The Tombs of Asciiroth

The Tombs of Asciiroth is a free, open source game you can play right now in your browser. It has arcade, puzzle and exploration-style game play in an extensive world of font-based abstraction.

If it looks a little old school, it's only because I've been trying to make this game since 1980. But other things kept getting in the way. Hope you have some fun with it.

Play Asciiroth one of two ways:

Online	The Tombs of Asciiroth (Web Version) Play Asciiroth using Firefox or Safari. IE8 works, but it's slow. There's no registration or server account needed. After you try it, install Google Gears so you can save your game.
Desktop	The Tombs of Asciiroth (Adobe AIR Version) Install Asciiroth using Adobe AIR. But see hopefully temporary warning below. Windows, Mac or Linux. This is the "works everywhere" way to play.	Install Adobe Air
	Player's Guide The guide talks tactics and introduces many of the things you'll find in the game.

News: This game is done, and has no bugs, and is a cross between Zelda and NetHack, so what are you waiting for, dig right in. No wait... actually there was this bug where right at the end of the friggin' TOA scenario, you couldn't activate the transporter and finish the scenario. So that sucked for the two people who have finished the game. Dude! That's fixed now.

The game doesn't work in Adobe AIR 1.5. Some sort of cryptic JavaScript error. It's their new, fast, doesn't-work-entirely-the-same interpreter, Squirrelfish. I'm too busy to fix bugs introduced by the platform like this. Also I can't reproduce it in WebKit nightlies. Maybe if I wait long enough, it will just go away. Play it in a web browser.

The only thing I plan to do for this game is either add music or bridges, or both, because some map authors have struggled to make decent-looking bridges.

Thanks to everyone who has written in with comments, bug reports, and suggestions! It makes it all worthwhile to hear someone finished the game.

Asciiroth has a map editor that can be used to create maps. Read the Guide to Creating Asciiroth Maps for details, and the API documentation for a description of all the available pieces and how they work. I'm also happy to answer questions and/or fix the code if it's needed to create scenarios.

Desktop

Asciiroth Map Editor (Adobe AIR Version)

Only available as an AIR application, because it needs to load and save map files. You must use Adobe AIR 1.1, the 1.5 version doesn't work.

WARNING: It's impossible to work on either the code or the maps without encountering spoilers. You might want to play the game first.

Latest Builds

If a more recent build exists than the release build, it will be available here:

Game: Web Version, Adobe AIR Version

Editor: Adobe AIR Version

The Code

Source (svn co svn://svn.icculus.org/asciiroth/trunk/asciiroth)
Defects
Build Instructions
JavaDocs (API documentation, but also good for looking up pieces)
Cross-Browser Test Status

The game has been made with the Google Web Toolkit, Eclipse, and Ant. Currently you must use Adobe AIR 1.1 for that version of the game/editor, as the 1.5 version has a new WebKit JavaScript engine that doesn't work:

Adobe AIR 1.1 Runtime (Windows)
Adobe AIR 1.1 SDK (Windows)

If I can ever figure out why... I'll fix it.

The Ant script also bundles the game using Adobe AIR for distribution to end users. If you retrieve the code and can't get set up to work by looking at the build.properties file, please email me.

Patches welcome... you can also create scenarios which doesn't require any programming, and is probably more valuable to everyone's overall enjoyment of the game.

Release Notes

0.6.3

Fixed bug where you couldn't finish TOA scenario, a but that users would not find until being literally one step away from victory. Easily the meanest thing I've ever done as a programmer, if not the Hooloovo.

0.6.2

Scenario updates/fixes.

0.6.1

Updates to the gold castle scenario.

0.6

New scenario, usability enhancements to map editor, some bug fixes.

0.5.2

Fixed a bug that messed up the ending of the TOA scenario; worked on performance. The game now works quite well in IE8 although there are some further steps that can be taken.

0.5.1

Save game did not work correctly (SQL was wrong).

0.5

You can now save a game under a different name, so you can have more than one save point in a game. You can now load a scenario from the new game dialog (AIR only), so they don't have to be included directly in the game. Map making instructions are updated to describe how to create a functional stand-alone scenario, and the editor allows you to enter the scenario data, so that closes the loop on that. Bug fixes to maps and pieces, mostly minor to the game, although you can now pick stuff up that lands on low terrain like chests, crates and urns.

0.4.3

Addresses focus goofiness, and keyboard shortcuts not working to control the browser.

0.4.2

Fixes for a number of reported bugs. Keyboard mapping revised to work on international keyboard layouts. Font symbols revised for better compatability. Mouse-based navigation improved a bit.

0.4.1

Fixed a bug that hanged saving when there's something continually flying through the air.

0.4

This is a complete release. After this, I'll try and keep things backwards compatible.

The main TOA scenario and a tutorial are done (probably will be tweaked further).
New game pieces (pushers, sliders), new critters, now organized in groups in the map editor
Refinements to both the game and map editor UIs
Performance work (bit flags, compile-time class swapping, etc.).
Bug fixes, of course.

0.3

A large number of new pieces have been added, including many more agents and some pretty entertaining puzzle pieces like the reflector and the force field.
The "AI" (if you could call it that) has been improved. Agents navigate doors and corners now, and use breadcrumb pathfinding to track the player.
The map editor now includes the ability to play a map in preview mode, which is extremely helpful when developing maps. See the help doc from within the editor.
A lot of cleanup of the code, and expansion of lifecycle methods.

0.2

Initial release on icculus.org.

Planned

Localization, if anyone wants to translate it (easy to do with GWT)
Implement WHAT 5 storage provider, so you can save games as this becomes available in browsers (particularly Safari).
More pieces as really worthwhile ideas come up. (Should look over ZZT for relevant ideas.)

References

Some helpful sites for designing the visual appearance of pieces:

The Tombs of Asciiroth and the map editor are provided under the Apache 2.0 license.

(That means it's free to play, and available to change as you like, with attribution.)

The development tools are, with the exception of Adobe AIR, open source under various licenses. AIR isn't necessary to build the game and/or play it in a browser.