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[quantumpotato]

Thank you! Greenworks looks promising.
 I've heard that Steam players really-really like their achievements, do you think it's a requirement for a game on Steam?

[jeremiah]

I've wondered that a lot and haven't found any definitive answers.

Achievements are good for:

• Quick statistics on how far your players are progressing and where the difficulty spikes are
• Hinting at interesting corners of your game that players might not find on their own
• Keep people motivated and give them goals

I personally don't think they're a requirement, but if you have an easy way to generate the art assets you might as well.

[jeremiah]

Working on prettying up the menus in the game. They've been really basic and kind of ugly so far (rounded corners with 1px thin white border, that's it).

So this is what I have so far. Quite elaborate, maybe too much so? I'll have to plug it into the game and see if I get used to it.

[quantumpotato]

tigs site error loading that, try imgur for https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKIer4aW4AAqh0A.jpg

[jeremiah]

OST

Golden Krone Hotel now has an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza! You might know Christopher from the KeeperRL soundtrack, but he also made our delightful chiptune title track and trailer music. We've been working on redoing all the game's music for a few months and it's finally done.

If, however, you want to switch things up or just get nostalgic for the old music (which has a more ambient horror focus), you can toggle back and forth between both soundtracks in the Options menu.

Despair mode
Even if you're not quite ready for the game to get harder, I know you will be eventually. Despair is a new unlockable, unfair, and unforgiving difficulty mode. It comes with its own redone title screen featuring a gnarly remix, blood moon, and custom font. I have to be honest: this is easily the most badass thing in the game.



Visual tweaks

Stained glass has been toned down and looks less like "unicorn puke." Menus have been visually reworked and made Fancy!

There's also a good number of bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who reported them!

• The game now features an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza. The old soundtrack can be switched in as well.
• New difficulty: DESPAIR MODE
• The credits menu has been totally reworked into a "crawl" and now displays after a win (also available from Options)
• Reworked menus
• Stained glass no longer looks like "unicorn puke"
• Difficulty can now be selected with keyboard (left/right)
• Drawing ASCII windows differently depending on their orientation
• Debug menu has been made more difficult to accidentally access (now requires '~' + 'debug').
• Accessing the debug menu (or running console commands) prevents a run from having a morgue file saved. This should prevent at least one category of "cheat" morgue files from popping up on the leaderboards.
• Fixed an issue with sliding on ice diagonally
• Fixed a morgue display issue when dying of starvation
• Fixed a major bug where reading a book the same turn one dies turns you immortal.
• Any unbound commands (which had their keys stolen from another remap) are randomly assigned keys, which should prevent a bug where the game wouldn't start with unbound keys.
• Fixed an issue with potion deduction. You should be able to deduce identities more often.
• Fixed a game locking bug with Examine mode in the tutorial. Also now easier to escape from menus in the tutorial.
• Fixed an issue with MIASMA that wasn't hurting enemies unless they were directly hit.
• Fixed an ugly display issue with spell icons on Grimoire menu

[quantumpotato]

How is Despair mode harder?

Also.. curious what version of electron & greenworks & node you are using? (Compile issues over here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46549838/confusing-nodue-module-error )

[jeremiah]

Despair mode: enemies deal 50% more damage, their crits are much higher, sunlight/water damage is doubled, blood dries up quicker, vampire HP drops faster. I think that's about it?

I have not compiled greenworks myself and am using the release binaries: https://github.com/greenheartgames/greenworks/releases

I believe I'm using nw.js 23.7 for Windows and 20.3 for Mac/Linux. With those releases, you have to make sure you have the right combination of greenworks, NW/electron, and steam SDK. I wish I could help more, but it looks like you have some comments on your question at least.

[quantumpotato]

Despair mode: enemies deal 50% more damage, their crits are much higher, sunlight/water damage is doubled, blood dries up quicker, vampire HP drops faster. I think that's about it?

I have not compiled greenworks myself and am using the release binaries: https://github.com/greenheartgames/greenworks/releases

I believe I'm using nw.js 23.7 for Windows and 20.3 for Mac/Linux. With those releases, you have to make sure you have the right combination of greenworks, NW/electron, and steam SDK. I wish I could help more, but it looks like you have some comments on your question at least.

Greenworks: Thanks! Yeah, definitely have to use the exact version. I see a "module not exported" in my greenworks console, but the Steam API seems to be responsive. It hasn't saved an achievement yet but it gives an error. I am going to try uploading to steam, launching within steam then making achievement to see if that fixes it.

Difficulty: Cool, sounds brutal

[jeremiah]

Crunch time. I'm wrapping up the final update to the game this weekend. We release out of EA on October 26.

I planned a little "release party" that night:



http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/releaseparty/

Should be fun. If nothing else, it was damn fun making the site for it.

[jeremiah]

Golden Krone Hotel has been released! 20% discount for the launch

Come join our launch party tonight: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/releaseparty/

[quantumpotato]

There are 2 jeres. Which # are you?

[jeremiah]

jere#7969 ?

In any case, I think your message was well after the release party. But feel free to come hang in the discord any time!

[jeremiah]

Released the soundtrack as separate DLC:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/738980/Golden_Krone_Hotel__Original_Soundtrack_by_Christopher_Loza/

HOLY HELL was that confusing. It took me like 2 weeks to sort it out. The docs encourage you to have the DLC managed along with your base game.

Well, in hindsight, I think that means you can't give it separate permissions. I struggled for days to figure out how to actually get the DLC working without adding it to the base game package (which of course grants it for free to anyone with the game). I did in fact try that once and then was shocked to find out you can't revoke it! Even if the DLC is unreleased, you can never remove depots from a released game. So I had to beg someone on the developer forums to fix it up for me.

When I posted again asking for how it actually worked, crickets. I got it working by using the option "Manage DLC separately", even though the docs say that's only useful if you have a lot of depots. 

[quantumpotato]

Thanks for the tip!
Congrats on Steam launch!

[jeremiah]

Running a 3 day competition for Valentine's day.

Details: http://steamcommunity.com/games/497800/announcements/detail/1658883402140670961

Leaderboards: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php

In other news, the game hit the "Very Positive" threshold! 



I have to admit to a bit of luck in reaching 100%. Currently there is one negative review, but it's a key review and not counted in the regular total. One negative review was due to technical issues but the author was impressed with my quick response and flipped it. One other negative review was reported and removed. I know the negative reviews are coming eventually, but this is nice for now.