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'lo there,
I've had a go with the new alpha, very nice. I like the new UI, and the lakes in the mountain and the bridges, and this was the first version where I was able to retire a keeper on hard mode after conquering the entire land. Yay 🙂 And that even though I somehow managed to have no more stone left when the time came to build a laboratory, so no potions, no golems…
I am not sure about the torches, they add light but does this do anything else? Like, do I have minions that have difficulty in the dark?
There were a few suggestions like creature upkeep and mining hazards in other topics. I would very much like the dwarves to have their caves in the same mountain I dig in. For one, this makes it possible to have my imps clear out the dwarf caves after I conquered them.
As I wrote before, I would like to have something that expanding your dungeon, or at least doing more digging, becomes worthwhile. Creature upkeep a and more gold might do that, or maybe special items hidden in the mountains… also, (dungeon keeper inspired) the other tribes might have jails with “special” allies for the keeper in them.
Speaking about creature upkeep, I saw that some of the other tribes have chicken farms. My minions don't need to eat, that is a plus in war 🙂 But it would be nice if they did…
As for problems, I found a few on my first playthrough:
– pathfinding still has issues.
– creatures on guard duty still won't accept any other orders.
– performance. At one point I had around 30 creatures + 13 imps, and the framerate dropped below 5, at times to 1 or less.
– pacing… as written before. Maybe for a start spread out the attacks by the other tribes a bit more.
Not quite a problem, but after reading your article about the AI, and seeing that creatures do sometimes go to sleep right after waking up, I found that maybe the sleeping behaviour is a bit too simple. I would suggest a scheme where different activities make the creature more or less tired (not too complicated, sth like idling makes 1 tired, workshop or laboratory makes 2 tired, fighting or training makes 3 tired, being wounded makes veeery tired), and when reaching a certain level, the creature would want to go to sleep.
When I find more, I'll report it here.
miki151I added torches mostly for decoration, although they influence the line of sight, so you can have minions shoot enemies from the dark, for example. See this screenshot (https://keeperrl.com/images/keeper_screen323.png). I'm sure there will be use of them later on. They could influence minion productivity, I need to think if it would be interesting.
– what kind of issues of pathfinding did you notice? (save files help if you can supply them)
– I'm surprised about performance, although it did go down a little bit on this version. Can you try to give me a save file? You don't happen to build the game from github?
– I used to have chickens in the dungeon, but I removed them, because they were boring. The way it works in DK doesn't add anything to the game. I would maybe add farms that are built outside, and you would have to defend them, that would be more interesting.
– creature activities will get more interesting later (getting tired, etc), the way it works now is just a stub.
I added torches mostly for decoration, although they influence the line of sight, so you can have minions shoot enemies from the dark, for example. See this screenshot (https://keeperrl.com/images/keeper_screen323.png). I'm sure there will be use of them later on. They could influence minion productivity, I need to think if it would be interesting.
I agree that lighting influencing creatures can be interesting. You would need proper lighting in training rooms, workshops and laboratories to get full productivity, for example. This could also influence rest, where lower lighting in bedrooms and graveyards would be allow creatures to rest faster. Also, very low lighting would slow down movement in general, however creatures who normally live underground or in the dark (eg. dwarves, vampires, etc.) wouldn't be affected. Having very dark passages could be part of a defense strategy to slow down invaders, however at the cost of also slowing down your own creatures.
Maybe one issue I'd try to correct with the current implementation is that the base lightining level on an underground tile seems to follow a gradient dependent on how close it is to the surface. I think it would be better if ligthing worked a bit more naturally: that it flows into the dungeon following line of sight from entrances. All other tiles further underground would have the same basic low level lighting.
Combined with the wall-building idea we're discussing in another thread, I'm thinking maybe it's better if stone and reinforced walls didn't have a light source by default. You would need to add torches manually. You could even have different light sources, with torches emitting just enough light to enable penalty-free movement, and lanterns which would give off more light and be suitable for rooms such as workshops and laboratories.
– what kind of issues of pathfinding did you notice? (save files help if you can supply them)
similar to what was before. However, I did notice that pathfinding is different from before, attackers take multiple routes for example. I don't have a save file any more with this, but if I see this again, I will make one and send it. Btw. I find it strange that attackers always know where to find the keeper… no matter how complex or branched my dungeon is, they always take the direct route to my keeper.
– I'm surprised about performance, although it did go down a little bit on this version. Can you try to give me a save file? You don't happen to build the game from github?
I wanted to attached the ret file of the dungeon where this happened, but when I do that, instead of posting, I get thrown back to the form to start a new thread… How can I get it to you? . A subsequent Adventurer vs. Keeper in this dungeon also saw fps drops, though not as harsh. Also it seems that if I restart the game, I am back to (somewhat) higher FPS again. This is on linux, if that matters.
Speaking of ret files, I noticed that the ones from alpha 6 don't work any more on alpha 7. This is to be expected, obviously, but as there is another thread, started by you, to post ret files, when will it make sense to do so?
miki151Please send it to rusolis@poczta.fm
sent.
Could the creature behaviour be altered so that when I explicitly give an order, this will still be valid after they sleep, or fight, or whatever takes higher prio? I find I give the same orders to the same ogers quite often.
after playing for a bit more, I have a few more remarks.
– doors can only be locked if the workshop tab is open and doors are selected in that tab. That seems like an unneccessary restriction.
– creatures can only be selected by clicking on them for ordering them around, when the creature tab is open. Dito.
– I feel I should be able to take prisoners when raiding villages. Especially when torturing them is an additional source of mana.
I feel the alpha 7 is a big improvement over alpha 6, especially the locking doors feature is nice. A room full of rotting corpses is an excellent death trap for pesky adventurers, and being able to keep my own minions out of them makes this even better… I am very much looking forward to the next version. Speaking of which, I sent a link to your campaign to several friends who might be interested, however, I have no outlet many people read. I kinda feel you do need more publicity for your campaign to succeed.
miki151The restriction with locking doors and selecting creatures is because otherwise it's too easy to accidentally click while your are building stuff. But I agree that it should be improved, I'll try to experiment with it.
Taking prisoners from villages is definitely on the list.
You are right about publicity, unfortunately most big gaming websites are ignoring me. I probably really suck at PR. What has worked best so far is fans posting on various forums. Thanks for helping too 🙂
You are right about publicity, unfortunately most big gaming websites are ignoring me. I probably really suck at PR. What has worked best so far is fans posting on various forums. Thanks for helping too 🙂
I think there is still some potential to spread the word about KeeperRL among free software aficionados. A blog post on FreeGamer could be a first step: http://freegamer.blogspot.fr/
Then LinuxGames and TIGSource would definitely give a boost to the campaign. Have you already tried to contact those three websites?
For the FreeGamer blog you could try to discuss it on #freegamer on Freenode, they might be interested 🙂
I saw that your game was on indiegames.com, and after that your indiegogo campaign saw quite a boost. Nice 🙂 Now, one more like that…
miki151Actually it was this guy who gave me that boost: http://www.youtube.com/user/quill18
And here is one more, let's see how far we can stretch 😛
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/22/were-going-underground-keeperrl/
