Winter Wrap-Up

First off: we are amazingly honored to find ourselves on some “best of 2011” lists. In particular, IndieGames has declared Dungeons of Dredmor to be their sixth best independent game of 2011, against some very stiff competition (and, amazingly, beating out Bastion, a game we really enjoyed.) Even more mindboggling is the fact that we’ve been nominated as one of the five best RPGs for the PC for 2011 over at the IGN Network – next to Bastion, the Witcher 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and a little game called Skyrim that nobody’s ever heard of. This is basically like being nominated for an Oscar – you may not win, because you’re up against a ringer – but hey, you’re still Oscar-nominated!

We’re also in IndieDB’s “Top 100 Indie Games of 2011” – vote for us here – and we’re still neck in neck with ToME 4 over at the ASCII Dreams Roguelike blog, where the battle between a commercial roguelike and one of the best new free traditional roguelikes of this year has caused no end of controversy. (I say this not having played ToME, but I’m making it my business to do so over the holidays.) Feel free to vote for us at these things if you think we deserve your voting love.

In non horn-tooting news:

Monday, we released patch 1.0.8, shortly followed by patch 1.0.8b, and patch 1.0.8c (fixing the invasion of the Giant Pink Scorpion Diggles on OS X.) Thursday, after some hiccups, we got the Realm of the Diggle Gods up on Steam, and we’re delighted that the feedback has been universally positive. Everybody is having fun, and everybody seems to think it’s worth $2.99. Friday, just to put the icing on the cake, I successfully defended my Master’s Thesis in Computer Science, which I have been quietly writing in the background while all of this development has been going on. Finishing that project, however, has meant that I am a little behind on Support Things this week; under normal circumstances, we would probably have been a little better organized.

Accordingly, here is a run-down of where we currently are on All of The Things.

Dredmor 1.0.9: will be a handful of hotfixes for some of the issues that have been exposed by the DLC content, and by 1.0.8s’ release. In particular, we still have:

– crashes with the n-dimensional lathe under some circumstances (when you have no recipes, it seems?)
– mysterious portal crashes (loading and saving in mysterious portals, portals not showing up to get you out of the portals, no loot, etc.)
– whatever the heck is going on with OS X 10.5.8 (crashing after the “New Game” screen.)
– crashes, randomly, trying to trigger the achievements for the DLC expansion skills.

There are also a handful of complaints about the new craft tools; I’ll be addressing as many of those (mousewheel support and output tooltips being the big two) as I can. David has also put in a handful of fixes for some of the expansion stuff (cat ears with the wrong art, various things having the wrong prices, a few broken cooldowns), and I’m going to attempt to put all this out quietly next week. There will be a more thorough patch sometime in 2012 after the holidays.

If the community has urgent requests for things to get fixed for 1.0.9 in the hotpatch – i.e. if there’s something that I’m not aware of – let me know and I will try to sneak it in.

Desura and HIB: We have not forgotten about you folks; you were hurt most by the Great Thesis Defending, because all the patches for this sort of thing need to be hand-built and put up by me. We will get you taken care of.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 users: something’s broken for you. We’re not sure what. We’re on it.

Modders: We will be putting up a mod guide for the rooms in a couple of days. We actually documented this for once.

Dredmor DLC fixes: David has put in a handful of stuff before he left for Las Vegas for some much-needed R&R and gambling. We’ll push this at the same time as the crash and tool hotfix. Also, nobody has found the Diggle God of Secrets yet – perhaps, we hid him too well…

Anyhow, that’s the plan. Most of the office will be shut down over the holidays; I’m buying a Notch hat and am taking a well-deserved vacation. 2012 is bringing at least one more major patch to Dredmor, some interesting news about ports, and hopefully we will be in a position to start talking about our next, post-Dredmor title – tentatively referred to in-house as Project Odin. (It doesn’t actually contain Odin.) It’ll be a fabulous year and we can’t wait.

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

62 Responses to “Winter Wrap-Up”

  1. getter77 says:

    Congrats on the thesis defense and all out otherwise— have some well earned holiday recharging and happy hunting on ToME4. You might also find some things of interest in a fellow ASCII Dreams poll entrant by the name of LambdaRogue that just landed a spiffy update likewise yesterday, somewhat in response to ToME 4 directly even.

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  2. Duder says:

    Project Odin would be better if it DID contain Odin, though.

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  3. CuriousParty says:

    Already bought Diggle Gods on Steam due to impatience, but I’ve only been introduced to the glory of Dredmor since HiB. How is purchasing the DLC gonna work for people who want to stick totally DRM free and outside of Steam and Desura?

    Now excuse me, I gotta finish my first vanilla run before I can delve deeper into the darkness of the diggle gods. 😀

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    • We… totally didn’t think about this. Honestly, we assumed most people would use Steam or Desura. 😀

      When we have an answer, we’ll let you know. 🙂

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      • AlsoWondering says:

        I’ve been wondering this as well. I literally can’t connect to the internet on the good computer I have (the one that can get internet is old and terrible for trying to game on).

        That leaves me out cold on anything that needs Steam or Desura (or anything else that needs internet to run it) so I’m really hoping there will be a DRM free option for Diggle Gods.

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    • Brian Kemp says:

      I picked up DoD through HIB. The lack of DRM, and really copy protection of any sort is a hugely important thing to me. My system is older and slower (and was briefly homed in a dumpster by its previous owner).

      Binary-only games get played under a different user account, and if I’m not lazy enough, the network gets shut off too.

      If I have to choose between DLC & no DRM, I’ll just play the base game. I have a rabid, frothing hatred for activation & license key management.

      (You would too, if third-party software you depended upon started printing “unlicensed version” on everyone’s badges at a trade show.)

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  4. SirPrimalform says:

    The Desura situation is a bit confusing… I got an update a short while ago but it was 1.0.7. I had assumed you’d be skipping straight onto 1.0.8 as with Steam. Oh well!

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  5. Cogwheel says:

    Since you asked, a handful of bugs. And while these ARE rather annoying, I’d like to make it clear that the DLC is still fantastic. This is quite possibly my favourite expansion to date.

    1: Taking the final rank of werediggle causes a crash. Not sure if this was mentioned above or if you were referring to something else.

    2: Picking up a deciduous wand makes the game crash. Unsure if this was a one-time thing, obviously not keen on replicating it.

    3: Right clicking to swap equipment seems to have issues, but so far, only with belts. Sometimes, when you right click a belt in your inventory to equip it instead of the one you have on, the one you previously had equipped will simply vanish irrevocably. I also accidentally right clicked an artifact wizard’s sleeve once, which vanished – I assume this is related.

    4: If you level up and take a non-werediggle skill while in werediggle form, it won’t appear when you go back to being human, and will stay lost forever. I lost the fourth, fifth and sixth demonology ranks this way before I finally caught on.

    To any players reading this, do NOT take a non-werediggle skill if you level while transformed. Wait a bit instead. All this is on the Windows version under Windows 7, if that helps at all.

    I believe that’s about it. Thanks for your work, and congratulations on the awards!

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    • Cogwheel says:

      Sorry about that, bug 4 was a mistake. The skill does appear, but has to be added to the bar manually. Slight bug, I suppose, but nowhere near as major as I assumed.

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  6. Adam Atkinson says:

    Ah. So my Desura version crashing all the time is because it’s not 1.0.8? Since my upgrade a couple of days ago I’ve been virtually unable to load saves or make it past character naming.

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  7. Spankeh says:

    Gotta say I’m really proud of you guys for getting those accolades. I’ve been playing the game since the day it showed up on Steam and definitely consider this one of the games of the year. Keep up the fixes and I’ll enjoy trying to get to floor 11+.

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  8. Knallis says:

    I got stuck in a mysterious portal room with no way out. I saved my game and am going to leave it alone until the next patch.

    What I would like to know is if the devs will be able to fix it so that gamefiles already saved in limbo will spawn a portal back? Or is the gamefile lost? I hope not…

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  9. Sheepyhead says:

    I had a bug on my archaeologist/werediggle charater where I didn’t get the “This Belongs In A Museum” skill when chosen from the skill tree. Also I lost my equipped Swashbuckler’s Belt when I right clicked on the Champion’s Belt (I think it’s called) in my inventory. Minor bug, but still counts

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  10. Wouter says:

    Congrats on the thesis, master!

    You would do me (and presumably a lot of other linux users) a big favour if you can get the patch to desura before christmas. I’ve tried a couple games on the current desura version but I can’t get very far before crashed become so frequent to render the game unplayable. I’ve tried steam-over-wine but had no luck there.

    — Wouter

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  11. Musaab says:

    It says 2012 will bring us at least one more major patch. Does that mean plans for another expansion or further updates are off the table?

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  12. Glauber says:

    Still crashing in OSX when i try to load my old saved games

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  13. GhostOfSteveJobs says:

    So I finally got around to updating and playing last night (Mac w/OS X 10.7.2, via Steam). It was working fine and I was having fun. Now today when I try to launch the game nothing happens. The icon just sits there stupidly. If I force quit and relaunch I get a message about restoring windows and do I want to do that. Picking no was apparently the wrong answer because it still won’t launch.

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  14. Liam Dawe says:

    Please don’t take too long with Desura patch and DLC! Game isn’t really playable on Desura’s version right now – a fair few annoyed customers on your games page!

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  15. ivan says:

    I’ve been playing it extensively on 64bit linux through Desura and had no issues at all. Strange but happy

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    • Wouter says:

      Strange. I am running via desura on ubuntu 11.10 64 bit (with xmonad WM but that shouldn’t matter?)

      I was getting used to saving every five minutes because of random crashed, but my last two games now face persistent crashed: 1) whenever I go down to level 3, and 2) whenever I summon a wyrmling. I will no longer play until a patch is released (as download or through desura) as it is very frustrating to advance a character only to be unable to continue.

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  16. TheWumpus says:

    It’d be really, really nice if you could fix the ability of monsters to counter crossbow bolts from across the room. Yeaaahhhh…that would be great.

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  17. FerrousCadaver says:

    Things I noticed:

    the healing fungus, the thaumaturgic tap skill and the regeneration potions can have their effects resisted by the character’s magic resistance causing you to not regenerate hp/mp.
    Not sure if this is a bug or not.

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  18. James says:

    So… no tablet version? Shame; iOS and Android could use a great roguelike.

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  19. Kevin says:

    Don’t know if this was intended or not but arrow traps and now dragon breath spell i tested now seems to be able to sometimes “destroy” walls. ???

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    • David Snedden says:

      I think it’s intended, there are actually some hidden walls in the game that can be destroyed with damage to reveal secrets. I’ve found some stuff on accident due to Killer Vegan (4th skill) procs.

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  20. David says:

    Killing animals with crossbows (possibly thrown weapons as well?) incurs no penalties for vegans.

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  21. J Brian says:

    Congratulations on all your well-deserved success. Happy holidays and enjoy the break!

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  22. JSC says:

    If you’re still looking for bugs to deal with in 1.09, the most annoying non-crash one I’ve encountered so far is that you can resist your own heal-over-time effects. It makes Fleshsmithing really frustrating to use, as well as Ley Walker and probably some other items and skills. Taking out resists for all DoT effects would be a quick way of dealing with it in the short term until healing and damage effects are separate in the code. (I think the bug actually came from 1.07, not 1.08 or the expansion.)

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  23. Aegis says:

    This’s a great game, keep up the great work 🙂 One peeve of mine is the “maximum four things used for item creation”… and if you get more than nine skills, there’s no overlap, no way to see or access them (I think, haven’t gotten that far).

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  24. Atomic says:

    Wait, was the title of this post a reference to what I think it is…?

    Might be coincidental, but seems 20% cooler.

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  25. Wouter says:

    THANK YOU! For getting 1.08 out to Desura. Hopefully this fixes the linux crashes.

    Enjoy the holidays!

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  26. Velorien says:

    Congrats on the thesis and great work all round! I am truly amazed that you’ve managed to balance academic and diggle-slaying commitments as well as you have.

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  27. doug says:

    First of all, great game! Unfortunately my save from before the update got messed up and it was the furthest I ever went 🙁

    Anyway, I just wanted to point out some issues with the game which you might want to tackle.
    – As JSC said, resisting your own spells such as Thaumaturgic Tap
    – If I have the Character page open and then open the crafting menu, I am not able to close the character page although it appears on top of the cradting menu. I have to stay closing the crafting menu, closing the character page, and re-opening the crafting menu
    – On probably all resolutions but on some more than others, the character is very off-centre and for example on 1024×768 I can only see about 3 spaces to the bottom but then 6 boxes on top; and about 6.5 to the right but 8.5 to the left

    Happy holidays!

    – New crafting

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  28. AishaLove says:

    Mystery stat?

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51889267/Untitled.jpg

    I looked on the wiki to be sure and it’s not listed.

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    • Aris says:

      I think that’s Magical Reflection.

      I’m not sure if it’s been implemented yet. It might have been, just the icon might not have been added.

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  29. Legate Damar says:

    You probably know this, but: New crafting system automatically makes maximum number of things it can. So I finally get (multiple) brass mechanisms and want to make a 3rd-tier crossbow. I go to the new crafting menu to start the process and it eats up all my raw materials to make 3 1st-tier crossbows. Grrr.

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  30. AccentNZ says:

    Just want to say you guys are fantastic. Despite trials, tribulations and patches, this game has made me love failure and the lessons it has to teach. Looking forward to all Dredmor DLC and keen for Project Odin (And I don’t even know what it is yet!)

    Happy holiday Nicholas, Daniel, David, Chris D., Derek, Matthew and Chris T.

    Take a break guys, you deserve it. And take your time! I’d like to think that we’re a loyal fan base with enough patience for quality 🙂

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  31. AishaLove says:

    Please make tool items not stack by default when picked up and sorted, I can think of 2 main reasons off the top of my head this is preferable.

    Selling extra tools

    Saving horadric lutafisk cubes to trigger the paradox as an attack.

    Also please make “disable click to move” a permanent toggle instead of making us re toggle it every time we load a game.

    I notice that music and sfx volumes keep getting reset.

    It would be nice to have native gamepad support, including a toggle to have the cursor snap to the game tiles.

    If gamepad support is added, a tweaked ui for viewing farther away would be nice (I’d preferably love to play this from in bed about 12feet from my 22″lcd monitor)

    I’m running windows 7 ultimate x64 I play the steam version of the game with Diggle gods DLC.

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  32. Jeff Dempsen says:

    Would love someway to get around all the animal clutter when you pick vegan.

    Apart from that, the only bugs I’ve experienced (logged 28hours since expansion…)

    1. Stuff (Candelabras, Levers) spawning where they shouldn’t. Blocked me off from the corner of a floor once.

    2. The first skill of demonology can be used to push things around. (Candelabras, Levers). Which is handy, because it can counter point 1. However it can also make levers inaccessible, which is a pain when you’re on an island with a teleport lever.

    3. I crashed once, no idea why. Happened as I levelled up, to level ~17/18. No other weird circumstances.

    Would also love a standalone version of some sort. Girlfriend loves DoD, but I really doubt I could get her to use steam. Quite frankly I hate it myself. I only have one steam game…DoD/RotDG

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  33. Midnight Tea says:

    … *looks at title of blog post*

    Is it weird I’ve played Dungeons of Dredmor to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic music?

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  34. Rachel says:

    Still can’t start a new game on the Steam version without crashing. Confirm that the game is no longer compatible with Mac OS 10.5.8?

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  35. Tomtefar says:

    I don’t know if it has been mentioned before, but the player is not centered in the game. He is one square right+down from the square that is centered in the screen.
    Check any screenshot, count the squares from the player to the edges on all sides, and compare with the face on the UI and you’ll see what I mean.
    It has always been like this as far as I know

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  36. leo says:

    Regarding the craft interface, perhaps the items could be listed in an order that makes more sense. Annoying to scroll looking for a certain weapon type and some recipes are scattered around the list.

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  37. anonymous says:

    I’m totally hooked on this game and am glad to see that it’s getting well-deserved recognition.

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  38. DCT says:

    Well in case no one has posted these bugs yet but I noticed in the DLC that the big game hunter achievement is bugged i maxed out the skill tree three times and no achievement.

    there are times when I click on a diggle egg I can spam the mouse button and grab 5 to 10 of them instead of 1.

    Also in no time to grind some objects end up being placed on top of or blocking other items. There’s also occasional odd pauses when opening rooms, normally I just got that when opening up a monster zoo room.

    oh and the streched ui is too large at least on a 1366×768 monitor as the ends stretch off my screen
    also everytime I load up my game I have to keep disabling click to move everytime. Plus for some strange reason I myself moving in a random direction after leveling up and spending my skill point, it doesn’t happen everytime more like every other time I level up.

    I think that does it for bugs I noticed.

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  39. Verrath says:

    – crafting recipes aren’t in proper order for me, i.e some that would belong tothe porta-still get listed with the ingot press, among others. It’s very hard to find anything this way.

    Could this have to do with me using a pre-1.0.8 savegame?

    – Also, I am positive I once had the deep omelette and cheese sandwich available for smelting (after 1.0.6 and intro of the new crafting system!), and now they are gone. Any reason why this might be? Due to the issue above I didn’t notice right away, assuming they were in another crafting list.

    Thanks, and keep it up 🙂
    V.

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  40. Argnom (A.K.A. Ragnar) says:

    I say, any more info on the Mac fix? I do want to play the update.

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  41. Extzed says:

    I was playing for the first time today on a Mac (10.7.2) through steam (ver 1.0.8). I was working my way through the tutorial and when I hit anything crafting (both alchemy and tinkering?) I crash out to the desktop. Verified both multiple times.

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    • There are a few known issues with the Mac and Linux versions of the game, and this is one of them. We are working on it right now, but as it’s already 7pm here I don’t know when we will be able to get a fix to Valve. I *can* say that we have yet to hear about this issue on windows though, if there is any way for you to try that in the mean time for the winter achievement.

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      • Extzed says:

        Thanks for the reply – I hadn’t seen my issue posted elsewhere and just wanted to pass it along – I can fire up a windows VM.

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  42. Philip8o says:

    So tell me, are you all or just partially bronies? Obviously, someone somewhere is slipping references in.

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