The Desktop Dungeons beta is here!

[232]

...and it should say exactly how much mana/hp it'll consume and how much it will leave you and the enemy with...

+1, this would be nice. Mental arithmetic for plain attacks is easy for me, but when it starts getting into resistances I break out the calculator as well.

[michal.lewtak]

...and it should say exactly how much mana/hp it'll consume and how much it will leave you and the enemy with...

+1, this would be nice. Mental arithmetic for plain attacks is easy for me, but when it starts getting into resistances I break out the calculator as well.

But owning a boss with the Crusader's final blow, with a calculator in hand, is like the logical conclusion of geekiness

[dislekcia]

The Beta is quite nice so far but im really missing some good music. Will there ever be music in this game?

Yes. And it will be amazingly awesome for reasons that are not available to the public at this exact moment in time

[dislekcia]

These clickable "icons" within buttons are extremely confusing.

I remember that i couldn't get past them in E3 alpha as well. I just couldn't figure out what to do, so i never actually played before.

I kept randomly clicking everywhere, but still couldn't get "Play" button to activate.

This time, half-consciously, i still have managed to kinda-sorta understand how it is working after all but anyway this is a very bad UI right there.

Agreed! We know the Kingdom interface isn't what is should be right now, in fact that's something we did on purpose: We want to be able to change the entire Kingdom layout and progression at the drop of a hat for balance reasons. That's hard to do when it's the glorious building layout that we've got planned (see image behind crap buttons) because you don't want to remove building that have had that much effort put into them.

The popup icons are holdovers from where we want the menu to go: Eventually you'll just have your races popping up as a sort of "overlay" on the buildings that have races (spread out all over the kingdom) and then the same thing for classes.

The entire right panel is up for a redesign soon as well. We really do appreciate these comments and feedback though, because they help us design better UIs in the end, so keep em coming

[dislekcia]

#1 the small fonts are unreadable on my screen (for example when explaining item abilities), just shows up as dots
#2 interface in the town is totally non-intuitive. how many upgrades can i do in my buildings? i dunno, i just keep clicking. not sure how to pick who to end up adventuring where. I'm sure I'll learn soon, but compared to the original desktop dungeons it feels like a lot of added complexity for no good reason...

To be honest im a bit disapointed by what is in the beta. The interface in town needs to be totally changed in the final version, and it should be made to feel like it actually has something to do with whats going on while adventuring.

Do the fonts look better when you fullscreen the game at all? We're still looking for a good font that can handle those sizes without devolving into a nasty blur.

[dislekcia]

...and it should say exactly how much mana/hp it'll consume and how much it will leave you and the enemy with...

+1, this would be nice. Mental arithmetic for plain attacks is easy for me, but when it starts getting into resistances I break out the calculator as well.

All damage prediction should take resistances into account, FYI. Or is this pre-planning for combat where you can't see the predictions?

[Herborist]

...and it should say exactly how much mana/hp it'll consume and how much it will leave you and the enemy with...

+1, this would be nice. Mental arithmetic for plain attacks is easy for me, but when it starts getting into resistances I break out the calculator as well.

All damage prediction should take resistances into account, FYI. Or is this pre-planning for combat where you can't see the predictions?

Speaking of damage predictions, I think there's something wrong with how the game handles the sorcerer. It might be just me, but I don't think it's taking into account the sorcerer's second ability (he deals magic damage based on his level). I've killed things that said "safe" instead of "victory."

[spoomak]

These clickable "icons" within buttons are extremely confusing.

I remember that i couldn't get past them in E3 alpha as well. I just couldn't figure out what to do, so i never actually played before.

I kept randomly clicking everywhere, but still couldn't get "Play" button to activate.

This time, half-consciously, i still have managed to kinda-sorta understand how it is working after all but anyway this is a very bad UI right there.

Agreed! We know the Kingdom interface isn't what is should be right now, in fact that's something we did on purpose: We want to be able to change the entire Kingdom layout and progression at the drop of a hat for balance reasons. That's hard to do when it's the glorious building layout that we've got planned (see image behind crap buttons) because you don't want to remove building that have had that much effort put into them.

The popup icons are holdovers from where we want the menu to go: Eventually you'll just have your races popping up as a sort of "overlay" on the buildings that have races (spread out all over the kingdom) and then the same thing for classes.

The entire right panel is up for a redesign soon as well. We really do appreciate these comments and feedback though, because they help us design better UIs in the end, so keep em coming

About the Kingdom interface... You should use the big character portraits in the character selection. Because they're so awesome. When the user is selecting race, class and startup kit, the UI should remember the last time's selections.

[Hero of the Beach]

Agreed! We know the Kingdom interface isn't what is should be right now, in fact that's something we did on purpose: We want to be able to change the entire Kingdom layout and progression at the drop of a hat for balance reasons. That's hard to do when it's the glorious building layout that we've got planned (see image behind crap buttons) because you don't want to remove building that have had that much effort put into them.

The popup icons are holdovers from where we want the menu to go: Eventually you'll just have your races popping up as a sort of "overlay" on the buildings that have races (spread out all over the kingdom) and then the same thing for classes.

Sorry, this sounds like a step in the wrong direction. Currently the issue with the adventure loadout screen is that the buttons are small and the menu flow is counter intuitive, moving around the screen in odd directions. Taking those buttons and dragging them all over town will result in a minigame of hide and go seek every time you start a new adventure, at least until you memorize where everything is by rote.

I think the menu in the freeware version was laid out just about ideally, in that you had your races, you had your classes and then you had your destination, and there were clear dividing lines between them. Given the new number of dungeons, it makes sense for destination to come first, but the loadout still needs to be clear and cleanly organized.

If you wanted to split the difference you could do portrait magnifications that clearly pointed to where they're supposed to come from in town or something like that, which would allow for big buttons that could be easily moved, but I think it's fundamentally confusing to leave town, go to the world map, click on a dungeon, and then suddenly be back in town. I thought something had broken at first.

A better system, I think, would be to have a completely separate adventure loadout screen, and keeping the clickable buildings for their new town functions and upgrades. That way you still get to use the nice map in an interactive way, but nobody will be confused.

[Snowy]

I really dislike the new grinding aspect of the money system, especially with the rewards decreasing for the boss trophies. I've been playing for like 6 or 7 hours now and the pace has slowed almost to a halt. I've only unlocked one of the third tier classes.

I don't mean to sound like someone who always says "but it was better in the oooollllld version," but I think what DD alpha did right was having classes unlock immediately after mastery of the previous tier, which was very satisfying, and then by having many challenges (defeating Snake Pit, Library, Boss Hive, with each class, etc) available to players who've mastered all the classes.

Having unlocks be gold-dependent (especially with gold being so scarce relative to the unlock requirements) just makes it grindy--even when you know you've mastered a class, you have to play seven or eight times or more, since the boss trophies decrease in value, agh, just to unlock the next level.

In short: having the pace of the game be controlled by grinding for gold is way, way, way less satisfying than having it be controlled by mastery of previous classes. If you want to slow the pace down, maybe just add more challenges, like "defeat Creeplight Ruins with all classes" or something?

(Speaking of which, right now there's no motivation to try out different classes on each dungeon--I just go with what's most well-suited. Even having a record of which classes have defeated what dungeons would be nice.)