Inclusion of 2-3 subraces for each primary race, with
somewhat different traits -- twlight elves, batkin kobolds,
duergar, svirfneblin, forest gnomes, etc. (A lot of subraces
are coded already but commented out, and just have to be
refined and fixed for balance.)

Monster AI Rewrite
  New monster AI will be modular and rule-based, with
rules as separate resources called Behaviors that can
override a monster's actions from the script files, so frex.
you could add a rule that "casters always cast /phase
door/ when threatened in melee" to the script file in the
same way you would add a new monster. Also: A*
monster pathfinding, monsters learn about and remember
foes' strengths and weaknesses, change strategies if
what they are doing isn't working, monsters use benefical
effects on members of their party (i.e., orc priest will cast
cure spells on orc chieftan, etc.)
  The gold ring ideal here is that monster tactical
intelligence will be able to keep growing and growing
without running into spaghetti code issues, because the
Behavior resources will be isolated. Different Behaviour
resources will also allow us to assign unique /behaviour/
to different groups of monsters just like monster resources
assign different /abilities/. This will hopefully give the
monsters as a whole more personality.
  The game mechanics of Incursion are very prone to "X
counters Y, countered by Z", and rule-based behavior will
make monsters able to act on this, making fights with them
-- especially casters -- much more tactical.

Monster Targeting Rewrite
  Refactor target code so that it uses my coding conventions
instead of Westley's, make more complex loyalties possible
with monster memory, so NPCs might betray you over time
or remember you treated them well, target code will then be
fully accessable from IncursionScript, fix remaining glitches
with hostility, etc.

Modular Save/Restore
  Game will cache levels not currently in use in temporary
files, and will store only differences in save files. This is a
prerequisite to wilderness, towns and multiple dungeons,
and according to design notes, surprisingly complex. (But
if you think the AutoSave delay is a bitch now, imagine it
with 5-10 dungeons with 5-15 levels each!)

Wilderness Support
  Support for a wilderness screen, including geologically
and climatologically credible random geography gen,
random nation gen, travel times, wilderness encounters,
weather hazards, getting lost, uses of Wilderness Lore,
Herbalism and other applicable skills, placing cities and
such on the map, etc. BIG task.

High-Level Pack
  Implementation of character levels 12-20 for all classes,
including high-level spells for wizards, priests, druids and
all 40+ domains, capstone feats, special powers for high-
level warriors and monks and high-CR monsters.
  (Incursion will never support "epic" levels; this was a
design decision from very early on, because levels are a
resource and constrained resources make roguelikes
interesting, and because the d20 system breaks on a
numeric level at 21+, and because my suspension of
disbelief breaks too. I may adapt some epic feats and
concepts for 15th-to-20th-level characters, though.)

IncursionScript Work
  Improve the script engine; add support for functions and
parameter passing, add support for multiple loaded
module files and 3rd-party add-on modules, document
the script engine so others can expand Incursion, add
development tools, implement cross-module function
calls and cross-module scripting.

Urban Support
  Building random cities and towns from prebuilt pieces
and rules. Guilds for the player to join ala Omega. Multiple
shops, some secret or restricted. City guards ala Omega.
This is a prerequisite for the Quest system.

Quest System
  Quests, storylines, unique NPCs with memories and
different behavior states, and implementation of several
specific quests. Depends on urban support and new
monster AI, obviously. Unique, named NPC party members
with the possibility for different social interaction, but not
scripted dialogue.
  This will also include dynamic text resources, which will
be used to generate random meaningful story text both
for quests and for the player's background in much the
same way that ADOM and Moria write a background for
the PC, but more elaborate and extensible.

Advanced Wilderness
  Implementation of advanced wilderness features -- the
Seneschal skill, ability of PC to build forts and castles,
seagoing ships, ship-to-ship combat on the wildermap,
mass combat on the wilderness map with friendly and
hostile units of creatures represented the same way
that encounter groups are.