Well, folks, we made it to 2012. Barely, but we made it. For those of you worried about the Mayan Doom Prophecy – fear not! Like all good Canadians, we scoff at your doom prophecies, and know that there are in fact 100 years until the arrival of the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx.
Our contact e-mail is completely jammed up, and we’re trying to work through everything, but here’s some news and status updates on things.
First off: the hotfixes that we put out earlier for various save issues over Christmas are now live on Steam and Desura. We’ll be putting another one up later this week to clean up an additional three crash issues that have reared their ugly heads. If you installed a hotfix from our webpage, we recommend uninstalling local content and making sure you grab a fresh install from Steam. If it does *not* say something like “1.0.9 REVISION B” on the title screen, something’s gone wrong.
There have been a few reports of older save games still being broke on OS X; we’re on it. That said, we have also heard reports of older save games working just fine on OS X, so… it’s a bit puzzling, really.
Second off: Desura and HIB users who want to purchase the Realm of the Diggle Gods, we are working on this but have no ETAs yet. As soon as we know how we’re going to do this and have it set up, we’ll let you know. Watch this space.
Third off: with Dredmor and the expansion pack behind us, our plan at this point is to finish stabilizing any last issues caused by the 1.0.7->1.0.8->1.0.9 patch cycle, and then to keep proceeding with smaller, more incremental patches. Hopefully we should be as stable at the end of this week as we were when we released 1.0.6 (voted “Most Stable Patch of 2011” by our user base.) Balancing and fixes are a continual process, and we’re taking our inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in terms of how we’d like Dredmor to continue evolving. (This does not include a) a hat store, b) becoming free-to-play, c) “Meet the Diggle.”) We’re also looking at the mod support that we put in with release 1.0.7; people have made some *very* cool things, and we are going to continue to provide support for this developing part of the community. Additionally, we will be starting a “mod spotlight” feature on the blog, featuring a mod selected once… every so often… by our community moderator, Mathieu “Daynab” Dugon. We should have the first one up sometime next week.
Finally: not content to rest on our laurels, this week has officially marked the start of work on Project Odin. I am up to my neck in network code and the innards of Google V8, David has been drawing concept art and running art tests, and Daniel is doing The Dark Paperwork. What are we up to? Well… watch this space for hints.
Thanks for the update on RDG4HIB. No matter how brief, it’s always appreciated.
No hat store and not free-to-play, fair enough, but no Meet the Diggle, even for you, that’s way too far. I, as a player of DoD, hereby demand a Meet the Diggle movie!
In other news; good luck with the mod support! 🙂
Good times ahead from the looks of it, looking forward to a more intentionally functioning Diggle Gods and surely a nicely growing assortment of mods alongside said fixes and enhancements.
Awesome, I am glad all of the bugs are being worked out, I am happy that I can play Dredmor again. And I am very excited to see what you guys make next.
+1 for “meet the diggle”.
🙁 I had the hotfixed version and it worked, but Steam updated me to 1.0.9 Rev B and now I’m back to crashing whenever I load my save. I’m on OS X. This is even after uninstalling and reinstalling from Steam. Re-applying the hotfix doesn’t appear to fix it. Looks like I’m SOL.
Send me that save? contact@gaslampgames.com and mark that it’s you from the comments so it doesn’t get too lost.
Where is the manual for this game? I can’t figure out basic stuff like how to throw items, and there doesn’t seem to be any documentation online, or ingame.
There is a tutorial that teaches basic controls on the start menu. And if you’re on Steam make sure to die at some point during the tutorial for an achievement. Why? I haven’t the faintest clue. lol
I got the steam version working nativly on linux, though since the HIB4 has no more .deb files you need 3 different version for a “proper” install hack…
1st: install the version 1.07.deb file
2nd: then you need to install DoD+RotDG steam version 1.09 on windows
3th “install” version 1.09 from HIB4 (note they were to lazy to repackage everything, so its a zip file, you have to copy everything to /opt/Dredmor/ and don’t forget execution rights to the 3 files)
4th: copy whole dir from windows steam to /opt/Dredmor and give proper admin rights
or was step 3 and 4 reverse order :P… can’t remember…
however since there is no linux hotfix out yet… you will get a lot of lvl 1 quests, but no way to finish them…
then again maybe they did update the linux files you get with the steam install (haven’t tried this)
please do package the files properly for linux!
else you won’t get the launcher icon and stuff…
We have no plans to actively maintain .deb packages for Dredmor for all distributions at this time. It’s just too time consuming building and testing everything across multiple distributions.
(Although, that said, we will be ensuring that the Humble Bundle folks give you correct tarballs for Linux, at least.)
As an alternative: seriously, why not give Desura a go? The HiB should have given you a Desura key, there’s STILL no DRM, and it’s pretty good, all things considered.
isn’t there a way to automate the build process in such a way that the .rpm .deb … just come roll out automatically?
(on a more selfish note i only care about the .deb and .exe :P)
guess there is no way to transfer the expansion from steam to dresura?
The .tgz packages work fine on Ubuntu & Debian, and other Debian derivatives, and they have the advantage of not requiring root to install it (which is *big* for me.)
While debs are nice, they are not necessary. If there’s one Linux build, please let it be a .tgz.
@jrodman: Play through the tutorial if you haven’t :-). To drop items, simply open your inventory, and click them once to pick them up, and then once on the ground next to you to drop them. If you have questions like this it is probably better (faster reply) to ask them on the forums…
Drop and throw are not the same thing.
Dropping items means putting them down. Throwing items means sending them far away from you, to land elsewhere or hit someone.
The tutorial doesn’t cover very much. Really, where is the manual?
Crawl, Angband, nethack, rogue, moria, and so on all have manuals, and cost nothing. Surely we can get a manual for a commercial game.
This game is all about experimentation and risking death while learning how things work, so it’s not going to explain everything, but the tutorial *does* teach all basic controls. You learn how to throw during the bomb throwing scenario.
If you have an item that can be thrown in your backpack, right-click it. Or place it on the left side hot bar and right-click it there. The item should show up as the active item next to the skill bar. Then right click a creature and voila! Bombs away!
MY HIB page still has 1.0.9 on it, no revision B. When can we expect that, because I don’t really want to install Desura just for that.
This is MADNESS!…NO.. THIS IS…CAKETOWN!
MEETE THE DIGGLE NOAWWW, tf2 IS amaZIn’
Is there some place we could see a list of what all got fixed/changed in the update? I played a bit and did notice some of the more obvious fixes (like for the load game crashes and quest mob issues), but I was wondering if there was a more comprehensive list out there.
I promise it’s in the tutorial. Right click a throwable item (or, if you have a crossbow equipped, an arrow), and then right click on an enemy to use it. Same goes for magic.
I’ll second that question above: I’m an OSX user who purchased via the Humble Bundle, and I have the save problem at the moment. I’m not concerned if I have to start over a char or two, but I would like to get the Rev B fix.
Any update would be great! Thanks!
And one more for 1.0.9B on HIB, Linux version.
(And have you ever read Desura terms of use? There’s no way I’m using it for anything I’ve paid for.)
… I must say, I haven’t. What’s the egregious bit?
This gets ranty, but you said that you didn’t see where the issue was. I would have just said “some people prefer not to use Desura” but you’re making us back it up.
From the Desura T&C’s:
“Where you have purchased a Subscription, you may access the relevant Application through the use of your Account while that Application remains available on the System. A Subscription does not permit you to make copies of the Application or to use the Application separately from the System. Your use of an Application is also subject to any licence terms included with the Application.”
They say there’s no DRM, but that’s because it’s in the T&C’s rather than the binary. If an application becomes no longer available on the System, I lose my access, DRM or no DRM.
I don’t rent games, I buy them. I expect them to work in 2 days, 2 months, 2 years, 2 decades, not “until Desura stops being a viable service.”
I also don’t buy things based on the promise that if the service shuts down they’ll open it up or send a patch. What if I’m not on the internet when that happens & miss the patch?
I’m hugely into Free Software, except that I buy binary games. As a result I’m really choosy about how I spend my money. I have given the creators of World of Goo fits about the DRM terms in their license, even if there isn’t any in the code. License is just as important as code – if you say you can do something, I expect that at some point you will do it.
Short version: I do not like it, Sam I Am.
1.09 HIB is only playable straight through; any savegame loading segfaults. I’m done. The game is fun, but it’s not viable for the amount of time I have in the evenings.
May your future games live up to the promise Dredmor presented.
*flounce*
Yeah, Desura’s terms are flatly unacceptable.
I pointed this out to them a maybe strongly worded, but definitely civil email, and they replied essentially trying to claim that the license doesn’t say what it very obviously says.
Legal terms are important, and they need to be gotten right. Hand-waving around the problem discourages trust.
They need to update those terms, because it seems clear that they do not match the intent of the site. Providing a simple version in non-lawyerese is also a nice touch.
I have experienced some crashes.
That’s all to be expected, but I do recommend that you make the game save the character upon completion of character generation.
You can save and reload the game whenever you want to (that is, of course, until you die if you’ve chosen Permadeath), so make a save after you enter the dungeon if that’s what you want. Save often! And to avoid most crashes, check the bug forum for a list of bugs.
I also highly recommend copying the DoD save folder to somewhere else periodically so that you can retry whatever it is that may have crashed it and possibly even send it to the Gaslamp team if it is an unknown bug. Save game folder in Windows is located under My Documents/GaslampGames.
Seriously, V8? After writing Dredmor in C++ using SDL’s 2D parts, like proper programmers, you are now looking at JavaScript? You do realise it sucks, right? It’s… well, it’s JavaScript. Enough said.
I respect you for being such a small team and shipping something on three platforms which does not use Unity, Flash, .Net or something derived from one of the Quake engines, but … JavaScript? Just say no!
The next game requires some sort of a scriptable component. The shortlist for scripting languages that meet my design criteria is very small: Lua, Angelscript, and V8. Angelscript didn’t agree with me for some reason I can’t remember, and Lua is too much of a toy language in many ways for it to be useful. Also, the syntax is appalling. That leaves us with V8.
In particular, here’s the issue. V8 and Javascript are just about the only embeddable thing that has what we’re looking for in terms of a performance guarantee; namely, an decent incremental garbage collector. I don’t care about the actual speed of V8 – especially as it will be likely running in its own thread, and the game logic for the next game runs at about 10Hz anyway – but I do care about the game stalling when we hit a GC. Google put a lot of effort into optimizing the V8 GC *specifically* for real-time applications (admittedly, real time web applications, but still) and it shows.
Rest assured, it’s *only* going to be as the scripting language. Everything else is written in good old-fashioned C++ and OpenGL as it was in the days of old.
Interesting to hear you say Lua is a “toy” language in comparison to JavaScript. JavaScript has always seemed like a toy to me, but then I don’t really know enough about Lua to comment; I have vague memories of hearing about its use in a number of big titles, though, so I find your comment a bit surprising.
I suppose to some extent, an embedded scripting language is only as useful as the interfaces it’s been provided with for interacting with the host. That said, JavaScript’s type system & object model really rub me up the wrong way, though I’m no expert in it.
On a serious note, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. 🙂
Huh, I always found LUA a rather huge things. It has been used in many AAA titles, as well as creating smaller games in it.
If it’s not too much bother, could you point out where LUA lacks compared to JavaScript? I would really like to know, since I have never worked that much with LUA.
Just to say I’ve been losing many hours to your brilliantly addictive and just plain brilliant game. It’s immense fun.
Also, I’m all for anything called Project Odin. Anything Norse has to be good.
All roguelikes are about learning how things work while risking your life and frequently dying. However, pretty much all of them come with a manual. You don’t expect the manual to tell you every fact about the game, but listing controls and giving basic pointers is appropriate.
Here is an example:
http://rephial.org/wiki/UserManual/
Angband is a much more complex game interfacewise, so the manual is fairly large. A manual of this size is not necessary for all games, but covering the interface is.