Archived news from 02/00.
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- Balrog 170. BALROG has reached the heady heights of 170 games listed, 22 of which have detailed pages. Erik I. Bolsø has also added screenshots from VMS Moria 4.8 and Mac BOSS, info about an obscure online pre-roguelike called "Black Dragon" and a bunch of minor updates.
- Real polymorphing with useable monster abilities.
- Scrolls of super genocide make you the master of life and death of entire races.
- Made monster spell flags 64-bit, adding room for 96 new spells.
- DooM monsters from Zce and associated spells.
- Added 256 colour support to -mx11 and -mxaw. Not #defined by default.
- Colours changed for -mgcu, the terminal patch by KJ is no longer necessary.
- Added panel centering on player
- Less powerful vorpal blades (this one from Z).
- http://artemida.amu.edu.pl/~naskrent/gsn21dos.zip = DOS Binary.
- http://artemida.amu.edu.pl/~naskrent/gsn21src.zip = Source.
- Amiga OAngband. Bablos has ported the recent OAngband release (v0.4.1) for the Amiga. You'll find the file you're after here...
- RML Article. Ross Morgan-Linial (of borg fame *grin*) has also just sent in a new article for the Development section. Called 'Finding Explorable Regions', it's a slab of code to help you find if regions of a dungeon are reachable and connected. This now brings the articles total to 32 which is great if you ask me but it could be more! If you think you could help out others wishing to create roguelikes by writing an article on a related topic, please get in touch.
- New OAngband. Just a week since the last release, Tim Baker has another new version of OAngband (v0.4.1). We have a list of features too and it's kinda large so there's been a little mutilatio...uh, editing involved. Here you go...
- A number of changes were made to support Tom Morton's Bigscreen Patch.
- Changed the Windows version to allow the user to choose any fixed-width font installed on the computer, in addition to the included font files.
- Changed the Windows version to apply a "gamma correction" to the screen colors (to make them a bit brighter).
- Added two options for keeping the player centered, "center_player" and "center_running" under the Efficiency page. Stolen from ZAngband.
- Changed the Windows version to optimize drawing of the screen. This is to counteract the slow center_player option.
- The target/look command now scrolls the screen. Stolen from ZAngband.
- Fixed a redraw bug with selecting an item.
- Many extra status messages are displayed if the screen is at least 26 rows tall.
- Added the "verify_destroy_junk" option to the Disturbance page.
- Ask for which ring to replace when putting on another ring, if two rings are already being worn.
- Added two commands for saving and loading options in the "options" command. The window flags are also saved/loaded.
- If there is a lib\user\birth.prf file, it is automatically loaded when a new character is created, before the other preference files (see below).
- Race- and class-specific preference files are loaded in addition to the others, as in ZAngband.
- Separated user inscriptions from game-generated inscriptions.
- Added many new menus to the Windows version, containing most of the game commands. This should help new players.
- Changed the "screen dump" commands to ask for a filename, and fixed a bug.
- Made sure the monster fear message was displayed when a monster sets off the player's cunning trap.
- Fixed a few "buf[i] == NULL" typos.
- Added "time of day" command (^T/') from ZAngband, minus the descriptive messages.
- Added auto-pickup of any item inscribed with "=g".
- Grids outside the town walls are darkened. This looks better with big screens or when center_player is on.
- http://persweb.direct.ca/dbaker/OAngband-041-src.zip = Source.
- http://persweb.direct.ca/dbaker/OAngband-041-win32.zip = Windows Binary.
- Fixed char creation, where age limits balanced to 0, you get big number :>
- Fixed random seed in char creation (strange...)
- Fixed djgpp makefile to be 'cleaner' for systems not my own ^_^
- Fixed to handle pd curses 2.4
- Added 'money' scattered around the dungeon
- Money matrix for converting the realms cash (copper, silver, gp, platinum)
- Added 'pickup' to the keylist + ini file
- When objects (money) is pickedup, it is now removed from the object list
- Fixed the 'do more', it was firing 1 line too early on long messages.
- Autoget now parsed and it now does 'auto pickup' on money currently.
- Fixed evasion skill bug in traps. Now you cant rack up skill points on an empty/disused trap.
- ftp://ftp.mega-tokyo.com/pub/underdark/underdark-0.1.11-src.zip = Source.
- ftp://ftp.mega-tokyo.com/pub/underdark/underdark-0.1.11-exec.zip = DOS Binary.
- Amiga ZAngband. Almost forgot but Bablos has a port of the ZAngband development release (v2.3.5) for the Amiga. You'll find the file here...
- OAngband Features. Tim Baker was kind enough to post along the list of changes in OAngband (v0.4.0e) so here they are...
- Themed levels aren't generated on quest levels, to prevent down staircases and give the quest monsters a better chance of being generated.
- The item activation description for objects which brand missiles said "brand missiles every 999 turns" but the code value is actually every 1750 turns.
- Make sure the "Please wait. This may take a little while." message is displayed while generating a themed level if the fresh_after option is not set.
- *Identify* was incorrectly listing some uncursed objects as cursed.
- Random artifacts were not being allocated. All my fault. They were initialized for each character, but never showed up in the cave.
- Elven Cloak random artifacts always get a "pval" bonus, since they always affect stealth.
- Fixed a bug where *Identify*ing some objects would not display the full knowledge the first time.
- New OAngband. Tim Baker has released a new version of OAngband (v0.4.0e). Unfortunately, I haven't (at this time) got my mitts on the feautes list so I can't really tell you much about it apart from where to get the files. So, without further ado, here they are...
- ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband/Incoming/OAngband-040e-src.zip = Source.
- ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband/Incoming/OAngband-040e-win32.zip = Windows Binary.
- Amiga DrAngband. To complement the above port, Bablos has an Amiga version of the recent DrAngband (v3.9.4) release. You can get it here...
- New Claw. There is another release of Claw and Sword (v0.0.2) from Francisco Muoz. This one expands and fills in some of the features missing from the last version. The player appears above stairs now so the teleport debug command isn't required and there is also an outdoor map feature. Source can be found on the homepage.
- The GCU port can now use wide and tall screens correctly (-x and -y switches).
- 52 item inventory (if you aren't using a large enough screen so see it all, '+' scrolls through it).
- Mages & their spells are considerably changed.
- My first attempt at making the player use a larger selection of stuff.
- Useful utility stuff is more effective. Almost nothing is immune to confusion, sleep and slowing and genocide got killed.
- Fractal caves & vaults.
- The angband 283edit monster changes.
- Wands/staves and rods of various types (confusion, sleep, slow monster) rarer since the effect is more powerful.
- Widescreen!
- Detection and mapping spells work by radius, not screen size.
- Character dumps now appended to end of character log files. Comments can be added to log files by hitting ':'.
- http://www.yikesstation.freeserve.co.uk/drang/download/drangband-294-dos.zip = DOS Binary.
- http://www.yikesstation.freeserve.co.uk/drang/download/drangband-294-src.tar.gz = GZipped Source.
- http://www.yikesstation.freeserve.co.uk/drang/download/drangband-294-src.tar.bz = BZipped Source.
- ftp://ftp.mega-tokyo.com/pub/underdark/underdark-0.1.10-src.zip = Source.
- ftp://ftp.mega-tokyo.com/pub/underdark/underdark-0.1.10-exec.zip = DOS Binary.
- More Claw. There is a new release of Claw and Sword (v0.0.1) from Francisco Muoz available. In this version, you can fully explore 15 randomly populated levels and mess with the debug commands. Nb. Remember to compile with the debug commands switched on as while starting levels, you often appear within walls and need to 'teleport' out of them.
- ZAngband Dev Release. All you naughty variant authors have been too productive and filled the 'export.andrews.cmu.edu' FTP site so poor old Robert Rühlmann can't upload his new dev release (v2.3.5) of ZAngband. Not to fear though, the files are still available at the homepage. Here are the changes... for a change...
- Cleaned up monster fighting messages.
- Quest entrances show now the name of the quest.
- Added player alignment based on pet alignment and virtues; this determines the alignment of monsters the player can summon.
- Monsters may no longer summon their enemies.
- Added an "autodestroy worthless objects" option.
- Lowered the pet upkeep slightly.
- Made pets able to locate the player from a greater distance.
- Restored the mana of all classes to pre-2.3.4 levels.
- Made 'trump cyberdemon' less difficult to cast successfully.
- Added an invisible wall for nightmare mode.
- Disintegration balls are now stopped by permanent walls.
- Corrected a bug which prevented monsters from casting non-bolt spells at monsters when a friend is between.
- Shattered weapons are now 1d1 instead of 0d0. This fixes the 'division by zero' error when getting a critical hit with such a weapon.
- The EMPTY_MIND flag of monsters is now remembered by the player when an attack shows that the monster is immune to psi-powers.
- Exploding monsters no longer hurt the player twice when exploding.
- Fixed a bug that could crash the game when generating fractal caves.
- Fixed a typo when a ring disappears in shallow water.
- Removed the CAN_SWIM flag from mushrooms, molds, and most jellies.
- Fixed a bug with the 'NOT' operator of the *.prf files parser.
- Added a new main-x11.c file by Uwe Siems. The improvements include better graphic-scaling on systems with HiColor/TrueColor mode (can be switched off with -s).
- Added a new main-mac-carbon.c file by Ron Anderson. It supports PPC, CarbonPPC, and 68k and implements the 16x16 tiles.