Tuesday 31 October 2017

HyperRogue 10.2: More Geometry Experiments!

While this update probably does not add much for the "normal" players (except some minor bugfixes), it greatly extends the possibilities of experimenting with various geometries and tilings. HyperRogue started with the "hyperbolic soccerball" tiling; further versions have added Euclidean geometry (to see why it matters), heptagonal tiling, spherical tiling (as used in the Halloween minigame), and several quotient spaces. However, this was not enough -- for example, you could not recreate Escher's Circle Limit series in the built-in vector graphics editor because it used a different symmetry than HyperRogue, and other tilings are also definitely useful for educational purposes, and applications of hyperbolic geometry (such as visualization). Therefore, this update adds quite a lot of new geometries to play with! [Still no square grid, though :)]



This picture shows all the tilings/geometries you can select in the Geometry Experiment menu in HyperRogue 10.2. The first two columns show the bitruncated and non-bitruncated variant of each basic tiling. Some of these look the same; this is because the image also shows some quotient spaces -- look for the player character appearing in multiple places :) These are available in all lands -- as shown in the two columns on the right, using the Red Rock Valley as an example. There are more tilings available, but only in particular lands -- we already know the Warped Coast (fourth column), and the new land, the Crystal World, uses the dual tiling (we could previously play in the dual tiling in the Graveyard, but the Crystal World is much more explicit). (The Crystal World does not appear during the normal gameplay -- it is very simple and designed rather for geometry experiments.)

On the Steam forum, players have already started creating ideas about the possibilities for new lands specific to the octagonal tiling. Have fun!

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