PRIME 2.2 (27th March 2013)

[Ancient]

Gave this a quick try. It seems pretty cool.

Thank you! I'll address the issues you pointed out.

Couple things, I can't seem to be able to hold down a key and have it continuously be pressed. As in I can't hold down a direction key and have the character keep moving. I have to continuously tap the key.

NotEye thing. Haven't figured out how to enable it but works as expected in console mode. Try run mode command ('.' in angband keymap).

The "5" key doesn't seem to rest.

You must be using Angband keymap and indeed it leaves "5" unmapped. Until new version appears you can edit band_orig.cfg file and add line "rest = 5" somewhere. Thanks for the report!

Is there an explanation of the different key set types? 

No, but you can set one and hit "?" to see what is bound to what. I assumed only players familiar with various roguelikes would be interested in them and the rest would ignore it.

Is there a way to start the game in ascii console mode?

Supply -a parameter.

I'm guessing "buggy" is the same as cursed?

Mostly, yes.

Any chance of being able to make menu selections using the arrow keys and "Enter" key?

It could be implemented but I'm not very fond of it. This slows the gameplay somewhat when browsing large inventories. That and arrow keys are used to scroll. So far it has worked well in DoomRL but it does not feature scrolling menus.

[guest509]

  My favorite feature is that my mouse wheel walks my character toward the cursor. Fantastic.

[Ancient]

Ha ha ha. I also like it but what makes me laugh about it neither Psiweapon nor me anticipated it. Its Necklace of the Eye addition. Many pure ASCII roguelikes could benefit from it really. Such a beautiful piece of work I wonder why it has so few adopting projects when compared with the Chronicles of Doryen Library. Thus, to make it known PRIME now prints NotEye version inside game just under welcome screen.

Bad news: PRIME 2.1b has resistance shift bug. It is impossible to gain protection against radiation and thus cross Gamma Caves without dying. Victory might be still achievable with Ninjas who with a lot of skill can lock pick the retina scanner. Expect 2.1c to appear in near future. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Good news: we are planning for some more publicity friendliness. More screenshots on website (especially graphical mode), some development information what might be planned in new version and improved RogueBasin page. Works on the last are in progress. If anyone has any tips to share with us we are all ears.

Oh, we also have much awaited radiation spoiler!

PRIME Dev Team would like to thank Mendonca for his review of PRIME. It was a pleasant read and gave us an idea for a certain feature that is very likely to get implemented in next minor version.

[Z]

Thanks! Hopefully NotEye integration will become somewhat more popular after ADOM+NotEye gets released I suppose that important arguments for libtcod and against NotEye are currently the relative lack of documentation, and that it is hard to use for non-C++ games (apparently libtcod can be used easily with Python).

The problem with key repeating has been fixed in NotEye 6.4.

I have downloaded the Linux 64-bit binary, tried to run ./prime, and got:

bash: ./prime: No such file of directory

No idea what this means, everything looks OK.

Then I have downloaded the source, and compiled it, but I had to fix some problems (tablemaker was not compiled correctly, I had to enter its directory and "make" manually; i had do replace -llua with -llua5.1; I had to copy files from "data" to "user").

The help screen does not tell about the ESC key (which is very important), or the NotEye key. ASCII does not work in NotEye.

Regarding official spoilers... I wonder whether to start a spoily strategy wiki page about Hydra Slayer... there are many interesting strategies there. On one hand I want to share my thoughts when creating stuff / discovered strategies, but on the other hand, this should be done by players, not by the author...

[guest509]

  I like Prime but I often play Roguelikes like action games. All fast and button mashy. I use the Space Marine and fire away all day. I usually get overrun by Melnormes. Level 4 maybe?

  Scroll mouse wheel, tap 'f' until everything dies, pick up stuff, look at it, worry about radiation, scroll mouse wheel some more. Tap 'f'. Die. Restart.

 

[Ancient]

The problem with key repeating has been fixed in NotEye 6.4.

Good to know. The bugfix version shall upgrade.

I have downloaded the Linux 64-bit binary, tried to run ./prime, and got:

bash: ./prime: No such file of directory

No idea what this means, everything looks OK.

Executable incompatibility one way or another. I have to look at build system on the 64-bit machine.

Then I have downloaded the source, and compiled it, but I had to fix some problems (tablemaker was not compiled correctly, I had to enter its directory and "make" manually; i had do replace -llua with -llua5.1; I had to copy files from "data" to "user").

How was tablemaker not compiled correctly and why was it even needed? All files generated by the support program should come with the package already. Its there for people who would like to try modifying PRIME. Unless you called make clean which gets rid of some generated files.

In my system going with -llua5.1 will fail. Likewise for NotEye I have to add -lz and -lncurses to build command or it fails for me. Perhaps some GNU Autotools could help with resolving distribution differences like this but I dislike taking large things for small problems.

Copying files is done by "prepare" make target and is called by make prime (or just make). Have you invoked it when doing things by hand or did it fail somehow?

The help screen does not tell about the ESC key (which is very important), or the NotEye key.

My bad.

ASCII does not work in NotEye.

This is known deficiency and to be honest doing something about it is very low on to-do list. ASCII can be had by passing -a parameter so why bother?

Regarding official spoilers... I wonder whether to start a spoily strategy wiki page about Hydra Slayer... there are many interesting strategies there. On one hand I want to share my thoughts when creating stuff / discovered strategies, but on the other hand, this should be done by players, not by the author...

This is a difficult problem. Creating collection of bare facts about mechanics like PRIME spoilers do won't work for HS because it has most stuff exposed. I recall members of NetHack Dev Team sometimes provided clarifications to player-written spoilers but probably didn't write anything themselves. The latter approach could lead to situation "the author wrote spoiler on it so no point writing another" under assumption authors know their game best which would be loathsome thing to cause. Programmers do know game's internals best but that does not imply being good at the game at all. In Hydra Slayer's case I would wait with creating any such a wiki but it may then not happen at all.

[Z]

How was tablemaker not compiled correctly and why was it even needed? All files generated by the support program should come with the package already. Its there for people who would like to try modifying PRIME. Unless you called make clean which gets rid of some generated files.

It seems these files are not included in prime-src-2.1b.tgz (h/cpp versions of Attack.txt and other *.txt files).

I think that make executes some built-in rules to build "support/tablemaker/tablemaker" (which appears in dependency), which fail, instead of using the "support/tablemaker/Makefile".

Copying files is done by "prepare" make target and is called by make prime (or just make). Have you invoked it when doing things by hand or did it fail somehow?

Yes, but then I have tried to execute "prime" from the source directory. Did not notice the "build" subdirectory.

ASCII does not work in NotEye.

This is known deficiency and to be honest doing something about it is very low on to-do list. ASCII can be had by passing -a parameter so why bother?

I might want to switch back and forth between ASCII and tiles (not sure). Or use NotEye's other features with the ASCII mode. But I think you are right, this is not very important.

[jim]

Alright, I'm famous!

Wondering if I can get away with playing PRIME at work for the rest of the day. Only one way to find out!

[Ancient]

Just wait till credits page is finished. All contributors to PRIME shall get their tiny piece of fame.

So far I have fixed help screen and improved build system. Still need to upgrade to newest NotEye. Then 2.1c should appear.

[Ancient]

Name: Pesky Reticulans, Improvements, Moar Everything
Synopsis: Hacklike roguelike game with all kinds of aliens.
Version 2.1c (release #18) published 8th February 2013

DOWNLOAD: Windows --- Linux 32 bit --- Source code
Website: http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/

List of bugs that were squashed:

• Laser ray corners drawn when blind.
• Most wrong tiles.
• Torc when felt blindly is a torc, not a "bionic implant".
• Identified keycards are named right.
• Critical resistance shift bug fixed.
• Starting equipment corrections.
• Examining monkey wrench crashed the game. (thanks Robert)
• Keypad 5 was not mapped in several keymaps. (thanks Legend)
• Transportation ray gun was badly broken. (thanks Robert)
• Crazy marines power armor crashed the game on generation.
• Floppy disk of hypnosis printed totally freaked out message. (again, thanks Robert)
• Makefile that caused problems is brought to much better shape.

That would be it. Current PRIME should be fully enjoyable until new version comes out.

No 64bit version for Linux. Sorry, the build machine is unavailable right now!
Changelog lists also few other changes:
http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/changelog.txt

[getter77]

Nicely done.   

[Nymphaea]

Love it so far, such a different feeling from other roguelikes. And thank you, Jo, for pointing out the scrolling thing. So convenient for movement. Would be nice, though, if scrolling down moved in the opposite direction

Only problem so far, is a seg-fault when exiting the help page. PM me if you want the core dump, I'll throw it on dropbox in that case. Makes playing quite difficult, not allowed double checking the commands

[Ancient]

Name: Pesky Reticulans, Improvements, Moar Everything
Synopsis: Hacklike roguelike game with all kinds of aliens.
Version 2.1d (release #19) published 9th February 2013

I am ashamed of letting such a bug in. Trivial to check for and horrible for players at the same time. This release fixes the problem.

DOWNLOAD: Windows --- Linux 32 bit --- Source code
Website: http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/

Only problem so far, is a seg-fault when exiting the help page. PM me if you want the core dump, I'll throw it on dropbox in that case.

Thank you for the offer. It was easy to reproduce myself. Moreover the core dump was useless - I have smashed whole stack depriving execution trace of all information. Go me. :-/ Fortunately location to check was obvious.

I will ask Zeno about scrolling back. Might be cool. My mouse does not feature a scroll wheel so I usually forget there is such a feature in NotEye.

[Z]

Scrolling back works in NotEye 6.6.

[Ancient]

Name: Pesky Reticulans, Improvements, Moar Everything
Synopsis: Hacklike roguelike game with all kinds of aliens.
Version 2.2 (release #20) published 27th March 2013

First PRIME version appeared in March 2012.  It is March 2013 now so we celebrate a year of development with release 2.2!

Downloads Windows --- Linux i386 --- Linux x86_64 --- Source code

Visit our website: http://arcywidmo.republika.pl/prime/

This release brings:

• First and foremost a ton of fixes.  Changelog contains over fifty entries dedicated to eradicated bugs.
• Graphical mode has minimap.
• New stuff: asbestos jumpsuits and asbestos jackets, webbing grenades and motoric coordinator bionic implant.
• New creatures: sewer worms, spiders and vulture spider mines.
• New shop type: Imbibing Parlor!  Guess what is sold. :-)
• You can now switch to NotEye's ASCII mode.  It finally works.
• In graphical mode you can hold left alt to see whole map.
• Using blank floppy disks has whole new interface!  There is help file available and chances of success are shown.  They may not be totally precise if you haven't identified your stuff though.
• Spam may ask you to donate to charity for a change.  Local shop owners may advertise their wares.
• You can dismantle rad traps using repairing tools.
• Some status effect show countdown.  For example drowning does that.  Being in pit also tells you how far you are from climbing out.  To know other timeouts install health monitor implant.
• Creeping Credits only keep two third of money they steal from you.  They're no longer good banking service.
• Restoration modified.  Canister bugginess state now influences its effect.  Ray guns restore less but are still preferable to canisters.  Related docbot service is also better.
• Space Orcs recover from damage faster.  They have better regeneration rate and gain restoration effect every level.  Good for your janitors.

Full changelog also available for the curious or inquisitive.