Category Archives: Dungeons of Dredmor

Patch 1.0.5 Is Now Up

September 6, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

The Windows version of Dungeons of Dredmor has now been updated to patch 1.0.5. (OS X users: we’re having one last Lion Issue, so we are working hard to resolve this; you guys should have your patch either later today or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow.)

Let us know what you think in the comments. Also please remember that this is not intended to be the end-all and be-all of fixes; this simply addresses everything we got done. (I have another one hundred and thirty seven issues, of varying levels, in the bugtracker, so we’ll be addressing your favourite issues as soon as we can.)

Changelog below. We’re pretty sure we did some other stuff that we’re forgetting.

EDIT: There will also be a leaderboard wipe in a bit.

EDIT EDIT: The leaderboards have been reset. Have fun, folks.

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Patch 1.0.4 Status & The Road Ahead

August 31, 2011 by David Baumgart

EDIT: Okay, final patch release date for 1.0.4 can now be confirmed as Tuesday morning – the morning of September 6th, 2011. We’re putting one last beta out even as I speak, and the actual release candidate will be sent to Valve over the weekend. Why are we doing this? Well, frankly, because it’s a very bad idea to ever release a patch on a Friday. That’s just asking for something to go wrong and for everybody to be frustrated over the long weekend. So go enjoy your last few moments with Dredmor 1.0.3, and throw some Lutefisk on the grill.  Next week, there’s a whole new Dredmor waiting for you. — N.

We’ve been fairly quiet on the blog so I figured I should fill everyone in on progress on various fronts. Let’s dive in.

Dungeons of Dredmor patch 1.0.4 status

We released the second iteration of the 104 to testers yesterday and it seems pretty stable. Lots and lots of small fixes, tweaks, and rebalancing plus a few new features (like the “digest” button), some new content, and some new achievements (pictured above).

There are also known smaller issues, tweaks, fixes, and new content that aren’t going into the 1.0.4 patch because we want to ship a patch sooner rather than never. We’ll push them to the next patch. Your patience in all of this is very much appreciated; we’re a tiny team.

We’ll try to assemble a comprehensive list of changes when the actual patch ships — this may be as soon as Friday, if all goes well.

Gaslamp Games & offices

Nicholas is moved to Vancouver and he and I are now set up in a shared office space – naturally, with a coffee machine running at all time. Expect crazy things. We’ll have to post a picture as soon as we remember to do so and aren’t all busy with this patch.

We’ve also got income coming in now so we can focus our efforts on Gaslamp (read as: Nicholas doesn’t have to sell his belongings to make rent).

Buying Dungeons of Dredmor via non-Steam distribution channels

Is a real thing that really exists and it’s up next on the to-do after patch 104 ships. Deals have been made and will be announced when the time is right.

Dungeons of Dredmor on Linux

Is also a thing that will happen after patch 104 (and of course requires the above non-Steam distribution channels because there’s no Linux Steam … yet?

Dungeons of Dredmor patch 1.0.5

Looks like it’ll be UI upgrades, some fun content, the usual round of fixes and rebalancing, and official/useful modding support seems likely. We’re aiming to fire off a patch every two weeks and I hope we get the process smooth enough to be able to do so. At the very least there won’t be delays like that between 103 and 104 (as that was due to a move and sorting out how we can actually pay ourselves).

The future of the Dungeons of Dredmor looks bright. Or dark and murky, if that’s what a dungeon is supposed to be. Whatever – point is that we’re getting on track with running a business and working out how to systematically patch (and work on Project Odin) in an organized manner without random stuff exploding. One step at a time.

If there’s anything else y’all would like to know feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll answer if I can.

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Penny Arcade Expo! Dinner and Drinks!

August 24, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

As stated in our previous post, we will be attending Penny Arcade Expo. As we are curious as to what sort of people actually play Dredmor, we propose an exercise called:

DINNER AND DRINKS WITH GASLAMP (but mainly drinks)

To participate in this exercise: join us this Saturday, at 7 PM on Level 6 of the Convention Center, inbetween the Unicorn and Serpent Theatres and in front of the “PC Area”. (You may consult this map here – if you wish.) We will have some sort of a sign. Once enough people have assembled, we will be trooping off to get dinner and/or drinks – most likely at the Tap House, but somewhere else if we overflow that possibility or if they’re too busy – and the night will progress from there. As an added bonus, you can put your name on our list and receive an Exciting Achievement in Dungeons of Dredmor that will ONLY be available by completing the Drinking and Dining Exercise.

See you there! Please RSVP in the comments if you are going to attend, so that we have some sort of an estimate as to how many people are going to show up. Oh whatever, just show up and we’ll see what happens…

EDIT: To confirm – it is this Saturday.

EDIT, EDIT: for those keeping score at home, we will hopefully be receiving beta testing keys tomorrow. As soon as we have them, we will start distributing them to our humble applicants. We’ll let you know.

EDIT x3: Patch 1.0.4 is now in beta. So far, it has been a glorious trainwreck – so going as well as I had expected. Given our late start – and no doubt impending hangovers – I don’t think we’ll have this done by Monday; that said, I’m hopeful still for September 1st.

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Patch Status Update; Penny Arcade Expo

August 21, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

A user on Twitter has pointed out that it’s been three weeks since we put up a patch status update. What’s going on, Gaslamp? So here’s the approximate status and time line.

The patch, as it stands, is done. I’m waiting for one piece of art from David, and he assures me that he can paint it tomorrow, but I’m ready to drop it in when he says he’s done it. We’ve spent the weekend testing it internally, and are going to pack it up and send it out for external beta testing on Tuesday. As soon as the external beta testers give it the all-clear, we will fire it your way. There may be a second call for external beta testers next week; I need to get everything sorted out. I would like the beta to take about a week, so that I can put it up next Monday. There will be a content patch thereafter.

Thanks for sticking with us while we get this sorted out. The entire mess has been complicated by my moving, badly, and thus not having a real office until last Wednesday. Nonetheless, David and I are in the same building again, and we have plans to entertain you. I still don’t have internet at the new apartment yet, mainly due to working on this patch, so no doubt I will be in the office a lot until I manage to get that sorted out. 🙂 I need my fix.

In other news, various Gaslampers will be trickling down to Seattle this weekend for the grand and glorious Nerdstravaganza called Penny Arcade Expo. I will be there Saturday and some of Sunday, as I expect to be sorting out patch stuff all next week. Daniel will be wandering around, having a good time, and terrorizing Seattle in his [and Nicholas’s -Ed.] RV, “The Diggle Express.” If anybody would be interested in a Dredmor meet-up, or if anybody would be interested in having a beer with us, feel free to comment on this post and we’ll try to sort out something for Saturday. (As part of our deconstructionist approach to Achievements on Steam, there will be a special Dredmor achievement exposed to those of you who have been drinking with Gaslamp.)

There’s been a lot of other stuff happening in our three weeks of radio silence. There should be new distribution deals announced, including the long-awaited Linux port, in the next few weeks, and we will also be unleashing some sort of Merchandising Effort from the Dwarven Mountainhomes. Watch this space…

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Gaslamp Interview on QubeTubers – Live!

August 7, 2011 by David Baumgart

We’re streaming a live-play with Gaslamp interview and commentary on QubeTubers right now. Well. In a minute or three. Edit: Or more like 30 mintues, at 1pm PST. We’re not good on the time zone conversion.

And we’re on!

Go here to watch and listen: http://qubetubers.com/index.php

Will update this post with more relevance, archived links, etc when those happen. I should get back to setting up now.

Edit: And we’re off. As of like two hours ago.

But they’re going on for what looks like another 45 minutes (as of 4:15pm PST), and check out the Qubetubers work general, they’ve been doing some very good stuff for indie games and charity and general silliness. We had lots of fun rambling and not really answering questions during our interview and look forward to doing more interviews in the future. Thanks to the Qubetubers for a good time all around!

Another edit [which was edited again]:

You can watch the recorded video of Dredmor gameplay w/ audio interview overtop via this link to the youtube posting. We kinda pick up right in the middle of the action but it makes as much sense as it can. Eventually.

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp, Interviews | 10 Comments

Patch Status

July 28, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

Hi, folks!

We’re still grinding away on the next patch; this is slightly complicated by the fact that I am moving on Sunday, so my apartment furniture consists of nothing but my desk, chair, and a never-ending sea of boxes. There are two practical sides to this, however. The first is that I will be in the same city as David, which can only increase The Madness. Gaslamp will have shared offices again! David may yet drink decent coffee, if I have anything to do with it! And so forth. The second consequence is that I was originally slated to begin a Ph.D in Computer Science as of September; this has now been pushed back to January 2012 so we can wrestle the madness a little bit more, and ensure that Gaslamp is well set up to work on the next thing. (Who knows if I make it there in January, either. At the rate things are going, all bets are off. Dredmor may have spelled the end of my academic career… or not. Who knows. It worked for Jeff Vogel…)

That said: our planned next revision hums along at a good pace. My working notes on the things that have actually been fixed are below: subtract these from the most recent list we put up to get an approximate idea of the amount of work is remaining. I’m considering splitting this into smaller patches, so we can get this out sooner rather than later; at the same time, I want to make sure that we … well, for a lack of a better term, that we get everybody’s pet issues. 🙂 If you want to participate in our Exciting Dredmor Blooper Beta Bonus Round, send us an e-mail to ilovetocrash@gaslampgames.com (really) and tell us why you want to be one of our Exciting Patch Testers. Preference will be given to those who participated in the beta, to those who have been active in the community with assembling bug reports and tracking things, and to those with existing QA experience.

Okay. List of things we’ve done so far… is below.

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Obligatory Press Post

July 22, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

As game developers, we have to put up links to our Press Clippings on the company weblog so we have some place to send our parents (who still don’t believe we have real jobs.) So now, it’s time for the Gloat Walk:

Rock Paper Shotgun: “I survived the nameless horrors summoned by the Shrine of Eyeballs. I fought cybernetic aliens, hulking Djinn, moustache golems. I even survived the Monster Zoo, the dreaded room packed wall-to-wall with bloodthirsty enemies – twice. I didn’t survive the blade trap…”

Press X or Die: “It’s a good sign when you’d rather play the game you’re supposed to review than actually review it. I am afraid to run Dungeons of Dredmor again because I’ll spend another hour on it (at best). Sadly, I had to get screenshots for the article, so I lost another 2 hours summoning moustache golems and killing diggles.”

Game Informer: “Dungeons of Dredmor isn’t Diablo III. It’s not even Dungeon Siege III, but it makes no pretensions about it. The game barely takes itself seriously enough to have proper swords, much less tell an epic story or rewrite the rules of a genre. Gaslamp Games’ mission was to make a fun, accessible, lighthearted dungeon crawl with enough interesting mechanics to make exploring the game’s systems as intriguing as diving through its dungeon. Dungeons of Dredmor is a solid success in those terms, and easily exceeds expectations for its five-dollar price tag.”

Game Pro: “I’m quite taken with this roguelike; it feels like a game that came out of nowhere and hits all of the dungeon-crawl buttons — steep challenge, lots of loots, and a ton of monsters. Throw in its humor and soundtrack and you’ve got a roguelike that should appeal to anyone who likes a good dungeon-crawl.”

and Wired, of all people, featured us in their list of “7 Fantastical Indie RPGs worth playing” (alongside such distinguished company as Recettear and Cthulhu Saves The World.)

Have you written about Dredmor? We’d love to hear from you. Would you like to write about Dredmor? Send us e-mail to our increasingly-buried contact list, and we’ll see if we can help you out. Want to talk Dredmor? Same deal.

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Laundry Day

July 21, 2011 by Nicholas Vining

“When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.” — Ancient Diggle Proverb

Today, I caught up on my sleep and did all my laundry. Small things, but necessary, especially if you have ever seen what three weeks of laundry looks like. I also started taking stock of the bug pile. So since you’re all wondering, here are some Mild Announcements.

– We have hired Chris Triolo to do some art for us; in particular, he will be providing us with a female hero for Dredmor (Something that I have always wanted) and a handful of new monsters. Chris has promised to “rein in his salty language”, whatever that means. Welcome aboard, Chris – and just remember: when the new hideous demons start killing people, it’s Your Fault. Chris will be working on these as soon as he gets some of his other contract work wrapped up, and we look forward to letting you all play Dredmor as a woman with massive eyebrows.

– We have gotten Valve to set us up with an opt-in beta program; particularily active community users, and general masochists, will be invited to participate in our Advance Patch Testing Program. More on this as soon as we get it set up.

– I now have a working Mac development environment of my very own, which means Mac users will be getting the same level of love as their Windows brethren from now on. (Linux users, we love you too. I hope to have some good things to say about this soon enough.)

– I now have a version of Dredmor that can test three hundred save games for compatibility in five minutes. (Seriously? This is the best thing ever.)

I have also gone through the bug and balance pile and have started working out what is going to get into the next patch. The following is a draft list of what we are planning to address, collectively, for 1.0.4. If your favourite bug or balance issue isn’t here, don’t worry – we are thinking about it, and we will address That Lame Skill You Really Want To Love eventually. I don’t have an ETA for when we will get through this list, but I will let you know. Real life – plus Company Drinking and Cigars on Saturday – will delay the start of work on this, so realistically I will start working on the next patch on Monday. The biggest issue towards getting this done in a timely manner is that, as previously mentioned, I am moving on the first of August. This, traditionally, means chaos, but it also means David and I will be sharing an office space again… and this can only mean more madness that will please the Elder Gods.

Ye olde Patch 1.0.4 issue list is below:

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