Dev Log

#301

The main reason for the price bump is entirely oriented around Steam’s obsession with sales, and I admit it’s a bit of a calculated risk.

At $15, I agree we’re starting to edge out of impulse buy range, but based on the data we expect most of our purchases to come from deep discount days, and Steam loves to mark things down by as much as 75%. At this markdown, we’d be selling for something like $3.75. If we stuck with the original price, we’d be all the way down to $2.50. So it’s more about giving ourselves a bit of a floor rather than raising the ceiling. So while those other games with 3D graphics might make the base price comparison a bit difficult, I expect we’ll be more willing to participate in deeper discounts more often than they will.

And we can always bring the total price down later if it turns out to be a huge mistake :slight_smile: I imagine we’ll also probably want to try a pay-what-you-want promotion or the like after it’s been out for a while and sales start to slow down.

So, the good news is we know everybody like deals and we’ll do everything we can to participate in them :slight_smile:

@coyot: Working on it. Already fixed the “can’t preview locked skills” thing, working on the rest of it. This’ll all go into 1.0.36+ and will hit the test server… monday probably. Saturday if I’m lucky.

#302

Thanks for the fixes. And my comment on prices would be that this game will sell a lot based on friendly recommendations. 10 or 15 dollars? probably not a big deal - people who are just “browsing” the catalogue won’t probably buy that any often IMO, at either price. And if they’ve heard about the game and it’s replay potential, they’ll pay 15 gladly IMO :wink:

#303

Latest updates:

  1. Got the steam versions uploaded and running in the steam client on my developer’s account. That’s really cool.
  2. Got all the builds to all the various distributors. Took all yesterday to upload everything to every place.
  3. Fixed a bunch of small and medium sized bugs just now for version 1.0.36, let’s go over them really quickly:

-The “super cultist doesn’t die” bug keeps rearing its head in rare edge cases, so I’ve thrown even more safeguards after it this time. Now it slows the game speed down to 1x when zelemir shows up, zelemir’s attack now has stun just in case the thing somehow doesn’t die, zelemir will cast the deathzap spell at three separate trigger points should the creature escape the first one, and on top of that, in the worst case where it just gets through it will not cause any damage. It sill LOOKS like it will, which is the entire point. Now on the worst scenario, it should just be a weird story glitch and not ruin the battle.

-Let you preview locked skills in the skill tree

-Various legacy situations where you can have more than one unique item. The inventory will now only let you have 1 instance of a unique item. Books are now unique.

-Fixed glitch with wave indicator.

-Fixed “enable/disable” visual glitch on character preview panel

-Noted that “Niru missing a skill point” has been fixed some time ago

-Fixed some typos.

So, although I didn’t see any immediate new problems during bugtesting, possible side effects and new bugs related to these fixes might include:

-Books no longer working
-Enemies no longer hurting Azra
-Other weird visual glitches
-Etc

Hopefully everything will be clean.

#304

Okay, putting in a few final touches before I upload 1.0.36

So far, pretty much everybody’s first experience with the game has been the browser demo, either on our site or on Kongregate. On Steam and the other services, I imagine that for those customers they’ll be trying the downloadable demo first, and I want to streamline the save-game import process as much as possible. So, I threw in a little code that prompts you to auto-import your demo saves if it detects them.

IF:
-All three full version save slots are empty, AND:
-There is at least one save slot in the demo version save directory,

THEN:
-Ask the user if they want to import their saves from the demo.

I imagine a steam user is going to start playing the demo, then at some point decide they want to buy the game. They go back to steam and buy it. Then, they start playing the full version. Sure, they could manually export/import the save file, but I imagine some people aren’t going to bother. Hopefully this extra 1% of UX polish will make people happy :slight_smile:

Other than that, I’m working on some of the bugs in the database and other various things. I’m also working hard with my Linux expert on the Linux packages. Adobe AIR has been a thorn in my side on Linux, and we’re looking into solutions to package all dependencies with the DefQ installer so you don’t have to do any of http://www.defendersquest.com/linux.html just to get it working. This will be really important for getting the game to work on Steam+Linux if/when that’s released, because Linux grognards have an aversion to Adobe AIR because of the hassles it involves. Obviously, Linux is a pretty tiny market, but I see a lot of value in being one of the launch games for Steam+Linux, especially if we can make the install procedure as painless and “it just works” as possible :smiley:

Finally, I’m fixing glitches in our Steam and Desura configurations so they’ll be ready by the 30th. I’m trying to get final, for real, confirmation about Steam Keys today, also getting a final answer from Kongregate about distributing the downloadable game to our customers there, and talking with James about whether we can get the Journal feature ready for the Oct. 30th release.

#305

99% chance you’ll be able to get Steam keys for people who purchased the game before, since every game in the green light bundle promises Steam keys when their game is put on Steam.

#306

Add 601 like on Facebook ) :o

#307

Just heard from my Steam contact:

“Kassidy can help you set up the ingestion of your keys you sold on your site. We can support that. =)”

I’m not sure what “ingestion” means in this context, but I’m going to guess this means we can give out steam keys to our fastspring customers. As soon as I have any on hand, I’ll look into how I’m going to distribute these (by email, most likely) and take it from there.

Also I’m uploading version 1.0.36 (EDIT: it’s up now).

Changes:
-Fixed duplicate fullscreen resolutions
-Fixed wave indicator glitch
-Fixed DOT bug when poison+fire are on same enemy
-Fixed “enable/disable” showing up on wrong tooltips
-Fixed graphical glitch on overworld when leaving treasure chamber
-Fixed dragon-shift-over glitch when redesigning
-Fixed useless sorceress boost button
-Assuming eztli’s spell bubble bug has been fixed
-Added some dynamic info to book descriptions - will now display changes to cost, cooldown, or PSI tax

Also, the new build will auto-detect demo version save files. So if you download the demo version, and you play it (creating save files) and then you download the full version, when it hits the save screen, if you have no full version saves, it will prompt you to import the demo version saves with one click. We figure this will be useful for our steam customers.

#308

Making good progress on Azra’s journal.

The reason it’s been delayed is that James has been suffering from RSI (repetitive stress injury) in both of his hands, chiefly the right. I had this problem about a year ago too, so it was easy to recognize the early warning signs and we pulled him off intensive writing, slowed him down and made sure he got some therapy (upgraded ergonomic home setup, wrist braces, etc). He’s been slowly writing the journal entries free-hand on paper with his left hand, no more than he can handle at a time.

Meanwhile, my hands have long since recovered and I’m super OCD about proper typing posture and wrist braces and all that now, so I’m doing the transcribing! Got through about half of it yesterday and the rest should follow today. After that, I’ll have to encode the raw text into a format the game understands and debug the journal interface functionality. I originally coded this all up months ago, but it’s never been tested with real content so I’m sure there will be bugs.

Journal content will show up in NG+. Assuming it’s a fresh playthrough, you will unlock journal entries as you progress, and a little indicator will show up over the journal button saying how many new entries there are. If you load an old playthrough, it will retro-actively unlock any journal entries you would have unlocked based on your current position.

Also, over the course of development I’ve been working with this super talented contractor from Germany by the name of Alexander Sturm (in the credits as “Linux Advisor”) whenever I get totally stumped on something. We got him a copy of the Valve NDA so he can help us with the Steamworks integration, because we want to get achievements, and if we’re lucky, cloud save support, ready for the Steam version before October 30th.

Updates to follow. How’s version 1.0.36? Did I introduce any new bugs?

#309

Working on the journal. It’s coming along pretty well. The first thing I’m doing is filling in all of the raw journal entries as well as the index page, and once that’s done, I’ll go back through and tag them all so they can be unlocked one by one. Once that’s done, I’ll put logic in the game progression triggers to unlock them as you progress through the game.

As an interesting side note, part of laying out these journal entries required me to do some calculations for how many days our heroes have spent in the Pit - mine worked out to about 42 days, which seems like a nice round number :slight_smile:

screenshot_journal.png800×600 332 KB

#310

http://xkcd.com/1015/. The journal looks nice (content-wise) but I think it’s time you tried looking for some alternative fonts (although I have no clue what’s up on offer in flash)

#311

Figured it out. Turns out, the font problem has nothing to do with Flash not being able to handle kerning (as I initially suspected) - it’s just an undocumented side effect of a specific setting I’m using on the text that renders it with pixel-perfect edges, but apparently throws away kerning data! I should be able to achieve mostly the same effect through specific anti-alias settings, while preserving the kerning information. I’m excited to see if this also fixes our problem with W’s in the tooltips.

#312

That’d be great :slight_smile:

#313

Hopefully it’s not a huge time sink or PITA. We’ll see :slight_smile:
UPDATE: Initial tests look good. There’s a few small glitches, but I think we’re well on our way to better looking / more readable text.

#314

Results:

screenshot_journal2.png800×600 425 KB

The letters themselves are a little fuzzier with the new anti-alias settings, but the kerning is vastly improved. If it’s hard to read, I can always increase the font size / increase letter spacing, etc.

#315

Uploading version 1.0.37 to the test server. New stuff in this build mostly focuses on the journal.

  1. The journal now appears in NG+ mode.
  2. Journal entries unlock as you progress
  3. Old journal entries should retro-actively unlock in existing NG+ saves.

That’s pretty much it. The journal only has about half of its content ready for now. It’s not quite finalized yet, so be aware of that - I suspect that if you unlock all the journal content, when I add more the rest of it, the new stuff might not show up when you test it, but players who hadn’t ever touched the 1.0.37 would.

So, bottom line - back up your saves before playing 1.0.37, and if you encounter any bugs with the journal when I release 1.0.38, first confirm that they happen with your backed-up saves, too.

#316

— Begin quote from "larsiusprime"

Just heard from my Steam contact:

“Kassidy can help you set up the ingestion of your keys you sold on your site. We can support that. =)”

I’m not sure what “ingestion” means in this context, but I’m going to guess this means we can give out steam keys to our fastspring customers. As soon as I have any on hand, I’ll look into how I’m going to distribute these (by email, most likely) and take it from there.

— End quote

That’s confirmation enough for me to order through fastspring. Really want it on steam but too impatient to wait for the steam release, so this is perfect :slight_smile: .

Thanks

#317

Okay, 7 days left! Getting close. I’m working closely with my contractor on Steam SDK integration - we just got the AIR native extensions to compile on windows and they should be up and running tomorrow. I’m sorting though Xcode too, hopefully that will go smoothly.

I still have to finalize a few uploads on Desura and some other sundry things. Journal content’s coming along pretty well, just need a few final entries from James. I’d like to get even more entries in, but we might have to fill that in retroactively in a future patch.

Other than that, I’m not considering any serious revisions before Steam release except for maybe toning down Zelemir a bit in the final battle as his spellcasting rate is kind of insane, and some minor tweaks to healers.

I’ll be posting some special requests for testings coming up pretty soon. Some of our veterans will be getting early-access invites to the Steam build, so they can help us figure out of the integrations are working properly. If you want to be considered, send me a PM. Since Steam limits how many people we can give early invites to, only veteran testers with a history of reporting at least a handful of well-written bug reports will be considered, sorry :slight_smile: Having access to a mac with Steam installed is a major plus, though the first requirement still stands.

#318

— Begin quote from "larsiusprime"

and some minor tweaks to healers.

— End quote

Awaiting that eagerly :slight_smile: . I’m currently not playing because it’s damn hard even with 4 healers to get a perfect on the first dark level in a linear play.

#319

Hey guys, getting close. I’m working hard on version 1.0.40, which has steam achievements, and some minor balance tweaks. Specifically, I’ve toned down the NPC in the final battle a bit so it’s not as insane. The spell cooldowns are increased by 4x across the board, though I did up the damage on lightning so it retains the same overall DPS. This should make the final battle less distracting and seisure-inducing, without hopefully wrecking the difficulty balance too much. As it was, it made you never have to cast your own spells, in my experience at least.

I’m mostly focused on babysitting the steam build for now, and any veteran testers on this forum please PM me for your early access Steam Keys if you haven’t already, we need you now more than ever. I will still try to update the old test page at least once before launch so non-steam people can check the balance changes, etc, but steam’s kind of my top priority for today.

Also, I might not be able to constantly check on the forum. To follow me in real-time, my twitter handle is @larsiusprime

#320

New test build is up. 1.0.45

Preparing for the steam launch, so this is a “steam build” which is standalone, and also a debug build for now - achievements won’t work since the steam api won’t be detected, though if you copy/paste the zip file’s contents into the same place Steam stores defender’s quest, it will actually launch correctly in Steam and integrate with the SDK and everything.

Most new changes are steam related, though I’ve put in some general tweaks, as well. Healers have slightly updated logic, Zelemir toned down in the final battle. Also fixed a crash bug for certain save file configurations.