The last post of this series was in 2017! So it is high time to continue with the lands added in 10.x.
This was also in 2017, so we are not sure whether we remember all the influences! So please comment if anything is missing.
The Hall of Mirrors replaces the older Land of Mirrors. The original Land of Mirrors did show that mimics
who copy the player's movement are not very useful in hyperbolic space, and thus was a rather uninteresting land. But we
could do so much more with the concept by adding mirror walls! wonderfullizardofoz
and bluetailedgnat talked about such ideas in the suggestion thread.
The monsters also got replaced. No more Eagles -- fast-moving
monsters are not that fun. The basic enemy, the Narcissists, are of course a reference to the myth of Narcissus,
who fell in love with his own mirror image. The Narcissists are naked, again, as a reference to the classic Greek and Roman sculptures.
They have narcissus flowers in their hands, interpreted as "hand mirrors" by some players.
The name and the description refers to the popular undestanding of "narcissist"; all kinds of bad guys are popularly called
"narcissists", so they make a good enemy. The Mirror Spirit is an enemy with a special abitity referring to the mirrors; for a bit of extra creepiness, their mirror reflection always
looks at the player (as suggested by the players). Some players interpreted the Mirror Spirits as spirits of the Rangers who were the inhabitants of the original Land of Mirrors (and no longer exist in the game); they
use a very similar graphics. This was not a conscious reference, but still a very nice interpretation :)
The original idea of Blizzard was based on a suggestion by Toph (credited in HyperRogue
as snowyowl0), although only the basic idea is used, the monster/Orb details are changed. One problem with this original idea is that we need to generate a "flow" which has no sources or sinks, and
being somewhat interesting (rather than just random).
HyperRogue uses a kind of cellular automaton to find such a flow; as suggested by tricosahedron,
such a flow is constructed in a quotient space and then repeated (since it is the Field Quotient, players are not likely to notice the repetition).
I think Christopher King has also suggested a similar approach to find such a flow (although IIRC it was after it was already implemented).
The description of the land has been written by Tehora. It contains a subtle nod to Game of Thrones (however, nothing more than the famous catchy phrase), and to the trope of religious leaders abusing
their power (Corrupt Church on TVTropes would be the most similar). There is also a play on the concept of
counterfactual theories of causation (as in philosophy and statistics) -- we cannot say whether the winter came because the priests had stolen the jewels. The idea of a "void beast" is inspired by the concepts in physics, such as the electron hole. The Ice Golems and the Forgotten Relics are not really a reference to anything. We just wanted to add something to the lore.
The Volcanic Wasteland is another land using the "flow" construction. The release post credits wonderfullizardofoz,
although this post seems to be only a very remote inspiration.
The old roguelike Ragnarok (aka Valhalla) has a level named Wasteland, which needs to be explored quickly because of an exploding volcano. (Do you remember another HyperRogue land whose name was taken from
a level of Ragnarok?) Lava Lilies are of course inspired by Water Lilies; Lava Wolves are the same wolves as Icy Wolves
who somehow got more intelligent due to the exposure to heat. That was because Tehora did not like the description of Yetis in the Icy Land, which claims they are "quite intelligent". This
refers to them actually using a pathfinding algorithm, while the Ice Wolves use heat-seeking to track the player, apparently making them "less intelligent".
Tehora claimed that in the case of Ice Wolves, it was not a matter of their intelligence, but their dramatic struggle for warmth. So she insisted on making Wolves more intelligent once the environment was
warm enough for them.
In real life, a Salamander is a small lizard-like amphibian, however, in many video games, Salamanders are large lizard-like creatures
with some affinity to fire (Wikipedia gives an interesting explanation for this Ancient Roman myth).
The idea of the Hunting Ground comes from a comment under some video about HyperRogue -- we are unable to find that video, but the commenter complained about being attacked by a group of Running
Dogs from several directions at once, and thought that situation was impossible to survive. I have noticed that while such a situation would indeed be impossible to survive in Euclidean mode,
in HyperRogue we could still escape because of all the extra directions available. So I did some experiments to confirm these expectations, and I found out that it could make a good land
to teach the basic HyperRogue strategies to new players. So, a bit paradoxically, such an introductory, important land has appeared quite late in the life of HyperRogue. This land completes
a trio of dog-based lands with different compositions of unstable ground (fully unstable Land of Eternal Motion, fully stable Hunting Ground, and the mixed Zebra). Again, the dogs here are more intelligent than most HyperRogue monsters -- they escape when their ambush has failed. This is done to avoid the less interesting part of the puzzle and to reduce the number of kills, so you won't get Graveyard unlocked simply because you finished the Hunting Grounds.
The theme is
inspired by the Native American concept of afterlife; coincidentally, the Polish name of this concept translates as "The Land of
Eternal Hunting", which again matches the "The Land of Eternal Motion". We have chosen turquoise as the treasure because of its importance in the Native American culture, which is referred to in the description.
Hunting Ground is the only basic land which does not have any "advanced" version, which would be unlocked by collecting its treasure; some players have suggested to change this.
However, Hunting Ground has no advanced version for a reason -- it is very scripted, so it is not very interesting to replay; so after the player has learned the skill, there is no need to
do the puzzles again, except to finish all the lands for the Hyperstone Quest. (Potentially, it could have an advanced version which would be another scripted land, or maybe "the places where
the hunter spirits and game are" referred to in the description could be added later.)
The Terracotta Army was suggested by Kojiguchi Kazuki, who wanted HyperRogue to include ideas based on the Far Eastern culture. It is of course based on the real-world Terracotta Army,
a collection of statues buried with the Emperor of China. According to some account, the treasures in the tomb were protected by traps, and it featured mercury rivers -- these features were
consequently included in the HyperRogue land. We have learned about Jiangshi from Spelunky; Jiangshi have stiff bodies and thus hop rather
than move normally, which is reflected in their movement animation.
Somewhere on the way, we also got new lands which are not in the main game because they are primarily designed for other tilings.
Crystal World is one such land; it takes a lot from a Catacombs suggestion posted by Patashu,
although it does not take the theme (mostly because we wanted the tiles to actually be triangles, rather than be simulated Graveyard-style). The treasure is called "glowing crystal" because crystals often glow in video games, even though the real-life crystals do not emit their own light.
The Docks are based on the map and idea posted by Patashu; you can read the Wikipedia article about sea glass. And the Snake Nest is based on the
idea of Fulgur14. The treasure is called "snake oil", referring to
the term used for deceptive marketing.
Version 10.3 includes also two new lands for the main game: the Ruined City and the Jelly Kingdom.
The Ruined City is based mostly on the suggestions of Patashu and
wonderfullizardofoz.
There is a Polish slang word koksu, originally referring to unhealthy bodybuilding (using drugs), meaning basically overpowered.
Some people called both me and Tehora koksus (referring to our programming/academic performance rather than bodies), which we found quite funny, so we wanted to include similar koksus in HyperRogue. The Raiders are larger than most monsters, to represent their overpoweredness. The internal names of the Raiders come from before the "raider" theming was introduced, and they might look a bit surprising. For example, Brown Raiders are internally called "monks", as a reference to the trope of monks avoiding material wealth due to their vows of poverty, prominent e.g. in the Crypt of NecroDancer, where the "monk" character dies when he steps on gold. Green/gray raiders are internally called alt/hex "demons" -- HyperRogue demons are slow, and the original idea was to have demons which are slow in a different way.
The Red Raider's description is a reference to the "gentle giant" trope -- a literal, bromantic interpretation of the "Watch Each Other's Back" idiom. The pairing mechanics was originally implemented for the "Magnetosphere" land, which included "north poles" and "south poles" behaving in a similar way; the "magnetosphere" is still unfinished, but the pairing mechanics has been reused for the Red Raiders. The appearance of the Raiders, especially Blue Raiders, also took a bit of inspiration from the Hammering Giants in Golden Axe.
Nothing special about the Chrysoberyl treasure, we just wanted another gem, and Chrysoberyls were not used yet.
We needed a land to act as the "advanced version" of Alchemist Lab; previous versions of HyperRogue used Ivory Tower or Reptiles, but the similarity was rather far-fetched. The Jelly Kingdom is based on a suggestion by tricosahedron.
It is a rather simple idea from 2015, which has not been implemented right away probably because of a somewhat confusing reference to Alchemist Lab (it seems both me and Fulgur14 imagined that half of the land would be filled with monsters, just like half of Alchemist Lab is filled with "wall-like" slime, and did not understand how such a land could work). While the Raiders of Ruined City are overpowered, the jellies are just the opposite: they are represented as underpowered cowards ("shaking like a jelly"), that would be rather considered "food" by others. As we know, weak creatures like to refer to themselves using strong words, hence the land is called a "Kingdom", and "Jelly Revolution" used in the description of the "Tasty Jelly" treasure.
That is all in 10.x! The next part will talk about the new lands in 11.x and 12.x, and hopefully will appear sooner than after 5 years.
