HyperRogue 4.2 smoothly released!

It turns out that OpenGL works with the Minkowski hyperboloid too! As a result, HyperRogue 4.2 is released, using OpenGL for display, which works MUCH more smoothly than previous versions. In case of any problems, the non-OpenGL renderer is still available (run with the "-o" option or press F2 o to toggle), and without OpenGL, anti-aliasing can be turned on or off (F2 Shift+O).

Also, fixed a crash bug with Ivy plants — it affected the Android version (and thus was fixed in 4.1a for Android), not sure whether it affected the desktop version too.

To celebrate the smoother engine, a better looking Wolf has been added. I am happy with the current graphics, but if you are interested in making alternative vector-based art, we could work on it ;) Don't forget that you can press F6 to draw your own floors and player character. (In the Roguelike Radio episode 83, Kawa mentioned how the @ sign traditionally used in roguelikes can represent any kind of character that the player imagines. In HyperRogue, you can actually draw one! Well, the editor is very simple for now, colors are not supported yet.)

There are no gameplay changes. See the HyperRogue website for more information about HyperRogue.

I am still working on porting the changes to Android, hopefully the Android port will also run more smoothly soon.

As expected, you can now vote for Roguelike of the Year on ASCII Dreams. Don't forget to vote for HyperRogue, Hydra Slayer, and ADOM! If you want to support HyperRogue, bitcoin donations are now possible (not sure whether they work, though).

Download HyperRogue 4.2 here (Windows+source+music, 44MB); if you already have the music, you can download the version without music (1MB). Happy hacking!

HyperRogue 4.1 is released!

HyperRogue 4.1 is released, with the following improvements:

• In the Android version, the Android-standard menu for user settings (which are saved now), and the game log is available from the menu. (This was actually done in version 4.0b, but not announced here.)
• Added tags to the OGG files. (Actually this was already done in "hyperrogue-40t.zip", but not announced here.)
• An option to reduce the framerate limit to conserve CPU energy. Also framerate is reduced in non-game screens and when the app is not in focus. (Thanks to Damyan Ivanov for suggesting this!) Unfortunately desktop only, for now (on Android the framerate is low even with full CPU usage, at least on my devices).
• Alchemist's lab fixes: all monsters (except eagles and ghosts) now adhere to the rules. Fixed a bug with pushing Thumpers through. Mimics and mirrors no longer damage the slime colors. Worms and Ivies can enter the Alchemist's Lab now. Flash/lightning spells now copy the slime color under PC when used in the Alchemist's Lab (thus allowing easy travel). (Thanks to Andrew Farnsley for mentioning this and several other bugs!)
• The Jungle is easier now. (Previously, either a single ivy with 7 branches, or two ivies next to each other with 5 and 4 branches, were generated; the ivy got less branches if the required cell was blocked. Now, the harder case only happens in 25% cases (instead of 50%), and the ivy is not generated at all if some of the locations for branches are blocked by other ivies.)
• The greater demon description now explains the mechanics is more detail. Mimics and mirrors no longer kill greater demons (they turn them to lesser demons instead).
• Fixed a minor bug with Thumper power draining incorrectly, and a bug with bonfire power draining twice as fast as stated.
• Eagles and ghosts no longer fall or collapse tiles in the Land of Eternal Motion. Also, Eagles now actually fly (i.e., can go through lakes, chasms, and slime).
• The Esc-screen now displays the last messages (scrollable with the arrow keys).
• Contributors are now listed in the Credits section in Help.
• Added missing license files to the package.
• Fixed the filename in hyperrogue-music.txt for Cocytus.

Download HyperRogue 4.1 here (Windows+source+music, 44MB); if you already have hyperrogue-40t.zip, you can download the version without music (1MB). The Android version should be available on Google Play soon.

See also: the HyperRogue website

Have fun! And don't forget to vote for HyperRogue, Hydra Slayer, and ADOM in the Roguelike of the Year poll, which should come soon on ASCII Dreams!

interview and ADOM pre20

Rather old news, but there has been an interview with me on the Roguelike Radio!

Also, ADOM prerelease 20 is available (for everyone). It includes a newer version of NotEye than the one available on the official NotEye's website. But I am going to wait a bit before releasing the new version officially.

Stay tuned!

NotEye 7.3

NotEye 7.3+Hydra Slayer 15.3 is released!

NotEye 7.3 has the following changes visible to players. You can see them in Hydra Slayer 15.3, as well as in ADOM Prerelease 17, which is coming soon to donors!

• Some crash bugs in NotEye 7.2 have been fixed.
• The display does not jump to center of the new player position immediately—instead, it moves smoothly.
• Smooth character movement animations in games which support it, such as Hydra Slayer or ADOM. There are some issues with it, but still, I think it is a nice feature.
• Auto-scrolling, manual scrolling, and movement animation speeds are configurable.
• OpenGL is now automatically turned on in the FPP mode (this previously worked in ADOM, and has been moved to NotEye).
• Fixed a problem with out-of-window mouse on Mac (thanks to jt).
• Ctrl+wheel zooming has a limit now.
• The Minimap now tends to use the reserve lines if they were allocated.

For those who want to use NotEye for their own games, there are also some more technical changes:

• Noteye uses Vector and Rectangle structures now (see vectors.noe), instead of {x=, y=} or {x0=, y0=, x1=, y1=} structures. This makes some code more elegant (we no longer need to do the same thing for X and Y coordinates separately).
• Adjustments for the Roguelike Bundle: NotEye detects if it is a part of the Bundle, and adjusts its menus accordingly.
• Added "pickinteger"/"pickbool" functions to make it easier to write user config files (config-GAME.noe).
• Redesigned the display system. Most of the functions have changed.
• FPP mode now accepts floating point coordinates of the origin.
• Fixed spFree ordering in the non-OpenGL FPP mode (it is now drawn after spFloor/spCeil).
• I have started some refactoring (to reduce the number of global variables), but this is still a work in progress.
• Some of the changes above are not backward compatible (old game.noe files would not work with the new version). The file "backward.noe" is supposed to list what has changed, and apply fixes for old game.noe files.

You can download NotEye+Hydra Slayer (Windows binary+source) here (~8 MB), or the Roguelike Bundle Draft v1.2 (Windows, 20 MB) with more games included which work out of the box.

Have fun!

HyperRogue 4.0! (music and other features)

HyperRogue version 4.0 is hereby released!

This version includes music, by Neon Corridor. You can now listen to a canon which plays in reverse in the Land of Mirrors, a mysterious tune in R'Lyeh which always gets lower and lower, and many more great tunes on your way to the Orbs of Yendor! Also some things have been improved (Crossroads treasure added, Ivies improved...), and some exploits have been removed (thanks to Adam Borowski for noticing these).

The full changelog is below:

• music support added
• Ivies have been greatly improved: they shrink if an active branch sees no good move (except at the root), they are now active as long as there is at least one segment in view, and they no longer go to the Alchemist Lab (as this caused bugs). Also, if you cut an active Ivy just after root or another branching point, it immediately regrows and spins (previously it regrew without spinning at the root, and caused bugs at other branching points)
• Worms are now active as long as there is at least one segment in view, they now destroy walls and thumpers around them when they explode (so if you find a good place for killing worms, it is hard to use it more than once), and worms and tentacles can go to other lands now, except Motion and Alchemist (but worms produce spice on explosion only in the Desert)
• After getting 10 Demon Daisies, Crossroads get a unique treasure to be found (Hyperstones), so the player has some point to spend time there (should be fun, since you are likely to meet almost all monsters and orbs on the Crossroads)
• the cheat mode has been extended (press F2 F4 to start cheating, then press shift+letter for various effects)
• Cocytus works now (but is still available only via cheating or by getting an insane score)
• if you collect a lot of items in a single land, this increases the spawning rate of wandering monsters in all lands, so you are no longer relatively safe by walking at the edge
• when used on a location containing both an item and a monster, context help now shows information about the monster
• added some flavor messages, and replaced "ESC to quit" with "ESC for menu/quest", to make it more clear to the players that there is more about the game than hunting for treasure
• pressing F1 or right clicking while looking at the context help now displays the general help screen
• Fixed the Crossroads description (there are no longer Crossroad Rangers and big holes in the ground)
• improved the general help screen
• improved the handling of non-qwerty keyboards (movement is done according to the QWERTY layout as previously, but other menus take the layout into account correctly)
• Alchemist Lab: the description is more detailed now, killing lots of slimes no longer degenerates the Alchemist's Lab into pure treasure, slime beasts now destroy items around them when killed, and dead orbs no longer cause the slime to spill
• Living Caves: Foreign monsters and objects affect the Living Caves now, and cave trolls now destroy items around them when killed
• Graveyard: killing graveyard monsters slowly increases the initial monster rate in the graveyard (so grinding for Dead Orbs is harder), and necromancers can go outside the Graveyard now
• renamed Icy Lands and Living Caves to singular (for better grammar)

Have fun!

HyperRogue homepage
download source+Windows binary+music (44 MB)

Hydra challenge, new NotEye, HyperRogue music and exploits

It seems that a lot of things have happened during the last month...

In the previous two weeks, Hydra Slayer was featured in the Reddit Roguelike Weekly Challenge. Players were asked to play Hydra Slayer and reach as deep as possible. You can see the results here.

I had some fun, and I hope that the challengers had fun too. Congratulations to ionfrigate for winning! :)

Still, I think that the Hydra Slayer challenge did not show the game's full potential... I mean, it was not as fun for the players and myself as it could be. For players competing for scores, I think it would be better to count the wounds gained during the 50 levels, instead of going as deep as possible (I think that the game gets quite boring after level 50...). Also, all of the high-ranked players have been playing as daughters of Echidna, which is unfortunate IMO, as they are the least interesting race for me: it is easier to construct an efficient weapon set for Echidna than for other races; using this efficient weapon sets is a rather boring calculation; and they seem to be more powerful than the other races. They pose an unique challenge due to being completely different than other races, but if I was organizing a competition, I would probably ban them.

Still, weapon sets that have been used by different players have been a bit different (one of them used a pick axe, which was surprising for me).

The challenge led to some improvements in Hydra Slayer!
Hydra Slayer 15.2 features:

• The potion of knowledge is now usable only against a single enemy. This is actually more logical: when facing a bloody hydra and a vulture hydra, for example, you can choose whether to unblood the bloody hydra, or to analyze the vulture hydra.
• Also, the potion of knowledge is now less useful on shadow hydras: it now shows three single handed attacks. Before this change shadow hydras were extremely boring for Echidnas, since for any respectable Echidna three attacks are enough to kill a shadow hydra, and thus shadow hydras boiled down to drinking the potion and noting the numbers. Especially boring when there were lots of other Hydras in sight, and the game had to analyze each of them, which takes a lot of time for ambidextrous slayers...
• To nerf the Echidnas a bit, they are now slower to use items. Using items costs a turn, and throwing powder at hydras costs another turn (and the hydra attacks in the meantime while the powder is thrown!). I think that Echidnas need more nerfing, though, so please comment if you have any ideas for this.
• Some bugfixes: shadow hydras are no longer detected with a right-click. Keys such as 'm' and 'f' now actually work when a hydra is stunned (previously, the screen tended to disappear right away in this case... this bug appeared in UberHunter's videos and I could not find the reason for it, but it was apparently caused by the stun animation). The semi-transparent part of the screen sometimes appeared in the wrong place, this is fixed.

Also, NotEye got some improvements. Some players know these improvements from the closed prerelease of ADOM, or from the Roguelike Bundle draft. Both of these were called NotEye 7.1 (I think), so the official release gets number NotEye 7.2.
The changes are following:

• Minimap has modes: it can show the old typical minimap from colored boxes, but it can also show the original ASCII screen, or a graphical screen (in the Tile, Isometric, or FPP mode). So the player could play in ASCII mode and have a tiny FPP view in the corner, for example. Also the minimap is movable now, and the default placement is (supposedly) more intelligent.
• The Noteye window is resizable.
• A new 3x5 font added (especially useful for the ASCII minimap).
• Some keys caused NotEye menu to crash in some situations, this has been fixed.
• Added ChessRogue, Gruesome, Toby the Trapper, and Unstoppable to the NotEye menu.
• Music now stops when NotEye loses focus. Also better handling of mouse out of the window.
• Noteye looks for batch files in the 'batch' subdirectory, and can run games via these batch files.
• Scrollable map. Holding the mouse close to the edge of the map area will cause the map to scroll. Look at the menu (NotEye menu, or some game menu) to center back on the PC. This also means that when the PC is on the edge of the map, the tiles mode will detect this and move the PC off the center, so that more of the map is visible.
• Zoomable map. You can now zoom the map in the menu (by changing the tile size in the graphical mode submenu), or using Ctrl+Mousewheel.
• You can now specify the max frame rate, to conserve the CPU.
• Table streaming, to be used in integrated games, so that special events sent by ADOM will be streamed when creating a NotEye recording or playing via a NotEye server. The next prerelease of ADOM will display a nice, detailed animation when using the machines in the level with lots of guards and a huge shop! ;) (I was surprised when I saw that place first, so no details, go play ADOM yourself if you do not know what I mean)
• For some games it is good to restrict the map to the original map area, this is better supported now.
• An option to reserve space below the map appears in the menu now.
• Fixed some minor bugs with the cache used for zoomed images.
• Fixed some problems with FPP.
• noteye_getevent() now actually returns the event.
• "isosizes" now returns all the original parameters, too
• NotEye scripts have access to "getkeystate" (e.g. check if Ctrl is checked) and "getticks" (for timing)

You can download Hydra Slayer 15.2 and NotEye 7.2 here.

Last but not least, I am collaborating with NeonCorridor: he is creating great music for HyperRogue. The songs which are ready are available here; comments are welcome :) For a long time, I felt that HyperRogue was complete except that music was missing, and this is going to be fixed in a few weeks. Also, Adam Borowski has discovered some exploitful strategies in HyperRogue, which allowed one to achieve unlimited scores while remaining safe (or practically safe). These are also going to be fixed in HyperRogue 4.0. Stay tuned!

HyperRogue 3.8, and some plans

HyperRogue 3.8 is released!

It has the following minor updates:

• the window is resizable, instead of having a fixed list of resolutions
• exits cleanly in case of errors, such as the missing font file or unability to initialize SDL
• fixed a crash bug with wandering worms
• mousing over "help" in the config menu lists the hidden features, such as the graphics editor or the showoff mode
• some command line options are added (try --help)
• the SDL.dll file has been updated to a more recent version (screen size is now detected correctly)

Thanks to chrysn for creating a Debian package, and reporting the crash bugs!

Download HyperRogue 3.8 here. You can also see its website.

In other news, we are also currently working on the Roguelike Bundle. For now, you can download my preliminary draft which includes a NotEye-based launcher (a newer version of NotEye than the current official release), some roguelikes preconfigured to work with NotEye (DoomRL, Brogue, Hydra Slayer, NLarn, Drakefire Chasm, ChessRogue, Frozen Depths, Gruesome, Toby the Trapper, Unstoppable), as well as HyperRogue 3.8. You are welcome to discuss the bundle. Hopefully we will create something great!

Have fun!

ADOM: graphical prerelease

I think I should mention this on my blog: the first graphical version of ADOM, using
NotEye as the graphical display engine, is available as a closed release!
 

 

This is available for people who donated in the campaign. If you have not donated, it is also possible to buy access.

Have fun!

NotEye 7.0 + Hydra Slayer 15.0

After a relatively long time, a new version of NotEye and Hydra Slayer is released!
This version includes many features and fixes many bugs reported in the meantime.

NotEye 7.0:

• A selection of palettes. Several palettes are included, and you can even define your own palette. Also palettes with non-black color 0 work somewhat.
• The choice of font/resolution has been improved. Any font can be scaled now (both up and down). You can also request a specific resolution (e.g. 800x500) and the currently selected font will be scaled to match the requested resolution as well as possible. Fonts which were simply scaled versions of other fonts have been therefore removed, and replaced with two new fonts. (In the future NotEye probably should also support TrueType fonts, or some other format...)
• You can now save the configuration from NotEye, and have it automatically loaded the next time you run NotEye (when saved before selecting the game), or the next time you play the specific game (when saved during the game).
• Alpha-aliased fonts did not look well on non-black backgrounds, this has been fixed (again?)
• letters in mini-tile mode look better now
• fixed some bugs about the map location
• the mysterious "view using a selected config" moved to the Network menu where it belongs
• a new recoloring algorithm (which will be supposedly used for karmic dragons in ADOM)
• When the game hides/resizes the cursor, NotEye handles it correctly (also added to noteye-curses.h)
• Renamed keymaps and keytabs (might introduce backward incompatibility)
• tested on a Raspberry Pi (works, although slowly)

Hydra Slayer 15.0:

• Giants are sometimes 50-headed and named Hecatoncheires, to reinforce the Greek mythology theme (as suggested in that thread)
• A rare error with connectivity has been fixed. If you had to abandon your game from the previous version due to being unable to find the stairs, load the savegame in this version, it will fix it for you. (Also this does not ruin the Tutorial, as the previously released small bugfix did)
• A new rare weapon family, probably not very useful, but always something new (based on the Roguetemple thread)
• Meteorite Eradicator now uses the correct image in NotEye. Also Eradicator now uses the appropriate ASCII character if the font includes it (works in NotEye's VGA and Fantasy fonts, I have not tried to make it work in Unicode terminals)
• Weapon materials have been fixed in the Tutorial (in the weapons room).
• fixed a bug with the NotEye script which caused crashes in some circumstances (I don't remember the details)

A new version of Hydra Slayer for Android has also been released at Google Play (the last version of Hydra Slayer for Android released was 14.0...).

Download NotEye 7.0 + Hydra Slayer 15.0

Have fun!

NotEye 6.7 + Hydra Slayer 14.7: First Person Hex

Yet another small update to both NotEye and Hydra Slayer.

The following things have been improved in NotEye 6.7:

• When you choose the viewing mode before starting a game, it will be used each time. This is useful for roguelikes where you have to restart after each character. Also the config file is more versatile now regarding this.
• Fixed a bug with the built-in terminal emulator (this bug caused messages to overlap while playing Crawl on Linux)
• Freeformparams now have additional parameter, "side" (should we also display it when looking at it from the back? usually we do not want this, as these are the back sides of the walls etc., but sometimes we do) and "shiftdown" (should we shift the images to put the bottommost pixel of the image on the ground?)
• FPP parameters now allow more control. Use (dx, dy, dz) to move the eye position slightly (I have moved it to the front, which sometimes allow us to see more). Use (objpush, monpush) to tell how much the objects and the monsters should be shifted. Use (xz, yz) for non-square grids.

As for Hydra Slayer 14.7:

• Ambidextrous attacks now check for collapse (thanks to CCC for reporting this)
• Hex no longer uses the far left/right columns (that was ugly)
• The Brownian level generator did not work in the Hex mode
• Some wrapping levels did not display correctly in the Hex mode
• First-person perspective in the Hex mode (yes, non-square grids are useful!)

Download NotEye 6.7 + Hydra Slayer 14.7

Have fun slaying more Hydras!

NotEye 6.6 + Hydra Slayer 14.6

Hello! Time for some bugfixes...

Thanks to CCC, the following things have been fixed in Hydra Slayer 14.6:

• Fixed the Primeslayer (did not work without enchantment, although it should).
• Fixed the ambidextrous Vorpal Blade (did not grow correctly).
• Fixed the missing end-of-lines in the player log file.

Game Hunter has created a Frozen Depths+NotEye video, which caused the following bugfixes:

• Cursor shown in Frozen Depths (and possibly other roguelikes in the future).
• Frozen Depths will no longer interpret the "@" on the Help Screen as PC (unfortunately, I see no way to tell Sages from the PC...)

Also the following things have been improved in NotEye 6.6:

• The Dungeon Crawl config has been fixed (should no longer detect the PC on the X-map, or interpret other humans are PCs - NotEye now knows that PC is always at the same coordinates).
• In Linux, NotEye (caller.sh, actually) will now automatically turn off the UTF-8 encoding (and use ISO-8859-1). (This bug caused lava and other weird terrain to be displayed as several characters in Crawl.)
• Letters now look better when drawn on a non-black background (especially when the letters are black).
• As suggested for PRIME, mousewheeling upwards now moves your character in the opposite direction.
• Keyboard input menu is improved. Now, it allows you to turn on/off rotation/translation for numpad and arrowkeys, has more explnatory text, and more options for letter-based layouts.
• Fixed a bug which caused alpha-blended images to be scaled incorrectly.
• Fixed a problem with noteye_halt and enabling key-repeat on reload.
• The 'distill' function is now available to script writers ('getdistill'). Mostly for debugging.
• Tile debugging ('tiledebug') now provides a slightly more informative output (for images and transforms).

Download NotEye 6.6 + Hydra Slayer 14.6

The Seven Day Roguelike Challenge 2013 will be running from March 9th to March 17th. I have no good ideas for my entry yet, but you are invited to use NotEye as your display engine :) See sample.cpp and sample.noe for a simple example. Have fun slaying Hydras, developing and playing roguelikes!

NotEye 6.5 + Hydra Slayer 14.5

Game Hunter has made several more videos about Hydra Slayer and NotEye. Go watch them!

Of course, some bugs and feature requests were discovered on the way...

Necklace of the Eye 6.5:

• Some fixes from 6.4 did not actually make it to the release (which actually made NotEye 6.4 unusable with DoomRL and some other games)
• NotEye now explains what is OpenGL good and bad for

And, on the more technical side:

• File generic.noe is no longer such a chaotic file, with functions related to many different features of NotEye (view modes, sounds, reading the map, running the game, keyboard input, and fonts). It has been split into several files . Also some stuff has been rearranged.
• Added some comments in the common/*.noe files.
• Some sound-related functions added (playsoundloop, playmusicloop, mixsetdistance, mixsetpanning, mixunregisteralleffects) (not yet used, but requested for ADOM)
• Added 'getobjectinfo' to get info about an object, as a Lua table (for example, using getobjectinfo on a simple image tile will currently return all the values used to create the tile (image, origin, size, transparency key) and the number of empty rows at the bottom)

Hydra Slayer 14.5 (thanks again to Game Hunter for his videos, and Ben Franzluebbers for reporting several bugs):

• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused hangups on entering the new level in the 4-directional mode
• invisible walls now look like dark walls, and unknown cells are simply black now
• shadow hydras are now remembered after you save the game
• pick axes have been upgraded slightly: they are now doublers (like bows and spears), not stunners, are more powerful (e.g. they work instantly at size 5), have new names and growth messages
• Mushroom staff now remembers mushroom displacement stats (and is displayed in the weapon history if used only for that)
• Titans now can press Shift+G to quickly move weapons from the ground to their extended inventory
• Potion of Knowledge now displays the weapon '0' correctly
• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused crashes when using knowledge/growth on vampires
• Updated the onsite feature list to the new theme

Download here, and have fun!

Hydra Slayer 14.4 + NotEye 6.4

I have noticed some bugs in Hydra Slayer while watching UberHunter's Hydra Slayer videos (and also noticed some more on my own when playtesting). I have fixed some of them, although there are still some left (I have no idea what causes some menus to disappear immediately, and what caused the crash after the 9th episode). Anyway, I think there are enough changes for a new version (for example, daughters of Echidna were much easier to play than intended).

Hydra Slayer 14.4 has the following changes:

• Damage modifiers (+1 damage for Echidna, -1 damage for having a correct shield) now actually work instead of being displayed wrongly
• Made bows stronger (longer stun times for larger bows; also stun times are displayed correctly now)
• Fixed a bug which caused loss of turns when wielding a bow
• Full-info now always displays the element sequence (and the names)
• Fixed a bug which caused levels to be empty after using 'o' to use another savegame
• dragon hydras are now animated correctly
• time weapons now work correctly against partially stunned hydras
• Fixed the message when "finding a powder"
• Removed debug numbers when generating a level
• The game now makes sure that there is a free spot next to the level entrance (otherwise you could run into problems if you are surrounded by mushrooms and have no dagger)
• minor fixes to the NotEye file

Also NotEye 6.4 has some improvements:

• "setscreensize" can override the default screen size (default = font size * ASCII rows/columns); also the ASCII screen is now centered if the resolution is larger than its size
• Fixed a bug which caused "key repeat" to not work
• Added an "enablekeyrepeat" function
• Added a "noteye_getevent" function to libnoteye, which returns the last keypress as an SDL event (so that you can read special combinations); also "noteye_getchev" which reacts to all keypresses and keyreleases
• Removed endwin() which sometimes caused a crash when closing the program on Windows
• screen is now cleared after closing a NotEye menu
• Curses mode now reads "ALT" correctly
• A small fix to the antialiasing routine (a bug caused weird vertical lines)
• Fixed a rounding error in tile scaling
• Auto-shiftdown is now always disabled when using tilefreeform or tiletransform (I will probably add some extra functions to adjust this manually later)

Have fun!