POWDER is a roguelike game, which is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning.

After 5 years the coder Jeff Laid pulls out the 100th release of Powder. The game is available for Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Linux, Windows and MacOS X.

Changes:

Remove flash when clicking on inventory items. (Richard Quirk)
Properly remove base item from inventory during drag. (Richard Quirk)
Creatures have only 30% chance of doing a last-ditch self-poly rather than always doing so. A bit less optimal from their point of view, but more playable from our point.
Dequipping items using drag-and-drop leaves the cursor at the source position, not the end position, as the end position isn’t where the item ends up anyways.
Verb List in the Command Menu now named Command Menu to be more clear. (Grothias)
Keybinding for the Command Menu, ‘V’, added, so you can restore your Command Menu if you drag it off without doing a full reset. (Grothias)
ActionBar settings should now be properly reset on every version upgrade, avoiding the embarassing bad settings seen in the 098->099 upgrade. (Richard Quirk)
FullScreen option changes to Windowed when you are already in Full Screen. (Kantaphon Tongmee)
Identify spell allows you to use the stylus to select an item.
Top row of ActionBar is mapped to F1-F15 on SDL platforms. (I don’t have a machine with F13-F15, so can’t confirm if they work) (David Damerell)
Top action bar shows up when in cast or command menu mode even if action bar is disabled. This is because it allows you to assign your F1-F15 keys.
Pressing F1-F15 during Command Menu or Zap screens will bind your current command/spell to the relevant slot, so there is no need to invoke your mouse.
Soul Suckers will properly target you when you are more than one square away.
When you look around with the stylus you will no longer replicate your original overlay icon. (Richard Quirk)
[DS] When I made [X] and [Y] remappable, I also accidentally swapped their meaning. Since the swap was done in the last month while the original meaning was around for 10 months, I’ve decided to swap them back. This means [X] is now Verb List, or [Start] equivalent, and [Y] is Inventory or [Select] alias. The rational is that the relative location of [X] and [Y] line up with [Start] and [Select] If you grew used to the swapped version, remember that you can remap them back by hitting [Select] in the Command Menu. (Matthew Rollins)
The Dip and Identify menus require you to chose a Checkbox or X button rather than just picking what you click on first. This allows you to explore your items with the stylus to figure out what you want to act on.
Moved the help icon to the top left which, thanks to the keyboard shortcuts, means hitting F1 gives you help.
Having a custom tileset will no longer cause you to revert to the classic tileset after ever load. (Matthew Rollins)
One new room.
Linux .tar.gz extracts into a powderXYZ directory rather than to the current directory, better matching the expectations of people on that platform.
Windows, DS, and GBA users now have a .zip format since .tar.gz can be hard to figure out on Windows platforms.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

POWDER is a roguelike game, which is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning.

Release notes:

Most of my effort has focussed on UI related issues with this release. My vision for the Action Bar is now realized. You can populate it with your own choice of actions or spells.

Akoi Meexx has been working extremely hard at a total-conversion tileset for POWDER which I’m proud to now make the default tileset!

I’ve moved my primary playing platform to the DS. I’m extremely happy with the current stylus interface. I have not had to use the buttons at all. This is fortunate as in the winter one can use the stylus with gloves, but I’ve had issues trying to use the buttons.

Changes:

The PPC Mac and Linux versions will no longer have psychedelic colours, but instead look normal. (Ben Hjelt)
[Mac] The Mac port now uses a .dmg making installation a snap! Note your .txt and .sav files will be saved to whatever directory you put the POWDER program into.
[SDL] The window icon was accidentally half brightness – it is now in its full glory.
There is now an action bar along the top of the screen as well. Further, you can reassign action bar entries when in the verb screen. Merely drag and drop to until the bar matches your dream layout!
There is now actionbars on the left and right of the screen. It is recommended you don’t use the top few of these as they will obscure your text output.
Your action bar settings are saved across sessions. If you mess things up, the Options menu has a Defaults entry that will revert them to the defaults.
From the Zap menu you can drag and drop spells to the action bar. This lets you cast specific spells with a single click.
On reading a spell or skill book, you will be given the full text of the spell or skill you are trying to learn. You will then have to confirm your selection. This requires two extra button pushes, but I hope such learning is rare and this helps people discover the spell text as [Select] is a tad bit obscure.
The background for the inventory screen has been changed into a series of boxes rather than the odd C symbol. This is also done on the layer beneath the items.
When you possess another creature and equip items, your original body will no longer mirror your new weapon choices.
Renaming yourself will change your actual name (the one for the win screen and character dump) rather than just your body’s name. (Grothias)
Linux port is now statically linked against libstdc++, so those of you who don’t have old libraries installed should be able to run it. (Martin Read, John Overmars)
The final inventory screen will no longer go to full-examine when you click on an item. Instead, it acts like the normal inventory where it does the short description on click and changes the item bar to reflect whether you can view the item. Similarly, the only way to quit it is to now press the inventory button again. (Or [B], of course) (Honourable mention to Richard Quirk who submitted a patch for this after I had already coded it)
Possess now takes Diagnose as a prerequisite.
The haunted island and other similar rooms that have monsters have been double checked to ensure they don’t allow stairs. (Martin Read)
[DS] Richard Quirk finished the earlier fix to support r21 of devkitPro. It turns out my refusal to use short-enums was the source of the incompatibility.
Requesting info (‘i’ or [Select]) on the cancel option of a spell book reading menu will no longer crash. (Ciaran Walsh)
You can drag items around your inventory screen to reorder them. You can drag into your equip slots to put them on or drag off equipped slots to remove them. (Richard Quirk)
it’s to its correction in cockatrice description. (Richard Quirk)
Eating items now grants ten times the foodvalue, bringing them more in line with eating corpses. (Brendan, Michal Bielinski)
One new map.
Brand new tileset – the Akoi Meexx tileset. This is a total conversion which has been made the new default tileset. Never fear, if you want the naked pink guy, you can change to the Classic tileset.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

POWDER is a roguelike game, which is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning.

Changes:

“You are too big to swap” has two os in the first too. (David Damerell)
Many encyclopedia typo fixes. (David Damerell)
Wands that fizzle now conjugate “fizzle” according to the wand rather than the zapper.
When you learn the charges in a wand, there is no longer an incorrect article prefixing the wand name.
[DS] Now using devkitPro r21 rather than the hybridized version. Thanks to Richard Quirk for finding the work around and sending me code.
[DS] Thanks to Richard Quirk’s patch, POWDER should consume less power when waiting for a key press.
[DS], [SDL] Paged text will now show the background all the way to the edges of the window rather than being cut off at the GBA’s resolution.
When items teleported, their location in the map array wasn’t being updated, allowing them to be potentially accessed after being deleted.
Cancelling autopickup after already picking one item up when there is a thing to eat no longer causes you to eat said thing. And, incidentally, potentially killing you if said thing was a slug corpse. (Brendan)
“The fighter foobar’s death” will now auto-capitalize Foobar.
[DS] Save locations are now specified with absolute paths so it doesn’t matter where the actual POWDER executable is. (Johnboy554)
[DS] The output of POWDER on the DS is saved to /data/powder. This is also used for reading – graphics tiles must now be in /data/powder/gfx. This should keep your flash card clean and (apparently) this matches the standard homebrew definition. If you want to keep your old highscores, move the POWDER.SAV into the aforementioned directory. (Phillip Conrad)
Backspace key on the virtual keyboard is a double key to accomadate the fact it is too compact. (David Hong)
Wearing multiple pieces of artifact armour with attack boni will increase your chance of doing an armour attack. This means it is beneficial to add more attack armour rather than it only being wise to only equip the most powerful.
bmp2c and bmp.cpp both now properly handle non-Intel endianness. (Ben Hjelt)
Icons are now present on SDL builds and in the windows .exe. I also think that, thanks to Richard Quirk’s help, they’ll be present in the DS in Moonshell, but I haven’t been able to verify.
A wand once again crumbles into dust rather than crumble.
An interesting graphical upgrade. Monsters and items are now on a separate layer from the terrain. This means they can be drawn transparently on top rather than always being black bordered. This is made optional as the default tiles are not optimized for this look – you can turn it on with the Opacity option of the Options menu.
One more room.

Thanks to cid2mizard / http://www.dev-fr.org for the news.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

Lily and the lost Angel is a Gameboy Advance shoot-em-up using mode 3.

http://www.drunkencoders.com/compo/index.php?page=entries

If you’re in need of a quick gaming break, why not take a Bauble Break?! Bauble Break is a puzzle game similar to Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move. You must aim and shoot Christmas Baubles onto a playing field, trying to get groups of three or more to be connected, at which point they will break. See how many levels you can clear before your credits run out. See if you can get your name to the top of the high score list. When successful, hand off your copy of Bauble Break to a friend and let them try and beat your score. It’s hours of fun for everyone.

http://www.drunkencoders.com/compo/index.php?page=entries

The Christmas Turkey is a game where you have been given the task to look after a turkey (The plot is implemented in the game). It appears like a platform game where you control a turkey. The game contains four levels, the aim is to collect all the 100 seeds on each stage as quick as possible. Your score is based on how much time that is left after you have collected all the seeds. So basically try to beat it as quick as possible and get a nice score!;)

http://www.drunkencoders.com/compo/index.php?page=entries

To understand POWDER, you should first understand roguelikes. “Roguelike” is a term applied to a wide variety of games which share a common inspiration from the game Rogue. A non-exhaustive list of such games would be: ADOM, Nethack, Crawl, Diablo (I & II), Moria, and Angband.

Powder is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning. It uses actual graphic tiles (16×16) rather than the traditional characters.

Changes:

Releasing a possessed creature on the otherside of a dimensional portal should no longer cause problems.
Releasing possession after your body has died but left a corpse will no longer leave you as some weird ghost. This also prevents you from picking up your own corpse and eating it, which has dire reprecussions.
Releasing possession after your body is a statue is likewise fixed (JCM)
If you polymorph and drop something on the ground due to lacking space and that item merges with an existing item, it no longer crashes.
New tridude rooms have a unique tridude to act as the leader to avoid infighting.
Zapping a wand of create trap outside of the map no longer crashes.
Rays bouncing off the map boundaries no longer risk crash.
You can read equipped scrolls, books, and zap equipped wands and drink equipped potions. No particular advantage is currently conferred by such, other than looking cool, but it seemed odd you had to unequip things to do this. (Bill Walker)
Starting inventory has been normalized and you start the game wearing your armour and weapon. Your bonus item may still be better, so you likely still want to look in your inventory at the start. This means no more starting the game with an evil -2 floppy had and dagger, but also no more starting with a +3 holy artifact warhammer. (David Damerell, Richard Quirk, Stu)
Dying while possessing a creature and being on a different level from your body will no longer corrupt the mob list of your old level.
Zapping a wand of teleport at yourself and dying after the teleport will no longer crash.
Zapping a wand of teleport at yourself will no longer teleport items on the square you teleport *to*, and instead teleport them from the square you teleport *from*.
Quit & Save will immediately put you at the main menu rather than letting you spy on the local dungeon life. (Clare Boothby)
Help and tutorial docs now talk about how to use the stylus/mouse.
[SDL], [DS]: Starting image now fills the screen. It has also been made darker as the original image was calibrated against the original GBA.
[SDL]: Linux and Windows users will find their screen size a bit larger to bring it in line with the DS screen. There is method to my madness.
The title menu now has an Options choice that lets you change the options and read the help without starting a game.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

POWDER is a roguelike game, which is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning.

Changes:

Golden tridude is reflective as intended.
Soul suckers now have encyclopedia entry. (Richard Quirk)
I had forgotten to update the non-classic tilesets with some approximations of the new tiles. This has now been done.
Creatures blown into something that kills them will no longer cause a crash.
Fire elementals boiling water, falling in the resulting pit, and dying, will no longer crash.
New ring: polymorph control; along with the required intrinsic. If you have polycontrol, you can chose the form of any creature you have slain.
Creatures with polycontrol will try first to become their most evolved form. If they are already that, they’ll stay the same, unless they figure they are close enough to death a polymorph might be worth a shot.
Wand users that are almost dead may decide to zap themselves with polymorph in hopes of a better roll.
Mini icons are flipped when moved to the off-hand. Most notably, the bow will point away from the character in all cases. The handle for the off hand has also been made symmetrical to the main hand so a symmetrical mini-me will work as expected. This required a two pixel change to the mini-me icon. (Akoi Meexx)
Restarting the game would not delete any of the items in creature’s inventory, leaking memory. This was very apparent during stress tests causing the DS and GBA to quickly run out of memory and PC based systems to eventually run out of MOB ids.
Killing yourself with Acid Splash will no longer crash.
Creatures who revert to normal form after teleportitis, auto-searching, being blown by the wind, boiling water they stand on, will no longer crash.
Creatures reverting to their normal form from their own fireball will no longer crash.
When in look mode, clicking will scroll to that tile and give a brief description. Clicking the current tile will end look mode and give the long form description. (Richard Quirk)
Three more maps.

Thanks to cid2mizard / http://www.dev-fr.org for the news.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

POWDER is a roguelike game, which is not a port of an existing roguelike. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning.

Release notes:

While some maintainers may make a special Christmas Release that has neat features that provide joy and happiness to their players, the 094 Christmas Release had no interesting new features and a serious game crashing bug.

In penance, I have been running the stress test for a day now to hopefully avoid a similar embarassing release.

Now for the good news: ><0|V| has his chosen quest level created. This was no small feat as it also required numerous new tiles to support it. Note the presence of a new artpack with this release. As a bone to those of us that rarely get as deep as level 20, the weapon damage has been adjusted slightly. This is most noticeable with maces and clubs which will now be comparable to shortswords and longswords. Hopefully edged weapons won't be such a no-brainer any more.

Changes:

Your armour now longers glows $B1, but instead the correct colour.
Scrolls of remove curse and enchant weapon are no longer scrolls of crash the game. Not only are they fixed in particular, but the underlying problem has some sanity tests so errors like this in the future should just result in bad grammer.
Can now load bitmaps that are taller than necessary as custom tilesets. This ensures that we will have forward compatibility with larger tilesets of the future.
Maces and clubs are made slightly more powerful, giving them the same average damage as their corresponding edged weapons: shortswords and longswords.
Thrown knives to hit bonus raised slightly so they can be more equivalent to thrown daggers.
While spears are meant for throwing, for a two handed weapon to have the same attack as a one handed longsword is embarrassing. They have been slightly powered.
“..looks like your funeral” style messages now have “. ” after it.
Creatures casting force bolt will no longer target themselves.
Fix rare case where you could start the game standing on another creature.
When you are fetched by another creature, the map will scroll and FOV update immediately.
Correctly save RNG state when building monsters inside of rooms, this ensures if populateRoom is invoked early in the map building it doesn’t change the RNG seed for the rest of the map. This saves about 300 bytes per level for saved games for many map types.
Climbing back up the stairs after winning the game will not trigger the win message again. (Clare Boothby)
Changing levels will not display the new level as black if a long message requires your input prior to the full level change.
Description text is given for lava, water, acid pools so those who first encounter them can e’x’amine them before jumping in.
Unchanging prevents turning into a lich or ghast.
Creatures with unchanging will no longer be tamed by Bind Soul.
New level honouring ><0|V|. This is an optional level reached via a dimensional portal on level 20. If a creature teleported onto a trap that killed it, the game could crash. This has been fixed. If a creature is killed by zapping its own wand, there is no longer out of bound reads when determining if the wand should be ided. Stress test mode is accessible without needing a custom buld in a similar manner as Wizard mode.

Thanks to cid2mizard / http://www.dev-fr.org for the news.

http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release

Mammary Advance is an erotic game by Metalvotze.

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=34548