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Smart Kobold at E3 Saturday, June 12th, 2010 22:25:31 EDT

I am honoured to have IndieCade select Smart Kobold for demonstration at their booth at E3! More info about their E3 presence, along with the other cool games being shown, over at their press release. Sadly, I will not be able to attend. But if any POWDER players happen to be at E3, I suggest you check out IndieCade's booth!

Flaming Sword Sunday May 23rd, 2010 21:43:05 EDT

A while back I came across this video. It is a fun look at roguelike development. However, I feared that some inaccuracies in the video might lead to problems. There is, for example, the implication that you can just go and write a roguelike. It should not need to be repeated that roguelikes can only be written after a detailed design document has been expressly approved by the cabal (there is no cabal). Much more serious, however, is the scene in which an Angband developer is bested through the use of a nerf sword. This is, of course, a dangerous claim to make. I have decided to make the following public service advisory to remind viewers that to become a roguelike developer one must already have access to spells of much greater level than the demonstrated In Flam Ylem. (I'd have demonstrated Sunfire, but air travellers have already had enough flight delays due to volcanic dust this year) I do approve of the clean coding style shown in the video, however.

No Moving Parts Monday May 10th, 2010 20:52:17 EDT

So I release a new version to a new platform and manage to have an off-by-one error in the help system. I guess the good news is that I now know that people actually do read the help! Of course, Murphy being what it is, shortly after releasing 113 my off-site Subversion machine decided to stop working. Don't fear, I have backups of the repo, and am now in the process of extracting the last repo directly from the machine's flash drive. But I think it likely is a good point to try out one of these new fangled source control systems. Mercurial is the one I'm thinking of. Being distributed, future failures will be less critical as I can easily rebuild a master repo from any of the checked out baselines and just resynch. So what does this have to do with no moving parts? When my previous CVS machine died, I took the chance to switch to Subversion and also to move away from the standard PC platform. I went with a Zonbu, an excellent little mini-PC that uses only 15W of power. It is also has the virtue of running of a Compact Flash and thus has no moving parts. No moving parts, in my mind, meant no failure conditions. If nothing moves, nothing can go wrong? Right? I think I've identified what's wrong with my logic. There are no computers with no moving parts. Because, you see, to be at all useful, there's a heck of a lot of electrons moving about in there. And these electrons rushing about, filling and discharging capacitors, heating up wires, etc, can lead to a system failure as easily as a frozen fan. Not being one to learn from my mistakes, I've put in an order for a GuruPlug Server to replace the Zonbu. It also has "no moving parts", but an added advantage of being a mere 5 watts in power.

iPhone Port Sunday April 25th, 2010 20:13:38 EDT

I am happy to announce that as of 113, POWDER is on the iPhone! At some point I'll figure out how to make one of the cool app-links, but in the mean time just use "roguelike" as your search term in the app-store. As an added bonus you'll also get to see all the other fine roguelikes that have made this platform their home. I'd like to thank the beta testers that put up with the early versions of this port and pushed me in the right directions to make it more useable on this platform. The many remaining deficiencies are not their fault, however. My apologies to those who wanted the iPhone space kept pure from mere "ports". The current POWDER version isn't what I'd design if I had started with the iPhone as my target. But I do believe that it is close enough to fulfill the need of the many people who have emailed me asking for a port. You will note that the iPhone version is different in another significant fashion: to enable the wizard codes and access the last ten levels, you need to use the in-app purchase to upgrade. In the case of the wizard codes, this is no different from other platforms where these are the reward for those who donate. As for the level lock? Since many players can spend months trying to get to level 15, let alone past it, I don't consider the second aspect something that makes this crippleware.

Again Even Still Yet Another 7DRL Complete! Tuesday April 20th, 2010 21:57:21 EDT

I managed to write another roguelike in 168 hours! Woohoo! For those of you counting, this is the sixth such roguelike, produced in the sixth year of the 7DRL challenge. This one is called Smart Kobold. Since I delayed announcing it here so long, you can play the 002 version rather than the raw 7DRL version. The deep artistic message in this game was supposed to be that you shouldn't ask game developers for smarter AI or you might just get it. It turns out, however, that many game players are much smarter than I, so are still able to best the kobolds. Do not be ashamed if you are not able to - they are beyond my abilities. Check it out at: http://www.zincland.com/7drl/kobold Previous seven day roguelikes: You Only Live Once Letter Hunt Save Scummer Fatherhood Jacob's Matrix Smart Kobold

Seven Years of Development! Friday January 22nd, 2010 16:36:21 EDT

According to my records, this marks seven years since I first touched main.cpp in my POWDER baseline! A huge drop in releases last year - a paltry two releases! I think I can safely blame this on Jacaob's Matrix. Despite being a 7DRL with limited development time, it grabbed a lot of mental resources from me this year. I'll try and better limit the effect of this years 7DRL on my POWDER development. This time I've actually managed to post this on the actual anniversary, however, avoiding the need for any ugly backdating.

New build machine Thursday December 10th, 2009 01:22:31 EDT

I was worried about the 112 release causing problems due to it being a 10.5 only OSX build. It seems that at least POWDER Mac players keep their OS up to date as I've not heard any complaints. Thanks to my brother's aid, I have a new temporary mac build machine so I can build locally rather than in a remote bunker. I've left it with the 10.5+ build style, however, but I think I installed XCode with 10.4 support. Any 10.4 players should let me know soon and I can try to revert the 10.5+ changes. Hopefully this means I can finally sort out backspace vs delete on this platform! In completely off-topic news, I recently bought an iTouch.

IRDC and IndieCade Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 22:34:40 EDT

IndieCade 2009 is starting soon - October 1st to be precise! Sadly, my submission did not make the cut for nomination. But, happily, this means the games that did make it are of superior quality! I will actually be able to attend Thursday and Friday, so if any of you are in Culver City, let me know. Speaking of conferences, I should note that the International Roguelike Development Conference will be running November 6-8th. I'll be presenting something in Geneva, but I'll reserve the right to change my mind closer to the date.

SIGGRAPH Friday July 31st, 2009 21:59:48 EDT

Well, I'm off to New Orleans for SIGGRAPH '09 the coming Monday. Unfortunately, it has been a while since the latest version so I'll have to use this as an excuse for any delay. Any also at Siggraph are welcome to send me a message. My schedule can be rather hectic, but I can always find time for POWDER players. If you are wondering how you can contact me, I recommend reading to the end of the README.TXT that ships with POWDER.