Dwelvers (former Dungeon Dwellers)

[Rasmus]

Hello, hope you all are well

Just wanted to drop by and tell you all that I am working on a new game, but this time it ain't a Dungeon Master clone Instead my interest have been directed towards making a scramble ship game out of Settlers and Dungeon Keeper, which also are among my favorite games

Check out my web page http://rasmus-dev.com for some info about my game idea.
Or this direct link to my latest video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b2bw2ZFqnQ

I was also ment to ask what you guys thought about Grimrock, I haven't had the time to check out it yet :/

[Gambit37]

Whhhoooooooww! That looks fantastic! You've clearly been very hard at work!

It's a great idea for a game and I think there's a lot of people out there who would enjoy something like this. If you feel you are able to make a commercial game out of it, you could seriously consider Kickstarter to raise funds for development.

I love the animation that you've got for the imps, they already seem to have great character, especially the one turning the well handle

Welcome back

Oh, and we have some discussions about Grimrock here:
http://dungeon-master.com/forum/viewtop ... 30&t=29107
http://dungeon-master.com/forum/viewtop ... 27&t=29515

[Seriously Unserious]

This looks amazing! I played around with Dungeon Keeping a little bit a while back and found it to have a lot of promise but couldn't get around all the glitches from running an old DOS game in XP. I also played around with The Settlers a bit a few years ago on WinUAE but lost that game when my hard drive crashed and haven't been able to find another copy of it. I'm really looking forward to this game.

[Bit]

This is soooooo cool! (Love especially that one in the last second at the well )
If I wouldn't be such paranoid, I would say hurry and set up a kickstarter project and build your own company...
I really believe in you. If that just would be enough...
But I do have another idea:

Listen Almost Human - GET HIM!

At least I'm really glad to took a look in again
And btw - my evil notebook won't stop you anymore - got at least an i5 now.

[Rasmus]

Its great to be back
@Gambit: I am glad you liked the imps, they are my soul characters in the game
I have been checking Kickstarter out and it would be a great start for me, not only because it can help me financially but also because I have heard that the projects there gets alot of media attention. But it seems that one will have to be a permanent US or UK resident to start a Kickstarter project :/
I was thinking about http://www.indiegogo.com instead, they also seems to have some serious pledges and contributes on the gameing market..

@Seriously: Yeah, what I liked about Dungeon Keeper (I only played DK 2) was that all the creatures seems to have a thier own personallity, and that is what I am looking for, I also what to dress them alittle bit diffrently so that they can be telled apart Settlers on WinUAE? That must have been the first Settlers, I was thinking more about Settlers 2 or the new Settlers 7, what I like about those games is how the society is built up, every little resource have to be transfered from one place to another and you can see the whole production chain, it somehow fells like the game doesn't have those fixed bounderies normal socity building games has

@Bit: Thanks, and I am glad you are still hanging around And btw - welcome to the 21 century

[Bit]

Hmmmmm - we should create kickstarter europe then and we will swim in money...

[Ameena]

Hey wow that looks really cool . Can definitely see the similarities to the DK games (of which I've played both). Speaking of which...SeriouslyUnserious, did you try running the original DK in DOSBox? That might work. Don't think I've tried it myself but given that the point of DOSBox is to run old DOS games that don't work in Windows, you might have some luck there .
Looking forward to seeing how this Dungeon Dwellers game goes, though. Is there any chance you might get into trouble for making it too similar to DK, though?

[Rasmus]

Thanks Ameena
I don't think there will be any problems. Sure, the basic gameplay such as the digging and building rooms will be simular to DK, but other than that the game will be diffrent. I think the gameplay in Dungeon Keeper is a genre by itself, so it would be like sueing the developers of Duke Numem 3D for making the game so simular to Doom or Wolfenstein, or making Starcraft to simular to Command and Conquer..
When I think of it the simularities are that I want a game where I can select where my creatures will dig, and have some sort of base that should be protected at all cost, and then some buildings the creatures can use. And if the graphic becomes to simular I can easely change it a bit

Here are some other very look alike games:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofvFTBKB ... e=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWgcg6aqgLU

[Ameena]

Lol okay...it's just that what with the monster names (especially stuff like imps and mistresses), dungeon appearance, tagging rock for imps to dig, having them put the resources in a special room, and so on, it just seemed a bit like DK-done-by-someone-else. But I get that it's only at the Alpha stage and there's plenty more work to be done on it and stuff. I wouldn't mind giving it a go myself, just feel like it needs a bit more...imagination (for want of a better word) rather than just using the same names and stuff as an already-existing game .

[terkio]

Peter Molyneux, the creator of Dungeon Keeper , the Bull Frog Company and more .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux

@Rasmus.
Which 3D engine and editor are you using ?

Will you have a First Person mode like there is in Dungeon Keeper ?
In DK, there is a spell to enable the keeper to incarnate ( in first person view ) a chosen creature.

[Rasmus]

@Ameena: Well I will give you that, the names are simular, but I will change them later on as it is in pre-alpha state right now. In DK the only resource that the imps digs out and store is gold. Anyway, in the end it it will remind of DK but the gameplay will be with a lot more depth

@terkio: A make everything from scratch in c++ and Direct 3D, I use no external libraries, every model is made by me with 3ds max.
I will probably have some kind of incarnate spell (Ameena I know my hypocrisy ) among other spells

[Ameena]

The walk-around-as-your-creature spell was called Possession. I liked that, it was fun . And creatures you possessed did everything faster than if left to their own devices, so you could speed up your imps digging out space for a room, for example, by possessing one of them and hacking away the dirt faster. Technically gold wasn't the only thing that could be dug out, as you had gems as well, but though these were a different type of block it was really just an infinite supply of gold so you still ultimately got gold out of it. The second game had mana as a resource (in the first, spells used gold to cast), which was generated in small amounts by land you owned (ie land your imps had claimed, whether it was a room or a plain tile) and in larger amounts by mana vaults, special tiles which could be found in some maps and needed to be claimed for the mana generation to go into your own pool of mana - this was automatic and you didn't need to do anything special after claiming the vault.
Yeah, I know the DK games reasonably well .

[RAF68]

very well

[Rasmus]

Yeah, I know the DK games reasonably well .

Hehe, I remember that we had a little discussion about implementing DK creatures AI back when I was making DMT 2, and as I recall you did know much about DK

I had a friend over today, Fabian, he is the creator of Lootfest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV3tL29z1GE if anyone have heard about it..
Anyway, he gave me some pointers about the textures I am using for walls and floors etc, that they are a little bit to unaesthetic, that they drew to much attention from the imps and the items in the dungeon..
So I followed his advice and made some changes, I lowered the texture detail, used a gradient over the walls, and finally enchanted the edges..
I have only done this to the walls and on to the border over the walls. (Don't mind the torches and the fire, they will be fixed later on )

I would like some honest opinions from those of you that have some artistic skills if this is a direction I should continue in, or if it is a little bit to cartoonish.. I personally like it but am wondering if I should try making it more "evil"?
As I going to try to get this project started at indiegogo next week I wanted to fix up the graphic a little bit first..

Here's two screenshots:

[Bit]

What if they dig out bones instead of gold? This way a dead enemy is pretty useful too.
Monster bones ofc... and dinosaur bones...
Hitting a cementary would cause different kind of painful desasters ofc

[Seriously Unserious]

Its great to be back
@Seriously: Yeah, what I liked about Dungeon Keeper (I only played DK 2) was that all the creatures seems to have a thier own personallity, and that is what I am looking for, I also what to dress them alittle bit diffrently so that they can be telled apart Settlers on WinUAE? That must have been the first Settlers, I was thinking more about Settlers 2 or the new Settlers 7, what I like about those games is how the society is built up, every little resource have to be transfered from one place to another and you can see the whole production chain, it somehow fells like the game doesn't have those fixed bounderies normal socity building games has

Yup, it was DK1 and The original Settlers that I played. The Settlers kind of reminded me of a real-time take on Colonization, with a touch of Sim City and a few other of those types of building games thrown in.

Hey wow that looks really cool . Can definitely see the similarities to the DK games (of which I've played both). Speaking of which...SeriouslyUnserious, did you try running the original DK in DOSBox? That might work. Don't think I've tried it myself but given that the point of DOSBox is to run old DOS games that don't work in Windows, you might have some luck there .Looking forward to seeing how this Dungeon Dwellers game goes, though. Is there any chance you might get into trouble for making it too similar to DK, though?

I haven't tried DK in DoxBox yet. I have tried several other games in there but haven't gotten around to that yet, then I got into other games and forgot about DK... I'll give it a go eventually, just been busy with my RTC project, then recovering from an injury and now I finally have a couple of weeks of free time so hopefully I'll have some time to give it a try, if my newly purchased Civ 5 doesn't distract me too much that is

Lol okay...it's just that what with the monster names (especially stuff like imps and mistresses), dungeon appearance, tagging rock for imps to dig, having them put the resources in a special room, and so on, it just seemed a bit like DK-done-by-someone-else. But I get that it's only at the Alpha stage and there's plenty more work to be done on it and stuff. I wouldn't mind giving it a go myself, just feel like it needs a bit more...imagination (for want of a better word) rather than just using the same names and stuff as an already-existing game .

Actully, Rasmus should be ok with most of the names, like imp, goblin and such as those are common creatures out of mythology. the Mistress might have to be renamed as that is a specialized usage of that word. Also be aware that one of the alternatives "Tempress" was used by another game, Lure of the Temptress, if you choose to do choose to change that name.

@Rasmus: about the cartoonish look, I don't mind it. IMO there are too many games out there going for the "dark and evil" look, so a slightly cartoonish look may put you into a different niche then the mainstream games.

EDIT: I almost forgot, if you need any beta testers I'd be happy to help you out when you're ready for that.

[Ameena]

An easy, generic rename of the Mistress would probably be Succubus.
Anyway, the new screenshots look cool, though I think maybe the red gem things in the walls are a bit bright - maybe they should be toned down a bit? They make me look at the edges of the room first rather than its contents, that's all.

[Gambit37]

I agree about the red gems -- and are they even necessary? What do they signify?

[Rasmus]

@Bit: Digging out bones, thats a really good idea But I would still have to keep the gold..
My idea is that the gold and coal can be melted down, and then taken to the ironmelter to make coins. These coins can later on be used to bribing some of the more feeble minded creatures
But I am looking for a substitute for wood as trees don't likly grow in a dark dungeon Or maybe I can use the bones as fertiliser as they did in minecraft

@Seriously Unserious: I will need some alpha tester in the next month or so when I get multiplayer (lan / internet / splitscreen) running, so I will keep you in mind

@Ameena: Yeah.. Never mind about those too, I am going to replace them with some sort of a dungeon dweller sigil and only have a very faded colored light.

@Gambit: The color of the gem shows what player is owning this land, so I need some sort of sign for it.

[Ameena]

On subject of a substitute for wood...if it's for structures and stuff, bones would probably be pretty good. You could also have all manner of giant underground fungus (for example) or some other weird planty-things which could be harvested and basically be the same as wood but without being called wood or coming from trees. Or maybe you could have tree roots, extending down into your realm from the absolutely enormous trees up above. That'd give you another plot hook, then, as people hacking away at tree roots would cause the trees above to die/collapse, therefore possibly prompting actions to be taken by those on the surface (if the game is like DK in that the goody-goodies are coming down to your realm to try and stop your reign of terror from spreading to their world, etc).
The mention of "dungeon dweller sigils" makes me think of the player icons you could choose in the first Black and White (another Peter Molyneux game, made by his company Lionhead, the one he joined after Bullfrog). There were a number of symbols and things you could choose from as your player icon, and it'd be displayed above the town centre of any village you owned. You could also choose from among the same selection (I think) to use as tattoos on your Creature, if you wanted to put some of those on him (and could change their colours in this case, too). I like customisation - maybe offering players a choice of symbols and stuff (or even the ability to design their own, somehow) would be cool, even if it's only for the player icon that you hardly ever see once you're actually in the game or whatever .

[Rasmus]

I have thought about the tree roots coming from the surface, but I am not sure about the design of them in the game.. But I liked the fungus thingy It would be a nice change to harvest plants instead of just rocks.. And it would give the dungeon a more "alive" look.
And I was also thinking about instead of having the "evil dungeon keeper" I can have some "chaos lord" that are turning creatures against each other. A lot of dark churches, prisons, bribing, stealing and so on..
Yeah I was looking for a simple symbol that just marks out the path.. Like this:

And that a hexagon border surrounding it will have the faded "player light color"..

But I also wanted it to be extruded into the floor or roof, meaning that it will be hard to make it custom made as it is a 3d model in itself, but I do like the custom sign idea as it gives players a stronger feeling of being a part of the game.. Maybe later, when and if I get any funding from Indiegogo

[Bit]

Having wells already, they could also find oil as a basic resource.

[zoom]

I would not substitute wood for some other resource.

If you would like to have wood in this DK game, go for it.
Tables, torches(every wall got one?), Tools like pickax handles,
wooden shields, what have you- a well for water

it does not have to be realistic just feeling like a thorough,
little believable world.
wood is too important and hard to substitute imo

Thoughts
1-send workers outside to gather wood/ raid villages
possibly attracting good- doers
2-Spell to teleport or create wood.
3-Races , like Goblins each bring their own amount of wood-
eg you summon a worker and it comes with 2 wood
4-Trade 1:2:3 with gold and coal respectively.. somehow improve that
ratio
5-wood is just there, do not bother where it comes from or how

6-what does DK do about it?

make your live as easy as possible without missing out on important stuff
if your creative fluids are flowing about a ressource wood,
you can think of many combinations about wood it is feeling good,
so why use bone?
(while bone and funghi are all cool)
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonecruncher
also if you want to experiment go for it(oil etc)

cool game you got there, at first I thought that is exactly
DK, like ameena(point being? ) I see you want a better version
I find the red dots very important, yes maybe tune it down
The walls look good from afar but change appearance( more noise looking)
when zoomed in. Could you increase or decrease detail for zoom factors)
walls not feeling "as one"- but could be me

[Ameena]

DK doesn't have wood - you use money to build rooms by placing down room tiles and once a room is large enough, furniture automatically appears. One of the rooms is a workshop which is needed when you want to build doors and/or traps for your dungeon - in the first game, work-loving creatures (Bile Demons and Trolls, tohugh you can place creatures in there yourself to force them to work) will go there automatically and craft doors and traps but you can't decide what they make, so you just have to wait till the thing you want gets made. In the second game, no creature will automatically go to the Workshop. Instead, you place down a blueprint of the thing you want built and then the Bile Demons and Trolls will go and make whatever you've "ordered" (in the order that you placed the blueprints, if you placed more than one). Some things are indisputably made out of wood (the most obvious being the wooden door, the most basic type of door) but it all still just gets made amid the forges and anvils of the Workshop.
Every game uses wood - if you want to use fungus-type stuff (or something) and have it serve exactly as wood apart from the name, why not do that? Then it's different .
Regarding player symbols, of course if the art of them needs to be done a certain way that wouldn't let people design their own (due to the way it get utilised/created by the game), that's fine - you could just provide a selection for people to choose from. The same goes for player colours and any other minor things - you can let people choose their own from a selection of options so that you can still control how it works, but players get to feel like they have some say in what their "character" is like by choosing from a list of stuff .
Maybe as the "chaos lord" (lol yay get some DM in there too eh ), you could have more than one possible way to win a level, and maybe the "good guys" react in accordance with that. So, say you start raising a massive army of troops to destroy everything, the "heroes" will respond in kind and try to batter you to bits with their own army. But if you go all sneaky about it, maybe you can make "arrangements" with some of the good guys...like say you've built up loads of money but have very little by way of creatures, the surface people might hear of it and some might come down to investigate...then you can buy their assistance with some of your precious gold and they'll go out, now working for you, and persuade people to follow you or something. So rather than killing everyone, you take over by corrupting others and getting them to do your dirty work. Then players can still win without having to rush to build up a massive army before the opposing force comes in to crush them. But if they don't have many creatures or save up enough money, they won't be of interest to anyone and so won't get anywhere. Or something. I dunno. Or maybe you can change yourself into/possess one of the "heroes" and go around killing other heroes to give that one a bad name and cause a load of in-fighting so that you can then march in with your army and take over that way. That'd be fun .
But what can I say...I'm not very good at RTS games and I like employing Sneaky Bastard tactics whenever possible .

[zoom]

yeah, the concept should be clear
what is the objective
how come heroes walk into your dungeon
because of gold?!
You could place an illusion of some artifact
in your dungeon. Heroes will steal the fake one
and that way you win.
one Problem: what does it yield if you defeat
some heroes walking in?

just had the idea of getting some dm in there
24 heroes walk into your realm and you got one
mirror for each of them

[chiefy]

cool

Hello, hope you all are well

Just wanted to drop by and tell you all that I am working on a new game, but this time it ain't a Dungeon Master clone Instead my interest have been directed towards making a scramble ship game out of Settlers and Dungeon Keeper, which also are among my favorite games

Check out my web page http://rasmus-dev.com for some info about my game idea.
Or this direct link to my latest video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dibJ0l5RKdo

I was also ment to ask what you guys thought about Grimrock, I haven't had the time to check out it yet :/

rasmus-dev.com is a great site and contains very recently updated content I actually bought Dungeon Keeper from Amazon last year but it wouldn't start on my laptop, I tried a few solutions but it didn't want to know sadly

Grimrock has been put together with stunning detail and robust operation in mind, I love the "music" and the way there are just "no bugs"

[Rasmus]

@bit: Oil may be a little to futuristic for this game

@zoom: I like the way you think about wood "just beeing there" as it is a very valuble resource, but as I even collect dirt and rocks I should collect wood too. I think I am going to go with the previous idea and having some underground plants or fungus.. Maybe I will let some sunshine in from above and like that explain the treegroth..

@ameena: I have been thinking alot about how the creatures should be summoned.. Right now I am into the idea of catching them with traps and either let the rut into skeltons in the prison or bribe them with gold coins / sacrifices / food / specific cloths or weapons, the fun thing is that the player may have to experiment to find out the diffrent creatures weekspot is

@Chify: Thanks for your input about my website I try to keep it simple but still informative.

Anyway, first of all I need to fix the graohics just alittle or so (2 or 3 days), then start a project on indiegogo. Later on create some sort of map / chart over all the items and creatures and how they will interact with the dungeon before I do the the next serious update Just so I don't fumble in the dark

[Ameena]

Maybe you could place down some kind of "Attractor" item...ilke something that sends out a signal saying "Hey, monsters! Jobs available here!", and then monsters will show up by their own means (eg teleporting in, walking along some kind of entry corridor/digging their own, etc) but will only stick around if they feel like it. And you have to make them feel like it by providing adequate payment in the form of the things you've suggested - food (whether homegrown or corpses of enemies/your own creatures), gold, combat, some kind of workroom, etc. Obviously different creatures would have different preferences, but if whatever that particular species wants isn't there (or is there but not in sufficient quantities), they'll bugger off again and be less likely to turn up in future.
I had a vague sort of idea for a creature - something that probably needs to eat a lot and generally be kept safe, and the longer you keep this creature, the bigger and more bloated it gets, probably needing a whole room to itself while imps come in to stuff its face with food (maybe it snatches the odd imp here and there as well). Eventually, the creature is "ready" and starts spewing forth baby creatures...well, I say "baby"...they're like little goblins, or insects, or vicious imps (hey, maybe your worker imps spawn in the same way, and it's the imp spawner you must keep safe if you don't want to lose because no imps means no dungeon expansion and therefore no gold or other creatures in order for you to take over the world? ), or something else and basically serve as fighting creatures with no other goal except to charge in there and hack/bite/claw/stab things until they die or run out of things to kill. But the big blob creature has to be fed a lot and since it can't move once it gets too big, it'll basically starve to death if it can't get enough food. But you could feed it anything including corpses. So it'd be a pretty resource-heavy project, but provide you with a secondary source of disposable troops with which you could take over the area or something.
Now look, see, you've set me off now and I'm probably gonna keep thinking of stuff, lol .

[Rasmus]

Haha, thats a really cool idea, instead of bribing I could just feed some fat blob with specific items and eventually he will spit out a creature corresponding to the items I feed him with.. This is a perfect and idea for my game, it is simple to do and it is straightforward, do you mind if I steal that idea and your name mentioned in the credits?

[Ameena]

Ooh that's even better...like a creature vending machine, lol. I was thinking more along the lines of a specific species of creature that you can attract to your dungeon is of this species and you need to feed it up to get troops produced later (a bit like if you had a queen ant and looked after it, it'd produce more ants later). But a creature who can produce lots of different creature types is even better.
Ooh hey, so, maybe that's your "Dungeon Heart"? Your "queen creature", "monster spawner", whatever you want to call it? So rather than having to attract in creatures from the outside, you get your imps (who get shat out for free or something, like in DK2 if you have less than four imps, they'll auto-spawn until you have four so that you never completely run out) to dig out resources so that you can use them for building rooms and for generating more creatures from your Spawner. And if that dies, you can't generate any more. Maybe you can feed it the corpses of your enemies to produce Dark versions of them...you know, corrupted versions or something. Or maybe just some kind of generic zombie or something...ooh or maybe you get different type sof undead (spirits, zombies, vampires, etc) depending on the type of corpse you fed your Spawner. And feeding it rock gives you a rock golem or something, while giving it coal creates erm...something relating to fire, perhaps. And gold creates something metallic...even though gold is crap as a metal but hmm I dunno...and you could feed mana to get a magic-using creature. Or maybe several creatures can be created from the same resource (eg stone can make either a golem who's good at building things or a little burrowing armadillo-looking thing which is good at tunnelling and sniffing out resources for your imps to dig and causes you to get a small increase to any gold you mine or something like that), and when you've fed enough of that resource to your Spawner you can open a window and choose from your available options - "So far you have fed X amount of these materials to your Spawner, therefore you can afford to generate X amounts of the following creatures". Or something. And now I think I'm getting carried away.
But yes, if you like my idea I don't mind if you use it, just as you don't try and claim someone else's ideas as your own, really .