ARRP news

I was planning to release the new version of HS+NE on the ARRP, but unfortunately, my testers were too busy working on their own games, and I was unable to improve the latest version, due to not enough feedback about the new graphical style. I was quite busy, too. Hopefully I will get some feedback soon, and I will release the new version, finally :)

On the other hand, Psiweapon and Michał "Ancient" Bieliński have recently released PRIME, using NotEye as a graphical renderer. Great to finally have NotEye successfully used by someone other than me. And a great roguelike too. I heavily recommend it :)

Good luck!

Exciting times

The ADOM crowdfunding campaign became a great success. One of the major roguelikes got $90000 for its resurrection. Congratulations to Thomas for a great campaign! And I am very happy to be a part of it. I have learned a lot about marketing and graphics (Hydra Slayer should look better from now).

I have also put HyperRogue III on Steam Greenlight. I am not very serious about it, but I got some new players, and it generated some interesting discussion, so I think it was a very good idea.

In two weeks, ARRP will come, and we will release the Roguelike Bundle. I have got some useful feedback from Ancient and Darren Grey, and I am releasing the new versions of NotEye and Hydra Slayer.

NotEye 5.9:

• Improved handling of out-of-map cells in the ISO mode
• Minimap can use a different border color
• Added some basic info to README.txt
• Fixed the problem with HOME and END keys
• Changed NotEye's transparency key checking to match the behavior of SDL
• Fixed the mirror images of floors (spFree) in the FPP mode
• NotEye's Curses routines are no longer hardcoded to 80x24 screen

Hydra Slayer 13.9:

• Changed the palette in Hydra Slayer to a more tasteful one (you can press F8 to get the original, although it won't react immediately, and is not documented)
• Changed the floor color to brown
• In Hydra Slayer, unseen cells are now dark gray instead of black; and parts of the map which are outside of the level are a brighter shade of gray (they no longer look like walls)
• Added shadows for items, objects, and walls
• Improved the minimap colors (the background is no longer black, has a frame)
• Tiles changed for PC and scrolls
• A special picture for Centaur and Echidna PCs
• You no longer get a huge menu when you start the game. Race selection is a separate menu now
• Added an option to open another savefile, or rename the savefile
• The game now automatically goes to the main menu when the PC is dead
• However, it is possible to resume game, and theoretically it is even possible to get back to life after being defeated... added an achievement for this
• Made the Human description more concise
• Fixed a grammar error in the Centaur description
• Fixed a bug with weird letters appearing in the inventory in the minimap mode

You can download NotEye + Hydra Slayer here. Have fun! And see you on the ADOM Resurrection Virtual Party today, and on the Annual Roguelike Release Party in two weeks!

ADOM gets NotEye support and tiles!

I should have written about this earlier, but now, we know that it is true: ADOM gets NotEye support and tiles!.

There are only 36 hours left, so you can still make ADOM even better!

Maybe I should start a crowdfunding campaign on my own, for NotEye (or for Vapors of Insanity)? Just wondering.

NotEye 5.8 and ADOM news (and Hydra Slayer 13.8)

Recently, I have been involved in the ADOM crowdfunding campaign. As a stretch goal, NotEye integration is considered. Integration means that ADOM will be able to communicate with NotEye directly instead of just reading the output, avoiding problems where very different things are represented by the same character (arrows and open doors, for example). As a further stretch goal, a full tileset is going to be created.

The video above is not yet integrated. Krys has created the most basic parts of the tileset, and I have made NotEye support them. Just in case, other NotEye's graphical modes also work with these new tiles: 32x32 tiles, 64x64 tiles, isometric Terinyo, FPP, and mini-tiles.

Although NotEye 5.8 does not include the work specific for ADOM, it includes several technical improvements which were required for this (or for other reasons):

• Alpha channel is now supported in tiles (and in fonts). This might have broken backwards compatibility ("transparent color" which was 0x008000 can now be 0xFF008000 because it has 0xFF alpha now), so take care.
• Multi-layered tiles. This means that you can say that a part of the tile is on layer 0, and a part is on layer 1, for example. We draw all layers 0 first, then we draw all layers 1. Glowing torches in the ADOM video are done using this (we draw the glowing auras after all the level has been drawn).
• tiletransform is now partially supported in ISO (IItem only) and FPP (walls, items, monsters). Still not a complete support, but at least, stun animation in Hydra Slayer now works in ISO and FPP modes too.
• Added a "spFree" spatial flag which allows more complicated 3D models (together with a new tile transformation). Not very useful for now (as it is not documented and has no practical way of specifying that the surfaces should be drawn in the correct order), but at least there is something. Stairs in Hydra Slayer use the new abilities.
• spWall and spIWall separated into several spatial flags, so you can design each wall separately
• Ability to halt music. Hydra Slayer does this on death (I am thinking about adding some special music, but silence will do for now).
• Some tileXXX functions now have extra parameters. Specifically, tileshade and tilefill are combined into one, which also gives more options (set any alpha value, and it can be different for R/G/B). TileTransform now has extra parameters for 3D (shift in the third dimension, rotate), and recolor can use one of several algorithms now (the old recDefault, recMult which simply multiplies tile's color by the new color, and recPurple which works like the default but affects only shades/desaturations of purple).
• NOAUDIO and AVOID_NET flags work now (i.e., NotEye actually compiles with them)
• Improved generic-tile.noe
• Fixed support for games where the movement is with numbers (used in ADOM)
• Some auxiliary functions for color handling in Lua
• For integrated roguelikes, NotEye now also exports "setfieldString" and "setfieldBool" for more integration options

Documentation is still heavily lacking, but Ancient (Michał Bieliński) is working on NotEye integration in PRIME, and he says that the progress is satisfying. So at least I am not the only one able to use this :) Have fun!

NotEye non-QWERTY fix

I have found a bug report that NotEye was not working correctly on non-QWERTY Windows... So I had to fix that. Hope it works now. Hydra Slayer is not affected (it was already fixed on Linux and in the integrated Hydra Slayer). At least the minor version number agrees in HS and NotEye now :)

Direct download link

Hydra Slayer 13.7 and NotEye 5.6

And yet another joint update. Do not worry, no new versions planned soon, unless something is very wrong :) I will have other things to do...

Direct download link (but better download 5.7)

Hydra Slayer 13.7:

• Fixed bugs with the 'full information' which displayed hydras incorrectly and caused crashes.
• Fixed some graphical bugs with non-animated one-headed hydras (their head disappeared somehow) and 6-headed hydras (they had holes in them).
• Hydra Slayer adds statistics about auto-explore, auto-attacks, and alien killing. Also some special hydras were not counted in "hydras killed", this is fixed.
• You can now quit Hydra-Slayer with Esc. It also handles the close window button (via NotEye).
• You can now break auto-explore by pressing 'o' again. The screen is refreshed during auto-explore (NotEye-curses handles refresh and getch more correctly now). Mushrooms are automatically destroyed during auto-explore if there are no more hydras.
• Auto-attacks now works correctly with ambidexterity.
• Configuration (manual fire, alt-keys, quickmode, simplehydras) is now kept when pressing 'n' for new game.

NotEye 5.6:

• Additional choices of key layouts. You can now choose WASD, QWEADZXC, or pseudo-VI keys.
• Users can also now specify their own key remappings in config.noe.
• Some bugs related to auto-rotation of directional keys were fixed (for example, arrow keys did not work correctly in inventory in Hydra Slayer when in ISO or FPP modes).
• Some keys in the NotEye menu are more natural now.
• Updated the version information in Windows executables.

Hydra Slayer 13.6 (and NotEye 5.5)

Yet another small, but hopefully cool, update.

As you can see on the picture above, hydra pictures now have procedurally generated animations (each hydra you meet will look a bit differently). If you do not like these or prefer the clarity of non-animated pictures, you can also press 'p' for them (they have became even more clear by putting a number of heads on the hydras, if not too small or too big).

You can now also move diagonally in hex mode by pressing left/right while holding the up or down key. And the quick inventory mode is now saved into the savefile. One bug in text has been fixed.

As for NotEye, not many changes here (animated hydras were rather on Hydra Slayer side), but still. Left and right arrows in the FPP mode now rotate instead of strafing. Much more reasonable on laptops. Recolored and ISO versions of tiles were cached, but they were not updated if the underlying tile changed. This is fixed now (so animated hydras work correctly in ISO).