Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Discussion about Rogue Touch for the iPhone and iPod Touch
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CommanderData
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by CommanderData »

swhatley wrote:Really enjoying the higher res sprites!

RE: Too many of same monster: One game, I had Kestrels running outmy ears! I have noticed this with other monsters at times like with ice monsters, rattlesnakes, and auqators.

One feature req: PLEASE add a male/female switch to the Rogue Name prompt! Currently the only way to get a female rogue is to play a special character like Athena. Thanks!

Cool, glad you are enjoying the look!

I was concerned about this upgrade because some people would prefer a more nostalgic tile set. Hell, some people would also like Rogue Touch to include ASCII too :)


Regarding the monsters, that is an interesting observation. Is it possible that these are "wandering" monsters that you are seeing, rather than ones that are pre-generated in rooms at the start of the level? Do you have any idea whether they are wanderers by chance?

The reason I ask is there were a number of background tasks that needed rewriting for RT 2.0.64 to run as a position independent executable. One of these tasks happens to be the wandering monster generator... if it could get stuck re-spawning the first wandering choice it made for every level then that might explain things.


If anyone can give feedback on monster types: If you're ever overwhelmed by certain kinds, do they appear to be wandering monsters generated *after* the level started? I'd love to narrow this down to see if there's a real problem somewhere or just really strange RNG distribution :ugeek:
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swhatley
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by swhatley »

A herd of Yetis in a party room on floor 18! I think there were a few more futher in. Hard to tell since all yetis look alike to me. :lol:
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by NightOwl40 »

Argh...that's a heck of a room :o In other bad surprise news, the new version of iTunes did away with app management. I have no idea if any of my games, including this one, will transfer data to a newer phone. From what I've read at the Apple site, all games/apps have to be redownloaded seperately when getting a new device. I'd hate to have to start this game (and many of my other ones that I've spent hours gaining progress in)from the very beginning. Granted, I start this game over quite frequently, but others are much more problematic as I can't afford to use iCloud as it seems to be all or nothing, and on a fixed income I can't afford more than the limited free space. Sorry to vent, but I really want a way to get the app supporting version of iTunes back that also works with iOS 10.3.3
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by CommanderData »

swhatley wrote:A herd of Yetis in a party room on floor 18! I think there were a few more futher in. Hard to tell since all yetis look alike to me. :lol:
Image
Haha that is quite a room!

Funny side note is I considered making "themed" party rooms, where all monsters were intentionally the same type but decided not to implement that (for now). :geek:

Since this room full of Yetis was a party room, they should have all been generated at the start of the level and were residing there... and not generated by the wandering monster system as I was speculating before.

This doesn't eliminate the possibility of very odd random number generation, but it definitely tilts things towards some sort of strange monster creation bug (where it is duplicating a previously made monster instead of creating a new random one). Possibly something with the 64-bit code changing data types/sizes, but I would have expected it to be very common in that case- as in all monsters on each floor would be the same. Of course that type of problem would have been noticed immediately in testing! Darn obscure intermittent issues :P

NightOwl40 wrote:Argh...that's a heck of a room :o In other bad surprise news, the new version of iTunes did away with app management. I have no idea if any of my games, including this one, will transfer data to a newer phone. From what I've read at the Apple site, all games/apps have to be redownloaded seperately when getting a new device. I'd hate to have to start this game (and many of my other ones that I've spent hours gaining progress in)from the very beginning. Granted, I start this game over quite frequently, but others are much more problematic as I can't afford to use iCloud as it seems to be all or nothing, and on a fixed income I can't afford more than the limited free space. Sorry to vent, but I really want a way to get the app supporting version of iTunes back that also works with iOS 10.3.3
Yes I had read about the iTunes updates removing app management. Prior to Rogue Touch V2.0.64, save files were not compatible between two devices due to address space randomization stuff Apple implemented for security. For the technical people, I was storing pointers to active routines in the save data. Now it's more of a collection of objects, so the location in memory no longer matters and save files could be used on another device.

My recommendations for anyone trying to upgrade to another phone and keep a big-run save file:

iCloud Backup is the first choice- if you're unable to pay for the higher tiers of cloud storage (I actually don't either, sticking with the free 5GB they give) then try to set up your iCloud backup so it only stores the few things you care about and cannot retrieve in another way. That means turn off photo backups to iCloud and big stuff like that (make sure you backup those photos to your PC or Dropbox or something first!), and just leave the most important apps turned on. Then ensure it runs a new backup to the cloud. That way when you restore on a new device you should still have all the save files for various games after they download from the app store.

Another option would be to look into a Mac application called iMazing. I use that to copy apps and their data between my Mac and devices now, and I believe it has full iOS 11 support already.



I had kept the code-pointer save files for so long specifically to prevent copying and sharing saves between devices, but now that the 64-bit update forced me to rewrite that stuff eventually I could open up "save-scumming" directly: Making it so iTunes has access to the Rogue Touch documents directory (things like book and comic readers generally have this, among other apps). From what I understand all apps that have this ability still work with iTunes 12.7, but this app-document access is found in a different location in iTunes now.
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by NightOwl40 »

Thanks for the tips, but sadly I use a PC, not a Mac. I'm looking into finding an earlier version. They do have them on the apple site for those of us with older computers. Uninstalling will be a pain in the ass, because of all the files that need to be removed before doing a new install. It still won't help with the new phone problem of not being able to clone the old apps onto a new one without downloading them all again. Also, not every area has reliable cell service in order to access iCloud. There's quite a few places in my rural area where I get no signal at all, which is a problem when playing anything that needs Internet access to even load, let alone run or save.

They screwed the pooch on this, as I'm sure there's many folks with more than one device that will have to download everything for each device rather than using a Mac/PC as a hub. They really should offer the App Store code as a separate App management tool, and have it capable of saving the save files on the various devices. Having a hub destination to manage files across multiple devices was one of the best things about the old iTunes(that worked with 9.3.5 and below). It looks like it'll be a very long time before I ever get a new phone, and I bet there's going to be some unhappy customers when they figure out that their fancy new phones are missing their favorite stuff after upgrading.
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by swhatley »

CommanderData wrote:Haha that is quite a room!

Funny side note is I considered making "themed" party rooms, where all monsters were intentionally the same type but decided not to implement that (for now). :geek:

Since this room full of Yetis was a party room, they should have all been generated at the start of the level and were residing there... and not generated by the wandering monster system as I was speculating before..
That’s why I posted the screenshot. You suspected the wandering monster generator. BTW, Athena made short work of the yetis without breaking a sweat.

One note: I have YET to successfully retreave the Amulet of Yendor. And, I’ve been playing Rogue since the mid-80s when it was on mainframes! I have gotten it a few times but never made it back up all the way.

My favorite (prettiest) version of Rogue was done by Epic Games for the Atari ST. But, there was a NASTY bug that caused the game to NOT like the Atari Mega 4 ST (with 4MB of RAM). About the 3rd floor, the game ITSELF would kill me. Would say, “Killed by design”. The death screen went further and called me, “Software pirate, scum of the Earth!” It WAS a legit copy of the game. I finally found a fix at atari.archive.umich.edu which disabled the copy protection. BTW, I have not ever bypassed the copy protection of any othee program or used pirated software.
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by CommanderData »

Swatley, thanks for the confirmation on this oddball party room. Not sure what is causing the unusual monster groupings yet, but once my business trip is done I'll be digging in further.

Rogue Touch was born out of my love for the old Atari ST version! I had a legit copy as well, but only ran it on a 520ST so the copy protection never attempted to clobber me. I recall playing that all night and going to bed at 6 or 7AM on more than one occasion! Anyway the fact you had 4MB of RAM was probably something the original developers didn't expect, I think the 520 and 1040 ST were the only options at release (512kb and 1Mb). Maybe CPU speed too, the Mega 4 must have had something faster than the 8Mhz 68000 chip. :ugeek:

Someday you'll beat it, and probably come right back for more. I know I did ;)



NightOwl40- if I come up with any other recommendations for you in the iOS / iTunes upgrade I'll let you know. In the meantime if you keep using your current device(s) and upgrade them to iOS 11 over the air, you should be safe to keep playing RT 2.0 without losing games in progress.



Final words- Everyone please be sure to read Nighthawk's great writeup on RT 2.0 and help discuss the future of Rogue Touch :mrgreen:
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by swhatley »

CommanderData wrote:Someday you'll beat it, and probably come right back for more. I know I did ;)
Back in college, I did eventually rescue Princess Daphne a few times in Dragon’s Lair on the old laser disc arcade game systen. So, there is hope!. Now have DL & DL 2 on my iPad.
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by swhatley »

Just played RT 1.x on my iOS 9 iPad mini. It seems RT 2.0 upped the minimum room width and length from 2 squares to 3 squares. Is this correct?
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Re: Rogue Touch Version 2.0!

Post by swhatley »

Got a spear of Shocking. It lights tiles 2 squares away in dark rooms. But, only adjacent squares in hallways. Why not 2 tiles in each direction in hallways? Just curois. Thanks!
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