As discussed on the, uh, “Live Design” portion of our interview on the Immortal Machines podcast back in February, Dungeons of Dredmor is going to have a difficulty level selectable at the start of the game. This should make it a bit more accessible to players both new-to-the-genre and those that play only roguelikes and love only pain.
(David recently did a State of the Dungeon post, and I guess this is my State of the Dungeon.)
For the most part it is rewarding for us, as developers, to hear that people are excited about the work that we’re doing and how badly they want to pre-order our title. (See, we’re listening!) I think that this is true of any creative endeavor: the artist thrives on the energy of his or her public. At the same time, it is also worth noting that it is very easy for a developer to get unexcited about a project when people keep telling you that you’re doing a lousy job. Most developers will tell you that the secret to this is not to listen to people on the Internet – after all, what do they know? That said, most successful developers – Valve springs instantly to mind, under the capable direction of Gabe Newell – will tell you that the success or failure of a game, and of a game company, is dependant upon your fans and your customers. Listen to people, get them excited, and you will prosper. Alienate your fans and you will alienate your customers, and your customers are the people who pay you money (or who will pay you money once we get the pre-orders going.) So that’s why we listen: we secretly want to be Valve. (Who doesn’t? Ben McGraw, our executive producer, recently pointed out that Valve is one of the few game companies in the so-called “Industry” that he would work for. Like indies, Valve brings joy to people. Other companies, he says, just make games.)
So what are our users saying? In a recent poll on our Twitterfeed – which you should all be following, because it really is the best way to keep tabs on us – one user wanted to know more about our development process, and the day-to-day decisions behind game development. We hope that this will oblige you, but today’s blogpost is *really* inspired by something from The Internets.
In a recent online discussion about Dungeons of Dredmor, somebody said – and I paraphrase: “Commercial roguelikes will never be as good as free roguelikes because the multi-year, evolutionary development process that results in amazing games like Crawl will never be commercially viable.” Here we have somebody who likes roguelikes, and who should like Dredmor. Hopefully, he will support us – here is a man, after all, who could be a customer, and any failing to attain him as a customer is a failing on our part as a business – but his concern is legitimate. Can a commercial roguelike be as good as Crawl, or Nethack? Well, I think we can… but let’s talk about this.
(from the comments, but I’m copying and pasting it here. — N.)
Two people have asked so far: will there be a 64-bit Linux version of Dungeons of Dredmor?
Short answer: “Maybe.”
Longer answer: “Sure, but only if you’re okay with an EXE where you can’t save. Fortunately, this is a roguelike.”
Longest answer: I’m still looking into this one.
I have answers for a few questions that may be kicking around. Read on! (And here’s an image of various skill icons to distract you.)
So how is Dredmor coming along?
More slowly than we hoped, but steadily.
A mighty sewer-brew toast to the birthday of Matthew, our esteemed sound-crafter who toils in a meat-abusing quest to please your auditory needs!
We’ve just declared Dungeons of Dredmor beta 0.94.1.
It’s a beautiful thing how much this has come together. I can see it looking back just a week — and two weeks, a month, the changes are huge! We have a real game here which is almost ready.
What’s new in this version? Oh, all sorts of things: new stairs that aren’t awkward, custom scripted rooms (which means we can do Very Silly Things), lots of UI polish, lots of new dungeon content, many more varieties of monsters — and spellcasting monsters. Tons of bug-fixes. Lots of new sounds. Players actually getting to level 4 or 5 of the dungeon. Lots of new things.
We’re confident enough to start sending copies out to a couple press outfits and we’ll be mining the beta list for testers as soon as we figure out a protocol for all of this.
Yeah, it’s all a bit of a blur right now. My mind is still decompressing from this last crunch cycle. (And shall be back at it soon enough, I assure you.)
So here, have some pictures.
We have all kinds of tooltips loafing around our UI just waiting to fill your head with baseless hearsay and conjecture.
We’ve finished Dredmor 0.94, and are busy trying to figure out what we need to fix for Dredmor 0.94.1 (a handful of minor bugs that weren’t worth stopping the build today for) and 0.95 (???) Based on where we are right now – the start of the game is looking good and polished, but the end game and middle game is still in need of work. We’re looking at how to address that with 0.95, but here’s where it gets encouraging: most of what is left in the TODO for the game – the entire game! – is scripting and content creation. Not much code appears to be needed from me, which leaves me relegated to bug fixes, little pieces of polish, and of course tackling some of the last few little design issues. I’m sure that my bugtracker will fill up again, but it’s very nice having only seven code issues sitting between me and shipping.
Be advised: we may start mining the beta list shortly for more testers. You lucky, lucky people.
April 1st, 2011 – Gaslamp Games, an independent game development company based out of British Columbia, Canada, has regrettably announced that its upcoming Roguelike Dungeon Crawler, “Dungeons of Dredmor”, is not an April Fools’ Day Prank. In fact, the game exists, is being actively worked on, and is still on track for a release on major digital gaming distribution services some time in April 2011. Members of the gaming press, understandably incredulous that anybody is actually trying to make a roguelike that makes money, have recently been claiming that Dredmor is an elaborate practical joke on the PC gaming community; Gaslamp’s cofounders have therefore been forced out of their bunkers and parents’ basements to inform the public that this is not the case.
“Yes,” said Nicholas Vining, Gaslamp’s technical director, “we at Gaslamp genuinely believe that you will actually want a game with 8-bit graphics, stored in antiquated file formats, where you run around a dungeon and eat Lutefisk while trying to kill an evil sorcerer. We deeply regret the error of our ways.” David Baumgart, Gaslamp’s technical art director, was heard to gnash his teeth and wail in dulcet tones at this pronouncement, before running out of the office to seal his claim to fame as the independent game community’s version of Toulouse-Lautrec. Daniel Jacobsen, Gaslamp’s technical business director, was technically unavailable for comment, being technically asleep at the time, lulled into peaceful slumber by the soothing songs of the Space Whale.
“We understand that this is a painful time,” Vining added, “and that Dungeons of Dredmor is probably the cruelest non-April Fools’ Day Joke not committed in the history of not-jokes. We apologize to our audience for not tricking them, and for actually making this thing, but we actually believed that you wanted to play a game with eighty-seven bazillion cheeses in it. I have erred grievously in mixing my business projects with my personal hobbies, and my fascination for the bovine product has doomed the company and sullened its reputation by casting it as nothing more than a band of merry pranksters. I feel that this announcement, clarifying that we have actually built this game in deathly, earnest seriousness, will go a long way towards improving our company’s reputation as being perfectly serious as well as my reputation as, technically, Gaslamp’s technical technical director.”
“Woe is the life of the starving technical art director artist,” Baumgart commented miserably and technically. “I told you we should have ripped off Minecraft.” The Dungeons of Dredmor codebase was unavailable for comment, having impaled itself on a version control system some hours earlier and remaining in critical condition.
Dungeons of Dredmor will be available for purchase in case anybody wants to buy it. The game is rated “T” for technical.
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