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[stevej]

Hey guys,

I've been lurking around for a while but not really posting. I wanted to share my project so that it's recorded here somewhere. "The Deep Paths: Labyrinth of Andokost" - fairly on track for an end of June release.

The blurb:
The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost is a first-person, dungeon crawling RPG, with traditional grid-based movement. Players explore a vast labyrinth filled with dangerous creatures, elaborate puzzles, and hidden treasures, to unravel an ancient mystery and deliver their city from harm’s way.

Featuring rich, 3D environments with an old-school, retro feel, and traditional turn-based combat, this huge adventure pays a modernised homage to classic 80’s and 90’s crawlers, such as “Dungeon Master” and “Lands Of Lore”.

I've been using Unity for about 7 years and this is my latest Unity-based game. It's my third grid-based, first-person dungeon crawler. Possibly my last. We shall see. This one has been a long, hard slog with some major life changes popping up along the way to derail me. I'm pretty proud - and a little amazed - that I've actually managed to get it completed.

The game has been Greenlit so I'll let you guys know when it hits Steam. Maybe there's some closet "Dungeon Master" fans here on the forum that would like to have a crack at it

NOTE: There's a bunch of fresh screenshots on the game's page at my site if you want to check out more (http://www.stevejarman.com/the-deep-paths/).

[ThemsAllTook]

This looks super cool!

[stevej]

This looks super cool!

Thanks man. Much appreciated. With any luck it will play nicely too

[stevej]

Hey guys - a couple of new videos. Aiming for a September 30th release.

TRAILER:

GAMEPLAY DEMO:

[stevej]

Hey guys, just wanted to share that The Deep Paths: Labyrinth Of Andokost is now finally available via Steam and Humble.

Here's a couple of links if anyone would like to check it out:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/375500/
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/the-deep-paths-labyrinth-of-andokost

[ThemsAllTook]

Awesome! Totally going to be playing this as soon as I get a chance.

[Tomma]

Oh! A dungeon crawler

How long does the game last?

[stevej]

Oh! A dungeon crawler

How long does the game last?

...Depends

But my analytics say that the current average playtime is 9.7 hours for the 90 players that have completed it so far.

[ThemsAllTook]

So, I've been playing this for a little while now. It's been pretty enjoyable, but I've run into a serious bug with the save system that has halted my forward progress...

I'd been noticing that the amount of time it took to save my game was getting longer and longer as I got deeper in the dungeon. The most recent one I measured took 19.5 seconds. This was a bit of an annoyance on its own, but workable. However, once I get to level 12 (I had just entered, then did a bunch of backtracking to pick up some things I left behind), I started running into an issue where saving the game didn't seem to complete properly, and left me in an unplayable state. Autosaves when going up or down a level would say they completed, but then the party would still be standing in the same place, and unable to move. Manual saves would also say they completed, but the save window wouldn't actually close. I was able to close it manually and keep playing in this case. This was happening intermittently; maybe once every 4 saves or so.

Worse yet, I discovered that loading any of these saves that didn't appear to complete normally would cause entire floors of the dungeon to be reset. When I left the floor where I'd created the save, all of the equipment I had gathered and monsters that I'd already killed were back, doors were in their initial state, etc.

I'm doing a let's play, and I caught the problem happening on video. It starts here at 28:43, and continues pretty much to the end (you can see the stairs autosave failing at 34:15): https://youtube.com/watch?v=NFq9SiIhrkE

I'm playing on Windows 7. I can provide more detailed specifications if it might help. I looked around on disk to try to find where saves are stored, but didn't have any luck finding them... If you can point me to the right location, I'd be happy to send you my save file.

Hope this helps!

[stevej]

Looking into a similar report for someone else who also mentioned that he thinks level 12 triggered the issue.

Out of curiosity, approximately how many save games do you have?

[ThemsAllTook]

Ah, interesting! I've been cleaning them out as I go along, since the game encourages me to when I get over 5. I currently only have 6 or 7, though I've probably saved over a hundred times throughout my entire playthrough. Not sure if deleted ones make a difference.

[ThemsAllTook]

So, I tried playing again today to see if I could work around this problem by not going to level 12 yet... I continued from my save at the end of level 11, and went to subfloor 11 first, then started going back upward to take care of some things earlier in the dungeon. The problem occurred again when trying to ascend from level 10 to level 9. Looks like it's not just level 12 that's causing it; or at least, I can verify that it occurs on a save that has not yet visited level 12.

[stevej]

Hey thanks for the feedback again. I have yet to reproduce this issue. It's baffling me

I asked about the numbers because I did notice after release that there was a fundamental flaw in the way I was merging save games which was going to mean anyone with a LOT of save games would be in for a bit of a wait while saving. This should never mean that it doesn't work, only that it's slow - hence I put in that silly warning as a small "workaround".

Still trying to figure out the bug - I have some time off now for Christmas, so I'll spend some time on it and hopefully sort it out before the upcoming iOS/Android releases.

[ThemsAllTook]

Great! I'd be happy to help out in any way I can. Again, I'd totally send you my save files, if I just knew where to find them on disk - I looked in all of the normal places I'd expect, but couldn't track them down. I can reproduce the issue pretty quickly after loading one, so if you let me know where they're kept on Windows, maybe they could help in finding the problem.