Miniatures on a grid board utilized for a Dungeons and Dragons game in La Mesa, California (source)
Finally, after many weeks of delays and many hours of work, I managed to finish a new article based on the research I did for my 2018 talk at the roguelike celebration. I hope this article provides useful insights and allows having an additional approach to roguelikes as a genre on its own.
Many thanks to all the friends who provided useful feedback. 🙂
Can we find useful insights on what a #roguelike is, by examining the results of the efforts of the developers of rogue and other early roguelikes to bring their beloved #dungeonsanddragons hobby into the world of computing?
Share your Gravestone page, including a screenshot of your journey, via twitter using the #ananias18 and #roguelike hashtags. (See here for a Gravestone page)
You are also encouraged to share it on reddit but it’s not required
You can submit your character any time before October 7, 4PM PST
Participate playing in any valid official 2.4.4 version of the game, including Android, iOS, Steam and Web. No Fellowship Edition required.
You can also participate playing in person in the Roguelike Arcade at the Celebration (but it’s not required)
Winners will be picked based on the standard scoring criteria (depth level, then kills)
You can use any class / pet combo
Notes:
Money Prizes to be awarded via Paypal
Ananias Box and Manual – No diskette
T-Shirts available in limited sizes – To be awarded as available.
Sticker set will contain assorted characters as available.
Physical prizes will be delivered in person at the Roguelike Celebration on Sunday October 7. If you are not attending then they will be sent to you for an additional Shipping cost to be paid via paypal.
FAQ
How can I get the gravestone page for my character?
Just create an account in the game, and then when your character dies or ascends use the “Gravestone” button
The Roguelike Celebration is happening again this year, October 6 and 7. I will be flying to SanFran to assist and also give a talk about the History of Roguelikes.
Had an idea running on my head for a while to make a “trailer” for the event (no one asked me for it). At first, I thought of creating a playable classic roguelike using my JSRL roguelike template. I actually did create the foundations for it (as in walk in a predefined map), but it lacked the cinematic potential for a short trailer. In any case, I integrated the “torch” effect from the unicodetiles.js example into JSRL, which may be useful. You can check out the integration here.
Then I had another idea and I just couldn’t be at peace until I implemented it. I think it occurred to me a day while driving and listening to the Mega Man III OST. I thought I had found the perfect tune for it. So, even in a busy week with lots of work, I just had to do it.
The trailer features the awesome speakers’ lineup in a “robot-masters” NES Megaman stage selected style.
I implemented it using JavaScript and Phaser, you can check the source code here and the demo running live here
Of course, there’s little structure to the project since it was meant to be a quick job (and is also pretty simple). Most of the relevant logic can be found in a single Object, the Game state. I set up a stage with a black background and the gray strip, as well a Sprite object for the character and 4 text fields. I used a Megaman 10 font (I had found another one for Megaman 2 but for some reason, it could not be loaded as a web font), I performed a simple centering function based on each line’s character count to keep the characters as sprites in the grid (thus getting a bit close to being a NES “background sprite”?).
There was also a simple “particle” animation in the background, instead of stars they were small @ signs because, you know, roguelike. I used the same color palette used on the Roguelike Celebration logo for them.
Of course, the most fun part was doing the pixel art for the speakers. I used a bunch of Mega Man 2 robot masters as a base and then I proceeded on tweaking them for each speaker. The ones I know in person where easier, for the others I had to do a bit of stalki Internet research, I hope I managed to capture their likeness.
Finally, I reused the “Retro TV with scanlines” from Cat Cafe.
I missed the date, but we hit the 1K milestone for the paid version of Ananias on Android, last February 23 🙂
We also surpassed the 1K mark on steam about 3 months ago (for sales), activations are waaay higher now (over 5K!) I wonder where I got that many? (maybe some bundles which I forgot to deactivate unused keys) while it took about 4 years in Android, it took less than a year on Steam. The Free edition on Android is now close to 60K cumulative installs
Meanwhile, on the Apple Store, Ananias has sold a bit over 300 units, in about the same period of time than Steam. So far, all of this has been without marketing campaigns or major advertising (besides some minor and useless facebook ads).
In other news, I decided to make the project board public, take a look if you feel curious 🙂
A friend mentioned the Successor of Fate track from Harmony of dissonance. The conversation went on to me downloading CvRL 0.73 (from 2010) and he insisting I should upload to somewhere more public.
So here it is! Straight from 2010 to the Internets 🙂
It was about time to make a release for iOS. The last release was 2.4.1 from July 10, 2017! I was hoping to pack more into it but since there are many good gameplay changes (including a new class), a critical UI fix, and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to work on it in the next couple months, I figured it was a good time to do it.
Standard Edition
Any Device via the official web version, just point your browser there and you’ll always get the latest version.
It was about time to make a release for itch.io. Last release was 2.4.1 from July 10 2017! I was hoping to pack more into it but since there are many good gameplay changes (including a new class), and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to work on it in the next couple months, I figured it was a good time to do it. I also packed a new version to Steam (which had 2.4.1 from October 31 2017)
Standard Edition
Any Device via the official web version, just point your browser there and you’ll always get the latest version.
It was about time to make a release for Android. Last release was 2.4.1 from July 10 2017! I was hoping to pack more into it but since there’s an important UI bug and many good gameplay changes (including a new class), and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to work on it in the next couple months, I figured it was a good time to do it.
Standard Edition
Any Device via the official web version, just point your browser there and you’ll always get the latest version.
Halloween comes with a new version of Ananias including a new class: the Lunar Witch! In addition of being experts concocting potions, they have access to a whole new school of magic: Witchcraft.
Witches cast spells (or hexes) sacrificing their own blood. However, if they have a familiar they will share the burden with him, causing him small harm in exchange for much less pain for the witch.
Hurry up and get it now from Steam‘s halloween sale! (coming soon to other outlets)
Other changes include:
UX
Allow continuing games from older version, warn game wont be saved.
Bugfixes
Prevent issue with sprite positioning when morphing floating enemies
Prevent issue with summons sprites being misplaced
Fix achievements relying on count number of levels
Make sick fountains reduce attack instead of contracting it (allow recovering)
Prevent items from disappearing when dropped and no space
Fix issue with confirming spell selection on mobile
