Powder Release 114

Powder Release 114

May 26th, 2010, 01:50 Posted By: wraggster

via nmax

Jeff lait has released a new version of Powder for consoles,PSP, GBA and Nintendo DS

To understand POWDER, you should first understand roguelikes. "Roguelike" is a term applied to a wide variety of games which share a common inspiration from the game Rogue. A non-exhaustive list of such games would be: ADOM, Nethack, Crawl, Diablo (I & II), Moria, and Angband. My apologies to the many excellent roguelikes I didn't list. What characterizes these games? The exact specifications are a matter of debate - indeed, I may receive hate mail for including Diablo - but I shall try to write a few:
Tactical play. The unit of action is based on the individual adventurer. The game is not twitch oriented (like Quake, rewarding reflexes & well trained actions) nor is it strategy oriented (like Civilizations or Warcraft, requiring working on the large picture)
Based in Hack and Slash. A roguelike isn't primarily about plot development or telling a story. It is about killing things and acquiring treasure.
Random games. A roguelike is a dungeon crawler where no two games are the same. The maps are different, the items are different, there are no guaranteed win paths.
Permadeath. You die, that is it. No restoring a savegame. Good roguelikes delete your save game after loading them. This is compensated by the replayability of the game.
Complex interactions of properties. While the commands for a roguelike are simple, the potential interactions are not. My favourite example is equipping a silver ring as a weapon in order to damage a creature vulnerable to silver, but not one's other weapons. [Editor: This matches the Hack branch of the roguelike tree, not the Angband branch]
Steam rolling monsters. If a critter is in your way, and weak, you shouldn't even notice it is there.

Due to my temporary subversion server being behind my firewall, I had to change the Linux and Mac build machines. I think the Mac build is safe, but if you have issues with the Linux build please let me know. Because if you don't, I'll just retire the offsite machine.

The 10x10 and 12x12 tiles are now enabled on the non-iPhone versions. I'm pretty happy with the 10x10 now, but the 12x12 still need lots of touch up. For those wondering why I did 10x10 first: I've found portrait mode is the way to play.

iPhone users will also be happy that the native keyboard is used. Hardcore POWDER fans will lament that I didn't instead revert to the original GBA keyboard input method. Would be a good excuse for multitouch as you try to chord four virtual buttons plus an direction arrow :>

Help menus are no longer off by one. (Patrick Don't have one, Matt_S, Sam Spencer, Alex Marsh, Robert Barber, mattock)
Remove potential crash when zapping wand of invisibility off map.
Items are no longer revealed by hostiles searching.
Status message "Searched" when you search to make it more clear you did something by searching.
Correct lighting tests for giant mobs along with looser LOS requirements to see them.
No longer crash if a rolling boulder kills the caster and then fills a hole.
You can click-drag on display text to scroll it.
Chris Lomaka's tiles have been updated with some nice new additional icons.
Help menus are platform specific, so GBA users should no longer be taunted with stylus help, etc.
The Akoi Meexx 10x10 and 12x12 tilesets are enabled in SDL builds. The 10x10 has had a round of manual smoothing applied to it.
Status bar on iPhone now rotates and is hidden in landscape mode.
iPhone now uses native keyboard controls.
If you start the game in a room with only secret exits, you are explicitly told that there are secret exits to search for. (Eisel Mazard)

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