7DRLC: HyperRogue II

HyperRogue II is complete as a 7DRLC Challenge 2012 entry!

The original Hyperbolic Rogue was an out of challenge 7DRL (in fact a 6DRL, even less). Just a @ moving on a map. For the 7DRLC I have added more polish, and more features, while keeping most of the spirit.

You are still a lone adventurer trapped in a strange world. You still hunt for treasures, while being hunted by monsters yourself. You still have to hit the monsters before they hit you.

However, the world is much richer now. There are seven types of lands for you to travel, each with specific monsters, treasures, and terrain features. You can also find some magical orbs, which give you temporary magical powers.

The game also became more user friendly. You get tooltips and help, and a configuration screen, instead of having to press strange keys.

I still have four days until the 7DRL challenge ends, but I am running out of good ideas. I originally planned to introduce some Economy but I don't see how it could be done without making HyperRogue a worse game. I have tested the game and I think everything works very well, but in case if someone finds some nasty bug, or suggests a new awesome feature, I can still do it on Friday. :)


Download from the website, and have fun!

Vapors of Insanity version 0.55

Time for a new release!

The previous release had several incomplete features and bugs. Some mouse movements which had an intuitive interpretation did not work, or worked not intuitively. This release polishes these, and of course contains many new improvements, for example, it has an improved keyboard interface too.

Mouse interface improvements:

Some clicks and draggings which did not work intuitively do now.

A 'pick up' button.

The big map now shows location names, and also can be used to view the World Map.

You can now see the names of objects when scanning the map with the mouse.

Shift/Ctrl-clicking the map for special meanings (shift+LMB for pick up, shift+RMB to automatically travel to a location).

Windows now display XP/Mana as numbers.

Mousewheel can now be used to scroll long texts and menus, and it no longer shows underlying 'windows'.

Keyboard interface improvements:

The biggest change is that when pressing, e.g., 'e' to eat, you get a list of all matching objects nearby (potions and food, in this case); the same works for many other commands. This is faster and more consistent with other roguelikes.

Replaced 'w' to mean wear and 'W' to mean wield; since there are some people who think that these should be the same command, this is configurable as an option.

More convenient firing (for example, 'f'iring an unloaded crossbow results in an option to load it), and the 'L'oad command can now be used to put things into containers, zappers, sheathes etc.

The '?' key no longer shows a huge and hard to browse list of commands, since it has been split into several subcategories.

General interface improvements:

Non-missile offensive spells are now cast on a nearby enemy/door/wall by default.

You can now configure how direction keys work (turn-or-move, turn-and-move, or relative to facing direction).

Action runes (and their auras) now have colors depending on whether they are powered.

Quivers you find will come pre-configured (which also makes you immediately know the contents).

Added some more formulae explaining calculations if requested.

Improved and fixed armor/weapon replacement menus.

Hashing icons for faster graphics.

Gameplay:

Hybrid villages. These are filled by a unique randomly generated race.

Everything can now be used by wielding it (previously you had to wear armor to use its special powers, and now you can also wield it, sacrificing the ability to wield a weapon; I think this increases the depth a bit).

You can now play with the stuff of paralyzed beings.

Fixed the power of some armor enchantments. Weapons of phasing (DAM/2, huge WC bonus). Strengthened some Protective enchantments. Randarts can have these powers now.

Runes of strength/dexterity are now more likely and more powerful on armors.

Amulets of the hand and mounted horses delayed to later levels.

Only humanoids can mount now. Not items made for humanoids.

Other improvements:

Improved the Manual, which is now also available as a file, and online.

As usual, some other texts and icons have been improved too.

VaporGS improvements: a convenient system for creating methods depending on several objects. Improvements in the priority system (we can now write A < B < C).

Fixed lots of bugs (tutorial, menus, useless question when looking at targetting help, memorizing books, mounted, some usages, forget confirmation).

And lots of minor improvements!

Get it here and have fun. Good luck!

Hydra Slayer Social for Android 13.0b: more social features

Hi, a minor update about Hydra Slayer for Android: it becomes even more social by integrating with HeyZap. Also, there has been an bugfix with one of the achievements, and a new leaderboard added (the simplest one, which counts the wounds until winning). Have fun!

The desktop version of Hydra Slayer is still the same. I think I have a nice idea for a new weapon: a blade which reverses time. The basic idea is as follows: a flaming dagger is not very useful against most opponents in the later levels, as it usually removes one head and gives, say, 7 new ones. But what will a time-reverse flaming dagger do? Well, it will take 7 heads and grow one. I think it could be quite interesting to have it in the first part of the game, which would probably mean a new race which starts with it (like Elves start with the Bow). What about the later game? Well, the dagger described above it is too unreliable to be very useful in the later game, but using the Scroll of Big Stick could give more time-reversal powers, like being healed on an attack, or making the Hydras flee from you instead of going to you. Needs some balancing, but could be fun.

Hydra Slayer for Android 13.0a: bug fixes and social features

A new version of Hydra Slayer for Android is released on the Android Market!

On one hand, this fixes some bugs. You can now show the soft keyboard ("show keyboard" in the menu), and the game should now detect corrupted savefiles, and offer to remove them (instead of silently crashing again and again). It also should no longer create empty savegames (which resulted in a slayer in an empty level). There are some other minor improvements.

I am also experimenting with Swarm, which is a SDK for enhancing Android games with social features such as achievements, leaderboards, and friend lists. So, you will now be able to compare your scores against your friends, and fight for achievements. Since some people might not want it (due to Internet permissions or a slighly larger size) you need to download another version of Hydra Slayer, named Hydra Slayer Swarm.

Since these features are only for Android, there is no new version for desktop.

Good luck Hydra slaying!

Brogue video

And here is another NotEye video, presenting Brogue.

There are some glitches (Brogue draws some black letters on black background which are supposed to be invisible but are visible in NotEye; windows do not display very nicely and sometimes don't receive mouse clicks correcly) but I hope it shows something.

Have fun watching!

Hydra Slayer + NotEye video

Another video! This one presents Hydra Slayer as viewed through NotEye. It presents the various graphical modes available through NotEye (one important thing which is not shown on the video is that you can change to a bigger resolution to see a bigger part of the map), and Hydra Slayer's various geometries. Have fun!

Noteye version 5.0 released!

NotEye version 5.0 is released! This is a rather big release, with many new features:

• Isometric view.
• Mini-tiles view. This is similar to the roguelike's normal ASCII view, except that the ASCII map is replaced with tiles.
• Sound effects, based on messages from the game.
• You can now change fonts in NotEye. This also changes the resolution, so more tiles will fit if the font is larger. A nice VGA-like 32x16 font from VoI is included.
  
• A custom libtcod 1.5.1, so you will be able to connect to libtcod roguelikes.
• A config for Brogue. All graphic modes and sounds.
• More configuration options in config.lua.
• Objects in 3D no longer float over the ground.
• Additional optional input methods: Shift/Ctrl+Left/Right arrow for diagonal movement, and VI keys.
• Keypresses now know their "unicode" meaning, not only key symbol, which should make development easier, and more portable to different keyboard layouts.
  
• NotEye Menus (and webpage) now display a logo.
  
• Curses output. Could be useful to watch recordings of 16-color roguelikes on simple terminals, but not recommended for things like Brogue (the colors are very bad).
  
• Faster (SDL's blit functions are now used where they were not, much more efficient hashing of tiles, some additional hardcoded functions).

Also I have created a video showing NotEye in action (with DoomRL). 

Hydra Slayer itself has not been updated, but NotEye gives new options to it (sounds, new fonts, isometric and mini-tile views).

Plans for the future include finally writing the documentation (I suppose adapting NotEye for new games might be quite hard now due to the lack of docs), and probably improvements to the FPP mode (using OpenGL's hardware acceleration instead of drawing by own calculations should be much faster, also new ways of placing the 3D objects).

Good luck to all (B)Rogues and Hydra Slayers!