The next Dweller release and the future

Now that I (hopefully) got rid of most of the serious bugs introduced these last couple of release I hope to be able to work a bit more on (re)playability. I want each Dweller session to feel unique and fun, and the gameplay throughout a game should not be too repetitive. I've learnt over the years that writing new features is not the hard part. The hard part of writing a game is to make the game interesting and fun to play. I have a list of things I'd like to do in future versions of Dweller, but it is far from complete and I am by no means a game designer. Things I'd like to do:

User experience

• Add more in-game help
• Make Dweller translatable

Inventory

• Add an option to Use Many (for instance use 3 Mushrooms of healing in one go, without having to go in to the menu between each use)

Map

• Place stairs further apart
• Perhaps add several stairs up/down, possibly to different branches ("You see a staircase leading down to the sewers", "You see a staircase leading down to a dungeon")
• Sewers: Add junk that can be searched for items (can spawn monsters and/or cause disease)
• New map type: Catacombs. Undead monsters mostly. Coffins that can be opened for loot/monsters
• New map elements: Altar (sacrifice items to gain favors), Teleporter, Fountain (healing, antidote, mutation, poison)
• Minimap
• Evaluate Fog of War monster "ghosts" - remove monsters and keep only items?

Monsters

• Add some kind of danger assessment to monsters (Harmless, Weak, Even, Dangerous, Deadly etc)
• Named monsters (mini bosses)
• Immobile monsters: Statues, Deadly plants
• Show monster description at first encounter of a new monster
• More monsters!
• Monsters should avoid undiscovered traps (they already avoid discovered traps)

Items

• Other lightsources (fires, torches)

Spells

• Curse (decreases chance of attacking/casting spells or maybe preventing items from being removed)
• Acid (damages inventory and/or equipment)

Death/Win

• Improve "game over" screen

Gameplay

• Investigate if a Rest command should be added (regain HP with the risk of monsters ambushing)
• Possibly add difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard). Maybe prevent use of stairs up on Hard or something? No starting inventory? Separate highscore tables (or a single one with a score bonus depending on difficulty).

I am very interested in hearing some player feedback and suggestions on how to make Dweller even better. Do you have an idea how to improve Dweller? Please let me know!

Dweller 1.1.3 released

Time for another update. This time it's a mix of bug fixes, graphical tweaks and some changes to the save/load code in the Android version. Changes:

NEW FEATURES

- Monster descriptions are shown upon first encounter

CHANGES

- Underlying floor tile rendered for traps, doors and chests

- Android - save/load code reworked. Should work on 2.2 devices now

- When selling an equipped item you have more than one of you no longer un-equip the item first

BUG FIXES
- Solved a recently introduced bug with the map generator that could cause disconnected levels

Download and installtion instructions at http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Dweller#Download_and_Installation_instructions

Dweller 1.1 bugfix release

The 1.0.2 release was unfortunately a bit buggy. I didn't have enough time to test all aspects of the release and had to release too early due to my vacation plans. Well, now I'm back and ready to release version 1.1 of Dweller. The new release is mainly a bugfix and balancing release with the following things done:


NEW FEATURES
- The merchant will be named after player who have contributed to the game by submitting bug reports or giving feedback

CHANGES
- Adjusted item prices. No more arrows being worth thousands of gold.
- When you sell something to the merchant you won't get paid the full price of the item

BUG FIXES
- There was an issue with Scrolls of Recall that left a player ghost on the level you travelled from
- Game over crash bug
- Crash bug when redefining keys
- Some monster graphics were wrong
- Traps and secret doors in the caves are no longer clearly visible even when not found
- Android - Cycle Target set to Menu key
- Going back from the Buy/Sell item list takes you to the correct screen
- Improved touch screen srolling in menues
- It was possible to kill the merchant with ranged attacks

Download and instructions here:

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Dweller#Download_and_Installation_instructions

A new version o Dweller incoming soon

I've had two busy weeks with a lot of summer activities that have prevented me from working effectively on a bug-fix version of Dweller. Some work has been done, and I expect to get a lot done next week with a goal to have a new release out before the end of next week.

I would like to thank everyone who have sent feedback on the latest release. Your feedback is invaluable! As a token of my appreciation everyone who have given feedback or will give feedback in the future will get their name into the game. The merchant on level 1 will be randomly named each game from a list of people who have given feedback. You will come across merchants like Jeff the trader, Mateusz the merchant and so on. Thanks again!

Dweller bugfix

It turned out that there were problems with the sewer level that I did not catch when testing... how sloppy of me... :-( Since I'm on my way on a one week vacation I had to release a patched version (1.0.2) with the sewer level disabled. I'll release a proper bugfix next week. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Dweller 1.0 released

I released a new version of Dweller today. The new version comes packed with goodies, most notably a well deserved graphical overhaul, courtesy of Oryx. The graphics also comes with simple idle animations. In the next version I have plans for things like attack and spell animations.

In this version I have also decided to remove the ASCII version of the display completely and make the game more accessible to new players outside of the roguelike scene.

Another brand new feature is the merchant on the surface from whom you can buy and sell items. This should increase survivability quite a bit and make the game easier.

Download from:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Dweller#Download_and_Installation_instructions

Change log:

NEW Brand new graphics
NEW Simple idle animations
NEW Merchant on the surface to buy and sell from
NEW Scroll of Recall to move between surface and deepest dungeon level visited

CHANGE ASCII mode removed

FIX Null pointer on rare occasion when switching level
FIX Null pointer when viewing an empty inventory/ability category
FIX Runetime exception when restarting the game after it has been halted (Android)

New graphics for Dweller

hSince the initial release of the Android version of Dweller I have come to realize that the current graphics for Dweller simply wont work on higher resolutions. The 8x8 tiles will not look good when scaled to above twice their size and I need at least 24x24 pixel tiles for high resolution devices.

I decided to make a post on a few pixel artist sites like Pixel Joint and Pixelation. I was surprised by the number of replies I got and the quality of the sample artwork many of the pixel artists sent me. I finally made a decision to work with a really talented US based pixel artist who goes by the handle Oryx. I first saw Oryx work at TIG Source a while back and was struck by the retro style and the crispness and overall coolness of the graphics he makes. I'm happy to be working with him and hope to have a new version with Oryx' graphics ready in a week or two.

Here's a few screendumps from a dev. version of Dweller showing the new graphics:

The guy next to the warrior with the sword is a merchant. In a coming version of Dweller you will be able to buy and sell things to the merchant to get upgrades and means of improving your survivability in the dungeon.