Dweller 1.22.14

I managed to screw up the last release by not having the new dev machine properly configured. It's resolved now and a new version with several game play tweaks and a few new items has been released. Here's the full list of changes:

#599 Adjust distance penalty for missiles
#594 Nerf starting stats of the Ranger's dog
#593 It should not be possible to use missile weapons at point blank range
#592 Show Mana on item info screen
#591 Add Moonstone Circlet
#590 Add Mana increase to several items
#589 Add Rod of Subduing
#588 Increase drop chance of Wizard's Staff
#587 Mark Animated Armor as undead/lifeless
#586 Make sure creatures wake up if they are pushed aside by larger creatures
#585 Make sure creatures wake up if they are knocked back Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2013/01/dweller-12214.html

Dweller 1.22.13 - Happy new year!

After an unusually long period of no releases I'm finally back with a new Dweller release. I have been very busy at work, there's been the Christmas holiday to plan and enjoy and it's taken some time to set up the Dweller build environment on a Macbook Pro (I've used a PC up until now), but now it's pretty safe to say that most hurdles and road blocks for swift development of Dweller have been cleared away. 2013 will be a great year for Dweller with many exciting things planned! Happy new year everyone!


#569 Fix issue with quickslot indicator in inventory list not working for all items
#584 Add Elven Quicksilver Blade
#576 Try to clarify what the attack speed % means (ie is 80% better or worse than 120%)
#571 Pathfinding should work across poison if you're poison resistant
#583 Reduce casting time of spells to 100% (same as other actions)
#582 Minotaur's Axe should not be enchantable
#562 Add a way to distinguish named monsters from normal ones
#579 zzZ not present over a sleeping monster
Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2012/12/dweller-12213-happy-new-year.html

Vote for Dweller!

It's time to vote for Roguelike of the Year. This annual event is arranged by Andrew Doull (one of the guys behind Roguelike Radio). If you've enjoyed playing Dweller this year I'd very much appreciate if you could vote for me!

Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2012/12/vote-for-dweller.html

HAWKEN Open Beta!

Good news mech pilots! HAWKEN has entered open beta! I've played the closed beta and the game is really well made. Try the beta and see for yourself!

Status update

Some of you who are used to a very rapid release cycle may start to feel a bit worried about the lack of releases lately. Don't worry though, I haven't abandoned Dweller! I've simply had too much work to do at my day job. I recently got assigned to an iOS project and had to learn a whole new world of things... I'm starting to get used to the company Macbook Pro I borrowed. Objective-C isn't as terrible as before when I only had looked at code and never written a line myself. The iPhone is still a bit crap as is the horrible XCode IDE (yes, yes, my colleagues are nagging me to install AppCode).

All in all it's been a fairly good experience and it's even gotten as far as me ordering a Macbook Pro of my own (insanely expensive, but with monster specs). I intend to dual-boot it with Windows 8 and use it as my main development machine when on the move. A positive side-effect may be that Dweller for iOS is a little bit closer to a reality than before!

And when it comes to Dweller I'm actually getting closer to completing a version of Dweller that makes use of Libgdx to significantly improve rendering performance. It's still far from complete, but yesterday I got a version running with the correct graphics but with a few rendering artifacts.

I'll try to make an interim release with some minor changes and improvements that have been discussed on the forum.

Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2012/12/status-update.html

Development plan - Winter 2012

I thought I should share my rather fuzzy development plan for Dweller for the coming few months. The plan is fuzzy because I find myself more and more unsure of what to do to improve Dweller further. I'm sure there's a ton of things I could do, but I've worked on Dweller for so long and that makes it hard to look at the game with fresh eyes (like a player who discovers Dweller for the first time). I've never meant for Dweller to be anything but a hobby project where I can experiment with different coding practices, technologies, platforms and have fun coding. At the same time it is pretty obvious that the average Android users expects a hell of a lot more of a game today than only one or two years ago. Anything less than a triple A title and you're required to be either very innovative to get player attention or be content with a much smaller group of brilliant gamers who can see beyond pretty pictures and enjoy a game because of other merits. You guys who are reading this are among the latter group, and I love you for it, but that doesn't mean I can't have at least a little bit of both, does it?

This is why at least part of my plans for the winter are about polishing the game in such a way to make it more attractive to "the masses". So, without further ado, here's the plan:

• Add an intro screen. I'd like to have some pretty pictures to give a good first impression.
• Improve the death/win screen. Currently it's something of an anti-climax to beat the game.
• Add music and sound (at least for Android and desktop version, most likely not for J2ME). I'm in touch with a composer who is working on music for Dweller. 
• Improve rendering performance by switching to OpenGL using libgdx or similar. Tablet performance is total crap at the moment and low-end Android devices are also starting to struggle. Switching to hardware accelerated rendering will increase performance significantly.
• Add player perks. I'd like to see something similar to talent trees (as seen in WoW, Torchlight, Diablo etc). It's going to be hard to balance, but I'd really like to allow the player to within each class come up with different kinds of character builds supported by talents/perks.
• Add more dungeon variation with rare rooms, encounters and items.

I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on the focus of Dweller in the months to come. In the words of House Stark, "Winter is coming", and I'd like to have a solid plan backed by the community to get it all done.

Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2012/11/development-plan-winter-2012.html

Dweller 1.22.12

Minor release primarily focused on bug fixes and stability issues. Full list of changes:


#553 Remove teleport traps from the labyrinth
#554 Unique monsters/bosses should ignore hidden traps
#555 Make sure that banishing a previously summoned ally when trying to summon it again never fails
#556 Adjust message sequence to show trigger message before damage message when moving to a cell with a trap
#557 Remove duplicate "You miss" message when the player misses a target
#558 Periodic effects such as poison should trigger on any action, not just movement
#559 Items that recharge when an enemy is killed should not have to be equipped to be recharged
#560 Adjust delay of stun effect to be half the time it takes for the stunned creature to make a move
#561 Make sure to not change position of an item in a quickslot if it is enchanted or recharged
#552 Fix broken room where items can sometimes be generated in walls
#544 Fix problem with item on the ground being destroyed when receiving a quest reward
#531 Being disarmed while all neighboring tiles are filled with items should not destroy the dropped weapon
#564 Player box does not properly update at all times
#565 Chest traps should not prevent the player from opening chest using targeting mode
#566 It should be possible to see if an item is in a quickslot from the inventory list

Source and comments: http://www.dwellergame.com/2012/11/dweller-12212.html