Powder Release 113

Jeff Lait has released a new version of Powder for Various Consoles

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. My apologies to the many excellent roguelikes I didn't list. What characterizes these games? The exact specifications are a matter of debate - indeed, I may receive hate mail for including Diablo - but I shall try to write a few:
Tactical play. The unit of action is based on the individual adventurer. The game is not twitch oriented (like Quake, rewarding reflexes & well trained actions) nor is it strategy oriented (like Civilizations or Warcraft, requiring working on the large picture)
Based in Hack and Slash. A roguelike isn't primarily about plot development or telling a story. It is about killing things and acquiring treasure.
Random games. A roguelike is a dungeon crawler where no two games are the same. The maps are different, the items are different, there are no guaranteed win paths.
Permadeath. You die, that is it. No restoring a savegame. Good roguelikes delete your save game after loading them. This is compensated by the replayability of the game.
Complex interactions of properties. While the commands for a roguelike are simple, the potential interactions are not. My favourite example is equipping a silver ring as a weapon in order to damage a creature vulnerable to silver, but not one's other weapons. [Editor: This matches the Hack branch of the roguelike tree, not the Angband branch]
Steam rolling monsters. If a critter is in your way, and weak, you shouldn't even notice it is there.
For more information about roguelikes there is the Rogue Basin, a Wiki documenting this genre, and the Temple of the Roguelike, a newsite tracking developments in the field.

You wouldn't know if from the change log, but I have been hard at work on POWDER for the last few months.

I do have new base 10 and base 12 versions of Akoi's tileset, along with corresponding fonts, but they aren't yet enabled in the default builds.


Fireball and Cloudkill always explode at the end of their trajectory.
When you gain permanent intrinsics by evolving or lichifying, relevant temporary intrinsics will be cleared, preventing you from having a silver-tolerant lich. (Nathan Bogue)
Timestamps on the final character dump and the description of how long you lived will now match. (Deozaan)
You can wish for bones and corpses without them instantly dissolving. (Garron)
You can no longer fetch items that have teleport fixed. (Eris Discordia)
When a creature (un)polys into a gargantuan creature, it will now also push away monsters in addition to crushing walls. (Nathan Bogue)
Lich-form creatures that are undead no longer report it being your evil that was useless. (garron Bailey)
When you name an item, the menu defaults to naming the type rather than the specific as this is the usual scenario.
The floor of the kiwi room is now the proper floor tile.
Controled teleport onto the square you are already standing no longer reports that you are blocked, but that you decide to stay put.
Mysterious mapping of rooms fixed. Thanks to Kender and Mental Mouse for tracking this down - it has been annoying me for six years or so! (David Damerell, Eilu, Kender, Mental Mouse)
buildall.sh should work with --use-home-dir again. (garron)
The option menu no longer has Load. Instead it has Quit, which prompts you if you meant this. Loading is now only done from the main menu.
No experience for killing your pets.
Confirmation prompt if starting New Game with active saved game as one can easily accidentally overwrite it.
Some spells when mistargeted no longer waste your mana. Not all, so remain vigilant.
Cancelling your choice in the Wish menu no longer costs a turn.
Fix potential crash when you are killed by splash damage from a thrown item.