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rainlizard

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A member registered Apr 20, 2015 · View creator page →

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Hmm,  you say "dungeon keeper gold" does that mean you don't have keeperfx? It's not clear from your post.

Either way, portals won't generate any creatures without a script. (Map settings -> 'Edit script', or use the script generator)

But I believe a common issue is how the CREATURE_AVAILABLE function's arguments are different in keeperfx. Read the documentation here: https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx/wiki/Level-Script-commands#creature_available
Be careful copy pasting from old map scripts, since if they don't have LEVEL_VERSION(1) at the top then stuff functions differently.

For now, keep it simple and see if the script generator works with default settings.

Hello.

You'd achieve that in Map Settings -> Edit Script. In Unearth if you click 'Help' there's a link to the scripting commands for KeeperFX: https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx/wiki/New-and-Modified-Level-Script-Commands
Keep in mind LEVEL_VERSION(1) must be at the top of the script if you're using the KeeperFX scripting commands.

The copy-paste solution is here - copy these lines to the bottom of your script:
QUICK_INFORMATION(2, "Second message.", ALL_PLAYERS)
QUICK_INFORMATION(1, "Welcome to my map.", ALL_PLAYERS)

I don't have much experience with DK scripting myself, so asking me anything is the same amount of effort as figuring it out yourself. Check out the DK discord: https://discord.com/invite/zKTjfDh
There's a bunch of people there who love to answer scripting questions and solve bugs with the game. I don't know what's up with the taunting, if you don't want to use discord you can create an issue on the keeperfx github: https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx/issues
It might even be considered a bug with the game, in which case it should be reported.

A pre-rendered sprites exporter for Dungeon Keeper 1. It requires .gltf rigged models and animations to use so you'd want Blender installed as well to make best use of it.

See the KeeperFX discord for more info https://discord.com/invite/zKTjfDh

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You'll need the latest KeeperFX alpha for KFX format to work correctly. Be sure that you're on Stable version 0.5.0B as well before you install the alpha patch.

https://keeperfx.net/downloads

Large map sizes are a new feature that needed a new file format to be implemented.

Hi, I believe it crashes if you haven't selected the game executable. This window can't be ignored:


I know this part's a bit clunky but you need to use this window to navigate to the directory that you installed Dungeon Keeper to. Then click on the keeperfx.exe or keeper.exe file.

If this window isn't appearing then you can open it by clicking "File -> Preferences -> Game executable" or by deleting settings.cfg

If this isn't your issue then I'll need more info.

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https://github.com/rainlizard/Unearth/releases

Hi, sorry about the lack of translation.

To lock a door, first be in 'Edit: Thing' mode by clicking the button at the top, then click on the Door object. It will automatically open 'Inspect', from there you can edit the properties of the object, such as its 'Door locked' state.


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Thanks for the bug report. My bad, I forgot about maintaining compatibility with the original GoG DOS version, it was only working correctly for KeeperFX.

I've uploaded a fix: v0.24c

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Undo is difficult to implement. I added "Reload map" to the File menu as a stopgap solution, though it's for using when you make a mistake and haven't saved yet. To fix your campaign maps download keeperfx again and copy the levels from it.

One thing I could possibly try implementing is keeping a copy of the map files before you save them so you could undo saves. Kinda like keeping "backups". A feature like that is much easier than the ability to undo individual actions.

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If you've got multiple DK directories you might also need to reselect the game executable (Settings->Game executable) so the editor knows which /data/ directory to look inside.

I don't think Python has anything to do with anything. The editor is written in Godot's GDScript and dernc.exe was written in C.

There could be some very obscure reason why dernc.exe isn't working for you. What version of Windows are you using? One idea is to try using the dernc.exe executable by itself to see if that works. In command line (Run -> cmd) you use it very simply like so:

"C:\directory\dernc.exe" "C:\directory\TMAPA000.DAT"

But for now, to get the editor up and working, you simply need some decompressed TMAPA files. The latest alpha of KeeperFX supplies them decompressed already.
https://keeperklan.com/threads/7239-KeeperFX-Test-builds-for-version-0-4-9
https://keeperfx-loobinex.keeperklan.com/alphabuilds/
Since you have 0.4.8 you'd have to install keeperfx_0_4_9_alpha_2215.7z then fx_alpha_2696_from_2215.zip, which as of writing this post is the latest.

If there's a reason you don't want to install the latest KeeperFX, you can simply copy the tmapa files from fx_alpha_2696_from_2215.zip into your DK's /data/ directory, replacing the old ones. By the way these files only contain texture map tilesets, nothing more. I just remembered you can also tell if a tmapa file is decompressed by whether it's 544KB or not.

If I recall correctly, that means the "tmapa000.dat" files (in DK's /data/ directory) aren't properly being decompressed when they should be. So the editor is instead reading the RNC compressed versions, causing this static reading.

The editor usually decompresses these files but it may have trouble doing so if the DK directory has no write permissions. The problem is most likely that you've installed Dungeon Keeper to "C:/Program Files/" (Windows is fussy about that directory) and so this can be fixed if you move DK's directory elsewhere. There was supposed to be a write permissions error but maybe it didn't pop up.

If you like, you can check whether your tmapa000.dat files are still compressed by opening them in a Hex editor or Notepad and if the first three chars are: R N C, that means it's still a compressed file and Unearth hasn't successfully decompressed it.

The compression stuff was a big pain to deal with. There's a lot of compressed maps too, Unearth actually runs an external program from a subfolder (unearthdata\rnc-decompressor\dernc.exe) for each compressed file, since the algorithms were too difficult for me to rewrite.

Hello, glad to hear the editor is easy to use. You can try deleting the settings.cfg file that's next to unearth.exe, or download and extract Unearth to a new separate folder.

The position of the window is remembered so maybe a bug is caused by somehow remembering the window position off screen.

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Well done, I've never played the game like that relying on allies to that degree while having no player damage, that's kinda untested territory. I sort of tried to build the bosses around combating different playstyles, but I don't know whether it turned out like that. After a quick double check it seems like they all chew through your allies at fairly different rates, surprisingly the northern boss seems to be the one who is the poorest at killing your allies despite firing 10 billion projectiles. While the eastern boss is the best at it, however the eastern boss was designed to fall quickly to builds with high Energy/Frenzy so it's balanced like that.

Using lifedrain on bosses sounds like some silly gameplay though lol, maybe I shouldn't have allowed that. I think I prevented bosses from being rot (poisoned) because I like to avoid tedium. But then again, having freedom in playstyles for the sake of fun is a good thing too.

This time shouldn't be too hard for someone to beat.

(ver 1.00)

During development the bosses were playtested 1v1 while having stats of: 12 Lifeblood, 12 Energy, 12 Strength, 12 Technique, 12 Restoration and a Longsword. So defeating all of them while having much lower stats than this run should be possible.

I've implemented a bunch of the things mentioned in this thread for version 1.00

https://rainlizard.itch.io/slautios/devlog/222328/100

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It will do I think. Also I'd like them to be distinguishing (some colour code maybe?), because in the end of the game enemies just litter weapons everywhere and trinket finding ends up into cherrypicking.

I am uncertain about your idea of colour-distinguished item drops. It sounds good in theory, but it would hurt several factors: the lootbox gamble (you don't know what you'll get, which I believe is core to items in Dark Souls being fun to pickup), the game will start looking like a rainbow (despite my colourful enemies I do generally prefer a gloomy gothic look), and it would also hurt game balance just a little as you may start avoiding picking up item types based on their colour which would make the game easier providing you more free light. There's a small risk-reward factor in the act of picking up an item instead of leaving it on the floor, you'll also notice when you discard an item it no longer provides light.

I can decrease the late-game weapon drop rate a little if you think you are being swarmed with too many weapon drops. It really is an arbitrary matter, there's no rule to the amount of weapons I'm providing the player. It's currently 3% (0 Luck) to 10% (25 Luck), should I change it to "3% to 8%"? The problem is that after death this determines how quickly you will find an initial replacement for your Bone weapon so it should probably remain high for the game to be less tedious.

Unfortunately, I figured out to equip them only when I opened the inventory to switch weapons... Yep, I'm that simple minded.

I could add a tutorial message which upon picking up an artifact commands you to equip it. I didn't think this would be necessary but I guess it's important.

It looks better at 90, Darklings are more distinguishable from floor and some objects start to looking more solid. 80 is too low, it makes walls too eye unfriendly.

I've ordered an expensive colour correct monitor on amazon (because this crap has been driving me nuts) hopefully I'll determine once and for all the perfect picture values.

The order of bosses was W>S>E>N (but now I think I would go E>S>W>N).

I am very surprised to see your boss order because I thought North boss was the easiest! lol
If you didn't realize, you can pop its projectiles by attacking them (a large swinging weapon helps). But I imagine it could be extra difficult if you have bad luck with enemy spawns, as that boss certainly likes to kite around.

Shield of Blood is imbalanced and makes you virtually invulnerable (I wouldn't nerf or remove it though).

I thought Shield of Blood might be a bit too strong and I came to the same conclusion that it's alright to have some strong items, so you feel good when you find one. There is another way to nerf it though - rarity.
As it stands, all unstackable artifacts are 3 times rarer than stackable artifacts (Diseased heart is a stackable artifact, shields are unstackable) and then there's "Dead frog eggs" which I made even rarer as they block curses which gives you an entire reason to never take Necromancy (for curse resistance which allows you to take advantage of statue blessings with no downside). So I might put Shield of Blood on the same rarity level as Dead frog eggs (as a result you would find a Shield of Blood half as much as you currently do).

Bosses are underpowered (or I got overpowered), only centipede killed me once (and that's because it had many other enemies nearby), after this I farmed a bit more and then did my last run and all bosses were killed in one life.

I didn't spend a ton of time on bosses, I would've liked to add more boss attacks but I became too tired of working on the game. Bosses only have one or two attacks so a lower amount of HP seemed appropriate for that kind of simple gameplay. For normal monsters Cactus has the most HP at 600 and all the bosses have 8x that value at 4800 HP. But I am not opposed to buffing bosses if it would make the fight more fun without becoming tedious (tedium is something I always want to avoid), I do recognize that the normal enemies are probably harder to deal with than the bosses themselves. Should I increase all boss attacks' damage by 25% and increase boss HP by 25%? What do you think?

Domain turned out to be the most essential skill in the late-game, probably if I spent some points in it instead of Charisma and Luck I would beat this game even faster.

Regarding the late-game darkness, basically Pyromancy is instant darkness alleviation and Domain is slow darkness alleviation. (there's also Luck which provides a number of ways such as the Luminous stone, Lightseeds, Jarred bug, Bonus creature (sometimes), Torches and Blazing beetle pincers.)
Pyromancy is intended to be more useful at the beginning because you can easily kill monsters with it (that you might be lacking in poise damage to stunlock) which should help players who are bad at the combat, then becomes less useful late-game because it is limited and you may as well kill enemies with your weapons. Though it's always pretty useful against large packs of monsters that are chasing you (good AoE), or could be saved for a troublesome late-game enemy type. I had ideas to add more fire spells but I cut them in the interest of actually finishing the game.
As you've pointed out, Domain is fairly useless early game then it becomes one of the best stats for late game. Though it is possible to explore the deepest areas without it and even without Pyromancy, by using item-drop light. I notice your Necromancy is at 0, if that was at 25 instead of Domain then your game would be swarming with even more item-drops, it's an intended strategy to not pick up items in order to allow them to provide light for you.

15 deaths in your pic looks pretty good to me. My early attempts at playtesting my game netted me something like 50+ deaths (though I think that's back when I had insta-kill pits). I've played through about 6 times and became bored of it so I opened up public playtesting with 0.99. Here was my most recent run, where I tested to see if I could beat the game without Pyromancy or Domain or a Luminous stone:


It's hilarious to see that our Time is so similar. I guess it's a 4 hour game? I have less deaths because of using summons which draw aggro away from yourself. Oh and thanks for telling others about the game!

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When you first walk near an interactable the tutorial system will popup saying "Space : Interact". This includes items as they're an interactable, but it only happens once and so I guess this isn't good enough. I can add another controls popup specifically for items saying "Space : Pickup item". That's very easy to do.
You mentioned the "trinkets" being unobvious, but it says "Equip artifact" when you hover over it in inventory, isn't that good enough?
I'm not sure what you mean by light being difficult to master, more light = more easy game, because you can see the enemy as opposed to not seeing the enemy. I guess the only thing I would be concerned about are players not utilizing their Seek Glowbug ability, which is there so that players don't feel completely crushed by being lost in the dark. (though Glowbugs are missing in the deepest areas)

"Regain stamina on kill" was one of the stat variables I didn't spend much time on, so I might implement that idea. There is a slight intention to make stamina start as "something you are required to manage" to then level up to "being virtually infinite". This isn't souls where stamina is always something you are required to manage no matter the level. The combat is faster with more opponents, no one's got time to stare at the bar in the top left.

I find it funny you like the spears, I don't like them at all. I actually thought they might've needed to be longer. The ancient TV which I use as a monitor has some input lag though so precision is a little harder.
If you have trouble with the Cactus monsters then I would chalk that up to your poise damage not being high enough in order to stunlock them. Cactus have the highest HP in the game apart from bosses, and the poise levels of monsters runs parallel with their HP.
Yes Bell power granted relates directly to the XP of every monster that is aggro'd by the bell at the time that you ring it. At the moment it's 40%, so ringing a bell then killing every aggro'd enemy will grant you a total of 140% power. It should be possible to find the Bell once in every area, if it's unfindable then enemies probably broke it. I've debated it with myself and I probably won't remove the bell from Central because I want to train the player to abuse the bell because some of the most fun I've had in this game is ringing a bell in a deeper area then running back to Central to level up while I'm being chased by 50 guys in a dark maze that has newly generated (since going back to previous dungeons alters them).

"However, you should really give some indication on this. Some players will probably think that there is no progression in the dungeon."

I'm not sure if that's necessary, because the player should recognize that they're discovering new enemy types by venturing deeper. So what happens if they keep going deeper? Discover new enemy types forever? No, you discover the boss. The music stops to indicate that something is up. Also there's 4 strange icons in the level up screen when you hover over "Continue", I'm not sure if I should have added accompanying text to them.
There is a potential problem where the player doesn't explore the deepest area properly and doesn't find the boss. Would this be considered a flaw? Surely players would properly explore the deepest area.

An issue with overhauling level progression is I'd have to playtest it and I'm sorry to say but at this point of development I'd rather accept flaws that are core to the experience than fix them. Because I want to move on. For example I don't like the terrain perspective (that zelda crap I went with) but there's no way in hell I can change it now.
Though I don't personally consider linear leveling progression a flaw. Maybe Dark Souls is the one who did it wrong, did you consider that, eh? I bet there's a lot of dark souls players who didn't know about the softcaps and ruined their builds!

Version 1.00 won't be changing anything major, just some bug fixes.

It's a free game, I won't be selling it, dev is a hobby. It's the greatest free game ever made! (well those are some big shoes to fill so maybe not)
Instead of buying, tell others about the game, I need more feedback before I'm done with it. Marketing is hard (is marketing the correct word to use for a free game?), consider me as someone who doesn't like talking to people despite these walls of text.

By the way, tell me if a lower Gamma value looks better. In ESC menu go to Graphics -> Colour Profile -> change Gamma to 80 or 90. You may be surprised to see Blue at 130, but you will be even more surprised to learn I designed all my art on a crappy low budget TV and had to create a colour correction shader to fix it. I think the gamma may have been incorrect too.

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Thank you. Several hours straight? That's what I like to hear!
I am indeed a fan of souls, particularly the Tomb of the Giants area from DS1 was a big inspiration.
It's nice to hear the praise though I find it humourous you listed "icons" there, I pretty much took a massive shortcut by having monochrome ability and item icons. All other roguelites use coloured icons.
I've also heard from someone else about the difficulty curve being too difficult at the beginning and poor tutorialing. There might be one or two small changes I can make. If players could tell me the most common way they're dying in the central starting zone then I could definitely apply some nerfs.
I tried something like logarithmic progression briefly but I wasn't a fan. Maybe my algorithm was too extreme but the later levels of a stat seemed useless to level up, which encouraged you to be an all-rounder. From my playtesting, linear progression seems to always remain interesting throughout until the end of the game.
The claim about being "turned into a death machine at the 13th level and game becomes a piece of cake" I take with a grain of salt, the central starting zone will quickly become easily conquerable as is intended, but deeper areas will still give you trouble unless you have very high stats. Did you know? This game has an end! Haha.

There is a potential flaw I recognize with the game, where you could grind the central starting zone until you maxed out ALL your stats. I think this is a possibility in a lot of RPGs, but it's probably fine here as long as the player recognizes that they get way more XP (Power) within deeper areas. Maybe I need to communicate that to the player. I was also thinking of removing the Bell from the starting zone (so you have to go North, South, East or West to find a bell) because it seems too easy there to ring it and run back to level up.

I apologize about the escape menu not pausing. I am not trying to imitate dark souls here. This is a problem with the way I have coded the game and Game Maker Studio. Hopefully this is the last video game ever made that is coded without using delta time. I have since learned to use Godot and use delta there.
A pause menu without delta time is possible but it would probably be buggy and abusable. (I would just manually deactivate enemies)
I'll take a look at the pit issue later. The collision on the pits will probably always feel terrible though lol, there's probably a lot of code I need to write in order to treat the pit not as a wall but as something that you can walk closely overlapping.

I thought that heal bug was already fixed, I'll have to look at it again. Luckily you don't lose anything during that softlock.

I guess I'll try sharing it on lame ass social media for version 1.00. Thanks.

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Convenient: hitting the install button then instantly playing. That's the itch app's best feature.
Inconvenient: loading up the URL from your main internet browser into the app. It's not worth bothering with.

Most itch.io game URLs are shared and browsed from within your normal internet browser. So I think it would be convenient if there was an "open page in app" or "install in app" button on every game's page that you could click which would open the app and browse to the same game page, or better yet: instantly start installing. That would be the ultimate convenience.

As it stands, the itch app is too out-of-the-way to be bothering with. I may as well just continue using Firefox/Chrome to download games.

Another idea is allowing this with a browser extension.