Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Allure of the Stars v0.9.5.0 stars in reddit's Feedback Friday

« on: May 03, 2019, 07:27:37 AM »

The freshly released Allure of the Stars v0.9.5.0 stars in today's reddit's Feedback Friday. Please come over, play, share your scores, offer feedback and have fun!

https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/comments/bk4q33/feedback_friday_44_allure_of_the_stars

Browser play and binaries are available. Note that Mac OS X binaries are accessible from Homebrew via `brew install allureofthestars`. Dear sight-impaired players, please use the screen reader binary (for Linux) and offer feedback especially about how to improve the text UI to be more accessible to you.

If you prefer a quirky fantasy/victorian/maths-punk setting, the LambdaHack engine's sample game may be more to your liking: https://lambdahack.github.io
Feel free to share your feedback under the same reddit post.

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: September 14, 2018, 04:02:53 PM »

I'm always curious when devs us efunctioal languages. How have you found Haskell for development?

A blast. All good things they say about Haskell are true and of the bad things, it's true it's harder to reason about low level optimization issues --- the only things I struggle with is finding occasional memory leaks that occur due laziness and predicting compiler optimizations and prodding the compiler to generate optimal assembly in the few places where it matters. Oh, and compilation with all optimizations turned on is slow (many minutes). so I need to use the fast compilation mode for development.

People also complain about IDE situation, but I wouldn't use it anyway, I'm happy with emacs. I could also complain about the size and speed of generated JavaScript, but actually it's a miracle I can generate JavaScript from a language designed to compile to native CPU code at all. And it's improving slowly.

IMHO, the only language that could be better suited for a CPU-intensive roguelike is Rust, but it's still less mature and it requires more diligence, more effort to write decent code (Haskell requires smarts and persistence when learning, but then the absence of 90% of bugs and the ease of refactoring gives it an edge in dev speed).

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: July 05, 2018, 04:36:33 PM »

Progress on the UI front. A new placeholder ASCII art for the Main Menu and help screens that use the twice area. Other menus and listings where scaling up automatically fine

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Early Dev / Re:Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi, squad, WWW)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: July 03, 2018, 03:04:36 PM »

Regarding these illustrious plans:

Hot! Plans for the next year!

* [UI] This is a big one. We are breaking through the eternal 80x25 characters barrier! The game window will be resizable and dungeon level viewport will be scrollable. Help needed, including brainstorming. In particular, I have no idea whether the view should always centre on the squad leader or only until any area outside the level is visible or yet something different, e.g., auto-scrolling so that the messages that overlap viewport from the top don't obscure the leader. See. https://github.com/LambdaHack/LambdaHack/issues/22
* [Gameplay] As soon as this is implemented, levels will have awesomely different sizes! But then we suddenly don't know how to align them vertically and it matters, because a single staircase is located at the same position on each level it passes through and so the relative distance of staircases needs to be preserved (even if we rotate levels, which I don't think we are loony enough to implement). Assuming there are no story-wise constraints, should the levels just align with their geometrical centres or is it too boring? Or top-left corner? Or centre of the top line? Also, what to do if a staircase passes through a void outside the level? See https://github.com/LambdaHack/LambdaHack/issues/115

I've decided to fix Allure window to 45x80 characters and keep LambdaHack at the old 24x80. Also, all levels will have size equal or smaller than the viewport size (until somebody wants to create a game with huge levels, at which point we'll tackle the issue again). Both of these design decisions simplified matters a lot. In particular, as of now, the display code copes with the generality and dungeon generation limps along somehow.

There is still a lot to do, though:
- Allure cave and place content needs to be overhauled to create nicer dungeons (currently they are just scaled).
- The other content (rooms, tiles, items, blasts, actors, organs, temporary conditions) needs to be extended to fill the twice bigger dungeon with exciting things.
- The codebase needs to be overhauled to create interesting, tight dungeons and not be hampered but take advantage of the larger level size.
- To make it possible to vary the size of Allure levels (but all will be smaller than the viewport), stair and level creation needs to be rewritten (because stair locations match on levels they connect).
- Dungeon generation and content choice need to take into account the small (21x80), tiny (21x40) and very tiny () levels, to make them interesting and balanced.

Contributions and feedback, as always, very warmly welcome.

5

Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: June 30, 2018, 09:51:14 AM »

v0.8.3.0 is just released, with Mac OS X binaries included for the first time, thanks to Pablo Reszczynski.
who apparently found the game's Easter egg, became an alien and is seen at the screenshot giving the puny humans a hard time.



Changes, as in https://github.com/AllureOfTheStars/Allure/releases/tag/v0.8.3.0:
- Add a hack to run SDL2 on the main thread, fixing the OS X crash
- Warn visually when impressed and Calm running low, risking domination
- Display actor as red when low Calm and impressed or when low HP
- Fix, complete and fine tune UI, AI and server skill and weapon checks
- Fix a bug where item aspects look different to clients than to the server
- Change the requirements for the main menu ASCII art
- Tweak loot and terrain a tiny bit

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / v0.8.3.0 Allure of the Stars(Sci-fi, squad,browser)/LambdaHack(Fantasy, Haskell)

« on: June 30, 2018, 09:49:40 AM »

If you are on a Mac, v0.8.3.0 is just released, with Mac OS X binaries included for the first time, thanks to Pablo Reszczynski,
who apparently found the game's Easter egg, became an alien and is seen at the screenshot giving the puny humans a hard time.



Changes, as in https://github.com/AllureOfTheStars/Allure/releases/tag/v0.8.3.0:
- Add a hack to run SDL2 on the main thread, fixing the OS X crash
- Warn visually when impressed and Calm running low, risking domination
- Display actor as red when low Calm and impressed or when low HP
- Fix, complete and fine tune UI, AI and server skill and weapon checks
- Fix a bug where item aspects look different to clients than to the server
- Change the requirements for the main menu ASCII art
- Tweak loot and terrain a tiny bit

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: v0.8.0.0 Allure of the Stars(Sci-fi, squad,browser)/LambdaHack(Fantasy, Haskell)

« on: June 17, 2018, 11:05:15 PM »

I'd like to thank all people engaged in the giveaway event: the organizers and the hundreds of contestants and also those that didn't register, but vociferously participated in the festivities on various fora. If you didn't win, don't despair --- you are cordially invited to name the price of your choosing at https://man-of-letters.itch.io/allureofthestars and enjoy the game to its fullest. If you won, you rock and you are entitled to all future versions of the game (though not necessarily all DLCs), no matter how high the minimal price rises when the game exits Early Access (in a decade or so). Now let's go claim from the pesky aliens what is ours!

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: June 17, 2018, 11:04:59 PM »

I'd like to thank all people engaged in the giveaway event: the organizers and the hundreds of contestants and also those that didn't register, but vociferously participated in the festivities on various fora. If you didn't win, don't despair --- you are cordially invited to name the price of your choosing at https://man-of-letters.itch.io/allureofthestars and enjoy the game to its fullest. If you won, you rock and you are entitled to all future versions of the game (though not necessarily all DLCs), no matter how high the minimal price rises when the game exits Early Access (in a decade or so). Now let's go claim from the pesky aliens what is ours!

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: v0.8.0.0 Allure of the Stars(Sci-fi, squad,browser)/LambdaHack(Fantasy, Haskell)

« on: June 17, 2018, 12:17:58 AM »

The giveaway has started!!! https://www.indiedb.com/giveaways/allureofthestars

Excitement! Emotion! Thrill, Tumult, Rush and Commotion!

Details at https://redd.it/8rguey

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: June 17, 2018, 12:17:29 AM »

The giveaway has started!!! https://www.indiedb.com/giveaways/allureofthestars

Excitement! Emotion! Thrill, Tumult, Rush and Commotion!

Details at https://redd.it/8rguey

11

Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:58:59 PM »

BTW, giveaway is right around the corner: https://twitter.com/AllureRoguelike/status/1007759955879956481

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: v0.8.0.0 Allure of the Stars(Sci-fi, squad,browser)/LambdaHack(Fantasy, Haskell)

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:57:20 PM »

BTW, giveaway is right around the corner: https://twitter.com/AllureRoguelike/status/1007759955879956481

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Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / v0.8.0.0 Allure of the Stars(Sci-fi, squad,browser)/LambdaHack(Fantasy, Haskell)

« on: June 09, 2018, 08:06:54 AM »

v0.8.0.0 explodes with many new features, backstory elements, a dashboard and scratches and itch: https://man-of-letters.itch.io/allureofthestars

See https://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=5454.msg51338#msg51338

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: June 09, 2018, 08:04:53 AM »

v0.8.0.0 explodes with many new features, backstory elements, a dashboard and scratches and itch: https://man-of-letters.itch.io/allureofthestars

Also, v0.8.1.1 follows up with much lower RAM usage when compiling and other developer comforts: https://github.com/LambdaHack/LambdaHack

Enjoy!

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Early Dev / Re: Allure of the Stars (Sci-fi,squad, browser)/LambdaHack (Fantasy, Haskell engine)

« on: February 17, 2018, 05:42:35 AM »

A showcase of shooting down explosives. Small font. A couple were shot down close enough to enemies to harm them. Others exploded closer to our party members and took out of the air the projectiles that would otherwise harm them.

This is a semi-automatic stealthy speedrun of the escape scenario. The enemy gang has a huge numerical and equipment superiority. Our team loots the area on auto-pilot until the first foe is spotted. Then they scout out enemy positions. Then hero 1 draws enemies and unfortunately enemy fire as well, which is when he valiantly shoots down explosives to avoid the worst damage. Then heroine 2 sneaks behind enemy lines to reach the remaining treasure. That accomplished, the captain signals retreat and leaves for the next area (the zoo).