Messages

1

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Brogue v1.7.3 released

« on: September 12, 2013, 01:05:50 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.7.3 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots, a forum and a wiki can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with v1.7.3:
⁃   Redesigned the stealth system to promote transparency and tactical interest. Monsters now have a flat 25% chance per turn to notice you if they are within your “stealth range,” which is a product of light level, invisibility, whether you spent the previous turn resting, rings of stealth and the natural weight of your armor. Your stealth range is listed on the side bar and may optionally be displayed on the map. Hunting monsters will lose track of you if they are farther away than triple your stealth range (or more than two spaces away if you’re invisible).
⁃   Redesigned ally progression to make allies feel less compulsory and capricious. A charge from the new Wand of Empowerment will permanently increase the combat abilities of a monster and allow it to absorb one ability from a fallen enemy. Allies that are empowered and subsequently negated will be able to re-learn their lost abilities. Allies no longer progress in strength or abilities from “exploration experience.”
⁃   Score upon victory is determined exclusively by gold, the amulet and lumenstones; other items are not counted. To compensate, the amulet is worth 35,000 gold instead of 10,000.
⁃   Implemented conduct challenges, which are listed on the death and victory screens as appropriate (but otherwise do not affect the game or score).
⁃   Scrolls of recharging no longer affect wands.
⁃   Food generation is slightly more generous, and somewhat less predictable.
⁃   Sneak-attacking with a runic will either double the proc chance or increase it halfway to 100%, whichever is less.
⁃   Added a new trap: the net trap.
⁃   Added a new charm type: the guardian charm.
⁃   Added a new quest room: the goblin warren.
⁃   When equipping armor, the armor value will rise from zero over several turns to discourage frequent armor swapping.
⁃   Wands of domination and plenty are less common.
⁃   Added axe and spear attack patterns to certain monsters. Spectral weapons from multiplicity inherit the attack pattern of their parent weapon; nagas and dragons attack all adjacent opponents like axes’; and goblin attacks penetrate like spears’.
⁃   Negation charms have limited range, which increases with the enchantment level of the charm.
⁃   Pressure plates are no longer activated by items floating onto them or by aquatic monsters in water.
⁃   Grappling monsters have more health.
⁃   Nerfed the jellymancer build by preventing split jellies from inheriting their progenitor’s learned abilities or attributes.
⁃   Reflected bolts won’t turn allies against you.
⁃   Submerging monsters cannot have the “explosive” mutation.
⁃   Damage from poison, caustic gas, steam, burning, mutuality and reprisal now ignore magical protection status.
⁃   Poison damage pops up temporary alerts similar to health alerts.
⁃   Added a “view dungeon seed” item to the menu button at the bottom of the screen.
⁃   Summoners can continue to summon while they are fleeing.
⁃   Polymorph erases mutations.
⁃   Drinking a potion of descent will cause you to fall unless you are levitating, irrespective of the terrain you are standing on.
⁃   Pit bloats are a lighter shade of blue.
⁃   Bloodwort pods no longer appear in the side bar; only the stalk is listed.
⁃   Accumulated gold is described on the game over screen.
⁃   Poisonous attacks won’t affect inanimate creatures.
⁃   Guarding and worshiping monsters will mill about more randomly.
⁃   Spectral blades aren’t listed in the side bar unless highlighted by the cursor.
⁃   Centaurs and spiders will launch their projectile attacks whether or not the enemy is reflective.
⁃   Centaurs and arrow turrets can hit turrets, won’t attack creatures embedded in obstruction crystals and won’t lose their ranged attack when negated.
⁃   Shattering will free dormant creatures trapped within.
⁃   Guardians hit harder, and monsters avoid them better.
⁃   Potions of purple gas and pink jellies are referred to as caustic rather than poisonous.
⁃   Monsters that learn to fly will lose the ability to submerge and will no longer be constrained to liquids.
⁃   Weapons known to have runes of acid mound slaying won’t warn against attacking an acid mound.
⁃   Creatures launched by weapons of force will damage (in addition to being damaged by) the enemy that they slam into.
⁃   Fleeing monsters won’t become aware of your location if you’re invisible unless you’re next to them.
⁃   Thrown items won’t hit submerged creatures.
⁃   Runic armor with an unknown enchantment level won’t give away its enchantment levels from its description.
⁃   Gouts of flame appear when monsters are consumed by lava, similar to items.
⁃   Fixed message color issues when one ally kills another discordant ally.
⁃   Tweaked negation order of operations so negating an infected golem won't release spores.
⁃   “(Off balance)” status indicators appear only when a monster is hunting.
⁃   Fixed a bug that caused certain creatures to flee at the start of a level.
⁃   Fixed a bug that caused the vampiric trait to increase a monster’s max health over time.
⁃   Fixed some edge case bugs that resulted in malformed machine rooms and bridges.
⁃   Fixed bugs related to naming items.
⁃   Fixed bug that caused discordant monkey or imp allies to flee forever if they steal an item while discordant.
⁃   Fixed
⁃   Fixed grammatical flaws related to choosing between “a” and “an”

2

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Brogue v1.7.2 (updated Oryx Tiles too)

« on: February 21, 2013, 03:01:38 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.7.2 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots, a forum and a wiki can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with v1.7.2:
   ⁃   The download includes a “seed catalog” file that details which items may be found on the first five depths of seeds 1-1000 as an optional benefit for players who want to try certain items.
   ⁃   Cursed items will no longer appear in vaults.
   ⁃   Rare monsters on deeper depths will appear with mutations, which can affect the monster’s stats or abilities.
   ⁃   The food clock is significantly tighter.
   ⁃   Allies’ power progression is slightly slower.
   ⁃   Summoned allies reveal themselves to you telepathically, as do normal allies that have traveled with you for some time and monsters under the influence of a staff of entrancement.
   ⁃   At the “You die... --MORE--” prompt, pressing ‘i’ will reveal your inventory with all items fully identified.
   ⁃   An enemy’s status will display as “(Off balance)” if you will get two turns before the enemy’s next turn.
   ⁃   Added a new key room.
   ⁃   Poisonous melee attacks will stack, and poisonous monsters will not flee when you are poisoned.
   ⁃   Attempting to move while seized by a grappling monster that you can see (krakens, bog monsters) will not cause you to lose a turn.
   ⁃   Allies that don’t regenerate won’t flee at low health.
   ⁃   Staffs recharge with a slight degree of randomness so players will not be coerced into counting turns to derive the charge level of an unidentified staff.
   ⁃   Positive unidentified rings will function as +1 rings so players will not be coerced into spoiler-induced trickery to ascertain their precise enchantment level.
   ⁃   Teleportation will try to move the player at least a certain pathing distance from where she started.
   ⁃   Allies will more reliably flee from monsters when appropriate instead of casting spells, and monsters that maintain distance will more reliably flee from allies.
   ⁃   Increased the total number of lumenstones generated from 23 to 25.
   ⁃   Addressed an exploit known as stair-dancing by allowing monsters moving between depths to displace any monster or player already standing at the entrance to the destination staircase.
   ⁃   The player no longer takes 50% damage on depth 1.
   ⁃   Allies no longer continue to increase in power past depth 26.
   ⁃   Fixed certain subtle gameplay changes by synchronizing the player’s turn timing more closely to environment updates.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused some charms’ recharge durations and enchantment profile to be incorrect (resulting in an overly powerful charm of recharging).
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused protection status on the player to wear off too slowly.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused staffs recharged by a scroll or charm of recharging to take a long time to recover subsequent charges.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused the inventory display to occasionally misalign the detect magic glyphs.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could cause certain bridges to terminate in water.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that allowed the player to blink onto the staircase tile.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that prevented guards of captive monsters from approaching their captive to attack it.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that allowed fire-immune allies to cast firebolts from within explosive gas.
   ⁃   Fixed several bugs related to the “call item” command.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused flying monsters to avoid poisonous lichen in some contexts, even though it cannot harm them.

3

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.7.1

« on: January 31, 2013, 04:34:36 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.7.1 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots, a forum and a wiki can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with v1.7.1:
   ⁃   Certain terrain features (locked doors, stairs, altars, etc.) are noted in the sidebar, and like monsters and items, can be selected from the sidebar by mouse or with the tab key for pathfinding and targeting.
   ⁃   The dungeon generation code has been rewritten from scratch, and the dungeon is generated with several new basic room shapes.
   ⁃   The lighting state of the player’s location (lit/unlit) is displayed at the top of the side bar.
   ⁃   New armor runic: the Armor of Respiration, which renders you immune to harmful gases.
   ⁃   New weapon runic: the Weapon of Force, which flings enemies backward and damages them if they hit something along the way, in proportion to the distance that they traveled.
   ⁃   New terrain feature: bloodwort plants, which grow seed pods that release healing gas when struck.
   ⁃   The rapier deals slightly more damage, requires 15 strength, and will perform a triple-damage never-miss lunge attack if you are one space away from an enemy and step directly toward it. Runic effects on rapiers are also more likely to trigger.
   ⁃   Brief flashes of light are displayed to indicate discovered secrets and other events.
   ⁃   The deepest dungeon depth is now 40 instead of 100, and it contains a reward for players skillful and insane enough to reach it.
   ⁃   Groups of monsters will now swarm their enemies more intelligently.
   ⁃   Plate armor now grants a base armor value of 11, down from 12.
   ⁃   Natural crystal formations reflect magical bolts.
   ⁃   Removed scrolls and charms of fear.
   ⁃   A type of item will automatically become identified if it is the last type of that item category not to be identified.
   ⁃   All item types in a vault will auto-identify as soon as you enter the vault, obviating the need to sequentially pick up and drop each such item.
   ⁃   When monkeys steal darts or other stackable weapons, they will steal only half of the stack at a time as long as you have more than three.
   ⁃   Charms are less common.
   ⁃   Swamp gas will explode only if it’s completely surrounded by swamp gas, fire or terrain that obstructs gas. Otherwise it just burns.
   ⁃   Weapons of multiplicity can summon up to 7 images and armor of multiplicity can summon up to 5, in each case based on their enchantment level, up from a maximum of 3.
   ⁃   Diagonal movement is permitted around all terrain except for walls and obstruction crystals. In other words, you can now step diagonally around statues, caged altars, wooden barricades, etc.
   ⁃   Vaults are no longer generated with destructible corners, which previously allowed a player with tunneling/shattering and blinking to rob vaults without unlocking them.
   ⁃   Tossing an item into lava will result in a one-cell gout of flame, which can ignite flammable gas clouds.
   ⁃   Items carried by monsters are now always identified in the monster details display.
   ⁃   Attempting to move while confused and next to lava will prompt the player for confirmation, as will attempting to drink a potion that is known to be bad.
   ⁃   Saved games load about twice as quickly.
   ⁃   Allies and other monsters are less likely to clip through walls in a variety of contexts, including upon summoning and when moving between depths.
   ⁃   Enemy monsters are again willing to cast offensive spells at allies that have learned reflection.
   ⁃   Wands of plenty are now generated with 1-2 charges, like wands of domination, instead of 2-4 charges.
   ⁃   Polymorph will no longer generate liches or phoenixes, to avoid odd outcomes with phylacteries and phoenix eggs.
   ⁃   Phoenix eggs have twice as much health, and phoenixes do more damage.
   ⁃   Negation will clear the “reflects magic” status from monsters.
   ⁃   Fixed several potential causes of out-of-sync errors.
   ⁃   Fixed a few bugs related to vault generation edge cases.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could cause the player's armor value to display as negative, even though it cannot go below zero.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could mess up dart/javelin quantities.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could cause memory corruption when items that had been ‘c’alled long names auto-identified.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that allowed you to spend a scroll of identify on a charm.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused the duration of entrancement to be shorter than it should be.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could cause the upward stairs on depth N to become discovered (and, potentially, could cause recordings or saved games to go out of sync) if you took the downward stairs to depth N+1 and then back up to N.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused weakened monsters to hit more accurately instead of less accurately (though their damage output and defense were correctly lowered).
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that could cause high-level charms of protection to provide too much shielding and potentially destabilize the game, and rebalanced the charm of protection to offer more benefit at lower enchantment levels.
   ⁃   Fixed a bug that caused monsters to wander back and forth repeatedly (by rewriting the wandering code from scratch).
   ⁃   Changed the open source license under which Brogue is distributed to AGPLv3.

4

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.7

« on: October 18, 2012, 04:37:12 PM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.7 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots, a forum and a wiki can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with 1.7:
- Removed experience from the game to reward exploration instead of combat, in part to avoid discouraging character builds that survive by avoiding or incapacitating monsters instead of killing them.
- Potions of healing are now potions of life, and in addition to healing you, they permanently increase your maximum health. Their frequency is now tightly controlled, like scrolls of enchanting and potions of strength.
- New item category: charms. Each can be activated periodically for a non-targeted effect. The duration over which the charms recharge as well as the intensity/duration of the effect increases with enchantment.
- New quest room features and types which are intended to make the quest room system feel more organic and less systematic, some of which were inspired by Andrew Doull’s UnBrogue.
- New potion, the potion of invisibility.
- New weapon type, the rapier, which attacks twice as quickly as ordinary weapons.
- New armor runic, armor of dampening, which renders you immune to explosions (though not to flame).
- Reduced the frequency of treasure rooms to its former, pre-1.6.4 rate to reduce player decision fatigue.
- Increased the accuracy progression of weapon enchantment (to a compounding 6.5% increase per point of enchantment instead of a constant +5 per enchantment) to remain competitive with armor enchantment, based on a quantitative analysis by Alex Mooney.
- The items that monsters drop are all pre-determined at the start of the game, to prevent different players playing the same seed from finding different items. Monsters will also no longer drop food.
- Depths from 30-33 have only two lumenstones each, and depths after that have only one lumenstone each.
- The window on Mac OS X will resize smoothly, and can be run in full screen mode on Mac OS 10.7-10.8.
- Fixed a bug that prevented hidden pit traps from being permanently discovered when you fell through them.
- Fixed a bug that could cause allies and occasionally players and items to fall through the ground when activating extending bridges.
- Fixed a bug that could occasionally cause a custom dungeon seed to generate a different pool of items and monsters based on the player’s actions on the prior depth.
- Fixed a bug that caused weakness status to erase allies’ level-up benefits.
- Fixed a bug that caused polymorphed monsters to regenerate health quickly (unless they were of a type that didn’t regenerate at all).
- Fixed a bug that could prevent phoenix eggs from hatching.
- Fixed a bug that could cause out-of-sync errors when attempting to throw an equipped weapon, confirming at the confirmation box and then canceling during targeting.
- Fixed an issue that could cause foliage and rings to appear as colorful emoticons under Mac OS 10.8 because of Apple’s new font selection routines. Many thanks to Joe Wreschnig and Dennis Gentry for their assistance in solving this issue.
- Damage statistics in the monster info panel are expressed in terms of the monster’s current health rather than its maximum health.
- If a weapon stack is divided into two or more stacks, and some of them are degraded by acid, enchanted or rust-protected, they will no longer stack with the weapons that were not degraded/enchanted/protected.
- Monsters’ damage ranges are generally tightened, so that they will deal the same average damage with less variance.
- Weapons of slaying will never miss their intended target, and will not be generated for bloats of any kind.
- Enchanting a wand will add to it the minimum number of charges that a wand of that type can initially have.
- Inanimate creatures cannot be weakened.
- Goblin conjurer allies will no longer count blades from the prior or next depth toward their summoning quota.
- Allies on the previous level and next level (in addition to allies on the same level) will gain experience from the player’s exploration, and exploration points will accrue for locations discovered via telepathy.
- Reduced the frequency of monkeys in the interest of being less annoying.
- Burning monsters will not ignite terrain while they are submerged.
- Rewind with left-arrow no longer hangs replays when used more than 100 turns into playback.
- Allies will no longer cast negation on entranced teammates, nor cast offensive spells of any kind at reflective opponents, nor try to engage bloats in melee.
- Weapons of slaying will not miss their intended targets.
- Disabling color effects with the backslash key will result in even blander graphics than before.
- Jellies will not split if there are already 100 of their clones within one depth, so that the elusive jellymaster build will not cause crashes.

5

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Announcing Brogue v1.6.3

« on: June 08, 2012, 07:42:40 AM »

Brogue v1.6.4 is out, which fixes some issues with 1.6.3:
-   Fixed a bug that caused allies’ damage to increase dramatically over time.
-   Fixed a bug that disabled the warning dialog box when you tried to walk into flame while levitating.
-   Fixed a bug with playback controls when watching a recording.
-   Fixed a broken message when an ally absorbs centipedes’ weakness ability.
-   Magical glyphs connected to guardians will not appear in hallways.

6

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.6.3

« on: June 07, 2012, 01:30:18 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.6.3 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots, a forum and a wiki can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with 1.6.3:
-   When examining items, unequipped weapons will tell you the percent by which equipping the weapon would affect your accuracy and damage, given what you know about the item. Similarly, examining unequipped armor will tell you what your expected armor value would be if you equipped it.
-   You get a free search every turn, as though you are always wearing a +1.5 ring of searching. In addition, secrets embedded in walls (secret doors, hidden levers) are 33% harder to detect.
-   Paralysis trap pressure plates are now physically separate from the locations that emit the paralytic gas, which means there are more hidden tiles that can be discovered to reveal the existence of a paralysis trap, and paralysis gas will generally take a turn or two to reach the player after stepping on the plate.
-   Several new quest rooms and improvements to existing quest rooms.
-   Stairs are generated in torchlit nooks in the walls of the dungeon.
-   Out of depth monsters generated in shallower depths are drawn from a narrower band of depths, making depths 2-5 easier, and some monster hordes (bog monsters and groups of vampire bats) are specifically prevented from spawning out of depth.
-   Portcullises that block poison gas trap rooms cannot be obstructed with items or creatures. Instead, a hidden lever will be generated inside of the room when the trap is activated that will lift the portcullis.
-   Fixed a bug that constrained possible quest room generation to certain depths.
-   Quietus and paralysis runics trigger slightly less often, and slowness runics trigger slightly more often.  Slowness also lasts longer.
-   Hidden dungeon features (secret doors, traps, etc.) are revealed in omniscience mode during recording playback.
-   New cursed runic: armor of immolation.
-   New monster: dart turret.
-   Invisibility granted by a wand is now timed. The player can become invisible with a reflected bolt from a wand of invisibility, which is treated as being extremely stealthy.
-   Allies will now announce when they are ready to absorb a new ability.
-   Allies will more reliably resume being friendly after being affected by magical fear.
-   Allies can now absorb centipedes’ ability to cause weakness.
-   Creatures that can cast or breathe fire are now more careful with flammable terrain.
-   Pathfinding over harmful terrain while under the effect of a temporary status that provides immunity to that terrain -- for example, pathfinding over lava while temporarily immune to fire -- is handled much more intelligently.
-   Tweaked the rate at which allies’ combat abilities improve over time.
-   Dar blademasters have less defense; eels have more.
-   Transference benefits allies less.
-   Weakness lasts 50% longer.
-   Explosion tiles will disappear instead of promoting into gas fire.
-   Fixed a bug that could occasionally cause allies to attack you while they were attempting to escape from harmful terrain such as poisonous gas.
-   Fixed a bug that sometimes caused fleeing monkeys to leap into lava if the player was fire-immune, or into chasms if the player was levitating.
-   Fixed a bug that sometimes caused nausea to cause recordings to go out of sync.
-   Fixed a bug that occasionally generated bridges that lead into deep water.
-   Fixed a bug that could render gold invisible and unobtainable, though it would still appear on the sidebar.
-   Fixed an exploit that could allow summoner allies to summon an unlimited number of minions.
-   Axes and spears will no longer hit creatures embedded in obstruction crystals.
-   Monster cages will obstruct gas, so caged monsters won’t get steamed to death before you reach them.
-   Killing a shielded monster with a weapon of quietus generates the correct amount of blood.
-   Items will no longer float away from you if you are entangled in a spiderweb over deep water.
-   Messages that refer to monsters that cannot be seen (referred to as “something”) will be appropriately gender-neutral.
-   Unicorns have a more apt appearance.
-   Phylacteries will be destroyed by negation magic.
-   The help screen is more streamlined.
-   The version number is displayed on the title screen.

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.6.2

« on: March 01, 2012, 01:36:26 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.6.2 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a forum can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with 1.6.2:

   ⁃   New games can be started with a custom seed by control-clicking “New Game” on the title screen.
   ⁃   Several new monster types that appear exclusively as allies, and a new quest room in which they appear.
   ⁃   New weakness status effect that can be inflicted temporarily by centipedes.
   ⁃   Equipped items are listed at the top of the inventory and separated from the remainder of the items by a one-line divider.
   ⁃   The names of unknown item types are displayed with purple coloration.
   ⁃   A few more pieces of information are included in item description screens.
   ⁃   Visible items on the floor are listed in the sidebar below monsters.
   ⁃   The variance of gold generated as a function of depth has been tightened substantially between games so that score better reflects depth (assuming that one finds all of the gold).
   ⁃   10% of monsters are generated out-of-depth, from 1-5 levels deeper.
   ⁃   Explore and travel functions seek out weapons that you’ve thrown at enemies and items that have been stolen from you, and will otherwise avoid, when convenient, items that you’ve discarded or thrown.
   ⁃   Targeting will default to the last confirmed target when it remains a valid and appropriate target.
   ⁃   Throwing an item will auto-target a monster only if the item is a weapon or potion.
   ⁃   Calling an item a blank string (instead of pressing escape) will remove any existing inscription and revert to, e.g., “a pink potion.”
   ⁃   The “Direction?” prompt displays the item name and action in the row above the prompt.
   ⁃   New purely cosmetic “true color” mode that optionally disables lighting colors, toggled during play with the backslash key.
   ⁃   Coloration of locked doors is more distinctive, and water is a deeper blue.
   ⁃   Fleeing monkeys stop fleeing if they drop your item to water currents.
   ⁃   Allies will no longer cast negation at reflective opponents.
   ⁃   Allies can again absorb invisibility from defeated enemies.
   ⁃   Rings of regeneration have been nerfed at high enchantment levels, so that they will never permit full regeneration in less than two to three turns.
   ⁃   Hallucination potions that have been affected by detect magic will auto-identify when thrown.
   ⁃   Title screen colors are somewhat calmer.
   ⁃   Lots of bug fixes.

8

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.6.1

« on: February 08, 2012, 10:56:31 PM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.6.1 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a forum can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with 1.6.1:
   ⁃   New main menu screen, new file selection dialog box when loading games and saved recordings, and other miscellaneous interface improvements.
   ⁃   Bug fixes.
   ⁃   Monsters with the “magical fear” status effect will no longer attack when cornered (though monsters fleeing for other reasons may still do so).
   ⁃   The curve by which the “darkness” status effect wears off is more back-loaded.

9

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.5.2

« on: November 08, 2011, 07:37:05 PM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.5.2 for Mac OS X,
Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a forum can be found
here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with 1.5.2:
   -   Message archive can be viewed by pressing shift-M or by clicking in the message block at the top of the screen.
   -   Further refinements to mouse mode.
   -   Tweaked experience point cut-offs at higher levels, with the goal of effectively capping growth at player level 12.
   -   Rewinding is now supported during playback in a limited fashion (via skipping to a turn that precedes the current turn).
   -   Fixed a bug that could corrupt a save file when you load and then immediately re-save the file.
   -   Fixed a bug that could cause a recording to hang if the player dies while paralyzed and you fast-forward to a turn during that paralysis.
   -   New quest room added.
   -   Player health bar fades to red at low health.
   -   Paralysis from paralytic gas lasts 10 turns after the gas dissipates instead of 15.
   -   New confirmation prompt when eating food when you’re not hungry enough to get the full benefit.
   -   Fixed an issue with a quest room that would cause steam vents to appear instead of mud patches.
   -   Polymorphed monsters will now have the greater of the previous monster’s health fraction or max HP less damage taken, and will be stunned for one turn afterward.
   -   Entrancing your allies will not turn them against you.
   -   Monsters now have genders that are properly reflected in pronouns that describe them.
   -   Changed the message "you hit the monster from the shadows" to the more accurate "you hit the monster, catching [him/her/it] unaware."
   -   Allies caught in the effect of a scroll of cause fear will flee like ordinary monsters, but will resume being your ally once the effect wears off if you haven’t attacked them in the interim.
   -   Firebolts cast by monsters do more damage on impact.
   -   Status bars indicating poison will use the creature's maximum health for its scale, so that a poison bar wider than the creature's health bar indicates that the creature has received a fatal dose.
   -   Scrolls of shattering no longer create a barrier around the perimeter of the area of effect.
   -   Thrown items (including non-spell projectiles from monsters) cannot be reflected, though they are still subject to ordinary combat rules with respect to accuracy and defense.
   -   Centaurs take only one turn to shoot an arrow.
   -   Turrets will no longer spawn on inaccessible walls, e.g. walls trapped behind a statue or crystal formation.
   -   Fixed an issue that would allow hasted players with the right key to sometimes pass through iron doors without unlocking them.
   -   Fixed an issue with armor of multiplicity creating the wrong number of images.
   -   Steam and gas vents have a different appearance.
   -   Waterbound monsters stranded on land are described as such.

10

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.5.1

« on: October 28, 2011, 01:15:13 AM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.5.1 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a forum can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New with version 1.5.1:
   -   New mouse control features that combine examine mode with auto-travel, and that make the game fully playable without the use of vi-keys. Some related changes to key commands.
   -   New quest rooms, some tweaks to existing quest rooms, and some new flavor terrain throughout the dungeon.
   -   Added Scrolls of Shattering.
   -   Added a brief alert that pops up next to the player when your health drops below 40, 25, 10 or 5%.
   -   Added a message informing you what kind of item a scroll, potion, wand or staff is when its effects identify it (in addition to marking the item category as identified).
   -   Added flavor text for impassible terrain, accessible by “bumping” the terrain.
   -   Items in certain treasure rooms will be pre-identified.
   -   Liches are now more interesting.
   -   Explore mode will not seek out keys, since picking them up often triggers traps, and it will be interrupted when a key or stairs are discovered.
   -   “Dungeon” reward rooms now contain only two imprisoned allies.
   -   Starvation is now gradual. When your nutrition level reaches zero and you have no food, your health will decrease by 1 every turn and will not regenerate.
   -   Pink jellies have slightly less health.
   -   For balance reasons, allies will cast healing magic less frequently and less effectively, will absorb enemy abilities half as frequently, and will improve their other stats about 40% slower.
   -   Monsters with only one maximum health point will not display a health bar.
   -   The player’s throwing range has been shortened.
   -   When displaying the player’s armor while wearing unidentified armor, the strength penalty/bonus will be taken into account even though the armor enchantment level, if any, will not.
   -   Fixed a bug that could lead to insufficient food being generated.
   -   Fixed a bug that could cause an item placed randomly on the level by one quest room to be rendered inaccessible by another quest room.
   -   Fixed various issues with the item details screen for certain items, especially runic weapons and armor and the Staff of Tunneling.
   -   Fixed an errant message when drinking a potion of paralysis.
   -   The player turns a shade of blue instead of purple when standing in dark shadows.
   -   Scrolls of negation will now properly strip curses from rings on the floor in addition to enchantments.
   -   Wands of plenty will clone their target but also halve its health.
   -   On Mac OS X, saved games and recordings will be placed in ~/Library/Application Support/Brogue instead of the same folder as the application.
   -   When saving a recording or saved game, the suggested filename will be incremented as necessary to default to an unused name.

11

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.5

« on: October 10, 2011, 09:26:06 PM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.5 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a forum can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New features since v1.4:
   -   Dungeons now include interactive “quest rooms,” which include lock-and-key puzzles, collapsing/flooding terrain, hidden items, elaborate traps, challenges, boss monsters and more.
   -   All new weapons: spears/pikes, which hit an adjacent enemy and the enemy behind it; axes, which hit all adjacent enemies; and maces/hammers, which hit twice as hard and require an extra turn to recover afterward.
   -   Added item description screens, which include useful statistics about the item and are accessible via the inventory or by examining a discarded item on the ground.
   -   New monsters, items and weapon/armor runic abilities.
   -   Monster descriptions include statistics about how certain staffs and wands will harm or affect the monster, and whether the monster is carrying an item that it stole from you.
   -   Messages and monster descriptions are color-coded for clarity.
   -   Monsters that can blink will now do so more intelligently to approach enemies, flee attackers and escape harmful terrain.
   -   Numerous tweaks to make colors crisper and the interface less distracting.
   -   Allies get stronger over time at a faster rate, are able to attack wall turrets, and are better at following you down pits and stairs.
   -   Monsters are no longer generated in sight of the level start.
   -   Merged Potions of Healing and Extra Healing; eliminated Scrolls of Sanctuary.
   -   Gold is now generated independently from items, both to reduce the variance of per-game aggregate gold quantity and to stop gold from being generated at the expense of items.
   -   Rings now auto-identify after being worn for a while, similarly to armor and weapons.
   -   Subtle change in ally color to distinguish allies from enemies.
   -   Spectral blades and other inanimate creatures do not avoid gas clouds if the clouds would not affect them.
   -   Wisdom is now a ring instead of an armor runic.
   -   Reflection is now an armor runic instead of a ring.
   -   Cancellation is now called negation; certain monsters are marked as animated by magic and will die if negated. New Scrolls of Negation will negate all creatures and items within your field of view (but will not affect items in your inventory). Negated weapons, armor and rings will lose their magical properties, and negated wands and staffs will lose their charges.
   -   Removed Scrolls of Sanctuary.
   -   Added a point of damage to darts.
   -   Creatures exposed to fire will burn about half as long.
   -   The duration of entrancement no longer varies with the target’s maximum health.
   -   Auto-resting will terminate if you are embedded in an obstruction and it dissolves.
   -   When pink jellies split, their health is divided between their progeny, and they have commensurately more health initially.
   -   Items and monsters won’t spawn in hallways or doorways, but items may spawn in shallow water.
   -   Detect magic icons are now also color-coded to distinguish good items from bad.
   -   The ‘D’iscoveries screen specifies whether the detect magic potion will flag that item as good or bad magic.
   -   Wands and staffs that are meant to target enemies once identified will not default to auto-aiming at captive monsters.
   -   You can now see allies that are invisible (and wands of invisibility will auto-identify if you use them on an ally).
   -   New special effects for magic mapping and aggravate monsters scrolls.

12

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Brogue v1.4 released!

« on: April 19, 2011, 03:05:47 PM »

It is my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.4 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Downloads, screenshots and a web forum can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New features since v1.3:

* Games are now recorded into recording files that can be played back later. Recordings can be annotated if they are accompanied by a text file of the same name.
* Games can be saved and restored later. (Because saved games use the same architecture as recordings, they can take a while to load.)
* Allies are smarter about self-preservation; they will attempt to disengage from combat before dying and will try to avoid toxic gas.
* Allies will grow stronger as you explore levels with them. They also have the ability to absorb certain attributes from slain enemies.
* New items: Staff of Conjuration, Incendiary Shurikens, Potions of Descent, Scroll of Recharging and Wand of Domination.
* Scroll of Darkness is now a Potion of Darkness that creates a cloud of darkness when thrown. Standing in a cloud of darkness yields a substantial stealth bonus.
* Strength system overhauled: nothing will sap the player's strength, potions of weakness and restore strength have been removed, potions of strength are the only source of increased strength, and they are metered and placed around the map without a preference in favor of hidden rooms. Every point of strength deficiency when equipping armor or a weapon results in a -2.5 modifier, and every point of strength surplus results in a +0.25 modifier.
* New enemy: Flame Turret, to replace the Dart Turret
* Non-flying enemies will not follow the player down pits, though flying enemies and allies will do so
* Ogre shamans will create only one ogre per summoning
* Reflected entrancement bolts will confuse the player
* Entrancement has a minimum duration equal to the staff level
* Beckoned monsters lose a turn after beckoning
* Dropping an item will cause you to automatically pick up an item that is already there
* The inventory screen indicates the amount of free space left
* Fleeing monsters that can blink will blink toward safety
* Poison runics on weapons ramp up faster with enchantment
* Magic mapping color is a little brighter for greater visibility

13

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.3 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux

« on: July 04, 2010, 11:50:20 PM »

It's my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.3 for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Website/Screenshots/Forum/Download: http://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/home

New features since v1.2:

   •   Three lines of message text are now visible instead of one.
   •   Monsters can now be examined to reveal their statistics and special properties.
   •   Strength is no longer gained upon level-up; instead, potions of gain strength are metered like food and scrolls of enchantment.
   •   Armor and weapon strength requirements have been lowered, but exceeding them will diminish movement and attack speeds respectively.
   •   Certain terrain (lava, water, etc.) will animate in between player turns.
   •   Terrain can now have random but persistent coloration.
   •   Four new monsters.
   •   Eels and krakens will now attack land monsters in deep water.
   •   Fiery monsters will now avoid flammable terrain except when moving erratically or hunting the player.
   •   Fleeing monsters will now occasionally jump into chasms or venture into water when chased.
   •   Monsters will now take a full turn to awaken instead of attacking immediately.
   •   New terrain features include bridges over chasms, glowing fungal forests and patches of relative darkness.
   •   Individual items (in addition to item flavors) can now be inscribed with the 'call' command.
   •   Thrown items will now trigger traps.
   •   Detect magic will now flag non-magical items as such.
   •   Staves of lightning have been buffed, and armor of reprisal has been nerfed.
   •   The player can now pick up items while levitating.
   •   Lava will now destroy all items except the Amulet of Yendor.
   •   Monsters under the effects of a staff of entrancement will now move in the opposite direction as the player and can be compelled to step into lava and chasms.
   •   Crystals created by staves of obstruction temporary lakes created by water traps will now decay from the outside in rather than uniformly.
   •   Staff and wand bolts now light up terrain as they fly past.
   •   Tile colors are dynamically adjusted to assure that monsters will not be difficult to see against a background of similar color or in high or low light conditions.
   •   Memory color has been tweaked to make it more visually distinctive.

14

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Announcing Brogue v1.2 for Mac, Windows and Linux

« on: May 07, 2010, 07:11:17 PM »

It's my pleasure to announce the release of Brogue v1.2 for Mac, Windows and Linux. Brogue is fully feature-equivalent for all three platforms thanks to the excellent libtcod library.

Downloads and screenshots are available here: http://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/


New features since v1.0.1:

Full feature-complete Windows and Linux ports thanks to the excellent
Libtcod engine.

True player memory functionality so that the player is not aware of
changes to the dungeon that she cannot see

Examine ability to look at monsters, items and terrain from a
distance. Pressing return will travel to that point just like
clicking. Pressing return again will resume travel if interrupted.

Auto-explore and auto-play functions to navigate tedious portions of
the game with a single keystroke.

Numerous new terrain features, including thick foliage, water traps,
sparkling crystal formations, beds of flame-swept brimstone, deadly
lichen and scalding steam.

Out of sight fleeing monsters will be unaware of your movements until
they are again in your field of view.

Numerous monsters have been refined.

Flying monsters and monsters with enough health will chase you into
pits and trap doors.

New items: staff of discord, staff of poison, staff of haste, wand of
beckoning, wand of plenty, scroll of darkness, potion of creeping
death, ring of reflection.

Runic weapons and armor with special magical effects have been added.

New monster: the wraith.

Invisible failsafe to assure that every character finds some good
items.

Weapon enchantments consolidated into a single number instead of
separate accuracy and damage scores.

Staffs will permanently reveal their maximum number of charges when
depleted.

Armor will not be instantly identified when equipped.

Weapons and armor will reveal their enchantments and whether or not
they are runic (though not what kind) when used for a while.

Several new tile appearances.

Detect magic is now much more powerful: it will attach to items in
your and monsters' inventories and lasts forever on those items.

Food distribution tweaked to be less common on earlier levels which
take less time and more common on later levels which take more time.

Hovering over lava/chasms/water and wading through lava while immune
to fire will warn you when you are running out of levitation/immunity.

Drawing routines have been optimized substantially.

Travel and autorest animate and can be interrupted partway through.

Doors do not obstruct vision when a creature has opened them.

Scads and scads of small bugfixes and enhancements.

15

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) / Re: Announcing Brogue v1.0

« on: January 29, 2010, 02:30:56 PM »

An enterprising coder has released a preliminary Windows port, available here:

http://rogue-ish.blogspot.com/