Desktop Dungeons

Welcome to the modern era of gaming! In a supreme flush of forward thinking and divinely-inspired game dev smarts, we’ve implemented an alternative UI for enemy engagement, giving players the option to select a foe and kill it with the help of a quick options menu instead of the classic DD fighting style. Great for mouse users and surprise-click death victims!

The old Kingdom continues to be erased in favour of newer, more accessible interface panels. Information now flows throughout the screen like a unique solid/liquid hybrid of manna and ambrosia. Word has it that next week we’ll be seeing the final round of art for Kingdom buildings, too. Hooray!

This week’s blog post is short and sweet, as we continue to focus on interface changes and improvements. We’ve struck at one or two bugs where possible (including that pesky Gaan-Telet dungeon generation error), so check the changelog for details: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s somewhat satisfying whenever we wipe out the more uggo elements of the old UI in favour of newer, sleeker and more accessible systems. The Kingdom continues receiving love on all fronts, helped along generously by user reports which let us work out the kinks that much faster.

This week, we’ve been putting our work into the default Kingdom and map side panels, both of which have been in sore need of updating for quite a while. The obsolete information displays and quest listings have left the scene, replaced by stuff that’s easier to use and much friendlier on the eyes (our Kingdom Advisor panel will be making a return later in a different and much more impactful form).

We’ve also managed to properly implement regeneration trails in-dungeon, which is a huge relief for us. As it turns out, teaching people about the marriage of exploration and regeneration is a rather thorough exercise in pulling teeth. Visually reinforcing where one’s health comes from – and where it ends up – is one of our most vital weapons in the war of understanding. Perhaps we’ll write a post sometime about common gamer expectations versus departures from the norm, because this issue alone has given us more pain than third-degree burns at a salt convention.

The radial menus mentioned in this week’s dev blog aren’t in the game yet, because we want to polish them a bit more (not much use giving people an alternative interface yet if it’s not 100% convenient to use, right?).

Aside from one or two changes which could be considered bug fixes more than anything else, we don’t really have much in the way of balance adjustment for you this week. Graphical improvement, however, marches proudly on. Changelog follows: Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s an interface update, folks. The most noticeable change is the movement of building panels into the Kingdom’s sidebar, which involved a fair bit of code reshuffling to make the new system work as intended (you may read that as code for “here be dragons and / or uncaught bugs”).

As those of you who read our blog post on the subject are already aware, we’re trying to get certain tasks and game areas done and dusted in a very definite manner. We’ve already abandoned most trivial balancing concerns (favouring user interface and player expectation problems) and we’d like to get the Kingdom locked down soon, too. Expect regular poking at that over the next few weeks.

Since the changelog generally does a good job of explaining what already IS changing, we’ll mention here that the coming weeks are also going to see more changes made to the in-dungeon interface, mostly related to combat interactions and supporting animations for “everyday” stat adjustments. We’ve been receiving a lot of feedback from new players recently about their experiences with the early stages of DD. Our thanks to all of you – even the horribly confused ones. Especially the horribly confused ones.

Slowly but surely, our Kingdom is winning the war against its greatest and most long-standing nemesis: poor UI. The changelog that follows chronicles just one battle in this epic, years-long conflict: Read the rest of this entry »

This week is heavier on bugfixes again, but we’ve made a few interface and design tweaks according to recent player concerns (don’t get too excited about balance though, we’re keeping our interference super light on that from now on).

The new effects icons should start rolling out this week, and will continue doing so for a while (you may remember us teasing the concepts for those in previous blog images). We’ve also got more significant plans for Kingdom interface improvements which will hopefully be gracing your screens next week. We’re not just talking about artwork, here – extra user interface optimisations are lurking off the port bow, cap’n.

A few other ragtag changes of note: we’ve done teensy tiny tweaks to the Tinker and Transmuter challenges which should make them more readable and consistently doable (mostly by massaging the RNG, so let’s see how well a more subtle approach works). We’ve also done away with the initial buying of prep slots, at least for now, so hopefully that’ll make the play experience a bit smoother in this area.

That’s it for now! The rest is detailed in the changelog. Because it’s the changelog that you both deserve and need right now. It’s kinda like some sort of double hero, maybe? Or maybe just an obscenely stretched pop culture reference. Either way, it follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Right, so a bunch of you have been complaining about the apparent dissonance between the Transmuter’s lore and his abilities. We’ve attempted to clarify this point with an all-new set of Transmuter challenges that absorb the old storyline and update it just a lil’ bit. Have fun!

As is the norm recently, we’re pleased to announce a few interface improvements and an important development in the war against erroneous logging (hawww yeah!). The inventory and prep panels have been improved and we’ve also removed the questionable Gardening Shears from play.

Enjoy this week’s update, that’s the last of our bonus challenge series. The feedback in recent weeks has been fantastic, thank you! Changelog follows: Read the rest of this entry »

The Tinker challenge dungeons are in now!

Aside from that, welcome to the first full update week in a while. Phew. We nailed a chunk of that huuuuuuge bug list that crept up on us over the break, tweaked some minor balance issues here and there (in an unprecedented move, we’ve been quite generous towards players) and performed some well-needed interface maintenance.

Some notable fixes and tasks: we’re working on the login problems that some folks are having (with game sessions repeatedly demanding usernames and passwords), PQI Vicious awards a much bigger chunk of gold to victors and more work has been put into effects icons and information density concerning your heroes. As the past two blog images may suggest, we’re also hoping to get some revised icon art into the game soon.

Enjoy this week’s update, and let us know what you think of the latest round of improvements.

This week’s changelog is slightly bulkier than the last one. Are you ready for this? Okay, brace yourself, let’s go! The list awaits below: Read the rest of this entry »

GDC is behind us for another year – and so are the long flights, communication delays and jet lag. Our normal update / work schedule resumes next week, but we’ve thrown together a couple of things for the front end that you’ll appreciate, including an all-new set of Crusader challenges featuring the all-new Ratling opponents featuring an all-new story told across several paragraphs of all-new epic writing.

All new!

So this is us getting into gear again. You can expect a full update next week with the regular dose of beta adjustments, poorly-constructed witticisms and life-changing work. Cheers for now!

Our artist is hard at work right now making effects sheet adjustments and fancy new icons for a lot of everyday stuff (half of the ability roster seems to be represented by a pool of blood right now. Seriously). Minor changelog follows, but we’ll actually have more tweaks next week: Read the rest of this entry »

The GDC has ended. We have fled San Francisco and the indie hostel will once again have free IPs. Unfortunately this means that the Free for GDC period is coming to an end as well. 2233 people took the opportunity to take a look at where Desktop Dungeons is now, it is our sincerest wish that they had a good time. And, just in case any of them would like to continue having said good time, here’s the link for pre-ordering Desktop Dungeons.

In the spirit of having good times, here’s a picture of Marc and I hanging out with the astounding duo of DannyB and Grant Kirkhope at the Mojang party last week. Yes, it really did get that silly, but what else would you expect?

Click here to sign up and play the Desktop Dungeons beta for free until the 31st of March!

Our annual pilgrimage to the GDC in San Francisco has begun (in fact, it’s well enough underway that we’ve had nearly enough time to recover from our 29hr transit) and, as is our custom, we’re throwing open the beta to anyone that would like to play it this whole week!

All you need to do is click here, enter your email address, prove you’re not a robot and you should be receiving a validation email from us within 15 minutes! As an added bonus, your progress will be saved should you find you can’t live without Desktop Dungeons next week.

P.S. The Desktop Dungeons forums are a great place to look for tips and tricks or give us feedback on the game.

Hail, fair Desktop Dungeons supporters! Today, QCF is flying from sunny South Africa all the way over to GDC 2013 in the glorious urban utopia of San Francisco, to frolick amidst like-minded professionals and play Game Developer Katamari with as many quirky industry types as possible.

This means that today’s release is a little earlier than usual (yay!) and consists mostly of tweaks and interface adjustments and miscellaneous changes (not quite so yay, but still kinda important).

For the majority of the conference, your best bet on keeping touch with QCF is via the twitter accounts @dislekcia and @aequitasZA , where a whole manner of GDC adventures will be recorded in 140-character form. And in case folks are sad about the disruption to our regular broadcast, we have something special planned for the coming week.

It’s short and sweet this week, there’s a plane to catch! We’ll see you on the other side. And in the meantime, cuddle up with this changelog and give it a good read: Read the rest of this entry »