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Wayfarer download released! playable, sadistic!

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ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 3:33:28 AM3/27/09
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Wayfarer has a lot of new features. Ironically, despite my long-term
goal of less violent options (diplomacy, non-fatal combat, etc.), the
game is currently so bloody and twisted it makes me cringe. In
delight. I'm only human. It is fully playable (not winnable), and
there are executables for Windows/Mac/Linux. You may have trouble
with the Windows version, especially its speed, and the Linux version
is untested. Positive and negative feedback equally appreciated!
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me on the graphical road. (And they
say r.g.r.dev is puritanical.)

Link:
http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer

enjoy, Ben

Xecutor

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Mar 27, 2009, 6:19:27 AM3/27/09
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Visually very attractive.
Once I've found scroll of restore limbs, I've remembered IVAN.
It's very sad that it was discontinued :(
IMHO average battle takes too much time.
And I'd prefer some kind of fast regen in town.

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 7:05:04 AM3/27/09
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Wow, I'd never seen IVAN, but I checked some screenshots. Same limbs
+ inventory, at the top right, too. Wayfarer is based on a game I
started writing back in 2000, in HyperCard. Link:
http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer/OldTown.jpg
The silhouette inventory system was directly inspired by Diablo, which
came out in '96. So maybe IVAN had similar roots? I agree about
battle and regen. I will nerf the monsters a bit. I also plan to
make some fountains into "fountains of healing." Thanks for input.

Ben

PS: If you have "fond" memories of grappling with limited inventory
space in Diablo, you may get a laugh out of this, especially the
music: http://www.flashrolls.com/fun-games/Diablo-Tetris-Flash-Game.htm

purestrain

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Mar 27, 2009, 7:29:38 AM3/27/09
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This is, what i would call, a "up-to-date" roguelike i wish everyone
would do instead of old ascii, and It leaves place for imagination
too. I'll go the same way for my next roguelike (well, did some sort
of 3d graphics too, but not that great 8bit art)

Seems like this is a realtime game, only interrupted if the player is
idle?

Good work, i'll enjoyed it.

Jotaf

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Mar 27, 2009, 9:45:10 AM3/27/09
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Stunning! The quality of the "characters" is what strikes me most. I'm
also looking forward for nerfed monsters :P One more thing, it's easy
to get lost. You only get to see a few tiles around you. Decreasing
zoom would probably kill the style, so maybe display a minimap?

Jotaf

Ido Yehieli

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Mar 27, 2009, 12:30:29 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 12:29 pm, purestrain <uschkinredsunsh...@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> This is, what i would call, a "up-to-date" roguelike i wish everyone
> would do instead of old ascii, and It leaves place for imagination
> too. I'll go the same way for my next roguelike (well, did some sort
> of 3d graphics too, but not that great 8bit art)
>

I'd be happy to do a graphical game like that (in fact my next game
will be graphical), but you just can't compare the amount of
investment in both time & effort between that and just using ascii.

-Ido.

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 1:13:59 PM3/27/09
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> You only get to see a few tiles around you. Decreasing
> zoom would probably kill the style, so maybe display a minimap?

In early stages there was a minimap...as I recall, the game got
slower, but I can sure add it back for those of who can render the
flames in Jacob's Matrix without editing the .config file!

>Seems like this is a realtime game, only interrupted if the player is idle?

Basically yes -- it "feels" real time because different speeds are
shown as different npc-slide-rates, and they complete their current
move if you idle. So you can outrun a glormbeast if you're holding
the movement key down, but if you're doing a tap-think tap-think
process it will stay at your heels.

Ben

Darren Grey

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Mar 27, 2009, 1:46:52 PM3/27/09
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I don't know how, but your Java app somehow screwed up my Firefox
interface royally. All links started opening in new windows, new tabs
got switched to immediately and it acted as if the shift key was
constantly held down. Even after leaving your site and restarting
Firefox these problems persisted - I had to restart my computer to get
my browser working properly again! Never got to see your game
either :P

--
Darren Grey

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 2:10:42 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 1:46 pm, Darren Grey <darrenjohng...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know how, but your Java app somehow screwed up my Firefox
> interface royally.  All links started opening in new windows, new tabs
> got switched to immediately and it acted as if the shift key was
> constantly held down.  Even after leaving your site and restarting
> Firefox these problems persisted - I had to restart my computer to get
> my browser working properly again!  Never got to see your game
> either  :P

Ouch. Be it known that he crashed with honor, and it shall be
remembered. Link to no-java download site, in honor of the late
Darren Grey:
http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer/nojava.htm

Happylisk

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Mar 27, 2009, 2:38:15 PM3/27/09
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> Ouch.  Be it known that he crashed with honor, and it shall be
> remembered.  Link to no-java download site, in honor of the late
> Darren Grey:http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer/nojava.htm

Awesome, I was hoping there would be a downloadable version. It
worked fine on Java last night, but today it killed my Firefox too.

Gelatinous Mutant Coconut

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Mar 27, 2009, 5:18:09 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 4:05 am, benh...@gmail.com wrote:
> Wow, I'd never seen IVAN, but I checked some screenshots.  Same limbs
> + inventory, at the top right, too.  Wayfarer is based on a game I
> started writing back in 2000, in HyperCard.  Link:http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer/OldTown.jpg

I love the 4-color look! You should consider having that available as
an alternative tileset, or possibly use it in a special part of the
game (like the Rogue style area in NetHack).

MaxyB

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Mar 27, 2009, 5:47:49 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 2:33 am, benh...@gmail.com wrote:
> Link:http://benhem.com/games/wayfarer

Wow, this is super cool, and I encourage you to continue developing
it.

One minor nitpick:
The font can be confusing sometimes. If you select a potion, it looks
an awful lot like it says press "a" to drink. This tripped me up for a
while, until I realized it's supposed to be a "q".

MrBudgens

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Mar 27, 2009, 8:14:59 PM3/27/09
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Nice! But I couldn't move diagonally with the keypad whereas monsters
can... (IE 7, Java 6.12 in case it helps - Firefox didn't work with this)


--
-----------------------------------
http://www.justgiving.com/helpcorby
-----------------------------------

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 8:32:55 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 5:47 pm, MaxyB <max.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The font can be confusing sometimes. If you select a potion, it looks
> an awful lot like it says press "a" to drink. This tripped me up for a
> while, until I realized it's supposed to be a "q".

Quite true. Fixed that Q. Thanks --

On Mar 27, 5:18 pm, Gelatinous Mutant Coconut
<GelatinousMutantCoco...@gmail.com> wrote

> I love the 4-color look! You should consider having that available as
> an alternative tileset, or possibly use it in a special part of the
> game (like the Rogue style area in NetHack).

Well, that old game is b/w but probably looks grey when shrunk...a
greyscale color set might be nice for night, aboveground. Thanks,

Ben

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 27, 2009, 8:35:59 PM3/27/09
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On Mar 27, 8:14 pm, MrBudgens <mrbudg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Nice!  But I couldn't move diagonally with the keypad whereas monsters
> can...  (IE 7, Java 6.12 in case it helps - Firefox didn't work with this)

Oh, check your numlock key...it should be on. I'll throw a note in
about that. Please let me know if it still doesn't work after that!
I might need to throw in a "move" key for those without numpads for
those moments when a diagonal is crucial. The only other option I see
is to delay all key-acceptance to give more latency for a double
keypress, and that would slow the game way down.

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 28, 2009, 2:15:44 AM3/28/09
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On Mar 27, 8:14 pm, MrBudgens <mrbudg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Nice! But I couldn't move diagonally with the keypad whereas monsters
> can... (IE 7, Java 6.12 in case it helps - Firefox didn't work with this)

Update: resolved caps-lock and num-lock issues.
Also tweaked battle.
And the Q.

Ben

MaxyB

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Mar 28, 2009, 1:24:55 PM3/28/09
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On Mar 27, 7:35 pm, benh...@gmail.com wrote:
> I might need to throw in a "move" key for those without numpads for
> those moments when a diagonal is crucial.  The only other option I see
> is to delay all key-acceptance to give more latency for a double
> keypress, and that would slow the game way down.

Just use Vi keys. I think the only existing key you'd have to re-map
is "h" for help, which could become "H" or "?" and still remain
intuitive.

Gelatinous Mutant Coconut

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Mar 28, 2009, 5:33:29 PM3/28/09
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I'd suggest using "?", since if you're using the lower-case vi keys
for movement, you might eventually want to use the upper-case
counterparts for auto-explore. (Although I guess that makes less sense
in a real-time game?)

Andrew Doull

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Mar 28, 2009, 5:40:16 PM3/28/09
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Seconded. If you play roguelikes on a laptop, you're probably used to
the Vi key set...

Andrew

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 29, 2009, 5:52:32 PM3/29/09
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I never got used to Vi keys, probably because I never used Vi. I have
the arrangement memorized but I doubt it'll ever seem intuitive to
me. But since it seems popular: no problem! Are you positive you
wouldn't rather have a kind of numpad-style arrangement, though?
e.g.:

U I O
J K L
M , .

--Ben

Gelatinous Mutant Coconut

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Mar 29, 2009, 6:34:11 PM3/29/09
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Definitely not rather. Maybe as an additional option.

Another nice option to give laptop keyboard players is to have the
regular number keys move the @ in the same way that the numberpad keys
would. (I got quite good at that style while playing Dwarf Fortress
adventure mode on my laptop, since the game has other uses defined for
standard vi movement keys and I was too lazy to edit the key bindings.
I typically switched back to the standard 4-arrows when I wasn't in a
situation that made diagonal movement an advantage, though.)

Will Shattuck

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Mar 29, 2009, 9:22:35 PM3/29/09
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I second keeping the vi movement keys for any roguelike. I don't have a
number pad on my primary laptop, and grew used to the vi keys when
learning rogue and nethack all those years ago. For me, at least, the
vi keys are completely second nature when playing Crawl, Nethack, or
other RLs that use it

Also, the number keys across the top do currently control the character.
I use the diagonal numbers (1,3,7,9) to move diagonally when there
isn't a vi keyset available.

Just my 2 cents.

Will

Will Shattuck

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Mar 29, 2009, 9:25:27 PM3/29/09
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Hi Ben,

An enjoyable game. One suggestion might be to capture the ESC key. I
find myself trying to use it to bring up a menu system as in some other
games and exiting the game. I don't know if others are doing the same
or not.

Thanks,
Will

ben...@gmail.com

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Mar 30, 2009, 6:34:43 AM3/30/09
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Vi keys added! So be it.

On Mar 29, 9:25 pm, Will Shattuck <willshatt...@gmail.com.nospam>
wrote:


> An enjoyable game.  One suggestion might be to capture the ESC key.  I
> find myself trying to use it to bring up a menu system as in some other
> games and exiting the game.  I don't know if others are doing the same
> or not.

Grrgh. I haven't found a way to capture escape or keep it from
quitting (freezing) the applet. It's some sort of built-in safety
feature. I may be able to disable it in the executable/download
version.

--Ben

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