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[Kolya]

First the big one: The fact that the game runs in a pseudo console since 0.8 kills a lot of the charm it had for me.
I liked AliensRL because it was so reduced. The way it managed to get a lot of great gameplay out of a few ASCII characters.
Now this limitation has been dropped and the game has become a tile based graphical top down shooter. Only that the tiles look like ASCII. This fact is very visible in the game. The "characters" are antialiased now and have gradual lighting applied to them and whatnot. The obvious next step will be to repaint font10x18.png with some actual tiles, which I'm sure someone will do.
But I liked AliensRL because it completely focused on the gameplay and nothing else. If I want nice graphics, then there are many other games I can play. Graphics just aren't the point of his game and trying to make it look "nice" actually made it worse for me.

That being said, there are a lot of things I like about this update: The gameworld gets created much faster now. The added content makes the gameplay a lot more interesting. Although it seems a bit weird that they would have so many beds, tables and lockers randomly scattered around rooms. I haven't encountered locked doors yet but having played a lot of Alien Breed this also seems like a good choice. I also read that items would be more likely to be found in the proximity of corpses now, which is a step in the right direction. Searchable corpses would be even better.

[skarczew]

For the pseudo console thing:
You can reduce the resolution to the point it resembles the original 7days RL :) .

On the other side, this release has a lot of old issues fixed, compared to the old 7days version and 0.8 BETA 2 (the last console one).

Talking about high amount of beds and other furniture, I think this can be replaced (partially) by some chairs and computers in the next releases :) .

[Tavana]

This is just a step in a good direction. I agree that I still like the console, but I'm thinking that once we've added all we're going to add in the way of furniture and whatnot, we can assign letters/symbols to each and build it as a console release. Granted, that would happen much futher down the track, but it's still exciting to think about. Maybe if there's enough demand for it, Kornel would even make a package where you can designate console or graphics via /console or /graphics on the command line.

[yaflhdztioxo]

I have no problem with a 'fake' console.  It's probably easier than dealing with curses.

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Like this?

aliensrl-win-0.8-console.zip

Especially for Kolya from a fellow System Shock fan ^^)

P.S. The game is the same ASCII roguelike that we know and love, only with a graphical facelift -- there are no problems to make it run in a console.

[thelaptop]

squee!

[Kolya]

Wow! Now that is awesome, exactly what I wanted.
It's great that the map exploration is still in which only shows the parts of the map you've visited. To me this version looks actually better and less confusing than the graphical version, due to the absence of gradual lighting.
Of course this version can also be played in fullscreen, in case anyone doesn't know this yet. Start the game, rightclick the titlebar and choose properties.
This version also fixes the garbled text on the end screen.

Thank you a lot Kornel, I didn't expect that. :)

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Kolya, my pleasure :). For further versions I'll somehow integrate it to the main package.

Thank you a lot Kornel, I didn't expect that. :)

Nobody expects the ChaosForge inquisition! xD

[skarczew]

Pseudo console looks great :) .
There is one minor bugzor, though: the strings on the initial screen overlap.

[Kolya]

Two things I noticed while playing:
There should be a message after opening a locker that turns out to be empty.
("You open the locker. It's empty.")

A few times I had 2 beds block the path into a room. They were not directly in front of the door but touching walls and each other, enclosing the space next to the door. Some aliens managed to jump the beds but not me.

[skarczew]

Two things I noticed while playing:
There should be a message after opening a locker that turns out to be empty.
("You open the locker. It's empty.")

I agree.

A few times I had 2 beds block the path into a room. They were not directly in front of the door but touching walls and each other, enclosing the space next to the door. Some aliens managed to jump the beds but not me.

Well, I think the aliens sometimes move 2 cells in one rund - thats why you see them "jumping" the beds.

[Kolya]

The problem could be solved and some additional fun gameplay added by making furniture susceptible to weapon damage, eg a few MG rounds or a grenade would destroy a bed.

[Ratha]

Compared to what little i played of AliensRL before this new release, its become much more enjoyable to play. Not experiencing the lost ammo bug helps significantly. Like a lot of whats being done, only hope it continues to improve further.

Is there a way to scroll the display window? The look command only looks away from the player at a distance of about 10 squares or so. I run the game windowed in 1024x756, and this can make it a bit more difficult to see where ive been on a floor than if ran at a higher resolution. The lower tower levels appear to be about 80x80 and i can see 30x30 horizontally and 19x19 vertically at my resolution.

Also, is or will it possible to use a tilesets that are not 10x18 in size?

[Karry]

But I liked AliensRL because it completely focused on the gameplay and nothing else.

We must be playing two radically different games, in AlienRL i play - there is barely any gameplay, and what is isnt very good. Its boring, it feels extremely empty since you rarely find actual item interaction, its pretty much undocumented (wtf does Gyro do ? manual doesnt say) and way, way too hard.

It amazes me that some people actually won at this. Maybe there is still some vague potential to be found, but compared to DoomRL this is complete shit in terms of pure gameplay. And yet its 0.8 now...boggles the mind.

[yaflhdztioxo]

Oh karry...

I disagree!