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Total Members Voted: 2

Voting closed: August 27, 2013, 04:11:25 pm

[Anvilfolk]

Really glad to see this going again

Reset me too. Should be Anvilfolk, as everywhere else. I need to visit this again

[Vattic]

Unless you are still in quarantine you can reset in your bedroom.

[Sappho]

Anvilfolk, you will now be able to leave quarantine. Then if you want to reset, you can do it in your bedroom, as Vattic says.

I slept a grand total of about 3 hours last night for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, but I can't seem to sleep any more. So I guess I'll get to work. On the list for top priority work today are fleshing out the hospital, adding some way to reduce your Troublemaker (before you get sent to the cells), and then I will work on various tidbits like the residential area or maybe the workshops, depending on my mood.

By the way, if there are any requests for something you'd like to see sooner rather than later, feel free to let me know here. Certain things have to be done first, but I also want you testers to enjoy yourselves while you help me make my game.

[Sappho]

Today I plan to finish up the Intensive Care Ward for the moment. I'm nearly done with that already. Then I will decide between expanding the workshops or the residential area (I have lots of plans for both). I'll update the changelog in the second post as I go.

A request for my testers: Please watch for slips of language. I'm trying to keep any direct references to DF out of there - no use of Armok, or of specifically-named mushrooms, for example (I'm using dwarf names though). I don't want to rip off Toady completely. Also, please watch out for the use of "man" instead of "dwarf" and similar things. I've already caught one of those and I'm sure I've slipped other times, or will do so in the future.

EDIT: I now consider the Intensive Care Ward to be complete for the time being. There are 6 "possibilities" cards. Please let me know if you encounter any problems with them.

Now I need to try to make my word count for my novel, then if I have time and energy after that I'll add some more to the game.

[Vattic]

Time for another reset so I can check out the new Intensive Care Ward stuff . Either I was just lucky or with the current cards you can only just get injured enough before skilling up too far to fail (not a complaint mind you).

[Sappho]

I think you probably got lucky - I managed it first try. Injuries accumulate quickly. You only have to fail 10 times to get in the hospital. (Try hunting big game outside, if you're having trouble.) However, there is definitely a lack of content so far. I had to create the prison and hospital areas to deal with those qualities getting too high before I created too many ways to get yourself hurt and in trouble. But soon, that will change. : )

Maybe I'll add a full "tester's card" with options for increasing and decreasing your attributes... Would take a while to get it all together, though. Maybe tomorrow.

I've made my word count for my novel today, so if I get any more bursts of inspiration it will go toward Riddlerocks. First, though, I need to drink some more of this wine. It is called "Medvědí Krev" which means "Bear's Blood." Seriously. It's actually pretty good.



Also it's really cheap.

For now, some administrative things. I've decided that once a set of conditions are met, I'm going to release the game as "Beta." This will mean changing its status on StoryNexus from "in progress" to "playable" and starting a thread for the game in the Other Games forum to attract more testers, as well as advertising the game elsewhere. I'll consider you guys "alpha testers" and you'll get a special perks package when we move on to that stage. My current requirements for beta are:

1. Prison and Hospital are fully implemented. (This is pretty much done already.) I might also include a similar area with "insanity" (touch of elfishness), but I haven't decided yet. That could maybe come later.
2. At least 6 of the 15 planned professions (such as crafter, pencil pusher...) must be implemented to a degree that there are at least 2 basic ways to improve them and at least 2 ways to use them via possibility cards.
3. There must be at least 6 area-specific possibility cards for each area (such as the workshop orders and guard duty).
4. There must be at least 9 RNG cards (these are the possibility cards that can be drawn anywhere, such as the kobold and tantruming dwarf).
5. There must be something interesting to do for all the 3 basic attributes up to at least level 15.

Once all that is set, I'll "release" the game, take a break from this basic stuff, and implement a couple of plots. I have some great ideas, too. Itching to bring them to life.

[Vattic]

Have enjoyed the Intensive Care Ward cards I've played. Not managed to fail them all. Got a chuckle out of most of them.

[Sappho]

Great. I definitely want to keep the "losing is fun" feeling from DF, though of course I can't make players *really* lose or I'll lose all my players pretty quickly.

Thanks for continuing to test. Sorry I've been quiet the past few days. I made the terrible mistake of buying another Humble Bundle and I got sucked into playing Warlock for I don't want to think about how many hours. So today when I got up, the first thing I did was disconnect my gaming computer and hook up my writing computer (they both have American plugs and I only have one adapter, so I can't use both at once, fortunately). I'm not allowed to play more games until I catch up on my book (I'm about 6000 words behind) and make some serious progress on Riddlerocks. If I need a break, I can rewatch an episode of Black Books and paint/draw for a while, or, you know, go outside, but NO GAMES until I do my work.

[Anvilfolk]

You're making me want to play Warlock again...

I'm playtesting it again now.
- Moving to the workshops gives me a broken image next to "You have moved to the Riddlerocks workshop area.", same with the Administrative area.
- The "A Production Order: Stone Crafts" thing gives me 0% chance to succeed with 8 craftsdwarfship?

I then decided to reduce my injuries as much as possible and ran out of actions. Didn't want to walk around with 8x Injuries.... you never know, if this is DF inspired......

[Sappho]

The broken images are the fault of StoryNexus. Nothing I can do about them at the moment, unfortunately. They promise that eventually we'll be allowed to upload our own images, but for now we're stuck using what they give us, which is not much.

The production orders are not based on your craftsdwarfship skill, but your crafter skill. If you have no crafter skill, you cannot succeed at the production orders. You can build that up with the permanent cards in the workshop area.

Craftsdwarfship is a general ability with creative work. Crafter is a job, a specific skill. For each storylet (each situation on a card), I can only choose one trait to be rolled against for success. The three big attributes (craftsdwarfship, wits, and violence) are used in many situations, but I want there to be situations specific to the job skills as well, such as these production orders. There will be  many more options available as I add content to the game. Maybe I'll rename Crafter to Stonecrafter to prevent confusion, although I was hoping to include wood and bone crafting in the same category. I'll have to think about it.

If your injuries get up to 10, you'll be moved to the intensive care ward, where there is more material to play. You can't actually "lose" the game or die. Even the "penalty" areas have something interesting to do in them. I'm following the Fallen London model for that. It makes sense. If you punish players for taking risks, eventually they'll just get tired of it and quit. Everything in the game should have a purpose and an entertainment value.

Thanks for testing!

[Sappho]

Adding some more cards today and doing some background work to organize my notes and keep everything consistent. I've decided to add ranks to the guard forces. The first level will be Recruit - any of you who are members of the guard should now have this label. Doing guard work will slowly increase your rank. (I'll be implementing this change today on all the cards currently in-game.)

I need to decide on titles for the different ranks, however. I considered just using typical English/French military words (private, corporal, sergeant, etc.), but that seems so overused. I think the best thing would be to invent some kind of dwarven rank system, but it would have to be easily understandable. I'm open to suggestions here. Ideas?

[Anvilfolk]

Just prepend or append "Hammerer", or some such dwarven tool-related name, to those titles makes them sound fairly nifty, I think? My sense of written aesthetics is terrible

Also, the Crafter and Craftsdwarfship thing is fairly confusing One is supposed to be a skill and the other profession? I don't recall seeing any obvious separation between the two, but I might just have missed it?

[Sappho]

I renamed Crafter to Stonecrafter, so that should be less confusing now. Think of Craftsdwarfship as a general talent for being creative and crafty, something like artistic ability, whereas Stonecrafter is a specific, practical skill in crafting stone.

I added a new card to the Residential area today, so you can give that a try. I did a lot of other work as well but it was mostly organizational behind-the-scenes stuff. It might not be visible in the game but it will make it easier to add new things and keep it balanced from now on.

[Sappho]

Good news, everyone! I'm finally settling in to my new job and organizing my time a bit better. Today I spent a few hours adding quite a bit of new material to the game. No, it is not abandoned! Riddlerocks shall carry on! For the glory of the mountainhomes!

I've added the "chef" and "doctor" jobs along with a few options for each. Check the workshops to get started with cheffery, then there are uses for it in the possibilities deck in the residential area. There's also a hospital in the residential area now, and a Chief Medical Dwarf's office in the administrative offices. Your Room contains more options now, but they will only be visible when you qualify for them (for now, this means either having at least 4 injuries, or having obtained the medical book from the CMD).

Please do me the kindness of playtesting these things.

Also, a rather specific request: I'm trying to convert all instances of the word "dwarven" to "dwarfish." If you see "dwarven" still written anywhere, please let me know so I can fix it.

Finally, there's getting to be enough material now that I need to start worrying about balance issues. If anything seems to easy or difficult or just out of whack in any way, please let me know and I'll do some tweaking.

Thank you, one and all, and please enjoy the new content!

EDIT: Continuing to work. I've touched up a few things (see the changelog in the second post for details) and am right now working on adding mining to the game have added mining to the game. This means a whole new area, the mines, with (soon) plenty to do there. First will be basic acquisition and leveling of the miner skill, and I'll add a few possibilities cards as well. I have BIG ideas for the mines, but I'm trying to force myself to get all the "basic" stuff done first. Gotta lay the groundwork, tedious though that may be.

As a teaser, here are my current near-future plans for the game:
-Discovery of new areas in the mines, including caves, which will be explorable for various rewards
-Ability to gain status in the fortress, via various means, and expand your quarters
-Political intrigue
-Catsplosion management

Longer-term goals include:
-Megaprojects which can be completed in various ways (I want to try to make this a community effort, will have to figure out a way to do that)
-Strange moods which require rare materials, which will be obtainable through rare successes in different jobs
-Sieges which can be broken in various ways

For big storylines, there will usually be more than one way to solve them. For example, you can fight through something, or use diplomacy.

[Anvilfolk]

I guess I've had the same problem with Fallen London, but how exactly is this supposed to be played? I mean, should we focus on a small skillset and level that a lot, or have lots of everything? I immediately imagine myself focusing on one profession, but perhaps that's not the best way to play these, since I'd miss so much content, I guess?