Dungeon Colony Version 0.2.0.96

Hello Minions,

I've taken a small detour from my regular game development objectives to concentrate on improving the game controls to respond to a lot of requests to make them less confusing. It's quite insane that the controls have been almost the same since development began, at least when it comes to the mouse  button designations for most of the primary commands.

Get Dungeon Colony Early Access Now!  Version 0.2.0.96

The old commands used to select units and object with the left mouse and command them using the right mouse. This also applied to items in an inventory: You would select left and move (in or out of inventory) using the right mouse. This wasn't very intuitive given the difference between units and objects that can be selected on the map.

The new controls are mostly completely left click: Please give it a try and let me know if there is anything you would change.

If you are already familiar with the old controls or like the controls just the way they were then you can go back and switch between them in the updated Settings menu:

On the left is a new column for "Custom Controls". Here you can switch between the left/right mouse control settings. Any future customizations will be added to this area.

Dungeon Colony Version 0.2.0.80

Today's release (v0.2.0.80) improves existing features, fixes various game crashing bugs caught by the exception handler and continues on the Audio implementation.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixes bug when loading level from server.
• Fixes Nullpointer exception due to when copying entities.
• Fixes bug when some resolutions caused mouse input to crash the game.

Feature Improvements:

• Completes Shader implementation in Level Editor. (FOW & Borders).
• Prevents Spiders from stealing from or attacking objects.
• Begins with integration of first Sound effects and a new Audio Engine.

Dungeon Colony Version 0.2.0.67

Today's version (v0.2.0.67) continues adding features to the Campaign Map. The first thing we've added is the new art-work for the campaign map, which includes the map itself and a range of icons to represent different levels and quests.

Here is a screenshot of the map and some of the prototype icons:

This map will be used for the campaign game mode, which is one of the 3 modes available (Tutorial, Campaign, and Sandbox). If you have an early access account, you can navigate to the new map, but there isn't much you can do yet. Visit the Road-To-Beta ToDo List to find out more about the progress on the campaign map and other features we are currently working on.

Summary of changes for this release:

• Adds new Campaign Map Prototype.
• Adds new Campaign Map Icons.
• Adds new Campaign Map Level Info Frame.
• Adds backend features to store player completed levels.
• Adds new ground tiles to Level Editor.
• Fixes DropDownList bug.
• Fixes various Bugs in Level Editor.
• Fixes Shader Issues with Mountain Borders.
• Fixes Issues with frame borders.
  
  

March Update

Hi everyone,


It's been some days since I've posted news so let me share a bit more about what's happening in the realms of Dungeon Colony. For one, I took a break to recharge inspirational batteries. Some of this happened during GDC and there was a lot of good that came again from this year's conference: I am seriously looking into adding audio to Dungeon Colony!!

Finding Audio has been much more difficult than visual art. I have a much clearer idea in my head of how I want Dungeon Colony to look like, but when it comes to audio it's a different story. I can see several styles, but haven't focused in on the right one yet. All I know is that ambiance is super important to me. I have found a professional studio which works with AAA titles, but who also works with indies. This is all I want to share for now, since everything is in its infancy. But I'm excited =)

Of course, I found some time to code, so I continued a bit on the Beta-Road-Map-ToDo-List. I am currently working on the Level Editor. While its functional, there are soo many loose ends that I still need to fix.

At the same time, another item from the to-do list is the Campaign Map. The campaign map will allow the player to choose and play levels or side quests. The art for the map is almost done and it looks great. I will write a post in the coming days and show the final version of the map, so stay tuned...


There are only a few days left for the Early Access March Discount, support us by getting an account. Thank you!

Beta Progress Log

Last Sunday (3/16), my wonderful business partner and I sat down in our favorite café and discussed the plans to move Dungeon Colony to Beta. We came up with the following list of high level items.

As I have done before, I will use this blog post to keep track of progress on each of these items. If you want to find out about the progress, come back and revisit this post. There are many sub-tasks involved in each ToDo list item which I'll start adding as we work on them.

Orange = Pending
Blue = Work In Progress
Green = Complete

Last Updated: 04/13/2014

The Alpha-to-Beta ToDo list:

• Music/Sound
• Found and contracted production team for sound/music.
• First set of sound assets are in production & implrementation. 
• Adding new audio engine to configure sound effects and control playback based on map locations. 
• Campaign Map (Pre-Requisite: New Art)
• Creating new game frame for Campaign Map.
• Adding new placeholder for campaign world map.
• Adding Location Buttons that load a level.
• Adding Level Chain for Campaign.
• Adding support to the campaign map to show completed levels & next playable level and hide remaining uncompleted levels. 
• Storing completed level info with user data on server.
• New Art completed (new World Map + new Map Icons). 
• Adding new window for processing world map levels. 
• Adding additional world-map-icon functionality.  
• Level Editor fully functional
• Fixing DropDownLists in Quest Creator.
• Adding Tab-Focus to various controls to Editor Settings frame
• Adding Tab-Focus functionality to DropDownList
• Fixes border shadow when placing granite.  
• Adding Ground tiles to editor tool box.
• Adding close buttons to various tool frames in editor.
• Campaign Levels
• Game Player Profiles
• Creature Character Window for Equipment and Skill Management (To replace the current skill frame)

Dungeon Colony Version 0.2.0.46

In this version (v0.2.0.46), I  added the next toolbox for wall building to the side menu. When selected, it allows the player to choose between Dirt, Rock and Stone walls. It works just like the flooring tool where you to place new ground tiles. Once you choose a destination for the wall, your minions will try to find the necessary resources stored in any of your containers and then proceed to construction. Each requires 4 raw material of it's type. The resource count is subject to balancing.

Along the way, I improved how all 5 tools are deselected. Now you can simply right click to deselect the tool. Before, it was more like an annoying guessing game.

This new wall tool replaces the former way of building new walls. Previously, you had to craft stone blocks in the workbench before you could place them on the ground to make a wall. It was taking too long to get walls build and took much of the fun of dungeon building away. Now, if you have the resources stored, building walls is only one click away.

Here is a short gif animation showing how much simpler wall building has become:

Summary of Improvements in this version:

• Adds new Wall building toolbox. 
• Removes old wall block crafting recipes.
• Adds right-click toolbox deselect capability.
• Removes Email from Login screen. If you username is your email, then that'll work. 
• Fixes issue with username on website
• Fixes bug that caused the selection frame to remain on the screen, even after the object was removed from the game.

Dungeon Colony Version 0.2.0.42

Grunt!

We are finally on Steam Greenlight! Please vote and get Early Access at DungeonColony.com!

New in 0.2.0.42:

The dungeon needs air again, that is, if there is an entrance to the dungeon and if the level has enemies trying to enter the dungeon from outside. As a player, you can close the dungeon off by placing a wall at the entrance. Anyone trapped inside will start loosing air-points. Once depleted, life points will drop.

The air algorithm has always been part of the game engine. I turned it off a while ago when working on the tile map. The Alpha testers found out quickly about it and thus it was time to turn it back on.

As a result, I also made significant improvements to the enemy AI: Since dungeon layout and design is left to the player's imagination, the AI has to make somewhat realistic choices when faced with multiple directions. For example, if an enemy walks down a corridor with a room to the right, should he walk on or enter the room ?

The new algorithm helps the enemy make those decisions. While this is the foundation for enemy movement, I've been long working on an 'actual' AI based algorithm (one that learns as opposed to one that's just decision tree based). It's not done yet, but the progress looks promising.

I also created a new mining smoke/particle gif animation :

Summary:

New:

• Adds new Animation when a wall is destroyed (see gif).

Improvements:

• Re-introduces air need. Prevents player from closing off the dungeon with a wall.
• Improves Enemy AI navigation. 
• Improved order-cancelling logic when minions cannot perform a command for any reason. 
• Fixes bug that crashed the game when placing ground tiles.