Vapors of Insanity 0.56 (bugfix)

It has been brought to my attention that the current version of Vapors of Insanity crashes quite frequently. I have checked it, and found it out to be true... I don't know how this escaped my attention, and why it did not get reported for three months. Please report problems earlier next time :)

Anyway, hopefully this release fixes this. This is mostly a bugfix release, there are almost no new features (I have been working on HyperRogue and stuff not related to roguelikes recently).

• You now get more helpful lines when trying to move up/down in the hex mode.
• You can now move more conveniently on laptops, by pressing Shift/Ctrl together with Left/Right (but WEADZX is even more convenient).
• Fixed the WASD movement scheme: wear/wield and worldmap are moved from "w" to "W".
• Also fixed some targetting keys in WASD/VI movement schemes.
• Removed the conflict for shift+S (shift+S saves, shift+T takes sector screenshots).
• The executables are no longer UPX'ed, as this apparently caused malware reports.
• Now compiles without warnings in gcc 4.6.3 (warnings were related to buffer overflows, and missing error checking for input routines; these errors have been fixed).
• Fixed some bugs reported by valgrind (spaces in the font files, uninitialized variables, delete/delete[] bug).
• Improved how the ASCII version looks a bit (but I am concentrating my efforts on the graphical version, so I don't care about the ASCII version much).
• Removed some lines shown during startup.

Get Version 0.56 here!

HyperRogue III (version 3.6)

HyperRogue III version 3.6 released!

Finally I got enough ideas for improvements to release a new version. It has the following changes:

• Ivy plants were supposed to be a prominent feature of Jungle, but they were rather something that you see from time to time, and you should run away from, because there was no reason to fight them. This is changed. Jungle got rebalanced.
• Wandering monsters. It is no longer safe to just stay in one place and wait for monsters. (As a counterbalance there are less "stationary" monsters)
• A high score list. Accessible via ESC-t. You no longer have to remember your best scores :) (it uses the same log file as previous versions, but unfortunately is unable to read their scores)
• The Land of Eternal Motion now has its own Orb (rather than pretending that it has falled through a huge hole). This new Orb is also expected to improve the performance on devices with low memory.
• You no longer get 1000 points for the Orb of Yendor, only 50. The motivation here is that you should be able to play HyperRogue in two ways: as a completionist (aim to get the Orb of Yendor to win the game) or as a perfectionist (get a high score), and the quest for Orb of Yendor should not get into the perfectionist's way.
• You can now switch places with golems (previously it was quite easy to kill them, or to lose because of being blocked by them... I have decided that the game would be better without such problems)
• I have tried to actually play with the wersdzxc keyboard layout and found it very awkward, so switched to qweadzxc; also the quit/restart keys got changed to prevent confusion
• removed the Rangers from crossroads (creatures native to all lands appear on the Crossroads, so there is no need to make it even harder by adding Rangers; the screenshot above still has them...)
• running dogs no longer look as if they appeared from nowhere (I think it got broken in some earlier version)
• you are now allowed to get an Orb of Shielding even if there are monsters nearby

Have fun!

HyperRogue III video

For those who have not played HyperRogue III yet, I have made a video. It shows all the lands available, but it does not try to win the game (the final message shows what remains... this was intentional as it requires some spoily tactics, I want players to discover them for themselves instead of watching the video). I wanted the video to be relatively short, so it is also a speed run of sort. Moving that fast is risky...

HyperRogue T-shirts and other items

Following the example of Thomas Biskup, the Creator of ADOM, I have opened a shop with some items related to HyperRogue. I hope you like them.

If you want to see items based on specific areas in HyperRogue, or on one of my other games, comment here.

I don't really expect to sell anything, but why not try?

Of course donating would be a more cost effective way of supporting my work, but you don't get a nice T-shirt (or other item) for this :)

HyperRogue 3.5 and OSX

HyperRogue version 3.5 is out (actually it was already available last week, but I have not yet posted in on the blog). It just fixes a bug with the Cultists' ranged attack in R'Lyeh, which was not working as intended.

Also an OSX binary is available on the website. Thanks to Konstantin Stupnik for providing this!

yet another bugfix: HyperRogue 3.4

Some more minor bugs have been found, so HyperRogue 3.4 is released.

Eagles now can kill your friends only in their first move (it was illogical that they could kill you only in the first move, but your friends in both moves)

You can no longer be possesed by Ghosts, Seeps, Slimes, and Ivies while using an Orb of Shielding (thanks for ortoslon to noticing this bug)

Slimes and Ghosts will now attack your friends

Slime color under items is no longer displayed (it was irrelevant)

You can now drop dead orbs into slime to change its color

Compiling: you can now remove "#define GFX" in graph.cpp if you have no access to SDL_gfx and/or don't want graphics; some fixes to the Mac makefile (but I am still not sure whether it works)

7DRL reviews and HyperRogue version 3.3

We have finally finished reviewing all the entries in the 7DRL challenge 2012. You can see the results on RogueTemple, and also another version with screenshots, made by Todd Page.

We have one winner (rated 2.72 on average), I rule, you rule, we all rule old-school Hyrule, five tied for second place (2.67), and 7 more with average at least 2.5. I think that these differences are very small: it was often hard to me to decide whether to give a score of 2 or 3 in my review, and also much depends on who reviewed the particular entry. The ones I have tried (as a reviewer or personally) are of a very high quality, and I think every game in the top of the list deserves to be tried. Congratulations to all of them!

HyperRogue II was among the games tied for the second place. It got a perfect score for Aesthetics, Innovation and Roguelikeness, but lower scores for Fun (unfortunately) and Scope (I understand that it is a bit hard to judge scope since a part has been written before the challenge).

Anyway, HyperRogue III raises Aesthetics, Roguelikeness and Fun even higher (and Scope in some sense, although this should be judged for 7DRLs only). And this post announces Version 3.3!

This update is rather minor. Some descriptions are improved; they are now more accurate and detailed. Made it clear that there are actually many Orbs of Yendor. Cultists in the Icy Lands produce more heat now. HyperRogue should now work correctly in a resolutions with height greater than width (not only on Android).

The Android version gets a "share" function, which allows you to share a short description of your character (together with a screenshot). Your characters are be no longer destined to be lost without any trace.

Have fun!