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[AHrEJl]

Think u can start devlogs. Dont forget patchnotes. Hm. Im tried ur launcher, launcher dont search new version, dont downloading, and stoped on 0%(firewall offed).
+ i think need add feature like destination for new verstion like when installing new game on pc,previous to downloading

link with screenshote of problem
http://gyazo.com/ee02ff854d4d7caff629ab1e4a99c628.png?1342926840

@AHrEJl It's fixed...

Mb u update link for downloading in launcher?

[w01fram]

Version 0.1.6.0 is now released. This version increment completes the transition to public alpha.

The main new feature is cloud based game saves. After registering for an account, you can unlock your passcode on the profile page. I have tested as much as possible and it should work smoothly. Let me know what you think.

Now I can finally return my attention to game code. Meaning fixing some bigger issues and continuing on new features. (i'll create a devlog post for that)

[AHrEJl]

One of my testers Berserker wrote:

Well, the problem is when I'm trying to put the torch to the wall I can't do it with the closing of the crafting table, i mean when i wanna close the crafting table and put the torch somewhere on the map, the crafting table simply closes and I can't do anything, because in this case i dont even ahve torch in my hand. That's why I should constantly hold the crafting table active for acting with different items from it. Moreover, the light from the torches doesn't spread correctly, i mean sometimes the light doesnt even appear. Here's the screenshot, where you can see it.

Bug lighting:

[w01fram]

One of my testers Berserker wrote:

Well, the problem is when I'm trying to put the torch to the wall I can't do it with the closing of the crafting table, i mean when i wanna close the crafting table and put the torch somewhere on the map, the crafting table simply closes and I can't do anything, because in this case i dont even ahve torch in my hand. That's why I should constantly hold the crafting table active for acting with different items from it. Moreover, the light from the torches doesn't spread correctly, i mean sometimes the light doesnt even appear. Here's the screenshot, where you can see it.

Bug lighting:
...

Hi @AHrEJl and @Berserker: Thanks for pointing these 2 things out. Cool! I didn't know you have a team! 

1. The Light Engine is a prototype. A lot of the logic isn't finished and is probably going to change a lot. The shadows don't blend good so I added that to the bug-log.
2. I'll probably add the ability to close the inventory while still having the selected inventory item active, allowing you to still place/move objects. Im also playing with the idea of a Shortcut bar, on which you can place any item or creature, which creates a shortcuts to the actual object. It would look similar to the bar in WOW.

I added a a new Bug-Log at http://www.dungeoncolony.com/BugLog. I will collect and post bugs there so that everyone can have one place to check for known bugs before posting duplicates. You can also send bugs directly to [email protected].

[AHrEJl]

Think Shoutcut bar is a good idea, mb try this in next version and look what players w say.

Berserker send u new bugs on email :D

[w01fram]

Hello Dungeoneers,

I posted a new version of Dungeon Colony (0.1.6.6). If you already have the game starter, then the update will automatically be downloaded.

This update fixes some bugs with saving/loading games and other minor issues. But the newest addition is the introduction of XP & Skill Points. Your minions gain XP for various activities they perform. For example, mining, lumbering wood and fighting intruders produces XP points. Each type of activity stores those XP points separately, so that your minion can level up within each category. This will allow players to specialize their workers making then stronger fighters or faster workers for instance.

At the moment skill points can be applied to improve:

• Life Points
• Metabolism
• Stamina
• Attack Strength
• Attack Speed
• Walking Speed
• Working Speed

Currently in the works:
I am working on a new enemy type and a new plant type. The plan will only grow in the dark places of the dungeon. Any guess?

[AHrEJl]

Enemy? Bandit shadow, ghost, poltergeist, nightmare, evil clown

[w01fram]

Enemy? Bandit shadow, ghost, poltergeist, nightmare, evil clown

... the new enemy type will be a hunter with bow and a dagger, eager to find and loot your dungeon.

And the new plant type are different species of mushrooms which will provide another source of food for the hungry workers:

These new types aren't quite ready yet. Additionally, workers will also get a ranged weapon to protect from these new enemies. More details to come...

[w01fram]

I've just released procedural map generation. Now you wont get the same hand drawn tired map anymore. Instead, the generator creates different sized and shaped mountains with secrect caves and treasures.

This was the old hand drawn image, bleh:


And here are a few samples from the generator:

legend: grass is obviously green, the mountain border is blue-grayish, mountain dirt/rock is brown/gray, the path is also brown, caves are black...and the 4th image definitly looks like a face drooling all over the place

[Chris Koźmik]

Interesting and promising

- I don't think the "master" concept fits for this kind of game. Some "hand of the overlord" that does not appear on the screen from Dungeon Keeper would be better. I would make the master some chieftain of the tribe that provide some bonuses to surrounding minions, but it is not a representation of the player and the game does not end if it dies.
- I would remove the manual control of minions, just general orders with some task prioritization system would be better... Especially since AI is decent enough.

[ArcturusBTW]

I'm enjoying the random map generation! Great job on it, I've tried three times with it and haven't had any map-related problems. It makes it more exciting to start over, knowing I get a new map every time. 

[ArcturusBTW]

I think I'm getting the hang of this. I made it to the wave of Chaos Warriors and that scared me a little bit.  I want to share some tips I've figured out with other players.

Build a gate. Even if you have to build blocks to narrow your entrance, locking the enemies out is great because they will run out of stamina out there.

Alternate between lumbering and mining. I chop wood and collect seeds when no enemies are around, and then get all my workers in the dungeon when the enemies come, so my traps can take them out for the most part.

[w01fram]

It’s been a while since my last post. Though, last weekend I entered the Ludem Dare 72 hour game jam competition with a couple of friends. Check out our game here; the theme was Evolution.

I have published a new version for Dungeon Colony with bug fixes and some major updates :

• Dungeon Colony – Wiki: The first publish of the wiki contains most of the game entities and explains more or less what they do. This will be a work in progress.
• New Enemy: Archer - The archer is a new hero enemy unit and spawns from the village on the world map. Though weaker than the other enemies, the ranged attack makes this a fierce contender. (Still a prototype; will be tuned shortly)
• First Sound Effects for your creatures. (Moods) - I have added some new sound effects for your creatures which play on different behavioral occasions (such as eating, sleeping, grunting, alerting, dying…). At the moment there are only sounds for the player’s creatures. More will be added gradually. The sound effects have been created by Donald Hanson. Check out his website for more amazing art and music samples he created.

             

Please check out the new version (0.1.6.15). If you have downloaded the game starter, all you need to do is restart the game and it will be updated automatically. I would love some feedback regarding the sound effects, the wiki and the new enemy.

[w01fram]

Hello Dungeoneers,

I updated the website so that everyone can download the alpha without heaving to register first. This way you can test the game and then sign up later if you want to get the additional feature to save you dungeon in the cloud. For everyone who hate sign-ups, I hope this will be music to your ears!

Please keep testing, playing and feedbacking! Cheers.

[w01fram]

If you haven't tried out Dungeon Colony click here to download the free alpha. To get the latest development updates, follow me on twitter. For a more detailed DevLog, check out tumblr.

Version 0.1.6.27 - Adds new weapon & ammo:

Recently, we added a new enemy, the Archer. This increased the difficulty as Archers could easily target your workers from afar, especially in the wilderness. To counter balance their powerful ranged attack, this week we added a new weapon to the craftable items, the Sling which requires stone balls as ammunition:

 

To craft the Sling, workers must gather fur from boars and the leather from the fur can be crafted into the sling. The ammunition can be crafted from raw rock. You can find these recipes in the blueprint menu.

In order to equip a worker with Sling and Ammo, select the worker you would like to equip and click the new button:

The worker will then try to find where you stored a sling and ammo and grab it in its inventory.

[w01fram]

Dungeoneers!

I completed the new light engine =D

Dungeon Colony is a game about Dark Dungeons: one main game element is to create a dark atmosphere that the player can light up using different light sources he/she can craft. If no light is present the Dungeon is pitch black. 

This version completes the upgrade to the new Light Engine v1.0. It completely replaces the previous engine which was a prototype in terms of how the environment should feel. The new light engine uses 2D hard edge shadow blending techniques that distribute light more naturally than the previous engine. Currently, wall corners emit shadows which are generated dynamically.

Here are some resources I used to get my engine going:

• http://blog.greweb.fr/2012/05/illuminated-js-2d-lights-and-shadows-rendering-engine-for-html5-applications/
• http://www.minds-eye-games.com/updates/
• http://lwjgl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Using_Frame_Buffer_Objects_(FBO)
• and this one is really awesome: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/graphics-programming-and-theory/dynamic-2d-soft-shadows-r2032

This first release of the Light Engine will remain as is for a short while to debug any issues with the shadows and to test performance on large maps with many light sources. Since the player can add as many lights as desired, this could bring down the performance. But if it’s stable and performance is acceptable, I will upgrade the engine to include other elements (i.e. soft shadow edges, better blending of multiple lights, colors, sizes, moving lights etc.).

But next, I'll be goin on to fix much needed game controls and add new content.

Let me know what you think please =)

If you haven’t tried out Dungeon Colony yet, download the free alpha at DungeonColony.com. Follow me on Twitter for the latest development updates.

Screenshot of a new light scene:

[Garthy]

I really like the concept, and it is shaping up to be something pretty neat. I hope things go well for you in developing this game.

I have some feedback based on my experiences as a first-time player of the game. Please don't take any of the following as personal criticism, just as a few notes as to what I noticed when starting out with the game. Anyway:

- If the audio fails to initialise correctly under Linux, the program just exits with no message. I found this out by tracking down the installation directory and I found a logfile, and that gave me a hint.

- The audio didn't seem to work properly when it did initialise (I only hear random static sounds, occasionally), but it might just be some oddity of my system.

- In one game the workbench started in almost-dark, and if I hadn't played a previous game I wouldn't have known what to do. I just couldn't see it, unless I adjusted the brightness on my monitor.

- The tutorial for the table needs more detail. It wasn't obvious that I had to lay out a pattern in what seemed to be my storage. Even when I did that, it wasn't obvious I had to click the craftable items button to let me build, but I should only do this after making the pattern.

- Could there be a bit more visual feedback that indicates you have decided to place an item, such as a torch? At the moment you don't know it is done correctly unless you click and wait. Myself, I left-clicked, right-clicked, looked at the quest again, right-clicked again, saw nothing, tried a few other places, and eventually something was placed, but only after I left it a little bit. I've sinced noticed a target icon, but this didn't really stand out for me. Perhaps a silhouette or transparent torch showing the placement would help?

- Having the bench dialog sitting in the middle of your view as you are trying to place an item is a bit strange from an interface point of view. Perhaps it should default to the lower right corner or nearby? I later found the window was draggable, but the initial placement in the middle isn't really the best.

- If you pause the game with no units on the screen, the only visual indication is some small text in the top right that you may not notice. Since you cannot close dialogs when paused, this can get confusing. When I first hit "P", I was wondering if I'd actually paused it or not. Then I wasn't sure if it was unpaused.

- It seems to crash an awful lot. There didn't seem to be a logfile that I could send or similar, and I'm not sure the circumstances that led to the crashes.

- Could the bandit arrival in the easy game be delayed until you've reached say a certain minimum number of items built or similar? A first-time player is going to take far longer than someone who knows their way around the interface.

- It would have been nice to be able to save the game locally, rather than finding out when I attempted to save that the game expected me to have already created a login to save. Personally, this actually really bothered me, and I found myself thinking "If I needed an account to play, I wish I'd been told that up-front". After having lost my previous attempts to random crashes, finding this barrier to saving the game didn't sit well with me.

I hope this helps. Again, none of this is personal criticism, just pointing out the things that I'd noticed as a first-time player.

[w01fram]

...  have some feedback based on my experiences as a first-time player of the game...

@Garthy, thank you very, very much for your feedback; I'm glad to get more linux feedback =).

Here are some comments to your feedback which should let you and everybody have an idea of what to expect:

- Local game save will be introduced at beta. I understand the frustration, so in the meantime I will add a warning message for the least. Server saves are crucial for debugging and game balancing and a requirement during free alpha testing.

- Tutorial & Visual feedback & UI controls (Pause & Frame Dialogs). This feedback helps tremendously. As the designer and even my private alpha testers do not report on such issues anymore, since we are used to the controls.

- I like the idea of enemy arrival based on progress rather time for easy mode. I will add that.

Also, thanks for letting me know about the audio issues, crashes, and other issue. 


*** Check back for new updates. Current Version is 0.1.7.17. I release updates on a weekly basis; sometimes more often than that: Check the devlog at http://dungeoncolony.tumblr.com/

[w01fram]

I entered the current ludum dare competition - October Challenge 2012 to make at least $1 by bringing a game to the market:

If you like the progress of this game and would like to support development, you can pre-purchase a copy of the game for when it's released and set your own price! at http://dungeoncolony.com/Download.

Thanks!! 

[Garthy]

Happy to help. After posting the message I was worried it came off too much as a series of complaints. I'm always worried when I give feedback that it may come across in the wrong way. I should have also said that the reason I tried it out in the first place is that it sounded like a very cool concept, and it looks like it's going in a very neat direction.

I'm happy to be able to provide Linux input. From time to time I forget that I'm running a fairly different system from most people. Thanks for making a Linux port available.

Happy to help with regards to the tutorial and UI. First impressions can count for a lot, especially when a good chunk of people trying it out probably won't know too much about it initially.

Thanks for the explanation re saves. Maybe you should mention the reason for the server game save somewhere, even if it's just during the save dialog. If people know that it's for debugging and balance purposes, and only temporary until later in development, it might make them a bit more comfortable with it. Otherwise, you're left wondering what the catch is such that you can't save locally. I'm not sure if other people would have the same initial reaction as I did, but I imagine that would have set my mind at ease. I might be a minority though, perhaps it's fine- I may be a bit more paranoid than average.

Re enemy arrival, a gameplay-justified reason to delay it is that bandits and invaders might not even care about your little settlement until it has something worthwhile to steal and/or is a threat to them.

I've just finished a day of work, and it's break time, so I think I might give Dungeon Colony another "test". I'll see how I go with a server save this time, perhaps.