Saturday 23 February 2013

UnBrogue 1.1.2 released

Further fixes. Windows, OS/X.

Known issues
- Monsters will not flee through water.

Changes for 1.1.2
- Ogre shields now less effective when weakened.
- Mandrakes will now follow you down stairs (Requested by tinyrodent).
- Improve some tome names to better distinguish what they do.
- Harpies are more common and always spawn in flocks.
- Made lamias slightly tougher in combat and freely move through deep water.
- Prevent talismans of witchcraft upgrading items which had already been discovered.
- Provide damaging forewarning and additional stage of obsidian collapsing into lava and prevent pathing across any stage of collapsing obsidian.
- Freshly created mandrakes take longer to sprout.
- Fix and rebalance talisman of dungeoneering.
- Fix crash impaling zombies. (Reported by requerant)
- Fix various crashes to do with item workshops that could result in item corruption.
- Fix phasing penetrating or reflecting bolts.
- Fix force bolts damaging enemies which didn't collide with anything.
- Fix mandrake bolts. (Reported by tinyrodent)
- Fix polymorphed dominated monsters resulting in perma-allegiance. (Reported by qlordz).
- Fix elixir of strength (Reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix recharge times on charm of protection (reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix a number of OOS errors when using charms and talismans (reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix a crash when escaping out of enchanting an item (reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix a bug where you could consume any item when applying a potion to darts.
- Fix bug where lamias could spawn embedded in walls.
- Fix another display bug when getting hit while shielded (reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix tome and elixir graphics being the wrong way around.
- Really fix potion and scroll experiments.

Thursday 21 February 2013

UnBrogue 1.1.1 released

As discussed on the Brogue forums, this is a quick bug fix release. Nothing serious but lots of annoying bugs fixed. Windows, OS/X.

Changes for 1.1.1
- Spears, pikes get stained with the blood of any creature they kill by impaling.
- Significantly improve the feedback of identify, enchanting effects which apply to more than one item.
- Improve correctness of spear, pike impaling to try to fix out of sync errors, reports of crashing.
- Made permanent status effects actually permanent.
- Mark monsters as permanently negated only if they have underlying racial abilities/traits which can be negated.
- Make it clear what witch hazel does.
- Add a couple of reward room entrances (one from 1.7.1).
- Add monster tweaks from 1.7.1.
- Add some post-amulet monsters to try to spice up the deep a bit more.
- Improve description and appearance of obsidian walls (reported by tinyrodent).
- Flatten power curve of staff of protection.
- Fix problems with charms, talismans destroying items when using them.
- Fix blinking, pushed monsters failing to impale themselves on an extended spear or pike if they blink or are pushed through the grid.
- Fix various reward rooms not being impregnable (now using 1.7.1 code to prevent corner clipping).
- Fix potion and scroll experiments found throughout the dungeon.
- Fix protection display glitch and logic problems on getting damaged (Reported by Creaphis).
- Fix bug where half of all charms of protection had no recharge time (Reported by tinyrodent).
- Fix bug where you could not injure your allies using throwing weapons (Reported by ggoDeye).
- Fix bug preventing gambling from working.
- Fix occasional crypt weirdness/crash.
- Fix challenging staff/wand workshops and provide more information on construction rules.

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Linux, seed scummer builds of 1.1 available

Joshua Day has made me a Linux build of UnBrogue which you can get here. And Patashu has tempted the fate of the RNG to give you a seed scummer version of UnBrogue 1.1 including a Windows compile, which you can get links to from the Brogue thread on UnBrogue.

UnBrogue 1.1 released

Many thanks to Marco Salamone and Harrison Kreimer for taking the time to test the pre-release versions of the 1.1 release. Windows, OS/X Linux (thanks to Joshua Day for compiling this and updating the Linux platform code).

Changes for 1.1
- Code base updated to Brogue 1.7.
- Some changes have been added from 1.7.1: Bloodworts, lunging with rapiers, weapons of Force, reflection is now negatable, improvement to low level charms of protection, moving around obstacles diagonally.
- The majority of Brogue 1.7.1 change will be included in the next major UnBrogue release (1.2); the diff between 1.7.0 and 1.7.1 is approximately twice that of 1.6.3 to 1.7.0, and a number of systems changed significantly (dungeon generation, monster AI) in ways that will require more time to port across.
- Unlike 1.7.1, statues cannot be moved around diagonally.
- Added sabres which attack all adjacent targets in regular combat and when lunging.
- Blinking with a rapier, sabre will perform a lunge while blinking if there is a monster in the path of the blink.
- Moving with a spear or pike extends the weapon into the next grid in the direction you are moving if it is unoccupied. Any monster entering this grid will be automatically hit for x3 times damage.
- Maces, hammers damage is halved but they knock back enemies they hit 2 grids, doing triple damage if the enemy is knocked into an obstruction.
- Talisman of madness bonus now only affects weapons and armour. (One does not simply walk into DL100).
- Spiders summoned by a talisman of spiders appear at the stairs on the current level and begin levelled up twice for each enchantment on the talisman; this does not allow them to learn new abilities.
- Fix potion of winds typo.
- Scrolls of duplication correctly duplicate keys.
- Scrolls, charms of shattering have a chance of shattering reflective monsters, based on proximity and shattering radius.
- Fix protection so that it really only lasts 20 turns.
- Golems are not tortured.
- Dragons attack all adjacent targets; horror attacks penetrate like a Brogue spear/pike.
- Armour AC is increased by 1 for all armors except leather, plate. Plate strength requirement increased by one.
- Imps, nagas, salamanders get flee near death flag.
- Nagas and salamanders rapidly heal when submerged (2 hp per turn).
- Nagas and salamanders hate each other and will always attack each other on sight, even if allied.
- Added 'h'arpies, 'l'amias and [spoiler]. Feedback on how unfair these monsters are is welcome.
- You take half damage falling into shallow water, bogs or dense foliage, or if the air below is filled with strong winds.
- Slays/immunities now apply to a group of similar monsters (dar slaying, jelly slaying) rather than individual monsters in some instances.
- Firebolt is piercing: left over damage is applied to the next monster in line of fire if the first is killed.
- Aggravate Monster temporarily aggravates all monsters in LOS: aggravated monsters attack instead of fleeing, flitting or keeping their distance.
- Throwing potions of fire immunity creates a fire extinguishing gas. Throwing potions of life creates a healing gas.
- Centaur and arrow turret attacks unaffected by negation. Dart and acid turrets are stripped of their special effects but can still attack from a distance if negated. Ogres do not lose their shields if negated.
- Captive and dominated monsters generated out of depth don't begin gaining experience until they reach their minimum depth.
- Removed rings of Accuracy, Wizardry and Alchemy.
- Added Transference as a ring again. Removed Transference runic.
- Excess hit points stolen with transference adds to protection.
- Thrown weapons are not destroyed when they hit a target, unless it is a dart or javelin with a special ability such as incendiary darts. To compensate they all appear in smaller stacks and you begin the game with only 3 darts. (Inspired by morphles' patch).
- Thrown spears and pikes penetrate through to a second target in the next grid along the aimed path; thrown axes, sabres hit all targets adjacent to the grid before the first target they would hit.
- Wand and staff types are combined, with each type randomly being a wand or staff from game to game, but a minimum of two wands and three staffs, one of which will be a direct damage staff (lightning, fire, poison, force).
- Wands/staffs of Force and Nature added. Force pushes monster backwards 1 grid per enchantment and damages them if they hit an obstruction: triple damage if the target is knocked into a wall. Nature stops and grows a plant if the bolt crosses consecutive three fertile grids of the same type - either observe what plants grow on what terrain in the dungeon, or experiment to see what you can grow - and nature wands grow wooden bridges over chasms.
- Added more monsters summoned by wands/staffs of summoning. Staffs of phantoms removed as invisible hard hitting enemies on level 1 was not fun.
- Added more talismans. Check 'D'iscoveries for names.
- Talismans now all significantly change how part of the game works so that the least interesting ones are those which require that you be hallucinating, poisoned or on fire.
- Added some new reward rooms for further mid and end game variety.
- Runic wands and staffs.

Saturday 9 February 2013

Goofing off

My daughters have pointed out there are two types of touch controlled games: natural and goofy. Natural games are where you drag the actor around the screen, goofy is where you press somewhere on the screen and the actor moves to that location. Does anyone have a recommendation for good natural games for iOs for two year olds? Everything I have is goofy.

Saturday 2 February 2013

Sil-ver lining

From this thread on the angband.oook.cz forums where Darren Grey gets into a post episode 59 discussion about Sil with the developers and fans:

Actually the variance can function a little like multiple lives systems: you can think of it not as stochastically letting you die when you deserve life, but stochastically letting you live when you deserve death. And by being memoryless, it doesn't induce the temptation to restart if you lose a life early. (It's also a little less clear about providing feedback to the player when they made a mistake, but at least ending up on low life is a clue.)
I've been reading a lot of writing about how randomness has no place in games, and while the people taking this position seem to be perfectly nice and otherwise sensible, to me it feels like getting to know someone and then finding out their favourite book is Atlas Shrugged. I have an essay about it in me somewhere, but today is not that day. Scatha's sentiment is something I can agree with.