Triangle Wizard

Hello there my fellow wizarding triangles,

We find ourselves in 2023. Almost 15 years since the original release of Triangle Wizard. The world certainly changed a lot since 2008. When I created Triangle Wizard I was still a youngling studying physics. My friends and I used to play it during our lunch breaks. See how far we could get into the dungeon before we perished. With every update it was fun to see them encounter me latest devious creation. Against the odds some even managed to win the game multiple times. I myself, after many tries, bested Triangle Wizard and joined the ranks of those few Roguelike authors who could beat their own game.

Eventually I graduated, obtained my PhD, and started my professional career. Time dwindled. I met someone, I married, moved around the country a bit. My love of board games started to take over. Now we are one of those couples with multiple storage shelves full of board games and play board games most evenings. Suffice to say Triangle Wizard took a bit of a backseat during this time.

Honestly, after 15 years I would have thought most players would have moved on. And I suppose they did, but sometimes I come across a rare individual who still plays the game. This time it was SpookytheBee, who e-mailed me out of the blue that they played Triangle Wizard the other day on Twitch. It was great watching it. My wife enjoyed it too, and she has never played Triangle Wizard. It made me recapture some of those moments back in university watching other people have fun playing something I created.

It was very touching to see that something I created brings joy to people even 15 years later. I know probably not a lot of people played the game in the first place, and I am not sure how many people will even read this message (based on e-mail addresses from a decade ago), but for those that do, know that I really appreciated (and still appreciate) the time you took to play my game.

Ow, and I also managed to get the source code running again to fix some issues. I had to reread most of it to reacquint myself with how it all works. This level of attentioned caused me to find several bizarre bugs which amazes me that no one ever ran into before. Like, did you know that your stamina would drain twice as fast if you sprinted diagonally? You basically paid stamina per button you were holding. Absurd!

From watching SpookytheBee I also realized that the game does a pretty horrible job of explaining itself to newcomers and people who haven't played in a while. So I tried to alleviate that a bit with this update!

I hope you are all well, and wish you the best of luck in whatever it is that you are doing!

- Wouter

Patch R 18.01 notes:

-Added message in new game screen that R can be used to generate a new character.

-Added new player advice to new game screen.

-Restructured information under F1 menu.

-Added floating tutorial messages to help out new players during their first few levels. Can be disabled in the options menu.

-Spell list menu no longer has help text on top of spell text and the spell list is more condensed.

-Made it more clear to which item the glowing effect of powerful and cursed items in the shop screen belows to.

-Anarchy and Charm no longer affect quest givers.

-Resurrected or animated creatures lose their quest giver and boss statuses.

-A small message float now reminds the player they are exhausted when they try to cast spells or melee when exhausted.

-Daelan the Tinkerer will no longer incorrectly follow and join your party.

-Made the code that randomly places quest creatures in dungeons more stable.

-Stamina now regenerates during inital level entry invulnerability, but you can no longer sprint during this interval.

-Removed mention of using the mouse for movement in the tutorial.

-Updated the message in the tutorial on how melee combat works.

-You no longer lose stamina if you try to sprint whilst being knocked-back.

-Sprinting no longer drains double the stamina if you move diagonally.

-There is now an on-screen warning when you get hit (you can switch this on/off in the options).

-Greatly expanded monster and player name generation possibilities.

-Using Dismissal on objects in the shop will now anger the shopkeeper and increase your hate.

-Added a tip of the moment to the main menu.

-A warning will now display in the GUI if you try to melee or cast spells when exhausted. Hopefully this will make this less obscure to new players.