I’m happy to announce that OSX builds of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are available again!
The Downloads page lists 0.9 builds of the Console and Tiles version now, and also we will be able to provide more regularly updated builds of the current Development Builds.
Thank you very much to GreatZebu, who volunteered to provide OSX builds for the foreseeable future!
Edlothiol has been working on adding new features to WebTiles:
The Mini-Map is shown and working now, alas it cannot be used yet to initiate a travel. During login you have the choice to stay logged in via cookies. Also, spectators no longer need to resize their browser when watching someone. The game always adjusts to the browser size of the player and spectator independently. Additionally, the websocket protocol was updated to support Firefox 4, 5 and 6.
And last but not least, the game-mode Sprint and the Tutorial are now playable via WebTiles, too!
I was told there are more features in the making – so stay tuned! Also, webtiles code has been merged into the official master branch.
Head over to its website and give it a try!
We call it WebTiles for now and it serves version 0.8 of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Right in time for the unofficial tournament!
Edlothiol announced his great idea with working code on the mailing-list a few weeks back, and even though it’s still beta-quality in the aspects of features (mini-map missing, inventory-tab, etc), it’s fully playable and there have even been the first 4 wins by players testing it!
There is a slight draw-back: It needs a fairly modern browser which supports a technology called WebSockets:
Thanks to Kilobyte, we are now also offering packages for Debian-based operating systems (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc). For now there are three architectures supported: i386, amd64 and armel.
Add one of the lines from below to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
Stable release: deb http://crawl.develz.org/debian crawl 0.8
Development version: deb http://crawl.develz.org/debian crawl trunk
Additionally you should download and install our signing key to prevent warnings and to verify the packages:
wget http://crawl.develz.org/debian/pubkey -O - | apt-key add -
The available packages to apt-get are named: crawl, crawl-tiles
We’re working on getting the packages of the development version updated as regularly as the Windows binaries that we’ve been offering for a while already.
If you’ve been following the Stonesoup development, you might have noticed the recent shift of activity from longterm development to shortterm bugfixing, as well as a switch of trunk to version 0.9; the reason being the release of 0.8 that is currently slated for April 24.
The recent changes include the incorporation of the unicode branch, which fixes a number of issues with non-ASCII path names etc., bringing Ashenzari up to speed, and the aforementioned gazillions of bug fixes. In a concerted effort of several developers, we’ve managed to close 100+ bug reports on our bug tracker over the last couple of weeks, which is quite a feat, let me tell you. Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to do that if they hadn’t been reported in the first place. So, here’s a large thank you to our diligent reporters! :)
What follows is the list of changes in the 0.8 pre-release branch currently available on CDO (a206725), meaning they’ll be included in the stable release.
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.
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…
The skill menu has been completely rewritten in 0.8. New features are:
Tiles
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.
Come to the Tavern if you have any comments about it.
Galehar
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…
0.8 will feature a new god, called Ashenzari. The goals when designing the god were twofold:
The current incarnation meets both goals. Here is a list of properties: More: Read the rest of this entry…
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!
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.
If you haven’t been paying close attention (or you happen to be one of those backwards, curmudgeonly console players), you may have missed the boatload of new tile art going into 0.7. New dungeon! New monsters! New trousers! By my count, there were almost 300 modified or added tiles in this release.
This post is an overview of what you can expect to see when you start playing the shiny new version in a week or few.
A lot of this art has come from the ever-prodigious Poor Yurik (who you can thank for the new dungeon look, the spriggans, the kobolds, the goblins, the fabulous elephants, &c &c). However, there’s also a ridiculous amount of thanks for Denzi, coolio, Porkchop, LoginError, minmay, KiloByte, and others as well.
More: Read the rest of this entry…
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.
We’re getting closer to the next release, DCSS 0.7. It is partially a consolidation release (more below). Also, it will go public sufficiently early, so that there’s enough time to fix bugs before August, the time for the annual tournament. If you are curious, you can play the most current version on CDO, as usual. We appreciate feedback of any form.
The consolidation aspect of 0.7:
* Monster double actions due to energy randomisation always include a move. The double action was a source of a lot of controversy. In 0.7, an adjacent monster won’t hit you twice, although a monster a step away might still approach and hit you in a single turn.
* Make heavy armour guaranteed damage reduction percentage independent of armour skill. This makes heavier armours a bit better again, after the severe but long overdue nerf in 0.6.
In other news, there have been a lot of improvements to Tiles, Tutorials (tutorial and hints mode are now distinct) and the interface in general. Crawl will also officially feature Chapayev’s awesome Sprint variant.
Gameplay-wise, the biggest changes are these:
* Demonspawns will feature less lottery; all mutations grow to the full; also, mutations are meaningful, in particular, many of them are specific to the species.
* Zin has finally seen the light help: Recite is less risky, hence more useful. Also, there’s a new ability, which allows to imprison intelligent monsters.
Feedback on DS, Fi and Zinners are appreciated. We won’t re-design these on short notice, with release being so close. But comments on how far you get (and got in older versions) would help to see gauge we stand with the new AC/DS/Zin.
Some more changes which will be of interest:
* Aptitudes now on a scale +5 to -5.
* Remove Death Knights and Thieves.
* Show effective weapon speed in ‘@’ character info.
* Walls in the Slime Pits are acidic.
* Changed shop distribution between branches.
* Removed instant stat death.
Well, the list of bug reports has gotten steadily smaller to the point where I think we’re about ready for a release! Before that happens though, I wanted to run one more release candidate out there to test out some issues people were having with tiles builds (in particular with weirdness on input (dropping keys, etc), and with random lagginess). Barring things going severely wrong though, I think the actual 0.6.0 release is likely to happen sometime within the next week. Thanks for all the testing and bug reports, we’re almost there!
Changes since rc3:
-doy
You can now play-test 0.6.0-rc3 on Mac using this tiles build:
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.
Yup, 0.6.0-rc3 is up on the server to play online and for download on the trunk page. rc2 was made a mess of due to my attempting to do things on not nearly enough sleep, so we’ll just forget that ever happened.
Important bug fixes since 0.6.0-rc1:
Thanks for all the bug reports, and keep them coming!
