Dwelvers (former Dungeon Dwellers)

[Seriously Unserious]

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

Not necessarily. Oil wouldn't be used for any internal combustion engines or anything like that but is still useful was, in fact, used even dating back to ancient Babylon, according to available records history of petroleum. So it could be used for several purposes in this game and still be period appropriate. Possible uses for oil could be for fuel for lighting your dungeon (make this more efficient then torches), setting traps for intruders (eg soaking a tunnel in pitch and a guard shoots a fire arrow into it setting it on fire along with any trespassers caught within), or as a torchure technique used to terrorize enemies or scare a creature into serving you (ie boiling in oil). Historically, boiling oil was also used as an anti-siege weapon as well, vats of it would be poured down on attackers trying to storm the walls, with possibly a lit torch or other ignition source following it to add to the damage to the attackers.

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 like this idea. I'd also add in that victories in battle would make serving you more attractive making getting and retaining creatures would be, while losses would make it tougher.

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 .

I think this could be a good way of getting certain specialized types of creatures, you attracts a spawner creature in the same way as mentioned above and keep it satisfied long enough for it to become immobilized by it's own weight and it will eventually start laying eggs/giving birth but will only do so if it's kept satisfied with whatever food type/entertainments it needs and it it gets unhappy or hungry it stops producing. Leave it hungry for too long and it will either die or get light enough to wander off (possibly to a rival) and either way you lose it.

I also like the idea of digging out bones. Those could be used as components for dark magic, attracting certain types of creatures, or for making undead (ie skelletons) when you have enough of them and some sort of facility for making them. Finding a graveyard/crypt could also be a sort of special resource whereby you can re-animate those interred there as undead (skelletons/zombies) and it may have valuables stored there as a source of gold or rare artifacts that grant you or one of your creatures some special power.

Rebellions: I'd also include the possibility of a rebellion from your own creatures if you don't keep them happy enough, suffer too many defeats or in some other way let them get too unhappy, or let yourself look weak enough that they think they can take you, that could be another way of losing the game. We are dealing with selfish, evil creatures here after all and loyalty and honor isn't one of aren't exactly their strong suits.

[Ameena]

On the idea of bones as a resource, maybe you can get them directly from the corpses of your enemies (maybe there's some kind of "corpse extraction" device which pulls all the useful bits out of bodies if you don't want to reanimate them as undead or something) to use for stuff (dark magic, as suggested, perhaps), but can also mine them out of the walls. And the mined bones would be much better, because they've been sitting around for a few hundred years (or however long) and have built up a pretty strong charge of magic...or maybe there's something in the backstory which speaks of creatures slain in some epic war long ago, in which lots of dark magics were used which permeated into the very bones of their victims, ready to be found in later years and mined out by your imps for your own uses. Either way, older bones have been around much longer than those of the goody-goodies you've just killed in battle a few minutes ago and so will be a better resource (eg worth more "resource points" or let you cast stronger spells or make a stronger undead creature or whatever).
I also like the idea of victories in battle making your creatures like you more (again, this happened in the DK games, creatures victorious in battle would get a happiness boost, but many would become unhappy if standing on the body of a dead ally).
Ahh, there's so many possibilities .

[Bit]

futuristic? as SU wrote, beside the light, that's a pretty old weapon, here's more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
don't has to be used for engines all the time. even healing potions are made of it...

[Rasmus]

@Ameena: Yeah, that was my idea. Having an enormous vending machine as a dungeon heart The four imp generation is already implemented in my current version. Instead of mana I input dirt into the Dungeon Heart, At first 4 dirt are needed to generate an imp, then 6 dirt, then 10 dirt and so on. I was thinking about doing the same with this "vending machine" and the other creatures, forcing the player to not just stack up on one creature. Rock = Rock golems, Iron = iron golems will be implemented, they can always work as guards of the keep and ignoring the call to arms spell.. We will see what creatures and items my brain has in store
A friend gave me a link to the game Dwarf Fortress, it is an incredibly ugly game but filled with game ideas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQxmrA06tV8
And I would never claim another's idea as my own

@Seriously Unserious: Okey, I give up.. Wasn't really thinking about oil being used as fire fuel or healing potions as bit said
Rebellions will be included if the creatures are being starving or unsatisfied. And as my game won't have a portal for them to leave it will be more important for the player to keep them satisfied.

@Ameena: I could always pick uncrushed bones of several creatures and puzzle them together to make a skeleton And some creatures may need the bodies to feed, like the vampires in DK but more ongoing maybe..
I was thinking something like, first making them unconscious and putting them in the prison where you have the chance to torture them. If dieing in the prison the body could be taken to the meat grinder room, the bones that weren't crushed could later on be taken to the bone chamber where imps works all day long putting different bones together to make skeletons And the meat could always be used as food or potion making (the heart for example).. I think I just set the age limit to 18
I haven't started thinking about how the spell system should work in detail, except the classic research in the library. Maybe the mana could be replaced with some sort of runes crafted by the creatures, that way I can make more efficient and surprising spells

[Rasmus]

Video with the new graphic and some more game play talk at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDT4VfHfh4s

[Ameena]

A minor note - Vampires in DK didn't eat corpses. They ate chickens like every other mob (except skeletons, and in the first game, ghosts). Vampires were created, however, when enough corpses had decomposed in your Graveyard - this might be what you're thinking of.
But yeah, creatures who feed on corpses might be an idea. So as with your other resources, you'd have to decide on whether to feed them to your creaturs to keep them happy and healthy, or to your Spawner (dungeon heart/vending machine thingy ) to generate whatever kind of creatures can be created from the remains of other creatures.
As for spells...hmm, well, maybe there are magic-generating items in the dungeon. For example, your good old-fashioned generic magical crystal (eg fire crystals, ice crystals, etc). Or maybe...ooh...maybe souls? Souls/spirits of creatures - their life energy. Each creature's existence is "powered" in a different way. That is, the life force of one species is different to that of any other. So say you put some lava and rock into your Spawner to create (for example) some kind of magma golem. When this dies, it's possible to harvest its spirit, which is basically a small amount of the essences of fire and earth, because those are what the creature was made of at its most basic level. With this essence stuff, you can maybe combine it with mana (maybe there's some kind of Mana Pool, sort of similar-looking to the Temple room in the DK games) to build up Fire and Earth points to spend them on buying spells, similar to how you generate "resource points" to spend on creatures by feeding your Spawner. But in this case, the cost is much higher and once you've bought a spell, you can cast it as long as you have enough mana (as opposed to creatures where you have to build up the right amount of resources to pay the cost of every individual). So if you wanted to be able to cast, say, the Disease spell, you'd need to harvest enough Death and Earth essence (for example) and pour it into your Mana Pool, paying a one-shot cost of the essence plus a load of mana to add the spell's power to your own - from this point (at least, on that level of the game - maybe spells are wiped when you complete it and go onto the next level as you'd be in a new dungeon and not near all that power you have stocked up in the dungeon you just left) you'd be able to cast that spell for a mana cost...though this cost would be much less than you needed to pay to buy the spell in the first place.
If that all makes sense.
Of course, I'm just suggesting here. And then I get an idea and run away with it, lol.

Now, I just watched the video...a couple of things I thought of...
Maybe one of the upgrades to the Spawner, you mentioned it'll be able to defend itself - maybe it will get the ability to just plain pick up enemies and eat them, so the enemy would need enough creatures (or ranged attacks) to be able to destroy the thing before all their troops get eaten. Meanwhile some creatures are fast enough to evade the grasp or tough enough to bite the hand/claw/appendage before they get nommed . I sort of pictured the Spawner creature as being a somewhat less disgusting-looking version of the Broodmother from Dragon Age Origins, if you're familiar with that. Maybe the Spawner could take on characteristics of the stuff you feed it, looking more rocky if you keep feeding it stone, or starting to glow if you feed it lava, and so on. Hmm or maybe those are the upgrades - you keep feeding it as normal but when you go to the Spawner window (where you have the menu to buy creatures), there's another menu for Spawner upgrades, and you can use the eaten resources to buff your Spawner instead. So then you can use rock to increase its armour, or lava to give it a flaming attack of some kind (and/or fire resistance from monster who use such attacks), or bone to give it defensive spikes (a damage shield, so mobs get hurt when they attack the Spawner in melée), or erm...I dunno, corpses to give it some kind of noxious gas attack, maybe?
Look, I'm off again...I'll stop there .

[Rasmus]

Accually, I knew that the vampires was risen from graveyards and ate chickens in DK, but in popular stories I don't think vampire like to eat dead corpses or alive chickens, its all about sucking blood To make it right the vampires could always sneak into the prison and hurry up the killing process of the enemies So to many vampires can be a problem because there will be no prioners to torture and there will be a need of a constant enemy killing. Hehe I just remembered the old game King's Bounty on the Amiga (it is very simular to Hereoes of Might and Magic), if I had an army of ghosts they could multiply as they killed the enemy, and sometimes the ghost army grew to large and I couldn't controll it anymore, so it rebeled and I lost the game.. The same could be with vampires, the first one could be hard to create, but then they multiply very easely, and the counstant demand of fresh blood could easely make the vampires rebel against you..

So about the spells, I like the idea of combining diffrent creatures spirit to be able to research spells, it gives the game a natural spell learning curve as the best creatures (which has the spirits for the strongest spells) doesn't enter the game until the end. But I was thinking that it may seem alittle bit weird that the creature I created with my materials has to be killed to get other materials to make spells, maybe just a sacrifice (like in the DK temple) would seem more natural.

Broodmother from Dragon Age Origins? I just goggled it, yeah that is one disgusting fellow. I was also thinking something like that, with its stomage stuck in the hole and that it pukes up creatures. I would like it more slimy and ugly than just pure evil. I accually got a friend to draw some concept art of how the spawner will look, he should be finished with it tonight and I can show you

It should be rather easy to show the spawner uppgrades as it could be a simple as color and texture changes, maybe some weapons, headgear put on it.. About the feeding, I was thinking that the spawners menu would work something like that I get a list of all the resources in the game, and lets say that I want to feed it 5 stones and 5 magma to make a magma golem, then I just put 5 to both those resouces and thereby telling the imps that they have to get 5 magma and stones from the storage room and feed the spawner with it. As the spawner gets the stones the number decreases in its menu. The spawner could also have a stomage menu where the players can see what he has eaten. If the right amount of stones and magma has entered his stomage he will have a puke reflex and puke out the magma golem. In that way the player have to careful of what he is feeding the spawner with as some creatures may need simular resources..

[zoom]

wrote some of that earlier, similar to Rasmus's post:

I would envision the dungeon blob as an amorphous thing,
not in any way human looking( like DA broodmothr seems to be)
//Would like to see the concept art of your friend//
There could be spheres floating on or in this Blob.
of things you feed into that thing, defeated heroes, the
occasional own worker, bones, coal - floats about, gold...
literally every material can be poured in. secret recipies?

game mechanic wise it could function as converter
change "2 coal for 1 gold" or it could also work as ?decomposer?
the corpse yield 4 essence and 1 bones, the magic lantern
composes into 3 magic crystals...

so you had all kind of ressources your game has
floating about in little spheres
and you could choose what to build from that.
some kind of indicator, you figured that out already
Could be unlimited storage- or it levels up its space
and potency/ ability//techtree?
basicly look if it (thats everything)! could work
with a scifi theme. game mechanics are interchangeable
most of the time imo. fluff can be added later, or
as it seems where your approach is heading, you got
a theme( fantasy) and build up on that. Just try that
everything has some meaning. Oh well, I digress

[Ameena]

Here's what I was picturing regarding the resource build-up within your Spawner...
If your game has the interactive hand the same as DK (I notice the mouse cursor is more or less identical, a green hand, but don't know whether it's possible to use it to pick up stuff in your dungeon), you could manually drop resources onto your Spawner so it can eat them. On top of this, you can have your imps feed it...maybe you can give imps different jobs, or set them to different modes - Work, Gather, and Feed, for example. So if Imps are set in Work mode, they'll prioritise digging dirt, claiming tiles, building walls, etc. If they're in Gather mode, they'll give priority to going around picking up any resources (gold, corpses, etc) that are littering your lovely dungeon floor and take them to the appropriate storage area. If they're in Feed mode, they'll instead take these resources to the Spawner and feed them to it.
Anyway, eventually you'll start to build up resources in your Spawner and you can check what it's eaten so far by opening the Spawner window. This will give a display of its current resource totals, eg "Dirt = 50, Coal = 33, Bone = 12, Flesh = 18, Lava = 87" and so on. But in a nicely-organised list, not a one-line mass of info like I just wrote . Meanwhile there'll be a list of monsters and their costs (eg Imp = 4 dirt, Goblin = 5 dirt + 5 metal, Skeleton = 5 bone, and so on). So if you want to buy a Goblin, say, you need to have fed your Spawner enough of the appropriate resources. Then the Goblin icon will be in green, or lit up or otherwise highlighted to show that at least one goblin is ready for purchase. Then you select it and the Spawner spews it out of whichever end you want the creatures to come from .
I was thinking for the essences of stuff, they don't just have to be available when a creature is killed. Maybe dropping a creature directly into the Mana Pool thingy disintegrates their physical body (since contact with pure mana might possibly do that to a creature ) and consumes their essence (adding it to a similar resource pool to that of the one you get when you access your Spawner). Another though I had was that it might be possible (either in addition to or as an alternative to directly dumping critters into the Pool) to harvest a creature's essence without killing it...but that this would make the creature a sort of withered husk of its former self...just the mindless body wandering around like a zombie, though I'm not sure what use such a creature could be. Maybe one spell is a kind of "Zombie Bomb", a sort of magical thingy that you implant into a zombie before sending it out into battle. Then either you press the equivalent of the Big Red Button or the monster gets hit...either way this triggers the charge to detonate, and the magical thingy inside the "zombie" goes off and deals some kind of blast damage to any nearby creatures.
I dunno. Just some more ideas for you anyway, lol.
Oh btw, yeah the Broodmother does look "human" because she used to be a dwarf. All the Darkspawn in Dragon Age are basically corrupted versions of the main races, spawned form Broodmothers who themselves are corrupted females of the main races - their original race determines what sort of Darkspawn they produce when they get changed into a Broodmother.

[Bit]

However he will arrange it, the two biggest problems will be the AI, and the chance that there exists a simple method to win.
But I bet that's the real challenge for Rasmus, and I think he will master it.

[Seriously Unserious]

I'd love to see longer levels, or have 2 different modes, a freeplay mode where you don't have to worry about levels, just wins the one level with the option to make it huge so it will take a long time to win it, or a campaign mode where you go through many shorter levels similar to DK. One of the things I didn't like about DK were how short the levels were. I felt like I'd just gotten started on a level and already the main band of goody-goodies were coming in and raiding my dungeon and next thing I know, the level's over and I have to start again.

[Ameena]

The "My Pet Dungeon" levels in DK2 were good fun - I liked those. You could spend as long as you liked building up your dungeon and to complete the level you had to amass enough points (gained generally by building more rooms/claiming land, having high-level creatures, etc but you also got a load of bonus points for completing set objectives which differed between levels) to meet the main objective. Even once you'd done this and the "You've completed the level" box appeared you still had the option to keep playing if you wanted to. You could also choose when heroes attacked, either by triggering them from a hero gate (one wave at a time whenever you liked or as a wave-by-wave invasion over time, an option you could turn back off at any time you liked) or by picking them out of your hero toolbox (a smallish room surrounded by impenetrable rock, which contained one of each hero type and a trigger thingy you could use to insta-level them up, one level per click) the same way you'd normally pick up your own creatures and dropping them into your dungeon. The heroes from the toolbox were different in that you could pick them up, though their behaviour was still the same as any other hero and they'd attack your creatures and stuff as normal. You just couldn't normally pick up any other type of hero.
I tend to like taking my time to build up in RTS games, which is why I never seem to be any good at them because you basically have a time limit until all the shit starts turning up and destroying your stuff. I tend to get overwhelmed by numbers the moment the bad (or in DK's case, good) guys show up and start attacking. I like to take my time building up and then go forth and destroy everything...which is probably why I get my fun in RTS games out of using the cheat codes, lol.

[Rasmus]

Homepage update: http://www.rasmus-dev.com
I have included all the buildings, creatures, items, spells and constructions that I would like to have included in the game. Just press the sidetab "Gameplay" and you will see it.

@Zoom: I like the idea to be able to trade different items to another (with a penalty cost) if there is a shortage somewhere, that would even out some game balance flaws that most certainly would come up And yeah, I have already thought about feeding it creatures. Lets say that a Dark Dwarf reaches level 4 he can be fed to this blob (or "Dungeon Master" as I may want to call him ) together with 5x Beers, 3x Stamina Potions, 1x Axe and 1x Plate Armor... And out comes the upgraded version "The Juggernaut" But this upgraded creature will start over at level 1 and have to increase in level once again before he can be upgraded once more.
I am still a little bit blurry when it comes to describing the theme of the game, I know what I want but the best description I have come up with so far is a mix between Settlers and Dungeon Keeper.. I still have the gameplay to fill out on my webpage and I will have to think about a better way to describe it.. Maybe tonight Even if I am tired after all the writing I have done today. Hehe, I have to say that this is the first time I ever tried to describe my gameidea in detail, it is easy to take for granted that my friends that I present the game to will understand what I am trying to accomplish. But I have noticed that some questions come up now and then that make me understand that I still have a lot of work to do on the presentation.

So how do I describe this game to someone that hasn't played DK or Settlers before and make him or her see the vision that I have in a short five minute speech?

@Ameena: You read my mind, that is exactly how I want the spawner to work But I still have to see how the imps are handling the pressure before I put them in specific modes, but I do like the idea because it could help the player to prioritize what he want finished first I must confess that I am still a little bit uncertain on how I want the mana pool to work, right now I am thinking about letting the creature go to church and worship me, and their faith boost my mana reserves, that would be a simple way to do it. Maybe I can get mana from different actions, sacrificing enemy creatures in the church may be one way as all the creatures watching will increase their faith... hmmm...

@Bit: I agree, the AI programming will be both fun and frustrating.. I think the important thing here is to categorize their action like:

Code: Select all

If a creature is doing nothing then
  Get all jobs that this creature can do available.
  Prioritize the jobs according to distance and job priority.
  Take the first unclaimed job out of the list claim it

If a creature is doing nothing then
  roll your thumbs
else
  do job

Then the job itself tells the creature what to do.. Something like walk to this tile, face that direction, start digging, continue digging, stop digging, erase job.
And the creature has only the basic AI like walking and doing certain movements connected to him, otherwise I would experience a problem that I have had before, that all the AI intertwine with each other and makes the creature do unexpected things...
One thing I have had some problem with in the beginning was the collision detection. At first it worked fine, but as the imps started to multiply they could get stuck to each other or just doing annoying things.
I tried implementing some crowd control but then I thought, hey screw the collision detection, as long as it looks like they are avoiding collisions with each other it looks ok, even if they walk thru each other once in a while it is still better than them being stuck to each other..
But we will see how it all turns out

@Seriously Unserious: I would like that to, if you take a look at my webpage under creatures, there is a ultimate creature called Demigod. As the requirements for getting this creature is ridiculously high I don't think anyone will ever obtain him without a couple of hours game play. In that case it would be fun with some kind of Pet Dungeon as Ameena said just to be able to see if he I possible to get

@Ameena: I am the same, I love building and I really don't want to start the fight until my dungeon is perfect

[Ameena]

The creatures sound interesting. One thing - if a Dominator is female, it should technically be called a Dominatrix. It'll be interesting to see what all these various critters end up looking like, 'cause some of them sound really cool .
As for the mana thing...hmm, well, if you have the Mana Pool thing and the creature essence (aka soul/spirit) thingy, then this suggests that every creature has essence. Since essence combines with mana in the pool to create spells, essences are magical in some way...maybe they're mana but with a twist - plain mana is jsut pure magic with no orientation, sort of thing. Essences are mana which has "picked up" or "absorbed" part of the world into itself, becoming a tiny portion of the world's essence of that particular element (Earth, Water, Life, Death, etc). As such, maybe the essence helps you even when it's not being used to power spells - when the essence is still inside a creature or resource, as long as it's on your land it sort of "gives off" a faint whiff of magic which you can draw from. In other words, the more stuff you have in your dungeon, the more mana you have.
Ooh yeah...so, creatures (and lava and coal and all stuff like that) have their own essence which generates mana slowly, and this mana sort of suffuses into the surroundings and is drawn into the nearest Mana Pool where its user can draw from it to do simple things requiring only mana. But to create a specific type os use for that mana (a spell - magic turned to a specific purpose), the essence must be extracted from the thingy. So taking a creature as an example, let's say it's a Magma Golem. Such a creature's essence might consist of Fire, Earth, and Life. So you dump it in the Mana Pool - the contact with purew mana totally disintegrates the golem's physical form, leaving nothing left. But the essence diffuses into the Pool, giving you points into your Fire, Earth, and Life totals. Then say there's a Raise Zombie spell or something, to buy this you might need some Earth, Life, and Death essence. Once you've dumped enough stuff in the Mana Pool to build up that many points, you spend them (along with a one-shot large mana cost) and ding, you have the Raise Zombie spell in your spell menu. Then to cast it, you just need to use some mana like you would any spell in pretty much any Fantasy game ever...mana generated over time by whatever creatures and resources are still existing in your dungeon.
So you need resources to generate creatures. You need creatures to generate other creatures. But you also need resources to keep those creatures happy. But you can also use both resources and creatures to gain access to spells. And the more resources and creatures you have, the more spells you can buy and cast. So you need to balance having enough resources to keep your creatures happy, having enough creatures to be able to fight and stuff, and having enough of both to keep your mana total high (and recharging at a fast rate) whilst at the same time spending them like currency to buy more creatures as well as spells.
Something like that, anyway.

[Bit]

...collision detection
for moving things I would put smth like a triangle around the thing, one edge into the moving direction. when two things come together, the triangles already cross in some distance. so you begin to adjust the moving direction of both smoothly, not when it's too late. i should try to make an example.

Like it, that you really implement oil and bones . and hey, both are good for staffs and wands (for the demigods )

[Rasmus]

if a Dominator is female, it should technically be called a Dominatrix.

Good point, will fix that
That all cretures and items has some sort of a essence that can be extracted for me to regain mana is a good idea. But I am afraid it will be to much for the player to keep track of. As you said:

So you need resources to generate creatures. You need creatures to generate other creatures. But you also need resources to keep those creatures happy. But you can also use both resources and creatures to gain access to spells. And the more resources and creatures you have, the more spells you can buy and cast. So you need to balance having enough resources to keep your creatures happy, having enough creatures to be able to fight and stuff, and having enough of both to keep your mana total high (and recharging at a fast rate) whilst at the same time spending them like currency to buy more creatures as well as spells.

I would prefere keeping it simple and maybe just replacing the mana with some sort of a "faith pool", that it gets filled with prays when the creatures worship you in the Dark Church. So before going into battle it may be a good idea to make all the creatures go to church, just so that I can fill up my faith pool. So the bottom line is that the more the creatures pray to me the more I will help them
I would prefere it that way now in the beginning and maybe add some extra stuff later on, also because it is a simple idea and easy for the players to understand..

@Bit: It is not that I haven't tried that one out.. It is just that when 6 imps and some creatures are in the same hallway trying to pass eachother it may be alittle bit crowded, even if I fix this it would still affect the gameplay because of all the detours the creatures would have to take just to get from one place to another.. So now I just use a trafficsystem making all the creatures walk on the right side of road, in that way I avoid collisions naturally even if they walk thru each other now and then..

The Demigod is a secret creature that you will have to work for to see

[Lord_BoNes]

So when are we going to be able to download this great looking game?
Couldn't find a link, so I'm guessing it's not up yet

[Rasmus]

Nope not yet.. But I will need some alpha testers soon

[zoom]

Rasmus, maybe it would be an idea to start with a GDD/ game design document?
When explaining, try starting with simplest first and all that is needed to play the game.

Always try to ask yourself: Is this Element needed? why? Can it be done with the existing ones?
does it make the game in total more complicated, harder to understand or
does it add cool stuff that works with the basics.

You can read the description of DK on wikipedia.
the german version start text says :
is a real- time strategy game from 1997 , in which the player builds underground space complexes ( so-called dungeons ) to settle monsters, with which he can conquer the underworld. The game is characterized among other things by its original venue and the parodic reversal of the usual roleplay roles : Here the player leads the monsters as a " bad " Warlord while the opponents represent " good" heroes.

So if you want to explain the game to new players that do not know nothing about it at all,
go for some kind of synopsis or basic sentence describing the setting/ world. Then you could go on and
explain about the ressources and what´s needed to progress and reach the goal. Then say what troubles are on the way, and what to have an eye on..

maybe add in Settlers, too

!!it is basically a bad sign if you can´t explain the game!! Try to make it simpler, good luck

ps. what happened to the concept art?

[Rasmus]

Well I can explain the game easily for those that already know about DK, but for the others it requires a little more foundation into my presentation
Thanks for reminding me about checking the DK wiki out as it can give me some really good starting pointers.

My friend is a little bit slow on the concept art.. Hopefully he will get it done before Sunday as would like to have some art of the creatures and buildings to so that I have something to present except for what I have already done

[beowuuf]

Since I haven't played dungeon keeper, and am only skimming this thread (so many walls of text, now I know how other people feel) I'm happy to offer test-reading any intro documentation you might produce.

[Seriously Unserious]

the more stuff you have in your dungeon, the more mana you have.

this sounds a lot like Populous. That game used mana and the more followers you had, the faster your mana would replenish, so you could cast more powerful spells and cast them more frequently.

Nope not yet.. But I will need some alpha testers soon

count me in. I can test it on both Windows XP and Windows 8.

Since I haven't played dungeon keeper, and am only skimming this thread (so many walls of text, now I know how other people feel) I'm happy to offer test-reading any intro documentation you might produce.

That's a generous offer, and even though I am somewhat familiar with both DK and The Settlers I only really have a passing familiarity with them, plus I have studied technical writing and Systems Analysis so I would be able to offer some good advice and feedback on your documentation, and possibly help out in that area as a project technical writer even, if you really need help in that area to free up your time and energy for what you no doubt really want to be doing, like designing and implementing your game.

EDIT:
Suggestion: I don't know if you are already planning to do something like this but if the dungeon is kept hidden until a minion discovers it then one type of minion you could have is some sort of non-corporal minion, like ghosts, specters, etc, that could go through walls, but couldn't do much else, so they could act like a scout/spy, gathering info about the lay of the land and what your rivals are up to and stuff like that. Sort of like the Scout and Spy units from Civilization 3 and up.

This creature would then be useful early in the game as a sort of explorer, searching out the great unknown and find where the natural caverns and resource deposits are located, so you don't have to have your few imps wasting time digging into nothing but rock, hoping they may get lucky and find something. Later in the game, the ghosts could be used as spies, keeping an eye on your rivals or on the lookout for the arrival of any parties of heroes and give out an advanced warning of them.

[Lord_BoNes]

Nope not yet.. But I will need some alpha testers soon

You can count me in! I loved Dungeon Keeper... this game looks like a modern day DK, so I imagine I'm gonna love it too!

[Ameena]

To add a suggestion so SU's ghostly scout critter (which I think is quite cool, sort of like a combination between the Fly/Firefly creatures and the Sight of Evil spell from the DK games), you could have it that the creature can be destroyed by some kind of magical zappy spell/effect. That way you'd have a means of destroying any enemy ghosts that might try to scout out your dungeon. Maybe some kind of guard trap thingy that automatically pews anto-magic bolts (ie to destroy the ghost which has no physical body and so is formed of just magic) so that you wouldn't have to constantly rove over your dungeon keeping a lookout for them. Probably there'd be at least one species of creature with a similar attack, too, which could destroy or otherwise nullify magical creatures. Or maybe some kind of anti-magic field/barrier which ghosty things can't pass through. It'd make for an added challenge on more difficult levels in which you wouldn't be able to easily scout out the enemy dungeon (if your game has enemy dungeons or an equivalent, that is ) due to it having protection from your ghosty-scouts.

[Rasmus]

@beowuuf: I would really like that I will let you know when I am done in the week
@SU: Your in! I will send an PM to everyone interested with a link to the alpha version as soon as I am done
@Bones: And that goes for you to

Yeah a ghostly critter would be cool.. I have add a spell that is called "non-materialize" that can make creatures go thru wall and doors for short amount of times.. Maybe I could just add that skill to the firefly if he reaches a certain level

[Rasmus]

So I have been thinking about dividing my campaign on IndieGoGo into two parts. First a large demo and then the full game.
The demo could include about a third of the creatures, most of the buildings, multi player support and some minor campaigns. As this would take a shorter amount of time to do and that I take it step by step may motivate some of the contributers to help me out.
Then when I start the final campaign and if the demo was a success, the advertising value of the game should have been increased..

I do believe this may be the most beneficial way to go..

(And of course, if the fundings goes above my pledge I will use them to hire a 3D artist, making the game reach its final stage a lot faster..)

[Seriously Unserious]

Sounds great. I (im)patiently -- or is it (imp)atiently await your PM

[Rasmus]

Glad to hear that SU

Haha, I described my plan into making the game into two campaigns for my friend and he said:
"What? You want to make people to support you into just creating a demo, and then later on you will ask the same people once again to support you when make the full game??"
That made me think a little bit more..
Why I had the idea that I had, was because I have seen a lot of successful campaigns focusing just on one or two characters in the game..
So I will return to my original campaign idea mostly because I don't think it is right letting people support me for creating some half done, first I will create the full game and maybe later on campaign for some add ons.. But that's it!
Was thinking about letting those that funds the campaign a little bit extra gets to be beta testers and comment the game play as I progress In that way some people will get to try it out directly and not just wait for a whole year until its finished..

[Ameena]

A lot of Kickstarter campaigns offer rewards like that - maybe have a look at some existing ones to see what kind of rewards are offered at different pledge levels (the one for the new Elite game, "Elite: Dangerous" is probably a good example - it finished a few months ago but you can still go to the page and see what the reward tiers are, of which there are a lot). So for example, at a lower pledge level you only get the game. If you pledge a bit more, you might get an additional copy (for a friend). Pledge more and you get access to a backers-only forum to add in your own development ideas. A bit more could give you beta access. A higher tier could be alpha and beta access. Other possible rewards could include any additional expansions, in-game extras (not necessarily something that gives a mechanical benefit...it could just be a graphical option, or a special creature or something...some kind of thing that only backers of that tier get so they feel "special"), a downloadable soundtrack, stuff like that. Then potential backers have more of an incentive to you give you more of their precious money so you can make the game you really want to make .

[Lord_BoNes]

@Ameena: Looking at the Apple iStore, and seeing all those $1 games springs to mind... then there's all the $1 in-app purchases. If you want that little something extra, then you give them $1-2 dollars and you get it. It's quite an effective marketing technique.