Patch beta, Project Odin, and another Secret Project

February 29, 2012 by Daniel Jacobsen

Wow, it’s been a long time since we’ve posted anything on the blog.  Sorry about that guys.

The big patch beta has started, those of you who are interested in trying it out can take a look here.  There are still a few bugs in it, but we can use all the help we can get in testing it out.  Windows only for now, OSX and Linux on the way.

The team for Project Odin is almost complete: Joseph Nejat is joining our sodden ranks as 3D Character Artist. We are really looking forward to having him on the team largely due to his awesome English accent. And it’s becoming evident that we probably need to update our group portrait sometime soon =)

We are busy organizing our notes in preparation for finally releasing the details of Project Odin; right now we’re stuck on the name, but we should be coming to some consensus soon. (See: THE PIT.)

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
43 Comments

Dredmor Wallpaper on PC Gamer

February 17, 2012 by David Baumgart

PC Gamer (which named Dungeons of Dredmor its Indie Game of 2011) is showing off a nice new Dungeons of Dredmor wallpaper drawn by yours truly. Check it out on their site.

For your edutainment, I’ve taken images from the painting in various stages of progression, from initial sketch to final form, which you can view in chronological order in the land beyond the cut.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor | Tagged , , , ,
7 Comments

Patch 1.0.10 Changelog

February 16, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

EDIT: We totally forgot to mention that we’re PC Gamer’s Indie Game of the Year for 2011. Yeah. Oops. In celebration, we drew a wallpaper which they’re putting up at some point in the near future; we’ll host it over here as soon as they give us the go-ahead.

Gaslamp News

We have outgrown our offices, and are moving again! As previously briefly mentioned, the new offices have a spiral staircase and remind Daniel of the Ghostbusters (no pole though… yet). I interviewed for a job in this building eleven years ago, back when Black Box Games was still an independent studio and before they were purchased by EA. The thought of now renting an office, for Gaslamp, in the same building … is a little mindblowing.

I also have a giant mechanical clicking keyboard of doom now. It’s extremely noisy, and everybody else in the office hates it. I love it.

Dredmor News

Now that things are a little more organized on the Odin front, and now that our days are no longer a giant sink-hole of meetings and job interviews, we’ve found some time to finish pushing that patch out the door. A beta should be floating through the IRC channel any day now; at that point, we’ll have a week of testing, and then we will push everything to Steam, Desura, and the Humble Bundle. The current changelog is below the cut, as well as a handful of Odin teasers.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp, Modding | Tagged , , , , , ,
32 Comments

Community Spotlight #4

February 5, 2012 by Daynab

Hi everyone! The format for this week’s spotlight is a little different because I wanted to showcase a very proficient modder, Essence. He’s had it a long time coming, namely for his Essential DoD 1 and 2 mods which add 6 different skills to the game.

I will describe each of them briefly since there would be way too much to talk about for one post. If you want the details of every ability I suggest you go to Dredmorpedia, all six are featured there.


Bushido is probably the most Warrior-oriented of the skills. It’s designed to help melee characters survive the later levels and as such, it’s all about defensive buffs and self-healing. Here you even get some stackable buffs when getting hit, like Into The Jaws of Death, which stacks all resistances 66% of the time when you get hit.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Modding | Tagged , , ,
10 Comments

More General Bits of News

February 3, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

Simba!

Some more quick news fluff from the front:

  • Congratulations to Gaslamp Programmer-Affiliate Ryan C. Gordon (better known as “icculus”, the great and knowledgeable), who is now the proud father of a lovely daughter. (This has slightly delayed our incoming patch yet more; just before dashing to the hospital, Ryan immediately said “Here! Have an entirely new SDL library and audio driver!” This fixes a lot of the stuttering issues, as well as various performance issues and crashes under OS X, but I’m currently quietly poking his changelist with a stick, somewhat afraid that it will bite me.) We have celebrated by having Chris Triolo produce this small homage to the Lion King.
  • We are pleased to announce that Sean Hamilton has joined the Gaslamp Games team. Sean will be working with us on Project Odin; since his arrival on the project, he has already produced three crates, a selection of small shanty houses, two logs, one ingot, and a mineshaft. Auspicious.
  • We are still looking for a character modeler and a gameplay programmer to do some contract work on Dredmor with us. I think we’ve got everything else taken care of  at this point. Exciting. If you think you’d be a good fit for either of these things, please drop us a line at jobs@gaslampgames.com ; I think, at this point, that we are restricting ourselves to locals after all for the most part.
  • There is vague talk of doing another Dredmor DLC pack, either as an additional paid expansion (of a form to be determined) or a free DLC package of some sort to be determined. Other than our continued commitment to patching and general subterfuge, is there anything else specific that you’d like to see from us? Let us know in the comments.
  • Finally, here’s another Odin teaser.
Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Games, Gaslamp | Tagged , , ,
58 Comments

The Indie Things.

January 27, 2012 by Daniel Jacobsen

Brief status update on the goings on at Gaslamp Central:

  • We are still interviewing people for the programming positions we posted here, so you are not too late to submit.  At this point though, we reserve the right to charge you a late fee of beer or donuts.
  • I will be dropping by the Global Game Jam at the University of Victoria this evening at around 5pm to say hi, see what the whole thing is about, maybe pitch some ideas and participate, who knows.  The whole thing sounds really interesting: you can find more info about it here.  If you are interested in seeing what it’s all about but don’t want to do any development, evidently you can sit there and heckle us while you play Minecraft!
  • We are super excited that we may be moving into some office space that is sufficiently insulated that yesterday’s coffee doesn’t freeze in the night.  Woo!  Also, it reminds me of the offices of the Ghostbusters, which is potentially even more important.
  • Lastly, we received word this morning that we are in PC Gamer’s March issue listed as number 58 of the top 100 video games of all time, which, frankly, floored each of us. Seriously.  We are staggered and supremely honored.  The issue hasn’t made it into our cold Canadian mittens yet, but I am certain that we stand with some very illustrious company.  We know that we owe all of our success to you guys, and we hope to continue to make you happy for years to come.
Posted in Gaslamp, Interviews | 13 Comments

Community Spotlight #3

January 27, 2012 by Daynab

Hey everyone! It’s modding time again. I wanted to touch up on some older mods this week and will be doing so as well in the next weeks, but Ruigi surprised us with a new masterwork that deserved immediate mention. And that is…


Runecaster

“You’re very scholarly, you also make runes.”

Runecaster is a wizard skill that combines crafting with spell casting. You create runes out of mana, which you then combine with the n-Dimensional lathe to create runewords. These runewords are throwing weapons that cast a spell when hitting enemies/the ground.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Modding | Tagged , , ,
2 Comments

Teensy Patch Hold-up

January 26, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

There’s been a little, unforeseen patch hiccup. Interestingly, this isn’t as a result of Dredmor, but as part of a Dredmor-related secret project that we have been working on, quietly and mysteriously. We’re not saying what it is yet, save that it is something that a lot of people have expressed interest in.

As a result of this work, we’ve had to remove two libraries from Dredmor, in order to replace them with… well, equivalents that are suitable. We have only just finished rewriting all of Dredmor’s audio code to use OpenAL; because this is a fairly major rewrite, we actually have to sit down and run a Real Beta now instead of just testing the bugfixes, vaguely making sure we didn’t break anything major, and calling it a day.

Some test binaries will probably show up in the IRC channel either late today or early tomorrow, and based on how well that turns out we will let you know what a better ETA for the patch looks like. This is mainly us being ultra-cautious and trying to make sure that we don’t shower you all with broken pixels and static in our quest for increased portability.

That said, the new audio is a heck of a lot better, and also fixes all the little lag issues when changing music or wandering in and out of stores. We’ve also managed to cut down on our memory use a bit as a result of this secret project, although we still have further work to do on this front. Levels now use about 20 megabytes less memory on average. It’s not quite enough for our svelte new lifestyle, but it’s a start.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Games, Gaslamp | Tagged , , , ,
19 Comments