Hello Dingo.
I've been thinking about your problem with iOs and your probably right apple won't let you use lua with entombed 2. But I've thought of something with iOs you could have an in game mod creator that would let you add sounds and things like that. This way you could get around apple's restrictions.
Then with all the other platforms mac, windows, android, linux and whatever else you just use lua in those since I don't think google or any others would have a problem with it.
Btw, if you need somebody to write a storyline so you can focus on development I would be happy to do it for you.
Hth.

@Briant, why should there be a discount for those who own the first game? remember this isn't entombed version 2.0, it is entombed ii the skeleton tower, it takes place in a different dungeon and from what Jason has said will have some very major differences to the original Entombed.

It's something entirely new, albeit based on what we know, and so I don't see why a discount for those who bought the first game would be needed.

@Garret, shades of doom and Entombed are entirely different games. It would presumably be possible to go through the entire shades of doom without being hit if you were good enough, that is not the case for entombed. All resting over time would do would, as Crashmaster said mean you ended up sitting around for long periods after each fight recovering which is exactly what we were trying to avoid with the resting discussion. You do however bring up a good point about resting in the original game not curing some conditions. If the meals or safe places method of limited rests was used, then it seems resting probably should not cure conditions, as then managing meals and managing curative potions would be another part of the game to consider. If however either Jason's thought about the party being restored after each fight (not an idea I am personally keen on but obviously it's Jason's game), then it seems resting should heal conditions sinse if the challenge is just getting through the one encounter, then the conditions are part of that encounter.

if a rest vs reward system (or even a rest vs punishment system though again I'm not a fan of that), was introduced, then i'd suggest rests do cure zombie rot and such, because that would again encourage players to make their way through the dungeon, reattaching limbs and curing rot as they can as far as they can to earn more rewards.

Btw, I also do think curative potions for status effects should be more common, but perhaps to compensate there should be other bad status effects as well, eg, acid that burns you, slime poisoning that temporarily gellifies your lims, fear that causes you not to be able to act etc.

@Guitarman, the point of modding is to allow freedom with the game, thus I don't think a streight up creator would allow this. For example, suppose I wanted to create a unicorn enemy with the special attack skewer which did pennetrating and holy light damage to the target, caused the limb or torso involved to be "speared" meaning it was severely injured but took extra rounds to recover from as the unicorn finished it's charge and whieled around. All of that would require some quite extensive playing with the properties of attacks, creating a new skewered condition, adding damage types, and likely adding the inactivity of the unicorn afterwards. that would effectively mean programming a new attack and condition into the game with new properties, albeit the programming would be done in an English like language and would be more like spelling out what I want.
that sort of customization just wouldn't be possible with a "insert text and sounds here" type of approach.

Plus of course, getting! sound files onto an Ios device is a pest anyway due to Apple's silly policy of hiding the filing system (I know there are ways around but they're not convenient).

If there were an Ios version it'd probably either just be the main game, or have the ability to download mods from a central server or database, but I couldn't really see mod creation being a thing on Ios.

I liked the resting feature. Besides when you rested there was always a chance you could be attacked mid rest so you weren't completely safe. I can't count the times that happened to me.

Hi.
@Dark, I know what modding is I only suggested a mod creator on iOs to get around apple's annoying restrictions.
@Dingo, your probably right iOs versions wouldn't be able to be modable easily. But with android you could mod no problem since android has none of apple's restrictions. The only problem with android is you would have to modify the modding system to account for the touch screen. Other than that with those three operating systems after you write up entombed it's smoothe sailing.

@Garret, It's not so much whether your party rest in beds or just cherry picking from other games when thinking about mechanics as thinking what works. Both Airic and paladin had a large overworld structure with some safe regions you would return to to rest and resupply before heading out into dangerous dungeon areas. Entombed however pretty much is one entire dangerous dungeon area.

Lack of beds isn't the issue, after all at a pinch people can sleep anywhere (remember the fellowship having a snooze in the guard room in the middle of Moria in lotr?), it's more how things work related to the rest of the game, sinse in Entombed unlike airic and paladin (and I believe bk although I've not played that game), there is no set of safe areas you return to after completing a dungeon, the entire game is one huge dungeon with only a single town which you have only limited access to (remember how your recall amulet used to have to recharge?).

Hence the winning streak mechanic, though having a few safe camp areas that could restore a little hp as a randomly occurring, discoverable bennifit for exploring side passages might be another nice thing to have, sinse one thing I am always a fan of is to make the explorable environment as full of good things as bad.

Yeah. But, I guess we'll just have to see what Jason comes up with.

Some dungeon navigation updates. Navigation is one thing I'm greatly looking forward to improving over Entombed 1. So I've just written a dungeon generator and it works like this:

The main thoroughfare is circular. You can go left or right and you will reach the stairs to the next floor and loop around. These exits may be guarded.

Along the main route are doors to the north and south. These lead to discrete passages that might be self contained or they might meet up with other doors' passages. You can quickly return to the main route without getting lost and each door leads to at least one room, maybe more. Rooms are where interesting things happen. Battles, treasure, and so on.

So imagine a long hall with curious doors on either side. This is the Entombed 2 dungeon layout. If you're confident, you can head right for the exit, provided you can defeat the guards (if there are any.) Or you can spend some time exploring the side passages for battles and treasure. Returning to the main path is easy and there will be a unique footstep sound so you know you're on the right track.

I wrote the generator in a Lua script, so aspiring players in the future can change it or write their own if they want. You could make it more like Entombed 1 or have it make giant sprawling caverns.

@Dingo, nice idea for a mechanic, I do like the idea of calculated risk as regards exploring side turnings and of making the hole thing navicable, it actually does tie in to the  winning streak resting mechanic especially if there are traps and such in the side turnings, though I'll be interested to see how the stair guards work, particularly sinse that would mean characters won't always be at the same level all the time, I really didn't like the way in Entombed 1 you ran out of experience levels about three floors short of the bottom of the dungeon and were just wandering around looking for the final boss.

rooms also allow individual room descriptions which would be nice as well. The only issue I see with the system is with a circular path with side turnings a "have I visited before" key would be even more necessary than with the original entombed, sinse obviously with a circular path it'd be easier to miss side turnings you'd not explored, ---- assuming you wanted to. I'd also suggest having the door sounds shift in pitch the way wind sounds did to indicate whether a door was in or out from your current location on the circle. Even in original entombed it was sometimes possible to go through the wrong door, and with a circular pathway that loops that might be even more likely especially sinse those inner and outer doors are going to be so much more important.

@Bryan, the idea from the Immortal is sort of what I was thinking with my limited meals idea, though there you wouldn't have to trudge back to one specific area sinse the meals would be in your inventory and you could use them whenever, though equally having limited use campsites discoverable while exploring might be a possibility as well. I'm afraid I disagree though on bringing back anything like the resting mechanic from the first gamee sinse as I said it was far too easy to just rest after every fight and at least most of the time resting had no penalty and just took your time up.

If your going to have that sort of mechanic you might as well just have you start each fight with %100 health and no conditions anyway sinse all resting did was needlessly lengthen the amount of time you spent sitting around waiting, though personally as I said I'm not a fan of that idea sinse it feels so artificial.

Sounds fantastic!  This is going to be a great game.

@Violinist, I agree on both counts, if resting is in the game it must have some stratogy, and one of the major problems with the first entombed is that your big plate armour wearing fighter had just as much chance of being attacked as your cloth tunic wearing mage, which meant spending points on armour very pointless and meant that combat was so ridiculously offense based it wasn't funny.

I am fairly certain though jason will fix this sinse it was one of the most common complaints with the original entombed. Myself, the system i always liked was assigning your party to a front/back rank, with each rank needing at least one person. Those on the front had a %75 greater chance of being attacked, while those on the back were more likely to miss with melee attacks (though magic and ranged weapons would be unaffected. This could produce some interesting tactics, particularly if there were techniques especially designed to mess with the rank system, eg a barbarian or paladin might have a charge technique which let them hit someone on the back rank, or the brawler might have a "push" tecnique which caused someone on the enemy's back rank to be pushed to the front where other characters could wale on them in melee.
Another idea might be to have everyone have a "protect" setting like the paladin ability in entombed but being perminant and not taking up technique points or causing extra damage to the protector, where you could specifically assign one character to protect and take attacks instead of another. That could have some fun options particularly if you could change who was protecting who during each battle, eg, you start with your fighter protecting your mage, but then your thief gets waled on so your fighter has to change duty, then your fighter finds themselves in dire streights so your mage has to take up protecting and take a couple of hits while your fighter quafffs a healing potion. You could also have fun designing techniques and spells around this, eg maybe the ranger's true shot can hit  it's target irrispective of who was protectingwho,  or maybe thieves get a backstab ability for this purpose, or perhaps paladins get a shield block ability where they don't just take melee hits for their target but have an increase chance of blocking them with their shield and reducing damage.
What Jason will go for we'll see,but sinse this was such a major issue in Entombed and something that did cause real problems in game balance I'm fairly sure it'll be resolved here.

@Dingo, I fully agree hardness needs tweaking, sinse that caused major issues further down the dungeon especially with ranged weapons and your wolf. However, one thing I did always like in Entombed was that armor reduced chances of taking damage rather than adding to your over all hp, I also did like the different material and creation options for weapons and armor sinse it did indeed feel that each item had some unique qualities to it, although given the object distribution in the dungeon you were never in too much of a situation where materials got compared, eg, on the first few levels you always found copper, further down you always found bronze, then iron etc.

I disagree however about the limb targeting system, I really liked that aspect of the game sinse it both lead to some very nice tactical options such as disarming your enemy by attacking their hands or knocking them down with attacks to the feet, not to mention whacks to the head, (though that could get a little broken with some techniques like ice blast and assassinate). It also always felt more realistic to me in terms of getting an idea of what an enemy was like to be able to target body parts than just being told "here is a goblin with so much hp, especially when you got to some of the crazier creatures like spiderss or etins.

I think what I liked best in Entombed was the fact that so much of the time the player was required to think on their feet and make the best of what they were given in terms of party, in terms of enemy distribution etc. It wasn't just a matter of minimaxing your equipment and skills and then hammering attack, you were always required to think what you were doing. for example, on one occasion I remember a beta build of the game where a code mistake ridiculously over powered the drake to insane levels to the point that it's fire breath was pretty much an instant killer.
I managed to defeat it by growing my ogre brawler and using takedown to keep the drake on the floor so it always got up rather than attacked, while my other characters alternated between chipping away at the drake's health and handing out the healing potions just in case the drake did attack. It was a long battle but it worked.

I definitely like the row idea, particularly if as I said we're going to have techniques that mess with the rows, especially for characters using shorter weapons, eg, a thieve's backstab.

My only question is if we're having three rows instead of two, what happens if a character on the second row gets taken out? Also, how do the rows relate to characters being knocked down but not necessarily killed? If a front row character were knocked down, would the second row become the front until she/he got up? Indeed, could the rows be reshufled in battle at all, so that if as I said above your fighter was in trouble she/he could duck behind your second row character.

Also, in Entombed one we had several occasions where computer controled characters fought on your side, your wolf, skeletons etc.  I did like that option sinse it lead to some interesting battles, and also had potention for extending, eg, extra pets to buy, computer controled mercinaries to hier in the town to help you out (not to mention all the fun with chalm spells). Would you be able to tab to a computer controled character and assign them a row? or would they do it for themselves?