Michal BrzozowskiIt shouldn’t happen normally, and I can’t replicate it just by starting a game and recruiting them. Any chance that you angered the whole dark elf tribe by stealing from the shop or something similar? It’s possible that the game still lets you recruit after you’ve done that. I’ll make sure to check this later.
Michal BrzozowskiNot with armor, but with the body of the victim. Cut and bite can cut off a body part, while the others will only injure it. In addition, there are different messages for various body part / damage type combinations. See this for details. https://github.com/miki151/keeperrl/blob/master/creature.cpp#L1644
Michal BrzozowskiThere have always been 4 species of each type that you could recruit. The change was that now you can only get one unit of each species. I think that’s plenty though.
Overall there are 16 legendary species, each a combination of 4 attributes:
* humanoid < -> beast
* large < -> medium
* material < -> ghost/ectoplasm
* wings < -> no wings
Right now you can breed everything that’s medium size. The 8 large ones are unavailable, except one humanoid that you can find on a certain level. In the future there will be ways to get more of the large ones.
Michal BrzozowskiPlayers have complained that the base map feels empty, compared to the single map mode, hence this change. I can see how the added settlements can be a problem though.
Michal BrzozowskiI just fixed it. Thanks!
Michal BrzozowskiWell actually there is a small issue here, if you want to do the opposite: first level by training, and then by combat, because a highly trained creature will not gain much experience from killing a low level monster, which it would get if it had done combat training first.
Michal BrzozowskiCool! Those are some novel ideas. I’ll try to comment on most of them, forgive me if I skip some.
I propose an overhaul of the world map system that creates a better sense of moving through the world, exploring new areas and discovering hidden enemies.
Definitely. I would love to reimplement the world map as a normal (although small) level through which you normally move, and have the option or are sometimes forced to enter a map that you’re standing on.
The first change is that the player no longer chooses a starting tile on the world map. Instead, the start tile is in the center of the map, but they can still reroll the map to fine one they like. However, they will not be able to see every enemy or ally position on the map. Instead, the map will have a fog of war. As the game progresses they will be able to explore out from the starting tile to reveal the fog of war.
This sounds like the new campaign mode in Alpha21, minus the fog of war. I might implement that too at some point.
This brings me back to the idea of settling tiles. In this system the player would be able to settle multiple tiles, however at a high cost.
Sorry, nope :P, this would open a huge can of worms in terms of implementation and game design. And I don’t like the idea of building multiple bases simultaneously.
I would also simplify the resource system for crafting materials. Instead of storing wood, stone and iron on the ground, a single stockpile for each could be created in the dungeon.
I’m not sure how this would work. Does the player place the stockpile on the map or is it an abstract thing? What’s the gain of having only one?
These could then be used as part of the efficiency calculation for the manufactories.
How?
The advantage of this system of management is that it can reduce the tiles collected resources to a single variable. Then, from the world map (or other UI) the player could view their settlements at a glance and know what resources were available, without the system having to keep track of everything on the ground. (This may not be required, but it was a potential problem that I considered).
Tracking resources on the ground is not that hard (although it does eat some CPU, but there are ways to deal with that without changing the gameplay).
Along with this simplification, stone would no longer be tied to geology. Instead, every tile that is dug out will produce a small amount of stone.
I’ve thought about it before, but wouldn’t it make stone kind of useless in terms of gameplay? Why not just remove it then?
Now, for enemy mobs I would propose a tiered system (similar to the current lesser, greater villains) with four tiers of enemy mobs.
Why such a change? Is it to add more structure to the game, and give the player a better guide on the difficulties on the enemies? Mob difficulties are not explicitly defined in the game right now, so there would have to be a lot of guesswork about which enemy is which tier.
I would suggest that dragons will not come to attack the player’s settlements, but are much more difficult to defeat.
Attacking them should be a high risk/high reward scenario.
That might be a good idea. There will come a time to make the dragons more interesting, as opposed to simple buffed up enemies.
Also, the world map should not tell the player what kind of enemy they are going to encounter if they enter the tile. This could encourage scouting.
I don’t know, it stops the player from doing strategic thinking, if they can’t see the enemies in advance. I’d like to cover up some enemies/allies that are further out though, to add some unknowns to the game. Perhaps a simple fog of war would do.
My intent with these changes is to encourage exploration and provide a more uncertain starting experience. Additionally, the crafting and enemy drop changes would (I believe) shift the armaments of minions toward lower tier armor and weapons for the most part, giving the more powerful armor and weapons more value. This way finding or crafting a steel sword is an achievement and rewarding.
I also had the intention to force players to use more low level equipment (clubs, leather armor, etc), and reserve better equipment for a few chosen minions. This is why the high prices in workshops. But a lot of players seems to want to max out all equipment of all their minions, and they get frustrated about the lack of resources. Maybe there is something about the game that encourages this maxing-out behavior.
Meanwhile, the player could go out and defeat a tile full of dwarves. But, instead of murdering all of the dwarves and pillaging their dungeons, the player could enslave them. This could open up specific crafting capabilities. Perhaps dwarves are particularly good at crafting tier two or three weapons. They wouldn’t fight for you in battle, and you would have to maintain a military presence in their tile, but it could be a source of valuable arms.
Hmm, so prisoners would work in workshops. That’s possible.
The Portal
I like the idea a lot, it gives the game more story, and ads some tension to the end game. I don’t think I could add a 2×2 enemy to the game at this point, but I could think of something really powerful. Would it be a monster or some kind of ultra strong white knight? Perhaps another keeper / his former master?
I’m not sure if we should force the player to control the keeper in that battle? He might not have planned for this, and not leveled up and equipped his keeper.
libraries could use tiered furniture as well. Currently training dummies have tiers, but libraries don’t. Perhaps have bookshelves, orbs of knowledge, and obelisks of power.
Sure. Would the other tiers have different totally usages or just generate mana / teach spells faster?
allow keepers to hire adventurers. This could switch the player into adventure mode to assault a retired dungeon. You could provide the adventurer with items, weapons, armor and send them to a retired dungeon that you have already discovered.
I’m not sure if this adds much over simply using your own minions to raid enemies?
Between this and the ability to create and specify a specific dungeon to retire, players could create unique experiences for adventurers separate from the necessities of the standard game. This allows narratives to be created with creative use of the building tools. Special doors could be crafted that can only be accessed by adventurers, possibly by meeting specific criteria as well. Perhaps even allowing the creation of puzzles.
I would add a separate game mode for this, it does sound pretty interesting.
I would love to be able to create keepers with different specialties. This could be selected at character creation, or through leveling up specific skills (though it should limit you to a specific path if it’s in game). What I would like to have is a beastmaster build that gets bonuses to creatures. I’ve tried doing this in the game as-is and haven’t been able to have a successful dungeon using primarily beasts. I would also like something similar along the lines of a necromancer. Perhaps some kind of brawler/fighter as well. The idea is to have a variety of viable paths to success.
I’ve been thinking of this for a long time, and I think that at this point the game needs a bit more content and more interesting paths of advancement before I add this kind of specialization. I also don’t know if players would prefer to play as specialist keepers, as opposed to a generalist that can access all paths.
Adding icons to the activity feed to make it easier to see what is going on at a glance. Perhaps even color coding them. Clicking on them could even move the camera to the event, or open an appropriate UI.
They already do move the camera (at least the ones with the ➚ icon).
Allow players to set default actions for a class of minions. For instance, allow me to set goblins to never train by default.
Yeah, this is planned, I just need to design and implement a good UI for this.
Currently the keeper will level up four times from combat. However, he is als capped to level 17 through training dummies. These are not independent, however, so a keeper who levels up before he’s maxed out training will be limited. That is to say, if a keeper levels up through combat before level 17, they will not be able to go any higher. However, if they avoid combat until after training to 17, they can get to level 21. This discourages the use of the keeper in combat in the early game. (may be intended)
I think you got this wrong. The leveling paths are independent, so you can level up first through training and the by combat, or vice versa. The effect will be the same.
Well, that’s some of the ideas I’ve had while playing through the game and redrawing all of the sprites. My apologies for the wall of text. I really enjoy the game and appreciate all of the work that goes into it. Many of these ideas, I’m sure, are well outside of the intended direction and scope of the game. My intent is just to put them out there, to see if anything sticks. I would also love any feedback on these ideas.
Thanks a lot for writing this! The ideas are good, and even if I don’t use them, they encouraged some creative and critical thinking on my side, which is sometimes hard after so many years of working on the game.
Michal BrzozowskiInfluence maps (also known as Dijkstra maps in roguelike world) assign values to all positions on the map, and a creature simply moves to an adjacent position with the highest value. In other words, it follows the gradient. The map could represent the distance to a valuable item, and the creature would go fetch it (the values would have to be negative obviously).
The great thing about them is that they can be combined by summing up the values. Say you have a strong enemy that you would prefer to run away from, but somewhere close to it there is a valuable item.
The current AI in KeeperRL would first weigh between fleeing from the enemy and fetching the item, and then it would run either straight for the item a straight away from the enemy.
With influence maps, you’d have one map that repels you from the enemy, and another that wants you to fetch the item. When you combine them and have the creature follow the highest values, it could potentially find a path around the enemy that leads to the item. So it’s an outcome that you can’t get if you consider the actions individually.
Influence maps have a pretty high computation cost, which pays off if you have a lot of units with the same movement types. You compute the maps once, and have all the units follow them (a unit can use a combination of a subset of the maps that are of interest). Computing the decision of a single unit is very cheap.
The problem is that in KeeperRL you can have a team where one creature can fly, another is fire resistant and can walk through fire, etc. So there would be a lot of maps to compute if you want to make all the decisions that way. In addition, the units move sequentially, so after single move a map can get invalidated.
I do use influence maps for fleeing AI though, thank to which you can see enemies smartly run past you if you try to corner them.
Michal BrzozowskiIt’s available for everyone on Steam who wants to opt-in. I’ll post instructions how to do it when the testing build is out.
Michal BrzozowskiHey, sorry for not replying earlier. I’m pretty busy with finishing the next update now, so unfortunately I won’t be able to fulfill your requests in the short future. I’ll let you know as soon as a testing build for Alpha21 is out, and then you can adjust your pack to it (there are a few additions and changes). After that we could expose your pack a somewhere so more people download it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about replacing the current main menu background, as in my opinion it doesn’t fit the game that well. I like your background more, and perhaps you’d like to do a modified version that fits the original color scheme? It would be a paid job of course.
Michal BrzozowskiThat’s true, it’s broken now. I’ll fix it for Alpha21, and later on I’ll rework the logic for capturing prisoners so that it’s easier and less random.
Michal BrzozowskiAbout 3… you should be able to simply push the boulders around, and they’re supposed to go into the holes. I just checked and it’s working here, but I’ll investigate a bit more.
4. Sure, I’ll try to add image uploading.
Michal BrzozowskiThat’s a pretty cool way of creating a formation without the need of any extra UI.
Michal BrzozowskiSorry for that, it will be fixed in the next update. The game shouldn’t let two save files of the same game coexist, and give a better warning about what happens when you quit.
Michal BrzozowskiGreat news! It seems to be working! Loads of thanks! And have a great 2017
Great, I’m glad that this issue is out of the way 🙂
So after looking over my divers and trying to update everything, It looks like i have the most up to date drivers for everything…. granted wen i try to use the intel driver update it fails trying to update one driver… but I can not find it any were.
I’ll keep an eye out for this problem, but at this moment I’m not able to help you, sorry 🙁
