Tuesday 27 December 2011

NotEye 4.0

Necklace of the Eye 4.0 is released!

The focus of this release is a streaming protocol. You can use it to record and view recordings (which you can also annotate with messages, or perform simple editing), or use it over network, allowing clients to watch you while playing, or share a game between two or more people. You can let the viewers use their own mode (plain ASCII, tiles or FPP) or make them use a specific one. I suppose that, for simple uses, it is easier to set up than a SSH server, although some care needs to be taken for safety.

My next goal will probably be to make libtcod able to communicate via the NotEye protocol, thus allowing NotEye to work with libtcod roguelikes, not only system console ones.

Have fun!

Friday 23 December 2011

Vapors of Insanity 0.54

Vapors of Insanity 0.54 has been released!

The focus of this release is to try to become a bit more friendly to newbies. The right side of the main screen has been reworked, and it contains icons, which can be clicked to perform some action. You can also right click on objects to open an extra window about the given objects, which show actions available and contents for the given object. Also most common uses can be executed by simply dragging one object to another. As always, this is still a work of progress, but I want to release a version before Christmas to show what is being worked on.


As for more changes...

  • You can now choose from several modes of movement input. There is still a VI mode for hardcore roguelike and VI fans, but you can also select two simpler modes.
  • A 'Rogue' specialization is added. Rogues are good at hiding in shadow, striking from the back, and they know a simple teleportation spell. Overall, the facing mechanics used by VoI are supposed to allow a nice stealth-based game, and Rogues exploit that. (Although it seems it is quite hard to actually perform a backstab.)
  • Mouse navigation of the main menu.
  • Tooltips are shown when you are trying to use the mouse in an in-game menu, so you no longer need to guess what a click does. Anyway, when playing with a mouse, you probably won't need to use menus that much especially item selection menus).
  • Widemap now covers fullscreen (and can be navigated with the mouse, of course).
  • Spells obtained via concatenation now have icons which present what they do.
  • Some new icons. Armor icons are mirrored now.
  • Players no longer start with hooded cloaks (since they restrict vision, and I don't want to give bad impressions about FOV).
  • Fixes with AI (to make backstabbing more playable).
  • "Power of sight" can now be used to see the FOV of another creature.
  • Items in the backpack no longer lose color (unless you want this).
  • Some other minor bugfixes.
  • Tutorial now has two modes, for keyboard and mouse users.
  • "Spells" now shows mana, and "skills" shows XP and free XP pool.
So, not many gameplay chnages, but I have not had much time recently. And of course... there is not much time left, but fans are recommended to vote for Vapors of Insanity and my other games on Roguelike of the Year. Happy Holidays :)

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Hyperbolic Rogue in action

This video by ortoslon shows Hyperbolic Rogue in action, and how to get a score of 138$. Thanks!


My current high score is 163$. Other scores I have seen posted in Internet seem to be around $60. Are there any better scores?

I am planning to write a bigger game based on Hyperbolic Rogue geometry one day, but it will have to wait (I am thinking about the next 7DRL challenge)...