Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Magecrawl Tech Demo III release for Windows/Mac

Magecrawl Tech Demo III is available for download. The difficulty is a bit harder that I would have liked, but should be playable. You can find it for Windows and Mac here.

The new features compared to the last release include:
To play magecrawl, a few dependencies need to be installed.
  • For Windows - the .NET 3.5 runtime is all that is needed.
  • For Mac - Install mono, SDL, and libpng
    • Since libtcod uses .dylibs for mac, the dependent frameworks need to be installed, not next to the program. I think there is a way around this, but I haven't had time to look into it.
    • On some mac laptops the default resolution will place magecrawl overlapping the dock.  Two workarounds for this include setting the dock to auto-hide or uncommenting the line in Preferences.xml "True" so that magecrawl will run full screen.
    • To run open a terminal to the folder you unziped, and run "mono MageCrawl.exe"
If magecrawl happens to crash, a file called DebuggingLog.txt should be created in the magecrawl directory. Please note that this release is using an SVN version of libtcod, so be forgiving of any issues that crop up. Please send that file along with any description of the issue to chris dot hamons at gmail dot com.

I'm sure there are some Linux fans out there that are wondering why Linux got left in cold. The short answer is that I ran into a last minute issue preventing the new SWIG'ed libtcod from working on my test vmware. As I won't get much time to work on it for the next two weeks, it was either delay the entire release or skip Linux.

I'd love to hear feedback on Magecrawl; the good, the bad, and the flames about using .NET and how it made your goldfish sick. Send them to: chris dot hamons at gmail dot com

Things are going to be be pretty crazy personally for the next two weeks, so if you comment on a post or send me feedback/bug reports, please forgive the long reply times. Once I get past the next two weeks, I should be back on starting for iteration 9.

    10 comments:

    Norbert Melzer said...

    Thanks for that game, I like it, and follow this blog since a long while ago...

    But could you please consider making movement key configurable? I want to have them on numpad, alternate vim would be OK :-) But as it is now, diagonal movement makes really no sense with my keyboard layout (Dell Laptop with numpad). Insert and delete are just beneath F12, Home and End are only available thrue the numpad 7 and 1, but Magecrawl does not accept them as Home and End with both numlock on and off.

    donblas said...

    The movement keys are configurable. :)

    Open Preferences.xml, change this line:

    Arrows
    to Keypad, VIM, or custom.

    If you select custom you'll need to uncomment out and point it to a file. You can base your custom keymapping off the base ones in the resources directory.

    Norbert Melzer said...

    OK, I have searched the keymapping.xml up and down the last 10 Minutes until I realized, that you have written about preferences.xml :-) Eventually you should point to both files in the gamehelpscreen...

    Eventually make it even configurable through [gt]ui, but thats a later step in the 15 step plan if I remember right.

    donblas said...

    I'll talk about preferences.xml in a future help screen (bug filed). Editing the preferences in game has a bug filed as well, but that won't happen until after my "1.0" at least.

    jice said...

    Great stuff. The background text on login screen is great!
    A few usability remarks :
    - maybe the skill screen requires a small embedded help about controls (arrows/tab/esc).
    - I've still issue with white on black screens. Maybe lightestGrey on darkestGrey would be a first step if you're reluctant to add colors. I can't honestly play more than a few minutes with that high contrast.
    - You already know that, but it's hard! I've got surrounded by 4 creatures after only a few steps in the map. Make the first levels harmless so that the player can get used to the game before dying ;)

    fu said...

    Nice release, interesting approach to navigating the skill tree. The polish really gives impression that there's a lot more game here than you've written.

    Combat is brutally hard right now, and healers are evil to unleash on a newbie. :)

    terryjr said...

    Bug Report - Right after creating my character I hit "z" to try and cast a spell, get a menu with nothing in it, and press "enter". The game crashes.

    terryjr said...

    Bug Report - When the game initially starts up I get a string of messages.

    2010-05-29 00:23:01.580 mono[61914:6d03] *** __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x18270d0 of class NSWindowGraphicsContext autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking

    I doubt this is causing any real problems because I don't see them while playing, only at the beginning, but it still might be good to get them cleaned up. If you have questions about autorelease and objective c I can try and fill that in at some point.

    orillian said...

    Coming along pretty good! Frustrating as all getup though at times. :p

    I had 3 games in a row were I died in the first couple minutes due to getting swarmed by mobs. within a couple feet of my start location. My poor little character didn't have a chance. the one time I had 3 p's and 2 w's chewing on my after less then 20 turns. Almost feels like all the mobs on the level know were you are and converge on you! :P

    OK, I'm done complaining now! Everything else I've had the time to play with has been pretty good.

    Took me a minute to figure out what you were doing in the skills tree. The first time I was in there I thought it was bugged, when I was able to move the skills off the screen. :P

    O.

    donblas said...

    Thanks for the feedback and bug reports. I appreciate hearing that people are playing my game. :) 58 downloads for a "tech demo" is amazing and beyond what I expected.

    I realize the game difficulty is way too high. The reason is that I don't have implemented varying levels of item and monsters. That's one of the things I'm planning on implementing soon. Also, monsters have large LOS so they can see you as far away as you can see (or farther).

    jice, I'll add color preferences for foreground/background color next release. That's a good call.

    Thanks for all the wonderful feedback!