Category Archives: Programming

Clockwork Empires: Alright, Now What?

September 6, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

We’re back from Penny Arcade Expo! This was our first year as an exhibitor; while previous years have been reasonably epic (most notably for me, at least, was 2010, which was the year I crashed a panel with Steve Jackson), this year blew them all away. We got to meet a bunch of you, we got to hand out 100 Stuffed Diggle Menaces,  and we got to see the Hat of Bergstrom. We also had a few good times with some members of the remote team who don’t normally work at the Vancouver office, most notably Chris Triolo and Ryan C. Gordon, who just happened to be in town that day. I got a Valve tour! Daniel was on a panel! We went to Notch’s party! The list goes on and on…

Now we’re back, the question becomes: now what do we do?

The main thing that PAX impressed upon me was just how much work we have to do between now and next year on Clockwork Empires. Next year, we want to be showing this game, and we want it to be in a presentable state. That’s fine. We have a long, rather hard road ahead of us, and we’ll get there, but the question is… what do we do until then?

So here’s the plan. We’re an independent studio that is really not beholden to anybody but ourselves. We want you to know what’s going on and how we’re progressing; we want you to get excited for Clockwork Empires, and we want you to let us know how you think we’re doing. We’re going to open things up as much as we can, and we’re going to write while we do so. We hope you’ll like it. We’ll try to be honest, and we’ll try to let you know the good news as well as the bad news. You’ll be getting posts from me on the programming stuff, David on the art side of things, Daniel on AI (and maybe ranting about “business stuff”), and all of us on game design.

Let the great Developing begin, er continue! To that end, here is random art. What do you folks want to hear about?

Clockwork Empires serves the needs of all, from the clothing needs of growing alternative religions to the logistical infrastructure required to maintain a respectable zeppelin fleet in these challenging times.

Posted in Clockwork Empires, Game Design, Gaslamp, Programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
27 Comments

The April Madness

April 25, 2012 by Daniel Jacobsen

Turns out when you’re writing a renderer for a game, and the renderer isn’t finished, it’s hard to come up with really awesome stuff to show people about the game you’re making. This is essentially what we’re waiting on before we blow the lid off of everything on Project Odin. We want to be in a position where we can show you what we’re working on, get your feedback, ask you about things you’d like to see in the game, and answer any questions you might have.

Mr. Triolo is currently contemplating how one might animate a chicken

There is a lot of concept art floating around on our repos that we’re trying to use to give you guys an idea of the fact that a lot of work is being done right now, not just in art but in the code as well.  We’re having to do a lot of “architecture” programming before we can start putting the game together on top of it; the main reason for this is that Odin is multiplayer, and multiplayer games just work differently.  We are taking the opportunity to do some optimization to ensure that the game takes advantage of all these newfangled “cores” we hear about in the computer stores these days as well.  Again, if you have your toes in the programming world, you know that this can be tricky.  (If you don’t but you are curious, check out this educational wikipedia article on race conditions!  If you don’t like circuit theory, feel free to skip that.)

We are also taking some time to actually get organized.  The game is going to take more than a year to get done (not six like the last one!  maybe two though) and one of the biggest issues with making a thing that takes as long as games do is that it’s difficult to keep all the important stuff in your head when you haven’t thought about it in a while.  We were guilty of a lot of this on our first (failed) project, and we were guilty of more of it on Dredmor.  I’m sure it will happen for Odin as well, but my job over the last two weeks has been getting us set up with a way of managing our project stuff so that we can be as organized as possible with as little effort as possible.  (For those of you who are interested, we’re using Atlassian, and it seems pretty awesome so far.)  I’m also starting to understand why so many indies make all their games, start to finish, in a month.

Coming soon: some Dredmor news pertaining to toys, the Steam Workshop, and some new content!

A potential terrain style that we have since scrapped for technical reasons (orange didn't test well)

Posted in Games, Gaslamp, Programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
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Dredmor 1.0.10 Status; The Future

April 4, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

Dungeons of Dredmor has now been updated across all distributions and all platforms: Steam, the Humble Download Page, Desura, and GameFly (our bonus new distributor!) So far, the only problem we are aware of is that the skills for Realm of the Diggle Gods are not installing correctly in the GameFly build only; we are looking into this with Gamefly, and hope to have it resolved as soon as possible. There have also been reports of some people being able to wear cheese as armour, but that’s neither here nor there.

The full change log for the patch is reproduced under the cut. If you have any feedback on the new patch – balance changes and complaints, bug reports, praise, suggestions, or simply wish to enjoy the complementary Lutefisk samples, please don’t hesitate to let us know on our forums.

So what do we do for an encore? Stand by for … three announcements.

In the mean time, why not buy some shirts? (Or, for that matter, stickers.)

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp, Programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
33 Comments

Dredmor iPad Frequently Asked Questions

April 3, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

When a product such as Dredmor reaches maturity, it is often ported to a mobile tablet. During this awkward time of transition, you will doubtless have certain questions about the changes that your video game is going through. You may have strange feelings and sudden urges, and you may also note your tablet sprouting hair in strange places.

Please rest assured, this is perfectly normal.

Fortunately, Gaslamp Games is here to help you through this time of change and transition with our Dredmor-for-iPad Frequently Asked Questions guide. So here goes:

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp, Programming | Tagged , , , , , ,
21 Comments

Patch 1.0.10 Slowly Trickling Out; New Distributor

March 30, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

Patch 1.0.10 is slowly making its way through the various distribution channels. Desura has it up, and hopefully the Humble Bundle webstore will have it up shortly. We’ve run into a slight hiccup with Steam – I have to get the previously packaged off of our old build machine and onto our new build machine, which has involved (amongst other things) rebuilding its RAID array. Hopefully that will be up around Tuesday.

We are also pleased to announce that Dungeons of Dredmor is now available on GameFly! You can pick up Dredmor and Realm of the Diggle Gods as a complete package for a mere $3.75 – go buy some Dredmor today!

Yet more strange icons? What could it possibly mean!

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
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On Testing

March 22, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

When I started working on 1.0.10 at the start of this year, one of the things I asked myself was how to improve our patching process – or how to stop horribly game-breaking patches from happening ever again. First, let us review the Dredmor patch history:

0.9 -> 1.0.0 – The Greatest Crashing Beta Test Ever of 2011.
1.0.0 – Dredmor released with mysterious audio crashing problems, exposed by a change to the audio code at the last minute.
1.0.1 – Fixed the audio crash.
1.0.2 – Fixed the audio crash which was exposed by the fix for the first audio crash.
1.0.3 – Zillions of bugfixes.
1.0.4 – A hastily released patch after 1.0.3 broke save game compatibility with 1.0.2, and the laser-like glare of the Eye of Sauron turned upon me. (And I wept.)
1.0.5 – Was reasonably boring and nothing happened.
1.0.6 – Broke achievements; was hotfixed. (Some people consider this version a “classic” Dredmor for some reason.)
1.0.7 – Humble Bundle build; added Linux support and, also, bonus crashing.
1.0.8 – Diggle Gods build. Included things like “the n-Dimensional Lathe, a giant, crashing, unexploded bomb”, things not giving people the correct stats, crashing mysterious portals, eleventy billion broken tutorials…
1.0.9 – Patch for everything that went wrong with the Diggle Gods build. Added crashing bookcases, crashing savegames, save game corruption, and stuff not loading in the mod launcher. This also marked the start of the attempts at fixing the “belt eating problem.”
1.0.9 REV B – patch for all of these things, some of which actually stayed patch.

One of the conclusions that I reached was that a lot of the really bad problems (save game compatibility; n-dimensional lathe; hideous random audio crashes) were things that showed up when we had a thoroughly tested build, made one small change to it, and then put up the build with that one small change (which, consequently, was the change that broke everything.) As a result, we decided to instigate a new policy: any time we make any change to a Dredmor release candidate, no matter how small, the patch goes out for testing and is banged upon for at least 48 hours (preferably 72) before we ship it. Dredmor 1.0.10 is the first build we’re shipping with this new policy; we hope it works out well for all parties concerned, but it does mean that deadlines are a little hit or miss.

As always, thanks for your patience! We will try to keep the forums updated on where we stand in the QA process. If you want to grab patch RC7 and try it out, OS X and Windows versions are now available in our forums.

What's this? I don't know. Look over there!

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp, Programming | Tagged , , , , ,
18 Comments

Dredmor; Odin

January 16, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

A quick status update: Dredmor should be getting a second patch – 1.0.10 – this Thursday, or – worst-case scenario next Tuesday. (I’m not releasing patches on Fridays any more. Once bitten, twice shy.) This will be going to Steam, Desura, and the HIB simultaneously, so everybody will finally be up to date. This fixes the bookshelf crash, the weird loading of saves related crashes on OS X and Linux machines, and adds a few cosmetic niceties (working magic reflection, remembering what mods are loaded, remembering if you have disabled click-to-move, random boss monsters occasionally having additional magic resistance, that kind of thing) that have been on people’s lists for awhile.

We have been uncommunicative lately, and this is our fault. Owing to external factors which we cannot announce yet, we have suddenly found ourselves catapulted into Project Odin, almost full-time, somewhat quicker than we anticipated. We’re not entirely sure how much we can talk about this yet, which is problematic, and everybody is probably wondering what’s going on. Ah, growing pains. (This has also been one of the reasons why we are looking for additional gameplay programmers; at least one person will be working on Dredmor with me, on a full-time basis, for the next few months.)

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Other Games, Programming | Tagged ,
45 Comments

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

January 10, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

In what is clearly a sign of the apocalypse, we are hiring. If you think you’ve got what it takes to work for Gaslamp Games? Then we’re interested in talking to you.

Specifically, we are looking to fill four positions at this time. These are contract positions, mainly due to the fact that we are independent and therefore hideously unstable. We are looking to start with about two months worth of contract work, and should that be successful continuing onwards for up to a year (and beyond, if our next project is a success.) If you think you have what it takes, send your resume/CV and a cover letter containing a link to your work portfolio to jobs@gaslampgames.com.

Preference will be given to candidates who are local to the Vancouver or Greater Victoria regions of British Columbia. (EDIT: We are open to remote work. But, we prefer locals.) Gaslamp Games is an equal opportunity and LGBTQ-friendly employer. Only those candidates we are interested in will receive a reply.

We are looking for:

- one gameplay programmer
- one generalist programmer
- one character artist (3D)
- one environment artist (3D)

Job descriptions under the cut. Thanks for applying!

{ read this article }

Posted in Gaslamp, Other Games, Programming | 29 Comments