Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.83

Today, I continued work on the Editor mostly. There were also some bugs I fixed that the bug tracker logged (thank you for testing). So short and sweet, here are today's changes to version 0.1.9.83:

• Editor: Grow Trees with one button click.
• Editor: Fixes Rendering Bug
• Editor: Adds Button to clear grass.
• Editor: Adds ability to draw fog of war.
• Bones decay on/off switch.
• Fixes bug that allowed creatures to walk on water in certain cases.
• Fixes bug when opening or using the level-up window.

And here a screenshot from today's development:

Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.74

This version (v0.1.9.74) fixes a few critical bugs caught by the automated bug tracking system thanks to the Alpha testing done by you guys! Thanks!! These occurred when a player transferred items from an object like the cooking pot, furnace or alchemy bar and the game would just crash randomly. Another bug was that players could craft bones from wooden planks... yes I left that in by accident!

This post is rather short but if you want more eye-candy, check out my last post.=)

I'm helping decorating for the holiday season this year...

Tis the time of the year and everyone is decorating so felt obligated to contribute this time and start making snow flakes. If you want to give it a try download the templates here.

I love the flames behind Vader's head.

I've made a couple so far, and it's becoming easier each time, but as you can see I've made a bunch of mistakes in the process. The most important thing is to have a good sharp knife and a solid surface to work on. It wasn't convenient either that my printer ink just ran out and the template wasn't visible all the way.

Cut out the round template shape and then fold it on the lines on the template, folding it into accordion shape and leaving the gray shades on top, so that you can see where you will have to cut. (There are better instructions on the web if you search for it ;-p)

 Once everything is cut out, be veery careful taking it apart. It is very fragile.

While unfolding, also try to fold into the opposite direction to get all folds rather flat. Finally you can place a heavy book on top of the completed snowflake to flatten it for a while.

Next I will try the storm trooper.

Dungeon Colony Version 0.1.9.70

For those of you who live by North American traditions, I hope you survived Thanks Giving. Even though I live in California, I don't originate from this part of the world. However, I've been doing quite a bit of Thanks Giving stuffing myself and found little time to work on Dungeon Colony. In the end, I still managed to get a release (v.0.1.9.70) out tonight which brings some new additions and bug fixes.

If you have followed my previous posts, you know that I am working on new levels (tutorial and campaign). I am working behind the scenes on the Tutorial which means Alpha Testers won't see any such progress until it's finished. Parallel, I am also adding other new features that can be tested immediately. Today I am adding new objects: Bones.

Bones are remains that enemies (currently only Bandits and Archers) leave behind. After their corpse disintegrates, bones appear on the ground. The following screenshot (click to enlarge) shows these new bones in action:

 At the moment, bones are pretty much useless and just look neat. Though, in the near future, bones will become a useful resource that your minions should collect.

This version also fixes some bugs and other logical issues.

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.