Falcon's Eye

Last updated
Falcon's Eye
Original author(s) Jaakko Peltonen
Developer(s) Clive Crous / community
Initial releaseFall 1999 to spring 2000 [1]
Stable release
1.9.3 / July 3, 2001;22 years ago (2001-07-03)
Preview release
2012-10-27 [2] / October 27, 2012;11 years ago (2012-10-27)
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Single-player, multiplayer, roguelike
License NetHack General Public License
Website falconseye.sourceforge.net
Character selection screen Nethack falcons eye class selection.png
Character selection screen

Falcon's Eye is a version of the roguelike video game NetHack which introduces isometric graphics and mouse control. [3] Falcon's Eye has been praised for improving NetHack's visuals and audio to an almost commercial level [3] and has been noted by Linux Journal as among the best free games available. [4] After development stalled in 2001, the game was continued as Vulture's Eye and later Vulture for Nethack.

Contents

Gameplay

The main change of Falcon's Eye over earlier Nethack variants is a massive improved graphical representation: it switched from a text-based 80x25 terminal representation to a 3D isometric perspective graphical representation. [3] The objects and enemies in the game are no longer represented by minimalistic ASCII characters, but now have actual graphical representations.

Whilst adding some features, such as a path finding tool, Falcon's Eye doesn't alter the NetHack gameplay. Peltonen says that this was to ensure that future versions remain compatible with future releases of NetHack. [3] Falcon's Eye provides a context menu when a creature or item is right-clicked. [3] Users can customize the interface by configuring the keyboard commands or by adding sound effects. [3]

History

Development

Falcon's Eye was developed by Jaakko Peltonen, a researcher of neural networks at Helsinki University of Technology, originally as a separate engine, and then grafted onto NetHack. [3] The artwork and sound effects are largely his, with some submissions from users. [3] NetHack's code assumes little about the user interface, telling which dungeon maps and messages to display, but leaves the implementation details to the interface. Peltonen explains that this versatility helped him to create Falcon's Eye, as he did not have to work around a fixed character-based interface. [3]

Falcon's Eye is released under the NetHack General Public License. [5]

Falcon's Eye was mostly programmed in C, with some C++ functions. Both SDL and DirectX are used for the graphics and sound in order to make the base code as system-independent as possible. [3]

Development stall

Since the release of version 1.9.3 in 2001, development of Falcon's Eye has not progressed, with the game based on a now out-of-date version of NetHack. In the interim, at least one unofficial update has appeared in the portage package management system.

Peltonen had planned to add more customization options, allowing users to add their own graphics. As some users reported difficulty in compiling and installing Falcon's Eye, he also wished to simplify this procedure. [3] He also envisions an application for NetHack that allows a user to switch between different user interfaces, similar to software skins. [3]

Continuation: Vulture's Eye

The level of inactivity between 2001 and 2005 prompted Clive Crous to fork Falcon's Eye to create Vulture's Eye and Vulture's Claw, [6] which have significant improvements on the original. The development happened on bitbucket, [7] a switch from the previous repository SourceForge. The game was ported to several platforms, for instance the OpenPandora handheld. [8]

Later this development branch was just called Vulture and is under continued development (as of February 2017). [9] [10] While still being free and open source software the game is commercialized via the author's website and Desura for $2.99. In October 2013 the game was put into the Steam Greenlight process [11] and successfully released on Steam in February 2015. [12]

Reception

Falcon's Eye has been praised for improving NetHack's visuals and audio to an almost commercial level. [3] In 2003 NetHack: Falcon's Eye received The Linux Game Tome's Best Free Role-Playing Game award. [13] A 2008 review of Vulture's Eye on gamesetwatch.com called the graphics "well done". [14] Linux Journal noted the game as among some of the best free games available in 2010. [4]

Between 2001 and March 2018 Falcon's Eye was downloaded nearly 580,000 times from SourceForge [15] while by March 2018 Steamspy reported over 22,000 owners of Vulture for Nethack purchased via Steam. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freeciv</span> Open-source turn-based strategy game

Freeciv is a single- and multiplayer turn-based strategy game for workstations and personal computers inspired by the proprietary Sid Meier's Civilization series. It is available for most desktop computer operating systems and available in an online browser version. Released under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, Freeciv is free and open-source software. The game's default settings are closest to Civilization II, in both gameplay and graphics, including the units and the isometric grid. However, with a lot of multiplayer games being played in longturn communities, rulesets and additional variants have evolved away from the original ruleset. Freeciv is playable online at Longturn.net, fciv.net, freecivweb.org and some temporary private servers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Links (web browser)</span> Web browser

Links is a free software text and graphical web browser with a pull-down menu system. It renders complex pages, has partial HTML 4.0 support, supports color and monochrome terminals, and allows horizontal scrolling.

<i>NetHack</i> Classical roguelike ASCII graphics computer game released in 1987

NetHack is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game Hack, itself inspired by the 1980 game Rogue. The player takes the role of one of several pre-defined character classes to descend through multiple dungeon floors, fighting monsters and collecting treasure, to recover the "Amulet of Yendor" at the lowest floor and then escape.

gnuplot Command-line and GUI plotting program

gnuplot is a command-line and GUI program that can generate two- and three-dimensional plots of functions, data, and data fits. The program runs on all major computers and operating systems . Originally released in 1986, its listed authors are Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley, Russell Lang, Dave Kotz, John Campbell, Gershon Elber, Alexander Woo "and many others." Despite its name, this software is not part of the GNU Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slash'EM</span>

Slash'EM is a variant of the roguelike game NetHack that offers extra features, monsters, and items. Several of its novel features, such as the Monk class, "conducts", and the Sokoban levels, have been reincorporated into NetHack.

Irrlicht is an open-source game engine written in C++. It is cross-platform, officially running on Windows, macOS, Linux and Windows CE and due to its open nature ports to other systems are available, including FreeBSD, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, Symbian, iPhone, AmigaOS 4, Sailfish OS via a QT/Qml wrapper, and Google Native Client.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crossfire (1992 video game)</span>

Crossfire is a free and open source software cross-platform multiplayer online role-playing video game. Crossfire features a tile based graphic system with a pseudo-isometric perspective. All content is licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. The client and server will run in Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, and an array of other platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FLTK</span>

Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK) is a cross-platform widget library for graphical user interfaces (GUIs), developed by Bill Spitzak and others. Made to accommodate 3D graphics programming, it has an interface to OpenGL, but it is also suitable for general GUI programming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adventure Game Studio</span>

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language based on the C programming language to process game logic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lazarus (software)</span> Free cross-platform integrated development environment for Free Pascal

Lazarus is a free, cross-platform, integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid application development (RAD) using the Free Pascal compiler. Its goal is to provide an easy-to-use development environment for programmers developing with the Object Pascal language, which is as close as possible to Delphi.

Wintermute Engine (WME) is a set of software tools and a runtime interpreter primarily designed for creating and running graphical adventure games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ClamTk</span> Computer antivirus software for Linux

ClamTk is a free software graphical interface for the ClamAV command line antivirus software program, for Linux desktop users. It provides both on-demand and scheduled scanning. The project was started by Dave Mauroni in February 2004 and remains under development.

<i>Chromium B.S.U.</i>

Chromium B.S.U. is an arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter available on Windows, iPhone, PSP, Mac, AmigaOS 4, Linux and numerous other UNIX-like operating systems. It is a free software distributed under the Clarified Artistic License. The original version of Chromium B.S.U. was designed in 2000 by Mark B. Allan and released under the Artistic License. Since then it has received many contributions from the community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DocFetcher</span> Open-source desktop search application

DocFetcher is a free and open source desktop search application. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and is written in Java. The application has a graphical user interface, which is written using the Standard Widget Toolkits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simple and Fast Multimedia Library</span> Graphics and Multimedia Library written in C++

Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a simple application programming interface (API) to various multimedia components in computers. It is written in C++ with bindings available for Ada, C, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, .NET, Nim, OCaml, Python, Ruby, and Rust. Experimental mobile ports were made available for Android and iOS with the release of SFML 2.2.

<i>Tales of MajEyal</i> 2012 roguelike video game

Tales of Maj'Eyal is an open-source roguelike video game released for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 2012. Tales of Maj'Eyal is available as donation-supported freeware (donationware) from the developers; donations grant some exclusive online features as part of a freemium model. The game may also be purchased through the digital distribution outlets Steam or GOG. The game's TE4 game engine source code is under a GNU GPLv3 license, while the game's assets are licensed for use "with the Tales of Maj'Eyal game only".

Impressive is a free and open-source software that displays presentation slides with 3D-effects. It is a lightweight and easy to use console presentation software with focus on PDF documents and images. It was started by Martin Fiedler in 2005.

mtPaint Free software graphics editor

mtPaint is a free and open-source raster graphics editor for creating icons, pixel art and for photo editing. It is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.

References

  1. ↑ nethack at webarchive.org (2001)
  2. ↑ master [ permanent dead link ] on bitbucket.com
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Howard Wen (2003-01-02). "Falcon's Eye: The Making-Over of Nethack". ONLamp.com. O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on 2008-11-06. Retrieved 2008-11-19.
  4. 1 2 More Free Games for Linux - Linux Journal by Mike Diehl (Jan 19, 2010)
  5. ↑ license on nethack.org
  6. ↑ The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs by Matt Barton & Bill Loguidiceon on Gamasutra "Falcon's Eye lives as a fork called Vulture's Eye."
  7. ↑ vulture Archived 2017-02-19 at the Wayback Machine on bitbucket.org/clivecrous
  8. ↑ Vulture's Eye 2.2.100.1 on repo.openpandora.org (August 24, 2012)
  9. ↑ Vulture
  10. ↑ Vulture Archived 2011-08-11 at the Wayback Machine on darkarts.co.za
  11. ↑ Vulture for NetHack on steamcommunity.com
  12. ↑ Vulture for NetHack on steam.com
  13. ↑ "Linux Game Tome Awards". happypenguin.org. 2003-01-28. Archived from the original on 2012-09-19. Retrieved 2008-04-01.
  14. ↑ COLUMN: @Play: Eye of the Vulture by John Harris on gamesetwatch.com (August 28, 2008)
  15. ↑ on sourceforge.net/projects/falconseye
  16. ↑ Vulture for Nethack on steamspy.com (March 2018)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.