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[Fyren]

This is the settings.xml after gunzip'ing it:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<bmo ver="5">
  <TSettings ref="0NDPO8">
    <field name="zoom" type="int">3</field>
    <field name="volume" type="int">0</field>
    <field name="sfx" type="int">1</field>
    <field name="music" type="int">1</field>
    <field name="tLog" type="int">0</field>
    <field name="tHint" type="int">1</field>
    <field name="currentPC" type="int">3</field>
    <field name="currentTheme" type="int">0</field>
    <field name="totalTurns" type="int">57533</field>
    <field name="totalDeaths" type="int">25</field>
    <field name="totalKills" type="int">3083</field>
    <field name="totalQuests" type="int">4</field>
    <field name="artifacts" type="array:TItem[]">
      <val ref="0NDQ7C"/>
    </field>
  </TSettings>
</bmo>

As you can see, there's the one tag sitting in the artifacts field but no info.

[Oddball]

Thanks Fyren. It appears that the serialiser thinks the artifacts array has already been defined so only stores it by reference. I'll have to look into it.

[dogzer]

lovely game  , I actually had fun! It's hard to enjoy games for real nowadays , even AAA games don't entertain me anymore . This was simple and entertaining , and I feel really easy to get in and play, no loading screens, no unnecessary storylines  (not that I don't like storylines, but games usually tend to have boring storylines, just get me into the action!  ).

This game is cute and I feel like there's plenty to explore , I only played a bit until I died . I might keep an eye on this game to see when it get released  , if it's not too expensive I'd gladly pay to play !

cheers!

ps: did I overdo it with the smileys? I don't think so! 

[TobiasW]

Woah, this looks awesome. Posting here to get notified in the "New replies" when I get home, so I can try it then!

[ortoslon]

tobiasw, you could just click the "notify" button near the bottom of the page

[rgcd.co.uk]

Hi there David, great game - wrote about it for my blog (http://rgcd.blogspot.com).

feedback:

Works like a charm on my usually fussy stock issue Eeepc netbook (1008HA) under XP SP3. (specs can be found on amazon).  No slowdowns here.

The game is instantly accessible, and fun to play.

Balancing issues; I agree with most of what this bob chap on the indiegames blog says:

---

"the melee class seems intrinsically worse than the ranged ones, especially because your health doesn't regenerate. With the ranged classes I can kill most enemies before they can even attack back, while the melee class has to submit himself to a chance of getting hit every time he attacks. The elf ranger seems even more broken, because it seems to get 2 moves for every 1 enemy move, making it even easier to kill enemies before they can attack back.

Also, even when full screened the game sprites are super small, and the perspective makes it non-obvious how the grid is aligned. Many times I thought I was vertically adjacent to an enemy I wasn't.

To that effect, the levels are much to large (and way too samey) for a "coffee-break rogue-like". I got bored trying to explore an entire level, and the map is so small it is practically unreadable.

The game also seems to continue out long actions even when enemies appear on the screen. If I click somewhere too far away, I can accidently get dangerously close to an enemy.
Finally, I dislike that to compare the stats between your current gear and the gear on the floor, you have to keep moving your mouse on and off of the item. Why can't it show a comparative number (like +1 or -2)?"

---

For me the main issue is the non-regenerating health (this is a roguelike standard), especially for non-ranged combat characters, and perhaps the size of the early dungeons is too big.  I'd also like to see the inventory made less basic - i would enjoy the opportunity to pick up some of the useless tat in the dungeon (rags, skulls, etc) and use them as rubbish armour and thrown weapons
 
With regards to price, I would happily buy this for £5-10.  Even at this stage I would place a pre-order for it.

Please keep up the fantastic work, 

James.

[RCIX]

An additional thought is that you have like 6+different types of each kind of weapon, but there's very little difference between each individual one. For instance, a Blood Steel Battleaxe of Doom does (with a few enhancements to my character) 46/23, whereas a Steel Shortspear of Wonder does 44/16. I don't really feel like I'd want to have a whip over a battleaxe over a longsword over a spear over... It would be really cool if I could see, for instance, a battleaxe do 28/40 and then a whip 85/10 and swords 52/19, or maybe maces have a chance to stun the target for a period of time, etc. Maybe toss in bonuses per class; like a knight gets an attack bonus for longswords, or some other class gets damage bonuses for battleaxes.

[Firetempest]

    Did it run? Yes
    System specs: Vista 64bit, 1680x1050.
    Usability: pretty darn simple to understand.
    Performance: Only thing I noticed is it does noticeable slow down when multiple units are moving out of site when auto moving.
    Balancing: Poison didn't end for at least 100 turns tell I got lucky and found a health potion and it stopped it.
Melee class is at a severe disadvantage. The AI will make you come to them unless you use the door trick to make them lose site of you and pass the door so you can first strike. Perhaps lighter weapons offer first strike like rapiers. Pole arms that have +1 block range. heavy weapons with stun or knockback.
    Key controls: I'm lazy and used mouse. was easy enough. Accidental move was a problem but atleast you auto stop when attacked so mistakes didn't outright kill me so that was nice.
    When finished, I can see it being $5-10 USD. Love the little details noted for all the dungeon fluff. would like furniture to play more of a roll in blocking paths within rooms. like long dinning halls. Or randomized shelving or skulls in walls that you can interact with when over them and find hidden rooms or portals to the other end of the map since they can be quite large. Makes you explore. Open cages to fight extra monsters etc.

[James Edward Smith]

The quests feel really long to me. Are they not meant to be completed in one sitting or am I just being too methodical?

[Oddball]

Thanks to everyone who gave feedback, it's been extremely useful. I'll address some of the points that have been raised here.

Saving potions for later
There is no advantage to saving potions until later and so no need to be able to do it. As there is no maximum on any stat or health the effects of drinking a potion immediately or waiting are the same.

[Numpad5] should be wait/[Numpad5] should be pick up
This is really frustrating. Most roguelike players want [Numpad5] to be pick up, but most non-roguelike players expect it to be wait. It seems my decision is do I pander to the roguelike crowd or not.

Item preview should indicate whether it's a stat bonus or penalty
Agreed. This is now in my dev build.

Swift is over powered
Agreed. In the dev build swiftness items now have curses/penalties.

Graphics are too small
I have a big monitor so it's hard for me to gauge things like this. Dev build now has a magnifier function.

Melee is under powered/magic is over powered
This is intentional. Melee, ranged, and magic characters are akin to the games hard, normal and easy modes. Or that's the theory at least.

Quest/levels are to long/big
In the final game some quests will be short and casual, and others will be long and involved. It'll all be dependant on which quest you choose. The test quest is a little on the long drawn out side.

[dogzer]

yeah, seems a lil repetitive right now, will there be more variety in the full game? will more variety make up for really tiny sprites?

I like exploring, but there's gotta be stuff to explore. There's no kick in exploring if I know what the next room's going to look like!

It's cool to keep a theme, and I'm not saying every room should be different from the next, on the contrary, the surprise of finding different things is what makes it great, if absolutely everything is different then nothing is valuable!

[TobiasW]

[Numpad5] should be wait/[Numpad5] should be pick up
This is really frustrating. Most roguelike players want [Numpad5] to be pick up, but most non-roguelike players expect it to be wait. It seems my decision is do I pander to the roguelike crowd or not.

Why don't you just let each player decide by putting it into an option?

[Fyren]

Saving potions for later
There is no advantage to saving potions until later and so no need to be able to do it. As there is no maximum on any stat or health the effects of drinking a potion immediately or waiting are the same.

If I could save potions with resistances for later I would when playing melee.  In general, none of them matter except the very end and you're melee fighting the enemies that blow up dealing fire/lightning damage.

Melee is under powered/magic is over powered
This is intentional. Melee, ranged, and magic characters are akin to the games hard, normal and easy modes. Or that's the theory at least.

I found ranged to be a little easier than magic, but there wasn't a big difference.  You do end up doing more damage with magic but you're weaker early on and the difference in accuracy is almost insignificant.  Nothing stops you from using a bow as a saracen/knight, either.

[capnramses]

Nice - I like it! Reminds me of Ultima IV. I'm also making a dungeon-ish game. Rather than fully-fledged conversation dialogues, I have a thing where if you step on a tile it can trigger a text pop-up box for some story or more detailed room description. Could add some flavour to the room exploring?

[Oddball]

Nice - I like it! Reminds me of Ultima IV. I'm also making a dungeon-ish game. Rather than fully-fledged conversation dialogues, I have a thing where if you step on a tile it can trigger a text pop-up box for some story or more detailed room description. Could add some flavour to the room exploring?

HSL already does exactly that with the addition that the pop-ups can also be triggered by meeting monsters, activating dungeon features, and picking up objects. I use it sparingly though as it breaks up the flow of the game. If you find any of the hidden bosses you'll see it in action.

[capnramses]

cool! clearly I didn't meet any hidden bosses yet. Nice one, will watch progress...
the only other thing was that I would sometimes click the ground by accident when trying to fire an arrow - could moveto be RMB instead?

btw - I've tried it on both Windows and Linux i386 no problems.

[roboguy]

1.Did it run? Yes
2.System specs: 2 gigs RAM, intel core duo, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, 64 bit windows 7 OS.
3.Usability I thought it was pretty easy to understand everything, I had to read instructions but that was expected.
4.Performance: there was no point in which I could notice any lag.
5.Balancing I thought that  health items should appear more frequently. I only encountered one once in the game, Also (not sure if this was already there,) there should be an offhand weapon, as I would like to be able to switch to some form of ranged attack from melee ones.
6.Key controls Not a big rougelike player at all.
7.Anything else I found one bug, when mousing over the stats window the health caption ran off the screen. If I were selling this I might give the game as freeware and sell DLC's for it.

[ronarscorruption]

1. Yep, no issues
2. 3ish year old Laptop, windows XP.
3. I really didn't understand accuracy. My the tooltip descriptions, a 60 attack should hit 60% of the time. I've counted it out, and it looks roughly like the real accuracy is just above half that. I hit about 40% of the time in the 50 hits or so I calculate out. Either clairify how this works, or fix it, because it does not work the way it is described in the game.

The vulnerabilities...  never seem to come into play. By the 5th floor, I wound up with vulnerability to everything, but never taking too much damage, because of armor. It'd be nice to have a numerical change a resistance/vulnerability gives you (+5? +50%?)

There's also the issues of the grid-lines not being very clear, vertically. But that's been mentioned often before.

6. I'm a roguelike player, and I would have liked  5 to be wait. Perhaps, it's both? if you're not over an item, it waits, and if you are it picks up?

7. You mention you're planning on giving swiftness a drawback. Or vulnerabilities. I've nevre seen vulnerabilities come into play, honestly, but I think that you'd have to give *huge* penalties to make having swiftness still not be a nearly game-breaking enchantment. In it's current state, it makes you just shy of invincible. If you reduce your power by 50%, you wind up at...  just shy of invincible, plus frustrated. Which is far less fun than just being invincible in the first place.

Perhaps, if you had a way to make it less than a 100% speed boost. Like, for every three actions you take, you act an extra time. or for every two. It would still be valuable, but you no longer end up automatically reaching the end by obtaining it.

[kidchameleon]

Did it run?

Yes Perfect!

System specs

Windows XP SP3, 2gig ram, GForce 7600GT, 1440 * 900

Usability

Once I got into the game it was easy to figure out. The menu at the start of the game could be a little more user friendly.

Performance

Everything was smooth, quick to load and stable.