It’s been a long time since 1.6 came out but Javelin has been in active development ever since! This blog is usually reserved only for full releases but this time I have written to some length about recent developments and future plans, on the latest beta release, so I though I’d share it here as well!
The download and release notes are available on GitHub. Any feedback is welcome!
Hello veterans and rookies! Today Javelin 1.6 is being released! It’s a big one so let’s get to it!
For those new to the game you can find out all about it here!
You can download your copy of Javelin 1.6 right here! If you have any sort of problem running the game check the link above for further instructions.
This release brings some changes to the early and late game, while also creating a new well-defined end-goal for each game. Besides a lot of new monsters for low level characters to duel against there are also new starting locations that will help you get the party started: the Adventurers Guild lets you apply starting kits to your units while the Training Hall provides an early challenge that also promises great rewards in a low-danger environment.
You will now find 7 temples scattered throughout the world map: each of them is a persistent, multi-level dungeon and holds a Relic on their deepest levels – each a powerful item on its own and now essential to winning the game, as you need to collect every relic to do so! Hopefully this will make each game feel more like a story while also providing interesting strategic decisions – should you rush towards each temple to reap the benefits from its Relic as soon as possible or level up enough to be able to face them with ease later on? Will your priority be vanquishing the forgotten temples or conquer the entire world map first?
There are new special locations too! The Summoning Circle lets your characters learn powerful summoning spells to bring forth allies during battle and the Pillar of Skulls, a macabre but powerful ally will accept several sorts of sacrifices and grant you fair boons for your trouble!
This release brings the full set of terrains predicted in the d20 rules – and with that also a system of seasons and natural hazards which you’ll discover while exploring the game world. Sail uncharted waters and try to find your way through massive sandstorms! This new system also makes world movement more dynamic and even lets you shape the world with your town workers – Civilization style!
The interface has been improved as well: you can now put your units under the control of the computer, activate quick combat (combat results are calculated automatically), edit your preferences and key settings via in-game screens and take notes with the new journal feature! The save system is faster, more robust and creates backups of your progress every time the game is started. A few bugs have been fixed too so if you had trouble losing progress on earlier versions please give this one a try! The AI now constantly monitors its own performance and suggests fixes if your configuration is less than optimal for the game. If and when an error occurs a lot more information is shown so you can submit it as a bug report.
And these are just a few of the new features! Check out the other highlights here:
I’d like to thank MustAwd for contributing art assets using the new mod/skin system (more info here). There’s still a lot of work to be done so keep your eyes open for great new pixel art on the next release! Our friend 11132113 also helped a bunch with a serious amount of beta testing and quality bug reporting – without his help this release wouldn’t be anywhere as stable as it came out to be! A big thanks too to everyone else who gave feedback in the earlier releases – some of the changes on 1.6 were a direct result of the points made back then!
What about the future? There are probably going to be a few extra releases before lunging on towards the 2.0 cycle and it’s goals. Planned features are Martial Disciplines (as suggested by Greg), basic mouse support and other interface improvements, new locations (like the Arena and Dragon Spire) and, as always new spells, monsters and items along the way!
Let us know what you think of the changes so far and have fun! Feel free to post comments here, discuss the game on our subreddit or contact me directly through javelinrl@gmail.com. We’re always looking for new talent to help the game grow! So if you’d like to join the effort let us know and we’ll try to put your skills and time to good use!
Greetings weary traveler! Javelin is a free and open-source strategy RPG game written in Java, based on open-gaming rules – similarly to Dungeons and Dragons (versions 3.0 and 3.5) and its successor Pathfinder. It draws heavy inspiration from many other video games, from Jagged Alliance and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup to Pokémon and the Dragon Quest series.
Javelin is dedicated to all gamers and RPG players out there, we hope you enjoy it!
Click here to download the game
== HOW TO START PLAYING == 
You need to have Java (8 or newer) installed. Download the game from the link above and extract the zipped file.
If you are running Windows (or most modern systems), double-click javelin.jar to run the game. For older operating systems you can try launching javelin.bat instead (however this method may show you a security warning on modern systems). Alternatively, you can manually run the command java -jar javelin.jar from the command line.
For help on playing check out the in-game guides. To find out their keys press h on the world screen.
The default settings should be fine for most modern computers but you can press o during the game to configure the settings (such as the computer player’s thinking time). If the game is slow for you try reducing the value of ai.maxthreads – you can start up from 1 to see which value works best for your computer, or let the in-game system notice slowdowns and help you through the automated configuration tools.
== NOTES == 
Your feedback is much appreciated! We have a discussion forum at reddit or you can contact me directly at javelinrl@gmail.com. Check the FAQ for some common questions.
You can find the Java source-code at GitHub and the change-log here.
Radio Rivendell and RPGN radio are awesome online radios and can be used as soundtrack for the game!
Don’t forget to subscribe to this website’s RSS feed to keep up with news!
For more information on Javelin’s development and testing check out our wiki.
== LICENSE == 
Copyright (C) 2015 Alex Henry
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
A copy of of the full license text is available under the ‘doc’ directory. Consult this page for licensing information on repackaged material. The d20 System Reference Document is licensed under the Open Game License. Both are included in the ‘doc’ directory.
== ACKNOWLEDGMENTS == 
A few projects were fundamental in making this effort possible:
The biggest thanks goes to Craig “Upper Krust” Cochrane for his work on the Challenging Challenge Ratings system – which he kindly permitted Javelin to use and redistribute (see the ‘doc’ directory). He is nothing short of a genius so check out his company Eternity Publishing and his d20 epic-level bestiary, the Immortal’s Handbook!
== OPEN GAMING == 
A good portion of the d20 system material was made available by Wizards of the Coast in a copyleft license known as the Open Game License, enabling other parties to use the world-famous rules on their own projects. Javelin relies on this and related OGL sources as a true-and-tested framework to offer old-school hack’n’slash similar to other classic titles.
Javelin isn’t technically a d20 product but a variant open-gaming system. This is a necessity in order to keep the AI fast, to offer a more video-game-friendly ruleset and to be able to introduce rules progressively and selectively as the game evolves. However, classic RPGs and open-gaming products have been a heavy inspiration from the very start, so people familiar with those will fit right in! The game also tries to be as intuitive as possible so that newcomers don’t need to learn any previously existing rules in order to enjoy Javelin.
== ROGUELIKE == 
Roguelikes are a genre of RPG video games that feature higher difficulty, permanent death, turn-based combat, high randomization, procedural level generation and long gameplay that can extend for dozens of hours for a single game – among many other common features.
The purists out there would call Javelin a roguelike-like. Javelin shares features with most traditional roguelikes such as the original Rogue and also newer ones like Desktop Dungeons. In the end you could say it lands somewhere between roguelikes and classic RPG titles like Ultima or Wizardry.
== SQUAD-BASED TACTICS == 
The main reason towards the development of Javelin is that there were no decent roguelikes that enabled a team-based approach. Of course allies have often been present in roguelikes, sometimes through the use of summoning magic but these are often clumsy to play with since almost every game is designed around the idea of a lone hero. In Javelin it is the other way around: you are allowed to play one-man squads but that is not really the focus.
We hope that by designing the game this way it offers a more intense roguelike experience since the number of possible tactical scenarios rises exponentially with the concept of having a party instead of a single character throughout the entire game.
The player is also capable of a good deal of freedom when leveling up party members, much like in Final Fantasy Tactics. This promotes creating a team that can work well together from a strategic point of view.
As mentioned before, Javelin’s combat is based on action points (AP) instead of traditional turns. This has been used in games like Fallout 1 and 2 and UFO: Alien Invasion and tends to make the game more dynamic.
== STRATEGY == 
Besides the traditional strategy elements present in most RPGs, like leveling up characters and inventory management Javelin also offers since version 1.3 many elements of turn-based strategy games, such as city building, army creation and enemy factions (that are featured in games like Master of Magic and the Civilization series) and overworld locations that can be explored, conquered and used for their strategic value (like those featured in the Heroes of Might and Magic series).
These further distance the game from traditional roguelikes, which focus mostly on dungeon crawling and tactical thinking, leaving strategy mostly at the background by way of character building (choosing the right class, abilities and equipment for a specific type of gameplay). Measures have been taken though to permit non-strategic play as much as possible, allowing players who aren’t interested in this to enjoy the game as well – ranging from having automatic city building turned on by default to allowing the game to be played by a single unit instead of squads or armies. Catering to both styles is easier said than done though so it will be a matter of fine-tuning based on player feedback as time goes by.
A few more reasons for the development of the strategic features were to promote exploration and discovery, which are centerpieces of roguelikes; create a more complex game world so as to raise the number of possible scenarios and dynamics every time a new game is started; and to include static checkpoints throughout the game (including the enemy factions that grow in power with time), in opposition to the scaled random encounters. Early Javelin releases featured only scaled encounters by way of the terrain (as explained in the “how to play” in-game guide) – allowing the player to choose the difficulty based on preference and current party power. Scaling however is often criticized by hardcore gamers as a manner of “dumbing down” games and taking players by the hand instead of giving them freedom of choice in a complex, organic world. Hopefully the way Javelin is designed now makes the most out of both of these approaches to RPG world building.
== ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE == 
Unlike almost every video game out there Javelin doesn’t rely on heuristics to determine computer behavior during battles but instead implements a minimax decision tree – which is a much more sophisticated sort of AI. This means that the computer player can make decisions on its own, based only on the current state of the game, without being taught anything besides a simple analysis of how well it is doing and what possible moves it can make at a given situation.
Unfortunately though this requires a lot more processing power than common “AIs”. The current AI is already a decent opponent but this is an area that needs constant optimization so improvements can be expected in the future.
== THE FUTURE == 
Javelin 1.0 is released as a finished, stand-alone game but newer versions are already planned. 2.0 will modernize the user interface to overcome its current limitations. The highlight of 3.0 will be multiplayer modes over the Internet. Besides these major goals you can also expect more content (monsters, abilities, spells, items…) to be added along the way.
If you like the game and want to be a part of the project let us know at javelinrl@gmail.com! We are always looking for pixel artists of any skill level – more information here!
Javelin 1.7 is getting very close to launching! I’ll talk for a while here about the city-building mini game, which has been almost completely rewritten in favor of what is (internally) a deck-building mini game. Some of the locations you can build will be familiar to returning players (for example: you can build minor versions of the Summoning Circle in your own towns) but most of them are completely new, including several types of guilds and less standard projects like building Sewers and Highways! There are around 30 district projects coming out with Javelin 1.7 and dozens more already planned for further releases! Several buildings can also be upgraded one or more times to make themselves even more useful during the game – and some other labors are not buildings at all but events you can choose to activate at the right moment, like producing a Settler to establish a whole new city somewhere else in the wilderness!
So how does this new design work? Basically, all functions that were performed inside a Town now have been delegated to external buildings: the Inn will let you heal your troops; Transport Hubs allow you to buy and rent vehicles (from a lowly stable to high-flying vessels); Dwellings allow you either permanently recruit creatures or hire mercenaries into your army and Shops and Academies let you craft items and train your units. Most of the buildings coming out with 1.7 fall under these categories in one form or another, while other non-standard projects are planned for future releases – however, many of the initial set found on this release have their own twists as well, which you can learn by playing!
I mentioned a “deck building” city management game but what does that even mean? First the basics: your town has a certain population, which you control by playing the game (but usually reaches 20 at the end of the first game year). The higher the population, the more labor it produces per day. Each project has a certain labor cost, ranging from 5 for building a simple Inn to 20 for the largest projects – and, as said before, many of the locations can be upgraded too, meaning they can be built first at low cost but further enhanced later on!
The difference between the innovative system in Javelin and those of classic games like Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic (or even Warcraft/Starcraft) is that you can’t choose any project at any point in time – rather, you are given a handful of choices (more, as your city grows in size) and you can unlock city traits by working on special projects. Each city trait added opens up more new projects and in the future will affect your city in several other ways as well, including random events and establishing forms of government in each city. The result of this system, true to Javelin’s roots in roguelkes, is that you can’t have a strategy defined from the get-go but, just like in real life, “have to deal with the cards you’re given” – making the game more dynamic and increasing its replayability.
Unlike in those games mentioned above, you cannot read a guide (or create one in your head) and know, even before you start, what path you’re going to take. You may want to have a certain type of building available for use but depending on how the cards are dealt, it may be impossible at first – or even possible, but hard to achieve. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have your own playing style and plans – but you’ll need to develop the strategy skills to react not only to the possibility your main plan won’t work or, even if it will, it won’t be the best choice every game – you can still go for it but the new system rewards you for exploring new possibilities, rather than sticking to what you know every single game.
As mentioned above, each city has traits that allows them to build a certain range of structures and projects in general. These are the ones coming out with Javelin 1.7:
As you can imagine, some trait combinations work very well together but that doesn’t mean you can’t try out your own combinations too and make them work! A Criminal and Religious district may sound bizarre at first – but only until you consider thieves and thugs have their own sinister gods to pray to…
Hopefully, this entire district system has a lot to add to the game in terms of emergent gameplay. Instead of static towns, districts are now living and breathing, changing as the game goes on. If you don’t want to handle your city management yourself and focus on adventuring instead, automatic Governors will be handling all of the work for you – not only for your own but enemy cities as well. Now, when your city is attacked, the invaders may choose to destroy specific buildings of yours (maybe that one guild you’ve spent months upgrading?) and force you to adapt to the new scenario. Likewise, you may find out, well into the game, that a distant city-nation is building a road towards your territory – how will this change your short, mid and long term plans? When you reach an enemy city, will you be satisfied to use the buildings it has produced for your own gain or will you attempt to conquer it for your own?
Each district now also secures a certain region of the world map around a town, giving you more freedom to explore the dangerous game world. Your hometown was already your base of operations since Javelin 1.0 but now it is also your harbor, your headquarters and your own to control and watch grow into a bustling capital! Much more than a place to rest, it is a whole new extra layer of gameplay, adding even more strategy and options to your game!
Even though the work on the new district is almost done, a lot of content is already planned for future releases. However, such a big change in the game also needs a lot of testing and feedback – I believe its design is solid – but is it actually fun to play with? What parts of it work and which ones do not? I hope to start putting everything to test soon with the first 1.7 release candidate build. If you’re interested in helping to try all of this out, make sure you’re following this blog (by hitting the Follow button or via RSS), subscribe to Javelin’s subreddit or send me a hello at javelinrl@gmail.com and I’ll let you know when it’s ready for testing!
One thing that has been difficult but manageable during development of the first batch of district rules – but is going to become harder as it goes on – is finding decent art assets for use in the game. If you’re an artist, take a look at some of the future district ideas and feel free to send in your own art assets if any of those catches your eye! I’ll also update the guidelines for artists in the wiki before the final Javelin 1.7 release, with a list of specific locations that need art assets before they can be included in the game. Any contribution are welcome!
The city management redesign is a big part of Javelin 1.7 but not all there is to it! Here’s a few things that are already in the latest development branch as well:
What’s still to go for 1.7 yet: more UI and AI improvements, a new unique location (the Deep Dungeon) and our first martial discipline! Along with your usual bugfixes and minor features here and there 🙂 Just a little further now before the testing can begin!
Over the past 3 days since last Friday I’ve been engaging with the community and promoting Javelin 1.6! This has been a pretty tame release cycle – even if that doesn’t mean the reception wasn’t good!
I’ll try to make a habit of doing these release reports after each new version comes out so I can have historical data to compare future campaigns to, to share information with those that are interested in this sort of data and to be able to compare notes with other open-source game developers and discuss “marketing strategy”. Even if you wouldn’t call it that for small games like most roguelikes, it still is an interesting thing to think about and discuss! Feel free to contribute your own experiences and strategies in the comments here, I’m sure I’d love to hear a few of them!
I usually try to release new versions on a Friday afternoon so the game can gain momentum during the weekend, when players are more likely to have time to find a post and play the game itself. This means these reports are going to be done usually for a 3-day period from Friday to Sunday. There is lingering increased activity for a couple of days after that (today, Monday has seen pretty good traffic so far) but the spike (what WordPress calls “booming traffic” ) is clearly well defined on the weekend while I’m engaging the community. The constant traffic received even way after a release cycle is done (from many websites but in particular from RogueBasin, which holds a recently-updated list for around a month on their homepage) would be an interesting study as well but out of scope for these reports.
I’ve also noticed in the last few releases that as soon as I make a blog post announcing a new version of the game there are around 30 to 50 downloads in a very short time span, even before I post the game anywhere else. I’m not sure how to take this in but I guess you could argue these are the people who are subscribed to this site here and get the new release fresh from the oven, so to speak 😀 I’m not sure this is a fair conclusion but I like the idea of having around 50 fans who want to try the new features out as soon as possible! Considering that’s roughly a tenth to a sixth of the the total downloads per release cycle I’d say that would be a pretty strong following, if my thinking here is indeed correct. Unfortunately GitHub download statistics don’t offer any more information to delve deeper into the issue.
A quick note about reddit, which is the biggest traffic source during the release cycle and still relevant for a long time after each release: the number of votes in each post, especially the most popular ones is obfuscated to help combat users with multiple accounts and botnets and such that would try to manipulate the system dishonestly. You can even see that a few of the numbers in posts and subreddits change constantly even when you wouldn’t expect any activity to be going on. All of this of course is publicized by them, not a kooky theory of mine. Taking this into account, data from reddit, as any other analytical/statistical data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt – they’re more useful as a means to identify the magnitude of the audience and to compare past and future trends than as an exact measure.
Okay so far I’ve written a bunch so I can refer further reports back here to all this general information. Here’s the specific stats for 1.6:
So as I said in the opening paragraph this has been a pretty tame release. There have been a few ongoing discussions on external forums throughout the weekend but no comments in this website and no shares WordPress can account for. We’ve got close to 900 unique visitors and 300 downloads, which is pretty close to previous releases. reddit engagement was very low with close to 50 upvotes across the board, which is pretty sad compared to the results for the last major release cycle (which I’ve just now updated with more data). It remains to be seen with future campaigns if reddit changed their sorting algorithms in some way that hurts this type of marketing or if it was just a case of bad luck. Despite that the discussions that were started, which are always more interesting than vote numbers from a development perspective, are interesting, in special one concerning the Arena, a starting location/mini-game/alternate game mode to be introduced in Javelin 1.7. The total number of subscribers on r/javelinrl is currently 22.
The lower community engagement (even the release post at our very own subreddit hasn’t received a single upvote) can be taken in several ways: gamers could have been interested in other things and news this weekend, could be bad luck, a general disinterest about Javelin as more potential players already know the game at this point or could even be the result of a more stable release – since part of the feedback with the last major release was bug reports which prompted a couple of minor follow-up releases. I guess it’ll be a matter of seeing how the next campaigns go – but the similar number of downloads and the nice feedback that came out here and there goes to show the game is still doing well enough by my standards!
If you’ve waited this far to share your opinion on Javelin 1.6 let us know what you think in a comment! Thanks to all who downloaded the game and also to the people who shared their negative and positive opinions! I’ll be working on a few of your ideas soon – from new locations and game commands to screen changes and mouse support that will hopefully make the game more friendly and dynamic in the future! See you all on the next release!
Greetings berserkers and strategists alike,
Today Javelin 1.5 is being released, it’s a bug-fix release with some minor patches for reported bugs, one or two of which could spoil your adventure mid-game. These seem to be the last (mildly) serious issues so unless something else comes up 1.6 should be a feature release once again – a few new spells and locations are already planned! I’d like to thank everyone who has reported bugs and general feedback recently, in special Greg for his outstanding contributions and follow-ups and Matthew who is just now joining the project in a best-effort QA capacity!
Download 1.5 here https://github.com/tukkek/javelin/releases/download/1.5/javelin.zip
More information on the game https://javelinrl.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/hello-world/
Since the release of 1.3 a week ago Javelin has had over 400 downloads and this site received close to 3000 unique visitors, over 30 comments, almost 20 shares and approximately 200 upvotes on reddit. Thank you all for taking an interest in the game and for all the positive feedback! I’m glad you like the new direction taken with these last releases!
This is a minor release fixing a couple of non-critical but very annoying bugs in the game. Thanks a lot to Greg who has been helping with excellent bug reports!
Download the fixed version here
In 24 hours since releasing 1.3 we’ve had approximately a 1000 visitors to the announcement post, over 150 downloads and 10 Facebook shares! It’s somewhat less interest than has been shown in the earlier releases but these numbers are sure to continue rising as the weekend progresses 🙂
If any other worthwhile bugs are noticed I will create other bug-fix releases so people can enjoy the game as best as possible. Don’t forget to subscribe to our news feed or to keep an eye on our subreddit to stay tuned about further releases!
Hello RPG fans, today Javelin 1.3 is released!
You can download your copy here and if you’re new to the game you can find more information here.
This release adds a whole new strategic layer to the game. Many new features have been added to that effect, from city building to hiring mercenaries and much more! Hopefully those who are only interested in pure hack-and-slash should find that strategic planning isn’t required to enjoy the game but that it is there for those who want to go one step further. You can read more about this development on the Strategy section.
Release highlights:
* 6 independent, opposing factions to play against at every game!
* City-building, automatic or manual!
* Equippable artifacts!
* 6 new location types to explore on the world map!
* 2 new unique locations: mercenary guild and artificer!
* Skill system, featuring 13 different skills!
* New units can now be acquired by spending XP
* The world map now has to be explored
* Dungeon redesign, featuring traps
* 137 monsters
* 28 items, 33 artifacts
* 53 upgrades, 25 spells, 13 skills
Some effort has been put into making the early game less repetitive and slow but this is probably something that can still be improved upon. You can share your early-game experience and ideas for improvement in a comment here or at our reddit community – it will be highly appreciated!
A few uncommon bugs were reported on earlier versions that could cause the game to be very unfair during battles and sometimes even crash and lose your saved progress. I’m very sorry about that but at least all reported bugs were fixed so far. Thanks to everyone who contacted me about bugs and hopefully this will be a much more stable release.
Since I’ve been asked about the short-term plans for Javelin’s future: the idea now is to add more content (mostly spells and items) in future 1.x releases until I can find time (or help) to modernize the entire user interface for 2.0.
Thanks to all who took an interest in the project so far – this release tries to cover some of the feedback that was put out by all of you! Keep your thoughts coming and happy gaming 🙂
This FAQ has been replaced with an in-game guide. You can find it on Javelin’s doc folder.
Javelin 1.2 is a minor release in response to community feedback after releasing version 1.1. See the changelog for more details.
You can download version 1.2 here. More info on the game can be found here.
In the weekend following it’s release, Javelin 1.1 has received close to 350 downloads, which is almost the total of downloads the game had before that (around 450)! Thanks to all who took an interest in the project, your feedback is always much appreciated.
Javelin 