Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Announcements => Traditional Roguelikes (Turn Based) => Topic started by: getter77 on July 19, 2010, 02:47:37 AM
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http://www.gaslampgames.com/
In ages long past, the Dark Lord Dredmor was bound in the depths of the earth by great and mighty heroes. Centuries later, the magical bonds that hold him in place are slowly loosening and his power grows ever stronger. The land needs a new hero.
Unfortunately, what they have is you.
Step into the Dungeons of Dredmor and embrace your destiny. Face monsters the likes of which the world has never seen – the terrifying Swarmies, the undulating Thrusties, and the menacing Brax the Salesdemon. Find treasures like gold, magical weapons and armour, and lutefisk. Worship at the alter of Inconsequentia, the Goddess of Pointless Sidequests. Discover the power that can be had by wielding a bizarre armament of devastating weaponry such as the Interdimensional Axe, the Plastic Ring, and the Invisible Shield (if you can remember where you left it). Wield shoes decorated by the Dwarven Glittersmiths, all of whom have now committed suicide because of their shame, and embrace the joys of destroying giant moustache-wielding brick demons with a mace decorated with tawdry, delicious bacon. While you’re at it, be prepared to die. A lot. In hideous, screaming pain that makes you throw your keyboard out the window.
The Dungeons of Dredmor await. Are you ready for them?
Screenshots (click to view full size):
Features:
* Classic Roguelike gameplay with the sweet, refreshing taste of point-and-click interfaces. No longer must you press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-x to drink a potion.
* Randomly generated dungeons entice you with the sweet, sweet promises of treasure and … things.
* Old-school pixel goodness. Face lovingly hand-animated monsters and enjoy the great taste of beautiful, individually rendered items on top of a sea of gorgeous, potent tilework.
* Achievements so impossible that you’ll never even figure out what they ARE, never mind how to get them.
* Infinite replay value: choose from a selection of mind-boggling skills to create your character. A new gameplay experience awaits every time!
* Did we mention there’s lutefisk?
Really do hope this gets completed and released, the 2 trailers look great and full of whimsy and character. 8)
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This looks like a decent game. It's interesting to see how good it will be as a roguelike.
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They acknowledged the Temple's existence with thanks in the latest blog post. 8)
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Hi there! I'm Nicholas, one of the founders of Gaslamp Games and the lead programmer for Dungeons of Dredmor. I'm glad people are looking forward to Dredmor's release - it's been a long time coming, let me tell you.
Regarding whether or not Dredmor holds up as a Roguelike: I can only speak for myself, but my aim from day one has been to create a game with the complexity of a title like Nethack while significantly streamlining the entrance barriers. To my mind, one of the joys of Roguelike gameplay is the interaction between complex mechanisms and the variety of said mechanisms. Dredmor embodies this by ... well, letting you do a lot. You have a lot of skills to choose from, and a reasonably complicated skill tree mechanism you can ascend. There are traps to disarm and re-arm, there are shops to steal from with demonic shopkeepers, there are monster zoos, graveyards, various forms of quests that you can complete... we go on and on. So you can do a lot, and we hope to expand on that in future expansions with post-release content and patches. (Some stuff hit the cutting room floor in favour of shipping an actual game, and ... well, that happens in a commercial title. At some point, we want to get paid. But we're looking to put it back in afterwards.)
Our philosophy has been to keep the best of the Roguelike experience while being very... well, blasphemous. For instance, as I'm sure you've noticed, we don't use ASCII. There may also be a mouse involved in gameplay. :) More libelliously, our dungeon is a little shorter than the average Roguelike dungeon too; we just found that it worked better for us as a small indie team. Dredmor itself is actually fairly moddable, so I will be waiting to see if the community decides to produce a "more traditional Roguelike" Dredmor mod with the tools that we have provided.
There are three levels of saving/death interaction: a mode that allows you to save at and restore from checkpoints, a mode that lets you find "Get out of Jail Free" cards in the dungeon which, upon you meeting your demise, will teleport you one level up to safety - until you run out of them! - and the traditional Roguelike death system that we all know and love (amusingly titled "Going Rogue" in the difficulty menu.) This was the most effective compromise between the Roguelike faction of Gaslamp/our beta testing pool and the less Roguelike faction of Gaslamp/our beta testing pool. A great deal of debate has been had over just who we want to alienate. :) The checkpoint mode is, for all intents and purposes, legalized save-scumming. That, to my mind, is a philosophically objectionable thing, but we have enough people who want it that we decided to go ahead and do it. I choose to simply ignore its presence, although it consumes me like a cancer upon my liver. The second mode is a little bit like having a liberal sprinkling of Amulets of Life Saving around the dungeon. (We don't have Amulets of Life Saving.) The third mode... well, that's the great Rogue taste you love with zero calories.
Regardless, one of my jobs is to make sure that the Temple of the Roguelike audience has a good time playing it and raves about it to all their friends. We have drawn a lot of inspiration from Crawl, Nethack, and to a lesser degree ADOM in its creation. I think Crawl has been the seminal influence, although our skill system is very much inspired by Lost Labyrinth and, to a lesser degree, World of Warcraft (?!)
Anybody who wants to get in on the beta should drop me a private message with your name, e-mail and background, and we'll get you set up for our next release (version 0.8, coming Really Damn Soon Now.) We have Windows and OS X builds going, and a Linux build is forthcoming as soon as I decide that I want to fight yet another linker. There should be another video trailer later this week as well, and I am hoping to send The Temple a few exclusive screenshots for your pleasure.
Any questions, just ask. Now, if you'll excuse me, Lord Dredmor awaits....
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Welcome to the Temple of the Roguelike Nicholas and thanks for dropping by to give us the good word on Dungeons of Dredmor. 8)
The thinking you outline above seems well reasoned and intentioned, which is surely swell. I also very much like inspiration in part from Lost Labyrinth alongside some of the other juggernauts within the scene---be sure and let those chaps know as I'd imagine them to be pleased to have made an impact on another new project.
I may try to see about sending along a beta message to help out, but in my case, I recall one or so instances of you lot's blogging that rings loudly to me as of late---the part about looming/deepening insanity over hashing out a bunch of 2D art.
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New trailer should be up ... well, as soon as it finishes uploading to Youtube. I'm trying something new with the uploading, namely sending it over as raw video; unfortunately, this means that my upload time is eight hours.
We used your Twitter quote in our promotional material, too. Hope you don't mind.
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Not at all! I look forward to this new trailer that's en route. 8)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhPBecpfM4 Short, but nice, Item video.
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Somewhere along the way, half of our trailer decided to disappear on us.
*sigh*
Re-uploading now.
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Right! Trailer #3 is now live in its entirety:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmGsE785E5U
Enjoy! As always, feel free to plug it, talk it up, dance in the streets, et cetera. Any questions, we're still here.
And now, back to my regularily scheduled bug-hunting.
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Here's one for Item's sake: What Anti-Junk systems are in place to ensure a tidily deadly dungeon and well wrought player inventory? IE: Shops to use, some sort of Horadric Cube, general auto-assembly assortments that Scallywag uses, etc?
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The Horadric Lutefisk Cube, obviously.
(What, you think I'm joking?)
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Fantastic. 8)
Check thy PM as well~
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUhxYVPwFnU New and freshly awesome Trailer 4
Pretty well a lock for the best Roguelike trailer I've yet seen produced---even including the console/handheld fare from out East. Bursting at the seems with style and character. 8)
Looks to be available sometime here in April 2011.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpCPDMHEpG0
Latest video featuring some of the traps in action, they are still trying for April.
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Some developments from the Land of Dredmor that have not percolated over here:
- We will be putting out a new, final trailer later this week.
- We will also be announcing distribution and pricing Real Soon Now. A hint on pricing: it's under $10. How much under $10? Stay tuned.
- We have entered beta, at long last, with an eye to hitting the End Of May. Our very own getter7seven has a copy. He has also sent one to the guy who runs this place. Ask them questions, just don't ask to get into the beta.
Finally, why not hang out on our Twitterfeed? http://www.twitter.com/gaslampgames is rife with beta testers waiting to tell you how much fun they're having.
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Wow. This looks like something actually worth paying for.
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so... how is it? has anyone tried/bought it?
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It is a solid thing that is due to become substantially moreso with the next near-term mega-patch or so which will also probably open it up officially for modding in a big way---I've paid much more for console/handheld Roguelikes in the past with less of a "future"/depth/replay value ahead of them than the mere $5 for Dredmor.
They are also still chipping away at a Linux port.
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so... how is it? has anyone tried/bought it?
Yesterday I've bought this and I've been playing it awfuly lot (for me). It has nice presentation (if you enjoy also graphic roguelikes), humor, gameplay, ideas, but bad thing is that it features non-permadeath mode. But you can still play with permadeath, if you resist the temptation.
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I don't want to buy it because Steam. When I hear Steam I see Gabe Newell eating pretzels.
I want a huge collector's package with special items and a cloth map.
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It should be coming to other vendors aside from Steam down the line as well, just a matter of time and getting things shook out pretty much all the way with the patching and whatnot.
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I don't want to buy it because Steam. When I hear Steam I see Gabe Newell eating pretzels.
funny, I bought it *because* it's on steam :)