As seen here we now have houses, knights and chests put out all over the surface world. We are going to put in more human and building variation in future versions, but first we must make sure that this is working as it should :)
Every time the player takes over a portal in the dungeon, he will also get a passage up to the surface world. When the player uses the rally flag on the surface world creatures will be told to go up through the portal. Once on the surface the creatures will destroy any building they get close enough to, if there are enemies nearby these will of course be prioritized over the buildings.
Inside some of the houses there will be chests, once the house where the chest is has been destroyed an imp will walk up through the portal to open the chest and pick up all the goodies.
The evil meter
To give the player some extra rewards when raiding the surface we introduced the evil meter.
When a building on the surface is destroyed the evil meter will fill up. The more filled the evil meter is the more the humans will hate you and attack you through the portals. A plus for the player is that the more filled the evil meter is the more experience will the player's creatures also gain through battle. So if the player has a strong enough army or have built enough traps it can be really beneficial to raid the humans.
Future plans for the surface
Remember, this is only the first prototype of the surface world, more content will come later on. There have been a lot of ideas presented about what the player will be able to do on the surface, there will probably be some limitations, such as not being able to build rooms and such on the surface. But ideas like only being able to harvest certain materials on the surface is something I really like :D Also, in the 0.9+ versions I will probably do something about the wood gathering, like reducing the wood in the dungeon and give the player the ability to chop down trees on the surface.
Website improvements
I don't know if you have noticed, but I did make some changes to the website a week ago as you can see here: http://dwelvers.com/
The "buy now" banner got a "stronger" message.
Inserted a news feed widget that displays the latest forum posts.
Changed the "Sign up for the news crow" message so that the user only need to give up his or her email address to get the latest news (also an un-subscribe option as been added to the mails that are sent out.)
A twitter news feed added with some screenshots.
My face added to http://dwelvers.com/pre-order/ so that they have someone to blame when things go wrong :P
What's left?
Not much, I have to do a proper play through and fix all the minor issues that may arrive. The tutorial needs to be updated. Once this is done the 0.9 version will be released.
The next Dwelvers release will be handled differently than the last release to avoid releasing it with game-breaking bugs to the majority. I will release it on the Dwelvers website only to those that have purchased it though the Dwelvers website, this is so that I can get some bug-testing done and find the most urgent bugs. Once the bugs have been found and solved I will release it on Steam (this should not take more than a day or two).
If you want to be a part of the pre-release bug-testing and have only bought the game on Steam, please contact me through http://dwelvers.com/contacts/ and we can probably solve it :)
News on the 0.9 progress
As you all may know the 0.9 version is on the way, this is a big update because it will feature the surface world and introduce raiding. It will probably take another week before the release though because I want everything to work as it should first.
The last thing I've been working on is the crowd control. As seen here (http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1320) the creatures sometimes get stuck when moving through small corridors. To solve this issue I have been working on something called crowd control which can be seen here as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9ZqssKXHiE
With the new road system and that the creatures are able to claim them themselves there have been some side effects. For example, when is a enemy room or portal going to be claimed. At first I thought about using the rally flag and giving the workers permission to claim the room where the rally flag is. But this would mean that only one room can be claimed at a time, and also that a lot of creatures that don't care about the room claiming will be there as well. So my second solution and the one I am having right now is that if a road is being built and led up to the room, then the workers will claim that room as well.
When working on the crowd control as explained above I also implemented something called heat maps into the game, here is one example on a heat map showing the death of creatures (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125213/Opinion_Balance_and_Flow_Maps.php), and a heat map like that could be useful as it will show the areas certain non-fighting creatures should avoid. But I did it a little different, instead of having the death of creatures I made it so that heat is coming from the enemies and cold is coming from the allies and spreading across the dungeon. In this way the creatures that wants to fight will divide themselves equally between the enemies by following the heat. In the same way creatures that wants to flee can just follow the cold to get into safety. This is just a simple example what a heat map can be used for, in the future we will see that it will have a lot of other uses as well.
So right now there is a lot of tinkering to get all the features to co-exist with each other :)
Almost at the surface
It has been a little more than a month since the last release, and it will probably take a month more before the next release will be out. This is because we have started introducing the surface world and a lot of other things to make the game play more fluid and balanced. So in this news post I wanted to sum up all the new features that have been implemented since the last release if anyone has missed something :)
This topic is about the upcoming surface world feature and the ability to raid villages. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1380
This topic is about giving the creatures an backpack so that they are able to transport several items at once and be able to speed up the item transportation. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1400
This topic is about removing the auto path claiming and giving the player the option to build the roads himself. These roads can also be upgraded to increase the movement speed. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1402
This topic is about removing the unlimited storage capacity from the Dark Mother, and increasing the storage capacity in other storage rooms. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1403
This topic is about that the minimap has been upgraded so that the player will have it easier to orientate in the dungeon. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1404
This topic is about giving the dungeon a secondary fog of war that will hide the enemies if there are no allied creatures that can see them. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1405
This topic is about building the whole room at once instead of building parts of it at a time. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1405
This topic is about giving the player the ability to select multiple creatures at once and move them or put them in different squads. Read all about it here: http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1408
Okay, one more letter before the 0.9 release. I wanted to get some features from the surface world in there before introducing the 0.9 version. The editor was put on hold because I believe that it can be damaging to the development process implementing it before all the features are in place.
This version has some new features such as new constructions and a new room called the "Catacombs room" with ghosts coming with it.
Mines + Storage rooms - I believe you shouldn't be able to place both mine and Wall Shelf Storage.
Creatures Won't Eat - There is plenty of food at the table, but the creature never fully commits to the task.
Pathing Fails to Construction - This is a weird one, and I've seen it replicated in this level in a couple different ways.
21:9 problem with Production dialog - When I run the game in 21:9 (2560x1080) resolution the Production dialog box gets screwed up (the one that is opened with the little pouch).
Bridges & Reeds Semi-Unbuildable - I was under the impression you should be able to build bridges anywhere over water. I found a spot that although you can initiate to build, once it has all materials placed there the construction never gets built; and the materials are on shore.
Lava on Portals - Noticed some lava showing through on a portal to the surface world.
Prt Scr Won't Screen Capture - I was trying to take a snapshot earlier using the print screen key, but all I got was white. I was able to take a snapshot from Steam tho.
Ladder climb down - Creatures climb up well, but they do not climb down. They just teleport to the very bottom of the ladder. I don't think it supposed to be so.
Imp AI - production stuck - Recently i encountered some strange bug. Namely - after closing breach to quickly cut off portal one imp was left at the wrong side of the wall. After some time i realised that all my production stuck.
I know I said I was going to introduce the editor with this version, but I had to put that one on hold because I believe that every new feature introduced would put the editor out of date. So the editor have to wait until I get most of the planned features in there.
The current plans I have for the next version is to introduce the surface world. That the worlds will be connected some how and have the creatures moving between them. I don't know how much freedom I will give the player to mess around with the surface world, but I think it will be somewhat limited to start with.
Dwelvers Alpha 0.8j released
Yes, yes, we are running out of letters :) This will be the last 0.8 patch before releasing the 0.9 version.
In this 0.8j patch there are some new features such as lava, swimming creatures, new wall and rock models and progression modes. The biggest new feature is the lava, it will burn everything in its way if the player isn't careful!
And to make it a little easier for new players to get into the game a progression mode has been added. Meaning that certain actions can't be done in the game before others. In that way the game leads the player into understanding the mechanics of the production chains and what is relying on what.
Feature updates in 0.8j
The rock texture has been improved.
Creatures no longer "tilt" between different heights in the dungeon, now they either climb the wall or fall down.
Progression mode implemented - Most of the buildings in the dungeon needs to be unlocked in one way or the other before they can be built.
Fixing the items menu - The items menu has been changed so that it matches the creature menu.
First look at the lava - Lava has been implemented, and it will burn everything in its way!
Bug fixes in 0.8j
Rally doesn't draw all orcs immediately - I noticed today when I was trying to rally to an enemy that Orcs were more focused on digging than attacking the enemy. They tore down half of my room before I deselected the area I was digging and then the Orcs responded to the call.
Placed Water Tiles & Constructions - If you have moved water from one place to another, then you can build rooms and other constructions in water that you have placed.
Farmland textures - I'm not sure if it's a bug, but it feels like something is wrong with those.
CPU Hog - Whenever I try to run Dwelvers it instantly maxes out my CPU, lags everything I have running (even the game when I don't run anything else), and basically proves itself to be unplayable.
Tile Selection - I noticed that when I selected to dig the top level out next to my Bar Room, that it appears to also select the tiles below as well.
Crash - Placing Fill Dirt in Water - I uploaded a short clip here of what is happening. I don't know if this has anything to do with being next to the fish, or if there is something else going on. I tried another block that was in water and a crash wasn't produced, but that tile is a definite crash point.
Corrupted structure icons - Hello, i started a new dungeon this morning and it seems that some of the building substructure icons are warped/corrupted.
What's next?
Next up is the 0.9 version, and with this version we will have a map editor included with a couple of new campaign maps if everything goes as planed.
The idea here is that new features will be included and the old one polished as new campaign levels get included in the game. And if these new campaign levels gets included with a regular basis, the interest for Dwelvers should be kept high and steady :)
Dwelvers Alpha 0.8i released
This update is a super bug fixing patch as you probably can see below. If everything goes well with this patch I will start adding features into the next patch :)
Feature updates in 0.8i
V-Sync option added into launcher.
Bug fixes in 0.8i
Destroyed Orc Statue - I noticed something interesting when I almost got overrun in one of my games.
Mine bug - The heart meter that shows how much there's left of a resource when building a mine on it don't go down.
Crash - Alt-Tab crash - Hello, I know there already is a thread about crashes related to alt-tab but it is old and locked so at sebt's suggestion i'm making a new one.
Game Speed x0 - If you reduce the game speed to 0 and then enter the menu, your game will be stuck at Game Speed x0.
Texture bug - After opening treasure chests in maze.
Placed Water Tiles & Constructions - If you have moved water from one place to another, then you can build rooms and other constructions in water that you have placed.
Decorations Built on Top of Wall - I noticed today that if you place any wall decoration on a wall that goes all the way to the top layer that it can end up being built on top of the wall.
Placed Water Tiles & Constructions - If you have moved water from one place to another, then you can build rooms and other constructions in water that you have placed.
Dropping Water at Top Level - The problem is that you cannot fetch a water block that has been dropped at the top level of the dungeon because your creatures can't reach it.
Mines + Storage rooms - I believe you shouldn't be able to place both mine and Wall Shelf Storage.
Constructions - Mine - same bug as with Impanzze bed on 0.8b.
Mining - After selecting room to be mined(3x5 on the screens), sometimes the mark disappears. I believe it happens when minion takes control over floor next to it, or reinforces wall next to it.
Creature Name is Very Large - Would this may have to do with a character limit on the name bar. This is a pretty long name that is displayed in large print on the screen.
Ladders and Torches - This is really kinda nitpicky, but you know me...I was playing around with ladders today, and fortunately they rotate just fine, but it looks really weird when you have a torch sticking through your ladder.
Dwelvers Alpha 0.8h released
This patch is mainly a bug fix version, the last patch had a lot of game breaking bugs that needed to be solved as fast as possible. The delay between this patch and the last is mainly because of the holidays and a planed vacation.
New features in Patch 0.8g - 0.8h
New rock texture - Dwelvers has gotten a new more alive rock texture.
Screen output launcher option - The player now have the option from the launcher to choose what screen he wants to play Dwelvers on in fullscreen.
Crash - Game crashes before starting - Oh dear, I'm continuously seeing "This program has stopped working" with 0.8g. The crash happens once I attempt to start the game on the loading screen, which eventually freezes. I've tried loading saves, different graphics settings, creating a new game but always the same :-(
Crash - Selecting Trade Route (Assertion Failed) - Was able to duplicate this a second time. When you go to select a Trade Route, you get an error dialog from Windows shown below. Hitting ignore just loops, you have to abort, then you get Dwelvers debug crash log info.
Now I am back and will look into some if the issues and bugs that have been reported with this last version. One of the most serious bugs is that some people are experiencing crashes at startup. I am possitive that this is because of the new launcher menu and that the game has been a little bit more demanding on GPU Memory usage, issues like crashes on startup can most often be solved by using another graphics adaptor and lower the texture quality.
We have now also gotten a Dancing Devils sign over the workplace, it may not make much difference in advertising purposes, but we got it with a really big discount as all the signs were to be replaced anyways, so I thought, why not? :)
http://forum.dwelvers.com/showthread.php?tid=1295
Well, now it is back to work for me. The issue with the trading routes crash has been solved, but the glowing textures and crashes at startup hasn't. As soon as these are fixed I will make a new patch.
Patch 0.8g has been released 29/12/2014
Dwelvers Alpha v0.8g has now been released.
This patch mainly has the focus on the new creature menu, and the new creature auto equipment feature. Something that has taken a lot of time when developing this patch is the game performance optimization. With the tests I have made the FPS has increased with almost 70%. The performance boost is mainly on the CPU, if you have an older graphic-card it is possible that you will not notice the boost that much.
As the headline suggests I have been working on Dwelvers like crazy the last weeks despite not showing that much progress on the forum.
So, sorry for the inactivity on the forums, and for not releasing the next version on time. The reason for this is that I got a little bit more on my hands than I expected.
When finishing the optimization and some of the bugs I made went through all the features of the game to make sure that they worked correctly, unfortunately they didn't. With the optimization I made it so that the all the 2D rendering is handled by one thread and all the 3D rendering by another, this cause some issues with the creature menu because it is mixed with both, and the result was that some of the function was made invisible. This is of course solvable but would take a day to solve, but as I am not fully pleased with the creature menu at its current state I decided to redo it, this was three - four days ago. Why I haven't posted any news since or explained the delay was because I didn't want to write another wall of text without showing any visual improvements.
So here we go, this is the new design of the creature menu:
This menu will replace the old creature menu completely, and it is already more user-friendly and packed with more features than the old one. I wanted to keep the visualization of the creature being looked at, therefore I made the mirror. On the right of the mirror you can see all the stats the creature has just like in the old menu, and below the window it is possible to switch between creature types by clicking the tabs and then the creature by clicking on the specific creature.
This menu is called the character menu because it shows details about the character. If we click the next tab we will see this:
This is the equipment menu, and here the player can see the equipment this specific creature has and be able to change it if he wants too. If he decides to change the equipment he will have to click the manual button, this will mean that he will override the auto-equipment for this creature in that equipment slot. When changing the equipment it will not happen instantly as it has been doing before, the new item will flash above the already equipped item with an hourglass on it showing that this is the item that the creature will change into, and once the creature has equipped the item the flashing will disappear and be rendered permanently.
This menu is a little larger as the creatures can no longer be selected at the bottom, only the creature type. Right now it only contains auto equipping features, but the plan is that it will contain more race dependent options in the future.
Here the player will be able to choose three items that will be prioritized for equipping for this slot and race. The player can also choose to not have any items prioritized at all, or disable the auto equipment completely to force the player to manually equip all the creatures of this type unless he wants them to run around naked.
This will mean that from now on all creatures will be born without equipment. But to make it a little bit easier for the players I will make it so that the Orcs (for example) will start with auto-equipment on hide armor and wooden clubs, and then let the Dark Mother puke out some of these items for the creatures to equip at start.
The idea is that this new creature menu will set the standard for future menus in the game, I want the items menu to look the same and be on the left side, so that these two menus can interact with each-other.
I also want to show of the new feature of being able to lock the creature production:
As seen here we now have a lockpad included in the bottom left menu, when activated this creature type will no longer be produced until the player unlocks it. Then if the player don't want to produce a certain creature type at all he should just avoid building beds for them.
So that was it for now, once again, sorry for the delay. I will probably not be able to release a new version this upcoming week either because of all the changes, and if we now have waited this long I really want to be able to give you a version packed with new features.
On a side note. I know that some of you may expect me to release a new version at least once every twice or third week (mostly because I said so myself). But when problems like this one arises I get very stressed because of this "deadline", I ask you all to be patient with me. I work best and fastest when I don't have "deadlines" hanging over me. This don't mean that I will take longer time on me to release new versions, sometimes it will probably be once a week, while other times up to a month between releases. This is not optimal, I know, Dwelvers will sell better if I were more active on the forums and released the game more often, but as I am the only programmer I need the space to be able to work the best the can.
