Grim Nights
DLC-release on Friday and a patch coming up! (Please read!)
The DLC has some new features which are being beta tested right now. So far they seem to working just fine. (And these will of course be added to the original game when the DLC is released, or a little earlier.)
* Auto saving. The game automatically saves every day at 5 in the morning.
This save can't be overwritten be accident. People have asked for this and I have done me best to listen.
* Autowork! I've managed to make at least a half-decent version to minimize micro managing. Workers can now search for similar work horisontally and nearby. If an iron ore deposit (for example) is depleted, the miner will check after iron ore nearby and auto-target and start mining it. Will work for building and clearing rubble as well.
* Toggle Rain ON/OFF. In game raining has been known to cause performance drops for some people so there is now an option to completely turn off rain.
* Single workers can be killed with Delete.
* Finding groups with CTRL + Number, won't always center your screen on those units. It will if you already have other units select, meaning you can double tap relevant number and zoom, or just press once to only-select.
* You can find idle workers with F also.
Some of these are minor addition, but I still thought they were worth mentioning. They will all be added to the original game in the next patch, which will be released on friday, or maybe earlier. The autowork-function I believe will be very handy in the original game.
The patch (for the original game) will mess up your old saves. So, once again, many apologies! However, I really think it will be worth it, since it will fix many bugs and improve the gameplay.
Best wishes//Mattias
PS: The DLC will also be difficult. You have been warned.
A short 'Happy Holidays' to everyone and some news!
The work on the DLC is going just fine. It takes longer than I expected but I'm still confident it will be ready for a release in February. Hopefully beta-testing will start in late January. Maybe I've written this before, but no harm in writting it again I suppose:
The DLC will be Elves vs Demons. and it will feature:
* All new units, portraits and buildings.
* All new enemies and bosses.
* New maps.
* Less focus on mining and more focus on building strategic defenses.
* Mage units (many people have asked for this and there will be plenty of it.)
* Really powerful and expensive magic skills. A big part of the game will be
managing your mana-resource and using it wisely in your defenses.
* New soundtrack, still songs from the one and only Vindsvept, whose music is in the original game.
* Some different god other than Mogha (I have some ideas but haven't really settled on one yet)
In total it will be a similar but still rather different game, maybe more like a sequel than a DLC. And I'm really trying not to make a cheap re-skin, so I am focusing a lot on making it a familiar but still new experience.
Anyways: Once again a huge thanks to everyone who has bought the game, all the support I have recieved and all the bugs you have reported. I'm working the best I can on improving the game, but sometimes things move a bit slow, especially when you are only one person, so thanks for patience =)
Happy holidays everyone! I will be visiting friends and family and taking a fews days.
Oh, and yes, the game is on Steams Winter Sale, so if you want to share it and/or give it to someone as a gift, please do =) It's only 2 dollars at the moment and I hope you think it is worth it!
Best wishes//Mattias
You can now access 1.1.2 - requires restart
So, you can access version 1.1.2 which has fixed the bugs listed below. However, in this version you will not be able to use your old saves. For this reason, you will have to access this latest version as a Beta. Right click on your game in Steam -> Properties -> Beta versions, and "testing - 1.1.2" should be in your list. No password required.
Please note that this patch only fixes a few bugs and those NOT provide new content so if you feel done with game, then perhaps there is no need at all trying out this version. I mainly give you this option so there is an accessable version with less bugs and exploits.
You can switch back any time you please to access your old saves, if you so wish.
Fixes:
* Elite barracks showing the wrong iron amount required.
* Infinite roof-animals on the starting house.
* Villagers will not "auto-gather" dead rabbits unless they are standing still and have no other task/target.
* When you use ctrl-groups to select a worker, the buildings buttons will appear, no need to re-select.
* The zoom-to-new-villager-that-just-arrived, will move the screen to the left side of the map where the villager arrive, instead of the tavern that summoned the villagers.
* Sulfur pop-up showing the wrong number of gained sulfur.
* Dread knights will now attack buildings and move smarter once up on terraces, making end game more difficult.
* House-frames/foundations counts to the houseCap, so you cant exploit to get higher population than intended.
* You can't give a unit a the potion-boost and also extract sulfur via the gunpowder mil at the same time.
* Wooden Spikes are repaired faster.
* Also (I forgot to mention this earlier, sorry) loot/items will move towards your units when they are close enough, so mainly sulfur will not be stuck on tower edges,
I am once again very sorry that this patch also messes with your old saves. This is my biggest problem at this moment - the save-system I use is very unreliable. I have not found a solution to this yet, but for the moment I will let you know when patches are avaliable and using this method I mean to give you a semi-smooth way to choose when/if you will start a new in the latest version.
Other news - I am working on a DLC, which I think might be ready in february. I'm thinking I will use beta-testers for this DLC, to make it as functional, fun and bug free as possible when released. I will let you know more later on if anyone is interested in beta-testing =)
Best wishes// Mattias
Hot Fix!
The new version should say "Version 1.1.1" at the bottom of the main menu.
Anyways here is what the problem was about:
Buildings, mines and some terrain add themselves to the minimap - a small icon that just sits there and has a minimal amount of code in it. They are of course only meant to be added ONCE. On the map "Piney Valley" that platform/Hill added itself 60 times per second, so no wonder that caused a lag rather rapidly. And of course I can't blame anyone for this except myself - missplace one line of code and that's what you get.
One more sad news: If you have a saved game on the map "Piney Valley" and the lag was bad when you saved, the lag will still be there when you load that game, so you will have to start a new on that map. However, since the lag was monstrous, you will hopefully only lose half a in-game-days progress, since it was almost impossible to play under those horrid conditions created by yours truly.
I also found one more memory leak-thing which actually has been there since the release: When a single unit was selected, the same problem was actually occuring with the "Kill Unit"-button. This problem fixed itself once you deselected that unit and all the buttons were removed, but I imagined this still caused lag and frustration for some people. So sorry about that as well.
Of course I have fixed these to issues and thank you for your patience. I'm still gonna be in ready-to-hot-fix-mode, and I still hope that this won't be necessary.
Best wishes//Mattias
Patch 1.1
Patch Notes:
Quality of Life fixes:
- Ctrl-group 1 -> 0 (Assign units to groups with CTRL + Number, then finding and selecting them with that number)
- Zoom-to-news button. Each line of news that pop up will have a button next to it, allow you to instantly jump the screen to the relevant part of the map. This includes dropped potions and resources.
- Some quick keys:
'H' to jump screen to your starting tavern.
'B' To equip/unequip torched on workers.
'N' To place torches (Yes, workers will be able to that.)
'N' To use Healers Group-heal-skill.
'V' To quick select Wooden Spikes with workers.
You can also use the mouse wheel to zoom.
- Information about resources when your cursor is on the Icons.
More content:
- Steam achievements.
- Steam screenshots. (F12)
- Two new buildings: Elite Barracks and Market.
- Two new units. Longbowman and Knight.
- Decoration. Hanging banners, standing banners and street lights.
- At village level II your houses can be upgraded to get animals on the roof, which auto-produce a small amount of food.
- At village level III you can upgrade your wooden spikes to be stronger and slow down the undead more.
- Two new enemies.
- Two new maps.
- More variation and randomness to all maps.
- Treasure chest which can be found underground. Will give better loot (potions and resources) the further down you go.
- A button which lets you see your current stats. (Total enemies killed, total units lost, and so forth)
- Taverns now have unique names.
Bug fixes and minor stuff
- Some optimization which should greatly reduce the change of performance drops.
- Ranged units no longer shoot at underground undead.
- Fixed a bug where Guard Towers showed the wrong number of units in them. (Atleast I sincerly belive so, I went out of my way to cause this error, but did not succed after thechanges I made, so I really think and hope this error is removed)
- Buildings can no longer be placed at natural 'elevators', at hills and so on.
- Fixed a bug where tomb-undead got stuck underground.
- Mogha will not aggro as long she has atleast "eaten" one worker. Spikes will no longer cause her to aggro.
- Fixed a bug where units used ladders even though you send them otherwise.
- Underground ladders target-area is smaller, making it easier to move around underground without constantly using ladders by accident.
- Undead giants no longer attack spikes.
- You can now have 9 houses instead of a maximum of 8.
- The light effects are more toned and more realistic and cosy. (Coziness is everything)
- When units starve to death the news-message will say so.
- Dread Knights and Mergle have all been made slightly easier.
- Enemies will drop potions less, instead you will find more potions underground through chests.
- Fixed a bug were you couldn't upgrade to Level III if your first tavern were destroyed. Now all new tavern will be instantly upgraded to your current level.
- Fixed a bug where you sometimes you would get 'clones' when you trained new troops.
- Made it clearer that you can chose to continue the game as long as you please.
- Information about how the healers actually work.
- Lots of other minor fixes for balance.
As always: Huge thanks for giving me good ideas on how to improve this game, reporting bugs, errors and general annoying stuff. I really hope this patch fixes many of them.
PS: I'm also nervous that I have missed something crucial, so the next few days I will be very prepared to do a hot fix, though I really hope that won't be necessary.
About the upcoming patch - please read!
First of all an apology: once the game is patched, your saved files won't work. The game will problary crash if you try to load them. I'm really sorry about this. I'm letting you know in advance (the patch should be released some day next week) so perhaps you don't update the game 30 minutes before you defeated the last boss.
Once again - really sorry! But I hope this stuff makes up for it atleast somewhat. This is what I've got so far:
Quality of Life fixes:
- Ctrl-group 1 -> 0 (Assign units to groups with CTRL + Number, then finding and selecting them with that number)
- Zoom-to-news button. Each line of news that pop up will have a button next to it, allow you to instantly jump the screen to the relevant part of the map. This includes dropped potions and resources.
- Some quick keys:
'H' to jump screen to your starting tavern.
'B' To equip/unequip torched on workers.
'N' To place torches (Yes, workers will be able to that.)
You can also use the mouse wheel to zoom.
(Should I add Delete for destruction of single units and buildings as well? I was worried that this would cause people to delete units by accident, but maybe not? Please let me know in the comments!)
More content:
- Two new buildings: Elite Barracks and Market. The barracks lets you train two new units (see below). The market lets you trade 24/7, (not magic seeds and the rate is worse than the trader, so will still have to use him strategically), buy decoration (see further below), and you can station workers at the market to generate gold.
- Two new units. Longbowman, which has extreme range and if given fire arrows they have semi-exploding arrows which cause really good dot-damage if the hit clean. Mainly used to 'thin out' large clusters of undead. Knight, which has really good armor (starting at 10), lots of HP and good damage as well, but short range. A much needed melee unit.
- Decoration. Hanging banners and standing banners - you can change the color. Street lights - you can change the color of the light (Super cosy! Image link: https://imgur.com/ZpxaB6Q ).
- At village level II your houses can be upgraded to get animals on the roof, which auto-produce a small amount of food.
- At village level III you can upgrade your wooden spikes to be stronger and slow down the undead more.
- Two new enemies. Those you will have to find out for yourselves, I think that is part of the fun :) (Might add a third one as well, still not sure though)
- Two new maps. It will still be the same senario: undead coming from the right side of the map. But the layout will be different, allowing for other tactical options and the style very different: lush-leafy-forest-map and a spooky-dead-trees-barren-map.
- More variation and randomness to all maps: resouces on the surface won't be exactly the same all the time and the distance of key points (high grounds you can use and the tomb for example) will differ somewhat.
- Treasure chest which can be found underground. Will give better loot (potions and resources) the further down you go.
Bug fixes and minor stuff
- Fixed a bug where tomb-undead got stuck underground.
- Mogha will not aggro as long she has atleast "eaten" one worker. Spikes will no longer cause her to aggro.
- Fixed a bug where units used ladders even though you send them otherwise.
- Underground ladders target-area is smaller, making it easier to move around underground without constantly using ladders by accident.
- Undead giant no longer attack spikes.
- You can now have 9 houses instead of a maximum of 8.
- The light effects are more toned and more realistic and cosy. (Coziness is everything)
- When units starve to death the news-message will say so.
- Necrobats, Dread Knights and Mergle have all been made slightly easier.
- Lots of other mini-fixes which I just can't remeber right now. Sorry!
I am working on fixing two more bugs: guard towers having the wrong number of units in them and ranged units shooting at underground units. Everything you read so far is done and I will really tro to fix these two as well, but I didn't want to write them in the list until I know for sure I have a good, stable solution.
Last but not least: I will also try to get some Steam achievments working.
I might have missed something but I think that is it. Anyways: your comments and input are so awesome, kind and useful. It really helps me improve this game, so please continue! As I've said before, MANY thanks. The comments in my last post were so loving and heart warming I must have read all of them 4-5 times. It really motivates me to make the best of this I can, so once again: huge thanks!
NOTE: I did miss something! As the game is right now, you can sort of play it an Endless Mode: once you defeat the last boss on day 13, you can chose to continue the game and it will simple continue and get a little more difficult each and every night until you eventually lose. I will make this clear in the patch and also give a big reward after defeating the last boss (and some new villagers will arrive), so you will have a fair chance to recover.
A little news and many thanks! A patch is coming!
Of course I have received some critizing and to be completey honest: far less than I expected. The game has its flaw and I'm currently working on a patch that will fix atleast some of them. I take your comments and ideas very seriously and I'm really working the best I can to improve the game.
If all goes as planned the patch will be released in two-three weeks. It will add new content as well as improvements in general.
I will give you more info as the progress continues.
Once again: huuuuge thanks, your comments mean the world to me!
Best wishes//Mattias