jwm-art.net: XorCurses (0.1.2)

XorCurses (0.1.2)

News: XorCurses-0.1.2 Released!

Monday 2nd November 2009

Download XorCurses-0.1.2.tar.bz2

To be notified of new releases see the links section below.

New Minor Release: XorCurses-0.1.2

* Fixed nasty bugs in teleport code.

* Brought improvement to xor_move struct
  from XorGramana.

* Minor UI changes.

XorCurses is a game coded by jwm-art.net based entirely on Xor by Astral Software. The original game was released around 1987 for the 8 bit home computers popular at the time. XorCurses attempts to faithfully recreate that game for Linux, but slightly ironically, uses ASCII characters instead of pixel based graphics (which even the 8bit computers could manage).

Large

The idea of Xor is to roam around a series of mazes collecting masks. The first level is simply a matter of finding your way around, but the second level introduces fish and chickens which block your path or kill you if they hit you. From there on in things get progressively tougher and really is a challenging and difficult puzzle game.

XorCurses resulted from there not being a direct port of the game for Linux. Windows users are ok. People happy with using emulators are ok too. I settled with a character-based display (as opposed to fancy graphics) because it would be much simpler to code, and learning ncurses simply has no learning curve compared with graphics (which I did not even look into). If I could get a working game using ncurses then atleast it would pave the way for a graphical version.

Links

Xor on danceswithferrets.org is a good resource for information about different versions of Xor from past to present, and lots of reference material including graphics, maps, and other technical notes. Certainly most useful during the early stages of XorCurses development.

XorCurses on happypenguin.org (The Linux Game Tome)

XorCurses on freshmeat.net Register with freshmeat.net and subscribe to XorCurses to be notified of new releases.

Wikipedia entry about Xor

OLD RELEASES

(Most recent first)

Information

"XorCurses (0.1.2)"

An open source port to Linux, using curses, of the puzzle game Xor by Astral Software.

XorCurses Features:

  * Colour ASCII for console and terminals using NCurses.
  * Gracefully handles window resizing of host terminal.
  * Very little system footprint.
  * Varying wall colours and wall patterns.
  * Fish and Chickens
  * Bombs
  * Dolls
  * Teleports
  * Sad Masks/Wall visibility toggle
  * Levels 1 - 15 from original Xor game.
  * Tracking of least number of moves taken to complete
    a level - stored in user's home directory.
  * Replays
  * Nine replay speeds changable by keypress during replay
  * Hyper replay speed to get to breakpoints fast.
  * Single stepping replay mode for intensive scrutiny.
  * Save replays
  * Load replays
  * Continue playing from any point in replay (thus use of
    saved replays as game progress save files).
  * Set breakpoints in replay (new).
  * Help on controls, replays, tips, objects (re-implemented).
  * Easily navigatable menus and options via keyboard.
  * Three different scrolling settings, including traditional
    and keep-player-central - changable during play by 
    simple keypresses.
  * Confoundingly difficult levels which I still can't complete
    even after all these years. (Note: I've just completed
    level 8 - Enlightenment).

Comments

james the factory dolt on 16:14 Thursday 18 June 2009:

this is just a test comment...

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