@ Necklace of the Eye

Current version: 2.2

Necklace of the Eye (NotEye in short) is an frontend to modify the output of console roguelikes. (That is, roguelikes which use the Windows console to draw the stuf. Does not work with those which create their own ASCII displays.) It has the following capabilities...

Screenshots

Note: these screenshots are from an older version of NotEye. Characters used as tiles now have bigger outlines, so they look better now.

ADOM: Terinyo with tiles

ADOM: Terinyo in 3D

ADOM: Tension room with tiles

ADOM: Tension room in 3D

DoomRL: aiming

DoomRL: barrel explosion

DoomRL: junk

DoomRL: tiles

Crawl with 3d window

DOS output

Currently, most important keypresses work (are transferred to the roguelike). Mouse does not. There is no acceleration, and in the graphical mode the whole screen gets refreshed whenever the map changes somewhere, so it could be quite slow. But it should be enough for most roguelikes.

During play, you can press the following keys:
In case if you don't know how to run your game via NotEye: probably you should type something like this:
c:
cd \games\crawl\
crawl
replace "c:" by the name of the drive the game is on, "\games\crawl\" by the folder containing your game, and "crawl" by the name of the exe file.
Download NotEye here. Currently available only under Windows. Released under GNU General Public License, version 2. As such, it comes with without any warranty. Source is included.

Disclaimer: I hope there are no crash bugs, but... Better not to test Necklace of the Eye on your important characters :)

The package includes sample configuration files for ADOM, Crawl, DoomRL, Frozen Depths; in all cases, only the most basic tiles are recognized (I wait for someone to add the remaining ones:). (To play ADOM, I recommend ADOM Sage.)

Also, a "generic" config file (generic) and a "dos" config file (show using the DOS mode) are included.

Note: some games don't recognize the resolution correctly when started in fullscreen mode (probably because going fullscreen resizes the console and they think that it is too small). Run them in windowed mode and switch to full screen later. In some locales (e.g. Japanese) NotEye does not interpret the screen correctly, switch your locale e.g. to US in this case.

Version history

Version 1.0: June 20, 2010.
The initial release.
Version 2.0: June 29, 2010.
SDL files included in the package.
Graphics are now refreshed only when the map is changed.
Text is now refreshed only in changed regions.
Added a new font file (double size, for those who don't want to go fullscreen, but want a big window).
Characters used as tiles can now have bigger outlines and be shifted.
Alt+AA now clears the background. Version 2.1: June 29, 2010.
Changed the ground icon in ADOM config, so that it is not the same color as walls.
Mini-map added.
Fixed a bug with showing leftovers from the previous screen. Version 2.2: June 29, 2010.
Fixed left and right arrows on numpad going in wrong direction in FPP mode. Improved some tiles for DOOMRL config.

How to edit the config file

The configuration file (*.noe) can contain the following lines. (Note that not all errors are currently recognized, and bad configuration can cause NotEye to crash.)

Generic options:

Tile definitions:



     
The current version of NotEye works, but I see lots of potential improvements. It would be good to have a Linux version. The format of configuration files should be changed in order to provide much more flexibility and make creating new configurations easier (I think this can be achieved by using Lua scripting). This would also allow NotEye to become a generic roguelike frontend, with more options (like adding an option to record macros, auto-explore, arrow navigation in menus, and others to any text-based roguelikes, or to show relevant information in a more accessible way). But I don't work on these improvements, since I have many more interesting or more important projects to work on. You can try to donate to convince me that NotEye is working on (or try to create a more advanced roguelike frontend yourself).



You can contact me at zeno@attnam.com, or at RogueTemple or New Attnam forums (Z), or at my blog. For example to provide more complete config files.


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Thanks to Slashie for hosting this at RogueTemple!