All posts tagged with "dredmor"

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 Patch Status

March 20, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

For those of you who aren’t hanging out in our forums (and why not?) Dredmor Patch 1.0.10 release candidate #7 has now been put up. So we’ve gone through seven of these now. So far things seem to be much more stable than 1.0.9, and I’m happy. I’m hoping that as soon as the testing Squad gives me the word, we can have this up on Steam, Desura, and the Humble Bundle download page by the end of the week.

Full changelog, and some Odin teasing, below.

{ read this article }

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

An update on updates, Workshops and workshops.

March 16, 2012 by Daniel Jacobsen

Communication is starting to get tough.  We want to tell you guys about the brand new patch that has a bunch of awesome things in it, but it’s not quite ready.  I can tell you about one thing that we haven’t told you yet though, regarding mods.  I also want to talk about our lack of communication regarding the state of Odin.

First, Mods.  We want to give the mod community a chance to get these fantastic creations in the hands of more people, get more feedback happening, more collaboration, and more generally awesome stuff coming out for people to play with.  To do this, we are piloting a project with Valve and the Steam Workshop platform.  Users will be able to search for mods, comment on them, rate and share them.  The forum will still be here and we will do everything we can to make sure that the mods are available for non-steam users as well, but they have built this fantastic tool, it would be a shame not to use it to let people share content more easily.  Details on how you guys can access the tools for this below.

We also want to tell you all about our new project: the real name of Project Odin, some screen shots that we have been working on, and answer any questions you might have about how it’s not a tower defence game.  The reason we haven’t done this quite yet is that we need to make sure we’re doing things right: registering trademarks, copyrighting what we can, and all that other stuff that keeps games from being duplicated before they’re finished.  It’s lame, I know.  It’s also a big enough problem that it deserves a bit of our time.  We didn’t do a lot of this stuff before Dredmor’s release, and we were lucky that it wasn’t a problem.  I’d rather that we didn’t have to be lucky again.  We are all really excited about this project, and it’s killing us to have to wait to tell you.  Trust me, game development is way easier when you get to talk about it.

{ read this article }

Posted in Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp | Tagged , , , , , ,
9 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

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

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

Community Spotlight #1

January 11, 2012 by Daynab

Hi everyone! I am Daynab, resident community/tester/DoD enthusiast guy. I’m gonna be doing weekly posts about mods and other things going on over at the forums and elsewhere.

The past few weeks have shown an amazing growth in interest and we’re now up to around 30 functional mods. It may not seem like much, but keep in mind they’re pretty major, such as completely new skill lines. Since I can’t describe every one in a single post, here are two among my personal favorites.

(Please read this guide if you don’t know how to install mods.)

Clockwork Knights

This skill is an interesting combination between combat and crafting. It boosts your survival by giving you a trap scanner and some movement spells, and it ups your general crafting skills while giving access to a bunch of special new recipes for (mostly) melee characters.

{ read this article }

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

Happy New Year!

January 7, 2012 by Nicholas Vining

Well, folks, we made it to 2012. Barely, but we made it. For those of you worried about the Mayan Doom Prophecy – fear not! Like all good Canadians, we scoff at your doom prophecies, and know that there are in fact 100 years until the arrival of the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx.

Our contact e-mail is completely jammed up, and we’re trying to work through everything, but here’s some news and status updates on things.

First off: the hotfixes that we put out earlier for various save issues over Christmas are now live on Steam and Desura. We’ll be putting another one up later this week to clean up an additional three crash issues that have reared their ugly heads. If you installed a hotfix from our webpage, we recommend uninstalling local content and making sure you grab a fresh install from Steam. If it does *not* say something like “1.0.9 REVISION B” on the title screen, something’s gone wrong.

There have been a few reports of older save games still being broke on OS X; we’re on it. That said, we have also heard reports of older save games working just fine on OS X, so… it’s a bit puzzling, really.

Second off: Desura and HIB users who want to purchase the Realm of the Diggle Gods, we are working on this but have no ETAs yet. As soon as we know how we’re going to do this and have it set up, we’ll let you know. Watch this space.

Third off: with Dredmor and the expansion pack behind us, our plan at this point is to finish stabilizing any last issues caused by the 1.0.7->1.0.8->1.0.9 patch cycle, and then to keep proceeding with smaller, more incremental patches. Hopefully we should be as stable at the end of this week as we were when we released 1.0.6 (voted “Most Stable Patch of 2011” by our user base.) Balancing and fixes are a continual process, and we’re taking our inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in terms of how we’d like Dredmor to continue evolving. (This does not include a) a hat store, b) becoming free-to-play, c) “Meet the Diggle.”) We’re also looking at the mod support that we put in with release 1.0.7; people have made some *very* cool things, and we are going to continue to provide support for this developing part of the community. Additionally, we will be starting a “mod spotlight” feature on the blog, featuring a mod selected once… every so often… by our community moderator, Mathieu “Daynab” Dugon. We should have the first one up sometime next week.

Finally: not content to rest on our laurels, this week has officially marked the start of work on Project Odin. I am up to my neck in network code and the innards of Google V8, David has been drawing concept art and running art tests, and Daniel is doing The Dark Paperwork. What are we up to? Well… watch this space for hints.

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