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[Rasmus]

Hi all

We have been discussing the creature production and the issues with using expendable resources to create creatures. The problem is that the creatures dies and the resources they were created with disappears, and sometimes it is a lot of resources as costs for the creature varies depending on how many creatures of that type the player already owns. So we have come up with the conclusion that we will use EP (Evil Points) for paying for the creatures. Evil Points is something that generate over time, and the speed it generate in depends on what buildings the player have built in the dungeon, or what actions the player have taken, for example imprisoning enemies and torture them in the torture chamber is something that definitely should speed up the EP generation. But the player will not be able to create any creatures he wants to just because he have enough EP. The idea here is that the player need to capture a enemy on the map, feed it to the Dark Mother so that she will "learn" how to create and spew out that creature. In that way we are also encouraging the player to explore the dungeon

I have read through some of the posts here, and BurningPet has also informed me about the issues reported here. Well the game is still in alpha mode, and I am trying to solve the issues as fast as I can. Right now I am tending to the Imp Priority system, that the imps will be able to be assigned to certain rooms and work only there, this will give the player much more control over the productivity and also make the game run smoother. In the previously released versions the player could get up to several thousands of jobs that the imps had to prioritise between, and that took its tool on the CPU unfortunately. There are a lot of things that can be optimized in the game at this moment that will make the game run a lot faster on the older computers, but up to this point I have mostly been prioritising the game mechanics.

I also noticed that some of you have had some problems with jerky mouse movements. This is a problem I haven't been able to reproduce unfortunately, but I think the solution could be just to use the windows mouse cursor and change its icon instead of having the game hide the windows mouse cursor just to render its own.

There was one suggestion here about giving the player the option to see what buildings could be built in a certain room. I merge this idea with the whole imp priority idea, and here is the result:



Here the player can assign imps to work in the farm room and link the farm room to a nearby storage room. Below that the player can see what buildings can be built in the room and how many buildings already have been built. If it says "0" on a building it means that the building is available for building, but haven't been built yet.
You can read more about it here: http://forum.dungeondwellers.net/showthread.php?tid=514&page=3

And no, that is not a fishwilly Well, it is not intended to be anyways

[burningpet]

A small update:

As you can see from his post, rasmus has been hard at work with changing how production and logistics works in Dwelvers.

this is the latest development screenshot:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see each room is now linked to a certain storage room and the player will have to make sure his dungeon is built efficiently. this was inspired greatly by the route/flag system of Settlers where each road had a worker assigned to it. now the workers (imps) are assigned to the storage rooms for hauling, and the production rooms for working.

We are progressing toward the release of the new build. i'd say a couple of weeks or so.

Ps - you can see the button that switch between the surface and the underworld cameras in the middle of the bottom icons bar

[mastahcheese]

Holy snap that looks awesome.

[burningpet]

Haven't posted in a long time, so i guess now its a good time as any.

We have been progressing on Dwelvers quite a bit, getting ready to release the game on steam Early Access and we want to make sure that it's ready to meet higher standards.

The atmosphere has changed a bit:

We changed the looks of the Dark Mother and also seen here is the new Anvil and Mechanical Sewing Machine (TM) (Pretty cute invention )

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here you can see a bunch of monsters having a relaxed beer. we made it so that if you capture a creature, you can throw it to the prison and after a while he can be fed to the dark mother for her to remember its genes to mass produce. in the future, such genes extraction would have to be achieved through intense torturing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, say hello to our little sneaky friend:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We have already began restructuring all the menus, so the gifs and the image do not represent them faithfully.

Another thing we added, is the ability to equip your monsters with various weapons and armours. currently, weapons are in a sort of linear progression, but as we develop, we intend to make it so that each weapon will have different purposes, so equipping will not be just to make your buddies stronger, but to make sure you have a good combination of monsters/equipment for each giving purpose.

For additional information, you can view the newsletter which also shows the new workshops animations and some of the weapons.
http://forum.dungeondwellers.net/showthread.php?tid=797

[Levi]

Sexy as usual.  Can't wait till its done. 

[hemmingjay]

To me this is hands down the best Dungeon game in 20+ years. You guys are nailing it, especially you BP with this amazing and atmospheric art. Your skills are now legendary!

[burningpet]

Thanks, but most of it is really Rasmus's and Erin “CobraMode” McClellan's work.

[Zangi]

Huh, why did I not notice this before?

[burningpet]

We have just released Dwelvers 0.7 to anyone who pre-ordered the game.

While it still has few glitches and bugs we need to sort through, you could already see the progress over the latest release, so if you did pre-order, head over to dwelvers.com and download the build.
If you haven't still, once we sort out those last minute bugs, we will release a free demo version for anyone to try.

Also, we will be headed toward releasing the game as an Early Access on steam in the coming month.

You can see a very very short video of blitz playing here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvlFZTxJPR4

Btw - take note of the excellent voices Thomas, our newest team member contributed

[dennislp3]

ptw

[Levi]

Just noticed this is coming to Early Access tomorrow.   

Any estimates on how long you think it'll be in early access?  I'm curious as to how far along this is.

[mastahcheese]

Yeah, I see it on Steam now.
I'll be sure to get it when I have money.

[burningpet]

Totally missed that people replied here. i didn't want to announce we got on Early Access because i wanted to see how steam people will receive the game before starting getting the word out.

Just noticed this is coming to Early Access tomorrow.   

Any estimates on how long you think it'll be in early access?  I'm curious as to how far along this is.

We estimate that it would be on Early access for about a year or so. however, we are overly critical so we may prolong it until we are extremely sure its ready (Towns history is a factor that contribute to that). for example, the game was already accepted and ready to go live on steam EA program around two months ago, but we took those extra two months of polishing and adding features because we wanted the best first impressions when launching. (Although, we still have a few problems with the tutorial even after taking the time to polish the game)

As for how far along the current state is, well, i'll try to estimate by breaking it into segments:

General Sandbox features (Creature behaviour, Production lines elements, Rooms, Combat mechanics, Hydraulics system, etc..) - ~20-25%
Player controlled Creatures/Monsters - ~15-20%
Enemies - ~20-30% (This one could be "bloated" by having several classes of the same basic enemy. for example, the current human knight could be "multiplied" by having several closer looking models with different weapons, abilities etc.. so we might be lower than 20% right now). we currently have 5 enemy creatures (Fishmen, Rogue, Human Knight, Impanzee, Cyclotaur), so 15-20 is a good estimate. (We got 3 types of basic impanzees and those can be equipped with various items, but i count them as 1)

Single player skirmish (AI opponent that builds and expands) - 0%
Single Player campaign - 0%
Multiplayer - 0%

At the current state, the tutorial is pretty bad. it doesn't give you all the needed resources and doesn't explain how to get them. rope, for example, is obtained through chopping roots. that's counter intuitive and would be changed in the future.

I'd suggest waiting for the next patch or two before buying the game and regardless, always try the demo before purchasing! i was surprised to see that more people bought the game than downloaded the demo.

[Levi]

Ah cool.  I'll probably pick it up some time after the single player campaign is at 100%.

[mastahcheese]

I went ahead and bought it, and I'm having fun with it.
Yeah, the tutorial is lack (For one, it fails to explain what is actually causing your creatures to be spawned, and never tells you how to craft or equip items to dudes, and other things) but I still like it.
Although it won't let you play the game if you're not connected to the Internet, for some reason (it'll run, but it won't start.) Haven't figured that one out, yet.