July 1st, 2009 by Slash
Major
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.5
* New species and job: Deep Dwarf, Artificer.
* Removed three species: Gnome, Grey Elf, Ogre-Mage.
* Several cool new uniques and other monsters.
* Several great new portal vaults.
* Zombies and skeletons can no longer use stairs.
* Transformations meld equipment instead of removing it.
* Many spell ranges shortened.
* Much more useful monster descriptions.
* More convenient tiles version.
Runners
Privateer ASCII Sector 0.5.3.3
Ramming a ship will now have the same effect on it’s attitude and on your criminal record as shooting it.
Unangband 0.6.3
This is the final release of Unangband 0.6.3 “Death to the Case Statement” aka “The Projected Release”.
DaJAngband 1.0.98
Magic staffs can now get weapon bonueses and egos. Since this can cause problems with stacking, I also added a free command “&” which can remove unwanted egos and weapon bonuses from a staff to allow it to stack with others of its kind.
Newcomers
When Zombies Attack v0.3
Mostly some small balance tweaks and bug fixes, if you’re interested, check it out:
Unnethack 3.5.1
The main intent of this fork is to put more randomness, challenges and fun into NetHack.
Tomb of The Aztecs 1.2
Longer journey to the bottom of the tomb complex
Prospector 0.1.6b
Grab your scoutship, hunt spacepirates, gather ressources and avoid getting eaten by aliens. And try to get rich while you are at it.
Dev
TinyCurses 1.0a
My next step will probably be to port it to ncurses and pdcurses.
Posted in Releases Wire, Roguelike Development | 1 Comment »
May 24th, 2009 by Slash
Notables
Privateer: AscII Sector v0.5.2
Added Brilliance and Ultimate drugs to manipulate time usage when in Combat Mode (can currently only be acquired by stunning or killing a character that is carrying Brilliance or Ultimate).
Wayfarer v5.23.09
Meandering goats and drunks will still occasionally hit your town portals, but much less often. Removed misleading “sell this item” text for items not wanted by certain shops. Added option screen to reduce keymap clutter. Includes some new options: sound and gore.
Triangle Wizard v5.06
Starting from spell level 21, Summon Demonic Servant now has a chance to summon a greater demon. Beware though as the demon’s disposition is not guaranteed.
Peleron’s Briliant Rebirth v0.106
This is a “skills” release that implements most missing skills (whereas the previous version implemented most of the missing spells).
MageGuild v1.4.1
Have a great idea for a monster or an item that you think the game is missing? Create it as a mod, add it in. Want to see how other players fare against your most devious mazes? Build a scenario for them to test themselves against.
Mines of Morgoth v1.0
This is meant to be the stable version and marks the availability of the full version available for digital retail for the first time.
GumBand v2.3.1
If you haven’t tried 2.3.0, this version should be a better presentation of the changes that were there (new and revised races, a good number of monster and item changes, overhaul of mutations and increased number of mutations possible, etc.)
Elona v1.16final
Download Elona 1.16final (about 27MB) Platform: windows xp,vista
RogueTouch v1.5
Rogue Touch is based on several variants of the orginal Rogue, but written from the ground up to take advantage of the touch screen and graphics capabilities of the iPhone.
Newborn
DungeonMinder v0.8
I am supremely honoured at the amount of downloads and feedback that was given for my 7DRL release, and I have strove to implement as many suggestions as possible with this release.
SaneRoguelike (.Net distributable)
Three races, everyone gets a rapier, a torch and mail. However, there is no inventory management. Going down and up stairs is fully implimented. Watch out for the arrow traps.
When Zombies Attack v0.2
When Zombies Attack! is a survival-horror roguelike game. The goal is to get to the top of the building and get rescued by the waiting helicopter. You can choose taller buildings for harder games.
Prospector v0.1.5f
(I)nspect command repairs ships and gathers biodata from corpses and plants.
Tomb of the Aztecs v1.0
Recent tectonic activity in central America has unearthed Very Old Things under New Mexico, the site of the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.
As a jetsetting plunderer of historic artefacts, you were taking some ill-deserved R’n'R down in New Mexico at the time, and just so happened to be sipping tequila outside a seedy terrace cafe when the ground around you fractured and the air was torn with the sickening noise of yielding rock and earth.
As plumes of dust began to billow up from the fissure, you had the presence of mind to whip out your trusty iPhone. A quick trip to Wikipedia confirmed your suspicions - you were surely standing above the tomb of legendary warrior Popocatepetl.
Dimension Dungeon v0.51
In Dimension Dungeon you play a warrior trapped in a dungeon-like pocket dimension and have to fight your way down to the bottom of the dungeon and confront the creator of this pocket dimension.
Posted in Releases Wire | No Comments »
April 13th, 2009 by Slash
Notables
Mines of Morgoth 0.90
Final release coming soon.
Triangle Wizard 5.05
It took some time, but here it is! This update features six new spells, over 90 new creatures (some of which may deal supernatural damage), many new traps and even a few new unique monsters.
Privateer ASCII Sector 0.5.0.1
When you save an ejected pilot and take him/her to a base, you’ll now also receive a random amount of credits (beyond having your standing with the pilot’s faction increased).
Invader Tactics
You are a human infiltrating an enemy installation populated by psychotic robots.
Blast Tactics
Blast Tactics is a mini space-roguelike puzzler incorporating elements of the classic Asteroids,
Newborn
Wayfarer 4.12.09
Ironically, despite my long-term goal of less violent options (diplomacy, non-fatal combat, etc.), the game is currently so bloody and twisted it makes me cringe. In delight. I’m only human.
Downfall 0.3
Downfall has many features common in Roguelike games, and also has some unusual features.
Expedition 0.1.6
Probably the easiest way to describe Expedition is that it’s (kind of) like Colonization meets Seven Cities of Gold meets ADoM.
Pyromancer 0.1.2
The gameplay didn’t move a iota. It’s a polish-only release.
RealtimeRL 0.3
My roguelike has been completely rewritten from scratch.
Zot Defense 0.1
You begin on Zot:5; monsters are generated in waves, swarming in from the upstairs. You must prevent the monsters from reaching the Orb of Zot, which you may not pick up or apport.
Angband/65 0.0.1
There are two reasons I’m doing this. For the programming practice and to make it open source
Kharne 0.01e
An interim release
Peleron’s Brilliant Rebirth 0.105
It’s been around 2 years since I last released anything related to Peleron. I have not buried PBR (Peleron’s Brilliant Rebirth) — it’s just been real life taking its toll.
SpiritsRL 0.4.21
Now instead of stupid generated levels one of templates is used. Levels are smaller, everyone is faster, everything should be much more fun.
Nyctos 1.0.1
The game revolves heavily around tactical situations related to light.
Prospector 0.1.3
Megacorporations employ freelance prospectors to find exploitable resources and map unknown planets for them. The player commands one of those scoutships, trying to become filthy rich as a prospector.
MetaCollider Beta 7
This is the last release for a while, if not forever.
Development
ASCII-Paint 0.3
This version has many new features and improvements, including some related to RL development.
ASCII-Draw 8
Try out room, corridor and outdoor designs without having to code them.
Serf Engine 0.5
The engine was created based on the source code of some years-tested roguelikes, including CastlevaniaRL, DrashRL and ZeldaRL, and thus is relatively stable on the moment of its conception.
RLX
RLX is a Common Lisp graphical roguelike engine
libtcod 1.4.1
Well it’s rather a non-news…
Umbra Engine 0.1
It’s meant to be a base for building new roguelike engines, not a game
Posted in Releases Wire | 3 Comments »
March 26th, 2009 by Slash
- DungeonMinder, Epic! Monster Quest! Hyper!, Underbooks, Excitable Digger, Fortress of the Goblin King, Expedition, and some other 7DRLs got bugfixes versions
- CymonGames has reviewed all of the 7DRL challengers and has three polls set up to congratulate the best entries
- The 2009 7DRL Playing competition has started on rec.games.roguelike.misc
Posted in 7DRL | 3 Comments »
March 19th, 2009 by Slash
And so it was that 45 brave challengers entered the fifth seven day roguelike challenge!
Of those, 25 returned alive, claiming to have a finished and playable game… Now it is your turn to judge!
The Newcomers (First 7DRL Challenge)
Experienced (2 7DRL Challenges)
Gentleman (3+ 7DRL Challenges)
Check the games and give them feedback on the roguetemple forums!
Posted in 7DRL, contests | 10 Comments »
March 10th, 2009 by Slash
For a groundbreaking number, 41 roguedevs have accepted the challenge! We’re all gonna have a lot of cool games to play next week :)
- Fruits of the Forest by Ido Yehieli
- TetrisRL by Sir_Lewk
- GrimRL by Nik Coughlin
- Pink Ninja by Deveah
- AbstractRL by jimmy aberg
- Stones of Chaos: the True God by idontexist
- Fl@shpoint by edwardoka
- The Favored by guesst
- Nyctos by Mary Haas and James Madison
- When Zombies Attack! by David A
- Murder in Moscow by Mike Judge
- Underbooks by Christopher Brandt
- Decimation by Ed
- The Lion King by Darren Grey
- Whispers in the Void by destroysound
- Unnamed attempt by Sherm Pendley
- Environmental Energies by Gamer_2k4
- Hydrosphere by HexDecimal
- Expedition by Slash
- Fist of the Rogue Warrior by s.chiu
- Unnamed attempt by Nils
- Robot Rebellion by Emile
- MultiRL by Nathan Stoddard
- Unnamed attempt by chr.m.charles
- Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper by buub0nik
- Planets of Elderlore by Altefact
- A Roguelike by h.j.l.jones
- Jacob’s Matrix by Jeff Lait
- Escape from Lab 42 by rdc
- Nidhoggr by Michal Bielinski
- Quarterlight by Phil O’Neill
- Fortress of the Goblin King by Florian Diebold
- DDRogue by flend
- Persist by jab
- dL1 by Legend of Angband
- Catacombs of the Soulthief by Derrick Creamer
- DungeonMinder by Adam Gatt
- Tales of Ezcyria by Stein
- SpiritsRL by Xecutor
- DukeRL by corremn
- chickhack by purpleflayer
Find full info and links at this roguetemple thread
Posted in 7DRL, Challenges | 8 Comments »
March 5th, 2009 by Slash
It is that time of the year again!
The sixth international 7DRL roguelike challenge is to take place next week (Starting from saturday, march 7 2009, ending thru sunday, march 15 2009).
Everybody, from in and outside the roguedev world, is invited to actively devote (him/her)self into releasing a complete and playable game.
Don’t miss the date, this year we will rock the house!
And don’t forget…. We are working, obviously, on the honour system!
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
March 5th, 2009 by getter77
Peleron’s Brilliant Rebirth (or PBR) is a pseudo-roguelike CRPG by Topi Ylinen. With the project just recently becoming publicly active again, I shot Mr. Ylinen an email with a few general questions about his ambitious project.
-What kind of development cycle do you foresee for PBR going forward after it has apparently been quite a long time since the last public release?
“I’m hoping to get a bit more frequent and better thought-out/conceptualised updates from now on. The rather long delay between versions 0.103 and 0.104/0.105 was due to a number of reasons. Although there were a couple of players who completed the Master Dungeon and helped me iron out certain problems, the initial versions (0.100 - 0.103) didn’t attract quite as much attention as I had hoped. (On the other hand, I can hardly blame the players when pretty much every other spell you attempted to cast used to say “unimplemented spell effect”, not very exciting, eh? The most recent 0.105 release at least fixes that.)
Then I started implementing the second starting location, Voldival. I drew a huge town map on a large sheet of paper and then started building the maps, one after the other. I had also started sketching out the quest code and it was turning out to be much bigger design challenge than I had anticipated. All things factored in, at some stage I simply lost motivation. Real life kept pressing me hard, and I directed my energies elsewhere.
Then, after a time, I returned to PBR and decided to take a different approach. Rather than try to implement a dozen different kinds of new features (like quest code) at once, I should first try to make the ones that do exist playable. And also keep adding new areas to explore at the same time. The current 0.105 release fits this pattern: it is a “spells” release (meaning that it implements almost every remaining spell in the game and a lot of new ones) and also adds one more predesigned dungeon to explore. The actual list of changes is of course much longer than that but that’s mainly because the version has been “in the works” for 2 years!
The next version 0.106 will be a “skills” release. It will implement almost all skills that are available to beginning characters, including the rather complex ones like Alchemy and Smithery. The only skill that probably will not be implemented is the Disarming skill since monsters don’t currently “wield” their weapons - that would need to be implemented first, and it is not a high-priority feature addition.
Version 0.106 will also properly implement the two high-level skills that one of your characters can learn upon assuming the high-level profession currently available in the game.
Not sure yet whether 0.106 will include any new playable areas. And no schedule for 0.106 yet.”
-What spurred you to go at things from a party based and CRPG mindset instead of the usual solo venture?
“The simple realisation that many of my favourite computer games were actually party-based CRPGs. Having a party of characters instead of a single character added a layer of strategic complexity that I greatly appreciated, even if my party configurations often turned out to be rather stereotypical ones. Like, “melee tank - thief - priest - wizard”.
In many ways, I didn’t initially set out to build a roguelike - I was making relatively complex CRPG with lots of character development and strategy options. The user interface is of course 100% traditional roguelike; that’s mainly due to my personal background. A roguelike user interface felt natural to me, and I knew how to code it, so I used it. But the underlying game - the game system and the game world - could be just as easily used in any other kind of CRPG concept, e.g., in a Baldur’s Gate style game, in a realtime first-person CRPG or even in an MMORPG. Come to think of it, it might actually make a heck of an MMORPG - the game world is definitely unique and different (after all, the game world has been a personal labour of love since the late 1980s), and the game system would allow for a lot more depth and strategic complexity than the prevalent MMORPGs of today (that I know of) do.”
-Are there any Roguelikes or RPGs in general you have drawn good ideas or just general “stuff that works well” from?
“I don’t consciously examine other games with the intent of finding new ideas, but I used to play a lot of CRPGs and related games when I was younger. There were games I didn’t like that much but I thought they contained some neat concepts. Then there was a handful of games that I enjoyed thoroughly, and I would be lying if I said that no detail in PBR was influenced by those games.
Eventually, of course, I’m aiming to remove the “foreign” game world material - this means especially the two predesigned dungeons - and replace it with stuff that is better aligned with my own Ikoniel world. I used an external source of inspiration for those two predesigned dungeons simply because I wanted to quickly create something playable, and detailed dungeon planning & design from the scratch can take a lot of time.
When I started building the game, I didn’t immediately start planning & writing the actual code. Instead I took a paper notebook and started planning how the game mechanics should work if it were a pen&paper RPG. My initial inspiration for the game system owes a lot to a well-known CRPG, but I wanted to take it one step further. What I ended up with was a game system that - with its complex calculations, modifiers and special cases/conditions - would have probably been too complex for an actual pen&paper game (well, except for the old Rolemaster or Advanced Squad Leader veterans, I guess), but in a CRPG that is not an issue when the CPU takes care of all that for you.”
-Favorite Roguelikes personally?
“I’m a very traditional kind of guy, really. Nethack and Angband are the ones I have played the most. I like Nethack because of its details and relative depth (but hate the arbitrariness - your success depends too much on blind luck, my first ascending character found a Wand of Wishing near the beginning!), and Angband because of its epic scope and feel. Angband is also better for strategic planning since once you know the game, you know how to play and develop different kinds of characters effectively. In Nethack you would be worrying about the food all the time. There are still random elements in Angband that can cause unexpected YASDs, but that’s the fun part of it, isn’t it?
Moria was the first roguelike I ever played, and even though Angband (when it was released) quickly superseded it for me, I still have very fond memories of Moria. Like when I encountered my first invisible opponent. I couldn’t see it - that was scary! Eventually I took it out with some well-placed ball or bolt spells and felt like I had achieved a great victory.
And then of course there are the numerous NH & Angband variants. Can’t say I have played them all. But I liked some of them a lot - especially the ones that changed the basic game content so much that it felt like a fresh new experience, like Cthangband did. The sense of discovery, again!
Adom is probably the newest(!) roguelike I have played. I never quite got into it, I just kept dying and couldn’t get the hang of it or how I should have played it. The same problem with Omega. They are probably great games, they just weren’t for my kind of a player.
One very different (semi)roguelike that deserves to be mentioned: Alphaman! The post-nuclear holocaust roguelike. I played it just briefly and, yes, kept dying all the time, but I had a great time with it.”
-Graphical tileset/sound/music planned to exist at some point after everything is fully situated?
“Yes. My todo list says under category 4b (”Not essential for the core game, will/could/might be implemented when *everything* else is completed & working”)
“- Add graphics
- Add sound”
Thanks for your time Mr. Topi Ylinen!
The homepage for the project is located at http://www.kolumbus.fi/topi_ylinen/peleron/
Posted in Interviews, New Roguelikes | 6 Comments »
February 20th, 2009 by Slash
Notables
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.4.5.
It can be played online; see crawl.akrasiac.org and crawl.develz.org. The latter server also allows you to peek into the gameplay changes in trunk (the cool, new stuff).
Privateer ASCII Sector 0.4.7
When a fixer or wingman has left his chair due to a fight breaking out, he will now stay inside the bar and will in time sit down again when the fight is over.
WarpRogue 0.8.0b
General Guderian now offers the Iron gate mission until you *really* reject it.
crashRun 0.3.0
The main new feature is cyberspace as an area that can be explored. When you jack into a terminal, instead of getting a menu of options, you instead can enter cyberspace
Newborn
Gruesome 0.0.3
It is pitch black. You are likely to eat someone…
Downfall 0.2
This release adds multiple dungeon levels and items.
AmoebaRL 0.2
You play as an amoeba that decided to grow eating others
Tomb of Radwin
Amulet of Yendor / Rodney…
Wizardry / Trebor + Werdna…
Rawdin.. Darwin.. only the strong survive…
blah. cheesy I know.
Faeries’ Lair 7DRL
I have tried to make the game experience varied by designing monsters to be qualitatively different from each other; nearly every one has a special ability or behaviour
Settlement 1.3
After a long travel your group of settlers finished a basic settlement. The land seems to be very hostile. The next group of colonists will arrive after a month, therefore you have to last 30 days. Keep at the end as much money as possible.
Development
CL-TCOD
CL-TCOD has bindings for maybe 75% of tcod functions. All the console stuff, fonts, mouse, colours, images are in (I think).
ASCII-Paint 0.2
This version adds some features which make it easier to make and edit drawings.
Bonus
Triangle Wizard 4.01
Sacred Wrath, Cold Breath, Fire Breath and Acid Stream can now hit flying creatures starting from a certain spell level.
Posted in Releases Wire, Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 1st, 2009 by Slash
Jhon Spelunky, a young, memory-less, snakephobic archeologist,
thirsty for adventure and treasure,
jumps into a cursed ruins complex full of traps and snakes…
looking for the ultimate artifact.
The amulet of Yendor.
This is a great way to start our biweekly Roguelike Spotlight, bringing you the latest and most exciting releases on the roguelike world!
Today, I give you Derek Yu’s SPELUNKY, a great game which albeit still on development, I am sure you all will enjoy!
My goal was to create a fast-paced platform game that had the kind of tension, re-playability, and variety of a roguelike. In roguelikes, the gameplay tells the story, and I wanted to give Spelunky that type of a feeling… but make the player rely on their reflexes rather than their brain (or knowledge of what 50 billion command keys do!). If there’s a best of both worlds, that’s what I was trying to go for.
Did he suceed?
This is much more than a procedurally generated platformer… besides the sweetly randomly generated levels there are many more things that take it close to a traditional roguelike! the fate of that promising character can change in less than you think, from a stuffed archeologist, shotgun and bombs packed, to giant tarantula food or a spike-teared bloody corpse!
The game features a smooth dificulty curve while still keeping things difficult; it is also full of surprises and puzzly situations where you got to make use of your available items, and by the way, you must make good use of them, as you may end up in a dead-end situation.
Following, the roguelikeness evaluation for Spelunky:
- High Value Factors
- Random Environment Generation: Yes
- Permafailure (including Permadeath): Yes
- Turn Based Interaction: No
- Single command set: Yes
- Freedom: Yes
- Middle Value Factors
- Discovery mechanics: Yes
- Single player: Yes
- Lots of content: No
- Complex non-trivial world and object interactions: Yes
- Low Value Factors
- High ramped difficulty: Yes
- Monsters are players: Yes
- Character-based display: No
- Hack and Slash: Yes
TOTAL ROGUELIKENESS VALUE: 21/27 (78%)
Derek Yu provides us with a worthy cross-over experience, his experience in the indie scene cleary applied to this product. Graphics and Sound are retronice (what else could you expect from the creator of Aquaria?).
SO, download the game, browse the wikia, share some levels and… DISCUSS! :)
Posted in New Roguelikes, Reviews | 17 Comments »
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