''Falcon's Eye'' is a version of the roguelike video game '' NetHack'' which introduces isometric graphics and mouse control. ''Falcon's Eye'' has been praised for improving ''NetHack'''s visuals and audio to an almost commercial level and has been noted by ''

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...

'' as among the best free games available. After development stalled in 2001, the game was

continued ''...Continued'' is the second album released by Tony Joe White. It was released on Monument Records and contained the single Roosevelt and Ira Lee It was recorded at Monument Studios, Nashville and Lyn-Lou Studios, Memphis in 1969. It was p ...

as ''Vulture's Eye'' and later ''Vulture for Nethack''.

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 Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of ''character cells'', each o ...

terminal representation to a 3D isometric perspective graphical representation. The objects and enemies in the game are no longer represented by minimalistic

ASCII character ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

s, but now have actual graphical representations. Whilst adding some features, such as a

path finding Pathfinding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the sh ...

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''. ''Falcon's Eye'' provides a context menu when a creature or item is right-clicked. Users can customize the interface by configuring the keyboard commands or by adding sound effects.

History

Development

''Falcon's Eye'' was developed by Jaakko Peltonen, a researcher of

neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

s at Helsinki University of Technology, originally as a separate engine, and then grafted onto ''NetHack''. The artwork and sound effects are largely his, with some submissions from users. ''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. ''Falcon's Eye'' is released under the NetHack General Public License. ''Falcon's Eye'' was mostly programmed in C, with some C++ functions. Both SDL and

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

are used for the graphics and sound in order to make the base code as system-independent as possible.

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 Portage or portaging (Canada: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a ...

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. He also envisions an application for ''NetHack'' that allows a user to switch between different user interfaces, similar to software skins.

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'', which have significant improvements on the original. The development happened on bitbucket, a switch from the previous repository SourceForge. The game was ported to several platforms, for instance the OpenPandora handheld. Later this development branch was just called ''Vulture'' and is under continued development (as of February 2017). While still being free and open source software the game is

commercialized Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchan ...

via the author's website and Desura for $2.99. In October 2013 the game was put into the

Steam Greenlight Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third ...

process and successfully released on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

in February 2015.

Reception

''Falcon's Eye'' has been praised for improving ''NetHack'''s visuals and audio to an almost commercial level. In 2003 ''NetHack: Falcon's Eye'' received The Linux Game Tome's ''Best Free Role-Playing Game'' award. A 2008 review of Vulture's Eye on gamesetwatch.com called the graphics "well done".

noted the game as among some of the best free games available in 2010.More Free Games for Linux
-

by Mike Diehl (Jan 19, 2010) Between 2001 and March 2018 ''Falcon's Eye'' was downloaded nearly 580,000 times from SourceForge while by March 2018 Steamspy reported over 22,000 owners of ''Vulture for Nethack'' purchased via Steam.Vulture for Nethack
on steamspy.com (March 2018)

References

External links

{{commons category, Falcon's eye
Official Falcon's Eye Homepage
at sourceforge.net
Homepage of Jaakko Peltonen
author of Eagle's Eye
Official homepage of Vulture's Eye
the later continuation on darkarts.co.za Open-source video games Roguelike video games Linux games Windows games Video games with isometric graphics Commercial video games with freely available source code fi:NetHack - Falcon's Eye