The third release candidate for 0.7.0 is out, addressing issues with piety gain, slime wall damage, and other miscellaneous fixes.

Mac and Windows binaries are on the development builds page as usual.

When filing bug reports on Mantis, please attach your save games if you have them. Also, please make your bug reports as detailed as possible to help us find and fix bugs before release.

0.7.0-rc2 is out, fixing many of the instabilities and other bugs in the first release candidate.

Please pick up Mac and Windows builds for 0.7.0-rc2 on the development builds page. The new Windows installer is also available directly from the development builds page now.

The first release candidate for 0.7.0 is here, featuring slick new tiles, a new Sprint map from the strange and terrible Chapayev, Demonspawn with fancy new mutations and chrome wheels, and a new tutorial with Extra Bling (TM).

There’s also a detailed list of changes if you enjoy that kind of thing.

Mac and Windows builds for 0.7.0-rc1 are available from the development builds page as usual.

We’re testing a new Windows installer for Crawl from kilobyte, and we’d appreciate feedback from Windows users.

Please file all bug reports on Mantis as usual.

Mac OSX Binaries of 0.7 alpha:

Mac OSX Tiles Build
(Last updated 2010-07-09, 0.7.0-a1-136-g6024cb9)

Mac OSX Regular Build
(Last updated 2010-07-09, 0.7.0-a1-136-g6024cb9)

We’re close to a release candidate for 0.7, but saves will remain compatible with the alpha versions of 0.7. Have fun with Menkaure in the Violet Keep (Sprint), courtesy Chapayev, and please report bugs on Mantis as usual.

Windows builds are available on the Development Builds page.

You can now play-test 0.6.0-rc3 on Mac using this tiles build:

Crawl 0.6.0-rc3 Mac Tiles

I’m not the person who usually builds Mac binaries so I may have screwed something up. If you notice problems with the build, please file bug reports on Mantis as usual.

The Lair is the highway most Crawl characters take to go from the
stressful early game (many players attribute later psychosocial
problems to D:2 bullying by Sigmund) to the more predictable
midgame. Along the way, you pick up lots of relatively safe
experience, and up to three runes from the Snake Pit, the Swamp and
the Slime Pits. Dying on the Lair superhighway is optional, but a
lot of players seem to enjoy it.

For a while now, players have been chafing under the injustice of
having to do the Swamp, since its devilish generosity with rune and
items and shops forces players to brave the menacing terrain to rescue
these poor lost items, in the process running into charming monsters
like swamp worms that get double damage attacks while the character
wades in shallow water. When not being torn apart by suave swamp worms
in shallow water, our heroes are usually demolished by humane hydras,
which can swim much faster in water than most characters can walk on
dry land, and the occasional urbane unique.

The Crawl devteam has naturally been eager to improve the situation,
and has turned to a new branch that has an even chance of replacing
the treachery of the Swamp with outright murder — tasteful, exciting
murder. Murder with turtles in it. A new branch called the Shoals!

The Shoals are set near the sea, in a little archipelago of islands
with beaches, tides, mangroves, and the occasional man-eating monster
thrown in for seasoning. It’s a long, fascinating story (you’ll never
guess how many useful things harpies can do with human entrails!), but
today we’re going to talk about how Shoals levels are generated, and
how the tide works in the Shoals.

More: Read the rest of this entry…