In a Time of Roguelike Chimpanzees I was a Monkey

doctorfrog on 28/3/2010 at 20:40

Crawl 0.6 is finally out!

(http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=xkcujwqgqtj&thumb=5)

Inline Image:

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/49f7e944578dfc0da337902c49cf20cb2g.jpg

Major changes:

* Removed Divinations spell school.
* Three new gods: Jiyva, Fedhas, Cheibriados.
* Altars for dungeon gods may now appear on levels 2 to 9 instead of the Temple.
* New water based branch: the Shoals, sometimes replacing Swamp or Snake Pit.
* Overhauled AC/EV system. In particular, effect of Dexterity on EV is uncapped.
* Strength has a much greater effect on carrying capacity.
* Slime creatures and ugly things are more interesting and dangerous.
* Many cool new monsters, portal vaults and ammunition brands.

Download it officially here: (http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/)
Or, download it with a little custom launcher I put together, with an ambient radio player and a prettified console version, here: (http://www.mediafire.com/?lzy1u22hnln)

(http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=lzmminzozww&thumb=4)

Inline Image:

http://www2.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/62e9bbdca39c9bff63beb1fff1770c5a6g.jpg

Dresden on 29/3/2010 at 09:28

Yay! Possibly no Snake Pit in a playthrough!

Kolya on 29/3/2010 at 11:11

Never played Crawl before. Seems a lot like Nethack albeit with a better help/message system.
Thanks for the launcher docfrog, appreciated.

doctorfrog on 29/3/2010 at 18:00

Quote Posted by Kolya

Never played Crawl before. Seems a lot like Nethack albeit with a better help/message system.
Thanks for the launcher docfrog, appreciated.

No problem, enjoy. Crawl is very good about being self-contained, in that all the playing knowledge you need to get started is in a very good dynamic tutorial system, and the knowledge you need to play well is included in the existing documentation and the game mechanics themselves. I started playing Crawl after getting tired of the spoilerfest required for Nethack and ADOM, so let me know if you have any questions.

doctorfrog on 1/4/2010 at 17:48

Good news, everyone! Looks like the next version of Crawl will be integrated with Facebook and allow you to send your character milestones to your Twitter feed!

(http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/tiles-server)

it's all lies, of course

Anarchic Fox on 1/4/2010 at 19:15

More good news: after more than a year of development, the new version of (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/) Dwarf Fortress is out! Bad news: it's very buggy, and the demand seems to have crashed the Bay 12 Games server. I think the DF Wiki has some mirrors, though.

doctorfrog on 2/4/2010 at 04:52

^^^ and a torrent.
(http://brage.info/~svein/df_31_01.zip.torrent)

Anyone who plays DF want to comment on the changes?

Zerker on 2/4/2010 at 14:54

So I was playing a bit of Crawl earlier today. I was playing as a Deep Elf Summoner, which meant summoning lots of lovely critters to do my dirty work for me. I was doing reasonably well, down to level 4 or 5 of the dungeon, killed a couple unique foes, and I decided to learn a new spell "Summon Elemental". Unfortunately, I didn't read the description carefully enough, as I didn't actually have any elemental magic skills. What this meant is as soon as I summoned a new Earth Elemental, he didn't like me very much and proceeded to smite me in one blow :(

doctorfrog on 2/4/2010 at 17:58

Don't feel too badly about that. I've only been playing Crawl since about December '09, and actually stopped playing until 0.6 came out. The game is significantly harder now, I used to have little trouble in at least getting to the Temple, but now I find myself smashed into a fine paste somewhere around D:4. I'm sure it's more complex than all this, but it's combination of the new out-of-depth monster spawning, the ability to access and abilities that are far beyond your capability of dealing with... and of course my need to create weird fringe characters that have no chance of surviving, like Spriggan Warpers and Deep Dwarf Artificers.

Anarchic Fox on 2/4/2010 at 18:10

Quote Posted by doctorfrog

Anyone who plays DF want to comment on the changes?

Sure...

* The combat system models body parts in a much more detailed way, although at the moment there are some balance problems.
* The underground is much larger and more complex, and useful features (like magma) are now guaranteed. This carries over into adventure mode too -- you can conceivably walk across the world underground, or delve all the way down into the Hidden Fun Stuff, as an adventurer.
* The dwarves actually have a decent health-care system, so there's no more letting your dwarves languish for years in bed because they have a broken arm.
* Squad control has been revamped with many more options, there are more ways for dwarves to be trained, and training is no longer deadly. The new system is harder to use, though.
* A few megabeasts (titans, and the new "forgotten beasts") are randomly generated, so you can have things like a poisonous ball of vomit inside a granite shell, or a scorpion made of fire.
* The notification system is more customizable and less annoying: for instance, it no longer pauses the game every time you find a new type of ore.
* There's a new arena mode, where you can create monsters with customized equipment and skills, and have them fight each other.

(http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010) Here is a considerably more complete list of changes.

In all, these are some great changes, but I will wait a month or two before playing more, for bugs to be fixed, interfaces to be improved and balance fixes to be made.