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According to my previous post, this marks twenty-two years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
With its second non-trivial palindrome, POWDER has left most of the age-related unlocks behind. Another year, and another 7DRL, Defocus. I read a very interesting book, "Time in Physics", https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-68655-4 which had an interdisciplinary view of time. Common were arguments of computationality and taking as a giving the finite nature of any volume of space-time. It then struck me that decoherence may be less due to any "observer", so much as a loss of precision of hyper-parameters as the system exceeds the storage capacity of the required interference pattern. This is of course is merely the ravings of someone who has insufficiently studied the field. However, it did mean I saw a way forward to a "quantum" roguelike where you took all possible paths. The two hard parts of such a quantum roguelike are how do you make it interesting, and how do you store the entire state? For the latter I started by doing it anlytically - I already had probability distribution functions as first class objects from the Save Scummer days, so I might as well leverage those to create the functions to sample from. Fortunately these distributions are nice real distributions, so sampling is practical on conventional machines. However, with this idea of "precision loss" in mind, I realized I could physically motivate a simpler answer - just keep an ensemble of worlds, themselves selected stochastically from all possible options. They form just a pre-filter on the eventual sample function. For the actual game, you are giving the choice of which square you end up at after X turns, you just give up control of HOW you get there. You will have got there by a valid path (no tunneling) as each ghost version is running an AI for your actions. This lets you take short circuits through mazes, for example. I tried to have a global timer to justify this, but I think I went too far building the rest of the roguelike to be a fun game, adding on top of WTF's already extensive features. So most saw it as a meaningless chrome on "standard" roguellike so rejected it... I hoped some bonus for the technical achievement of a roguelike that can fully load a 64gb many-core machine, but, ah well. It is the role of an artist to be misunderstood! I'm actually on a second generation 3d-printed RC-car, now that I dumped the idea of raspberry pi. I have my speedster and my "crawler". The latter uses roofing nails for the tires, so is very Mad-Max. And, no, still not done the 7DRL update.
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According to my previous post, this marks twenty-one years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
POWDER is now old enough to drink in the US! Now, you may have noticed POWDER isn't the most frequently updated project on the internet, so it is a good thing it isn't my full-time job. In that world, I'm very proud to link to an industry award I'll be getting soon! https://press.oscars.org/news/16-scientific-and-technical-achievements-be-honored-academy-awardsr. This is for my contributions to OpenVDB. For those that played my 7DRL "War of 1812", you may be interested to note it uses a 2d acceleration structure based off OpenVDB to handle the massive terrain and armies effeciently. Another year, and another 7DRL, Wizard-Thief-Fighter. Expanding on the tech of MAGE, but adding a twist inspired from Puss'n Boots, you play across not one, but three maps at the same time. Switching the protaganist will switch the maps. And the items. There is even a way that all three characters can get what they want at the end. I don't think anyone has found it, however. I tried to make the clues obvious. Those wondering about my 3d-printed RC-car, I abandoned the idea of raspberry-pi control, and switched over to off the shelf transmitter/receiver and ESC. A nice bonus is I could switch to full 3d printed system, and I don't have to futz with a bluetooth keyboard to control it. I've still not gone through and re-updated all my old 7DRLs for this post SDL 1.2 world. Bit-rot is a real thing :< |
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According to my previous post, this marks twenty years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
This is a bit confusing to me. The arbiter of all truth, ChatGPT, informed me that POWDER was first released in 2005. OTOH, it also claims I have taken over development of larn, so we might not want to be too swift to trust the new AI overlords. I did make another 7DRL, Mages Against Generic Enchantment. This is a still more traditional roguelike, this time inspired to be playable via audio only! I've realized I really need to go through and re-update all my old 7drls as I've had reports they have also suffered bit rot with Windows refusal to work with SDL 1.2. |
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According to my previous post, this marks nineteen years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
POWDER can now consume alcohol in Canada! I did make another 7DRL, Rogue Impact. This is a more traditional roguelike, inspired from the game that has kept me from updating POWDER: Genshin Impact. The other old roguelike I've just recently updated for this new year is Seven Day Band. My earlier 7DRLs were with early versions of libtcod or SDL 1.2. Unfortunately it seems Windows has taken a dislike to SDL 1.2, so they've stopped launching. I've managed to port Seven Day Band to SDL 2.0 so it should work on modern OSes. Thank you to the many people who wrote to say that they were stymied by this. Another sign I should spend some time "remastering" the old 7DRLs, not to give them fancy graphics, but just to get them running again! |
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According to my previous post, this marks eighteen years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
POWDER is now old enough to vote! Hurrah! I did make another 7DRL, War of 1812. This time I investigate the importance of tactics in roguelikes by making a purported roguelike that lacks any tactical component! While I've not been working on POWDER (as evidenced by continued lack of updates), I have been tooling around with other random projects. My 3d-printed RC Car actually was able to steer itself, after a mere... I don't want to know how many years... on the design table. It is very cool to iterate with physical designs though - the analogue space of reality has such different constraints than code that I usually work with. |
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According to my previous post, this marks seventeen years since I
first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
It seems I have not managed to make an update in time for this release to fix the race condition on iOS11. But let us not dwell on regrets! I did make another 7DRL, Tower of Babel. Back to pure ASCII again, this roguelike asks the question of what happens if you randomize everything! One cool project I must draw your attention to is the work of Mega Cat Studios, which has realized a physical instantiation of POWDER! They've sent me a copy to see their work, and the result is a serious step up from when I tried to package my own edition twelve years ago... You can find images of that down in the archives from when I submitted to the first PAX 10. I have directed any proceeds owed to me to instead be sent to some random charity; but I think it is good to support this reintepretation of an artform. And wait, there is more! Minh Tran has been working on an impressive tileset for POWDER, the git hub can be found here. This not only attempts an ASCII font-set, but also tries for colour-blind support. |
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According to my previous post, this marks sixteen years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
Finally, however, I can say that POWDER got an update! Hurrah! We should all celebrate, however that may be spelled. The benefit is iOS11 will work, the downside is there seems to be race condition with the a button that causes double taps. I made another 7DRL, Day Star. This was a fun roguelike to write as I did it in partnership with Faesu, who handled the art. It is cool to work with artists, as they always approach problems differently, and are more willing to spend time on more frames of animation than more procedural code. |
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According to my previous post, this marks fifteen years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
Another year of roguelikes has come and gone, and still POWDER remains un-updated! I made another 7DRL, Everything Is Fodder. No rush on this one. I like the resulting magic system, though few have noticed the underlying message. As you may have guessed, POWDER isn't my full-time job (a good thing too, considering this update rate!) I'm proud to link to an industry award I'll be getting this year: www.oscars.org/news/10-scientific-and-technical-achievements-be-honored-academy-awards. In less exciting news, iOS 11 does not like POWDER. I really had hoped to have been ahead of the curve here, but as you can see I'm still failing to get a new build out. Here is a picture of a tridude trying to convince a re-branded Mac Mini that I do have all the required icons in my pList!  |
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According to my previous post, this marks fourteen years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
Another year of roguelikes has come and gone, and still POWDER remains un-updated! Well, there was a bit of a release, in the form of Beta-3 of the Android version. So, yay! Progress! I made another 7DRL, Six Two One, this time in rather short time as I had to fly to Japan during the week. I'm looking forward to this years 7DRL when I currently have no plans to fly anywhere. For the last four or five years I've always been able to identify a video game responsible for my lack of free time for writing POWDER. 2016 is no exception. I joined the VR bandwagon and spent too many hours flying spaceships in Elite Dangerous. |
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One downside of not releasing is that none of the tweaks I made to
the Android built made it into the wild. Since I'd rather not
force people to using hex editors to fix their installs, this
is a Beta 3 release of the Android. I'm also providing the current
118 source code.
Note that you may need to do a clean install, I had to on one of my phones. And save games will not be compatible. I hope I have included what you need to compile the source... Remember: Press the menu button on your phone to rotate from portrait mode! |