Things are starting to come together now... I can feel the final crunch approaching :)
* Both the player and monsters start with items. Different monsters will start with different items, e.g. the Stylophone Clan members will start with Stylophones. * (basic) code to handle stacks of items is in * .... which also means that weapon firing code is in, for both monsters and the player. * Map discovery is back - the dungeon layout will be hidden when you start the level * Explosive weapons implemented * And not mentioned earlier, but the visibility/LOS code is now in its fully optimised state. Only takes a few seconds to change room, and 90% of that time is spent in screen updates.
The uncompressed code sits at 26,946 bytes; the compressed code is 16,114, although I can shrink it further. A runtime check shows I have about 1.5K of memory spare, so there's still some room for expansion. But preferably I want to have all the code finished tonight, so I can spend the remaining couple of days testing, balancing, and fixing. I'm not sure exactly which features I'll have a chance to squeeze in, and the player currently has two stats (intelligence and wisdom) that do nothing.