Dungeon Master Forum

Note that you don't have to have ways to move water around just because it's in the game - DK had water and DK2 had both water and lava, but because everything was on one level, you couldn't dig out the floor and make water/lava flow into other squares. But nor could you use either as any kind of resource - both were basically obstacles you had to bridge across (wooden bridges slowly burnt away if built over lava, so you needed to use stone bridges) in order to claim tiles on the other side. Water slowed down creatures who waded through it and was harmful to vampires. Lava was obviously something all creatures avoided (except the fire-immune ones, like salamanders, who could wade through it like water), and if pushed into it would take constant damage until they got out. It was a fun tactic to have a load of enemies coming at you across a one of your bridges and then sell the bridge beneath their feet so they all got dumped in the lava . They'd then attempt to get to the nearest land in order to climb out.
There was one level where you had to stealth your way through a hero fortress, waiting for patrols to pass by and quickly dropping imps in to claim tiles and then picking them up before the patrol came back. If you were discovered, it placed the entire fortress on alert and they'd all come to attack you. So you had to keep your area of the dungeon sealed off with locked doors so that your creatures didn't go wandering. There were three uber heroes you had to capture and their patrols all took them across bridges over a large lava lake - once you'd claimed the bridges you could then sell them to dump the good guys in the lava, then rebuild them so the heroes would continue their patrols...and then do it again, thereby avoiding any major combat . You did have to capture the named heroes alive but that was just a matter of rebuilding the bridge and dropping and imp by the unconscious hero in order to pick him up and take him to the prison (you failed the level if any of them died so you had to have Imprisoning turned on, plus a Torture Chamber in order to convert them). Good fun, anyway .

New update of Dungeon Dwellers released. This is pre alpha version 5.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b2bw2ZFqnQ

@Ameena: I did think of something like digging out paths for the water, I actually made that update before you said it (So no stealy stealy )
I think some of the game mechanics that Dungeon Keeper had was flawed, like the one that I just had to sell the bridge under the creature to make him die, even if I knew I could do it I never used it because I felt that it got too easy. Also, when using the torture chamber it is so easy to complete the game when all I have to do is take all the enemy creatures and put them in the torture chamber, and then watch them switch to my side. I really like the idea of a torture chamber, but I think it should be a lot harder to convert creatures.

So back to the water system I don't think I have it in me to create a game mechanic that will flood rooms, but I am thinking about digging ditches that can be dried out if a certain vault is closed. Then when standing on a pressure plate it will open and create a flood where the ditches are. I want to give a lot of energy to enable the players' creative side, I was thinking about Minecraft.. It can be so easy to give certain building certain properties and let the players' imagination set the limits. What would be really cool is if the dungeon wouldn't have any width and height boundaries, that the player would be able to create a whole network of rooms in his own design.. Have to think a little bit more about that..


Anyway, hope you all like the new update And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel

Great graphics now!
Hey guys - after watching Rasmus' video go to this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
It may leave a 'watch also' on the most popular video today... - and - this one surely has also deserved a click!

Just one thing that I think is important in 'early' design.
Rasmus, please care that all icons of the interface aren't too small.
This is a bad developer trap. Not all people have huge displays.

Thanks bit

My first review
http://rawketlawncher.tumblr.com/post/5 ... n-dwellers

@rasmus: congratulations! looks like you've won over that critic at least.

@bit: thanks for that link, that was worth a watch. Actually, I have a version of Major Tom as well, by Shiny Toy Guns, love that song!

@su:
in fact I wish I had a better idea to push Rasmus.
If I would write a small post in our german programmer's forum, it would just end up in trolling.
I just hope that PetriH shows up in time and the Almost Human crew could help a little bit in some way.
Maybe they already got some contacts by giving interviews to some more important reviewers.

I mean, I think Rasmus will not die in agony if that gogo-project will not reach the goal.
But if there's any way to make his way easier - he loses so much time just for ugly presentation stuff - and I doubt that this is fun - wouldn't be to me...

Hey, cool, good to have a positive review like that - you can post it up in places as more advertising for yourself, or something .
On watching the video, I thought of a few things - obviously these might end up being looked at anyway but I thought I'd mention them just in case they hadn't come to mind...after all, that's what feedback is for, right?
Firstly - Feeding the Dark Mother. Does a new creature pop out automatically as soon as you've fed all the right ingredients to the Mother, or will there be a way of choosing when that happens? If the former, you'd have to track which ingredients she'd had so that you didn't accidentally spawn one creature and waste the resources you were trying to build up for another. If the latter, that would mean players could just chuck any old crap at the Mother and generate creaturs from the available options when they wanted to. Guess which option I would prefer .
Secondly, on creature automation - if you can't specify what your creatures are doing (or move them around as in the DK games), how can you be sure that certain creatures will be whre you want them when you want them? Or is that the idea behind the game? To build guard posts so that your creatures are on the ball when invaders come in, and so on. And what about imps? If they're busy building walls at one end of your dungeon while you're waiting for them to come and claim some newly-discovered unclaimed squares at the other, that could be very frustrating.
Can imps be upgraded like other creatures? I'm thinking that if they can, it'd increase their speed (movement, digging, claiming tiles, etc), carrying capacity, stuff like that. I suppose if you could upgrade imps you'd probably have to do a mass-upgrade which levels them all up at the same time or something, so you don't have to trawl through all the zillions of imps that you have, upgrading them one by one. Of course, if you create a new imp, after the upgrade, he'd need levelling up seperately, so it'd be in your interest to create a large number of imps before upgrading them all, so as to save on resources. Maybe upgrading imps could use a very small amount of every resource or something...or at least, all the basic, most common resources.
Anyway, the game looks like it's shaping up to be pretty cool - I hope it does well .

@SU: Thanks, I couldn't have written a better review myself actually

@Bit: Yeah, all publicity are good publicity, I think my largest problem is that I haven't gotten that many views. But the last video did increase the count drastically, so I will try to make updates 1 - 2 times a week hoping that more people will notice Dungeon Dwellers. And no, I wouldn't die in agony if the project doesn't reach the goal It will just take a longer time to get it to the final stage

@Ameena: Thanks, yeah I added a little headline on my Indiegogo site, I will try to get more reviews with my next updates.

On watching the video, I thought of a few things - obviously these might end up being looked at anyway but I thought I'd mention them just in case they hadn't come to mind...after all, that's what feedback is for, right?

Gimme, gimme, gimme

that would mean players could just chuck any old crap at the Mother and generate creatures from the available options when they wanted to. Guess which option I would prefer .

That is what I would prefer too, it is the most elegant solution I am going to update the menu system with my next update, and I want a classic menu like in DK, but only more dynamic so that it doesn't take so much room. Except for the menus "Buildings", "Constructions", "Spells" and "Creatures" I want to have a menu that shows how many items I have stored, in this menu the player can choose to just select what items he want to feed the Dark Mother with. When selected, the imps will carry those items from the storage rooms and feed the Dark Mother with it. Then the player have another menu, a "Dark Mother" menu, here the player can see what creatures can be puked out from the items that she has eaten. What do you think of that?

About the creature control. The hand will be able to pick up creatures, so that a player in a hurry can quickly guide them to the right spot. Just like in DK
I think that the imps will be automatically upgraded as they increase in level, some of them will get wings, some of them teleportation and maybe some of them a wheelbarrow

That all sounds very cool . I hope the, erm, birthing process has sufficintly squelchy-sounding noises when it occurs . At least from the Dark Mother - I can't see a stone golem making a squelchy noise, as such .
Wings on imps is an interesting idea...probably not particularly useful in cramped tunnels, but if ceilings are high enough I suppose they could just overfly the traffic. And of course it'd make crossing water and lava a bit easier .
Will creatures be able to wade through water (and, if fire-immune, lava) like they can in DK or will it be too deep to do that? Or if it's too deep, can some creatures swim, perhaps, while others have to find a bridge...or fly, if they have wings. Or even teleport, I suppose, if any have the ability to do that.
Ooh, spell idea - a gateway/portal thingy. You place down two portals, and creatures can go through one and emerge from the other (hmm, sounds a bit like a rather well-known Valve game...), so it's a quick way to transport bulk creatures from one place to another, for example if there's a battle in progress, or to give them a shortcut to the treasure room on payday (if there is a payday, of course - teleporting dwarves to the pub would work just as well, I'm sure ) and therefore give tham a happiness boost at the personal attention they're getting in order to satisfy their desires . Okay so you can still pick creatures up and move them that way, but a portal would allow them go go of their own accord. And would last a certain amount of time before both portals disappeared. Either that or they constantly drain mana whilst open, and disappear if you run out. And if you want to cast a new portal, you have to close both and start again or something - casting the spell would be in two parts - placing the first portal, and placing the second. Of course, if they drained mana constantly instead of having a fixed duration, the ability to instantly cancel both portals (ie end the spell) would be kind of useful . Also, another drawback could be that if you're using it to, say, speed up exploration/resource-gathering by having one end in your storage room and the other at the edge of explored territory where your imps are currently digging, there could be a problem if they suddenly break through into an area full of hostile creatures and some of those manage to get through your portal...but hey, that's the risk for enabling mass teleportation, right?

even when there is one thing I do not understand

when someone like Tim Schafer launches crowdfunding House nearby players for a game project
happen to be harvested in a few days several million euro

while someone like rasmus is a passionate computer and game design has trouble obtained a thousand euro, there are perhaps not known as tim schafer

but I find when not even all of it nomal
(should have give more chance to the small ambicious developer)

I agree with you. The root of this problem though is name recognition, when people know who someone is and that person has an established reputation for making fun games and an established following it does get easier to both get noticed and to convince people to fork over their money for your project.

@rasmus: I just tried doing a quick search on Dungeon Dwellers here's what came up on the 1st page: http://ca.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt= ... tart=1&b=1
If you'd like, I could help out with your web site and do some SEO on it to get you somewhere on that list so more people will find out about you. As things stand search engines like Yahoo and Google are doing nothing for you. I went as far as the 4th page and still saw no sign of anything related to your project. Under these circumstances, getting noticed in any significant way will be a real uphill battle.

yes quite agree with you completely agree with you is called Seriously Unserious

@SU: Look again I am on 5 and 7 th place:
Fifth: Rawket Lawncher • FireStarter: Dungeon Dwellers
Seventh: Dungeon Dwellers - YouTube
It is only my webpage that are far away, but all the others are pointing towards it

I have gotten mails from people that wants to make a review of my game, among them:
https://www.youtube.com/user/GrimKillerGaming
and http://bigsushi.fm/
I have talked a lot to Grim, and he have some connections to bigger reviewers like http://www.youtube.com/user/ZoominGames so if his review is good, I will have a chance there too.
My latest video gave 300+ views in less than two days, and that is more than some of my other videos gave in a several months. Anyway, it is really hard getting out there from being no-one, I didn't expect it to be easy, but as long as I am going forward I will keep pushing even harder.
So I will keep making updates and spamming the reviewers, so that hopefully the snowball will start rolling on its own
I am actually feeling rather positive to the campaign now, because I feel that it has a lot of potential as long as I keep pushing.
You are right SU. The more known a person is on the Internet the more views he will get, and the more trustworthy he is, the higher percent of the viewers will contribute.

@Ameena: The wings will just create a faster and more mobile imp, and also, it will look funny I have actually just completed modeling and texturing the DM (Dark Mother ) and was about to rigging the bones when I got mail from Grim (the reviewer), so I got distracted and started fixing some bugs so that I could release a alpha demo. Anyway, I can show a picture of her later Yes, she will make puking sounds, and the creatures will cry like little babies I don't know what sound a rock golem would make, maybe she can puke out the rocks and the golem assemble him self when he have reached the ground
I was going to have teleporters, but more like a construction/trap that the Dark Dwarfs can make so that the players minions can take shortcuts in the dungeon, or teleporting away enemies. Having a teleporter to transport the minions temporarily is a fun idea. But should all of them just go in because they are close to it, or do I have to put it right on them? It would be nice having another way to transport the minions without having to lift them. Hmmm, I will have to think about that, but I guess you will have come up with an idea long before me
That mass teleportation idea really got me thinking

But right now I am really tired, gotta get some sleep.

Sidenote: I get really annoyed with my spell checker, according to it: "teleport" or "teleporter" isn't a word, and neither is "golem", "internet" should have the first letter in Uppercase like "Internet".. Is it just me?

Spellcheckers on geeky devices are, ironically, not loaded with geeky words!

hope that your game will have a lot of success

I've seen another game that looks a lot like your rasmus

click the link and watch the video
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sub ... -overworld

you have to work on games??

Here is more realistic game-play video, I think they had to lower the graphic because the fps was too low https://wftogame.com/

I'm familiar with WFTO, but that is not the kind of game I want to do, they are going to make a copy/sequel of DK, while I want to take it one step further

EDIT: Stupid spell-checker

I support project rasmus

and I think we should give more chance to the small developer to launch

Rasmus wrote:@SU: Look again I am on 5 and 7 th place:
Fifth: Rawket Lawncher • FireStarter: Dungeon Dwellers
Seventh: Dungeon Dwellers - YouTube
It is only my webpage that are far away, but all the others are pointing towards it

I took another quick look -- and there you are, 1 of your -- looks like earlier -- youtube videos, and your indiegogo page. in 7th and 4th spots respectively. I'd still be happy to help you out with your main web page and getting you better results on more generic search terms like "dungeon game" etc. since the search on "dungeon dwellers" is the exact name of your game and if someone's entering that in there's a good chance that person already knows about your game and is trying to find out some more info about it. The more generic search terms would be where you could capture more new viewers since these would be people looking for a type of game and don't know what their choices are.

as this example shows, most will never see your game as they'll get caught up in the games showing up on the 1st page of the search, I even wend on to pages 2 and 3 and there is no sign of Dungeon Dwellers anywhere, so this is the area where I'd like to help you out in, is getting you onto lists like the above search. The ideal would be top 10, but even top 30 would be a huge improvement for you.

Yeah, sure, if you could help I would be really grateful I have always thought that the more links I have to my page from other pages, the more I will climb the ladder.. But to be honest, I don't think I have a proper tag to my home page. It is not even named Dungeon Dwellers :/

Here is a link to my early model of the Dark Mother..
http://www.rasmus-dev.com/rljdev/DarkMother(Teaser).png

EDIT: Changed the picture 10 minutes after the post, hope nobody noticed

Looks quite cool...though there's no indication that the ceiling in that room is higher than any other (based on the surrounding walls) so it looks a bit like she's rather too big for the dungeon. I'm not too sure about the arm stumps...I think she should either have arms with which she can stuff food into her gob (maybe have a big sacrificial bowl thingy in front of her onto which "offerings" are placed, which she scoops up and eats), in which case you can have her room be larger than it is right now (so she can't reach the walls in order to eat them) and with a unique floor (maybe smooth obsidiian or something) which she can't pick to pieces and eat. Or give her no arms and make her look a bit more like a blob with a mouth, lower down (or even in a pit) so that imps can reach to just throw stuff into her like a giant dustbin (or have them place it onto a platform/tray thing of some kind and then one pulls a lever which causes the platform to either fire like a catapult, launching the stuff into her mouth, or just drop down to form a slope and dumping it in that way, depending on the height, of course) .
I'm guessing that the Dark Mother will match your player colour and therefore be changeable to an extent? Just guessing here as the one in the pic is red, as is the player colour in any vids/screenshots you've shown so far.

I was thinking that the imps themselves will throw items up towards her mouth, so that she can catch them.. I haven't even thought about the roof :/ Maybe I can lower her down in the ground or something like that.
It is good to get outside opinions, I can get blind doing my own work..
I was thinking of putting some accessories on her with the player colour, because she wasn't born with the colour of the player, she was assigned or captured.

I will do some more modifications on her and post a new screen-shot asap to hear what you think

SU, I sent you a PM so you know.. They are easy to miss

How about this then? The colours are still wrong so you know. Think of her in a more better looking way
http://www.rasmus-dev.com/rljdev/DarkMo ... easer).png

I was also thinking about surrounding her with bars or spears pointing towards her, just so that is more visible that this is room of some kind..

That's looking suitably hideous

the whole idea of a mother monster that's a big, bloated blob kind of reminds me of a demon from one of the Buffy episodes.

SU, I sent you a PM so you know.. They are easy to miss

yeah, they can be, unless I check my email 1st, then I get an email telling me I got a PM and a link to my inbox.

Okey then, I think I have gotten the right feeling to him now.. Just have to work on some texturing and other details.
http://www.rasmus-dev.com/rljdev/DarkMo ... easer).png

the whole idea of a mother monster that's a big, bloated blob kind of reminds me of a demon from one of the Buffy episodes.

Got link?

There's some kind of option to enable a pop-up whenever you come to the forum and have a PM waiting - I always get one, anyway, so presumably it can be toggled in your preferences somewhere. Either that or it happens anyway and you have pop-ups blocks for this site.
Anyway, the Dark Mother is looking pretty cool . I'm sure she'll look better once you get the textures and stuff sorted. How will she produce the new creatures? Will she just sort of tilt her head forward a bit and they fall out into the floor? If she actually has to heave and puke, that would involve moving around (shuolders moving up and down, for example) and she might break the floor . Maybe the space in front of her could be all...icky, like a giant blood-splat-looking thing. Or slime, or something. You know, where the creatures land once they're "born".
I suppose if the game had multiple levels then you could have a sort of...chute thingy coming through the ceiling of a room some distance below the Dark Mother, which the creatures drop through when they're created. And that would leave it to the imagination as to where exactly they're spawning from and what it looks like when they do . But a properly 3D environment would probably be very complicated in terms of moving the camera around and stuff, and keeping an eye on it all at once, so I'm not expecting this to happen . Lol actually, I suppose you could have a room on the same level as the Dark Mother, quite some distance away but directly behind her, with a chute/tube thingy coming up through the floor. And when you select a creature for production, the Dark Mother sort of has a straining expression on her face, and after a few moments looks relieved, and shortly after that a creature pulls itself out of that tube, having made its way along from...wherever it just came from .
On the other hand, having them being puked up takes up much less space in the dungeon .

Rasmus wrote:

the whole idea of a mother monster that's a big, bloated blob kind of reminds me of a demon from one of the Buffy episodes.

Got link?

Beo found the one I was thinking of when I first made that post, but there's also another one that falls into this category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Eggs_% ... _Slayer%29

That's the best I pic I could find...

basically it's a sort of queen demon blob thing that lays eggs which hatch into mind-controlling parasites.

That is an idea for how the mother produces new monsters, she lays an egg and after a delay the egg hatches. perhaps it also needs to be transported to a nursery room by an imp and be cared for there until it hatches. Also, the more powerful the monster, the longer the delay. Of course, imp eggs would need to be able to hatch without being cared for and perhaps could hatch anywhere as long as they don't get smashed by an enemy or careless monster or something. That would actually create a vulnerable stage for even the most powerful monsters, so you'd need to have enough monsters to guard its egg until it could hatch.

EDIT: just checked your updated evil mother pic, it definitely looks suitably hideous for an evil mother creature.