Desktop Dungeons

[dislekcia]

It bothered me that the Desktop Dungeons window is so small, but when you maximize it, the aspect ratio gets messed up, making the game look somewhat distorted.

That's odd. The game should fullscreen and maintain its aspect ratio, filling in the unused areas of the screen with black bars. This works fine on my widescreen laptop and my 4:3 desktop. Any chance of a zipped screenshot so that I can try to see what the problem might be?

Also, I know what you mean about the window seeming really small at normal res. I can't play it that way ;)

[Syrion]

That's odd. The game should fullscreen and maintain its aspect ratio, filling in the unused areas of the screen with black bars. This works fine on my widescreen laptop and my 4:3 desktop. Any chance of a zipped screenshot so that I can try to see what the problem might be?

Also, I know what you mean about the window seeming really small at normal res. I can't play it that way ;)

You're right, I actually used the wrong term. The aspect ratio is fine, but as the maximized window's resolution isn't necessarily a "natural" multiple of the default resolution, the scaling isn't quite right, making some "pixels" look bigger than others.
Here's a little part of a screen at twice the normal resolution and next to it what it looks like when I maximize the window on my 1280x1024 desktop:


Most noticably the eyes are uneven, as are the two bandits in general. That's what I ment by "distorted". It's not a huge issue and I played it like that for a while, but I really prefer it looking "clean" at exactly twice the normal size.

[Suho]

Nice script, Syrion. Thanks. I've always played DD at the natural resolution for precisely the reason you mention.

(Still, it would be nice to have a higher resolution game--i.e., that the game's native resolution would be double what it is now, or at least maybe 50%. Don't know if that's in the cards, though. It would take a reworking of the entire graphics set, for one.)

[dislekcia]

(Still, it would be nice to have a higher resolution game--i.e., that the game's native resolution would be double what it is now, or at least maybe 50%. Don't know if that's in the cards, though. It would take a reworking of the entire graphics set, for one.)

You'll be pleased to know that we've upped the res for the full version :)

[Suho]

You'll be pleased to know that we've upped the res for the full version :)

Yay! I am most definitely pleased! :D

[dislekcia]

Just a bit of a heads-up, some bad news has come up that means we're not at full capacity right now... We're not going anywhere and we're certainly not stopping dev on the game, we're just not 100% up to speed right now. So I'm afraid that the new version's going to be a little later than we expected.

Sorry about that. At least we didn't set a date that we could slip...

[Almost]

Finally, some insight into exactly how people are getting those hectic scores! Altho I'm still curious as to how people are getting non-vamp high scores. Vamps are hax, after all.

It's been a while since I've played, but I had a couple of the high non vamp scores. After killing the boss as quickly as possible it comes down to doing as much damage as possible. This means attacking enemies but not quite killing them and then exploring to heal them. For maximizing damage, human is obviously the best class, and I usually went with either rogues or monks.

With the rogue you have a lot of attack, and so can get a lot of extra damage in that last hit. (If the enemy is at 1 health and you have 100 attack you get points for the full 100 damage)
With the human monk you do not initially have much attack, but after converting a few glyphs, worshipping taurog, and buying some items, you have a huge attack while also having 50+ % resistances and double regeneration. This means that you can attack lots of enemies without worrying about dieing (trying to not kill them, if you can help it) and you will heal enough from just a few tiles to continue doing this with a lot of different enemies at once.

[GG Crono]

I have never been a big fan of Roguelikes, but man, I tried this and I absolutely love it. Good work! :D

(I even made a TVTropes article for it, because I am a huge dork.)

Though, I have a question for the playerbase. Is it just me, or is IMAWAL kind of useless? I mean, you're depriving yourself of EXP and blocking off a path. I can't think of any scenario in which this would be a good idea.

[Suho]

(I don't know if the following information might be considered "spoilers," but I couldn't find a spoiler tag or even any way to change the font color...)

Well, I suppose it might not be a completely bad idea for a Transmuter (which gets the wall-destroying glyph for free, can cast it for 1 mana, and regains HP for every wall destroyed). Having the Earthmother as your patron deity will also give you +1 HP to your max HP for every monster you petrify. Finally, there are also some scoring bonuses for petrifying monsters.

Whether or not any of these advantages make up for possibly blocking a path and missing out on XP, though, is another story. I used the IMAWAL glyph precisely once--the first time I picked it up--and then never touched it again.

[GG Crono]

I used the IMAWAL glyph precisely once--the first time I picked it up--and then never touched it again.

Yeah, same. Even as a Transmuter or while worshiping Earthmother, I don't think either of those things outweigh getting EXP.

[Suho]

Yeah, I expect (hope?) that this aspect of the game will get a facelift in the next version.

Nice TV Tropes article, by the way. :)

[GG Crono]

Thank you! Feel free to add to it. :)

[dislekcia]

Yeah, petrification is a problem at the moment... The changes to the worship system have meant that IMAWAL is now a more considered glyph instead of an almost instant-conversion.

There are other things we might do to it to balance it up a little, although you're right, there are few things we could give players that outweigh the exp-loss AND aren't super exploitable (like if it dropped a random attack/mana/hp bonus, for instance).

[GG Crono]

Speaking just for myself, I would not be sad to just see it go and have the Earthmother's bonus changed altogether.

Maybe extra HP per level the way Binlor Ironshield gives extra attack? That would be a nice option. But I'm no developer, and I'm sure there's a delicate balance of...er...balance. I trust that the dude doing the tinkering knows what he's doing! ;)

[shizak]

hey everybody,

i had to re-install my xp-pro-machine and since that i can't seem to get desktop dungeons running!
i also get the "Unexpected error occurred when running the game." message like squid did( http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthre...195#post237195 )

i extracted all the files, i also tried a fresh 'install' (i.e. fresh download without saves) but it's always the same: click on .exe ->loading image->error message

if you could only help me!! i am soooooo addicted!!


edit:
damn, the panic must have blinded me, since it was so obvious.... newly installed threatfire was the culprit. killed the processes with process hacker(since task manager is not able to) and now it works again!!
so if anybody else got this message, try killing the processes of your security software.

[dislekcia]

damn, the panic must have blinded me, since it was so obvious.... newly installed threatfire was the culprit. killed the processes with process hacker(since task manager is not able to) and now it works again!!
so if anybody else got this message, try killing the processes of your security software.

Wow, that's pretty strange... Wonder what it was that the security software didn't like. Maybe the way GM loads sprites during runtime?

[Chuluka]

Is the game going to receive an update or is the updated version going to have to be purchased?

[dislekcia]

Is the game going to receive an update or is the updated version going to have to be purchased?

There will be at least one more freely downloadable version of the game. After that we're moving it over to a different codebase and where it goes from there depends on a whole host of factors.

Obviously we do want to sell a much expanded version of the game at some point :)

[Suho]

I know it may be a premature question at this point, but where do you see DD going in the future? How do you expect the codebase change to affect the game? How will this "much-expanded version" compare to what we have at the moment? Is it going to be essentially the same game with a lot more features and polish, or will the underlying gameplay and concepts be changing?

I'll understand if you can't answer these questions now, but I can't help being curious.

[dislekcia]

I know it may be a premature question at this point, but where do you see DD going in the future? How do you expect the codebase change to affect the game? How will this "much-expanded version" compare to what we have at the moment? Is it going to be essentially the same game with a lot more features and polish, or will the underlying gameplay and concepts be changing?

I'll understand if you can't answer these questions now, but I can't help being curious.

It's the same gameplay polished to as high a shine as we can get it. The underlying mechanics won't change (apart from maybe one or two features that we've intended for ages but haven't been able to wrangle into the GM version) so it'll still be the same quick-session roguelike puzzle hybrid, but we're adding meta-game elements and polishing the crap out of things like the interface and difficulty progression. You'll see echos of what I'm talking about in the next freeware release :)

The codebase change is mainly to allow us to implement new features and quests much faster (trying out new gods or character classes is quite hard in the current structure) and to get the game running on as many platforms as we can without spending ages working on compatibility issues.

Basically, the DD you know and love right now is a slightly more difficult to play subset of what we want the full game to be. We've been using this version to test concepts and see what works and what doesn't (scarily enough, it seems that most things Nandrew does work really well!) so we certainly won't be "rebooting" the game and turning it into an FPS. Unless Activision buys us out or something...