Happy New Year!

Hello!

I am working on roguelikes until the last day of the year! :) I have just fixed the bug which caused HyperRogue not to run on the newest versions of the Android OS (it was already fixed in the basic version, but now I have updated the Gold and Lite versions too).

I have not been working much on my own roguelikes this year. In my opinion, there were not many new roguelikes in general -- I mean classic, big roguelikes, there were several great 7DRLs and games evolved from them, such as Golden Krone Hotel or TraumaRL, I have also had lots of fun playing Hoplite from 2013, and there were lots of games with roguelike elements. Some old roguelikes have been updated -- I have been working on ADOM, which was great too. Hopefully, ADOM should be available on Steam soon! Maybe I will add some achievements and scoreboards, and publish HyperRogue on Steam too?

Whether you are a game developer or just a player, I wish everyone lots of new great interesting games (whether you like 7DRLs, classic roguelikes, games with roguelike elements, or games which have nothing to do with roguelikes), and updates to old great games, in the New Year!

-Z

Three minor unrelated things

I have redesigned my website. Should be nicer to browse now. Please report any broken links, suggestions, or other inconveniences.

I have also created a guide about how HyperRogue implements its hyperbolic geometry development. This gives some basics about how HyperRogue was created, of course the source is more detailed. I have seen a research article somewhere which uses a similar approach, I think I should link to it, but I cannot find it now...

Last but not least, you probably already know that if you are interested, but ADOM R51 is released for the backers! It uses NotEye 8.1a, of course.

NotEye 8.1 + Hydra Slayer 16.1

After a long break, NotEye 8.1 is released!

The biggest change here is porting NotEye to SDL2. The major advantage of this is that NotEye should run much more smoothly now, which should be visible now. In the future, it should be easier to port to modern hardware such as iOS or Android, or to create games with many windows. This required lots of work to achieve — for example, SDL2 input handling is very different from the SDL one. I suppose the new handling is usually convenient for game developers, but it makes things much more complicated for frontends such as NotEye, which have to simulate the system console of Windows or Linux, or to communicate with libtcod (which still uses SDL 1.2).

More changes include:

• An OSX package is provided. You can now enjoy Hydra Slayer on a Mac!
• Tile transformations are cached (tilemapping). Another solution which greatly improves the efficiency of NotEye.
• Added more sizes of the minifont (used for the minimap in ASCII mode). Thanks to Asmerillion on the Polish roguelike forums for the files. Also the font selection menu has been split into two submenus.
• Supports changing of mouse cursors and window icons. DOS mouse cursor is simulated in the fullscreen ASCII mode.
• NotEye now supports TrueType fonts, modal windows, and special input codes (sent to the integrated game, but not corresponding to real keys). These are currently used only by ADOM.
• I have decided to remove the RogueBard music from the official NotEye package. It is still included in the Bundle version, though.
• The new sounds for Hydra Slayer are finished (well, for now at least). Thanks to Brett Cornwall for the new sounds!

In case you wonder where is NotEye 8.0: NotEye is intensively developed as a part of ADOM. The latest closed releases of ADOM (r48-50) use NotEye 8.0. There have been some changes since then, so this is NotEye 8.1.

Downloads:

• NotEye 8.1+Hydra Slayer 16.1, Windows executable+source
• NotEye Roguelike Bundle, version 1.4

Have fun!

The Indie Ocean's Top 10 Roguelikes

The Indie Ocean has posted his top 10 roguelikes ever (so far) on YouTube. The list features my HyperRogue and Vapors of Insanity, as well as NotEye (as used by PRIME). Also several good, original, and less known roguelikes are covered, such as The Slimy Lichmummy (which I have tried already) or TraumaRL (which I still have to try). Watching recommended. Have fun!

HyperRogue for iOS, and NotEye status

HyperRogue is now available for iOS! However, I am not willing to submit to Apple's rules, so it is not available on the AppStore. It is available on the HyperRogue website, and also on the ModMyi Cydia repository. Have fun!

NotEye is not dead either -- NotEye 8.0 has been moved to SDL2, and the last closed prereleases of ADOM already use the new version. This makes NotEye work much faster, however, it breaks the compatibility with libtcod (which still uses SDL1), and some of the other games (for a yet unknown reason). So there is some work required to release NotEye 8.0 officially, and I am quite busy now, so this needs to wait. Maybe I will port Vapors of Insanity to NotEye, we will see. In the meantime, please try the new version of PRIME (although it still uses NotEye 7.8). Stay tuned!

ADOM, NotEye, and Untahris

Recently, ADOM got greenlit on Steam!

This means that we (the ADOM team) will be now working a lot to make ADOM on Steam a superb experience. In the meantime, NotEye got major improvements -- like being based on SDL 2.0 instead of SDL 1.2, which brings a huge efficiency boost, and a potential for running on iOS and Android -- but there are so many things to do in ADOM that we have no time to release :) But hopefully there will be a new tester release of ADOM soon, and a new version of NotEye will come with it!

In the meantime, I have dusted off one of my old games, Untahris (see the changelog for changes). It features grid-based gameplay, randomly generated levels, permadeath, emergent complexity, non-modalness, resource management, and several other features. However, I won't advertise it on the roguelike sites. Strangely, I do not consider it a roguelike!

In Untahris, you can play several classic fun, simple arcade games, including games similar to Tetris, Snake, Tron, Arkanoid, Pong, Thrust, Bomberman, Rampart, Liero. You can play them both in single player and multiplayer mode (on one computer, local network, or maybe Internet). Now, Untahris has an original experimental feature, which makes it more than just a bundle of these games! In multiplayer mode each player can play a different game — however, they play all on the same board. This may lead to funny interactions, battles or alliances between them. Suggestions for adding more roguelikeness to the mix are welcome. :)

Have fun!

NotEye 7.6

NotEye 7.6 is released!
This update is mostly for those who would like to use NotEye in their 7DRL 2014 entry. The seven day challenge starts in just a few days. Whether you want to use NotEye or not, good luck!

The 7DRL invitation caused lots of discussion about the licensing of NotEye. I am quite confident that GPL is (mostly) what I want; I have explained my motivations in the dev guide. I have also made the licensing clear in the package: improved the comments in the Lua scripts, license is displayed in the "about" screen, improved the "readme.txt" file and the sourcing of the audio/gfx files.

More changes:

• Added the DawnLike tileset (together with two new fonts) and some Lua scripts for it. Sample games now use this tileset.
• Added an "About NotEye" option to the NotEye menu. This simplified the NotEye main (pre-game) menu.
• Fixed the TPP mode (in 7.5 it worked correctly only in Hydra's hex mode).
• Fixed the "-N --ascii" command line option (which runs NotEye in the console).
• Added some new utilities for sounds, and for scheduling an action later.
• Added a noteye_halfdelayms(int i) command for more precise timing.
• Added more functions to JNI (thus Java can use more NotEye's functions).
• Fixed the Makefile (NotEye did not compile correctly on some Linux machines due to missing -lz -lcurses).

There have been some changes to Hydra Slayer, although it was not a focus of this release:

• Hydra Slayer has new sounds by Brett Cornwall. It is still a work in progress.
• You no longer get a double sword when growing your fingernails. (Also fixed the grammar slightly.)

See the NotEye website, or download directly!

Good luck hacking!

HyperRogue 4.4

HyperRogue 4.4 is released!

The changes are most visible on Android. Music is included (so the apk is 8MB -- if you liked the small apk without music, there is also HyperRogue Lite). You can now save the game by collecting an Orb of Safety -- basically, if you leave the game after picking up such an orb (while its power is still active), the game will continue when you restart HyperRogue. (Orb of Lightning's animation has been moved to Orb of Safety; Orbs of Lightning use a new sparkling animation.)

There is also a new paid version of HyperRogue for Android, named HyperRogue Gold -- buy this if you want to support HyperRogue :) To make it include something which is not included in the free version, HyperRogue Gold also includes some cheats.

Of course, saving (after taking an Orb of Safety) has been added to the desktop version, too :) You can download HyperRogue 4.4 with music (44 MB), with low-quality music (NEW! - 8 MB, graphics are not affected), and without music (1 MB).

Go to the HyperRogue website

Happy slashing!

NotEye 7.5: TPP, samples, 7DRL invitation, and more!

After more than four months, a new version of NotEye is ready!

NotEye 7.5 has a new graphical mode (TPP). Since you can configure the camera angle, facing direction, and zoom, this is in fact several modes in one! Also, NotEye's fullscreen mode behaves in a more pleasant way (it keeps the current resolution, instead of changing it to the window resolution -- it can be configured to use the old behavior, too). Also, a new font was added (Wouter van Oortmerssen's Square font for roguelikes).

Moreover, NotEye is now friendly to developers using many different languages. Not only the support for C++ (namespaces) and C (NotEye header correctly compiles under a C comiler) has been improved, but also NotEye now includes samples in Free Pascal, Python, Java, and Lua. All of these examples (except Lua) show many basic features: PC, monsters, smooth animation, error handling (just reload the Lua files on Lua errors). All of the five sample games are very simple, but at least they are at least a bit different :)

Since the 7DRL challenge is coming, I invite the participants to use NotEye for their 7DRL this year. See here for more details.

Direct download link: NotEye 7.5+Hydra Slayer 15.5, Roguelike Bundle 1.3

Some more changes:

• Several options were added: Projectile speed, Backgrounds, Detail/violence levels (for disabling drawing of CPU-intensive details or blood). These options work for games which support them.
• Arrow keys can be used to change music/sound and detail/violence levels. Instant feedback when changing music/sound volume.
• All configs, recordings, screenshots etc. are now stored in the 'user' subdirectory; default config is included (in 'common') and copied there.
• 'copy error message to a file' in the crash menu.
• Auto-recording now can be selected from the menu (not only from the config file).
• Auto-logging. If you wanted to know how much time you spend playing roguelikes for some reason, now you can.
• Menus are now more colorful.
• Removed ADOM and PRIME from the menu - these games use NotEye, just download and run them.
• The NotEye Menu has been rearranged a bit. Fixed the message to 'press ENTER to resume playing' while in a game.
• Fixed the system terminal mode (it did not work in NotEye 7.3 due to changes).
• Gamescript files now provide their NotEye version (for backward compatibility in the future).
• In Hydra Slayer source, BFS is called bfs() instead of dfs().
• The palette display now works with all fonts (uses filled blocks instead of characters).
• Added some utility functions in the Lua scripts (sendvector, keyname).
• Renamed some functions in the NotEye header to make it clear that they belong to NotEye; also, for colors, the type 'noteyecolor' is used instead of 'int'. Added some new utility functions (noteye_lastkeyevent_* for examining the details of keypresses which do not resolve to characters, Lua-callable functions now can return nested arrays and Lua tables).
• Bounding boxes are calculated for tiles, which should make the pictures draw faster.
• A minor fix in backward compatibility.

HyperRogue 4.3 and Pandora

Pandora (image from Wikipedia)

mcobit has contacted be about his porting of HyperRogue to the gaming console Pandora. It was quite fun to improve HyperRogue's controls to make them work well on a device with a small screen, keyboard, and two joysticks (even if I have no Pandora myself). On Pandora, you need to touch and release to move (or use a joystick), arrow keys move (instead of panning), and shoulder buttons can be used to move diagonally; these could be also useful with other ports in the future. But the desktop HyperRogue got some control improvements, too. There are no real gameplay changes, unless you count new flavor messages which appear when you press 'g'.

• You can now actually control the whole game with keyboard (well, except the graphical editor and the help which you get when you right-click the framerate). When panning with arrows, a cursor appears, and you can press F1 for more information about that location, or 't' to teleport (if allowed).
• Keys 't' and 'g' now display messages if you have no respective Orb.
• You can now use a joystick to move. If you have two joysticks, the second one can be used for panning. There are two modes of joystick movement (press 'p' to switch).
• Right Shift and Right Ctrl change the meaning of mouse presses (useful with touchscreens and mice with too few buttons).
• Anti-aliasing can be enabled/disabled in the config file.
• Window caption was missing.
• You can now press the middle button to pan (a quite fun feature that was previously available only on Android), or use the mousewheel for far movement (down) or panning (up).

Download HyperRogue 4.3 here (Windows+source+music, 44MB); if you already have the music, you can download the version without music (1MB).

By the way, the next version of NotEye will have a Third Person Perspective mode. NotEye's FPP mode was mostly a joke to show the nonsense of the obsession with 3D in modern games, but the new TPP mode is something that looks quite well and is actually playable. Stay tuned!