We’re proud to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.17: “Squaring the Circle”! 0.17 features a square line of sight, shorter Lair rune branches, new rune vaults for many branches, and many, many additions and improvements to the game.
Download DCSS 0.17 here, or play it online on one of many servers across the world! The source and Windows packages are available now, and our deep build annihilator elves are hard at work on the OS X binaries. We’ll update the website as soon as those files are ready!
Update: The linux debian 0.17 packages are now in the repository!
Update 2: The OS X packages are now on the download page. Many thanks to geekosaur for making these and troubleshooting signing issues! If you have problems running this on OS X, please tell us in ##crawl-dev or file a bug report on Mantis.
The release tournament begins today, Nov 6 2015, at 20:00 UTC, with all online 0.17 games counting towards your score. See the tournament website for more details, including how to set up or join a clan.
For a list of other major changes, see the changelog. Many thanks to all those who have contributed to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. We hope you enjoy playing 0.17!
1. Comment by Yannis
6/Nov/2015 at 17:37
Hey, couple of errors in the post:
“square Line of Site” -> “square line of sight”
And the changelong link is broken.
Thanks for the great work as always
2. Comment by reaverb
6/Nov/2015 at 18:04
Thanks for the report! Errors fixed.
3. Comment by Ricardo
6/Nov/2015 at 20:25
No 64bits build for Windows this time?
4. Comment by hubbles
6/Nov/2015 at 20:43
I hope the tournament DoubleDamage™ bonus is turned on this time!
5. Comment by Leonard
6/Nov/2015 at 20:46
I can’t download 0.17 from the page =c
Still has 0.16.2 on the download links
6. Comment by Leonard
6/Nov/2015 at 20:48
And sorted no more than two minutes later… nice
7. Comment by Matt
6/Nov/2015 at 22:21
Why is square LOS preferred over circular?
8. Comment by DaStockMan
7/Nov/2015 at 03:15
Gotta say I don’t like almost every change made over the last couple years: always taking complexity away and making it more trivial. I now consider this a rogue-lite not a true roguelike. Only reason at all I even consider playing is the online webtiles is very user friendly.
Sorry I’m sure the devs are working hard but the direction they have taken has dumbed this down just too much. Not a fan anymore…
9. Comment by David
7/Nov/2015 at 04:23
Hi, I was wondering when 0.17 would be released for Mac? Cheers!
10. Comment by gammafunk
7/Nov/2015 at 07:40
Ask, and ye shall receive! The os x packages are available on the download page.
11. Comment by TehRei
7/Nov/2015 at 19:15
Loving the changes! Square-LOS is absolutely amazing. Reducing the amount of levels in the lair branches is also nice. I’m hoping for some more levels being cut in the future, but it’s definitely an improvement as it is right now.
Death cobs feel sort of weird in 0.17 though. By Zot you have enough perma food to just always explore at engorged, which makes them less of problem (most of the time) and more of an interface annoyance. On the other hand, at least they’re relevant (albeit annoying), whereas previously they were popcorn 100% of the time.
Anyway, huge thanks to everyone who worked on this! I love you all and want to hug you in a completely non-sexual way :)
12. Comment by Old fart toguelike player(tm)
9/Nov/2015 at 23:57
Another simplifications and taking out complexity?
STOP MAKING TO DUNGEON CRAWL, WHAT BETHESDA DID TO FALLOUT SERIE!!!!
13. Comment by tejón
10/Nov/2015 at 11:47
@Matt: “Why is square LOS preferred over circular?” Because it matches movement, I think. You don’t pay 1.4142x auts to move diagonally, so having circular ranges for everything else was inconsistent.
14. Comment by Clevelandgrab
10/Nov/2015 at 14:08
Holy crap, where are the Mountain Dwarves? You developers are imbecils! How will I play as Gimli now?
15. Comment by Pythagoras
14/Nov/2015 at 15:26
@tejón”“Why is square LOS preferred over circular?” – Because it matches movement, I think. You don’t pay 1.4142x auts to move diagonally, so having circular ranges for everything else was inconsistent.”
So there were two options:
1 – making movement cost more complex
2 – simplifying everything else
Now guess what they decided for… It’s frustrating.
16. Comment by Timbermaw
15/Nov/2015 at 02:40
I agree with the changes, when you look back now the circular LOS was kinda odd since everything in the game uses squares for calculations.
Some were against it, i’m sure, but i think we will all come to like the square one over time.
17. Comment by plaintextman
16/Nov/2015 at 18:48
With every release that made radical new changes, for almost all changes I was able to follow the theory behind the change, or to recognize its benefits after a lot of playing. But square LOS is a new level of ‘whut’ to me. I fail to see why it is ultimately the optimal choice for the player. Why couldn’t time calculations be made more precise instead? Maybe it was simply considered too much effort to invent, code and balance an improved but still “logical” time/space system? But on the other hand square LOS doesn’t seem like a change that will have minimal impact on ranged combat balance!
18. Comment by Rob "Tottoro" Tottousal
17/Nov/2015 at 20:10
As always thanks for all the effort devs, your dedication and hard work is inspiring. Having that said I have to admit I don’t like the direction Crawl is heading. Every new version seems to be watered down, simplified form of former releases :( It is something that tears my heart. I love crawl for so many awesome things: great interface, useful commands, amazing rich dungeon generation… but gameplaywise it became simple, generic roguelike with no spirit.
19. Comment by ToupeeForSale
18/Nov/2015 at 07:19
“many, many additions” Nothing was added to the game in this recent “update”. There were only removals or changes. RIP hex-stabbers. You will be missed dearly.
20. Comment by Oldguy
20/Nov/2015 at 07:14
Congrats on another great release (from a 0.4.3 player).
Comment on necromancy changes. Timer for animate is a good idea (and good balance with Yred). My problem is most classes feel powerful around lvl 15-17, but I don’t get that with necromancer/Kiku. Idea – remove Borg spell and make Borg a Kiku ability. Regards.
21. Comment by apparatus
21/Nov/2015 at 18:52
Toupee, you might have missed this:
* Non-magic-immune monsters are now always confuseable
22. Comment by blami
23/Nov/2015 at 13:42
Thank you for the 0.17 release and tournament. I am glad, that you are still doing such a great work. It was a lot of fun. But I was kind of disappointed to see my skeleton and zombie friends decompose in no time. The good times of hanging around with my lovely undead friends will never come back. It’s probably more balanced gameplaywise. But I will miss it. Just like I miss elven and orc armour and statues being destroyed by wands of disintegration. I was never a very active player. And everytime I came back to crawl it was a bit of a shock. I think that’s normal. New players won’t know the difference and will benefit from the changes. I didn’t get along with the new 0.16 Elyvilon btw. First time I played it was in the 0.17 tournament and it was a huge difference.
23. Comment by Joe
27/Nov/2015 at 06:18
“Squaring the Circle” – Someone is a Niel Hancock fan.
24. Comment by Kami
1/Dec/2015 at 22:18
Hi guys!
I suppose it’s a little bit late and very few people will join any further discussion but I’d like to share some of my thoughts regarding latest versions. I’m rather a casual crawl player, jumping in and out every couple of months to see what’s new, usually playing trunk versions to experience most recent iteration of the game. After longer breaks it’s quite easy to see how much it is evolving and how much effort went into it. It’s something awesome but also a bit shocking in the same time. Having read developers’ manifesto it’s actually not that hard for me to understand logic behind almost every change made in this and earlier versions. Above all other things gameplay is supposed to be noob-friendly, smooth and provide meaningful choices while maintaining as much balance as it is possible. I think that it’s pretty good development philosophy and I don’t want to question any of the developers decisions, however I’m a bit scared that in the end it leads to unnecessary simplifications that may remove cool aspects of the game. All in all, what’s the point of all this if you have to remove thing that people actually enjoy?
25. Comment by not mps
6/Dec/2015 at 09:37
Huge divide between casuals who show up in the blog comment sections and online regulars, tavern gdd people, etc. People pissed off about removing rotten chunks, “mountain dwarves,” other irrelevant flavor smdh. Death cobs are bad, but otherwise it’s a pretty good release — squareLOS is incredibly good and cool.