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dislekcia
17-06-2010, 02:23 AM
Whoa! Nailed the Mysteria exploits. Up to v0.142, still at the same link ;)

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 04:39 AM
I downloaded the game earlier today and it ran fine for several launches, then I shut down the PC.

I came back to the PC this evening and when trying to start the exe, I am getting a "Failed to initialize direct Music Audio" OK button, then it goes to "Unexpected error occured when running the game."

Just downloaded the one just released on top of one I downloaded earlier today and unzipped it right over the files from earlier. I am still getting the same error.

Also, I am not certain the Assassin's first attack is working correctly; it does not always apply for me against higher level monsters, even though they are fully exposed.

Additionally, the Blood Mage, when poisoned, is unable to use Mana Potions until he uses a Health Potion first.

dislekcia
17-06-2010, 04:44 AM
I downloaded the game earlier today and it ran fine for several launches, then I shut down the PC.

I came back to the PC this evening and when trying to start the exe, I am getting a "Failed to initialize direct Music Audio" OK button, then it goes to "Unexpected error occured when running the game."

Just downloaded the one just released on top of one I downloaded earlier today and unzipped it right over the files from earlier. I am still getting the same error.

Also, I am not certain the Assassin's first attack is working correctly; it does not always apply for me against higher level monsters, even though they are fully exposed.

Additionally, the Blood Mage, when poisoned, is unable to use Mana Potions until he uses a Health Potion first.

Hmm. Did you run anything else that'll use/initialise DirectX before running DD the first time? It sounds like it's trying to play sound and can't get hold of a sound device, that's really odd. If it still happens, we can try giving you a DD.dat file that has sound turned off and see if that works?

I'll see if I can reproduce oddities with the Assassin's revealed first strike. It should come into play even when a monster's on the edge of a map.

Bloodmages take damage when drinking mana potions, are you sure you had enough health before drinking the health potion to survive? The game won't let you kill yourself that way, even though it used to ;)

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 04:55 AM
Hmm. Did you run anything else that'll use/initialise DirectX before running DD the first time? It sounds like it's trying to play sound and can't get hold of a sound device, that's really odd. If it still happens, we can try giving you a DD.dat file that has sound turned off and see if that works?


Looks like it might be an issue with my audio device on my PC; I can't run Windows Media Player either. I wonder what I did; probably has nothing to do with this and it's coincidence.




I'll see if I can reproduce oddities with the Assassin's revealed first strike. It should come into play even when a monster's on the edge of a map.


My assassin wasn't by the edge. He should have been able to wipe out the target.

Also, several times I have sporadically seen a monster go from being a Safe target to a Death target on a secondary scroll-over. I'll have to try and duplicate the situation.



Bloodmages take damage when drinking mana potions, are you sure you had enough health before drinking the health potion to survive? The game won't let you kill yourself that way, even though it used to ;)

Possibly. I think a warning or something might be helpful.

Also, when going to a competing altar, the "So and So gives you +20 piety" message appears; no piety is applied, but it is weird to see the message from the competitor on the opposing altar.

xyber
17-06-2010, 10:35 AM
... game is bloody hard... sits in corner sulking.






... but that makes it that more fun. try and try again, till you make it ;)

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 03:59 PM
I got it running again today; sound is back; it's not your game doing it, but whatever. :)



Also, several times I have sporadically seen a monster go from being a Safe target to a Death target on a secondary scroll-over. I'll have to try and duplicate the situation.


I figured out how to replicate.

Start Assassin take AHPHEELSIK
Go to a lever 2 monster and hit them once.
You should see Next Hit Estimate : DEAD or DEATH (or PETRIFY in some cases)
Click Ahpheelsik.
Rollover Monster
Next Hit Estimate: SAFE
Apply Ahpheelsik to monster
Next Hit Estimate: DEATH

dislekcia
17-06-2010, 04:09 PM
I got it running again today; sound is back; it's not your game doing it, but whatever. :)

Ah, cool :) Glad we didn't break your sound card, that would have been scary...


I figured out how to replicate.

Start Assassin take AHPHEELSIK
Go to a lever 2 monster and hit them once.
You should see Next Hit Estimate : DEAD or DEATH (or PETRIFY in some cases)
Click Ahpheelsik.
Rollover Monster
Next Hit Estimate: SAFE
Apply Ahpheelsik to monster
Next Hit Estimate: DEATH

Ah, that's the prediction for Apheelsik: You can safely cast it without getting smacked by the monster. Sorry if that's confusing. There might be monsters that take a swing at you when you cast things on them in future, so we're just hedging our bets ;)

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 04:40 PM
ERROR playing as Fighter in the Snake Pit

I moved a step to reveal a hidden area (and walked onto a WEYTWUT - I am worshipping Taurog) and got this message



___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event
for object Interface:

Error in code at line 13:
if (Roomwatch.reveal[floor(mouse_x / 20), floor(mouse_y / 20)] >= 2) {

at position 20: Unknown variable reveal or array index out of bounds


Screenshot
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/5017/dderr1.jpg

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 04:42 PM
Ah, cool :) Glad we didn't break your sound card, that would have been scary...



Ah, that's the prediction for Apheelsik: You can safely cast it without getting smacked by the monster. Sorry if that's confusing.

It is, a bit. I would recommend a clarification: maybe a note of which action the character is taking

Action: POISON / ATTACK / FIREBALL / PETRIFY
Result: DEATH / SAFE / PETRIFY

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 05:38 PM
Even though I have Boon, the message still reads I receive +1 Piety Bonus instead of +2.

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 11:08 PM
ERROR playing as Fighter in the Snake Pit

I moved a step to reveal a hidden area (and walked onto a WEYTWUT - I am worshipping Taurog) and got this message


Exact same thing / message happened again while stepping on a glyph that is next to a darkness spot; this time in the Library with a bloodmage, with no god.

This time the game crashed after clicking OK.

dislekcia
17-06-2010, 11:12 PM
ERROR playing as Fighter in the Snake Pit

I moved a step to reveal a hidden area (and walked onto a WEYTWUT - I am worshipping Taurog) and got this message



___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event
for object Interface:

Error in code at line 13:
if (Roomwatch.reveal[floor(mouse_x / 20), floor(mouse_y / 20)] >= 2) {

at position 20: Unknown variable reveal or array index out of bounds


That is a seriously strange error... I really can't reproduce it, no matter what I try. I've added some guarding conditions and changed the order of polling the input around a little, but in all fairness it really should be impossible. Um, did you jerk your mouse out of the game window very fast or something? (I'm clutching at straws here)


It is, a bit. I would recommend a clarification: maybe a note of which action the character is taking

Action: POISON / ATTACK / FIREBALL / PETRIFY
Result: DEATH / SAFE / PETRIFY

Yeah, I agree that there could be more information on what's being predicted... In the full we're planning to have the cursor change to the icon of whatever you're going to do to an enemy, which might be enough info... We just didn't have time for that in this release.


Even though I have Boon, the message still reads I receive +1 Piety Bonus instead of +2.

Good catch. Fixed :)

XuaXua
17-06-2010, 11:48 PM
The error message came up twice so far; both times when I step for the first time onto a square containing a glyph (not the first glyph I stepped on in the game) next to some still-covered area.

Both times were not against the wall.

Both times the popup appeared immediately after clicking the glyph; the character would move to the glyph space, and then the popup. It would happen too fast for me to move the mouse out.

coendou
18-06-2010, 12:50 AM
ever thought of making it available in other languages to?

sagittary
18-06-2010, 03:52 AM
That's good to hear! Your initial posts about certain things being hard to see at times was a major influence on my thinking around the interface redesign. Do the combat health-loss visualisations help much? I'm guessing the low-contrast text is on some of the popups when you mouse-over interface elements?


I'll start a new game and basically write up as I play.

Main Menu: The black ? on the purple boxes for the locked stuff is really hard to see. But since it's locked stuff and there's already clear indicators that it's locked, it's not really an issue. You could take out the ??? and it'd be fine. The red text however is difficult to see. It's primarily the color; even with a thicker font, I think it'd still stand out as pretty harsh (to me). Alternatively, it's that it's on the textured background but I think we'd both agree that it's probably better to tweak the text rather than make a new background. :)

Credits: The red with the thin font is a little bad (but only a little as in it's a non-issue). Same issue as above really but since it's on a flat black background, there's better visibility.

Game screen: Red user profile name and red numbers (using a wizard).

The combat-loss visualizations are really helpful in tandem with the numbers. No color issues there and the clarity is much better.

The mouse over blue for the three stats could use some minor tweaking. It's clear enough though as is that I don't really have any problems. And since it's just the description part, it's not something important I need to look at constantly.

The red 10 on level 10 monsters could stand out a little better but since it's a unique monster, that actually kind makes it stand out anyway as what it's suppose to be (it's the only monster I can't glance at to see what level it is... so by proxy, I knnow it -has- to be 10). Doesn't really need to be changed as a serious issue.

Other than that... no major color issues (beat the boss, checked the god stuff, got poisoned) for me. The only real significant stand out is the mouseover stuff. So yeah. :)

Feynman
18-06-2010, 04:30 AM
Okay, been playing the new version, and I have to say that I love the changes to the deity system. There are a lot of new class/deity possibilities now... already, one of my characters has turned certain death into a successful run by using piety to polymorph a damage-resistant boss into something much more manageable.

One suggestion I have, however, is to please add a confirmation dialogue after clicking the "Retire" button. That button now sits only a handful of pixels underneath the "Pick Up" button, and I've accidentally ended a run prematurely a couple times now by inadvertently clicking on "Retire" when all I wanted to do was pick up a glyph.

Patashu
18-06-2010, 06:40 AM
New version looks awesome! I happened to get a wizard with poison + fire + blood to power and blew through the snake pit first try. The new blood to power makes up for the new poison being weaker, apparently. :D

Both glyph changes are definitely in the right direction, though. You can't poison as an after thought, you have to keep doing it and doing it and the extra regen necessary is noticable. Bludtopowa's efficiency is better, and I approve.

dislekcia
18-06-2010, 12:42 PM
ever thought of making it available in other languages to?

Yup. We're seeing what options we have for localisation in the full version. We're expecting it to be a big deal...


I'll start a new game and basically write up as I play.

Main Menu: The black ? on the purple boxes for the locked stuff is really hard to see. But since it's locked stuff and there's already clear indicators that it's locked, it's not really an issue. You could take out the ??? and it'd be fine. The red text however is difficult to see. It's primarily the color; even with a thicker font, I think it'd still stand out as pretty harsh (to me). Alternatively, it's that it's on the textured background but I think we'd both agree that it's probably better to tweak the text rather than make a new background. :)

Credits: The red with the thin font is a little bad (but only a little as in it's a non-issue). Same issue as above really but since it's on a flat black background, there's better visibility.

Game screen: Red user profile name and red numbers (using a wizard).

The combat-loss visualizations are really helpful in tandem with the numbers. No color issues there and the clarity is much better.

The mouse over blue for the three stats could use some minor tweaking. It's clear enough though as is that I don't really have any problems. And since it's just the description part, it's not something important I need to look at constantly.

The red 10 on level 10 monsters could stand out a little better but since it's a unique monster, that actually kind makes it stand out anyway as what it's suppose to be (it's the only monster I can't glance at to see what level it is... so by proxy, I knnow it -has- to be 10). Doesn't really need to be changed as a serious issue.

Other than that... no major color issues (beat the boss, checked the god stuff, got poisoned) for me. The only real significant stand out is the mouseover stuff. So yeah. :)

Woot! You have no idea how useful this is for future interface planning, thanks!


Okay, been playing the new version, and I have to say that I love the changes to the deity system. There are a lot of new class/deity possibilities now... already, one of my characters has turned certain death into a successful run by using piety to polymorph a damage-resistant boss into something much more manageable.

One suggestion I have, however, is to please add a confirmation dialogue after clicking the "Retire" button. That button now sits only a handful of pixels underneath the "Pick Up" button, and I've accidentally ended a run prematurely a couple times now by inadvertently clicking on "Retire" when all I wanted to do was pick up a glyph.

Funny point: Polymorph had a bug when it was first put in that caused monster attributes to stack. So you could get Iron Man on top of, say, Tower of Goo and be royally pwnt ;)

We've had a lot of people ask about a retire confirmation... I think it's because we're always just using spacebar to interact with things, so rarely head over to the pick up button. I think the best solution in future versions is simply going to be creating a whole new panel for it, like "stairs up" that you need to stand on for the button to appear.


New version looks awesome! I happened to get a wizard with poison + fire + blood to power and blew through the snake pit first try. The new blood to power makes up for the new poison being weaker, apparently. :D

Both glyph changes are definitely in the right direction, though. You can't poison as an after thought, you have to keep doing it and doing it and the extra regen necessary is noticable. Bludtopowa's efficiency is better, and I approve.

Yeah, poison is a lot less crazy now. It used to be game winning, now it forces you to trade resources for extra xp, you have to weigh those against each other. Bludtopowa took a long time to come right, but I think we're happy with where it ended up.

Patashu
18-06-2010, 02:06 PM
I like the idea of having an 'upstairs' icon as a roguelike throwback, but it would imply the existence of a 'downstairs', and disappoint newbies who expected to find one. So perhaps not. On the other hand, maybe killing the boss monster(s) spawns the downstairs!

In Angband, for instance, killing Morgoth makes the final downstairs spawn on the spot where he was.

aoeu
18-06-2010, 07:15 PM
I think the scoring for the time it takes to kill the boss is backwards. I played a game this morning but then left it for several hours. When I came back to complete it, I received half a million points for killing the boss alone (I think it was around 564,000 points). I played another game where I only got 749 points for killing the boss in 8:22, so it seems as though the scoring has a big problem.

sagittary
18-06-2010, 08:13 PM
We've had a lot of people ask about a retire confirmation... I think it's because we're always just using spacebar to interact with things, so rarely head over to the pick up button. I think the best solution in future versions is simply going to be creating a whole new panel for it, like "stairs up" that you need to stand on for the button to appear.


You could move it up to the gold and piety icons near the profile name to make three points of a triangle.

sagittary
18-06-2010, 10:41 PM
For the special dungeons, it's nice that you track which ones have't completed it once you unlock it. But it would also be nice to track which ones you still need pre-unlock. If I need to beat normal with all T2, it would be good to know that I've already done it with X and Y. Minor issue.

XuaXua
18-06-2010, 11:04 PM
Since you're taking design suggestions, flip the Naga (and Medusa to compensate) his staff looks too much like his health bar.

XuaXua
18-06-2010, 11:09 PM
Also, mousing over with fireball to a killing blow shows SAFE when it should show Victory.

dislekcia
19-06-2010, 03:34 AM
I think the scoring for the time it takes to kill the boss is backwards. I played a game this morning but then left it for several hours. When I came back to complete it, I received half a million points for killing the boss alone (I think it was around 564,000 points). I played another game where I only got 749 points for killing the boss in 8:22, so it seems as though the scoring has a big problem.

Aha, int wrapping error. Thanks for finding it! I can prevent against it, I think - unless you leave the game running for more than 3 years...


You could move it up to the gold and piety icons near the profile name to make three points of a triangle.

That's near where it used to be. Problem is that we can't move the button up there because player character names can be long enough to overlap it. We can't do the new panel+stairs thing in this version because we need to put glyphs where certain classes start, which would mean they couldn't retire until they picked up said glyph. Not cool... Basically we've got a ton of things in the way of implementing a proper solution fast.

I'm going to try and move the interface elements around, see if putting the buy/pick up button above the description text doesn't help somewhat, just for now.


For the special dungeons, it's nice that you track which ones have't completed it once you unlock it. But it would also be nice to track which ones you still need pre-unlock. If I need to beat normal with all T2, it would be good to know that I've already done it with X and Y. Minor issue.

Ah. The game does show normal completion with slight border colour changes on the class buttons. I can understand why you're not seeing it... Your points about colourblind usability actually made me go with the different display for the challenge dungeons (both colour and positional differences, etc) I guess it makes sense to use the same system everywhere, but they're actually very different things in the code. Hmmm.


Also, mousing over with fireball to a killing blow shows SAFE when it should show Victory.

Is that confusing? The monster can't attack you, so you're safe. I guess I use the enemy health bar to show me if I'm going to win or not. Could change it if it's a huge problem, I guess.

neongrey
19-06-2010, 08:25 AM
Running into an odd bug when I use the keypad to move. If I'm against any edge of the screen, and I hit 9 to move diagonally up-right, nothing happens; I don't move anywhere. It seems to only happen when I'm on the edge of the screen. Mouse movement from there still works.

coendou
19-06-2010, 10:49 AM
found something, taurog indeed sets your magic resistance to 25%, even if it already was higher, bug or just meant that way?

Lekon
19-06-2010, 04:16 PM
Running into an odd bug when I use the keypad to move. If I'm against any edge of the screen, and I hit 9 to move diagonally up-right, nothing happens; I don't move anywhere. It seems to only happen when I'm on the edge of the screen. Mouse movement from there still works.

That's sort of happening to me. I can't use 9 to go up right if there is something above me, and to the right of me. if I mouse move, I can push past them, but the keypad doesn't want to try squeezing through that space at all.

I think it's sensitive about it's size.

Delvin
20-06-2010, 02:48 AM
It'd be much appreciated if you could work the recoil-guitar into the combat prediction. It's a bit nasty to rely on the "victory" text and then die anyway.

In other news just a few more classes per dungeon to go and I'll have maxed the gold related perks, after which it's time to really start working on the campaign...

XuaXua
20-06-2010, 05:19 AM
Is that confusing? The monster can't attack you, so you're safe. I guess I use the enemy health bar to show me if I'm going to win or not. Could change it if it's a huge problem, I guess.

It's more a case of being inconsistent than confusing.

I scroll over and if it should win the battle, I expect it to say Victory; I am ok with it saying Safe, though there are times when the monster has a resistance and the Victory I expected turned out to actually be Safe.

That's the thing, consistency.
If you're going to give us a victory message and restrict it to being shown only for hand to hand attacks only, then you're not giving your magic users justice.

DMT
20-06-2010, 03:32 PM
Love the new version! Thanks a lot guys :)

You are probably aware of this, but I've not seen it mentioned yet, so I'll add it:

Activating and deactivating BLUDTOPOWA counts as glyph use and gains piety with Mysteria, so you have unlimited piety right away. It's totally broken so I assume it's not supposed to be like that.

All the new gods are great, except the Glowing Guardian. He is useful for the full heal you get when you join and the other that costs 50(!) piety, but even in the crypt I was unable to get enough piety for his 100 piety boon. If the HALPMEH glyph doesn't spawn it seems impossible.

Basically you'll only ever have enough piety for one boon, almost never enough for his ultimate boon, and the death protection is almost never useful when the full heal is the same price. (And you can get death protection a lot of other ways).

Other than that, having a blast! :D

dislekcia
20-06-2010, 11:32 PM
Love the new version! Thanks a lot guys :)

You are probably aware of this, but I've not seen it mentioned yet, so I'll add it:

Activating and deactivating BLUDTOPOWA counts as glyph use and gains piety with Mysteria, so you have unlimited piety right away. It's totally broken so I assume it's not supposed to be like that.

All the new gods are great, except the Glowing Guardian. He is useful for the full heal you get when you join and the other that costs 50(!) piety, but even in the crypt I was unable to get enough piety for his 100 piety boon. If the HALPMEH glyph doesn't spawn it seems impossible.

Basically you'll only ever have enough piety for one boon, almost never enough for his ultimate boon, and the death protection is almost never useful when the full heal is the same price. (And you can get death protection a lot of other ways).

Other than that, having a blast! :D

The BLUDTOPOWA bug's been fixed. Re-download the game ;)

Appreciate the feedback on the Glowing Guardian. Part of the freeware strategy is to find out how complex things like the different gods work out for players so that we can be totally clued up when the full version comes out.

sagittary
21-06-2010, 12:13 AM
The BLUDTOPOWA bug's been fixed. Re-download the game ;)

Appreciate the feedback on the Glowing Guardian. Part of the freeware strategy is to find out how complex things like the different gods work out for players so that we can be totally clued up when the full version comes out.

I actually had a situation where the death protection worked out better for me than the full heal (though as a caveat, in any mostly to pretty successful run, I tend to rack up either a lot of piety or very little). I don't remember the specifics, but I was mostly ready to fight the boss. I think it was the goat? At any rate, the boss had triple digit damage - well more than I had hit points. I had figured out that with my current mana and the mana from a level up plus mana potions, I could -almost- kill the bugger... but I'd be short something like 20-50 HP with no real way to do that (exploration would just heal more than I'd be able to deal damage and I was low on exploration squares anyway).

But then I noticed that my melee damage was just about enough (and I may have had a mana shield)... enough so that with the level up, I'd probably have enough damage. So I took Death Protection, popped Burnz, leveled, and used DP to survive the boss hit and return a melee hit to win. In this case, the full heal would have not helped at all and I wasn't in a situation where DP was available in any other way.

Which isn't to say that GG isn't a little subpar compared to the other gods; I've tended towards the other ones primarily (though with randomization of everything, that's pretty subjective since finding X god early can be different than if you find 'em late).

Unrelated note, I've noticed with the new god system, I've done less gold farming (not that I did much before) - at the very least, I've gotten further into dungeons before realizing I couldn't win (or screwed up beyond recovery).

rugzhltstirc
21-06-2010, 08:35 AM
On new Tikki Tooki:

I take it boon granting 10% dodging bonus being one-time bonus is an expecting behavior? To prevent us getting 60-70% of dodging?

I can live with it, but why Tikki's second biggest boon is "poisoning"? I just don't get it. Poisoning implies prolonged battle (2-3 strike exchanges), which is the exact opposite of what Tikki is about.

On new interface:

It doesn't show bonus' exact numbers (or it does i just can't figure out where it is exactly).

Twinge
21-06-2010, 12:27 PM
I think the scoring for the time it takes to kill the boss is backwards. I played a game this morning but then left it for several hours. When I came back to complete it, I received half a million points for killing the boss alone (I think it was around 564,000 points). I played another game where I only got 749 points for killing the boss in 8:22, so it seems as though the scoring has a big problem.

This was the main thing I was jumping on here to post about. See my high score on the list for an example; it racks up pretty quickly.



My main hope - that gold-grinding between games would be removed - hasnt happened.

...And this was the second. The current implementation is purely a grind with no redeeming value to it whatsoever; it's a jarring piece of awful game design amidst a sea of good design. Simply starting with maxed gold each game is probably also not ideal, but would be drastically better than the current implementation.


I'll also toss in my agreement that Glowing Guardian is awkward currently. In addition to being impossible to get reasonable piety without healing, there is no message indicating a piety gain when you heal (or use Sidestep). In addition, it seems like the counterintuative method of taking a lot of damage before worshiping GG to start with a higher piety will generally give you more piety than following early and getting the bonuses from killing undead/leveling up.

Initial thoughts would be to at least make unholy kills give 2 piety instead of 1 and drop the cost of a full heal from 50 to 35 or 40. More/different fixes would likely be better, but that would be an easy tweak that would make GG more viable and not overpowered.

dislekcia
21-06-2010, 01:56 PM
Thanks everyone, the score bug is fixed. We'll upload a new version tomorrow after we do some talking amongst ourselves about the gods ;)

Regarding the "gold grind": Gold was never intended to be necessary to clear a dungeon, it was sort of seen as something that would add a bit of persistence to the game and give players a helping hand now and then if they'd been dying a lot. The Goblin and Tinker were added to explore the angle that gold gave the game after it was put in. Suffice to say that in the full version, we're planning to mollify players that feel they always need a positive gold return on their runs in a number of ways ;) We're also doing a couple of things to add other ways that players can obtain benefits from runs that can be carried over to future playsessions, because that's the real "problem" with gold at the moment: Max gold lets you take advantage of options that you wouldn't otherwise have, yet it's a difficult decision every time exactly because you don't start with maxed gold. If it didn't cost time to earn that gold, players would simply buy everything and the delicious "Should I, shouldn't I?" that is the core of DD would be taken down a notch.

@Twinge: Aargh, I could have sworn there used to be a message on the GG's spellcasting piety rewards! Were you casting with keys or clicking the slot?

@rugzhltstirc: Yeah, we didn't want players getting too high dodge stats this time around. It's funny, but if any probability in a game goes over 60% we transition from not expecting it to happen (and feeling rewarded if it does) to expecting it to happen (and feeling robbed when it doesn't). Dodge at higher percentages isn't as fun.

Also, you can mouse-over the damage icon to see your current damage breakdown :)

I'm curious to see if anyone has been trying the transitions between gods at all...

Lekon
21-06-2010, 04:21 PM
I'm curious to see if anyone has been trying the transitions between gods at all...

That was how I beat the factory with Bloodmage finally. Went from Mysteria to Pact Maker and had mana out the wazooly. I kept expecting it to say "2 hit combo!" at the end.

fall_ark
21-06-2010, 04:22 PM
Max gold lets you take advantage of options that you wouldn't otherwise have, yet it's a difficult decision every time exactly because you don't start with maxed gold. If it didn't cost time to earn that gold, players would simply buy everything and the delicious "Should I, shouldn't I?" that is the core of DD would be taken down a notch.


Well I can always do 2-3 rounds of goblin wizards between runs....It's not a difficult decision, just time-consuming. I DO ponder before spending on expensive items before making sure I've got a decent map setting and they do not conflict with other items, but for those non-one-shot items lower than 30 golds I almost always buy on sight.


I've suggested a min. gold / max gold system before (you raise your starting gold by achievements, but there are always some room for collecting in game), and I still believe that a better balance can be achieved in that way than in the current system.

XuaXua
21-06-2010, 05:15 PM
If you've already ditched the appropriate glyph, EarthMother and that other god don't regenerate the DestroyWall/StoneSomeone glyphs.

If you have ditched it and join the associated god, I recommend they DO generate the glyph, but you should get penalized (or double-penalized) your stat bonus for ditching.

Chainsaw
21-06-2010, 07:55 PM
Not sure if this is intended, but if you use APHEELSIK on a monster and then attack THAT monster (even with BURNADAYZ), the poison wears off. Now I'm sure it's only supposed to wear off after attacking a DIFFERENT monster. Amirite?

SkinkLizzard
21-06-2010, 09:21 PM
Not sure if this is intended, but if you use APHEELSIK on a monster and then attack THAT monster (even with BURNADAYZ), the poison wears off. Now I'm sure it's only supposed to wear off after attacking a DIFFERENT monster. Amirite?

no, at least not from what I understand from this:



Apheelsik's been re-balanced. As soon as you deal any damage, poison wears off. It's still effective, but shouldn't allow high level kills too easily.

Chainsaw
21-06-2010, 10:15 PM
:<

Tbh, I think that's an overly harsh nerf.

SkinkLizzard
21-06-2010, 10:33 PM
dunno I mean it still allows you to attack, fireball, poison, run off and heal then come back and repeat, or attack, fireball,(whatever), poison, run off and find easy kill to level, level and provided you don't uncover any more blocks come back and repeat. It just means that the level difference in the kills comes down a bit unless you have some serious mana backing. of course I started again so haven't unlocked the poison glyph to test it yet.

Delvin
21-06-2010, 11:41 PM
The poison nerf doesn't affect a player's performance at all when all you're using is poison because hp is the limiting factor against higher level monsters. You'll easily regen enough mp while refilling hp to keep applying poison per every melee hit.

Glyphs are what the nerf actually affects, poison+fireball being the greatest victim. You'll essentially be using twice the mp for same damage as before. And fireball already does far less damage than melee - I definitely prefer HALPMEH + high atk on a mage in the average dungeon. It's very efficient and allows you to outheal most enemies a few levels above you even without poison.

Twinge
22-06-2010, 01:22 AM
Regarding the "gold grind": Gold was never intended to be necessary to clear a dungeon, it was sort of seen as something that would add a bit of persistence to the game and give players a helping hand now and then if they'd been dying a lot. [...] that's the real "problem" with gold at the moment: Max gold lets you take advantage of options that you wouldn't otherwise have, yet it's a difficult decision every time exactly because you don't start with maxed gold. If it didn't cost time to earn that gold, players would simply buy everything and the delicious "Should I, shouldn't I?" that is the core of DD would be taken down a notch.


Well I can always do 2-3 rounds of goblin wizards between runs....It's not a difficult decision, just time-consuming. I DO ponder before spending on expensive items before making sure I've got a decent map setting and they do not conflict with other items, but for those non-one-shot items lower than 30 golds I almost always buy on sight.

As noted above, there is no decision at all. You should grind out gold between games because it is strictly the best way to go about winning. The best option is boring and tedious, which is where the flaw lies. Whether or not you need the gold is irrelevant - it is better to have more gold, so we will have max gold between games, and its pointlessly tedious to do so.


@Twinge: Aargh, I could have sworn there used to be a message on the GG's spellcasting piety rewards! Were you casting with keys or clicking the slot?

I just double checked, and I don't get a message either from click casting or keypad casting.



Tbh, I think [the new poison] overly harsh nerf.

I think it's a good solution, myself. It was clearly overpowered before - now it is still quite useful but it has a drawback and is a little harder to use. The only drawback I see is that it is a little less intuitive, so it might confuse people at first when the cast poison first and then attack.

I'm also a fan of the new Blood To Power; it's elegant and useful.

dislekcia
22-06-2010, 03:26 AM
As noted above, there is no decision at all. You should grind out gold between games because it is strictly the best way to go about winning. The best option is boring and tedious, which is where the flaw lies. Whether or not you need the gold is irrelevant - it is better to have more gold, so we will have max gold between games, and its pointlessly tedious to do so.

Like I said above, it's more an issue of only having the one reward for games after you've unlocked all the normal classes. The reward stream slows down and the emphasis on harder dungeons means that players want to maximise their advantages, gold goes from a helping hand to being a resource. We don't see players grinding for gold until they hit the challenge dungeons, which are meant to be hard.

Obviously we're learning from player behavior like this and we've got some ideas that should help players deal with gold "shortages", if not prevent the resource switch altogether :) (BTW: Only a very small percentage of players focus on full completion, it's those players that have problems with the current gold mechanic)


I just double checked, and I don't get a message either from click casting or keypad casting.

I have no idea what's causing that... The message is definitely being set for every cast. This is what happens when your prototype grows a little too large :(

Feynman
22-06-2010, 05:06 AM
I haven't been able to spend as much time with the game as I'd like to lately, but I've got most of the basic unlockables done now, so here are a few more thoughts:

First, as others have mentioned, the new Bludtopowa is great! It also has a lot of synergy with the Halpme glyph. I used to routinely throw it away even when playing as the Bloodmage, but now it's a very useful glyph. I imagine combining Bludtopowa and Apheelsik on a Sorcerer will be extremely entertaining.

Second, to throw my voice in yet again with rugzhltstirc on Tikki Tooki, I agree that his poison boon is pretty useless... the kind of character who would really want such a boon is the kind of character least suited to gaining piety with Tikki.

I also find myself wondering if the Pactmaker is perhaps just a bit too powerful. In particular, his (her?) Learning boon is very cheap, and finding the Pactmaker early on is a huge game-changer, as it makes leveling up an almost trivial task. By comparison, his +10 max health boon is almost twice as expensive, and not really that useful compared to getting +10 max mana... +10 mana is a lot, but the health boon rarely ever makes a noticeable impact unless stacked heavily with other health-boosting items, which requires a great deal of luck to pull off compared to how extremely useful the mana boon is all on it's own.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 05:26 AM
To solve the gold issue

- Instead of a gold carry limit between games, have a gold carry limit in-game and start each dungeon at 0 gold (Tinker class starts with X gold) and have a carry limit. Give more gold in-game but you can only buy from stores based on what you can carry; if they offer rare items that are too expensive, you should have increased your maximum carry.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 05:34 AM
Again I got it. The error is consistent.

This time though, I was moving the mouse.

I move, I reveal a glyph. I click to step on the glyph, and as the icon moves to the glyph, I scroll away from the square almost simultaneously.

And poof, pop-up. The behavior is 100% consistent - every single time, it happens when I click on a not-yet-stepped-on glyph.

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event
for object Interface:

Error in code at line 13:
if (Roomwatch.reveal[floor(mouse_x / 20), floor(mouse_y / 20)] >= 2) {

at position 20: Unknown variable reveal or array index out of bounds

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 05:49 AM
Problem: Join Guardian.
Use BLUTOPOWA
It takes 3 times but then you get renounced; the problem is other than the red border around the game, it's not apparent you are failing; it seems more like a problem clicking the button.

dislekcia
22-06-2010, 12:51 PM
Again I got it. The error is consistent.

This time though, I was moving the mouse.

I move, I reveal a glyph. I click to step on the glyph, and as the icon moves to the glyph, I scroll away from the square almost simultaneously.

And poof, pop-up. The behavior is 100% consistent - every single time, it happens when I click on a not-yet-stepped-on glyph.

And yet we can't reproduce it at all. I need to know everything about your playsession:
1. Are you playing windowed, fullscreen or 2x?
2. Is the game running slowly in any way?
3. When you click, how long does it take the character to get to your destination.
4. Have you re-downloaded the game since the first time you reported this error?


Problem: Join Guardian.
Use BLUTOPOWA
It takes 3 times but then you get renounced; the problem is other than the red border around the game, it's not apparent you are failing; it seems more like a problem clicking the button.

This is the same issue as Halpmeh. God messages aren't appearing on casts, like they were before. We're working on it.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 02:48 PM
And yet we can't reproduce it at all. I need to know everything about your playsession:
1. Are you playing windowed, fullscreen or 2x?
2. Is the game running slowly in any way?
3. When you click, how long does it take the character to get to your destination.
4. Have you re-downloaded the game since the first time you reported this error?


1. Windowed as default.
2. Nope, not on this machine.
3. Movement on my machine is instant. I think the character makes it, then the window pops up. I may be moving the mouse (I use a thumb-powered trackball, but it has also happened with a mouse) at the time.
4. Yes, after you fixed that one thing recently and reported a new version posted. Saturday, I think.
5. Win XP SP2, Core 2 Duo T7300@2.00ghz, 1.99ghz, 3.49GB RAM

Again, only happened so far on one of the four special dungeons (last night was Crypt with Human Fighter) and only when moving to a newly revealed space that contains a glyph.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 02:49 PM
I'm willing to play on a temporary custom debug version with more data in the error message.

GG Crono
22-06-2010, 04:18 PM
All in all, the new DD is pretty damn awesome. I really want to try out the campaign, but I'm having a bit of trouble unlocking the special races. I'll get it one of these days!

The new worship system is very nice, though it could still use a bit of tweaking. On that note, a question. Is it just me, or does the new Tikki Tooki seem not quite worth the worship at the moment? He has some very nice boons, true, but considering how few classes can reliably avoid getting hit, it's nearly impossible to build up sufficient piety to get any of them in time to make any difference.

Likewise, I think the penalization of glyph use by the new Bilnor may be a little too limiting. Unlike, say, Taurog, who is considerably easier to build piety for, Bilnor doesn't provide much of an incentive to not use glyphs.

But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Any thoughts on the matter?

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 05:37 PM
But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Any thoughts on the matter?

There are definitely some odd choices with the gods.
As someone said earlier, Tooki giving poison is really weird considering it defeats the purpose of gaining Tooki piety. Maybe poisoning a target can gain piety with Tooki.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 07:32 PM
God JerJer gives you a mana shield for 30 piety, but it doesn't list on the character description on mouseover once purchased.

dislekcia
22-06-2010, 07:35 PM
1. Windowed as default.
2. Nope, not on this machine.
3. Movement on my machine is instant. I think the character makes it, then the window pops up. I may be moving the mouse (I use a thumb-powered trackball, but it has also happened with a mouse) at the time.
4. Yes, after you fixed that one thing recently and reported a new version posted. Saturday, I think.
5. Win XP SP2, Core 2 Duo T7300@2.00ghz, 1.99ghz, 3.49GB RAM

Again, only happened so far on one of the four special dungeons (last night was Crypt with Human Fighter) and only when moving to a newly revealed space that contains a glyph.

Ah, thanks. There's been a new version since then with some explicit changes to the code that you're getting that crash on. Pull that down and we'll see if the crash at least changes slightly ;)

I'm beginning to think it might have something to do with GM picking up multiple mouse events under very rare conditions. We had a few reports of multiple clicks happening in the old version as well, it's the new interface that's somehow causing this crash.


I'm willing to play on a temporary custom debug version with more data in the error message.

No need just yet, technically either of two impossible things are happening. I've eliminated the one in the most recent silent update. This seems to be a very rare special case, if it recurs with the most up to date version for you, I'll put together a verbose debug build so that we can test exactly what the crap's going on...

P.S. On the topic of gods, don't think that because we're not debating their various issues that we're not listening. This is exactly what we're aiming to test with this version, after all ;)

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 09:08 PM
P.S. On the topic of gods, don't think that because we're not debating their various issues that we're not listening. This is exactly what we're aiming to test with this version, after all ;)

The only way to get the Golden Guardian's top 100 piety is to be Earthmother, stone at least 2 for over 15 points and kill several - transfer that to 100 piety, then swap to Guardian (hoping you find both altars early enough), then take the 60 piety and kill a little less than 30-ish undead.

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 09:53 PM
O, I did Guardian without Earthmother, but could only hit it by the start of level 9, and at that point, I couldn't heal up to my maximum, so all that effort was pretty useless. :/

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 10:01 PM
Also, Earthmother giving you resistance to poison, yet penalizing you for attacking snakes is purpose-defeating.

SkinkLizzard
22-06-2010, 10:54 PM
snakes aren't the only ones to dish out poison though

XuaXua
22-06-2010, 11:40 PM
Earthmother telling you to repent for throwing away the petrify glyph; other than the chance of another being in a store, that's pretty unlikely to happen.

hideinlight
23-06-2010, 12:39 AM
Put desktop dungeons on www.IndieDB.com

Oh and ever thought of showing the amount of EXP you'd gain if you killed a monster.

neongrey
23-06-2010, 05:08 AM
The only way to get the Golden Guardian's top 100 piety is to be Earthmother, stone at least 2 for over 15 points and kill several - transfer that to 100 piety, then swap to Guardian (hoping you find both altars early enough), then take the 60 piety and kill a little less than 30-ish undead.

Not true-- GG hands out majour initial piety for late-joiners, so if you manage to hold off on piety-granting monsters and still join late, you should be able to make it up. and of course if you have HALPMEH you can trivially farm it up.

XuaXua
23-06-2010, 07:47 PM
Fighter ability is to see locations of all monsters of same level or lower.
Gains sight orb and ability to see all monsters.
Unfortunately, technically loses ability to distinguish monster level.

Suggestion solution: Fighter sees monsters of level or lower in different color, or a different symbol.

XuaXua
23-06-2010, 08:42 PM
I know you're working on the god messages. If you do something while on an altar and get a god message (like, you stone someone and you're on the earthmother) the Pray button goes away.

XuaXua
23-06-2010, 11:13 PM
Binlor's "Set Physical Resistance to 25%" isn't kidding.

It does not stack with the Monk's 50%, but instead reduces it to 25%.

dislekcia
24-06-2010, 12:51 AM
I know you're working on the god messages. If you do something while on an altar and get a god message (like, you stone someone and you're on the earthmother) the Pray button goes away.

The altar interface is overridden by the god message, just like god messages override everything else... If you move off the altar and back onto it again, the god message will have been dismissed by the first move and you'll see the pray button again.


Binlor's "Set Physical Resistance to 25%" isn't kidding.

It does not stack with the Monk's 50%, but instead reduces it to 25%.

Yup. "Set". 75% physical resist would be pretty hax.

q 3
24-06-2010, 05:37 AM
So I just found out about the new version and have been having fun re-unlocking everything. One comment, though; while I am happy to see BLUDTUPOWA has finally been made useful, it is overpowered in certain contexts. I just completed the Factory as a Gnome Wizard, and after fireballing a couple of armors to level up, was able to defeat both bosses at level 8 with literally nothing but BLUDTUPOWA and HALPMEH. I used no potions, no poison, no deity, nothing, just an insane health regeneration from being able to cast HALPMEH once for every uncovered tile, so much that their own regeneration barely slowed things down.

I don't know how easy it would be to replicate this trick with a different class, but you might be able to balance things out by (1) preventing all health regeneration while BLUDTUPOWA is active (i.e., no effect from health potions, HALPMEH, etc.) and (2) imposing a slight HP cost every time you activate BLUDTUPOWA (something like 1 HP per level or 10% of max HP). That way, as long as you're just fireballing or using LEMMISI or whatever you can keep BLUDTUPOWA active the whole time and only have to pay the HP cost once, but the HALPMEH trick would no longer be quite so broken.

Other than that, I'm enjoying the changes, especially the new deity system, although I do miss Glitterfinger. :(

XuaXua
24-06-2010, 06:19 AM
An alternate idea for BludToPowa , and I'm not sure how good it would work, would be to swap HP out for MP. Turn on Bludtopowa, spend HP as if they were MP.

Maybe 2HP = 1MP or have it based on level/2.

Nandrew
24-06-2010, 02:20 PM
An alternate idea for BludToPowa , and I'm not sure how good it would work, would be to swap HP out for MP. Turn on Bludtopowa, spend HP as if they were MP.

Maybe 2HP = 1MP or have it based on level/2.

Unfortunately, that starts becoming rather similar to how it *used* to work ... and people generally hated that idea. :P

Having that glyph drain on HP presented quite a few problems when we tried it. If the ratio was too generous, players would be able to blatantly exploit healing glyphs / bloodpower in a positive feedback loop that would effectively grant infinite health. Making it weak enough to avoid exploitation ... well, people just didn't deem it powerful enough, and in all fairness it really wasn't. ;)

varuka
24-06-2010, 06:51 PM
Tiki Tooki definitely feels underpowered. Only the dodge bonus is worth the effort. First strike doesn't come in handy often enough for the 80 piety cost, and most characters that don't already have it can use a glyph for it, or don't need it. Poison has no synergy with Tiki, and the gold bonus isn't that great compared to the effort.

On the other hand, Mysteria, Pactmaker, Binlor, Earthmother, and Dracul are all too powerful.

Overall, the new Gods system makes the game a little too easy. Most bosses could already be killed just by throwing fireballs and leveling up starting at lvl 7, but with the addition of more ways to increase your max mana (and in Binlor's case, instantly get to level 10), it's kind of ridiculous.

Even the campaign isn't very difficult with proper piety-abuse.

Edit: Err, am I the first person to beat the campaign or something?
Edit2: Oh, actually, I can now think of a good use for Tiki Tooki's gold boon: Campaigns. If you added in more & longer campaigns, it gives a good incentive to take Tiki, or even an entirely gold based god like the old Glitterfinger. Oh, and more and longer campaigns would be awesome.

Alpha Werewolf
24-06-2010, 09:48 PM
Overall, the new Gods system makes the game a little too easy. Most bosses could already be killed just by throwing fireballs and leveling up starting at lvl 7, but with the addition of more ways to increase your max mana (and in Binlor's case, instantly get to level 10), it's kind of ridiculous.

I think the new system is a lot less broken than the old one, actually.

And regarding Tiki-Tooki, I agree that the first strike cost should be lowered, especially due to the -1 piety whenever you get hit.

XuaXua
24-06-2010, 11:06 PM
OK, weird glitch.

Maybe?

Human Tinker in Factory worshipper of Dracul.

I land on a HALPMEH glyph.
I click on the big + symbol of the glyph on the right to pick it up.

It just disappears.

I don't get a +x to my attack as though I destroyed it.
I don't get it in my magic inventory (I only have a Bysepps and it was just applied earlier).

It just vanishes.

If this is a side-effect of worshipping Dracul, there wasn't a notification on the screen about it.


IIRC, in the older version HALPMEH disappeared, right? I guess the image was still there, maybe?

GG Crono
25-06-2010, 12:07 AM
I still haven't unlocked the campaign. Having trouble unlocking the special races. (Namely, the ones that require you to beat Dungeon X with Class Y).

Anyone want to share any ProTips to that effect?

varuka
25-06-2010, 01:29 AM
I still haven't unlocked the campaign. Having trouble unlocking the special races. (Namely, the ones that require you to beat Dungeon X with Class Y).

Anyone want to share any ProTips to that effect?

I'm actually interested in making a comprehensive strategy guide, but don't really have anywhere to put it. Maybe an "Advanced Strategies" section to the wiki or something? It'd be a lot more in-depth and number-crunching than anything in the strategy section.

GG Crono
25-06-2010, 05:18 AM
Go for it! I for one would appreciate it, :)

VanVeen
25-06-2010, 09:48 AM
I had to register just to say how freaking awesome this game is! I can't stop playing; it is definitely the kind of game you can get a quick round in, but all those cool things to unlock gives it a lot of staying power. I've played for over four hours just today, and every time I actually win (not often) I makes me want to play even more. The way it boils down into a sort of puzzle game, where every class, race and dungeon gives you another problem to solve, it is just so good.

I'm definitely going to recommend it to some friends, cause man once you learn what you're really doing, it is so fun. I just finished a great round as a human rogue worshiping Binlord, and the winning outcome was totally unexpected but great anyway. I really didn't think "screw it, i'll just mine my way to level ten then fight the boss" would work the way it did (I would like to believe it was my well planned killings), I was so psyched, cause I had been trying to clear the normal dungeon with that rogue for awhile.

This game would be so perfect as a DSiWare title, that'd be so much better than anything else you can get on there.

XuaXua
25-06-2010, 05:33 PM
Question: Why is it specified as "onscreen" bloodstains in the God summaries (for Earthmother and Golden Guardian)? I have yet to discover an "offscreen" bloodstain. Is that an attempt to reference to a bloodstain that was absorbed by the Blood Mage, perhaps?

varuka
25-06-2010, 07:40 PM
Question: Why is it specified as "onscreen" bloodstains in the God summaries (for Earthmother and Golden Guardian)? I have yet to discover an "offscreen" bloodstain. Is that an attempt to reference to a bloodstain that was absorbed by the Blood Mage, perhaps?

I think they mean un-used by bloodmage / vampire, but I could also imagine a situation where a Half Dragon kills something and the knockback would leave the bloodstain in the darkness. Not sure if a) the blood can end up in the unexplored dungeon or b) if it does end up in the darkness, how would it affect the blood count for those gods.


I still haven't unlocked the campaign. Having trouble unlocking the special races. (Namely, the ones that require you to beat Dungeon X with Class Y).

Anyone want to share any ProTips to that effect?

I'm adding an "advanced strategies" section to the wiki, as a starter. Although it doesn't have anything specific as, say, beating Crypt with an Assassin, I'm fairly sure the strategies within would allow a player to beat any dungeon without the use of race/class/deity advantages.

XuaXua
25-06-2010, 09:26 PM
b) if it does end up in the darkness, how would it affect the blood count for those gods.

According to either god, it doesn't get counted. Thanks for explaining; I think you are right about the Half-Dragon knockback.



I'm adding an "advanced strategies" section to the wiki, as a starter.

What's the difference between basic and advanced?

varuka
25-06-2010, 09:44 PM
What's the difference between basic and advanced?

I put it in its own section for two reasons:

One, I'm like 1/2 done, and it's already one of the biggest pages on the wiki. I thought it would kind feel strange to crunch it in with the "tips and tricks" strategy section that already exists.

Two, the other strategies are more "here's something cool you can do".. and what I'm writing is a about the meta-game, and putting together pieces from other sections of the wiki to maximize results. For example, it mentions on the leveling page that killing all monsters with no EXP bonus will get you to level 8 (as a foot note!). What it doesn't mention anywhere is the amounts of bonus EXP you would need to generate to get to levels 9 / 10 (though it's easily calculated), why it's so important to get level 9 or 10, the most effective ways to get the bonus EXP, etc.

So far it reads more like a strategy guide than an informative wiki page. I feel like that's the easiest way to empower players to start making use of the information, but it doesn't go well on a wiki. :\ If it doesn't belong there, I'm fine with it being removed, or the information being more spread about.

XuaXua
25-06-2010, 10:06 PM
I think the wiki needs to be more like a wiki, in that certain words should be linked to the appropriate pages.

q 3
26-06-2010, 05:52 AM
I've been steadily clearing all the bonus dungeons with each class and have a few random thoughts:

I agree with those asking for gold not to carry over between runs. Or at least have it not carry over in ranked play and maybe also in the challenge dungeons. It makes things too easy and encourages grinding, which is in my mind the opposite of what DD is about. Setting starting gold at like 10-20% of maximum and doubling gold gain from all sources would sound about right to me, although the exact numbers could stand to be tweaked.

I still don't quite get why the Warlord is the challenge class for the Library. The only real "trick" there is that Imps are likely to be your best high-level fodder, but they can be difficult to kill until you've explored a lot; that isn't much of a challenge, though. IMHO, Paladins are the toughest class to beat the Library with, since it essentially nullifies two of their bonuses.

Speaking of Imps, right now they're barely annoyances. A more devious approach might be to have them teleport the player randomly (i.e., cast WEYTWUT). Maybe also give them first strike?

The other dungeon-specific monsters could probably also use some tweaking. For example, give Armors a few more HP (maybe 2 HP per their level) so that it's not so easy to kill a level 9 when you're only level 1 (plus I don't think that would make them any tougher otherwise).

Nagas are probably more of a psychological threat than an actual threat, since when screwing around after defeating bosses I've found their weakening ability to be an acceptable loss in limited numbers, but as the only permanent malus in the game (other than ****ed-off deities) they are a bit odd; maybe increase their weakening ability but make it temporary (e.g., -30% to your next attack only).

Vampires are pretty boring as it is now, since their effect only triggers once and once the bonus HP is lost it doesn't regenerate, meaning you can hit them and then heal up before fighting them for real. Maybe lower their life steal to 10% or 1 HP per their level, but make it trigger every time you step next to them; that would create an interesting dynamic that encourages you to not start a fight with them unless you can finish it right away.


Yup. "Set". 75% physical resist would be pretty hax.

A Monk or a Gorgon can get pretty close to that with Plate Mail or a Tower Shield (or a ridiculous 80 percent with both - if there were a public debug version, I'd check to verify my suspicion that Dracul could then boost that to 100 percent, making you invincible, since his resist boon is cumulative). And items are quite a bit easier to get than boons. Maybe disallow those classes from buying armor? It doesn't really make much sense for Monks to be equipping heavy armor and wielding swords anyway.

Somewhat unrelated, but it seems like the Vampire race has been changed in the most recent version? Now you can explore the entire dungeon without dying, since your HP will never reduce below 1. That means the optimal strategy is to explore as much as possible before you gain a level (since your increased damage and first strike makes leveling fairly easy, even at 1 HP). I think that makes them way overpowered, but it also just doesn't feel much like a vampire; they should be constantly looking for prey, not running around everywhere and basically being a pacifist until the entire dungeon is mapped out. I'm not really sure what the solution would be here, though, since the old style obviously had its own problems.

Finally, I expect the deity system will continue to be revised, but one suggestion I would make is to try to increase the incentives for early, faithful worship. Glowing Guardian in particular seems to be best used as an endgame desperation move; ignore him until you are out of health potions, then start worship during a boss fight for the instant HP refill and probably enough initial piety for a second HP refill (or instant death protection, in the few instances where that would be more beneficial). Binlor can also be used right before your last level up for the extra max HP and enough piety for his wall smash to give you a few extra tiles to explore. Increasing the piety gains during worship and decreasing starting piety would help, as would making the default boons more incremental, e.g. bonuses on level up or favored action. Gods should want you to follow them early and faithfully, not **** around and then ask for their help at the last minute. Deities that give you penalties at the start of worship should probably have some sort of offset - e.g., maybe Mysteria can give you BURNDAYRAZ if you don't already have it, Jehora can give a one-time damage boost of a random percent, etc.

Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like a list of complaints! I really love the game.

GG Crono
26-06-2010, 04:47 PM
^

http://sadpanda.us/images/156281-7BMHCPS.jpeg

You make some excellent points there.

Though, I've always found that "grinding" for gold between dungeons is as easy as doing a quick run or two as a Goblin Wizard. Though, the fact that it is that easy may mean that a reconsideration of the system may be in order.

PS: I unlocked Gorgon! Hooray! :D

XuaXua
26-06-2010, 07:02 PM
Though, I've always found that "grinding" for gold between dungeons is as easy as doing a quick run or two as a Goblin Wizard.


Not a Goblin Tinkerer?

sagittary
26-06-2010, 07:12 PM
Unfortunately, that starts becoming rather similar to how it *used* to work ... and people generally hated that idea. :P

Having that glyph drain on HP presented quite a few problems when we tried it. If the ratio was too generous, players would be able to blatantly exploit healing glyphs / bloodpower in a positive feedback loop that would effectively grant infinite health. Making it weak enough to avoid exploitation ... well, people just didn't deem it powerful enough, and in all fairness it really wasn't. ;)

The way I first though the current B2P worked was that anything that restored HP would instead restore MP ie exploration and health potions. In effect health potions would be 'converted' into mana potions when used with the glyph. Thus you'd trade restoring health for restoring mana.

GG Crono
26-06-2010, 08:13 PM
So I found out just now that the Agnostic's Collar is still in the game. But unless I'm mistaken, you no longer have the option to renounce your religion. Does it still do anything?

Additional thought: Does anyone here ever do conversions? Seems to me like the benefits of doing so are minimal.

Feynman
27-06-2010, 10:38 AM
Speaking of Imps, right now they're barely annoyances. A more devious approach might be to have them teleport the player randomly (i.e., cast WEYTWUT). Maybe also give them first strike?

I actually really like Imps the way they are now. Imps aren't supposed to be a major threat by themselves...they're just Imps, after all! As such, they're fairly weak, and an excellent target to get bonus XP from - with a catch. The catch being that Imps make the rest of the monsters in the dungeon indirectly more dangerous. Striking an Imp that teleports into an unexplored area does two things:

1. It negates the damage you dealt to the Imp, as it will be almost certainly be healed by the time you reach it.
2. It consumes your resources, by forcing you to explore and regenerate any lost health/mana used in striking the Imp, precious regen that could have been used more productively.

As a result, the damage an Imp inflicts on your tends to show itself near the end of a game, when you realize with horror that you don't have enough resources remaining to kill the boss. I've had more then one otherwise good run go sour from Imps chipping away at my unexplored tiles.

Imps are a gamble. If they teleport to a square you've already uncovered, huzzah! Easy bonus XP! If they teleport to a black area, crap, you just wasted resources. How risky attacking an Imp for bonus XP is depends on how much of the map you've already uncovered, so the player must decide how much of their resources they're willing to risk - be too aggressive before uncovering much of the map and you might find yourself short of resources at the final stretch. Play it too safe, and you might find your level too low to tackle the boss. Imps are one of the more cleverly designed monsters, since their danger comes not from status effects or damage, but from the indirect consequences of their teleportation.

Having Imps teleport the player ala Weytwut would be too much. If an Imp teleports away, you lose a handful of squares and focus your attention on a different target. If an Imp teleports the player, however, the following scenarios become all too likely:

- landing in a completely unexplored area, causing the player to lose a full 9 exploration tiles outright, plus the tiles lost trying to find a new target

- being trapped behind a monster too strong to kill.

Weytwut exists as a spell of last resort. It's used when the player is in such a bad situation that no matter where they end up, it literally cannot get any worse. If a player hits a wall where the only accessible monsters are too strong, Weytwut can save the day, turning an unwinnable map into a victory. And if you land behind an unkillable monster? Hey, you were already going to die as it was, so even if your situation didn't improve, it certainly didn't get any worse. In the player's hands, Weytwut provides a chance at escape from an unwinnable situation. In an enemy's hands, it would be far too random and powerful to be fun.

Chainsaw
27-06-2010, 02:28 PM
How about some achievements? They can be separated into categories ranging from easy to impossible.

Example of a easy achievements:

-Finish a normal dungeon
-Finish a ranked dungeon
-etc

Impossible:

-As Wizard, gain 50 piety with Taurog
-Complete Crypt challenge while worshiping Dracul

Just an idea that I think might be fun

EDIT: These of course apart from dungeon-end achievements. Maybe completing them give bonuses like the challenge dungeons?

GG Crono
27-06-2010, 04:50 PM
-Complete Crypt challenge while worshiping Dracul

Achievements are cool, but I'm pretty sure this is literally impossible.

Also: All I have left to unlock is Vampire! Woo! That one, unfortunately, is still giving me difficulties. I would have thought that this would be one of the less difficult ones. Silly me. ;)

Chainsaw
27-06-2010, 04:57 PM
Achievements are cool, but I'm pretty sure this is literally impossible.

Why?

GG Crono
27-06-2010, 05:06 PM
Because Dracul kills you when you drop below zero piety, which you will do fairly quickly in Crypt?

EDIT: I have this uncanny ability do things that had previously eluded me after complaining about them. WOO! VAMPIRE! :D

Alpha Werewolf
27-06-2010, 05:27 PM
Complete Crypt challenge while worshiping Dracul

As worded, this is trivial. Just worhip him a second before landing the final hit.

Chainsaw
27-06-2010, 05:53 PM
Because Dracul kills you when you drop below zero piety, which you will do fairly quickly in Crypt?

EDIT: I have this uncanny ability do things that had previously eluded me after complaining about them. WOO! VAMPIRE! :D

Oh. See, I didn't know that. Probably why it's under impossible :D


As worded, this is trivial. Just worship him a second before landing the final hit.

Well, wording can be worked on, I assume.

q 3
28-06-2010, 04:34 AM
Additional thought: Does anyone here ever do conversions? Seems to me like the benefits of doing so are minimal.

No, but there are a couple possibilities that would be interesting to play around with, if you get a dungeon with both altars. Tikki-Tooki might be useful as a way to worship Mysteria without incurring her ridiculous physical damage penalty. But I suspect that getting enough piety from him to convert and then enough piety from her to make the process worthwhile would be so difficult that this would be more of a special challenge than a viable strategy. Mysteria still feels underpowered as well, anyway, especially in the challenge dungeons where you'll almost always run out of mana before the bosses run out of HP. Giving her a medium cost "full MP restore" boon would help.

Second, playing a no-kill game where you start by worshipping Earthmother and petrifying everything until you get her 100 piety boon, then converting to Binlor and smashing all the newly created walls until you get his resist boon and level 10 boon could be an interesting way of getting a nigh-invincible character. (Unless converting causes you to lose the Earthmother's boon, in which case that is dumb. This idea is pretty dumb, anyway, from a theological perspective.)


-Complete Crypt challenge while worshiping Dracul

Assuming that the Agnostic Collar still works (I haven't gotten the chance to test it), I think it is technically possible (although highly improbable) to complete a challenge of "defeat every monster in the Crypt while worshipping Dracul." You would need to (1) worship Jehora, (2) teleport, destroy walls, or injure yourself without killing anything until you get 50 piety, (3) polymorph and hope most of the monsters become non-undead, (4) renounce Jehora and worship Dracul, then play as normal. This would require a ridiculous amount of luck, but I think it would be feasible as long as you rolled a dungeon with the collar, both altars, and enough resources to get Jehora's piety up to 50 without killing anything.


I actually really like Imps the way they are now. Imps aren't supposed to be a major threat by themselves...they're just Imps, after all! As such, they're fairly weak, and an excellent target to get bonus XP from - with a catch. The catch being that Imps make the rest of the monsters in the dungeon indirectly more dangerous.

Those are good points, but for me the issue is that you really don't need early kills on Imps to level up in the Library - neither Dragonspawn nor Warlocks are all that difficult to kill even with a few levels' difference, since Dragonspawn only have slightly higher than average HP and Warlocks' only notable trait is their higher damage, which is relatively unimportant for most high level kill strategies. Compare the Factory, where Armors are by far the obvious choice to level up on in light of the Golem's magic resist and Meat Man's ridiculous HP; likewise in the Snake Pit, where Serpents have poison, Nagas have weakening, and Gorgons have low HP with only average damage; likewise, the Crypt's Wraiths have physical resist and mana burn, while Zombies have higher HP than Dragonspawn and the same damage, making Vampires easily the best choice for most classes to level up on. On most of my library runs, I've found that I can usually kill Dragonspawn and Warlocks 2-3 levels higher, but Imps only 3-4 levels higher, which just isn't enough of a difference to justify going after Imps until I've explored most of the map already. Now that I think of it that way, maybe we could improve things by putting Imps in the Factory and Armors in the Library. ;)

q 3
28-06-2010, 06:17 AM
You know what's ridiculous? A Transmuter with BLUDTOPOWA. Or a Crystal Ball (+1 Mana regen). Or worse, both. Transmuters are way overpowered anyway, if rather tedious to play as. Their healing is too strong, they're functionally immune to poison, and their only scarce resource is walls, of which they almost never run out. Maybe make their ENDISWAL cost 2 MP but heal 3 HP per level; of course, that makes them consume walls even more slowly, but it would probably balance them out in combat which IMHO is more important.

One other minor thing, I'd really appreciate the option to turn off the little graphical explosions whenever you regenerate from exploring or gain piety, and also those little circles whenever you pick something up. They can get very distracting, especially when those 20 little yellow orbs from the Pactmaker swirl around you whenever you level up (and their pathfinding is awfully bad, sometimes it takes five seconds or more for them to connect).

Chainsaw
28-06-2010, 02:46 PM
Assuming that the Agnostic Collar still works (I haven't gotten the chance to test it), I think it is technically possible (although highly improbable) to complete a challenge of "defeat every monster in the Crypt while worshipping Dracul." You would need to (1) worship Jehora, (2) teleport, destroy walls, or injure yourself without killing anything until you get 50 piety, (3) polymorph and hope most of the monsters become non-undead, (4) renounce Jehora and worship Dracul, then play as normal. This would require a ridiculous amount of luck, but I think it would be feasible as long as you rolled a dungeon with the collar, both altars, and enough resources to get Jehora's piety up to 50 without killing anything.

And this is the kind of person that would EARN that achievement. I'm thinking you creator peoples would want to encourage this sort of thinking and challenge for seasoned players.

Nandrew
28-06-2010, 07:57 PM
OK, weird glitch.

Maybe?

Human Tinker in Factory worshipper of Dracul.

I land on a HALPMEH glyph.

If I recall, that IS a Dracul thing and you just weren't given the message. Will look into it.

The gods system is still being tweaked, so thanks for the extensive feedback from everyone surrounding this area. :)

XuaXua
28-06-2010, 10:07 PM
If I recall, that IS a Dracul thing and you just weren't given the message. Will look into it.)

I think HALPMEH might not have been removed from the board as well if it was supposed to be.

dislekcia
28-06-2010, 11:43 PM
If I recall, that IS a Dracul thing and you just weren't given the message. Will look into it.

Yeah, it was the on-cast message bug. Already fixed ;)

Grim Reaper
28-06-2010, 11:50 PM
Damn this game is popular. Maybe I should try it.

XuaXua
29-06-2010, 12:21 AM
Because Dracul kills you when you drop below zero piety, which you will do fairly quickly in Crypt?

Oh, so THAT is what keeps happening. Will confirm fixed in wiki.

dislekcia
29-06-2010, 12:39 AM
Oh, so THAT is what keeps happening. Will confirm fixed in wiki.

Well, fixed in the code Nandrew has. It'll be release-fixed when the tweaks to the gods are done.

Unless you're talking about Dracul killing you at 0 piety. Yeah, he's a bit of a **** like that. You know how it is with ancient vampire gods of death.

XuaXua
29-06-2010, 03:35 PM
Well, fixed in the code Nandrew has. It'll be release-fixed when the tweaks to the gods are done.

Unless you're talking about Dracul killing you at 0 piety. Yeah, he's a bit of a **** like that. You know how it is with ancient vampire gods of death.

Yeah, I just kept joining Dracul, killing undead and death. Figured it was insta-death, but others kept posting -5 Piety, but were removing the insta-death comment.

I never got that far (0 Piety) and apparently the others were able to achieve negative Piety without penalty; hence the confusion.

Chainsaw
29-06-2010, 03:37 PM
I actually think the new Vampire is even more overpowered. In that I can actually play him now. :D

varuka
29-06-2010, 05:38 PM
I actually think the new Vampire is even more overpowered. In that I can actually play him now. :D

Haha, yeah. There's really two ways it seems something can be "overpowered" in Desktop Dungeons.

There's "too easy to consistently beat bosses" classes, like Transmuter. It might take fifteen minutes of calculating our how to get the job done, but there's almost no dungeon setup that the game will create a Transmuter can't beat. (Partially because he spawns with ENDISWALL)

Then there's the "easy to beat a ranked dungeon FAST" (and then damage creatures and let them heal for an insanely high score).. which the old vampire was. A lot of dungeons would be impossible or require lucky exploring for the vampire, but all the ones that were doable were doable VERY quickly. The changes for vampire moved it from this type of overpowered to the other type. :P

varuka
29-06-2010, 05:54 PM
Also, I wanted to put in a request here for a mode: Endless Ranked.

Similar to the campaign, in that you can't take breaks to get gold back (and maybe even can't pick race/class), but play through an endless number of ranked dungeons (or maybe rotating challenge dungeons?), until the player loses, with a high score board.

Chainsaw
29-06-2010, 06:01 PM
Also, I wanted to put in a request here for a mode: Endless Ranked.

Similar to the campaign, in that you can't take breaks to get gold back (and maybe even can't pick race/class), but play through an endless number of ranked dungeons (or maybe rotating challenge dungeons?), until the player loses, with a high score board.

Alternate idea:

Have the boss at one of the edges of the map. When you defeat him, you can move off-screen, moving to a new area of the dungeon, where the levels continue on from the first. As in, level 11, 12, 13 etc. The next boss would be at level 20 and so on. Could be fun? Might need a cap, though. Last boss is level 100?

varuka
29-06-2010, 08:04 PM
Alternate idea:

Have the boss at one of the edges of the map. When you defeat him, you can move off-screen, moving to a new area of the dungeon, where the levels continue on from the first. As in, level 11, 12, 13 etc. The next boss would be at level 20 and so on. Could be fun? Might need a cap, though. Last boss is level 100?

A cool concept, but I'd be worried it goes against the Desktop Dungeons theme of a "bite sized crawl." Then again, so does my idea, the more I think about it. Maybe a "beat as many ranked/challenge dungeons as you can in 15/30 minutes" or something would be more appropriate. That or a multiplayer mode where you both get paired with the same X number of dungeons, and race to beat them.

I guess I just have a yearning for more ways to play Desktop Dungeons and compete with my friends :D

XuaXua
29-06-2010, 11:25 PM
A cool concept, but I'd be worried it goes against the Desktop Dungeons theme of a "bite sized crawl."

If you've unlocked it to the point where you're playing endless ranked, I think you (as a player) are done with the "bite sized crawl" concept anyway.

Chainsaw
29-06-2010, 11:32 PM
If you've unlocked it to the point where you're playing endless ranked, I think you (as a player) are done with the "bite sized crawl" concept anyway.

Heh, I think this is pretty true.

q 3
30-06-2010, 01:22 AM
It would be fun to have a mode that unlocks upon beating the ranked dungeon for the first time, where the monsters' bonuses are increased even more every time you beat it. Maybe call it something like "Insane," "Insane+1," "Insane+2," etc. That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and theoretically the difficulty could increase forever, although you'd probably need a hard cap of like 10 or 20 just to be safe. It would be interesting to see who could get through the most of those.

varuka
30-06-2010, 05:20 PM
It would be fun to have a mode that unlocks upon beating the ranked dungeon for the first time, where the monsters' bonuses are increased even more every time you beat it. Maybe call it something like "Insane," "Insane+1," "Insane+2," etc. That shouldn't be too hard to implement, and theoretically the difficulty could increase forever, although you'd probably need a hard cap of like 10 or 20 just to be safe. It would be interesting to see who could get through the most of those.

No need to put a hard cap on it, endless dungeons / increasing difficulties would be all about pushing the limits of what's possible. The Sorcerer class with the BURN and old BLUD (v0.051) glyphs could kill any boss at level 1. I'm curious as to what are the limits in this version.

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 06:06 PM
Gorgon kills via BURNDAYRAZ
Target currently turns into a statue.
Just making sure this is correct.

Nandrew
30-06-2010, 06:16 PM
Gorgon kills via BURNDAYRAZ
Target currently turns into a statue.
Just making sure this is correct.

Hmm, yes, that's what's happening at the moment. From a balance perspective, I think it's okay, but I see where you're coming from thematically. It jars with the idea of what a gorgon's petrification should be about.

A revision may be in order. :P

Nandrew
30-06-2010, 06:17 PM
No need to put a hard cap on it, endless dungeons / increasing difficulties would be all about pushing the limits of what's possible. The Sorcerer class with the BURN and old BLUD (v0.051) glyphs could kill any boss at level 1. I'm curious as to what are the limits in this version.

Kinda hoping that we can strain out any more "infinitely-exploitable" problems for this version, so let us know if you find any. I like the particular spin being put on this endless dungeon idea, but it's obviously a complete waste if we have indefinitely immortal characters.

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 06:18 PM
UI Suggestion: Remove having to navigate to and click the "OK" button to remove the narrative dialogue on boss discovery. Make it so you can just click anywhere to remove the dialogue. This would speed up mouse-play.

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 07:44 PM
Regarding Nagas, instead of weakening the player, how about a weak aura?
In that if you are in one of the 8 squares around a Naga, you are weakened. Kill the Naga or move from that space, and you will no longer be weakened. Naga weakness aura stacks.

Chainsaw
30-06-2010, 08:05 PM
Regarding Nagas, instead of weakening the player, how about a weak aura?
In that if you are in one of the 8 squares around a Naga, you are weakened. Kill the Naga or move from that space, and you will no longer be weakened. Naga weakness aura stacks.

Would work, except I had four nagas stacked above each other in my latest run of Snakepit. Could prove a problem :D

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 08:20 PM
Half-Dragon Knockback destroys walls.
Half-Dragon with store item "Destroy walls for health (2-per level)" does not give health.

q 3
30-06-2010, 08:20 PM
I finally made the top 10 high scores! Top 5 if you exclude the cheaters. I'm especially proud of the method I used; my time and damage scores were both fairly pitiful, but I made up for it elsewhere. Hint: "The Earthmother witnesses what you did there." :)

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 08:33 PM
Punch an Animated Armor, knocking it back into a wall or target, it only takes 1 hit/save vs. death, not the expected 2.

Knock a target into an Animated Armor with 0 lives left; it still Saves vs. Death in perpetuity.

dislekcia
30-06-2010, 08:56 PM
Half-Dragon Knockback destroys walls.
Half-Dragon with store item "Destroy walls for health (2-per level)" does not give health.

I reckon that item should provide health when knockback destroys one. This is one of the problems with the current codebase that we've addressed in the Unity version: Hordes of special cases make it really hard to keep everything coherent...


Punch an Animated Armor, knocking it back into a wall or target, it only takes 1 hit/save vs. death, not the expected 2.

Knock a target into an Animated Armor with 0 lives left; it still Saves vs. Death in perpetuity.

That's because knock-into damage cannot kill anything, the save-vs-death text is placeholder to let you know that it's not working.


I finally made the top 10 high scores! Top 5 if you exclude the cheaters. I'm especially proud of the method I used; my time and damage scores were both fairly pitiful, but I made up for it elsewhere. Hint: "The Earthmother witnesses what you did there." :)

I'll go prune the obvious cheaters :) I'm glad the score changes nixed the time and damage milling. We want players to play smart, not boring, samey games. Obviously the plan is to have more special case achievements in the full.

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 08:59 PM
Also, since updating, I haven't received that random error I was getting.

XuaXua
30-06-2010, 09:30 PM
BLUDTOPOWA

Not sure it's working right in my game or if I just never noticed.
Converts health regen into mana.
Human Assassin on Crypt worshipping Jer Jer with madness and retaliation.
BLUDTOPOWA does nothing except stop me from regenerating health while active.

So... Jer Jer doesn't allow BLUDTOPOWA? Since I am guessing this, I'm converting it till I get an answer. :)

q 3
01-07-2010, 12:37 AM
So I finally was able to try out the Agnostic's Collar, and it seems to be acting kind of wonky with the current religion system. After worshipping Mysteria and getting all of her boons, I tried buying the Collar. It caused me to instantly renounce Mysteria, although there was no message to that effect. As expected, I stopped gaining piety and was no longer penalized for melee kills or converting glyphs. The extra MP, loss of monster magic resist, and bonus fireball damage boons all remained in effect; the "damage permanently set to 1" remained in effect as well, even after buying a Fine Sword. I'm a little disappointed in that last bit, but I'll live.

However, the really strange part is that I was no longer able to join any other religion. At the other altars, every option but "leave" was greyed out, as if I were still worshipping Mysteria. Mysteria wouldn't take me back, either. I would have expected that you could join another religion after you had renounced the first. Is this the intended effect? Being permanently barred from all religions, and still subject to the initial penalties imposed by your initial deity, makes the Collar a lot less valuable - I can't think of many uses for it in ranked play, not for 100 gold at least.

Speaking of useless items, does anyone have a use for the Bloody Sigil? (-20% damage bonus, +10 HP.) If the HP bonus scaled with level, it might be useful in certain circumstances, but as it is I can't think of many situations where the permanent damage penalty is worth an initial bump in HP that is of marginal benefit at high levels. Especially when there is the Pendant of Health, which gives the same bonus with no penalty. I think the Sigil should either be tweaked or have its price sharply reduced, because right now it just doesn't ever seem worth it.

On a related note, the Magician's Moonstrike sets your base damage to 1, but if you buy it and then immediately buy a Fine Sword, you end up with a base damage of 6 (1+5). If you do this at level 1, your base damage scales as usual, plus 1 extra, just as if you'd bought a Spoon. Is that intended, or should it set your base damage permanently to 1?

DMT
01-07-2010, 02:35 AM
Little bug: You can submit scores from ranked dungeons from older versions and they appear on the board.

I was just playing 0.14 and left a game for a while, came back and won it, ended up with a silly high score because of the backwards boss timer bug, tried to submit it to see if it would actually accept it (expecting it to be rejected) and it went through.

So now I've bugged the new score board with a score of 219998. Sorry :(

I also agree with the above comments about the bloody sigil. I've NEVER found a use for it.

XuaXua
01-07-2010, 04:18 AM
Never found the Bloody Sigil useful here.

fall_ark
01-07-2010, 05:16 AM
The Bloody Sigil is inferior, of course, but not useless. Extra HP is always handful with low-level combat oriented characters, especially if you choose Human. A level 1 character with 30+ HP (Pendant, Sigil, Binlor, powerups) can kill higher-level monsters and level up more easily.

Speaking of Magician's Moonstrike, it's the same with Terror Slice. Get it on level one without raising HP, and BAM, you get +100% damage for free! Well not free... but buying it on higher level? You're probably screwed by a First Strike monster.

So....yes, most items are best bought early on.

GG Crono
01-07-2010, 06:08 AM
Beat the first part of the campaign! Yaaaay. Mind, the only way I could figure out how to do it was to keep retrying until a CYDSTEPP spawned, and even then, I couldn't do it until I got lucky enough to get a Pactmaker altar for extra mana as well. >_>

No idea how I'm going to manage the second part! :D

Also: People are talking about vampires being overpowered? What am I doing wrong? I can just barely get to level 2. By the time I find a monster that I can kill, I'm at 1 HP and there's little I can do about it.

neongrey
01-07-2010, 11:07 AM
As far as the campaign goes, I managed to beat it, but only by having parts 2 and 3 spawn a Jehora altar. Amusingly, the round 3 shuffle turned the boss into round 2's, which is of course a complete joke for a berserker. I hope to go back and do it legitly at some point, but, ehh. Not right now.

XuaXua
01-07-2010, 06:02 PM
Better keyboard control (or documented keyboard control) is a big request here

For example : Need something to press to auto-discard a glyph instead of just space to pick it up. This would help when grinding for gold.

q 3
01-07-2010, 07:10 PM
I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but I'd really appreciate it if the pathfinding would avoid unrevealed tiles when attacking or casting a spell. E.g., when I want to attack a monster at the edge of explored space, I almost always want to not reveal any new tiles, but the auto-pathfinder will sometimes put me in unexplored space, so I have to manually choose the tile to land on and then attack. It's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.


Also: People are talking about vampires being overpowered? What am I doing wrong? I can just barely get to level 2. By the time I find a monster that I can kill, I'm at 1 HP and there's little I can do about it.

You'll never go below 1 HP, so explore the whole map. You should end up with enough monsters that you can one shot (remember, you have first strike) to level up.


As far as the campaign goes, I managed to beat it, but only by having parts 2 and 3 spawn a Jehora altar. Amusingly, the round 3 shuffle turned the boss into round 2's, which is of course a complete joke for a berserker. I hope to go back and do it legitly at some point, but, ehh. Not right now.

Yeah, the round three boss is just ridiculous. I don't think it's even possible to beat him legitimately without CYDSTEPP (which IMHO should always spawn on that map just so that you aren't put in an unwinnable situation from the start). I guess it's theoretically possible to use Mysteria's boon to strip his magic resist and fireball him to death, but good luck making that happen with a Berserker. You could also try getting first strike and one-shotting him, but you'd have to have a lot of luck with items and even then I don't know if it's possible; likewise, with Binlor and the two phys resist items you might be able to take a hit from him, but that's not exactly a combination you can rely on having. The really frustrating part is getting to him and realizing you have no way of killing him, and that to get another try you'll have to complete the first two rounds all over again. Which is all a long way of saying I think the campaign could use some tweaking. :)

varuka
01-07-2010, 09:12 PM
Yeah, the round three boss is just ridiculous. I don't think it's even possible to beat him legitimately without CYDSTEPP (which IMHO should always spawn on that map just so that you aren't put in an unwinnable situation from the start). I guess it's theoretically possible to use Mysteria's boon to strip his magic resist and fireball him to death, but good luck making that happen with a Berserker. You could also try getting first strike and one-shotting him, but you'd have to have a lot of luck with items and even then I don't know if it's possible; likewise, with Binlor and the two phys resist items you might be able to take a hit from him, but that's not exactly a combination you can rely on having. The really frustrating part is getting to him and realizing you have no way of killing him, and that to get another try you'll have to complete the first two rounds all over again. Which is all a long way of saying I think the campaign could use some tweaking. :)

There's also 2 one-off shops that give death protection, and he's really quite killable with the gods, or even just some good fireball spam and a first strike. It's fine as it is, but I think I'd rather have harder than easier if it was going to be changed. I mean, there's already plenty of easier dungeon crawling (54 challenge dungeon run-thru's) to be done, I was kind of hoping for something that would take me weeks to beat.

Edit: Also, I feel like it's more beatable than the impression it gives. Between altars, shops, and glyphs, for death protection, first strike, dodge, and mana improving things, I'd guess something like 45-65% of the time it is beatable. I don't have a problem with it being unbeatable half the time, though. Plenty of the challenge dungeons have unbeatable setups that occur, and the campaign is supposed to be much harder.

q 3
01-07-2010, 10:41 PM
I think I'm upset because I just did a campaign run where I was worshipping Jehora, but polymorph didn't do anything to him, and then I killed him with my mana shield but still got a game over. :(

Suho
02-07-2010, 04:56 AM
I just saw the news about the new version yesterday, and I downloaded it to try it out. I decided to start from scratch and so far I've played two games, one with a human fighter and one with a human thief. Both times I managed to beat the boss, but I remember the previous version being a little easier until you got to ranked dungeons, too. I suppose that's a good thing--don't want to discourage the player too much from the start.

One thing I noticed on my second game was some weird messages when I was over the altars. The first altar I found was GG, so I decided to worship him (which turned out to be a good choice, as there were a lot of undead--pardon me, "unholy" (I like how GG gives piety for killing warlocks now, too)--creatures on the map). Later on I found the altars for Taurog and Tikki Tooki, I think. Anyway, when I stood over those altars, I got the "GG rewards the slaying of unholy monsters +1 Piety" messages. My piety didn't go up, but it seemed a bit strange to get that message just for standing over the altars.

By the way, the new deity system looks really nice. I haven't played with it enough to come to a deeper conclusion, but I love the piety/boon system. It seems much more... natural, I guess. Actually being able to pray at the altars and request boons seems more interactive than just getting bonuses every time you do something. I like it.

I'll probably have more to say after I've played a little more, but so far it's looking really nice. It was such a lovely surprise to see a new version. I will definitely be buying the retail version when it comes out--you've earned my support many times over already.

Oh, and I agree with q 3's comment above about pathfinding, but I'm also not sure how practical it is. It would be nice to be able to click on a monster directly and know that you're not going to be uncovering any unexplored tiles. Perhaps it could be coded so that you only reveal unexplored tiles when you click on empty space? Then again, you'd have to figure in situations where a monster can't be attacked without revealing any tiles. Hmm. I imagine this would be harder to code than we might suspect.

neongrey
02-07-2010, 09:45 AM
Also, the game seems to now be a bit inconsistent about the spelling of everyone's favourite magic goddess-- it's Mysteria in some places and Mystera in others.

Nandrew
02-07-2010, 01:01 PM
One thing I noticed on my second game was some weird messages when I was over the altars. The first altar I found was GG, so I decided to worship him (which turned out to be a good choice, as there were a lot of undead--pardon me, "unholy" (I like how GG gives piety for killing warlocks now, too)--creatures on the map). Later on I found the altars for Taurog and Tikki Tooki, I think. Anyway, when I stood over those altars, I got the "GG rewards the slaying of unholy monsters +1 Piety" messages. My piety didn't go up, but it seemed a bit strange to get that message just for standing over the altars.

The message appears on the altars as a convenience to players: in previous versions, you'd only get one opportunity to glimpse a god's reaction before it got dismissed FOREVAR (TM). Now it's much easier to go back and review what effects have recently taken place, and although it may be a bit "weird", we're hoping that it's unambiguous enough in most situations for players to understand the intent of the message. As you mentioned yourself, you didn't actually get fooled into thinking that you were gaining more piety. ;)

Perhaps a simple "Most recent god message" description above these messages would do the trick? We definitely don't want to open up opportunities to confuse new players! :)


Oh, and I agree with q 3's comment above about pathfinding ...

I'm not exactly a top-notch coder, but I'll admit that the proposed changes to pathfinding shouldn't be too taxing / ridiculous to implement. I think it's more a matter of what we're trying to prioritise at the moment, because we're devoting considerable time to the ground-up Unity version as well. We'll take it under consideration, though. :)


Also, the game seems to now be a bit inconsistent about the spelling of everyone's favourite magic goddess-- it's Mysteria in some places and Mystera in others.

Haha! I guess that's the result of several tired devs working in correspondence towards a deadline. Thanks for the spot, the canonical spelling is "Mystera", and anybody who wants a citation for the wiki entry can link to this quote as backup. :P

q 3
02-07-2010, 07:45 PM
I have to say, I am falling in love with Earthmother's Plantation boon. It's not terribly useful in itself, except to get enough piety for her stat boosts, but for increasing your score and just dicking around it's pretty fun. (Theoretically it could increase your score by over 15,000 points, making this a must-have for high score runs, if you first kill every monster then turn them into plants then stone all the plants. However, having enough mana left over for that after killing the boss is a challenge that I haven't come close to succeeding at, so I don't know that this aspect actually needs re-balancing.) I just used it to take my Sorcerer from +100 to -400 piety in a few seconds, and still ended up with a decent points bonus. :)

Speaking of deities, if you're still working on Tikki Tooki, I was thinking that it might work out to make his highest-level boon something like "remove first strike from all monsters." That fits in with similar boons for Mystera and Taurog, and complements his other traits better than poisoning does, and I don't think it would be overpowered, either.

varuka
02-07-2010, 09:12 PM
Theoretically it could increase your score by over 15,000 points, making this a must-have for high score runs, if you first kill every monster then turn them into plants then stone all the plants. However, having enough mana left over for that after killing the boss is a challenge that I haven't come close to succeeding at, so I don't know that this aspect actually needs re-balancing.

This is actually my main complaint about Ranked mode. It's really dependent on the luck of the generated dungeon, from the Gods generated (this example) to the glyphs present (for a lot of the bonus awards), to even the monsters present (damage dealt). Every dungeon basically comes with a 'max score' at the time it's generated.

The randomness in ranked mode combined with having so many factors contribute to score has never sat right with me.

Suho
03-07-2010, 02:44 PM
The message appears on the altars as a convenience to players: in previous versions, you'd only get one opportunity to glimpse a god's reaction before it got dismissed FOREVAR (TM). Now it's much easier to go back and review what effects have recently taken place, and although it may be a bit "weird", we're hoping that it's unambiguous enough in most situations for players to understand the intent of the message. As you mentioned yourself, you didn't actually get fooled into thinking that you were gaining more piety. ;)

Ah, OK. I see what you're going for now. I still think it could be a bit confusing, though. I eventually figured out that I wasn't getting any piety, but at first I thought I might (although I couldn't figure out why--I actually thought it was a bug). I can understand it happening what you stand over the altar of the god you are currently worshiping, but it doesn't really make sense to me to see it when you stand over other altars.

Oh, by the way, having the candle on the altar light up after you pray? That's a lovely touch, both in terms of atmosphere and convenience.


Perhaps a simple "Most recent god message" description above these messages would do the trick? We definitely don't want to open up opportunities to confuse new players! :)

That might not be a bad idea. I have to admit I was a bit turned around at first.

While I'm on the subject of gods, though, I thought I'd share a little anecdote of my latest adventure. I just went through with a Dwarf Berserker and got Lord Gobb as the boss. I was worshiping Jehora, and I had gotten Gobb down to 13 HP, but I was all out of potions and one more hit would have killed me. So I went back to Jehora and used the Chaos boon. I had 74 piety, but still... that's a 1/4 chance of death. Even though it was a completely random event (there aren't many in DD), it felt great when Jehora healed me and I could go back and smack down Lord Gobb. Just the right amount of luck, I think.

:D


I'm not exactly a top-notch coder, but I'll admit that the proposed changes to pathfinding shouldn't be too taxing / ridiculous to implement. I think it's more a matter of what we're trying to prioritise at the moment, because we're devoting considerable time to the ground-up Unity version as well. We'll take it under consideration, though. :)

Yeah, to be honest, I wouldn't really consider it a high-priority issue. It's one of those "would be nice to have' features, not a "OMG I MUST HAVE THIS" feature. At least for me.

dislekcia
03-07-2010, 11:38 PM
Yeah, to be honest, I wouldn't really consider it a high-priority issue. It's one of those "would be nice to have' features, not a "OMG I MUST HAVE THIS" feature. At least for me.

Just as an aside: Remember that we're working with a new codebase every day now, we're into the new version, even though you guys might not see it for at least another couple of months. That does mean that we're a lot less likely to really deal with bugs in the GM code at the moment, that's a whole derail and mental track-changing process that's getting less and less productive for us to do. Unless something is a total showstopper, we'll probably let things slide until the first tests of the new version are happening.

XuaXua
04-07-2010, 09:18 PM
Verbage

Alchemist'ss scroll
Drinking A potion adds...
should be
Drinking ANY potion adds...

dislekcia
04-07-2010, 09:42 PM
Verbage

Alchemist'ss scroll
Drinking A potion adds...
should be
Drinking ANY potion adds...

You're so going to be on the tester list for the full ;)

XuaXua
04-07-2010, 11:42 PM
No notes regarding fact that Half-Dragon vision doesn't stack with orb of sight.

XuaXua
04-07-2010, 11:43 PM
You're so going to be on the tester list for the full ;)

As a tester, I'll expect full disclosure of all abilities, available items and in-game text lists. :)

Suho
05-07-2010, 08:02 AM
This is really minor, but XuaXua's mention of verbiage, made me think of something. When you start worshiping Jehora, you get a message saying, "The dice have been set in motion." This niggled at me for the longest time, but I never consciously thought about. I just saw it again, though, and I realized that it is a combination of two phrases: "The wheels have been set in motion" and "The die is cast." Setting the dice in motion sounds a bit odd.

If I had to pick one of the two, I would go with the former.

rugzhltstirc
05-07-2010, 12:21 PM
Dying music sometimes scares the hell out of me.

I mean most of the game is pretty quiet and you get used to that slashing sound very quick and stop noticing it, yet sometimes when you botch your math or just click somewhere you shouldn't and instead of routine kill you SUDDENLY die -- cue VERY LOUD music after minutes and minutes of almost silent session.

I literally jumped cursing on my chair a few times.

dislekcia
05-07-2010, 01:16 PM
This is really minor, but XuaXua's mention of verbiage, made me think of something. When you start worshiping Jehora, you get a message saying, "The dice have been set in motion." This niggled at me for the longest time, but I never consciously thought about. I just saw it again, though, and I realized that it is a combination of two phrases: "The wheels have been set in motion" and "The die is cast." Setting the dice in motion sounds a bit odd.

If I had to pick one of the two, I would go with the former.

Jehora's not exactly smart ;) Here in SA we have a lot of different languages and each has their own idioms. Often people will mess up well-known idioms in their second/third/fourth language, focusing on a grammatical nit-picking point instead of the meaning of the idiom, making them sound less smart. Maybe that's lost in translation internationally.

You'll often hear things like "A bird in the hand is a penny saved" here.


Dying music sometimes scares the hell out of me.

I mean most of the game is pretty quiet and you get used to that slashing sound very quick and stop noticing it, yet sometimes when you botch your math or just click somewhere you shouldn't and instead of routine kill you SUDDENLY die -- cue VERY LOUD music after minutes and minutes of almost silent session.

I literally jumped cursing on my chair a few times.

Hmm. I know it's a little unfair, but I kinda like the effect ;) Sound design is something we're going to spend more time on once we're stable on the next version. The idea of music is terrifying me, like a spider.

Suho
05-07-2010, 02:24 PM
Jehora's not exactly smart ;) Here in SA we have a lot of different languages and each has their own idioms. Often people will mess up well-known idioms in their second/third/fourth language, focusing on a grammatical nit-picking point instead of the meaning of the idiom, making them sound less smart. Maybe that's lost in translation internationally.

You'll often hear things like "A bird in the hand is a penny saved" here.

Heh. I think I'm going to try to work that into my everyday conversation somehow (after I translate it into Korean...).

In retrospect, I realize that post sounded rather pedantic. Glad to see that you didn't take it too seriously. :)

XuaXua
05-07-2010, 06:59 PM
I always play with sound muted.

GG Crono
05-07-2010, 07:14 PM
Perhaps a little "ding!" when you level up would liven things up a little? :)

Jigsawn
05-07-2010, 10:27 PM
Hello folks and developers of Desktop Dungeons. I got linked to this game on rllmuk forum and have been enjoying it, very much a "one more go" game! I like the twist on the standard dungeon crawler affair. The initial simplicity and intuitive interface is great as well.

Here are some ideas for improvements:

Main Menu - It would be useful for you to be able to see progress status with the different characters/classes. For example, I always forget which characters I have done the Normal Campaign with, and considering the variety available it would be nice to see this so I don't end up playing with the same combos again by accident. How about doing the same thing as you do for Snake Pit etc, except with the standard dungeons?

Sound Options - I often play this game whilst listening to my own music, but I like listening to the sound effects. The problem is the musical ditties at the start of a game and so on are considered "sound effects" as well, so they always clash horribly with whatever I'm listening to. It would be handy to have a music toggle button to cover these kind of effects.

PS Good idea from GG Crono, a ding and visual effect appearing on the character would be cool for levelling up, and useful too, you don't always notice!

rugzhltstirc
06-07-2010, 08:39 AM
Speaking of languages -- have you thought of localization so far?

I might translate your strings to Russian (if it isn't too much work of course, but i doubt there are THAT many in the game).

XuaXua
06-07-2010, 08:23 PM
Choice; vampire summoned by WONAFYT GLYPH currently causes no damage, but one revealed by LEMMESI does.

Inconsistent??

dislekcia
06-07-2010, 09:25 PM
Choice; vampire summoned by WONAFYT GLYPH currently causes no damage, but one revealed by LEMMESI does.

Inconsistent??

Niether, code legacy problem. One of the reasons for the current rewrite.

XuaXua
07-07-2010, 09:37 PM
OFficial fan request here to handle stacked bloodstains which might occur with glyph or half-dragon use.

XuaXua
09-07-2010, 10:01 PM
After Boon to increase Fireball damage is applied, actual text of fireball damage does not increase.

dislekcia
10-07-2010, 03:33 AM
OFficial fan request here to handle stacked bloodstains which might occur with glyph or half-dragon use.

Debating how best to handle this. Either enough stacked bloodstains will create a larger pool that spreads over adjacent tiles, or multiple stains provide extra percentage bonuses on use (exponential)...


After Boon to increase Fireball damage is applied, actual text of fireball damage does not increase.

Noted. Thanks.

XuaXua
10-07-2010, 08:59 AM
No notes regarding fact that Half-Dragon vision doesn't stack with orb of sight.


Half-Dragon knockback destroying a wall does not seem to give the +2 Health back when the item "destroy a wall get +2 health back" is owned.

I feel like I said this earlier, so just ignore if it's a dupe post.

EDIT I did mention this earlier (2 pages back), so just ignore.

XuaXua
10-07-2010, 09:09 AM
Half-Dragon Knockback destroys walls.
Half-Dragon worshipping Jeh Jeh gains no Piety when a wall is destroyed by knockback.

Probably same thing when using flail.

XuaXua
10-07-2010, 09:30 AM
Request
- a monster that leaves a damage (acid) pool instead of a blood pool.
- a monster that drains mana to its own health in the same fashion as the vampire drains health
- potentially scalable fireball damage/mana or an alternative secondary attack.

That third request doesn't work well with the 10 minute game concept.

XuaXua
10-07-2010, 11:58 PM
Potential gold mechanic fix
- Gold does not transition game to game
- Snake Pit wins determine starting gold
- No gold carry maximum
- With no cap, gold would always be picked up when stepped on instead of vanishing
- One or more classes could have a start with a zero to half gold starting penalty, double gold starting bonus, or a no gold allowed penalty.

XuaXua
12-07-2010, 05:05 AM
Current text for Vampiric Sword reads as though it sets Life Steal to 20% when in fact it adds 20% to Life Steal.

XuaXua
12-07-2010, 07:30 PM
Is the amount of Health lost by a Vampire casting a spell a randomized amount?
It seems that way.

dislekcia
12-07-2010, 07:35 PM
Is the amount of Health lost by a Vampire casting a spell a randomized amount?
It seems that way.

No, vampires lose more health the more times they cast something in a row.

XuaXua
13-07-2010, 12:32 AM
90 gold cost Ring of the Battlemage says it adds 50% damage to fireballs, but I suspect it adds less.

edit It is adding +25%

XuaXua
13-07-2010, 12:33 AM
No, vampires lose more health the more times they cast something in a row.

Actions in a row.

I found out it is Mana cost + X, where X is the number of prior times in a row.

Unfortunately, this appears to be easily circumvented by moving between each cast; it doesn't appear to be necessary to uncover anything, but I haven't (and probably am not going to) fully tested.

Jazerus
13-07-2010, 04:07 AM
I registered to say that I love the game; it has officially replaced Nethack as my time-waster of choice. at least for a while.

I know the mouse is a lot more efficient, but this game feels much more roguelike with the keyboard controls. At the moment, two or three tasks require mouse control to my knowledge: attack results prediction, glyph conversion, and using the altar menu once it's been opened with Spacebar. It seems to me that if you want to support both control styles, all of these tasks should have hotkeys.

Anyway, other than that issue, the game is great.

Edit: Oh, and as for the issue of music, I've personally found that the music from the old puzzle/adventure game Shadowgate really fits DD. You might want to look into having similar stuff for the full version of DD. The chiptune-ness of it fits the graphical style and overall theme of Desktop Dungeons really well.

XuaXua
13-07-2010, 07:22 PM
OK, so I beat every challenge with every race and got to the third level of the campaign and holy crap if you do not spawn the correct glyphs and/or the right combination of stores with the right pocket change in-hand, it's just not happening.

Which is kind of a shame. I know it's set that not every game is possible, but it would be nice if there was always at least one combination (besides retire) that would allow a win if puzzled out.

XuaXua
15-07-2010, 10:15 PM
Alright, this was my last time playing the campaign. I'm done with it.

Got to the last guy; unless you have CYDSTEPP or the shop spawns a resurrection or you've got a god that provides one and the means to acquire it, it's not possible to even try and take him down.

Unless I'm wrong there, but I don't think so.

I even had just fireballs (unenhanced and unable to be enhanced) and poison and 150 gold. And I had unlocked all gold piles and shop quantity and variety.

I'm wondering if a pre-game metric can be run to determine win possibility and scrap any game that allows for 0% possibility. I know it's a major enhancement, but it's an idea.

Suho
16-07-2010, 02:56 AM
I haven't gotten nearly as far as XuaXua, but I have seen people post about how hard the campaign is. I realize that roguelikes are characterized by insane difficulty, and I like the fact that you're just not going to win every game of DD, but I think there's a fine line between "really difficult" and "impossible to win unless certain conditions are met." Even if the difficulty involves a certain level of luck, players will accept that and even put that out of mind. When they win, they will feel a sense of accomplishment. They will feel that, even though luck played a part, they were able to make the best of their circumstances and overcome odds that were stacked against them.

If it becomes obvious, however, that a certain situation is impossible unless a number of purely luck-based factors fall into place, the player is likely to feel only frustration when they fail and little motivation to continue their attempt to win. Even if they do win, the victory will likely feel hollow, as it is obvious that they won not through any skill of their own but through a particular set of fortunate circumstances.

Now, it may be the case in a lot of games that luck is the deciding factor. I don't think there's anything wrong with that unless it becomes too obvious--like I said above, the player will still find a way to attribute their victories to their elite skills and intelligence while at the same time chalking up their losses to "bad luck." In a way, this is not entirely untrue. After all, even with a lucky setup, a player can make poor choices and still lose, and even with perfect choices the luck of the draw can still determine a loss. Once the player begins to feel that both wins and losses are entirely dictated by chance, though... well, you might as well be playing craps.

Just some random thoughts from a casual player who hasn't even gotten that far yet. Take them with a grain of salt (or two). :)

dislekcia
16-07-2010, 11:46 AM
The campaign was a test to see how far players would actually go... We're continuously amazed by the fact that anyone completed it at all! (And all the ways people did end up completing it - From Cydstep to physical resist tanking to health item hoarding, read back in the thread to see an interesting discussion on that)

The full game already has some very important changes that deal with the feeling of frustration you've mentioned Suho and I'm sure you're feeling XuaXua: Imagine being able to bring certain things into a dungeon with you when you start - suddenly a previously "unfair" dungeon becomes a challenge to find the right items for your play style that will carry you through. Basically we answer the "I wish the dungeon had spawned X" with "Ok, you can bring X in with you if you want, but there's a price..." ;)

(I'm actually in the middle of coding the new inventory right now)

XuaXua
16-07-2010, 06:57 PM
if you're still working on Tikki Tooki, I was thinking that it might work out to make his highest-level boon something like "remove first strike from all monsters." That fits in with similar boons for Mystera and Taurog, and complements his other traits better than poisoning does, and I don't think it would be overpowered, either.

This.

XuaXua
16-07-2010, 07:06 PM
Unlockable Hard Class Suggestion:

Peasant
Racial Bonuses for converting glyphs negated
Score Multiplier x1.5
Possibly able to hold only 2 Glyphs at once

Suho
17-07-2010, 04:12 AM
The full game already has some very important changes that deal with the feeling of frustration you've mentioned Suho and I'm sure you're feeling XuaXua: Imagine being able to bring certain things into a dungeon with you when you start - suddenly a previously "unfair" dungeon becomes a challenge to find the right items for your play style that will carry you through. Basically we answer the "I wish the dungeon had spawned X" with "Ok, you can bring X in with you if you want, but there's a price..." ;)

That sounds promising!

Also, a random suggestion: if I remember correctly the Pactmaker has two boons at the same piety price, one of which gives 10 max mana and one of which gives 10 max health. I have almost never used the health boon because, while 10 max health is nice, it's not nice enough to spend that much piety. 10 max mana, though, is huge, and if I'm playing a spell-casting class and get the Pactmaker, I get that boon as soon as possible (but usually after getting the Learning boon). Anyway, it just seems odd that the health and mana boons would be the same price, seeing as how the mana boon is so much more powerful. Or maybe the amount of max health could be raised?

Sorry if this has already been mentioned.

XuaXua
17-07-2010, 04:52 PM
Max Health plus a full heal would be more desirable.

q 3
18-07-2010, 04:37 AM
Pactmaker's health boon is always the better bet if you're playing a Vampire, and often even if you're playing a Monk, Berserker, or Gorgon (resistances make their max HP twice as important), Priest (think of it as an extra 10 HP whenever you drink a potion), or Rogue (lower starting HP makes HP bonuses more valuable). It can sometimes be worthwhile if you already have max MP bonuses, e.g. a Sorcerer and/or Elf, or have bought max MP items. That said, bumping it from 15 to around 20-25 HP, adding a secondary effect like healing, or decreasing its piety cost to around 65-70 would all be greatly appreciated.

Suho
19-07-2010, 06:34 AM
Pactmaker's health boon is always the better bet if you're playing a Vampire, and often even if you're playing a Monk, Berserker, or Gorgon (resistances make their max HP twice as important), Priest (think of it as an extra 10 HP whenever you drink a potion), or Rogue (lower starting HP makes HP bonuses more valuable). It can sometimes be worthwhile if you already have max MP bonuses, e.g. a Sorcerer and/or Elf, or have bought max MP items.

Good points, although even with those considerations I don't know if max health and max mana bonuses can be considered equal.

After hearing XuaXua's suggestion, maybe adding a full heal to that would make it worth while. Not sure if I would prefer that or higher bonus/lower cost. I suppose it would depend how it affects game balance.

(Although it has become obvious to me now that I haven't played enough to fully comprehend the ramifications.)

varuka
19-07-2010, 10:31 PM
Alright, this was my last time playing the campaign. I'm done with it.

Got to the last guy; unless you have CYDSTEPP or the shop spawns a resurrection or you've got a god that provides one and the means to acquire it, it's not possible to even try and take him down.

Unless I'm wrong there, but I don't think so.

I even had just fireballs (unenhanced and unable to be enhanced) and poison and 150 gold. And I had unlocked all gold piles and shop quantity and variety.

I'm wondering if a pre-game metric can be run to determine win possibility and scrap any game that allows for 0% possibility. I know it's a major enhancement, but it's an idea.

I really wish I'd crunched the numbers, but I think almost 3/4 or more of the L3 campaign possibilities are beatable. With 3 ways to get death protection (glyph & shop & altar), as well as the possibility to polymorph the boss, etc, the odds start pilling up.

To give a quick metric, the odds of JJ OR GG spawning is 1 - (7/9 * 6/8 * 5/7), or about 40%, and there's a 28% chance that a given dungeon has a CYDSTEPP glyph on its own. That's about 57% [40% + 28% - (28% * 40%)] between just the glyph, and JJ or GG, which entirely excludes other inventive ways to beat it.

dislekcia
19-07-2010, 11:00 PM
I really wish I'd crunched the numbers, but I think almost 3/4 or more of the L3 campaign possibilities are beatable. With 3 ways to get death protection (glyph & shop & altar), as well as the possibility to polymorph the boss, etc, the odds start pilling up.

To give a quick metric, the odds of JJ OR GG spawning is 1 - (7/9 * 6/8 * 5/7), or about 40%, and there's a 28% chance that a given dungeon has a CYDSTEPP glyph on its own. That's about 57% [40% + 28% - (28% * 40%)] between just the glyph, and JJ or GG, which entirely excludes other inventive ways to beat it.

I. I think I love you.

tripecac
20-07-2010, 06:11 AM
Hi, first of all, great game. I played all the way through the previous version on my XP computer, and loved it. Now I'm trying the new version on my Vista computer and I'm having a problem.

The fonts are a lot uglier on my vista PC for some reason. On my XP PC (running the same version), the fonts look good and resize very well, but on the Vista pc they get very pixelated and thin. This is strange, because the Vista PC is much newer and has a better monitor and graphics card. Also, I tried it on Vista last week and don't remember it looking this bad.

Recent changes I made:
1) switched from VGA to DVI cable
2) installed a new nvidia driver

Do you know if either of those things would make the fonts look ugly in Desktop Dungeons (but no other apps or games)?

Any idea how I can fix the problem?

Thanks!

tripecac
20-07-2010, 09:06 AM
Trial and error found me a solution.

In the nvidia control panel, I go to:

3D Settings > Adjust image settings with preview

and then select "Use my preference emphasizing Quality".

This fixes the font problems! Who would have guessed???

dislekcia
20-07-2010, 11:16 AM
Trial and error found me a solution.

In the nvidia control panel, I go to:

3D Settings > Adjust image settings with preview

and then select "Use my preference emphasizing Quality".

This fixes the font problems! Who would have guessed???

Ah. I was going to suggest checking your card's antialiasing and filtering settings. GM (and hence freeware DD) uses sprite fonts, so the only thing that can change how the text looks ingame is how your card's blurring/smoothing that texture, which it shouldn't really be doing anyway.

Very odd that it looks different across other PCs, my dev setup includes PCs with both XP and Win7 on them, didn't notice any difference.

Mulch
20-07-2010, 09:02 PM
Odd keyboard glitch; moving with numeric keypad "9", diagonal up right, does not work if you are against the left side or the bottom of the map. Just verified with a Transmuter; does not matter if there are walls around you or not. You push the button and nothing happens, trying to cast a spell in that direction also does not work. It just ignores the keystroke.

(Side note, trying to narrow down this problem, I discovered that if when I try to transmute offscreen in direction "9", I get an actual error.

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for Keypad 9 Key
for object Roomwatch:

In script RoomClick:
Error in code at line 10:
if (Roomwatch.reveal[rx,ry]>=2)

at position 16: Unknown variable reveal or array index out of bounds

)

DMT
21-07-2010, 04:08 AM
I must have gotten lucky, I beat the campaign on my second try. First try got me right up to a showdown with the level 2 boss.

Seeing the final boss did make me go 'wtf!? I'm screwed' but then I found CYDSTEP and it all fell into place.

Beating him without any kind of death protection is probably impossible.

varuka
21-07-2010, 06:00 PM
I must have gotten lucky, I beat the campaign on my second try. First try got me right up to a showdown with the level 2 boss.

Seeing the final boss did make me go 'wtf!? I'm screwed' but then I found CYDSTEP and it all fell into place.

Beating him without any kind of death protection is probably impossible.

I really don't think people are being creative enough. If someone puts the L3 campaign bosses' stats on the wiki, I'll crunch the numbers and come up with a list of ways / probabilities to beat him. (I'm at work, or I'd do it myself)

Suho
22-07-2010, 04:59 AM
Alas, I have yet to even unlock the campaign... I'm still putzing around trying to unlock all the bonus characters/classes. :(

XuaXua
22-07-2010, 05:26 PM
I really don't think people are being creative enough. If someone puts the L3 campaign bosses' stats on the wiki, I'll crunch the numbers and come up with a list of ways / probabilities to beat him. (I'm at work, or I'd do it myself)

You're an Elf Berserker (no choice - 50% Magic Resistance, +Damage vs higher levels, +2 Mana/spell, convert glyph to Max Mana)
The boss is Master Goat
Damage = 270
Health = 397
He Blinks (like an imp)
He has 60% Magic Resistance
Onscreen enemies include a random mix of Goats, Goblins, Medusae, Snakes, Imps, Dragons and Naga.

Depending on how well you did in the prior 2 parts of the campaign, gold is likely less than 160.

90% of the time I can consistently make it to the third part, but only once with 160 gold.

varuka
22-07-2010, 06:41 PM
You're an Elf Berserker
Boss:
Health = 397
He has 60% Magic Resistance


Most of the items that are helpful against this boss (pendant of mana, mana potions, fine sword, badge of courage, zombie dog, keg o' magic, blue beard, sign of the spirits, bonebreaker) are pretty cheap, and have very good odds of spawning, so money isn't necessarily a problem. 80 gold should be enough for most cases, although it's always nice to have more.

So, we're assuming CYDSTEPP didn't spawn, as that's the trivial case (28% chance!).

At that point, dieties are the key to this stage, really. Also, with CYDSTEPP gone, GETINDARE becomes the new CYSTEPP (with a 31% chance of spawning) as it gives us a way to swing at the boss before he kills us.

Pactmaker: doable. Pactmaker's +10 mana allows 3 fireballs for free to be cast each level (as we have 24 mana after sac'ing a rune, 28-30 after is said and done). Cutting out the numbers here to save space, dumping fireballs on the boss as you level up is about 720 damage after normal levels/potions (no shops), which after magic resist brings the boss to around 109 health. The rest of the damage then has to be made up through physical damage / shops, which is doable with any luck (1 extra fireball = 16 damage, L10 berserker hits for 88 after normal bonuses, just needs first strike OR death protection).

Dracul: Doable, with any luck with shops. Same concept as with Pactmaker, but the 24 mana for your 3x fireballs has to come from 13 + 5 from dracul + 3 sac'd runes.

JehJeh: Polymorph boss. Doable.

GG: Doable, with any luck from shops, as GG gives a one-off death protection. Only need to get the boss to 160-or-so health, as your first swing is a freebie.

Earthmother MIGHT be doable with luck from shops, but the goats would prove a problem. The stoneform gives +1 mana per level gained with it, which lets you 3x fireball after a few levels. I wouldn't try tanking the boss, though.

Mysteria, Tiki Tooki, Binlor, and Taurog wont help.

That's about half of the gods give you a way to win it. Also, for one-off death protections, badge of courage is an 18% chance spawn, and zombie dog is 8% (estimated based on my understanding of the items wiki page). The trick to the level is that your health potions should be used entirely to maximize your experience gain, as they're useless against the boss.

EDIT: The odds of CYDSTEPP not spawning and the 3 gods all being of the 5 listed 'not helpful' ones listed above comes to about 8%. I'm NOT saying the level is 92% winnable, but it's significantly higher than people make it sound. I'd maybe call it 75% "not entirely hopeless" (given that you basically need first strike if you don't have any available death protection). It takes some skill and some luck, but most dungeons do. All this, of course, is assuming there aren't other more creative ways that I don't know about.

XuaXua
22-07-2010, 07:31 PM
I have not received either GETINDARE or CYDSTEPP on this board the last 3 times.

Last game run was Pactmaker (discovered at level 3 unreachable behind a level 4 monster), Earthmother and Wasisname the Reverse-Earthmother. I had 1 resurrection due to a zombie dog and botched it by not hitting him once for +30% at level 9 prior to leveling (mis-calculated the pactmaker leveling bonus).

XuaXua
22-07-2010, 07:32 PM
The trick to the level is that your health potions should be used entirely to maximize your experience gain, as they're useless against the boss.

That right there is the big tip that needs to be in the Advanced Strategies section of the wiki.

XuaXua
22-07-2010, 07:34 PM
Cutting out the numbers here to save space, dumping fireballs on the boss as you level up is about 720 damage after normal levels/potions (no shops), which after magic resist brings the boss to around 109 health.

Are you taking into account regeneration if Poison is unavailable and that the boss teleports?

varuka
22-07-2010, 08:10 PM
Are you taking into account regeneration if Poison is unavailable and that the boss teleports?

You have to explore the whole map before you start and just use your healing potions while killing the monsters to level up. If you can't calculate a way out to get to 10 without having to explore, you can leave some unexplored area, but that's a BIG risk.

I almost always do all my boss fights after exploring everything first, so I don't miss any potential EXP / shops I could use. The fact that he blinks only really matters if he gets between you and a monster you'd kill to level up, so keep that in mind when determining which monsters to kill for exp first.

If you can spare the mana beyond fireballs for using the first strike glyph toward leveling up, that can help, too if you're having trouble. But the Berserker's +60% damage against higher levels plus goats/gorgons/imps all having low max hp makes it a lot easier.

Unfortunately, a lot of the specific tactics can depend on the item shops / gods available.

To be specific, though, a 3-fireball tactic starting at level 1 (impossible) would deal 800, at 4 would deal 740, so my estimate is for if you're starting at around 5. It's actually a high of the damage estimate, but I figure a rough estimate is good enough, because the only important part is just it's "enough that you only need 1-2 hits."

It's really what you have at your disposal at 10 that makes the biggest difference (first strike / death protection / polymorph), but those odds are a lot more difficult to calculate. (The shop system scares me)

XuaXua
26-07-2010, 06:19 PM
Attempting final board of campaign with CYDSTEPP (finally it spawned! Screw chance; this is this first time for me!), and 3 useless gods (Taurog, Tikki, and Earthmother).

Suho
27-07-2010, 08:00 AM
Well, how did it go? Don't leave us hanging!

@varuka: Thanks for the detailed analysis! When I finally get to the campaign, I will keep your wise advice in mind.

CiNiMoDZA
28-07-2010, 01:52 PM
I know that this is a random ask, but Ive been capped :( Does anyone know of a place that they can upload to locally?? Please :P

XuaXua
29-07-2010, 04:32 AM
Failed. I don't know, maybe I didn't attack him early enough. I needed one more resurrection and I didn't have enough to do it. I died giving the enemy his death blow.

tangyi
03-08-2010, 02:01 PM
What a nice desktop dnd games!!!

XuaXua
11-08-2010, 06:08 PM
Would there somehow be a scenario where Binlor wouldn't give you the wall-breaking glyph, but it also wouldn't be found on the level? This just happened to me on the first level of the campaign.

XuaXua
12-08-2010, 12:37 AM
Last board; Binlor, JerJer and Mysterious Anal.

Picking Binlor after scrounging all gold.

XuaXua
12-08-2010, 12:51 AM
Buy Glyph to heal myself
mana burn protection
instant max mana (used last)
instant max health
immunity to poison
+10 health -20% damage
ZERO RESURRECTIONS

Epic shop fail.

XuaXua
12-08-2010, 11:28 PM
BUG: Conversion to Guardian from Binlor does not heal you fully, per Worship.

dislekcia
13-08-2010, 12:07 AM
BUG: Conversion to Guardian from Binlor does not heal you fully, per Worship.

On worship effects don't trigger when using conversions. It says so. That's kinda the point ;)

XuaXua
15-08-2010, 01:20 AM
I've given up on trying to win the campaign; deleted the game so I'd stop trying to do so. Many, many, many attempts.

dashinglad
15-08-2010, 08:37 AM
I'm making a custom tileset, and I am trying to find a way to make a custom avatar for each sub-class. Here is an example of what I'm trying to do. This is the Thief/Rogue/Assassin progression.

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/9578/thiefprogression.png

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knows how I could modify the game code so that it checked for these when you selected the respective classes, rather than grabbing HeroThief for all of them.

FuzzYspo0N
15-08-2010, 11:37 AM
Very cool looking sprites so far. Just a note on their colors - the darker one falls away on a dark dungeon, and the lighter one falls away on a lighter dungeon. Be wary of that when making the tiles, or depending on the class it will be painful to use them :)

dashinglad
17-08-2010, 12:49 AM
Very cool looking sprites so far. Just a note on their colors - the darker one falls away on a dark dungeon, and the lighter one falls away on a lighter dungeon. Be wary of that when making the tiles, or depending on the class it will be painful to use them :)

Yeah, I was considering that. The Assassin is definitely too dark. Thanks for the feedback!

dislekcia
17-08-2010, 02:11 AM
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knows how I could modify the game code so that it checked for these when you selected the respective classes, rather than grabbing HeroThief for all of them.

We've got the last GM update with a whole host of bugfixes coming out soon. If you ask Nandrew really nicely, he might add support for individual class sprites.

Maybe.

greatdiwei
18-08-2010, 10:28 AM
Anyone know what a "Guitaromancer" is?

He's on the high score list:

16 Buck Dharma (Human Guitaromancer) 34231

dislekcia
18-08-2010, 01:56 PM
Anyone know what a "Guitaromancer" is?

He's on the high score list:

16 Buck Dharma (Human Guitaromancer) 34231

It's not a secret class, unfortunately. Seems like someone just spoofed the high score list with a fake class ;)

greatdiwei
19-08-2010, 05:31 AM
Darn, I thought it might have been the reward for defeating Lothlorien.

dislekcia
19-08-2010, 02:37 PM
New GM version of Desktop Dungeons is up!

Find it on the QCF site (http://www.qcfdesign.com/?p=354). It deals with most of the bugs that have been raised on this thread, changes positioning of some of the interface elements to prevent accidental retiring, tweaks some of the gods, re-balances some spells and items and adds a new Gauntlet game mode - in which the dungeons get progressively harder the more gauntlet dungeons you successfully complete.

Support for class-specific sprites has been added as well, for everyone itching to make individual Assassins, Vampires and Paladins.

All previous savegames will still work 100%, as usual :)

Enjoy!

FuzzYspo0N
19-08-2010, 10:52 PM
Spreading the word (http://forr.st/~yXI)

XuaXua
20-08-2010, 05:43 PM
Noooo!!!!!!

dislekcia
20-08-2010, 06:48 PM
Noooo!!!!!!

Wha?

Kosowuda
20-08-2010, 11:43 PM
First of all, great game, I've enjoyed it for quite some time now.

But i updated it today, and were going to play warlord... But the problem is that he don't spawn the cydstepp glyph, but the wonafyt glyph as a starting glyph. Don't know why, the description still says he will start with the cydstepp glyph. Anyone else having this problem?

dislekcia
21-08-2010, 02:08 AM
First of all, great game, I've enjoyed it for quite some time now.

But i updated it today, and were going to play warlord... But the problem is that he don't spawn the cydstepp glyph, but the wonafyt glyph as a starting glyph. Don't know why, the description still says he will start with the cydstepp glyph. Anyone else having this problem?

Whoa! Thanks for that, we'll fix it ASAP.

dislekcia
21-08-2010, 11:26 PM
The bug that resulted in the Warlord spawning with Bysseps instead of Cydstep has been summarily squashed and the same link (http://www.qcfdesign.com/?p=354) houses the fixed version.

jackdarwid
22-08-2010, 09:08 AM
Hi!
I'm a new DD Player and really enjoy DD.
I have made a Review of DD here: http://videogamegeek.com/thread/553441/cant-stop-playing-this-help-laugh
(note that DD is now in Hotness in VGG, I think because of the review :) check the left collumn)

Some suggestions(I play ver 0.14, and download ver 0.145 just now):
- please ask the player "Are you sure? Yes/No" when the Retire button is pushed, because it is very close to Pray button in an Altar. A few times I almost click the Retire button accidentally... phew...
- please put the gods description more detail, especially what is the penalty and how to get Piety. I'm tired of checking to DD wiki site every time an altar appears.
-one biggest complain is.... the more I play the game (you can see my current position/score in the game in my Review above) is that the more I face unsolvable dungeon. Means my level 1 Hero blocked by level 3/higher Monster in every way and no way I can go through any of them. This is ok in a one shot play, just push the Retire button. But in a campaign? In the last level ? This is bad. Can you make some checking when designing the dungeon randomly so that every path is blocked only with a level 1 Monster? So whatever the result, there is always no unsolvable dungeon.

Thanks for the great game!
:)
JackD

dislekcia
22-08-2010, 01:59 PM
Hi!
I'm a new DD Player and really enjoy DD.
I have made a Review of DD here: http://videogamegeek.com/thread/553441/cant-stop-playing-this-help-laugh
(note that DD is now in Hotness in VGG, I think because of the review :) check the left collumn)

Some suggestions(I play ver 0.14, and download ver 0.145 just now):
- please ask the player "Are you sure? Yes/No" when the Retire button is pushed, because it is very close to Pray button in an Altar. A few times I almost click the Retire button accidentally... phew...
- please put the gods description more detail, especially what is the penalty and how to get Piety. I'm tired of checking to DD wiki site every time an altar appears.
-one biggest complain is.... the more I play the game (you can see my current position/score in the game in my Review above) is that the more I face unsolvable dungeon. Means my level 1 Hero blocked by level 3/higher Monster in every way and no way I can go through any of them. This is ok in a one shot play, just push the Retire button. But in a campaign? In the last level ? This is bad. Can you make some checking when designing the dungeon randomly so that every path is blocked only with a level 1 Monster? So whatever the result, there is always no unsolvable dungeon.

Thanks for the great game!
:)
JackD

Hi JackD

Thanks for the review :) In 0.145 you should see that the buy/pray/pick up buttons have been moved away from the retire button to prevent accidental clicks. We are doing stuff to deal with nasty block-in situations, but a lot of the time it is possible for the player to break out with good resource use - this makes it really hard for us to balance the random dungeon generation against the capabilities of the player, which is something we're still figuring out how to track ingame.

Permadeath is permadeath - there's always going to be some risk to starting a new dungeon. Campaigns do need special attention though, right now we're not entirely sure what form they're going to take in the final game TBH.

Kosowuda
22-08-2010, 07:22 PM
Its me again, found another thing.
When you are playing with the gorgon class and kills someone with death gaze, the enemies doesnt turn to stone, but dies in the normal way

XuaXua
23-08-2010, 06:55 AM
Wha?

Bastards got me hooked on Crawl.

greatdiwei
24-08-2010, 09:47 AM
A winnar is me!!!

Finally defeated the Lothlorien campaign.. THANK YOU JEHORA JEHYRU!

q 3
26-08-2010, 06:33 AM
So the new version has got me back in the saddle and I'm really liking Gauntlet mode - it's helping me get over my bad habits from Ranked mode and focusing on the one thing that matters: killing the boss. No longer must I worry about speed running, pointless petrification, hoarding potions and piety, etc., and can just take some time to figure out the most efficient way to spend my scarce resources. So far I've completed the first seven levels with a Human Sorcerer, which has provided a nice challenge. Really, my only worry is that there will come a time when the only way to progress further in the Gauntlet is with a Tikki Tooki-worshiping Rogue and a lot of luck - although at that point I'll probably just call it a day.

I haven't noticed too many changes in the deities - TT is a bit easier to please, no longer automatically penalizing you for every single hit, which I like, although his mediocre boons still make him not so great (aside from the above). GG seems a bit harder to earn piety for, penalizing you for lower level kills, which unfortunately tends to emphasize his use as a desperation deity (ignore him until the end, then worship for the free heal and probably enough starting piety for a second free heal). Haven't tried too much of the others yet, although it doesn't look like any of them got their boons changed up.

(One other thing I would add: the deity conversions would be a lot more appealing if their piety costs weren't so high. As it is, it's pretty hard to get enough piety with one deity to make it worthwhile to switch - you'll often end up with hardly enough left over to get boons from either of them.)

salejemaster
27-08-2010, 01:50 AM
Hi guys, I've kind of been out of the loop for some time...so I hear word of some kind of Unity version of the game where can I find some more info about this :O?

dislekcia
27-08-2010, 02:07 AM
So the new version has got me back in the saddle and I'm really liking Gauntlet mode - it's helping me get over my bad habits from Ranked mode and focusing on the one thing that matters: killing the boss. No longer must I worry about speed running, pointless petrification, hoarding potions and piety, etc., and can just take some time to figure out the most efficient way to spend my scarce resources. So far I've completed the first seven levels with a Human Sorcerer, which has provided a nice challenge. Really, my only worry is that there will come a time when the only way to progress further in the Gauntlet is with a Tikki Tooki-worshiping Rogue and a lot of luck - although at that point I'll probably just call it a day.

I haven't noticed too many changes in the deities - TT is a bit easier to please, no longer automatically penalizing you for every single hit, which I like, although his mediocre boons still make him not so great (aside from the above). GG seems a bit harder to earn piety for, penalizing you for lower level kills, which unfortunately tends to emphasize his use as a desperation deity (ignore him until the end, then worship for the free heal and probably enough starting piety for a second free heal). Haven't tried too much of the others yet, although it doesn't look like any of them got their boons changed up.

(One other thing I would add: the deity conversions would be a lot more appealing if their piety costs weren't so high. As it is, it's pretty hard to get enough piety with one deity to make it worthwhile to switch - you'll often end up with hardly enough left over to get boons from either of them.)

Nandrew was hoping that the gauntlet mode would help us identify the more powerful combos and see what we could do to really push players later on. We've got some really interesting ideas so far, veterans should have plenty to do in the full.

Conversions are expensive, but that's so that we can see how players can maximise their piety earnings. We wouldn't get the same patterns if conversions were cheap...


Hi guys, I've kind of been out of the loop for some time...so I hear word of some kind of Unity version of the game where can I find some more info about this :O?

That would be the full version that we're beavering away on all the hours of the day. We'll be revealing more about it... Uh, I dunno when, actually. Tomorrow is our in-house first-playable milestone (which we're actually a little ahead of, woot!) but there's no art in the game at all yet ;)

Chippit
27-08-2010, 10:03 AM
That would be the full version that we're beavering away on all the hours of the day. We'll be revealing more about it... Uh, I dunno when, actually. Tomorrow is our in-house first-playable milestone (which we're actually a little ahead of, woot!) but there's no art in the game at all yet ;)

Game developers ahead of schedule? I dunnae believe it!

dislekcia
27-08-2010, 12:24 PM
Game developers ahead of schedule? I dunnae believe it!

Blame Nandrew and Aeq. They did the metagame stuff that I thought would take them another couple days yesterday... I guess I could see if they can do the quest system in 30 minutes or something ;)

salejemaster
27-08-2010, 04:11 PM
but there's no art in the game at all yet ;)

Hey I remember the first art DD had it was totally crappy but the game was still awesome :))

Also I just want to make sure I got this straight, this new complete version of DD, I will be able to play this on my PC (no pesky consoles involved :P)?

dislekcia
27-08-2010, 04:39 PM
Hey I remember the first art DD had it was totally crappy but the game was still awesome :))

Also I just want to make sure I got this straight, this new complete version of DD, I will be able to play this on my PC (no pesky consoles involved :P)?

PC and Mac, yes.

iPhone/iPad/Android eventually too.

varuka
09-09-2010, 12:22 AM
PC and Mac, yes.

iPhone/iPad/Android eventually too.

ZOMG, YES. I had two wishes for Desktop Dungeons: A gauntlet mode, and Android release.

I'm an avid DotA player, and Desktop Dungeons is the perfect length to play while waiting for DotA games to start / fill. Gauntlet mode should ensure it never gets boring.

But now I'll have to start saving for when you guys do an Android release. I'm going to need a lot of spare batteries for my phone...

dislekcia
09-09-2010, 04:01 PM
ZOMG, YES. I had two wishes for Desktop Dungeons: A gauntlet mode, and Android release.

I'm an avid DotA player, and Desktop Dungeons is the perfect length to play while waiting for DotA games to start / fill. Gauntlet mode should ensure it never gets boring.

But now I'll have to start saving for when you guys do an Android release. I'm going to need a lot of spare batteries for my phone...

Never thought of playing between games like that... Maybe we should do a WoW menu version as well! ;)

Freekybevis
09-09-2010, 11:05 PM
very kewl btw ^_^, i mst say i thoroughly enjoyed it, or i should say, am thoroughly enjoying it :P, only thing it lacks is some pretty torchlite style UI (minus torchlites crap cartoon font).

dislekcia
09-09-2010, 11:14 PM
very kewl btw ^_^, i mst say i thoroughly enjoyed it, or i should say, am thoroughly enjoying it :P, only thing it lacks is some pretty torchlite style UI (minus torchlites crap cartoon font).

Yeah, the whole front end is changing drastically to accommodate the meta-game and make more sense. We're still getting to the point where we can test that, but I seriously hope it's something players are going to enjoy.

Bananadine
11-09-2010, 06:37 PM
hi

my LEMMISI or whatever costs no mana

that seems like a bug so I am reporting it

maybe this is addressed already in this thread but the thread is full of spoilers so I can't read it without damaging my game experience and it's a good game that deserves not to be damaged

bye

dislekcia
11-09-2010, 07:39 PM
hi

my LEMMISI or whatever costs no mana

that seems like a bug so I am reporting it

maybe this is addressed already in this thread but the thread is full of spoilers so I can't read it without damaging my game experience and it's a good game that deserves not to be damaged

bye

Yup, been covered ;) Lemmisi is costing mana, it's just revealing 3 squares so it's giving you back 3 mana as well. That's important - try using it with a Berserker. Glad you're enjoying the game!

q 3
13-09-2010, 09:54 PM
Since there's no high score table for Gauntlet mode, I'll continue my bragging here - just cleared level 10 on my first try, still using a Human Sorcerer, killing the Tower of Goo with several mana potions to spare.

Actually, so far it seems like Gauntlet mode's difficulty doesn't scale as fast as it should, as each new level has only been marginally tougher than the last. A higher level is sometimes easier than the previous, just because of a different boss or different items. For example, Super Meat Man gains toughness far more quickly than most of the bosses, because his sky high HP translates to a huge boost from the modifier; Medusa and Gharbad hardly get any harder because their far lower HP doesn't increase nearly as much and most of their challenge comes from instakill attacks that are pretty much already maxed out. (Plus, once the modifier gets high enough, Aequitas and eventually Lord Gobb will have enough attack power to instakill most adventurers, obsoleting their comrades' abilities.) Perhaps the modifier should increase more rapidly, or include a linear stat boost as well (e.g. +100 HP to the boss for every level, regardless of its base HP).

Tormendez
15-09-2010, 10:26 AM
After level 15 or so the gauntlet gets heavily luck oriented. I'm currently trying to clear level 20 and most of the time it's impossible. For example the meat man has some 1700 or so hitpoints. If I get him I usually just quit. From level 15 to 18 I cleared with vampire and that was relatively easy. from 18 to 20 I have gone with an orc assasin worshipping pactmaker. The extra xp is essential 'cause most of the time all higher level monsters are unbeatable. I think that with the right combination of shops and weak boss I could make it to at least few levels higher, but all the restarting is getting frustrating. What I would hope would be the possibility to choose the difficulty so that I could go back few levels and play games that are difficult enough but still mostly winnable, and when feeling like it, try to beat my best so far.

Zikky
16-09-2010, 05:40 AM
So I just beat lvl 45 in the Gauntlet and I'm wondering what the highest other people have gotten so far is. For a while it seems like it's been unbeatable as anything but a vampire. The lvl 1 monsters at lvl45 Gauntlet are actually stronger than their lvl2 counter parts in normal. As far as I can tell one of the major deciding factors in whether I can beat the next Gauntlet level is how much of the dungeon I can explore before actually having to cast a spell or kill anything. While Pactmaker isn't mandatory, it's usually what tips the scale to a doable dungeon. The amulet of yendor I think it's called (+50xp) can substitute; or the orb of zot; occasionally I can do without any of these if I get a nice combination of attack items from the shops (fine sword/spoon/dwarven gauntlets/+50% attack (berserker's blade I think) -- not that you need all of those together). Iron man is pretty much impossible at this point; considering almost all the monsters 1hit kill you the fireball is the only hope and Iron man just shuts that down too easily. The goat boss (forget the name) is still doable though since he still doesn't have that much health (a little under 600 I think at this point). Meat man is also almost impossible, with over 3000 hitpoints I need to be really lucky to be able to take him down.

dislekcia
16-09-2010, 02:40 PM
Hot damn you guys are getting into gauntlet mode in a big way! Thanks for helping us find the really over the top imbalances in the system :)

Any chance of some runs at high gauntlet levels appearing on Youtube soon? I'd love to see how those play out, even "failed" runs... Do you guys mill a lot, or are you changing up general strategies like exploring as much as possible and using level buffering almost exclusively to regen?

Zikky
16-09-2010, 10:19 PM
I don't really know how to record > put up a video of a gauntlet run but I can describe stuff. At this point it's hard to have the spare health to work down a higher level monster, level to heal, and finish off said monster. I usually only can afford to do that on a few monsters on the way up. There are two essential resources for my vampire on my high level gauntlet runs: 1) low level monsters without first strike that I can kill in one hit (this both gets me more health to cast fireball with as well as resets the amount of health used by casting fireball back to six); 2) bloodpools that are also adjacent to unexplored dungeon tiles (stepping on these essentially has the same effect as #1, most importantly resetting the casting cost of fireball to six). Most of my failed runs that are very close (I have plenty of runs that aren't close; i.e. I give up before even bothering to hit the boss for a variety of reasons) tend to be close because I ran out of those two resources and as such continuously burning down the boss with fireball starts costing my vampire up to 12+ health each cast.

As a side note the only two gods remotely useful at this point are pactmaker (for the experience boost) or glowing guardian (for the full heal on joining). Jehora Jeheyu taking away first strike from the vampire is too brutal (although I will occasionally take Jehora if the other two are not available and I can regain first strike after joining Jehora by buying a dancing sword). Taurog and Binlor make the primary damage dealer of the vampire (fireball) too scarce a resource to use so they're out. Dracul taking away health is too brutal as you need as much health as you can get for casting fireball. Tikki Tooki doesn't have anything useful as bonuses (unless that extra 40gold is really necessary). Mysteria is just out of the question as is Earthmother.

Chippit
16-09-2010, 10:24 PM
And this, my fellows, is why you need to pull a Valve and incorporate stat-tracking into your game yourself. Ask people to share the output, everyone wins! Honestly, Nandrew. Such an amateur! :P

dislekcia
19-09-2010, 03:45 AM
There are two essential resources for my vampire on my high level gauntlet runs: 1) low level monsters without first strike that I can kill in one hit (this both gets me more health to cast fireball with as well as resets the amount of health used by casting fireball back to six); 2) bloodpools that are also adjacent to unexplored dungeon tiles (stepping on these essentially has the same effect as #1, most importantly resetting the casting cost of fireball to six).

Awesome! Never thought of blood next to unexplored blocks like that before, thanks for sharing that :)

It's funny that the Vampire becomes most useful in something like Gauntlet again, he's always been pushing the under/over-powered line. The increasing cost of spellcasting was supposed to bring him back to normal levels again, but I really like how you're gaming that ;)


And this, my fellows, is why you need to pull a Valve and incorporate stat-tracking into your game yourself. Ask people to share the output, everyone wins! Honestly, Nandrew. Such an amateur! :P

In the Unity version we already track every single event in the game... Exactly how much of that we keep depends on how robust the high-score system needs to be to kill the hacking we've been having problems with so far.

whamzow
12-10-2010, 06:47 PM
Hi, I love this game, it's a lot of fun. I didn't like looking at color-shifted versions of the sub classes so I made sprites for all of them, using Derek Yu's originals as a template, so they fit in with the originals. All you have to do is unzip them into the "default" tileset directory, or copy the "default" tileset and rename it, then unzip it into there. Feel free to use them for whatever you want.

Here is the file:

http://www.mediafire.com/?g2u51m4wwb5zocf

And a preview:

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/41d96fe160bbfdef9253245e7bf57bce6g.jpg

dislekcia
13-10-2010, 02:02 AM
Hi, I love this game, it's a lot of fun. I didn't like looking at color-shifted versions of the sub classes so I made sprites for all of them, using Derek Yu's originals as a template, so they fit in with the originals. All you have to do is unzip them into the "default" tileset directory, or copy the "default" tileset and rename it, then unzip it into there. Feel free to use them for whatever you want.

Here is the file:

http://www.mediafire.com/?g2u51m4wwb5zocf

And a preview:

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/41d96fe160bbfdef9253245e7bf57bce6g.jpg

Whoa, that's awesome! Thank you so much.

Would you be ok with me putting this on the site and including it in the freeware download?

whamzow
13-10-2010, 11:11 PM
Whoa, that's awesome! Thank you so much.

Would you be ok with me putting this on the site and including it in the freeware download?
Thank you! Sure, definitely yes, you are welcome to include it, I'm honored at the suggestion! If you want to add credit, my name is Brian Bugh. I'm just glad to help :)

dislekcia
14-10-2010, 12:46 AM
Thank you! Sure, definitely yes, you are welcome to include it, I'm honored at the suggestion! If you want to add credit, my name is Brian Bugh. I'm just glad to help :)

Thanks, I was going to ask your name so that I could credit you :)

dislekcia
19-10-2010, 03:12 AM
Just finished entering DD into the 2011 IGF. That's a personal milestone for me :)

8rAxBgnC0oQ

Aaaand there's a new version (http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20). Minor cosmetic changes and a couple of bug fixes, no new gameplay I'm afraid... That's all going into the full. Would love to have that up on the IGF FTP server right now, but it's not quite pretty enough. Yet ;)