RainbowRogue

Console-native roguelike exploring a seven-world (4D) dungeon rendered with bracket-lib.

Description

RainbowRogue drops you into a stacked dungeon where every floor exists simultaneously across seven attunement planes: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Each plane is its own tactical layer with bespoke hazards, monster templates, and traversal rules. You can phase between worlds mid-run, scout overlapping geometries, and line up multi-world plays—stepping through a smoldering Red corridor before blinking into Indigo for a flank, or freezing foes in Blue so their echoes in Violet arrive staggered.

Core pillars

• Spectrum shifting: Cycle worlds on demand to discover alternate tile sets, portals, and monster behaviors sharing the same substrate.
• Floor and world mobility: Climb floors via stairs while keeping your current world, or phase worlds on the fly while staying anchored to a floor.
• ECS-driven encounters: Specs-powered components drive AI, visibility, quick actions, and cross-world synchronization so every action can ripple between planes.
• Readable, moddable data: Monsters, world rules, and procedural substrates live in src/data so you can iterate on balance without touching the loop.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Rust toolchain (1.80+ recommended; install via rustup).
• A Unicode-friendly terminal.

Build & run

# clone and enter the repo
git clone https://github.com/<your-org>/rainbowrogue.git
cd rainbowrogue

# run in debug (fast iteration)
cargo run

# for smoother animation and optimized AI ticks
cargo run --release

Troubleshooting

• On macOS, grant the terminal “Input Monitoring” to ensure crossterm receives PageUp/PageDown events.
• If fonts render incorrectly, force ASCII glyph mode by exporting BRACKET_ASCII_FONT=1 before launching.

Persistent data

• run_stats.json in the project root tracks your run counter and best depth even if you close the game. Delete the file (or press R twice while alive) to reset progress completely.
• Set RR_VERBOSE=1 (or run with --verbose) to stream the in-game message log and final turn transcript to stdout—handy for automated playtests (e.g., RR_VERBOSE=1 cargo run or cargo run -- --verbose).

Player Manual

Objective

Descend through as many dungeon floors as you can, unify the spectrum by activating portals in each world, and survive the cross-world ecosystems trying to collapse the lattice.

Controls

Action	Keys
Move Up	Up Arrow, W, K, Numpad 8
Move Down	Down Arrow, S, J, Numpad 2
Move Left	Left Arrow, A, H, Numpad 4
Move Right	Right Arrow, D, L, Numpad 6
Move Up-Left	Y, Numpad 7
Move Up-Right	U, Numpad 9
Move Down-Left	B, Numpad 1
Move Down-Right	N, Numpad 3
Wait	.
Cycle worlds forward/backward	Tab / Backspace
Change dungeon floor	PageUp (descend while on >) / PageDown (ascend while on <)
Restart run / reset stats	R (restart after death; double-press while alive to wipe run stats)
Use quickbar item slots	1–4
Close the game	Esc or close the terminal window
Debug: Step Turn	T (forces a turn advancement)
Debug: Dump State	P (dumps current game state to verbose log)

Tips:

• Movement spends a turn even if blocked; watch the combat log to know whether you bumped an enemy or a wall.
• Cycling worlds re-centers AI intent, so you can shake pursuit or force monsters to rematerialize on safer tiles.

HUD & feedback

• Top banner: Shows build tag, current frame, and overall turn counter.
• Run tracker: Row 2 displays the current run number and the deepest floor you've cleared across all runs this session.
• World + floor readout: Highlights your active world name and floor index.
• Stair indicator: When you stand on < or > tiles the info line appends On < … or On > …, and a color-coded ^ (ascend) or v (descend) badge appears near the quickbar so you know PageUp/PageDown will work even without reading text.
• Vitality line: Displays HP in color-coded text (orange warning ≤60%, flashing alert ≤30%).
• HUD ring: Seven wedges represent ROYGBIV worlds with cooldown pips and modifiers.
• Quickbar: Appears on row 5 with [slot] name (uses) entries for consumables bound to keys 1–4.
• Message log: Bottom six rows narrate movement, discoveries, combat rolls, and health warnings.

The Seven Worlds

Each world has its own unique properties, monsters, and tactical considerations.

• Red World: "Heat blooms amplify melee damage."
  • Monsters: Ember Imp, Cinder Wolf
• Orange World: "Chemical clouds respond to wind tunnels."
  • Monsters: Acid Puff, Flask Golem
• Yellow World: "Lens-prisms extend FOV and detect traps."
  • Monsters: Prism Ghost, Sun Mite
• Green World: "Regrowth tiles slowly mend allies."
  • Monsters: Thorn Hopper, Bloom Sentinel
• Blue World: "Stillwater grants crit bonuses to ranged."
  • Monsters: Glacier Crab, Stillwater Shade
• Indigo World: "Mindstorms favor teleport talent rolls."
  • Monsters: Mindworm, Phase Stalker
• Violet World: "Curses thread through unseen resonance."
  • Monsters: Hex Bat, Veil Revenant

Traversal & combat

1. Substrate awareness: Every floor shares geometry across worlds; walls in one plane might be passable or hazardous in another.
2. Portals vs. stairs: Stairs move floors but preserve your current world. Portals (and attunements) swap worlds while staying on the same floor. Descending only works while standing on a downward stair (>), and ascending requires the matching upward stair (<) so you can't spam PageUp/PageDown mid-room.
3. Visibility: Exploring reveals tiles per-world. Swapping worlds can expose unseen tiles even on rooms you already visited.
4. Monsters: Each world seeds its own monster templates; leverage vulnerabilities (e.g., frost-stalled Blue mobs, psychic Indigo casters).
5. Consumables: Slots trigger instant abilities (heals, prisms, buffs). When empty, the log will remind you the slot is vacant.

Progression pointers

• Descending for the first time auto-generates the next floor and populates it with world-appropriate monsters; use this to farm safer stretches before pushing deeper.
• Revisit earlier floors after unlocking more worlds to loot gated rooms or rescue stranded portals.
• Keep an eye on the log after shifts—newly visible tile counts hint at unexplored branches.
• If HP warnings trigger, stabilize in a safer world (Green regen zones, Yellow visibility) before diving back into harsher planes.
• If your HP hits zero the spectrum collapses, freezing the run; press R to re-anchor into a fresh run or Esc to exit immediately.
• Run stats persist between sessions via run_stats.json, so try to push the "Deepest cleared floor" number higher each attempt.

Contributing

See ROADMAP.md for the staged milestone breakdown and use bd (beads) issues for task tracking. Planning documents belong in history/ if you generate new ones.