Last update: April 3rd 2010
The following pictures were taken in different display modes and tile sizes, to show the variety of display options you have when playing LR: The Book of Stars. Options include 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions, both fullscreen and windowed, plus a special Netbook mode which adjusts the view to 1024x600. Additionally, you can choose between a big and a small tileset. Finally, of course, the game offers a true text mode using your system's console or terminal to display ASCII characters.
The Temple of Enoa, starting place of your quest. |
Ready to dive into the dungeons? |
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Finding treasure in the catacombs |
Don't loose yourself. Use the map. |
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What could this barrel contain …? |
The library assistant – surely a helpful person. |
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No decent weapon? Throw items at your enemies! |
Fish + Bread = Bread Roll with Fish. |
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Unpleasant. |
Really unpleasant. |
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The Lonely Librarian is one of the earlier boss monsters. |
Facing ghosts from the past … |
In the following gallery, you get an impression of the various versions and experiments I made to the game in the past. Some things seem really strange to me today ;-) Have fun.
July 2006: The title screen of LR 0.1 reminds us of the meaning of »Lambda« in the game's title: It was used as an abbreviation for »Lost, Apocalyptic, Magic, Beautiful, Dark and Absurd world« – still true today. |
July 2006: Dungeon layouts in these early phases of development were often very buggy and with a size of 600x600 way too big; dungeon size in LR 1.5 is usually about 50x50. Story remark: The »eternal god of the darker way« soon became Ares, now called »God of Peace in War«. Quite a change, I think … |
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August 2006: LR 0.1.9 was still text-only, but it had already landscape elements like water, sand or trees. Very pale color scheme, though. The name of the god was a step in today's direction; his name in 0.1.9 was »God of Darker Way of Ares«. |
September 2006: LR 0.1.95 already had small tiles, but non-player creatures were still shown as letters with a solid black background. Not really pretty. ;-) Font family and color also underwent frequent changes. |
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March 2007: LR 0.1.105 had several subway lines for faster travel on the (still mostly non-random) maps. The color scheme of the tiles was changed to have a more surreal appeal. |
March 2007: LR 0.1.105 included an experimental inventory design – no list, but instead you selected items with [left]/[right] and chose options from a context-sensitive menu. Sort of cool, but it required many many keystrokes, so it got removed later on. |
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June 2008: For a while the game could be controlled by mouse, but this mode became too hard to maintain. Most players never used it anyway, so it was removed in LR 1.4. Both player and creatures were shown using letters in this release. |
August 2008: LR 0.3.x and later 1.0 introduced lots of artwork, which I created in long nights, using The Gimp and Photoshop. Many kind people at DeviantART gave me permission to use their stock photos as basis of my manipulations. They're all listed in the in-game credits. |
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December 2009: It was always my goal to have an interface which was both user friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Partly due to player criticism, I removed the black top and bottom bars, to gain more space for the dungeon view. LR 1.4 introduced graphical status bars, a minimap, and a quickbar. The game also got a complete artwork overhaul and lots of gameplay enhancements, improvements and bug fixes. |
August 2009: LR 1.5 follows the same lines as LR 1.4. The status area now includes a character portrait and level, the quickbar can now be moved, the minimap looks better and has a zoom button that calls an overview of the whole dungeon level. The message log was completely rewritten, display mode can be changed on the fly, and lots of improvements more. |
Development of LR: The Book of Stars began in summer 2006, when I tried to get an @ walking on the screen, using FreePascal and SDL. Very early I released several alpha and beta version to the community at rec.games.roguelike.development, whose members pointed out lots of bugs, interface annoyances and balancing issues. All releases from 2006 to 2007 had a somewhat weird cyberpunk background, where you could even hack into computers, using a minigame which was a roguelike itself.
Random levels of these very early releases had strange and unbalanced designs, and there were also lots of static levels. There was no Line of Sight (LOS), the Field of View was simply a rectangle, and nearly all mid- and endgame content was missing. The release of version 1.0 in August 2008 solved all these issues and therefore was a big step forward for the game.
Summer 2008 was also the time that defined the story of the game. While I kept all the basic assumptions regarding the fictional history of the game's society (i.e. the lost war against the Drekh'Nar which forced mankind to go underground), I transformed the setting from cyberpunk to fantasy. I also defined a clear purpose: Dive down the dungeons, find the »Book of Stars«, and come back with that book. However, I always wanted to embed this purpose in a more complex story, and to connect it to other quests, and the releases that followed made important additions.
Today, players consider LR: The Book of Stars a refreshing and fun approach on roguelike RPG, with unique features that make the game outstanding among other roguelikes. Development speed has increased again in spring 2010, to refine and enhance an already polished game.