Ancient Dungeon VR
Hotfix ea0.1.4.2
- hopefully fixed a sync issue that caused some player settings not to be transmitted correctly
Hotfix ea0.1.4.1
- fixed an issue where the host freezes randomly and breaks the game
- fixed beast bile companion not getting removed when going into the next run in multiplayer
- fixed an issue with public lobbies not being selectable
- fixed some issues with climbing in multiplayer
- updated multiplayer solution
- stability improvements for enemy networked state which should result in less issues of bosses not dieing for one player etc.
Multiplayer update out now!
Changelog
- The game has been reworked from the ground up to be playable in multiplayer with up to 4 people.
- Added lots of new rooms for increased variety
- Reworked the locked key and blood key rooms to have more varied loot and more interesting layouts
- Reworked the game over screen to now also show which milestones have been unlocked and which new items have been found
- New visual effects for fire and poison effects on enemies
- Lots of bugfixes and small quality of life improvements (too long to list here)
- Improved the save system to handle corrupted saves correctly and not lose progress anymore
Devlog #15 - Multiplayer is out very soon!
Final stages of multiplayer development
Apart from a few small bugs and issues, the porting to multiplayer is almost finished. Normally we would have already released the multiplayer update for everyone, however there was one major issue that we were not able to fix in all these months: Desyncs. Basically if you play with 3 or 4 players in a lobby, it can happen that the whole game just stops working and all people get disconnected and glitch out into the void. Sometimes you could still move, but all other players would just do repeating laggy movements and the run would be over. We really tried to fix this issue with our current multiplayer framework version, however we were not able to do so. This is why we are currently in the progress of upgrading from Photon Fusion 1.1.9 to Photon Fusion 2, which currently breaks some parts of the game. The last 2 weeks have been spent with fixing most of the issues regarding the version upgrade. We are almost done with it, however there are still tons of new issues popping up that we need to fix in the coming days. We hope to have a new beta version with Fusion 2 out very soon, which then should hopefully also fix the desync issue. Once that is fixed, we can release the multiplayer update out of beta and continue working on new content (finally).
New Content
We have already started prototyping a few things such as new weapons, some points of interest, and more. We hope to have more info on what you can expect in our next devlog, once multiplayer is out fully.
For people that have never played the multiplayer beta, and are coming from ea1.3.6, even if you only play in singleplayer there is also some new content and quality of life fixes to look forward to, that has been added during our multiplayer porting process:
- 60+ new rooms
- locked key rooms and blood key rooms have been completely reworked to include a wider variety of different loot and room shapes
- the slot machine has been reworked and beautified
- the slime boss now gets invincible if too many slime minions are spawned
- smoother animations when putting things into your inventory slots
- lots of bugfixes related to dungeon generation
- tons of tiny things that we probably forgot to mention here (but mostly quality of life fixes)
Devlog #14 - Our plans for 2024
Multiplayer full release
We want to achieve feature parity between ea0.1.3.6 and the multiplayer beta very soon, so that we can finally merge the two game versions to continue working on new content. This will hopefully happen sometime in February. Until then, we will continue to fix bugs and add the missing features in regular updates.
Once multiplayer is out of beta we will start the porting process for PSVR2. Players on PSVR2 can expect multiplayer to come out roughly 1-2 months later than the other platforms (because of QA, new requirements etc). We will also simultaneously start working on new content updates.
Towards more rooms and new content
While most of the content from ea0.1.3.6 and the multiplayer version is the same, there are still some small additions, balancing changes, and bug fixes. One big new feature however, is the introduction of a lot more rooms for more variety during gameplay. More rooms are needed, especially when playing with multiple people. The majority of the rooms currently in the game can feel cramped and unbalanced for higher player counts, which is why we want to create a big chunk of new rooms specifically targeted towards multiplayer gameplay. These rooms can still spawn in singleplayer to increase variety for solo players, although less frequently to keep the balance.
In order to not get overwhelmed by all these new room requirements (which will only get bigger once points of interest come into the game) we reworked part of the room generation to now support subgroups. To keep it simple, subgroups are small parts of rooms that can take different shapes or forms in order to create possibly hundreds of variations of a single room within a few minutes. This is especially useful for corridors or more generic rooms, because we can quickly generate tons of different rooms out of a few singular parts. Below is a small video that shows one of these rooms and all the possible combinations that can generate because of it. Notice how the center corridor line always stays for each room. Later in the video it also shows each of the parts colorized so it is easier to see how each of the subgroups gets attached. This proof of concept room was built in 10 minutes and can have a total of 250 different combinations!
This addition to room generation will soon give the game hundreds of new rooms with a lot less time spent building them. Expect a lot of new rooms in the coming multiplayer beta updates once the subgroup feature is fully implemented.
Our roadmap post multiplayer
As we stated in earlier devlogs, we would like to increase the rate of updates once multiplayer is out to keep a steady flow of new content and keep players engaged. This means once multiplayer is out, we will release smaller content updates in frequent intervals. We haven't decided yet how each update will look like but each update will add content from one of a few categories:
Points of Interest
Points of Interest is a huge category which will expand the game by a huge amount and will make it less linear and more interesting to explore. Points of interests will range from singular special/interesting rooms for each dungeon to possibly entirely new floors that are not part of the main path. Since this category is basically endless, there will be many updates adding content in this category.
New Relics, Insight Upgrades, and Weapon Combos
This category is pretty self explanatory. We want to add more relics to increase their variety, more insight upgrades to spend insight on and more weapon combos to make for a more varied playstyle between runs.
Homebase Expansion
We want to increase the size of the home base and add new NPCs and boards with new things to do. For example, we want to add a bestiary, a stat screen that tracks certain things you do in the dungeon, a cosmetics shop for multiplayer games where you can buy certain cosmetics (with in game currency, not in app purchases), and more.
Modding Improvements
We want to keep improving the modding implementation and streamline the modding experience to make it easier for everyone to create and manage mods
Final floor
As many of you know, the current final boss in the game is not the real final boss that will be in the full release. While this feature will most likely not be finished this year it is one too look forward to.
Future devlogs will go into more detail on our roadmap!
Multiplayer Beta is out now!
The Ancient Dungeon multiplayer beta is out now!
To access the beta branch, right click on "Ancient Dungeon" in your Steam Library. Go to "Properties" and select "Betas" in the left tab. Select "multiplayer-beta". After you selected it, the game should update and you are ready to play. If you want to play on the old branch again, simply switch back.
If you can't see the branch, try rebooting steam.
Here are a few infos to get started. PLEASE read through them to get the best experience possible.
Current state of the beta
Almost all parts of the game have been reworked to work in multiplayer, which means the singleplayer experience might also have changed. This means we need feedback for both Singleplayer and Multiplayer. If you don't have anyone to play with at the moment, but want to provide feedback, playing a singleplayer run is also viable.
At the moment, there are only room codes for people to connect to each other. We have created a channel called #looking-for-group in our discord if you need to find people to play with. We plan on adding a way to play with random people directly in the game in the future.
Not all features of the base game are currently implemented (list at the end of this post). The features that ARE implemented might be buggy and the game can start lagging at certain times. Please let us know when this happens. Usually playing the first run of a session does not have any big issues, but the amount of issues in subsequent runs can be higher and the game can be more unstable. If the game becomes too broken, it's best to just relaunch the game and join a new multiplayer session again.
Some bosses and enemies (especially in the later dungeons) can be a bit tricky and are not yet fully optimized for multiplayer. The same goes for room layouts and dungeon design. We did not have enough time to add new rooms for most dungeons yet (overgrown gatehouse has a few new ones), we are working on this.
Giving Feedback
We are looking for specific feedback on these early versions of the game. This includes:
- How difficult compared to singleplayer is the multiplayer mode? We want to balance it in a way that 1-4 players all feel the same difficulty wise.
- Which parts of the game need to be adjusted for multiplayer? Do we need more big rooms in multiplayer? More relics per player? General balancing issues? Are boss fights fun with multiple people?
- Does singleplayer still feel the same like in the pre multiplayer version or did we break/change something?
- If you do encounter a bug or issue, please let us know in our discord or the new steam discussions multiplayer forum . You can post bugs, suggestions and general feedback.
- Is the UI straightforward to use or are some things about the connection process unclear?
What is missing from the full experience?
Here is a list of features that are still missing which will be added back in the coming weeks:
- Ghost fights (a singleplayer only activity, but they don't work yet)
- Blood locks and locked rooms other than challenge chests
- Shopkeeper Boss Fight
- Beast Blood Augments
- Abberrant Enemies
- Hard Mode
- Roughly 25 relics
- Some cosmetic effects
- Character customization does not have a lot of styles to choose from currently
- Host migration (if the host player leaves, the game just ends currently)
- Saving a run in multiplayer
Multiplayer Open Beta launching on Nov 24th
This gives us enough time to prepare everything so the launch goes smoothly. More information regarding the beta will come out prior to release.
In order to have a smooth release, we plan on giving a select amount of people access to the beta a week prior to release to test out general stability. If you are interested in participating, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T73LXmjbUbxrVqj9TmWhXzghEgn09WE-qM0S35Vc-FM/
Devlog #13 - Multiplayer Open Beta soon!
Current estimates on multiplayer
Giving estimates on any update for Ancient Dungeon has always been very difficult, even more so with multiplayer. There is still a good amount of content unfinished and not ported over, but the core gameplay loop (beating a run) is now working as expected. Collecting journal pages, buying insight upgrades and hunting achievements are already working as well. In theory, you can play through the whole game (collecting all journal pages, unlocking all milestones, collecting all items) with your friends without having to play in singleplayer at all. The only content that will remain exclusively singleplayer is the sealed soul delves and ghost fights, since these challenges are built more around a single adventurer overcoming a difficult task.
We are currently focusing on balancing the game for multiple players, fixing minor issues that arise during gameplay, and implementing the remaining missing content.
Here's a list of things that are still missing until we have a "full" multiplayer experience that we can release to the public:
- Crossbow weapon combo
- Hard mode
- Roughly 30 relics haven't been ported over yet
- Trap rooms
- Save run feature
- Handling disconnects / host migration
- Different character customization options
- Abberrant enemies
- The singleplayer mode needs to work again (right now the multiplayer version does not work in singleplayer)
- Some special enemies, like possessed armor
- Sacrifice rooms
- Adjust boss fights to work with multiple players without making them too easy or difficult
- Public lobbies or matchmaking options
While we don't know how long it will take us to finish and polish everything to make multiplayer "release 1.0-ready", the public beta does not need to be as polished and can still be released with missing content and some bugs. Our current plan is to launch the multiplayer public beta in late October/early November. This hopefully gives us enough time to add some of the missing features and polish the general experience a bit more so that all players can get a good first impression of how multiplayer will play in the final version.
During the multiplayer open beta, we will open new feedback forums on discord and steam discussions to collect feedback and to improve the experience until it is deemed good enough to release.
Thank you everyone for the patience! I know it has been a long time without updates. Porting the game over to multiplayer was the biggest undertaking we ever did, and we think it was worth it. Even if you are not into multiplayer, the improvements we did for the game under the hood will allow us to build new content a lot faster in the future.
Future Updates
Once multiplayer is out, we'll start with regular content updates again. For more info on that you can also check our previous devlog.
Devlog #12 - Current progress of our roadmap
At the moment, multiplayer support is our top priority and receives the most attention. We are making excellent progress and anticipate having a closed beta test with select testers by the end of May (this date may change). Depending on the results of this internal test, we plan to gradually expand the multiplayer testing user base until we can launch a public beta for everyone to enjoy.
Our emphasis on multiplayer is due to several factors. First, according to our Discord poll, the majority of users want to see multiplayer implemented first. Additionally, the multiplayer feature necessitates a substantial overhaul of the codebase, meaning that any updates released between ea0.1.3.5 and the multiplayer update would need to be reworked into the new codebase, creating new development challenges and consuming more time.
As a result, it is likely that the next update will be the multiplayer update, with no other updates inbetween. This approach will enable us to add new content more efficiently once the codebase has been adapted for multiplayer support. Progress on the Points of Interest update will still continue, with the creation of new assets, rooms, and more. This update should follow relatively quickly after the completion of the multiplayer feature.
Transitioning to Regular Content Updates after Multiplayer
We also aim to release content updates more frequently. Although this was our original intention upon the game's launch, we had to prioritize significant overhauls to support new requirements (porting to OpenXR for broader headset compatibility, removing deprecated frameworks, adding multiplayer, and achieving Oculus store certification) and platform ports (Pico, Viveport, PSVR2). Consequently, our efforts have been focused on these major updates, leaving little time for new content.
Once the multiplayer update is released (hopefully, our final major "rework update"), we plan to launch smaller content updates regularly and solicit community feedback more frequently. Due to the ongoing reworks, we currently have limited time to go through suggestions in the suggestion forum on discord or fix smaller issues that people have reported, as we cannot add most of them until the rework is complete. By shifting to smaller, more frequent updates, we can change our focus every couple of weeks.
Here's a potential schedule for these regular updates:
Week 1: Fix bugs, add a new achievement, and introduce two new items; release update on Saturday.
Week 2: Enhance modding capabilities and improve the room modder; release update on Saturday.
Weeks 3 and 4: Introduce two new Points of Interest and a new boss; release update on Saturday.
If this approach proves successful, we could release one to three updates per month, keeping players engaged with fresh content.
Support for the pre OpenXR version.
Find out how to change versions here: https://ancient-dungeon-vr.fandom.com/wiki/Switching_to_an_old_version