Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon

It has been a while since the last big update.  We have been very busy working on the next two chapters.  We cannot publish them separately as they are totally linked together to progress further in the game.  We still have a bit of work before we publish them, but their release is not far from now. " The Storage" and the "Black Mage Quarter" are the biggest chapters of the whole game.  After those two ones, we'll be close to a complete game release. 

Here are a few screenies (trying to now spoil too much) :

I also spent some of time fixing issues reported by some players since the last build.  We'll publish a complete list with the next build's post. 

Among some bug fixes and other things, here is a list of improvements:

- City visuals have been improved (especially the cave).- Temple wall set has been reworked and is now final.- Many new statuses (more than 10) have been added to characters (such as "poisoned", "magic shield protection"...) and are displayed on the portraits (like the hunger/overweight/thirst ones were already).- A lot of new Items, weapons (both some long-range ones and melee kind), new armors and others various items. -  New Spells (Magic Shield is now working and we added other ones).- The fireball spell was reworked and now looks visually different according to the level of the caster. 

But that's not all, and that's probably even more awaited: YES, finally, you can now play a NEW Chapter! 

Welcome to the Jail !!!  Explore a totally new environment with a new level architecture, meet some new creatures, try to unlock 18 new secrets, and try to solve some new kind of puzzles! 

Thanks for your patience, and thanks again so much for your bug reports and support, guys! 

The release of the next chapter draws ever nearer: the final touches are being added by our 3D artist, Julien.  The Temple has also been reworked to fix rendering issues caused by shaders from the previous version of the engine (incorrect reflections in the lower parts of the temple, for example).  We’ve also added several items and spells into the game. 

Although the update won’t be released this month, it will be very soon and we promise it will be worth the wait!  In the meantime, here’s a screenshot from the Black Mage's Quarters later in the game:

Just a short development update before the next build: On the development side we’ve fine-tuned the previously added core ruleset.  From the feedback we received, it seems as though it was already fairly well balanced, so the changes are minor.  We have finished the new and improved AI system and have implemented a new set of creature behaviours.  You’ll see these in action in the next update, which will also contain the next chapter levels.  Old creatures (with the old AI) are going to be replaced soon as well. 

On the artwork side of things: beyond working on the new chapters, our 3D artist, Julien, has reworked some key areas of the temple, city and the caves.  These changes will also be included in the next update. 

Stay tuned, as we expect to put the next chapter into your hands around end of April.  We are currently doing the finishing touches! 

This build includes the new RPG rule system.  For those of you starting a new game, we’ll be very interested to have a look at your saved game when you reach the end of the Temple.  This will allow us to fine-tune the new system and make sure there aren’t too many differences between players when they finish the Temple.  So if possible, please send your saved game to contact@hydro-games.com

The new system is better balanced, and allows us to more easily change combat and character progression.  The new system also uses an external file to fully control all parameters, opening up the possibility for custom rules and even modding.  We’ll be able to talk much more about this in the future. 

We’ve made a lot of fixes and adjustments for this build, but here are the most important ones:

-You can now drop an item on a portrait to add it to the hero’s backpack, a feature that was requested by many players.  There’s no longer any need to manually open the inventory and then click on a slot to put it there.  Just left click on the portrait to drop the item, without opening the inventory.  If the hero has an empty slot in their backpack, the item will be placed there.  Note that, the right mouse button will still open the inventory.  This will also work for ammo and stackable items, stacking them automatically.-Stamina is now fully implemented.-A cooldown is now applied to a hero after she casts a spell, just like when using items. 

Bug Fixes:-Fixed an issue with the white moon symbol when changing hero’s position.-Fixed an issue with the adventure book not opening after using esc key.-Fixed an issue with reading books after they were thrown, leading to some empty text.-Fixed an issue with the cursor remaining visible when opening in-game quick menu.-Fixed some jumps when using ladders in the Temple and Jail.-Improved adventure book’s scrollview behaviour, useful when you have read a lot of books/scrolls.-Improved auto pickup of ammo, it now by default adds the collected items to the non-casting hand. 

Beyond all the changes above, we’ve made improvements to the engine.  As a reminder, Dungeon Kingdom’s engine is designed to be used for several games.  To make development faster, we need the engine of the first game to be powerful.  That’s why we’ve improved it in several ways. 

We recently added inverse kinematics to creatures.  This allows, for example, the feet of a creature to perfectly touch the steps of stairs, or perfectly follow a slope, all computed in real time.  We were not satisfied with the creatures navigation until now, especially in the next areas of the game where there are a lot of stairs and height variations (much more than in the Temple).  This is now working great!  Also, inverse kinematics gives us the opportunity to make realtime procedurally generated animations: I’ll give you a simple example: when a creature switches a lever on a wall, from any position, the arm moves perfectly with the lever, without any pre computation or any work from an human animator. 

The last major feature and improvement is about the artificial intelligence of creatures.  The previous navigation module was designed very early on in the project.  Since that time, the game has changed and we decided to go deeper with regards to the design of levels, with potentially any shape, lots of floors etc.  This game is far from simple 2D grids, as found in most classic dungeon crawlers.  So we needed a better system, more robust and more flexible, and it has been developed on these last few weeks.  We also improved the decision making module to make smarter AI, and more importantly, to allow mixing it with some specific behaviours when necessary.  You’ll understand what we mean in the Jail and the other levels! 

Please note that the current creatures in the Temple and City still use the old system and the old navigation module, but they are likely to be replaced over time. 

Now I have some great news.  In the next build, you’ll explore a new area in Dungeon Kingdom, you will be able to leave the cellar and we’ll open more of the levels to everyone!  Finally! 

Thanks so much for your patience and support, and thanks a lot to all those who help us fix issues and balancing in the game.  To finish the post, check out a few new screenshots…

First of all, we want to wish you all a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2017!  Hopefully this year will be full of exciting dungeon crawling experiences! 

This is the first of our new monthly updates, occurring on the last Thursday of each month.  We’ve stealthily updated the game from 0.9.930 to 0.9.932.  Included in this update are two core rule sets: the classic one that most of you are playing when launching Dungeon Kingdom, and the second one, which will eventually replace the current one (which is currently only accessible to a few beta tester players).  We’ve rewritten all the core rules (damage computation, character progression, etc.).  Once testing is complete, we’ll switch everyone over to the new rule set.  This should happen within the next few days.  This rule set change should make the game more balanced and more enjoyable.  It also means we will finally be able to publish the new levels, as the proper balancing was a prerequisite for us before we could allow you to advance further in the adventure. 

Beyond the core rules, here are a few new features that have been added:

-Ammo for bows, crossbows, slingshot, etc.  don’t need to be in-hand any more.  The game is able to get and count all the ammo items in your inventory.  This leaves one more hand free (useful for casters).-Ammo is automatically picked up when walking over it (after being launched for example).-‘M’ key now both shows and hides the map.-Reduced some console spamming when hovering over items.-You can now rebind the strafe keys (check input tab in the launch dialogue).-Added a few items (dard, etc.).-Fixed issues with torch holder in the temple. 

Hello!  We released version 0.9.930 of the game yesterday.  Here's what was included in the update:

----[ New features ]----

-The Saving system has been totally reworked, it’s better optimized, more flexible on the development side, and much more robust and easier to manage for players.  Note that we included an “import all save games” button to convert saves from the old system to the new one.  At runtime, all old save files are copied into a temporary directory and kept there, waiting to be imported. 

-The Autosave has been reworked to be less messy. 

-The amount of damage caused to an enemy is now displayed directly on them (this is optional, you can deactivate it).  This also works for spell based damage such as the fireball. 

-An icon now appears on a character’s portrait when they gain a level. Click on this icon to directly open the character sheet and highlight the increased stats. 

-Points distribution: from time to time, you will get some bonus points after gaining a level, you can distribute them freely in the characteristics of your choice. 

-It’s now possible to SWITCH the hero's position.  Simply drag and drop portraits to change their position.  During the process, a small grid of portraits is displayed to show the current position of each heroes in the team (2x2 grid, with two heroes in the front, and two in back). 

-A permanent mini automap is shown in the corner (this can be disabled, which will display the compass instead.). 

-A fullscreen, detailed and scrollable automap (click on the mini map to open it) has been added.  It includes an option to automatically add labels with names of rooms and places you’ve been to. 

-Primary gauges are now displayed while sleeping, so you can just stop sleeping when all of them are full. 

----[ Improvements/Fixes ]----

-New Settings panel: Settings is split into several categories (Graphics, Sound…).-Esc now stops sleeping instead of opening an intermediate menu.-Fixed wrong ladder/rope trajectory.-Added a setting to display minimap (if deactivated, display compass instead).-Added a setting to display location labels on the large automap.-Added settings to not allow auto performance tuning.  -Added settings for SSAO.-Added settings to show/hide 3D view damage display.-Added quality level for SSR reflection.-Lots of fixes and adjustments to the UI.-Fixed some wrong door orientation on automap.-Fixed particles flame not visible in the intro.-Cursor now hidden when sleeping whilst holding an item.-Mini automap now hidden when sleeping.-Fixed waterskin progress bar not updating when being filled at the fountain.-Cursor rendering order fixes.-Fixed issues with White Moon symbol on the character’s hand.-Fixed White Moon symbol appearing on second character's hand in the tutorial.-Added a text plate in the Offer Room, placed on the basket to inform that it's a basket for offering and that the player should be generous.  The plate appears only in easy and normal mode.-Fixed an issue with the Portrait Room when playing with a single hero or if loading a corrupted save-Added labels on automap for the city.-Fixed an issue with teleporters -Fixed the oil lamp issue when falling into the water area.-Added an offset to names in automap and a text justify option.-Fixed the main console line not showing.-Replaced compass center icon with a mini automap (if option for minimap is enabled).-Fixed an issue where all heroes are dead from hunger but the game still continued.-Fixed a bug that occured when loading a game after dying: items from a previous game could still be picked up in hand (was recent a regression).-Game is now paused when reading book/scrolls.-Fixed book/scroll title to "jump" when starting to read.-Fixed issues with mini console. 

...The list could go on for ages so let’s stop it here. 

Note that the new system for casting priest spells is currently on hold.  We’ll wait for more votes to decide if we should change it or not, as most players seem to prefer the current system. ( check the polls in the previous update post). 

We have new throwing items (Ninja Star, Throwing Knife, etc.)  and spells coming in the next update. 

Known issue: We identified a small issue in the rendering when SSR reflection is enabled, when you explore the lower levels with dynamic dirt on the walls and floor, leading to some strange white reflection on the bottom of walls in those areas.  We’ll fix it ASAP. 

Oh, and we’re back to updating regularly now! 

EDIT: There has been some changes to Health points and Mana: Mana Points are now Spirit points and Health Points are now Body Points.  It's not just a name change: a hero falling to zero Spirit Points won't be able to attack or use any item.  So when you create your team, think twice before creating heroes without any brains :-) And yes, of course this change is important for what will happen in the game in upcoming levels...

We are delaying our release by a few months, from the end of Summer to the end of this Winter. 

Even though we desperately wanted to stick to our original timeline, we've determined it best to head to full release with more content and more polish.  Delaying until December gives us plenty of time to achieve what we want. 

This was a tough decision, and we apologize to any who are disappointed by it.  We will do our best to release a game we will all be proud of in December. 

This decision was taken by playing and working on our own game for the last few months, listening to and observing our beta testers, and getting plenty of kind words from supporters asking that we take our time and to not rush things.  We always said we prefer to not sacrifice the quality of the game to release the game early.  That's our way of thinking and to respect our fans who expect a lot from our game, we won't change. 

We want the best for our dungeon crawler, and between making high quality artworks, testing balancing, or supporting a lot of languages, there are a lot of huge tasks for our very small team, but we have so much passion that nothing will prevent us from releasing the game we always wanted to put in your hands. 

Dev Update:

-We've made a few decisions and slighlty modified our workflow, so you guys will enjoy again more regular updates.  First of all, we may push updates in English and French only, and we plan to stop the time consuming task of translating all the texts (thanks to all our friends who help us!!!)  at each update.  We will include the extra languages translations in the final release only.  This will save a lot of time.  Secondly, we initially planned to release only 4 more levels (4 huge levels, remember our levels are not shaped the same way as most of the classic dungeon crawlers as we are not using stacks of 2D grid levels).  However this requires too much time to test and balance the new areas before we can upload any update on Steam... So we have taken the decision to split the huges levels into smaller ones to make it easier to push new content regulary. 

-Valve/HTC and Oculus kindly provided to us some Virtual Reality headsets and controllers to port Dungeon Kingdom to VR platforms.  Some good progress has been made so far and we will show something soon.  As a reminder, this was one of our IGG promises and the players waiting for it will be happy to know that this feature is on track.  This VR port has the same levels as classic (not VR) version, but you will play as a single hero and will interact and move with more freedom. 

That's all for this long update.  Thanks again to all who support us, either by simply sending some kind words, or by offering their help for testing, translating, correcting texts etc.