Core gameplay

1. Make alignment effect spellcasting; see additional gameplay "four world types" (done for "Entropic")
2. Framework for ongoing effects
   • Poison effect, Weaken effect
3. Spells done:
   • bat, bear, crocodile, dire wolf, faun (including "panic" effect), horse, giant rat, eagle, elf
   • orc, goblin, hobgoblin, ogre, manticore, gryphon, centaur, king cobra, lion, unicorn
   • wraith, ghost, phantom, banshee, vampire, zombie, skeleton, spectre
   • Gold Dragon, Green Dragon, Red Dragon, Giant, Troll, Pegasus, Hyrda, Harpy
   • Law, Chaos I and II, Vengeance, Dark Power, Justice, Decree, Magic Wood, Shadow Forest
   • Magic castle, Dark citadel, Magic Sword, Knife, Bow, Wings, Armour, Shield, Shadow Form, Subversion
   • Magic Fire, Gooey Blob, Raise Dead, Wall, Turmoil
4. Undead do not leave corpses; fix in kill()
5. Illusions, Disbelieve spell
   • "X was an illusion!" on death (currently in Disbelieve routine; move out to kill()
6. Make _createdata tally number of chaos/law spells and their total levels, for aiding balance.
7. Make _createdata tally and display ratio between summoning spells and other spells.
8. Various special qualities: Incorporeality, Resistances, Vulnerabilities, Immunities, Damtype, Regeneration
   • Constructs should be immune to poison, psychic attacks, weakness, etc.
9. Don't let players select a ranged spell that has no possible targets.
10. 2nd infobox for mouse-hover creature, expanded spell info.
11. 1 turn warning before fickle spells (e.g. Castle) vanish. Give chance to make stable with appropriately aligned spell.
12. Fix bug: Sometimes two units end up in the same (non-passenger) square. The code shouldn't allow this, so something is up.
13. Fix bug: 2nd infobox is overlaying both mount and passenger info.
14. Spectacular wizard death; unsummon creatures.
15. Fix bug:
    • Characters cannot attack diagonally between two other creatures, because the targetting floodfill is blocked by them.
    • Fix: Wizards are jumping off and onto their mounts.
    • Crash in delete_overlay() when "wound" entity was invalid
    • Subversion should not be able to target other wizards.
16. Ai Behaviour:
    • Tell AI how to handle mounts
    • Tell AI how to handle archers, spellcasters -> Do not send into close combat
    • Tell AI how to handle skirmishers -> hit and run Appears to work anyway
    • Tell AI to concentrate on either law or chaos spells, and move to best casting position for such.
    • Tell AI to consider using disbelieve when approached by a powerful creature.
    • Tell AI to compare targets when mounting or attacking
    • Tell AI creatures not to attack creatures that are immune to its attacks, or that are faster, or that are harmless (constructs not habouring a wizard)
    • Fix bug: AI not dismounting to enter magic wood
    • Tell AI to advance his wizard if no spells left.
    • Fix bug: Optimum distance for archers; they just seem to cower at the corner of the board.
    • Movement: Avoid moving back onto tile previously traversed this turn.
    • Fix AI mounted behaviour (mount still moving to its own target, rather than the wizard's)
      • Prefer "protect" mounts over any other.
    • Focus preferences: Skirmishers -> Controllers; Brutes -> Soldiers; Soldiers -> Skirmishers
    • Do not cast magic wood / shadow forest if already surrounded by one.
    • Fix: Wizards prefer combat over movement; they should only attack when they are at their destination
    • Movement: Allow movement into difficult / hurty terrain if no other path available. (Give a value in pathfinding)
    • Movement: if only 1 orthagonal movement left, and preferred route is diagonal, then re-route with orthangonal-only movement and use it up.
    • Check wizard preferences for attack spells, they don't seem to be casting them at the moment.
    • make AI wizard go to combat not when out of spells, but when out of available spells (that is, they haven't cast one except disbelieve)
    • Don't cast teleport spell unless in danger.
    • Remove dangerous terrain from ai teleport targets.
17. Avoid duplicate conditions.
18. Allow players to input their wizard's name
19. Enemy steathly creatures (wraith, ghost, spectre, phantom, vampire) should not be visible or targetable if they are X distance away from your monsters.
20. Engaged in combat (apart from skirmishers, and flying creatures vs. grounded creatures) (Perhaps make a special feature of "soldier" types)
    • Look at diagonal combat during engagement; seems to disallow it still.
21. Gooey blob / Tanglevine fix: immobilizing dead creatures; wizard's dying from "none" damage.
22. Trees and castles should block line of sight, and protect passenger from area attacks. (done for castles and walls, but left trees LOS free)
23. Make area-effect damage destroy terrain if it is vulnerable to that damage type.
24. New timer (3 count) for self-invoked ongoing effects (such as "defensive")
25. Wall clearly doesn't work, particularly with dy=0 shots. Try again.
26. Get rid of Init stat; just complicates things. Use a linked list to make initiative order: let wizard with lowest number of creatures go first.
27. AI Behaviour:
    • An advancing wizard is still stopping at "optimum distance".
    • Still seems to be shooting at pointless objects such as unoccupied Magic Wood.
    • Targeting: Prefer to target creatures that are vulnerable to the attack's damage type.
    • Creatures guarding their owners should might move to harras enemies attacking their owner, even if they are faster.
    • Teach AI to flank.
28. If persistant damage is not high enough to bypass damage resistance, then don't apply it at all.
29. Endgame
30. Save wizard stats; use "record" type, with name$ and value fields for forwards compatibiltiy
31. Save world stats
32. Bug fix: Don't know how this happened, but harpy song adjusts the alpha of the characters it immobilizes
33. Begin to test on other machines.

Core display, interface

1. During spell selection, show spell range/available targets
2. Creatures should make a sound when they move to attack.
3. Ensure smooth messages and music throughout. At the moment, text display is frozen during some effects, and music pauses during postphase.
4. Better demarkation between different wizard's turns.
5. Beam lightning effect; horizontal from caster to target for ranged attacks; vertical stabs for bursts. Still needs improvement when beams fire along z axis due to flatness of sprite. Additional sparkly particles.
6. snow trail for ice attacks
7. Camera pitch during zoom (Alex)
8. Regenerated vampire/troll retains wound overlay.
9. Fix cameraproject sprite selection after board has rotated
   • Orient numberpad directional control to camera rotation
     • Display arrow showing "north" (8)
   • Messages - in different colours for different types of message.
10. Raise Dead SFX
11. Wizards have 1px bars above their heads (It seems that even sprites have a depth in Blitz. May be possible to fix by ensuring a black border on all sprites.) Does not appear to be fixable; only noticable when zoomed in.
    • Randomly generated wizard sprites, then. (Can easily be expanded)
12. Continue to work on sprites; poison sprite needs some sharpening. Wizard sprites look naff. Make them better. Posture and proportion.
13. Option of larger sprites.
14. Each display update, select random grid location, create particle effects proportional to alignment saturation.
15. Highlight selected grid section / creature, a la old Ataxia.
16. Option for playing in fixed overhead mode.
17. Icon strip in top-right for game options (sprite size, music on/off, etc)
18. Improve front screen.
19. Attach scrolling info text to icons (on main menu, explaining game types - on spell icons - on adventure mode icons)
    • Use spell cards instead.
20. Display ongoing effects as small icons above creature
21. Incremental message generation, a la original Chaos (e.g. "Wizard" (pause) "casts" (pause) "spell")
22. Display % hit chance when considering an attack

1. Sound effects:
   • Special sound effect and pause for special attacks (bite, bloodfury, etc)
   • Special sound effect for undead and constructs death
   • Fix death/dispel channels

Additional display, interface

1. Try beam effects again.
2. Random sprites for trees
3. Better shot animation for non-magical ranged attacks.
4. Different style spell icons for rank2 spells. Cyan/red icons for law/chaos spells.
5. Mark rank2 creatures on the board as such.
6. In areas of high law/chaos, terrain effects such as flowers/crystals or menacing spikes.
7. Nice border and texture for spell / character information cards.
8. XP orbs, a la Ataxia I
9. press "I" or screen button to get expanded information about a creature

Additional gameplay

1. Law / Chaos spell should cause some other effect, such as stunning nearby creatures of opposing alignment.
2. AI to form creature groups that move together (when new monster summoned, either assign to a waiting group or start a new group and allow old one to start moving.)
3. Rank 2 spells
   • Limited availability; rare in initial mix, could be gained through gaining X amount of experience, finding a powerstone, etc.
   • Rank 2 creatures are named, have double endurance, better saves. (Names might be random ("duskclaw"), or specific ("Aello" the harpy), for example)
   • When spell cast at over 100% success (or equivilent per game world), summon spell may be either ranked or multiple depending on wizard.
   • Other ranked spells might include powerful attack spells ("disintegrate")
4. In addition to ranked creatures, unique summon spells (i.e. only one available in any particular game) that summon particular creatures (which may be ranked or not)
   • Each world has its own unique spells and summons.
5. Spell groups; wizards select two groups. Most groups should have a mix of law and chaos.
6. Single player campaign
7. Wizard level select for multiplayer, but higher levels need to be unlocked through previous games.
8. Each game played effects the game world in general, in some fashion.
   • Allow players to enter their wizard's names, which are added to a list of names.
   • Make wizard appearance random, using name as the seed.
   • Track each wizard's performance over time.
9. From front screen: "Book of Wizards", checks a named wizard's records. "Book of Spells", contains details of all spells seen by player.
10. Algomusic
    • Make it better. (ongoing anyway)
    • Associate creature group types with specific musical instruments. Angels = harp, Fey = pipes, Goblinoids = trumpets, etc.
    • Associate looped background noise with environment / terrain effect.
11. "Really big maps with castles 'n' stuff" (Thanks Alex)
12. Special attacks/qualities for general creature types, and for specific creatures (In general, done, except for "brutal strikes")
    • Give "smashers" (ogres, etc) a variety of brutal strikes. (Vic)
    • Allow "soldiers" to engage enemy in combat
13. Four world types:
    • Percentage chance of casting ("Limbo", classic Chaos)
      • Alignment level effects percentage. Ranked creatures have greater effect
      • Illusions cast at 100%
    • Rarity (less chance of owning a higher level spell)
      • Strong alignment may allow spontanious upgrade of a spell
      • Illusion as a seperate, permament spell, summons a random rare creature as an illusion
    • Spell points
      • Alignment level effects spell point cost
      • Illusions only use up 1 spell point.
    • Casting time (One extra turn to cast for every 5 levels over)
      • Strong aligmnent reduces casting time.
      • Illusions only take one turn to cast (might be too much of a giveaway?)
    • These ideas don't appear to be mutually exclusive, so there can be one world for every combination.
    • Display many different worlds on the title page. Icons are a representation of the law/chaos state of each world, which is retained after each game. Sandbox world which is reset after every battle.
      • Display each world's "Lord" (previous winner, who always attempts to defend his title)
    • World variables
    • grid size (Vic)
    • powerful undead (per original Chaos)
    • weak illusions (may be disbelieved as they attack or are struck)
    • alignment saturation effects (global, spell, creature, inverse square/linear, etc)
    • owned creatures unsummoned on casters death, continue to be controlled, or become independent.
14. Different worlds to have different cellular automata properties on the alignment grid (thanks Alex)
    • Give alignment a "surface tension" so that a uniform spread begins to "clump together" like droplets.
    • Self-balancing: If total law or chaos is over certain value, auto-saturate at point of greatest opposing alignment
    • Drifting
    • Sharpen, blur, or any number of other filters
15. Spontaneous opening of gates in areas of high law or chaos, from which demons or angels spill, announcing "Destroy all living!" or "Justice will be served!" respectively.
16. Editors for user-designed content.
17. Magic Castle / Dark Fortress to have some other effect, some use other than as a mount.
18. Flanking bonus; teach AI to flank with skirmishers.
19. Give player option of targetting any grid square in create_shoot_targets() [for destroying terrain, etc]

Additional spells

1. Law III, Chaos III, Ice Bolt, Weaken, Fire Wave
2. Crystal (spreads, like fire/blob, but lawful and in regular mannar)
3. Constructions: watchtowers, fortifications, catapults, ballistas
4. Greater variety of personal weapons. One that I always meant to put in Ataxia was "wraithblade" that turns slain foes into wraiths under your control.
5. Spell (couldren, altar...) that allows combining other spells to (maybe) form a more powerful one. (Like in Powerstone 2)
6. Phylactery - contains wizard's soul. If the wizard dies, he respawns at the phylactery (destroying it), sans buffs. If the phylactery is destroyed, wizard is killed, so must be protected.
   • AI will send his wizard recklessly into battle after casting this, but will assign creatures to guard it.
7. Tangle vine, Flood (puts out fire, but helps gooey blob grow), Healing pool
8. Powerful chaos creature called "Ataxia" that can rampage across the board.
9. Variety of raise dead spells:
   • Ressurect; lawful,
   • Raise Dead; creature becomes zombie - change to "brute" class, undead resistances/vulnerabilities
   • Skeletal army; rare, globally summons zombies at every corpse
   • Raise Dead II; creates wight.
10. Summoning stone; you lob it over there and its adjacent square are available as summon points.
11. Some obvious but boring ones: Clone, Teleport
12. Circe's Transformation, Corpse Explosion
13. Living Spell: will need one creature image for each damage type. Creates a monster from an attack spell.
14. Creatures:
    • phantom, banshee, destier (warhorse)
    • Norse mythology: dwarves, giants, valkyries, varulf (werewolf), vargr (warg), hrimfaxi(rimemane), skinfaxi (shining mane), sleipnir/grani (8-legged horse), hildisvini (battle swine)
    • Forest: Giant spiders, scorpions, wasps
    • Shahnama: Karkadann (makes ground shake, loud bellow which frightens, if it kills an elephant it goes blind), Shadhahvar (antelope with tempting song)
    • Spitting Cobra, hobgoblin crossbowman (thanks Vic), [requires more powerful elven archers first]
    • Demons and angels with random sprites.
    • Heraldic: Hippogriff (law), Gargoyle (law, scares away evil spirits), Lympago (man/lion), Yale (horse-like, tusks and horns, aquatic)
    • Aegean: Basilisk (chaos, poisonous bird/snake thing), Ker (chaos, fly, bloodthirst: a slight winged female), gorgons (chaos, immobilizes, when slain may raise a pegasus), minotaur (chaos), salamander (fire)
15. Other spells from Lords of Chaos - Pixie (in as "brownie"), gorilla, elephant scorpion, spider, demon, flood, magic eye