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[Eclipse]

just got an iphone 4, this will be one game i'll buy for sure 

[eclectocrat]

just got an iphone 4, this will be one game i'll buy for sure 

If you beta test it and give me some feedback, you'll get a free copy. (Save a few pennies!) You don't need a developer account to test. Just an iOS device.

[eclectocrat]

Hey! I need more BETA testers! Please send me your e-mail if you want an awesome dungeon crawl for your iOS thingy. Dev account NOT needed. Here are some excuses to bump this thread...

Spellbook: Each spell costs a certain amount of mushrooms. It was really fun trying to give spells 6 letter or less names.



Character creation: 5 races, Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Halfogre.



Inventory/Status: This needs a lot of cleaning up, it looks a bit like dog barf now, but technical priorities prevent me from spewing out slightly less awful 'art'.

[eclectocrat]

Yay! I've now played and beaten my own game! It's pretty hard, and I'm so sick of the first 20 minutes of it I want to barf. This repetitive gameplay stress injury has inspired me to add some scenerios: short little levels with a goal, often of the FFTactics/Tactics Ogre style: KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL!

It's pretty obvious now that I think about it, all my favourite tactical games are almost completely composed of skirmishes...

Next on the TODO list: Fix sneaking, pick-pocketing, and add an assassination ability.

[eclectocrat]

First off I'd like to apologize to the people who PM'd me to beta test. I basically ignored you. Sorry bout that. My life and the game have taken a dramatic shift, so the iOS beta is over (unsuccessfully).

Here's the nooze:
- Now for Mac/Windows/Linux AND iOS.
- Free on desktops.
- No longer an RPG, now it's a roguelike. RPG elements will be making regular appearances, but I've been hooked to procedurally generated something or other.
- Party based. 1-3 characters can team up and execute tactical maneuvers.
- Open Lua API for AI. That means make your own enemy behaviours. This could turn into some fun competitions between AI's.

I've had some friends play the desktop game and the response is really encouraging. They didn't have to play it so much, they wanted to because it's fun. I do want to make money off of this, but I feel so good about the game that I think that if people download it to try it out, many of them with iOS devices will go straight to the App store to get a paid copy. Maybe I'm deluded but I have confidence in this game.

The important part... WHEN? I'll stop embarrassing myself with deadlines I never meet and just say that I'm working my ass of on the last little touches before release. I hope the answer is SOON.

Title screen. Yay for out of copyright 18th century wood carvings!



Surrounded by demons, I'm so dead.



Found a cave, unfortunately it's populated by angry bow wielding orcs.



Oh yeah. At this point Mysterious Castle doesn't actually feature any castle. Maybe I should have named it Mysterious Forest...

[Eclipse]

just got an iphone 4, this will be one game i'll buy for sure  

If you beta test it and give me some feedback, you'll get a free copy. (Save a few pennies!) You don't need a developer account to test. Just an iOS device.

edit:

:-( are the ios beta application already closed? i'd love to betatest it!
I've an iphone 4 and soonish an ipad 2 too.

On another side, yay! PC version!

If you still someone to betatest the ios one mail me at [email protected] and i'll be more than glad to play the shit out of it  

[eclectocrat]

Download link in OP.

[superflat]

Hmm I get this:

Process:         MyWorld [308]
Path:            /Users/info/Downloads/Mysterious Castle - Beta Preview/Mysterious Castle - Beta 2.app/Contents/MacOS/MyWorld
Identifier:      com.yourcompany.MyWorld
Version:          ()
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [103]

Interval Since Last Report:          4196611 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           537
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  0 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   3

Date/Time:       2011-06-16 10:37:04.640 +0100
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version:  6
Anonymous UUID:  0A21BAA2-0E39-4FB0-8977-02E32040B7B0

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread:  0

Specs:

Model: MacPro3,1, BootROM MP31.006C.B05, 8 processors, Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 2.8 GHz, 4 GB
Graphics: kHW_NVidiaGeForce8800GTItem, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, spdisplays_pcie_device, 512 MB
Memory Module: global_name
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x88), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.21)
Bluetooth: Version 2.1.9f10, 2 service, 1 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en2
PCI Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, display, Slot-1
Serial ATA Device: WDC WD5000AAKS-41YGA1, 465.76 GB
Serial ATA Device: WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B0, 931.51 GB
Parallel ATA Device: PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-112D, 4 GB
USB Device: Keyboard Hub, (null) mA
USB Device: Apple Optical USB Mouse, (null) mA
USB Device: Apple Keyboard, (null) mA
USB Device: CTE-650, (null) mA
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, (null) mA
FireWire Device: built-in_hub, unknown_value, unknown_speed
FireWire Device: Duet, Apogee Electronics, 400mbit_speed


Dyld Error Message:
  unknown required load command 0x80000022

* * *

With both versions...

[eclectocrat]

Poo! I thought I fixed that! If you may, right click the app and select 'show info', then toggle 'run in 32bit mode' and see if it works. I hope that gets it working.

Thanks a lot for trying... I've had to tweak it for it to run on 3 different systems, a few more and I should have most configurations covered...

Bloody apple and their upgrade treadmill... I just uploaded a new version that will hopefully fix 10.5 linking issues. *fingers crossed*

[eclectocrat]

Download from OP.

Lots of new features:
- Up to 3 party members.
- Enemy spellcasters.
- Enemies use combat maneuvers.
- Lots of new items.
- Minimap.
- Major AI improvements.

Intel Macs. Please try.

[eobet]

Wow, I'm leaving a message so I'll remember to check back in this thread...

...from my first 3 min test, all I can say is that I dearly, dearly want a log (picked up something looking like a mushroom, but what exactly was it and where did it go?), or some sort of visual indication of what is going on (like the mushroom zooming down to an inventory icon at the bottom of the screen, for example).

There didn't seem to be much yet apart from mushrooms, bow wielding orcs and demons who killed you pretty fast, so hopefully a more balanced and interesting environment will be added soon.

Oh, and I have no idea how the turns work, because I was able to click on a monster, choose attack, and then... nothing... I had to move away for like five steps for them to react...

[eclectocrat]

Thanks for trying the game! Your feedback is much appreciated.

I guess I need a tutorial mode... I'm too close to the project to appreciate these things. I need feedback like yours to make it easier to use.

Right now what I can say is that the menu system is 'select and confirm' interface. So you have to select a menu option, it is highlighted and then select it again to perform it. Or just double click the menu item. I did this because of the tactical nature of the game, I hate it when you make a tactical error because of a bit of mouse slippage or some other interface quirk.

Short instructions. Click something. Click a menu option. It changes color. Click it again.
Also. Press arrow keys. Various screens show up. Neato.

Anyways. It's become painfully obvious that most people who try the game don't understand the interface right away (what a surprise ), and end up missing many of the features of the game. One tester played for 15 minutes without realizing that there are spellbook and inventory screens. Another one found the spellbook but never understood how to cast spells. And no one ever reads the readme. That's to be expected. I think many people expect the interface to be more Desktoppy, with everything kind of in your face HUD display comin at you. Well this is converted from a touchscreen project so now I see the perils of messing with peoples expectations. I have no-one to blame but myself. Whatever. Time for a tutorial mode. It's really easy when you get the hang of it...

[eobet]

It might be too late in the development, or that you don't have enough resources/time to pull this off, but:

A well enough designed interface should not need a tutorial.

And I think this game, with a little bit of work, could pull that off. I mean, the entire screen is empty of clutter. It's centered on your avatar and there are dark, unexplored surroundings and you have a cursor, so it's pretty intuitive that you try to click somewhere, and then you already show what will happen, no further explanation needed.

You just need to follow that through in the rest of the game. Click, show what happened, where it will happen, etc. Like you say, people don't realize there's an inventory (maybe because the inventory icon is a character, instead of a bag), but as I said, you could reinforce that by having the first item you stumble upon and pick up visually fly into the inventory icon. People who see that will probably think to click on that icon to see what's in there.

And then you just consistently follow through on a similar pattern through all the interactions of the game.

I think it would make it feel very polished.

[eclectocrat]

A well enough designed interface should not need a tutorial.

Well, yes and no. This game uses a different paradigm to normal PC games. The buttons that would normally do X in virtually all desktop games do Y in this one. It's not more difficult, just unexpected. When Xerox tested the mouse many people did strange things like pick it up and talk to it, slide it on the computer monitor, hold it upside down and try to use it like an awkward trackball. So even the blessed mouse was not intuitive at first. Every interface needs some kind of introduction.

You just need to follow that through in the rest of the game. Click, show what happened, where it will happen, etc. Like you say, people don't realize there's an inventory (maybe because the inventory icon is a character, instead of a bag), but as I said, you could reinforce that by having the first item you stumble upon and pick up visually fly into the inventory icon. People who see that will probably think to click on that icon to see what's in there.

This is great advice. But there is no inventory icon ! Still the theme of what you're suggesting is totally spot on. I'm going to design some visual indicators right now!

[eclectocrat]

Finally done! Here's a brief postmortem.

What I did right: Portable code, Lua scripting, Premature optimization, Creative Commons licensed assets.
What I did wrong: Writing graphics code from scratch, poor version control, writing, so much more.

Self assigned scores (how satisfied I am), on a scale of 0-9.

Gameplay: 7
I'm pretty happy with the result and I find the game to be fun, but I knock off a few marks because of the many features that are coded into the game but are not expressed by the procedural level generator. No climbing or jumping, almost no lock picking, no pick pocketing, no secret doors. All of these things are coded into the game, but finding a way to procedurally generate scenarios where they emerge is a different story. Still, the combat engine turned out better than I hoped, so I'll give myself an optimistic 7.

Graphics: 7
I knew exactly what I was getting into in terms of artwork. I selected the wonderful, albeit outdated and overused, David Gervais isometric tileset. Without this artwork the game would simply not exist. Thanks Mr. Gervais! My own attempts to make graphics, including some UI icons just shows my terrible artistic skills, but all things considered it worked out more or less as expected.

Sound: 8
Sound FX are generated by SFXR and nothing to brag about. I simply couldn't find all the sounds I needed, that meshed together in a coherent set. The environmental ambient sounds worked out very nicely, and I found some really great CC licensed music, especially by a guy named Owldude. Since I never expected to add any music at all, I'd say that I exceeded my expectations.

Story: 1
Wow, total fail. My writing skills have atrophied so badly. I used to be able to write a mean essay and a decent short story. Now I find stringing sentences together cumbersome. I basically wrote when my brain was fried from too much coding and the result is absurd nonsense that flows about as smoothly as stale peanut butter (the chunky kind). There is no 'story' to speak of, just a bunch of somewhat related gibberish.

Technical: 6
The game doesn't crash. The game runs on iOS devices with limited CPU/RAM. There aren't any major fails that I'm aware of. On the minus side, some of the Lua code was written when I was learning Lua. Incorrect usage of metatables, needless coroutines, stupid coding conventions, etc. No harm done, except for a needlessly high RAM overhead, which a refactor will set right.

Overall: 8
This is just a feelgood rating. I feel good. There is so much to improve on but I have a table and satisfying base from which to work. Once I take a small step back from the project I can return to it with a clear head and evolve it in the direction that I want.

PS> The final version is not released yet. I'm saving it for ARRP (Annual Roguelike Release Party) on September 18th. w00t!

[st33d]

Hrmm. On windows.

I couldn't figure out how to play and got killed in my first fight. Then I was a kobold.

Going to try on OSX at home tonight and see if I can figure it out.

[Yodhe]

Looks very interesting, and I look forward to giving the windows version a go if you ever get one compiled.
Good luck with it, from someone who is writing a similar(ish) game, but different genre and top-down view.

[eclectocrat]

Hrmm. On windows.

I couldn't figure out how to play and got killed in my first fight. Then I was a kobold.

Going to try on OSX at home tonight and see if I can figure it out.

The windows version is way out of date, missing features and buggy. The OSX version is much better, but still a few lingering bugs. The forthcoming 1.5 is the first 'complete' version. Once I get a legit copy of Windows I'll port the game.

Press F1 on the OSX version to see a simple keyguide.
Thanks for trying.

[eobet]

Well, was going to try the 1.4 version, but I get a message which says it's "not supported on this type of mac", even if I check the 32-bit mode... I have a 2010 Macbook Pro... could Lion be the problem?

Also... the game is done?

[st33d]

Okay. So after a while I figured out that it's final fantasy tactics in a Moria setting.

I don't know what the movement pattern is though. I couldn't figure out whether I was allowed to move or attack or what the end of a turn was. I kept completing a turn early it seemed.

I think there needs to be more context sensitive information. So that I know where the hell I am in the "turn". Not a tutorial, just some more info if you really need it.