Dwelvers (former Dungeon Dwellers)

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Seriously Unserious
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

No Bit, these are evil, violent dudes, they'll want to watch wrestling or MMA or something much more violent then football, of any style. :P

@Rasmus: How about the idea of some enemy invasions not being so obvious as a pack of warriors wading in though the spilled blood of your minions? In other words, enemy spies infiltrating your lair and trying to spy on you, where your rooms are, mapping your dungeon, where you station guards, barracks, routes patrols take, etc, and even attempting to do sabotage or incite your minions into misbehavior, such as agitating in a crowded area such as a full barracks or tavern, or bribing your creatures to side with the enemy when they attack, or other such skulduggery.

I don't remember seeing anything like that in the old DK games, so that would be one way you could place your own mark on DD, and differentiate it more from the old DD games and the other similar project that's also going on...
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Bit »

Is it possible to describe very short how the invaders acted in DK ? I never played it...
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

Enemies in the DK games were either Goodly Heroes or creatures of rival Keepers. Heroes would enter through portals from the surface or be ready-spawned in rooms in the dungeon (sometimes there'd be an actual hero fort - a walled, tiled area like a dungeon but heroes aren't contrlled by a Keeper so don't build rooms or have a Dungeon Heart or anything like that). Heroes entering through a Hero Portal would just make a beeline for your dungeon, with Tunnellers (in the first game) or Dwarves (in the second) digging through rock. The first game, dungeon walls were impenetrable so as long as you'd reinforced your dungeon you were perfectly safe until you dug out. In the second game, walls could be destroyed but it took longer. Ready-spawned heroes would patrol their own routs or just mill about until disturbed by your creatures, at which point they'd attack and make for your dungeon.
Enemy creatures (in a rival Keeper's dungeon) would act like your own, doing their own thing until their Keeper plonked them down for a fight, usually at the point when both your dungeons had expanded far enough that the Imps were competing over the claiming of tiles. Then it usually turned into a massive free-for-all as both Keepers would just dump handfuls and handfuls of creatures at the nearest spot they could get (you can only drop your creatures on tiles you own...apart from Imps, who can also be placed on unclaimed land). Then it was a matter of hoping your creatures were strong enough to win the fight, though of course you could help things along by casting spells if you had enough of the appropriate resource (gold in the first game, mana in the second).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

that's about how I thought it was. No clandestine attacks or strategizing.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Bit »

Thanks for enlightening me.
The second player was by serial cable connection? Or AI only?
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

You could fight other players or the AI. I think serial cables was waaay back, wasn't it? As in, pre-Internet? I recall some Atari games had that option. Playing the DK games against another player is done through an online thing - there's a lobby and stuff where you can go to see if anyone is up there looking for a game, I think.
You can do some form of Sneaky Bastard Tactics in the games - there's a spell called Sight of Evil, for example, which you can cast over an area of Fog of War and it'll reveal it for a short time so you can see what's beneath (if anything). In the first game, though (can't remember whether it worked in the second), you could mouse over areas on the map and hear any sounds emanating from there. As such, in levels with a rival Keeper it was easy to find their Dungeon Heart because you could just mouse over the map until you heard it beating - then you knew which direction you needed to head in order to find it. There was also a spell (only in the first game) called Disease. It used a lot of mana, I think, and could only be cast on creatures which were standing on tiles belonging to you (like most spells). But if you could just tag an enemy creature or two with it and then basically leave them to it, eventually the disease would spread amongst all the creatures in that dungeon, slowly killing them all. Then it was just a matter of heading in there and easily destroying what was left. You could cure diseased creatures by putting them into the Temple (not sacrificing them - just put them on the floor), but the AI never seemed to bother with this, that I recall. Oh well, their loss ;).
You could also use the Call to Arms spell (both games) which would place down a waving banner - all your creatures (except Imps) would head to that flag and basically mill around there. So what you'd do when ready to take on another Keeper (or a hero fort, or whatever), would be to place down a Call to Arms flag at the entrance of their territory (I think in the second game it only drained your mana if it wasn't on a tile you owned, so if you made sure your Imps were claiming land as fast as your creatures were moving forward, you could keep moving the flag and not worry about mana loss), and then chuck all your creatures as close to the flag as possible. If it was another Keeper you were attacking, he'd probably then also dump all his creatures at that spot and there'd be a massive free-for-all. But eventually you'd get far enough that you could drop the flag beside their Dungeon Heart (not applicable in Hero forts, of course) and hopefully you'd have enough creatures left to just destroy it, at which point any surviving creatures in the enemy's dungeon would immediately head straight for the nearest Portal. I think Imps probably just automatically died or something.
Attacking an enemy Dungeon Heart was obviously made much easier and quicker if you broke into their dungeon at a spot as close to the Heart as possible, and preferably avoiding always-busy rooms like the Lair or Training Room.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Bit »

Understand...
Looks a bit like Populous in dungeons...

About serial cables - don't underestimate those Ameena - they weren't that far away!
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

Hehe yes, I suppose it is a bit like Populous...but then, that was by Bullfrog too, so no surprises there ;). No sprogging in the DK games, though ;).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Bit wrote:Understand...
Looks a bit like Populous in dungeons...

About serial cables - don't underestimate those Ameena - they weren't that far away!
Yeah, they were a very viable option even up to under a decade ago, when many people still had 56k phone modems, so a serial cable in such cases would be the only way to play a multi-player networked game, as a 56k phone modem is just way too slow for that. :wink:

And yes, that description of Ameena's definitely got me thinking of Populous, an old favorite of mine from my old Amiga. :)
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

I never played the first game but we had the second on the Atari so it was one of the games I've downloaded since finally getting around to downloading Steem. I then had to seek out a PDf of the manual so as to copy the images of all the numbered face thingys in the corners so I could actually answer the copy-protection question on loading the game - I copied and pasted each one into Paintbrush and saved the file so I have it easily available to look up in future ;).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Well then, that's the reverse of me. I never played the 2nd version of Populous, but I did play the first version, quite extensively, at least until my Amiga started breaking down and some games got very difficult, if not impossible, to play. It was the internal drive, DF0 that went, which many programs on the Amiga relied on to function, including one of my all-time favorites, and IMO the best sports management/playing simulation ever made, SuperStar Ice Hockey, which could only be run off of DF0. :(

but I think we're getting to the point of hijacking Rasmus' thread here and we should probably steer the conversation back to Dungeon Dwellers before we go too far and a mod has to start splitting threads on us. :lol:
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

Haha, yes, good point ;). Maybe there's an Amiga emulator out there, though - the Amiga equivalent of Steem so you can play all your old games again. Might be worth having a look around for :).
Based on the frequency of Dungeon Dwellers updates so far, I'm guessing there might well be one coming up fairly soon so we can talk about that then :).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Zyx »

Remotely related to the theme, an interesting board game for creating dungeons:
http://planet-thirteen.com/dungeon.aspx

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... zhprAUoJXs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... jzjyfLeHB4

If nothing else, it leads to a net of sites who could be interested by your project.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

That's a good find, Zyx. I could definitely see this network of sites being interested in a game like Dungeon Dwellers. That software could also be useful in developing back stories to scenarios for Dungeon Dwellers as well, if Rasmus is intending to take it in that direction.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

Thanks for the links Zyx, they could definitely give me some inspiration later on :)

I am going to release the new Dungeon Dwellers alpha version 0.3 tomorrow and was wondering if anyone is interested and have the time to bug test it tonight :) If so, then just let me know.. And the worse computer the better :P
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

Found this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYlDQwhE3YU
Got really glad when I saw it :)
But many comments were about me just creating another Dungeon Keeper clone. I really want to progress with the game and show the public that there is a lot more to it.. Oh well, one day :P
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

Well, it does very closely resemble DK at the moment in many ways, because so far you're only focusing on the dungeon-building and haven't really got onto resource management yet - I expect that at that point, it will start to become very different. So far to anyone just giving it a cursory glance it's a top-down dungeon-digging game in which you even have small, big-eyed imps doing the work for you ;).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

I know, it looks a lot like Dungeon Keeper ;) I think people got annoyed because my webpage didn't mention Dungeon Keeper (fixed now) or that it wasn't mentioned in his video. Well, lesson learned.. I gave a small apologize on the youtube page so that people will calm down a little :)
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Still, it looks like the guy to made that video review was impressed with what you have so far. So am I.

I'd love to test the new version out as soon as it's ready, if it isn't already.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

New video uploaded :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfLPwKqmmuw

You can also download the demo from my Indiegogo site:
http://igg.me/at/dwellers
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Bit »

Have no idea how, but this morning your video made it to the main page of youtube category games, pole position...
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Great job Rasmus. :)
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

Just got round to watching these new vids - the one of the guy playing the demo and the latest official update. One thing I liked in the review vid was when he zoomed in and noted that the Imps wave at you - aaww, that's cute! :D
From the latest update vid...I noticed all the Dark Dwarves are basically identical clones of each other. I know that creatures in the DK games were the same. but do you have any plans to include maybe several different possible appearances that creatures can have? Even just basic differences in hair colour or something - a palette-swap kind of thing.
Also, when mousing over the Dark Mother's creature-creation menu, you highlighted the Dark Dwarf to show that there are enough resources to make one, but it doesn't say how many are needed, only that you can click to create one. It might be an idea to add creature costs in future so that players can see how much their resources will be reduced when they create that creature. Otherwise they might make something really expensive and then realise "Ooh, shit, I haven't got any stuff left to make some weaker creatures now".
Anyway, it's looking good :D. Looking forward to seeing how the game is improved and expanded as time goes by :).
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Ameena wrote:Also, when mousing over the Dark Mother's creature-creation menu, you highlighted the Dark Dwarf to show that there are enough resources to make one, but it doesn't say how many are needed, only that you can click to create one. It might be an idea to add creature costs in future so that players can see how much their resources will be reduced when they create that creature. Otherwise they might make something really expensive and then realise "Ooh, shit, I haven't got any stuff left to make some weaker creatures now".
That's actually a good point. A very good point. I'd also like to see some info on how many resources you'll have left after creating a creature before you create it so you can better plan ahead. As a matter of fact, having this sort of feature for everything that consumes resources would be a good idea.

Also, for those who don't like micro managing everything, or for a really big dungeon where you just don't have time to micro manage everything, having some sort of automation system to automate creature creation would be a good idea.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

I noticed it did tell you the resource requirements for creatures you couldn't afford - the Imps on that page required three pieces of coal, a number which I think was shown in red (haven't rewatched it to check) to show that it was lacking. If you have enough resources, it should probably do the same thing, but colour the number in green or white or something else generally used as "positive" (or at least something brighter than the "not enough resources" colour).
Will there be hotkeys available to jump to different rooms? For example, in DK/DK2 I think H warped you to the Dungeon Heart, Shit+L the Lair, while L or Control+L (I forget which) was the Library, T was the Treasury, Control+T the Torture Chamber, P for Portal, etc. If you had more than one, repeatedly pressing the appropriate key would cycle your view to each one you owned. This is obviously a very useful feature as it means you don't have to manually scroll the map over to each room every time you need to do something with it. Also, if unclaimed rooms are going to be included (or rather, rooms which don't initially belong to you and which you need to claim), this is a good way of working out why your Imps are suddenly disappearing to the other side of the map every time they mine some coal and it turns out there's a tiny Store Room back there which they claimed ages ago but you didn't notice because you were busy doing other stuff - then you know to sell it and have the Imps put the stuff in the proper Store Room, the one which is actually inside your dungeon-proper.
One other thing - will there be a map of some kind? Both DK games had this, so you could see an overview of the level you were currently on and mouse over your different rooms and stuff (rooms were always in a lighter colour than plain tiles belonging to the same keeper) - you could alsohear what was going on, too, when you moused over an area, which made it really easy to find an enemy Keeper's Dungeon Heart (at least in the first game - can't remember whether it did this in both) because it played sound even if you hadn't revealed that part of the map yet. So that made Training Rooms easy to find as well, because you could hear the sounds of combat.
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

@bit: That IS weird, I think I would have noticed it and gotten a *** lot of more views if it applied for everybody :P I know that recommended videos are seen at the first youtube page, and those videos are often chosen after what you usually watch :)
I noticed it did tell you the resource requirements for creatures you couldn't afford
Great that you said that last sentence, I just thought that I had left that out in the video and that you missed it :P You are making a good point, I will fix it with the colour red when it isn't affordable. And also add a 6/10 -> 10/10 text so that it is possible to know how much coal has been spent.. I don't know if I have said it before, but I am not completely satisfied with how the menu looks, I want every menu to be more unique and not just a row of stuff.. But as the time is short I had to do something :)
Shotcuts for zooming into different rooms are a must, and also the map. Haven't gotten to that parts yet because right now the dungeon ain't big enough to get lost ;) And also there is pitch rotation to the camera that enable the player to get a great look over the dungeon atm :)
Hehe, I don't want it too be easy to find the enemy dungeon, so no sound allowed unless you own the ground they stand on ;)
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Rasmus wrote:Hehe, I don't want it too be easy to find the enemy dungeon, so no sound allowed unless you own the ground they stand on ;)
I agree with that. I don't want any cheats, glitches or back doors that spoil the challenge and fun of exploring and finding what's in the dungeon.
Rasmus wrote:Great that you said that last sentence, I just thought that I had left that out in the video and that you missed it :P You are making a good point, I will fix it with the colour red when it isn't affordable. And also add a 6/10 -> 10/10 text so that it is possible to know how much coal has been spent.
That would definitely be good. I'm assuming the eg 6/10 refers to cost/amount owned, and that would be great.

About the cost of imps... I'd expect them to need more then just coal, after all they'll need wax and a wick to make their head-candles out of. :P
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Rasmus »

About the cost of imps... I'd expect them to need more then just coal, after all they'll need wax and a wick to make their head-candles out of. :P
Yeah, and the dwarfs will need more than beer ;) I just take what I have at the moment :P
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Bit »

This could be used to create kind of 'veteran' imps. They will start a work only if they get enough candlelight to end the task, because if there is anything imp-ortant, then this. An imp without candlelight is nothing anymore - he'll hide ashamed in some corner ('burn out' becomes a real meaning by that :twisted: ). If they really start a task only with enough firepower, this should not happen - under normal circumstances. Perhaps they can be forced to start the work as long as they can - red alert mode.
Implies another mode where imps watch out for 'burnt out' ones to share the light and animate them again (again - those special modes looks pretty like the master directions of Populous). After a task they first run to refresh the candle. A veteran imp is able to make a more improved candle which burns longer, so he can start a longer lasting task.
Many options with that - i.e. there needs to be no killing, just blow them :D
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Re: Dungeon Dwellers

Post by Ameena »

I had a thought last night when I was wondering what happens when monsters die - do they leave bodies, or turn into a pile of primordial sludge reminiscent of the resources used to make them, etc. And I thought maybe when Imps die they could just leave this sad little burnt-out candle on the ground.
Also, maybe there could be a way to "recycle" mobs (maybe feed them back to the Mother?) to get back a portion of the resources used to create them if you really, really need that type of resource right now but you haven't found any for ages and have spent what you did find in making this creature who's not actually being as useful right now as you thought he might be. Plus it'd be a way to "delete troops" if you reach the population limit (if there is one), like you do in games like Age of Empires. If there isn't a limit, it could be done to prevent overcrowding, especially if there are ways to gain creatures from sources other than the Dark Mother. Then again, I reckon all the creatures could be linked to the Dark Mother, so that if she dies, so do they, so you don't get a load of free (and potentially troublesome) creatures the moment you take over someone else's dungeon. Also, then you'd get a bonus if they do the collapse-into-constituent-resources thing on death, because then your Imps can go around and gather it all up for you. Maybe you don't literally get back piles of coal and stuff - maybe it's a blob of gunge or pile of mish-mashed resources (whatever resources formed the creature) and you can feed them to the Mother to have her churn them into usable resources, like you would when feeding her a live creature. I suppose the down side of these ideas would be taht they all involve feeding stuff to the Mother to gain the resources, when you might not want to use them for more creatures but instead to put in the Store Room. Maybe she can pooh them out or something and you can use them that way :D.
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