Sunday 5 March 2017

HyperRogue 9.4: bulls everywhere

HyperRogue 9.4 is released on Steam and itch.io! (Android, iOS, and the online version will come later.)

You can find safety in some places in the Prairie, but if you want treasures, they can be found only on the other side of a giant herd of bulls.

Butterflies of Bull Dash don't pursue you -- unless you get next to them, they just spin around the obstacles. They cannot be killed conventionally, but you get treasure when a Raging Bull crashes into a Butterfly.

Crossroads V is yet another layout of Crossroads.

Some other changes:
  • Additional 3D options have been added to HyperRogue. The ball model and hyperboloid model can explain the 3D hyperbolic space used by HyperRogue. The new camera options could be used to obtain FPP or TPP view, although the models used by HyperRogue are not adapted to this.
  • A slight change in the generation of orbs, so that it is no longer optimal to avoid collecting more treasures after the 10 or 25 threshold. Orb spawn rate in the Crossroads is just 70% (relative to the spawn rate before the change) if you have 10 treasures, and rises to 100% when you have 25. Prize Orbs appear if you have 25 treasures, but their spawn rate is 60% if you have exactly 25, 100% if you have 50 (the spawn rate gets higher and higher as you collect more treasures, but the benefits are diminishing).
  • Two new geometries have been added (in the euclidean/elliptic menu). The Zebra pattern is a periodic pattern of 40 cells, in the Zebra quotient geometry, the space is warped so that repetitions which become exactly the same cell -- thus, you play on a torus with two holes. The field quotient geometry is similar, but it is based on the pattern which is used by the Prairie; this pattern has 132440 cells (39732 heptagons).
  • In the mobile versions, a compass has been added in the bottom left corner. It can be used for movement, so that your hand no longer obscures the view.

Prairie is based on wonderfullizardofoz's Amazon River idea, but rethemed to make it stand our more from Whirlpool. Crossroads V is an old idea of Fulgur14. Many people have had idea of a land inspired by the Boulder Dash mechanics (Z, CtrlAltDestroy, simon_clarkstone); Bull Dash has risen from these ideas, although the relationship is quite remote. The field pattern is inspired by the method used by David Madore in his hyperbolic maze.

More improvements and are reported in the changelog, and on the Steam forums. Have fun!

4 comments:

  1. Hey there Zeno! I've loved hyperrogue as my go to roguelike for years, even though I'm really bad at it. My favourite mode to play by far is the hypersian rug mode, and after reading the following article in nature:

    http://www.nature.com/news/mathematicians-create-warped-worlds-in-virtual-reality-1.21689?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20170323&spMailingID=53682983&spUserID=MTAwOTI0NjI5ODU1S0&spJobID=1123821625&spReportId=MTEyMzgyMTYyNQS2

    I started wondering if it were possible to experience it as a 3d environment in VR.

    In ViHart's video about her research this year goes a bit more in depth about it at the following timestamp https://youtu.be/F7yLL5fJxT4?t=3m55s

    Well, that's it for me. I'm really curious what you think about the possibilities for experiencing HyperRogue in VR.

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    1. Hey, and thanks for playing HyperRogue!

      It is already possible to adjust HyperRogue's 3D settings to get a FPP or TPP perspective -- we used this feature in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vu3F95jpQ4

      I guess that adding a VR mode to HyperRogue would not be that difficult to program -- after all, it is simply displaying two views from slightly different points -- however:

      - HyperRogue currently displays 3D characters by drawing several 2D "slices" of them -- this works fine when viewed from above, but would no longer look good in FPP

      - the gameplay is designed around the way the game is displayed now -- having to look back, or not being able to see through walls, could be annoying

      - I would need a VR kit to develop -- I am not intending to get one soon because I am not that excited about VR to be honest, because it reminds me of all the fuss in the gaming community about having the most photorealistic graphics, while I believe games to not be about that.

      Anyway, I consider VR an interesting project for NotEye (and TB would like it for ADOM), and we are going to meet the hyperbolic VR team in person, so there are some chances -- we will see :)

      (I am also a bit unhappy about the Nature article -- it presents "playing the ball in the 3D torus" as if it was something novel, but games used torus topologies since 1979 at least, when Asteroids was released, and there were 3D versions of Asteroids too. The article says about creating a hyperbolic version of this, but as far as I understand the project was not actually completed.)

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  2. Thanks for the comment!

    Now that you mention it, I can see the difference in viewing angle in that video.

    I think I get what you mean with slices, so yeah, that'd have to be changed for 3D, and your gameplayconcerns are valid as well!

    These 3D versions of asteroids sound awesome :D

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  3. I just want to say I really, really, REALLY like your game! Thank you so much for making it!

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