NotEye 8.4 + Hydra Slayer 17.1

Necklace of the Eye, the roguelike frontend and display library, and Hydra Slayer, a roguelike based on mathematical puzzles, have been updated!

This update brings the following:

Hydra Slayer update

Hydra Slayer has been updated to version 17.1. This means that features which were previously available only in the paid version on Steam are now free. These features include: random challenges, traps, a new type of equipment (orbs), animations of flying heads, music, and lots of bugfixes and interface improvements. See here for details about version 17.0, and for the further updates. Of course, you still need the Steam version for typical Steam features such as online achievements, leaderboards and trading cards, and new features planned for the future will get in the paid version first!

LuaJIT

NotEye now uses LuaJIT instead of the standard Lua. This greatly improves the performance.

Better support for Unicode

NotEye is now better at handling Unicode, that is, characters outside of the standard ASCII. Thus, when using a font containing all Unicode characters, for example, Hydra Slayer can now display the appropriate symbol √ for Eradicator, and Brogue can use the Aries symbol ♈ to display grass (previously this was possible only with fonts supplied with Brogue). Probably there are still some cases where this does not work as well as it could -- see NotEye's GitHub repository for further developments.

Better support for Linux terminals

One of strengths of NotEye (compared to Libtcod) was always that a NotEye game could work in a system terminal -- this makes it easier to communicate with software such as ssh for remote playing or screenreaders for blind people, and is the preferred way of playing text roguelikes for some people. NotEye 8.4 improves this somewhat. Modern Linux terminals do support 256 color palettes, or even TrueColor -- the newest version of NotEye can use this, thus, if you are playing Brogue on such a modern terminal, it should look just like the graphical version, with Unicode symbols and truecolor lighting. Secondly, using this feature was somewhat complex -- in version 8.4 it is sufficient to set the environmental variable NOTEYEEXTRACONFIG to consoleout_curses() (for the traditional Curses output), consoleout_16(), consoleout_256(), or consoleout_truecolor() (these three options work only in Linux for now). Previously ADOM and Hydra Slayer had special scripts on Windows for enabling the console output -- using an environmental variable makes these scripts simpler.

Downloads

Download NotEye+Hydra Slayer, or NotEye+Brogue. Have fun!

Brogue 1.7.4, ported to NotEye

This is a new port of Brogue to NotEye. It includes tiles by Oryx and audio by LazyCat. Also thanks to Lanhash for asking me to finally do this, and for testing!

This is much better than the old port from 2012. Now, Brogue communicates with NotEye directly, without using Libtcod. This approach is much more convenient (no longer two windows) and much more robust (NotEye can get information about the placement of windows directly -- previously it could not, which caused some glitches).

Get it here, and have fun playing!

PS: I would love to also create a NotEye port of DCSS, using the DCSS tiles. Currently my preferred way of playing DCSS is to play the ASCII version of DCSS via NotEye. But somehow I found it hard to understand how tiles are drawn in DCSS -- if you have any ideas about how this could be done, please contact me :)

NotEye+Hydra Slayer update, last year, and further plans

So let's start the 100th on this blog by summarizing year 2015.

2015 started with HyperRogue just accepted for sale on Steam. I put it on Steam Greenlight some years ago while it was still free to do so, because why not? At that time, HyperRogue, although it seemed to be the most popular of my games, was quite small and simple -- I considered Hydra Slayer to be more interesting from the gameplay perspective myself.
Well, the plan was to add typical Steam features such as achievements and leaderboards, and release it for a very low price. But it went much better than that. Quite a lot of people have bought HyperRogue, added positive reviews, and formed a community who discussed strategies and suggested many new ideas for further development. I have decided to add new features -- these features are added to the Steam version first to encourage people to buy, but the free version is also updated later. At the end of the year, HyperRogue on Steam has 38 lands (including some that are very interesting and I am very proud of), contrary to 11 when it was first released on Steam -- as well as many special modes, such as Euclidean, cooperative shmup, Yendor Challenge, or pure tactics mode. The free version of HyperRogue has 32 lands, so whether you have bought HyperRogue on Steam or not, you got a much more interesting game to play :)

In the meantime, I have been also working in Team ADOM. This was mostly working on NotEye, which ADOM is using as a graphical engine. I consider working on innovative game design (as in HyperRogue or Hydra Slayer) much more fun than mostly working on user interface, but still, it is great to work on one of the greatest roguelikes, that I have played a lot many years ago. In November, ADOM has been finally released on Steam too, and despite some nasty bugs in the initial release, it has been very successful there.

So what are the plans for 2016? I don't think it would be practical to add 30 new innovative lands to HyperRogue per year forever, but there are definitely at least some lands to be added -- HyperRogue community still has some great unused ideas. There is also still a lot of work to do in ADOM -- the user interface needs many more improvements.

More interestingly for me, Hydra Slayer has been just accepted for sale on Steam. In some sense, the situation between HyperRogue and Hydra Slayer has been reversed -- Hydra Slayer is the smaller one now :) Although HyperRogue and Hydra Slayer are both roguelikes based on mathematical concepts, there are also very different in some other regards. HyperRogue is designed as an open world roguelike, with a vast hyperbolic world that you can roam freely; to make it interesting at all times, the player character remains roughly equally strong during the whole game -- there are no experience levels nor equipment other than temporary powerups which cannot be carried far away -- otherwise, the players would just grind the hyperbolic plane to become stronger and stronger. 1HP approach makes all battles full of action, and brings new challenges based on monsters and environments -- so I have to be creative instead of copying other roguelikes -- but it has its limitations, too. For example, an unfortunate consequence is that all characters are very similar, the only difference being which lands you have already completed, and which lands not yet. Hydra Slayer, although its math-based combat is what I find innovative and interesting, is more like a typical roguelike here: a single dungeon, hitpoints, several races to choose from for the character, randomly found equipment that the character has to build their strategy around.

I am planning to use the same model for Hydra Slayer as for HyperRogue -- what you get by buying the Steam version (instead of playing the free one) is online achievements (contrary to HyperRogue, Hydra Slayer already has local achievements in the free version), leaderboards, and automatic updates with new features (which are also added to the free version after some time). I have no clear ideas for these new features at the moment, but I hope that the community will help here too, so if you have any ideas already, I am happy to listen :) At first, some work is required to update the graphics, add music (any suggestions here?), create the trading cards and other graphical assets.

For now, I have released a new version of Hydra Slayer+NotEye. The previous release was not tested very well (some of the bugs being the same ones as in the initial Steam release of ADOM). This release fixes them, improves the performance, and includes a new sample for Noteye, written in the D programming language (thanks to Michał 'Ancient' Bieliński, the developer of PRIME). Hopefully all the bugs that were easy to run into have been fixed, so if you want to play the free version of Hydra Slayer before buying it on Steam, it should be much better than the previous release. Furthermore, NotEye now has a repository on GitHub -- this should make it easier to allow both ADOM and Hydra Slayer grow together with NotEye, and potentially to let more developers to use NotEye or to contribute to its development -- previously, NotEye grew continually due to ADOM developments, but this growth was invisible outside.

So, have lots of fun in the New Year!

Changelog for NotEye 8.3:

• fixes in the copymap optimization, fullscreen mode, some crashes, some timing problems on Linux, true console output
• an option to disable autocentering if the player character is still close to the center (a configurable area of no-autocentering region, which can be different while targetting e.g. in ADOM)
• added a capability of improved versioning (previously, the version number of NotEye in ADOM did not change, even though there were differences)
• an ability to easily add user-made interface mods
• NotEye's dev menu allows to evaluate Lua functions
• added a sample in D (thanks to Michał Bieliński)
• an option to "ignore errors and go to NotEye menu" after the script crashes
• configuration is now actually saved for the Third Person Perspective mode

Changelog for Hydra Slayer 16.3:

• added some optimizations to improve NotEye's performance
• fixed some bugs in the interface, some typos and credits
• when you finish the Tutorial, you continue normal game as expected, not go back to the beginning of Tutorial
• Hydra Slayer's save/highscore/log files are now moved to NotEye's userdir

Necklace of the Eye 8.2

Hereby,version 8.2 of NotEye, and version 16.2 of Hydra Slayer, is released!

NotEye was silent during the last year, but in fact, while I have spent most of my time on HyperRogue, I have been also working on NotEye as a part of ADOM -- so ADOM always had the most recent version, but the official NotEye was not updated. Now it is high time for release, and hopefully, the long-awaited release of ADOM on Steam will come soon too!

The update to Hydra Slayer is mostly caused by the update to NotEye -- other than that, just one bug with mouse is fixed. Anyway, if you like Hydra Slayer, or want it to be updated, please vote for it on Steam Greenlight! After HyperRogue was accepted for Steam, both its free and paid versions were hugely improved, and hopefully a similar thing will happen for Hydra Slayer. So whether you are willing to buy the Steam version of Hydra Slayer or you are just a fun, Hydra Slayer's presence on Steam will be great for you! :)

Also, the websites for NotEye and Hydra Slayer have been improved.

Download the new version of NotEye from its download page -- you can download either NotEye+Hydra Slayer, or a Windows bundle with several games preconfigured to work with NotEye -- or just download ADOM, that's definitely recommended too. Have fun! :)

The changelog follows.

• It is now possible to use True Type fonts for the NotEye interface, which allows it to look more modern. NotEye defaults to use the True Type version of DejaVu Sans now, but old fonts are still available :)
• Improved handling of crashes -- if the NotEye script crashes, there is a bigger chance of getting an useful message, with options which sometimes allow you to fix the problem.
• Improved the configuration files.
• Even when using diagonal combos, it is possible to repeat keys by holding them.
• NotEye starts much more cleanly now -- the window is opened just once now (previously it has been opened and changed several times while the configuration was read).
• (Hydra Slayer) Fixed the mouse handling in the race selection screen.
• More efficient reading data of subprocesses in Linux (DoomRL did not work correctly in Linux)
• Window position is remembered
• Fixed a bug in some game configurations which prevented starting another game later
• Fixed the config for the 'hide the mouse pointer' feature.

For developers:

• Improved support for TrueType fonts: markup, which allows to change styles or insert images in text
• Streaming data to a string -- this also allows the screen to be restored after NotEye crashes in NotEye-integrated games
• fixed Shift+D in samples, arrows in Lua sample
• added the Hydra Slayer trailer (disabled without editing sources, though)
• deleted object IDs are reassigned
• displaying messageboxes, getting the HWND of the NotEye window in MS Windows

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!

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!

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!

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!