Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 11:10
Currently, the guys at Oulu University (Finland) are running a usability project involving DCSS like they already did last year. We got a truckload of detailed feedback and great ideas the last time around, so I’m eager to see what they find this time. In preparation of this project (well, I’d been meaning to do it anyway, but this way there was a deadline), I overhauled the tutorial — once again.
You see, one of the first things I did when I started coding for Stonesoup was to create an in-game tutorial with situational triggers. Last year’s UP team created a new tutorial from scratch, so the old one was renamed to Hints mode. The idea was to use a fixed map with fixed puzzles and explanations. We had been planning to do something like that anyway, so we were glad when someone took up the task.
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Monday, February 21st, 2011 23:23
Saturday, February 19th, 2011 02:39
If you have been following the ##crawl-dev IRC channel, you may already be aware that we recently (this time last week) moved our code base from SourceForge.net to Gitorious.org. This move comes mainly from some minor frustrations with SourceForge, most of which relating to their recent reliability problems. SourceForge have been a excellent host, but as we’ve recently been butting up against its limitations, it seemed like a good opportunity to move.
You can find the main page for the Crawl code on Gitorious at: <http://gitorious.org/crawl>.
From there, you can see all of the contained repository, begin watching any of them, and see all of the changes represented as a stream; from the repositories, you can clone and begin tracking and pushing changes to these clones.
Therefore, if you’ve been following Crawl development via Git on SourceForge, you’ll need to make some changes in order to switch to tracking Gitorious instead.
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Saturday, February 12th, 2011 22:55
With several months delay, here is the 0.7.2 bug fix release. You’ve probably all switched to trunk by now, but just in case you haven’t, 0.7.2 fixes a couple of nasty crash bugs.
As always, you can find source code and binaries on our Downloads page. Unfortunately, we cannot currently provide Mac binaries.
The changelog is a bit rough around the edges, so here’s a more detailed list:
- Fix crashes on entering new levels with restart_after_game = true.
- Fix crash with off-level map viewing.
- Fix a crash when Jiyva worshippers spawn jellies for non-monster-damage.
- Fix crash when trying to throw a quivered dancing weapon.
- Fix problems with Unicode locales other than en_US.UTF-8.
- Fix near-uselessness on ARM.
- Fix save corruption for too long player names.
- Don’t trap teleporting merfolk in a couple of temples.
- Disallow targeting passwall at self.
- Fix stat boosting armour not losing bonus when melding.
- Fix weapon acquirement not considering some rare weapons.
- Disable Trowel card in portal vaults, labyrinths, Pan and the Abyss.
- A variety of other bug fixes.
Hopefully, 0.8 won’t be long in coming now, either.
As always, have fun playing!
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 12:05
For all interested in keeping up to date with our development builds for Windows & Mac OS X or the current versions running on CDO, we now provide RSS feeds of each category:
Each feed entry will provide information about the 10 recent changes and a link to download and play the build.
Update: A summary of all RSS feeds can be found here.
Saturday, January 8th, 2011 22:18
A week into the new year, and still no playtesting post? That’s completely unacceptable!
You already know about the big Armour unnerfing, and also about the the new skill menu, so what else is new?
Well, for one, there have been so many updates to the Zot Defence minigame that, this time around, I had to put them into a subheading of their own. We’ve got a truckload of new tiles. Lots of crash bugs introduced, and even more resolved. Oh, and the noise propagation has been changed to produce pretty pictures. Well, that and to make it less likely to wake up monsters behind several layers of walls.
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010 12:38
The skill menu has been completely rewritten in 0.8. New features are:
- Aptitudes are always displayed.
- You can press * to view all skills.
- Crosstrain bonus and antitrain malus are displayed as aptitude bonus/malus.
- You can navigate the menu with a cursor. It is disabled by default. Just press enter or a directional key (arrow or numpad) to enable it.
- When toggling a skill with enter, the cursor automatically move to the next skill. This allows you to quicky toggle several consecutive skills.
Tiles
- Mouse support for selecting skills and pushing the buttons at the bottom.
- Skill icons (thanks to Denzi for drawing them!). You need a window height of at least 702 pixels. You can disable them by setting the tile_menu_icons option to false.
Transfer knowledge. This is the last ability of Ashenzari, the new cursed god. It allows you to transfer skill points from one skill to another. The interface is integrated in the new skill menu. The transfer isn’t instantaneous, points are transferred each time you gain XP.
- Preview: when selecting a skill as the source or destination of the transfer, the new level at which it will be raised or lowered is displayed.
- Transfer progress: During the transfer, the skill menu will show the transfer progress by default. You can change view with “!”.
Come to the Tavern if you have any comments about it.
Galehar
Friday, December 17th, 2010 16:03
As recently announced the desire for a forum dedicated to Stone Soup has grown stronger. Luckily djnrempel aka danr took matters into his hand and set up a forum at freeforums.org. Their services are nice and easy to use but unfortunately there have been a few complaints about speed, privacy, advertisement and the fact that exporting the database for backups is not so free.
Danr contacted me and, due to the heavy snow keeping me away from work, I just finished to set up a truly free forum on CDO. Danr will do all the administrative work and I will deal with code changes and updates.
Proud to present: The Tavern
The feature I’m especially fond of is the fact that the user database is taken from our Mantis Bug Tracking System.
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 20:03
If you ask me, heavy armour is the most important topic for 0.8. It doesn’t need to be restored to its former overpowered glory, but the fact that wrapping a piece of bedsheet around you provides better defence than a plate mail set is a bit sad. And you get spells on top of that.
So, here are some recent changes: More: Read the rest of this entry…
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 19:58
0.8 will feature a new god, called Ashenzari. The goals when designing the god were twofold:
- Provide (some) divinations, as the spell school got axed in 0.7.
- An introverted/laidback god: many deities ask for a lot attention by the player, e.g. praying, sacrificing, training Invocations. There was demand for a god who is not like that.
The current incarnation meets both goals. Here is a list of properties: More: Read the rest of this entry…
Sunday, December 5th, 2010 00:00
On returning from yet another break at Crawl development, one of the first things I always do is try to find out what I’ve missed. Now this would have been much easier if there had been any recent Playtesting blog posts, but unfortunately this was not to be. Then again, since I’m already rummaging through the commit log, I might as well share my findings. You guys love to read these lists, right?
So here’s the gargantuan listing of what’s been going on in 0.8 development. Enjoy!
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Monday, November 29th, 2010 09:52
You guys have commented previously that you’d like a dedicated free Crawl forum. A few days ago, djnrempel was kind enough to set one up at http://dungeoncrawlstonesoup.freeforums.org.
This is really new, so there may be kinks to be ironed out. If you have any ideas for improvement, you can also speak up on the corresponding Mantis thread.
Have fun discussing all things Crawlific and more!
Update: Due various reasons the forum has moved.
Sunday, September 12th, 2010 18:06
Things have moved forwards, and the FR categories in Mantis have been disabled. Dive into the Code and Development Wiki, noble Feature Requester!
–Eino
Saturday, September 11th, 2010 21:46
edit: Feature Request categories have been disabled in Mantis now, please use the wiki to send in your ideas!
Contributors no longer need to ask for page-creation privileges to add new pages to the Code and Development Wiki. This should make contributing your ideas easier.
Note that when we moved our development resources to crawl.develz.org, the intention was to use the wiki for brainstorming and the tracker for ready proposals. We haven’t really enforced it so far, but would like to see this in action. FRs tend to turn into discussions and rot in the tracker, which limits the usefulness of tracker functionality. Discussion (and rotting) will happen in the wiki as well, but we think it is a better tool for that, as developers can summarize and reboot the pages more flexibly. We also hope that related issues get grouped better, so that contributors are more aware about related issues surrounding particular features.
Arguably, having categories called “Feature Request” in the tracker is pretty bad for the intended workflow. We are working on sorting this out. :-)
I’d like to add that the DCSS development mailing list is also a tool available for discussing ideas and issues with the development.
Below is the current tracker/wiki HOWTO for reference:
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Thursday, September 9th, 2010 09:10
The annual Crawl tournament took place during August. Thanks to the folks running the servers (CAO and CDO) for their awesome help.
Click here for the official tournament web page,
Some interesting numbers (those in brackets refer to the 2009 and 2008 tournaments):
More: Read the rest of this entry…
Thursday, August 19th, 2010 14:14
When applying a crash bugfix to the crawl.develz.org 0.7 Crawl recently, I accidentally broke the tournament Sprint setup, so Sprint was unavailable on CDO for a couple of days. This is now fixed, and you can play Sprint tournament games on CDO again. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Saturday, July 31st, 2010 15:40
A quick reminder to all you eager Crawlers out there: there’s less than twelve hours (at the time of writing this, 10 hours, 21 minutes and a few seconds) until the start of the annual DCSS Tourney! Get your crawling kit in, stock the fridge with caffeine drinks and settle down for the ride.
As a reminder, crawl.akrasiac.org’s official tourney page is here.
We look forward to see you die regularly!
-DCSS Tourney Team, ’10
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 14:55
Calling all avid crawlers!
The calendar rolls once more towards August, and August means the annual Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Tournament! It will begin at midnight, August 1st (UTC), and continue through until midnight, September 1st (UTC). All Stone Soup version 0.7.0 games started during this period of time, on both crawl.akrasiac.org and crawl.develz.org, will count towards the tournament.
We have several changes from last year’s tournament, including new banners, changes to the scoring system, and much more! You can read all about it on the official tourney page on crawl.akrasiac.org.
This year also introduces the Dungeon Sprint mini-game into the Tournament. Dungeon Sprint, or Sprint, is a variant of Stone Soup created by Chapayev, consisting of a dungeon dramatically reduced in size but increased in difficulty. Sprint games will be counted for the tournament from the 15th of August at midnight (UTC) on both CAO and CDO, and points will be awarded for wins! For more information, check out the tourney page linked above.
As usual, the Tournament will be a fast-paced month of Stone Soup action! Tune in for the blood-shed, tears and the enraged screams of those killed by Sigmund, as well as the joy of snatching the orb, and your first win, from beneath the pulsations of an orb of fire!
The best of luck to you all, we hope you have a great time playing this year.
-The Crawl Development & Tournament 2010 Teams
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 07:13
The 0.7 release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is here, complete with elephants, tile awesomeness, and fully recharged electric eels.
Edit: 0.7.1 is now out with a fix for a severe bug affecting ziggurats and other Lua-triggered features such as bazaars. Please update to 0.7.1 if you’ve already downloaded the 0.7.0 release.
All 0.7.1 release files are available on the Downloads page.
You can also read something approximating a changelog for a rough summary of what’s in the release.
I’d like to thank the whole team for working to release 0.7 in the short space we have before the annual August crawl tournament, and I’d like to give extra thanks to kilobyte and rob for their help with the release.
Thanks again to Napkin for hosting Crawl development on CDO, and the Crawl player community for their help improving the game.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 16:57
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.
