Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.65

This week's update (v0.1.9.65) brings some new features to the game engine. Much requested and finally here is the ability to select multiple creatures by dragging a frame around them. In most RTS games this is a standard which was waiting on my ToDo list for quite some time. Now, you can drag a frame and any 'friendly' creature that is in the frame will be selected. You can then issue commands to all selected creatures such as walk-to or attack target.

Adding this ability messed with the current control elements of the engine. Selecting walls to mine, for example, was negatively impacted by the change. So to make things more streamlined, I changed how the player can command minions to mine, lumber and in the near future also dig.

The following screenshot shows these changes:

1. To mine, simply click on the pickaxe tool button and then click on any wall.
2. To lumber wood, click on the  ace tool button and then click on any tree.

There are alternate ways to mine and lumber wood. For example, you can also select a creature and then right click on a wall or tree to start the command. Finally, if you have a tree selected, right clicking on the selected tree will also issue a command for any minion to lumber.

Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.57

   Now that the level editor is integrated and running I've built my first level and it worked without issues - for the most part - and I'm very happy with the results. When a level is done, I reuse the same algorithm for storing saved games to store levels from the editor, which will be great to distribute the levels from the server.
   I wanted to play around with it and create something different in terms of what the Map Generator usually spits out. The maps from the generator are to a certain extend predictable, well ... they should be to me, since I designed it, but the point is that I wanted to create something that the generator cant do. I started with an inside-only dungeon level - so no opening to the outside world. The good thing is the game didn't crash =). But the minions started acting very strange after a while and that helped me find a bug. I can see that the editor is going to help unleash a lot of new bugs and make the engine more robust.

   The next goal: I am going to start making the first tutorial level. It will be a basic level explaining navigation and commands. But before I start on that, I need to finish hooking up some of those features that make it possible to create goal oriented quests. Most of it is already done, like the quest manager and the quest tree. But I left out some time-consuming data entry tasks to fill out all the options and didn't finish every feature that will probably be required for the such a simple level.

I will post the progress of the first tutorial level. In the meantime, play version 0.1.9.57

doodle from the editor:

Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.52

Today, I released a new version: 0.1.9.52. The main addition is the level editor and its progress was tracked right here. I spend the last 8 days or so fixing many loose ends. There are a few things left to implement which will be the focus this coming week. At this point, the editor is only accessible by my team. We are working on testing the core features and will begin using it by creating a few tutorial levels.

This round of alpha testing will help us to make sure that the core game engine was not broken during the implementation of the game editor. That is because I build the level editor right into the game itself. It will allow much more useful level design =)

This update also brings many bug-fixes caught by the alpha-tester bug-tracker, Thanks for Testing!!. Additionally, there are some requests made by the alpha testers to which I responded directly:
1.) Usernames can now use '_' the underscore in game. 2.) Enemies carry more than just gold, they can also carry certain types of food. That varies by enemy type. 3.) New UI elements that help explain game features.