Monday 23 April 2012

HyperRogue III

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Crossroads
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Necromancers of Graveyard
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Demons of Hell
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Cultists of Cthulhu
HyperRogue III has been released!

The most visible change is the addition of graphics. This will hopefully make it more playable for people who are not hardcore roguelike fans. Of course, the ASCII display from the previous versions is still available (press "v" for configuration, then "w" and "m"), it also seems to run more smoothly on some of the older machines.

The floor graphics are slightly based on the works of M. C. Escher, one of the few artists who did use hyperbolic geometry in the past. You need to press 'v' to activate the new floors, as they are more confusing and slower to draw.

Also, four new lands have been added (the Land of Eternal Motion, Graveyard, R'Lyeh, and Hell).

Another big thing is that you now have a quest, instead of just aiming for high scores. You are no longer able to immediately enter all the lands, some of them will appear only if you have met certain requirements (most of them related to score). Ultimately, you will be able to reach Hell, and find the Orb of Yendor. Of course you can still aim for high scores, too.

This makes the challenges in Hell (which I find quite interesting) a reward for the most careful players, while HyperRogue II allowed everyone to see everything. It has good and bad points, but I think it is worth it to motivate the players.

And some balance improvements. Overall, I think this is enough changes to change the name again, to HyperRogue III (Hyperbolic Rogue was the preliminary concept work, and HyperRogue II was the 7DRL challenge version).

Have fun, and good luck in your quest for the Orb of Yendor!

Friday 6 April 2012

Necklace of the Eye version 5.1

The 7DRL challenge has created a wave of good roguelikes, some of them using the newest libtcod version. Drakefire Chasm is very good, but I could not get it into fullscreen on my Linux machine. So I have tested it with NotEye, and found some bugs (not very surprising, since Brogue was the only libtcod roguelike I have tested it on in the past). NotEye version 5.1 fixes these bugs, and adds some minor new features. I can play Drakefire Chasm on Linux in fullscreen now. :)
  • includes a config for Drakefire Chasm and Top Dog
  • libtcod fix: TCOD_sys_wait_for_keypress now stops waiting on a NotEye keypress too (this one broke both games above)
  • streaming fix (including libtcod): zipped stream is now flushed correctly (this bug made Top Dog halt in some circumstances)
  • NotEye no longer needs to be able to find the font file when running a libtcod game (it uses its own font instead)
  • Vapors of Insanity tiles are included (and some of them are used by Drakefire Chasm)
  • Some new fonts added to the selection: Fantasy 16x16, double-sized 8x8 terminal font (for square-shaped games such as Top Dog)
  • grass icon in Brogue is raised
  • a dev mode added to the libtcod.noe config, which can be used to get the RGB colors and positions on mouseover
  • an option to make screenshots with F4 (useful for animations)
  • the website has been redesigned to provide a more detailed information about each supported game
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Breathing fire
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FPP
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Dialog
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ISO
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a Priest casting a spell, in 3D
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ISO
Drakefire Chasm and Top Dog via NotEye

Unfortunately Sword in the Hand is not supported, since it uses libtcod 1.5.0. Porta Lucis uses a Visual Studio version of libtcod (I am not sure which version) and I cannot try it. Download NotEye 5.1 here!

Sunday 1 April 2012

HyperRogue II in news and videos

Recently there have been some news and videos featuring HyperRogue. It has been mentioned on the Roguelike Radio in its 7DRL 2012 episode. I think it was Jeff Lait who has noticed that, due to the special structure of the map, monsters chasing you will usually form a line. Indeed, this is a result of the hyperbolic nature of the world: you cannot have several monsters moving on parallel lines, unless they are on the same line. And I thought that it was just a result of simplifications in my pathfinding algorithm. ;) A nice observation, thanks!

Geek New Wave has a review of HyperRogue II (as well as of the original Hyperbolic Rogue), and also an interview with me. Have fun reading it :)

There are also some guys who post videos featuring recent 7DRLs. Game Hunter is blind running all of them, and here is how he sees HyperRogue:
I see that he has missed some important things in his blind run. You can mouse over the map, which explains what is what. This is most useful while having mirror images, as you can also see their cursors, which shows you where they would go. He did not visit the Desert, only touched the Living Caves, and ignored the Jungle (I think he confused it with Living Caves and thought he had already been there). Quite unfortunate, I think these areas are more fun than Alchemists Lab and the Land of Mirrors that he visited. Of course he did not see most of the magical orbs, but it is understandable in such a short try.

Also, dewaldo is posting videos of 7DRLs after becoming more familiar with them:
This video explains more about the game. I think it is a bit funny how he thought that he cannot do any move, while he actually had one (he could press '.' to wait for the slime beasts to move next to him). The game always informs you when you can no longer move.

Thanks to all the authors, and to you for reading this. :)