First off, the good news. We have managed to fix the save file issue, and we will have a patch in your hands tomorrow. So hold onto them. Mac Users, we are still waiting on some information from Valve about the correct way to build Mac Patches. Again, thanks for hanging in there. Your patch is coming.
A few apologies are owed as well. Obviously, breaking save files is a bad thing. This is our mess, we made it, and now we get to live with it. I am not happy with the fact that we have been having teething troubles after launch. This is, bluntly, not how I want Gaslamp Games to be run. I want us to be the company that is so freakin’ awesome you tell your friends how awesome we are. The programming side of things is my fault, and I apologize for that as well.
The simple fact of the matter is that we were not expecting sales in the volume that we got, and we were not expecting the response that we got. I honestly thought we would make… maybe a thousand sales during the entire lifetime of the product. We are… doing somewhat better than that, and as a result we are doing our best to try to deal with the fact that we now have to support a massive user base, with no money, no staff, and no time. Consequently, we have been scrabbling around trying to get everything sorted out, and when we were testing the reasonably large patch that was about to come out, this slipped through the cracks at the last minute. We didn’t go back and re-test the savegames after we put together a last minute fix for a shopkeeper issue, and ka-blam, there’s nothing left to do but to pick up the bodies. It’s a mess, and our forums are probably on fire as well… I haven’t had the heart to look.
So, yep. There’s mud on all of our faces. Mainly mine, because whenever there are bugs it tends to be a programming issue.
At the same time, patch 1.0.3 seems to have dealt with the major crashes in 1.0.2. So that’s good news. Obviously, there are things that we will have to straighten out – vampirism, balance tweaks, whatever the heck is going on with dual wielding, mod support, social stuff, and I am sure that there is at least one more crash bug waiting to strike! – but it almost feels like I can sit down, stop running, and take a breather.
The only reason we put an achievement in for crashing was because we figured that the game was stable enough that this would no longer be an issue. Hence it might be coveted, instead of something that everybody now gets. Bleh. I was, also, admittedly surprised that this is an issue with a permadeath game. I didn’t actually think that enough people would care that much about their characters and their runs in the worst case scenario that we broke the save game format. Frankly, this is also me being stupid. As users, you guys get to play the game how you want to play it, and who are we to make assumptions otherwise? I am, in fact, amazed and humbled that people are putting in monstrous amounts of time on Dungeons of Dredmor, and the stories of eighteen hour runs gone in an instant are absolutely heartbreaking.
As soon as things calm down and I get this hotfix out properly, I will be building some serious regression testing for save games so that this Does Not. Happen. Again. It was on the TODO list, and we didn’t get to it for this patch, because we wanted to deal with the Stairs bug and other issues. (Interestingly, the Stairs Bug has been in the codebase for five years; nobody’s managed to trigger it in all that time until the game has been released. Go team.) As soon as we actually get royalties, we will be investing in some hardware to run automated testing and hardware compatibility checking, and we will be building this into the next game from day one so that, again, this does not happen again.
I am also going to take a few days off to try and catch up on my sleep, so I feel less stressed out about having an Indie Hit on my hands that… well, to be frank, I’m not always totally sure how to deal with it. 🙂
Anyhow, as always, we are here to listen to your concerns. When I started Gaslamp in 2008 and dragged these other guys into it, I decided from day one that I wanted Gaslamp to be the kind of company that is awesome, listens to its user base, and puts out a good product. If we are not doing that, we need to know so that we can fix it… and we will fix it. So thank you, as always, for holding our irons to the fire.
Nicholas Vining
PS. Incidentally, we are interested in how things are going with 1.0.3 *other* than with the save game issues. A bunch of stuff did get fixed, and while I think we will be patching Dredmor a little more slowly from now on, we still need to start thinking at some point about what to tackle next.
Don’t worry about a thing guys, games are finicky bastards at best, and with limited funds and time and such, you’re doing a great job. You got an awesome fanbase, so keep it coming 🙂
As for 1.0.3, fast shopping is a God-send, but (and I haven’t tested it much yet) I’m still shift-clicking to pick up my items. Probably me just not setting it up properly, or the fact that I’m on a mac running bootcamp at the moment, but I don’t know.
Anyway, you guys are doing great, don’t be disheartened, those putting in 18 hour runs will put in more regardless of their progress lost, I know I am. 🙂
Hope the Mac patch comes out soon, but other then that great game guys I’m seriously addicted to it.
Great work, guys. 3 patches in, what, a week? You broke save games but fixed them again in a day or two. It’s a really impressive product and really impressive post-release support.
You must have had some inkling in the last few months that you would do better than 1,000 units. Everyone who got their hands on it loved it. It was clearly primed to blow up. It feels to me like you break 100,000 without breaking a sweat (maybe you already have?), and this title may be within striking distance of 500,000 lifetime.
Just a shame you only charged $5 for it. 😉
Honestly? No clue at all. The question was really how many people *would* get their hands on it, and we never really had a good answer on that one until it was too late.
Not that we’re not thrilled, mind you. We just need to take a step back and figure out what’s what.
I think its so popular is cause the guys at Yogcast did a video about Dungeons of Dredmor.
I think it’s so popular because it’s a game that could retail at ~£20 and you wouldn’t be short changed, for £3.
Many of the people I told about Dredmor immediately bought it, in part because of the €5 price tag. At such a low price, they felt they could afford to just buy it and see if it’s good. I’d wager that most of them wouldn’t have given Dredmor a try if it’d been €20.
I have to agree with him, I bought it because it was 5$, and I told my friend about it and he said, what the hell, it’s 5$, and he loves it. Cheap games sell, customers are happy, devs are happy. It’s why EA bought out the NFL Franchise, because NFL 2k5 owned them at a 20$ price point instead of 50$.
Great game guys, love it.
As a Beta Tester, I would also like to apologize for not triggering any crash bugs. Curse me and my magically stable computer that runs even games like heavily modded copies of Morrowind with no crashes. :p
PS, I’m still in the credits twice, kthxbai
As soon as I noticed it was an issue, I see a fix pending! It’s a great game, in the meantime I guess I’ll just reroll 3;
All is forgiven, and are simply happy for the success of your awesome game. 😀
No problems here guys but then again I read the Blog and knew what was coming – good to see Sales have been great for yuhs 🙂 – keep up the Good work
I’ve lost all kinds of time due to some bugs and other things, but frankly I don’t care. Reading these posts keeps my faith in you and your company at an all-time high compared so almost any company whose games I’ve played. Keep up the incredible work!
I know that no matter what, this damn game will continue to suck up ALL my free time, crashes or no.
I just got this game last night. I managed to die five times within half an hour. It was amazing. Started over today and I am doing better than ever. Thank you for such an amazing game. Never have I enjoyed a rougelike as much as this. I fear the death my current run may suffer but i’ll be happy to try and beat the score I accumulated. I look forward to your future updates.
I posted about this in the gaslamp forums as well, but with the new reversed looting behaviour enabled, shift-clicking an item puts it in your bags instead of on your cursor.
Disclaimer: I’m a bit drunk and just lost a level 10 character to two pumpkins, argh!
You guys rock. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing my own software, it’s that people will use it in ways that you never thought about. Bugs are inevitable. The open source ethic is release early, release often. I know that Dredmor isn’t open source, but when you’re as responsive as you guys seem to be, the tenet applies.
Just keep doing what you’re doing. I <3 Gaslamp.
Heh, the save file thing was really no big deal; plus you guys figured out a fix in a short amount of time so good on ya’.
Looking forward to more updates, and glad we have a quick sell option now. xD
I’ll admit, seeing the achievement pop up with a Nethack reference is something that dampened my ire a bit. ^_^ Glad to hear that you will be fixing this, and taking steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
That being said, I believe the main reason people get upset about this, even in a permadeath game, is the fact that they feel *cheated*. See, in game, I know that I might open a door, find a Monster Zoo, and get obliterated in moments. But that’s the game. If I die, it’s because I either didn’t take an option available to me (Potion of Spatial Instability, zap wands like a madman, take a skill to let me jump away, etc) or because I’d cheated death enough times to run out of options. Losing progress because of an update (which was automatically applied by Steam without asking) is something that is going to sting people.
What I would like to know is why the captcha does not show at all for Firefox, even when Adblock is disabled and nothing else is running. >.< Had to switch to Chrome to do this.
Good work on the patch, haven’t had a crash since it was released. I appreciate the honesty in this post and wish that more developers were so quick to admit fault, and so eager to make things right. I hope that you’ll be able to keep this refreshing level of integrity as you continue to develop games.
Glad to hear sales were much better than expected. I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that it’s a steal at $5. I’ve already got more fun out of it then I do most $60 games. If your next game is of a similar quality, there’s no reason I won’t pay $20 or more day one, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment. That said, I think the $5 price point was a smart move for a first release from a new studio, and certainly helped move a lot of copies.
Well, time to get back to my Vampire Mage run. Cheers!
Good work guys! Yeah the broken save’s didn’t bother me too much… but then most of my guys probably don’t get deep enough for it to be an issue 😉 Pleased with the fixes and tweaks though, looking good!
Also big thanks for the new crafting recipes, items etc. Given it was essentially a bugfix release, its quite nice to have new stuff to play with 🙂
A couple friends of mine told me about this game and as an old RPG fan I gave it a try, now I’m telling everyone about this marvelous game, I really hope that you will have a similar success as Team Mojang. <3
Would have been nice to tell us in the update notes on Steam that the Mac patch was yet to be released. Spent quite a while trying to understand why it wouldn’t download.
We will get Steam to do this in the future. — N.
“First off, the good news. We have managed to fix the save file issue, and we will have a patch in your hands tomorrow. So hold onto them.” FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU… Oh well, s**t happens.
The following are the opinions of this poster and may not represent the opinions of fellow posters:
Personally, I wouldn’t look at this as too much of a bad thing. Yes, some people may have lost a lot of game progress, but before they go off running and crying they need to understand a few things.
Firstly, this is a brand new game. Bugs are to be expected and frankly, as this is a major bug, it is good to get out of the way early instead of later. It is also good that it has quickly pounced on. This is a plus for you and your company. This means, although mistakes may happen, you acknowledge that they happen and work quickly to repair them.
Secondly, this game is an indie game. No one should expect that everything works flawlessly right off the bat. Even the big company games don’t always work perfectly right off the bat. One needs to understand that programming is not an easy thing to do and takes many many hours to do. It’s understandable that something is inevitably going ot get missed, especially if there is only a small workforce on hand.
Thridly, I personally believe it is not the game that determines how great a game company is, but how well said company handles the problems that follow their game’s release. If they are willing to take responsability for mistakes and promtply fix problems, then they are fine in my book.
I posted this bug in the other 1.0.3 thread but since you asked here specifically for OTHER save bugs…
I was having some very strange behaviour from the save function:
1) Upon starting the game again my single save I made in 1.0.3 was duplicated (no permadeath). I had 2 identical saves.
2) My save was about 30 min earlier than when I saved and quit the last time. Maybe I pressed the wrong button and quit without saving but I doubt it…I don’t even think that’s possible. It seems it reverted to an earlier save point.
3) Deleted one of the saves, loaded the remaining save, saved and quit. The save had duplicated again.
4) I just tried deleting a save, quitting the game, then restarting the game again. Save has duplicated.
5) Pressed Save and Continue at one point and it quit rather than continued. Only happened once and it was during all of this saving/reloading testing. Probably just a random occurrence.
Sorry for the poor explanation but basically the save feature is totally messed up.
Anyone else experience this? And is it addressed in the hotfix?
I think you are doing a great job. Maybe you aren’t perfect, but who is? Sure, you broke the savegames, but you are dealing with that problem in the best possible way.
You’re too way apologetic. So you fixed a bug and broke some save games. A lot of professional companies never fix(ed) bugs and completely broke my faith in the entire professional game industry; that’s a lot worse.
As for the rest of the gameplay; seems to work just fine. Game seems to have stopped crashing. Can’t discover any other bugs.
I’d appreciate it if the salesmen would stop selling duplicate items, though. It’s kind of silly to be able to choose from 3 identical axes when you can wield 2 at most.
Also, it would be nice if the changelog on Steam would tell you what patch version the changes are for.
Oh, and I find poison gas traps kind of annoying. They seem to be disproportionally punishing compared to any other trap and creature. Actually, I think that 7 out of about 10 deaths I have suffered so far were by poisonous gas traps…
Is this patch live yet? Because my game closes immediately after loading old save.
Unfortunately when my save didn’t work I made a new character to see if the game worked at all. And stupidly I used the same name as the old character. So now it seems my character that was doing really well has been overwritten. Can you patch in a warning when you try to make a character with the same name as one you already have? To stop stupid people like me from destroying their characters.
Yeah a feature to let us know when we are risking overwriting an old save would be great. Also there is a bug with the just quit button, where after pressing NO on the second prompt it still quits anyway.
It’s popular because it’s a solid badass game without any cutscenes and other pretentious crap.
You guys have done a great job and little games like Dredmor are why I support Indies as much as I can.
Awesome job. The fact that you can admit your mistakes and reassure the community that things will be fixed means more than many larger gaming companies seem to realize. You have a great game on your hands. I’m patiently looking forward to more patches in the future. Keep it classy, sir.
Congratulations on a great game! I have been playing it for hours now. Took a little time to get used to the controls and gui, probably since im used to stone soup’s dungeon crawl, but im getting there=)
A few improvement suggestions:
– Transparent walls when the user is behind them (at the bottom)
– Use of the numpad and bumping into things (it didn’t allways work, even i ticked that move/use box)
– Different graphics for the player based on what he is wearing/wielding. (this is a big one..)
– Better information on the effects of the potions / food.
The save games not being able to load wasn’t too big of a deal. You guys let everyone know days in advance that they may not work going forward, so most of us were prepared for it. Plus, losing 8 hours of progress because we went right instead of left is so common now, who really cares?
Anyways, great game. I’d just like to see the skills fixed first, then to have them balanced afterwards.
1.0.3 has been working great for me. I gifted it to a friend, and he’s been putting in more hours than me. You guys really did something special with this unique take on roguelikes.
You already are an awesome company who brought us this awesome game!
I’m not too worried about my saves, it’s fun starting over and trying new builds anyway. 🙂
Since my saves didn’t work I made a permadeath character and recorded everything. That was a fun and challenging hour. XD
Keep up the good work! Much love! <3
great job love the support but the patch added a few more bugs:
-stacks of items are only stacking to a certain amount and won’t stack further, it also seems to be a random number that the stacks cut off at so I know its not a balance thing.
-since this update you can no longer plant multiple spores on corpses that fall in the same spot you now have to wait for the first corpse to go away in order to seed any others. There’s also a problem with spores not seeding and instead causing you to walk to a location instead.
It’s not quite a bug rather than just my laziness, but if an enemy is standing on the same tile as an open door and you use WASD to attack it, closing the door takes priority over attacking, which is impossible in the first place with the tile being occupied.
I’m loving the new update! 😀 Quick-selling is definitly a time-saver. And the new message for selecting “Just Quit” made me laugh. 😛 I would, however, have that message prompt when you click “Delete” on the load character screen. This would prevent lost characters from misclicks.
Also, like others here, I’ve lost a chracter from the lack of a “Just Quit” message, save files getting deleted for having the same name, and the new patch. But, you know what, I don’t care! I feel the way you expected people to feel: It’s a permadeath character, I’m not that attached to my characters. It’s also very reassuring to know if there’s an issue, you guys are on it.
I truly believe you guys are the awesome indie game company you hoped to become…I’ve been telling all my friends about the game, showing it to them, and getting them to get it. No one has dissapointed yet. 😛
~Shmoo
Worry not, after just two hours into the game I can safely say you are a company I will tell my friends about.
That really does help. I was frustrated last night, but hey, it’s a roguelike, you never know what will happen! 🙂
Thanks for the post Nicholas!
Though some people have been very vocal about their upset from losing saves I think you can see clearly that they are greatly outnumbered by the understanding fans that are having fun with the game regardless. It’s great to see you’re committed to keep on improving Dredmor, and I’m sure most people appreciate that fully.
This game is a welcome throwback to small groups of programmers making games they are passionate about. EA with Trip Hawkins, Origin Systems before EA ;), New World Computing before M&M 7, etc etc
Having worked with dealing with support issues, honesty is always the best policy, exactly as you have done. Fans care more about being listened to and dialogue than the bugs themselves. Knowing its going to get fixed is the important thing.
There is NOTHING more frustrating for a gamer than coming up against a big wall of “we don’t care, you’ve already plunked down your cash” Ie…EA after Trip Hawkins 😉
Keep up the great work and dialogue and by all means get some sleep we have more than enough to keep ourselves busy! 🙂
You guys are so merciless with bugs aren’t you? Anyway keep up the good work, i really hope you guys got the reaction you were hoping for or better.
As far as I’m concerned, broken saves between major patches are expected in the roguelike genre. I suppose it’s not as acceptable among mainstream(?) gamers, but then again, I guess this might be a lot of people’s first game in this genre.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that the transparency is really appreciated. The way you guys talk with people here and on IRC is something I haven’t seen anywhere else, and one of the main reasons I bought the game without even knowing much about it.
I don’t regulary rage about bugs, bit I gotta admit I was begining to get pissed before I read your blog. Nice to see honesty, humility and a readieness to accept resposibility. Don’t let your post release issues get to you. With the clarity and straight-forward way you interact and talk with your fanbase, the great bulk will happily forgive and forget any issues with the games state post release.
Personally I will gladly wait for a patch to fix the save file problem now with nary a twinge nor twitch of anger.
Stop being so hard on yourselves! You guys are awesome, and dredmor is still great, even with the combusting saves (thought that IS annoying)!
That is really nice thing that someone can say: it’s my mistake and i am sorry for it. Not all people can do that.. and i am so impressed by this, that i am not going to complain.
I was laughing too hard at that achievement to care, but I suppose the only save I lost was an archer on level 2, so it wasn’t a huge deal.
I hope Dredmor does even better sales-wise than it already has! Between this and Terraria, I’m really digging this trend of low-cost, high-quality Steam games run by people with genuine love for their projects, even after they’ve been released. Even better, they don’t chicken out and call this a “beta”. It’s an ongoing project, it’s amazing, and we all get to come along for the ride for less than the cost of a fast food dinner.
As for the patch, I was THRILLED when it came out! Every major issue I had with the game was solved at once. I wanted more achievements, I got them, I wanted a faster way to sell my stuff, I got it, I wanted a faster way to manage my inventory, I got it. The game did have an admittedly rocky launch, but now, I think it’s as solid and functional as anything else out there. Can’t wait to see what you all come up with next!
Hi dear taskmasters and minions at Gaslamp! Great work on DoD, and I’m extremely happy that I made this awfully cheap purchase. I’m really looking forward to you guys becoming the next Valve ;D
On a separate note, when can we expect the arrival of the steam overlay? It sucks not being able to chat with my friends while playing the game.
On Windows, Steam Overlay is in. Run the game with “-opengl” in the advanced parameter settings (or pass it as a command line parameter.)
Nicholas
I didn’t have any saves so I guess I got lucky, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have been sad about losing them. Your honesty and humility is still highly respectable even if the problems didn’t affect me personally.
In fact the game has inspired me and my nephew to try and make our own dungeon crawl / roguelike in fake 8bit style (bit ambitious but I wanted to share).
Lastly a MAJOR issue that pops into mind:
if you move by double-clicking any vertical or horizontal tile next to the hero the game doesn’t realize a turn has been used but the hero still moves one tile further. This could allow someone to get out from most nasty situations or save buffs untill he meets some enemies etc.
Yeah, there are some timing issues in the game that we are hoping to address for the next release.
Keep us informed of your progress, that sounds like an awesome project!
Well, if there’s such a thing as a good reason to have problems, overwhelming success would be it.
I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about people loving this game. It’s fun, it’s addicting, it’s creative, and it’s outright hilarious. You guys are doing an awesome job, and I’m glad I bought the game. Keep up the good work, and thank you for all the time you’ve spent!
Hello.
While playing dredmor I crafted a flail and put it in my inventory for safekeeping until I could upgrade it later once I leveled my smithing skill.
I completed a quest that gave me a VERY nice magical flail and I dropped it onto my avatar.
When I looked in my inventory to equip it, it had stacked onto my regular flail which now read (2). I had to use a crafting tool to split them but they were both regular flails now.
Is this issue known yet? Has it fixed in the upcoming patch already? I’m playing on the latest version off steam.
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Well, don’t feel too bad. You’re one man doing more work on quick fixes than I saw from, say, New Vegas 😛 It’s still a fun game aside from the bugs, just glad that the fixes are coming at all xP As for what I’d like to see… well, a rest feature is one thing I’d like, I guess. Anyway, best of luck on this and future titles 🙂
Um so you know how you added the automatic save thing? Well when I restarted the game I realized I had two save files; one from when I saved manually before exiting the game, and the automatic save from much earlier. I accidentally selected the automatic save thinking it was my manually saved one, and I ended up two levels below where I had finished. I then pressed Menu, then Save and Quit, thinking it would simply over-write the automatic save. However this was not so. I returned to the Load Games menu, and my more advanced save was gone, leaving only the older save from two levels below. Now I’m sure this was just my fault, but I think it would be extremely useful for, when pressing “Save and Quit” or simply “Save and Continue”, that some text would show up asking if it was okay to over-write your other save, or if you could simply make a new save.
Sorry if that was complicated but it’s something I think should be fixed. You guys are awesome. 🙂