Version 1.0.47 is up on the test page. Stable/Debug. This has ALL the journal content!
Dev Log
I just loaded up the new version on Steam and had an avalanche of achievements, woo.
But Iām still worried about my skull count. I need 2 more bronze skulls and 1 more obsidian skull to have all weapons / armors. The problem is there are 2 bronze skulls and 2 obsidian skulls available to me.
Is there some weapon or armor on my savefile that glitched and isnāt being offered to upgrade for the leftover obsidian skull, or are we meant to have one left over?
Also, in Journal Entry #1 shouldnāt it be ācapitalā and not ācapitolā?
Edit: Iām assuming Iām missing some weapon from my file, considering I have no other weapons available to upgrade and yet Steam has not triggered my āUpgrade all weaponsā achievement.
Edit2: Achievements that should activate that arenāt activating on Steam - Earn Every Unique Armor, Earn All Unique Weapons, Upgrade All Unique Weapons.
Also, for āHero Modeā - do you have to make a new save file and not recruit any generic units? Or does the game track which stages you beat with only the base characters?
My savefile is attached for figuring out which sword/armor Iām missing and why the achievements arenāt activating.
Actually, Anthony designed it so you should have (1) Obsidian skull and (4) white skulls left over for reasons that I forget.
Weāll probably create some more content in a future patch to take advantage of this - relax, youāre not missing any items!
Iāll look into the achievements, and as for hero mode, yes it does require a separate playthrough. All it does is check if you a) have the right amount of progress and b) currently have no generic units.
So, since thereās no way to āfireā a defender, this assumes that you have started a fresh playthrough without hiring any generics. Of course, thereās no way for the game to tell if you just copy/pasted your save file and removed all the generic entriesā¦ but thatād be cheating! 
There seems to be a bug with Steam achievements. āSuper Sheep Slayerā shows up in potential achievements global achievements, but āSheep Slayerā shows up only in global achievements. 0% have it and it doesnāt appear to be available in your personal achievements.
Also, your store page just went up. Is it my imagination, or are all the preview screenshots squished? It doesnāt look so great. 
Should we have been emailed our keys yet?
Yes, the screenshots on the store page are 4:3 images stretched to 16:9, so they kinda look wrong.
Other than that, nice to see it up~
Hope the keys are dished out pronto :V
Also, you say I should have 4 leftover white skulls, but my save file has 10 available and Iāve bought everything available to me. It seems like something on the file I uploaded on my post is glitchy. Hrm.
Well, in an earlier Version, the left over skulls were different (you had 10 to many white skulls, but 1 to few obsidian skull).
So if you have a save game that you started in or before that version and applied the patches to it later, then of course your data will be messy. You got the10 white skulls to many of the earlier version but also the one to much obsidian skull that was added later.
Yinanās probably right - if you played the game while we were still updating the test builds, we changed the balance around a lot and that might be the deal.
As for the achievement, Iāll look into it and see whatās wrong. I emailed new screenshots to Steam, they apparently need to be widescreen ratio, so I gave them ones with some padded black borders that shouldnāt squish.
Okey dokey. New build version 1.0.49, going up on Steam soon.
- Fixed Error #1009 bug - 0 length save files no longer crash the game, they are treated as empty save slots
- Fixed eternal āloadingā hang - related to a dependent .dll file we accidentally introduced. Fixed in 1.0.49 (probably)
As soon as some testers get their eyeballs on this, I will upload it to Steam. I need to verify 2 things:
- That the above bugs are indeed fixed (possible to do by āsneakā installing the zip fileās contents into your Defenderās Quest Steam installation directory)
- That no NEW bugs are introduced
So, for testers that donāt have the game on steam yet, you can still help us verify #2, which is at least as important as #1. The major things that have changed are file loading logic and the steam SDK bridge. I havenāt made any major tweaks anywhere else just yet.
Things are pretty hectic this week, so the next āglobalā update to all versions of the game hits the public update server next Monday. This should cover our direct customers, as well as GOG, GamersGate, Desura, and Impulse - I think, at least. Weāll also try to update the kongregate version and give them their long-promised direct download soon.
I have the steam key mailer script in hand. Iām testing it now. If Iām lucky, these will go out today. If not, well - sometime after today
Mac version will be updated to 1.0.49 with achievement supportā¦ eventually. Maybe next week!
I donāt suppose you can tell us how many new sales youāve gotten over the past week? It would be nice to know how many new people are enjoying the game on Kong+Desura+GoG+Steam combined. Hopefully enough to keep you guys from starving.
Things are going pretty well. We will release all the final numbers eventually, but Iāll probably hold them back for a few months so I can leverage a featured article or a GDC talk out of it.
In the meantime though, Iāll talk in general terms.
So far, so good. Weāve had a lot of sales on Steam, but still less than our lifetime direct sales by a good margin. So we havenāt doubled sales overnight or anything on epic Minecraft level proportions.
I will share these numbers:
Demo->Sale conversion rate is 22.5%
That is stupidly high. That means that 22.5% of everyone who touches the demo goes on to buy the game. In certain contexts, 5% is considered a huge conversion rate.
Average play session length 62 minutes
Average time played 6 hours 49 minutes
Median time played 5 hours 17 minutes
Time played range 1 hour 22 minutes - 11 hours 49 minutes (one standard deviation of playing time)
Those playtime numbers are also scarily high, too. Compare that to the legendary Cliffskiās http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2012/11/02/median-time-played-on-steam-for-my-games/.
Remember to sleep and eat, people!
As was told a long ago on one http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/24/hours-of-towers-defenders-quest/
ā Begin quote from ____
Just donāt blame me if you end up missing meals.
ā End quote
So probably we all should blame this particular Adamā¦ ))
Okay, did customer support for three straight days. All the keys have been mailed out, and now itās time to get to work with some patches and stuff.
The plan is to roll out new versions for Monday. So, right now that means updating the game to version 1.0.49 across the board. Hereās what I still need to do:
[list]
:13jaev9s]Update Kongregate build, add DRM-free downloadable game link + soundtrack/
13jaev9s]
:13jaev9s]Update Steam Mac build, integrate achievements and stuff/13jaev9s]
:13jaev9s]Fix dll dependency in Steam build/13jaev9s]
:13jaev9s]Roll out global 1.0.49 build to public update server (covers GOG/Desura/Impulse/GamersGate/Direct)/13jaev9s][/list:u:13jaev9s]
ā Begin quote from "larsiusprime"
Demo->Sale conversion rate is 22.5%
That is stupidly high.
ā End quote
As I wrote on GoG - this was the first demo to which my reaction was āShut up and take my moneyā. Glad to see thereās so many of us.
Launch has been insane. Iāve been doing non-stop support for the past week.
My last task is to synchronize all the versions. Right now Iām compiling version 1.0.50 and packaging it for the public update server. That will be going up today if Iām lucky. Also, the kong version should get downloadables soon.
After that, Iām going to try adding achievements to the mac steam version and fixing some of the minor bugs specific to the steam build.
Where is there a change log. You had mentioned changes to healers and I was curious how that was going to effect the game.
ā Begin quote from "larsiusprime"
Average play session length 62 minutes
Average time played 6 hours 49 minutes
Median time played 5 hours 17 minutes
Time played range 1 hour 22 minutes - 11 hours 49 minutes (one standard deviation of playing time)
ā End quote
I hope youāre using your own metrics from within the game code. If youāre using Steam stats, you can throw those away. Steam says Iāve played 58 hours. My save file says around 24 hours. Not sure if youāve fixed it yet but when I was playing this weekend, Steam had to be restarted in order to relaunch the game. It always thought the application was running after the 1st launch since Steam started.
From now on, every Friday Iām going to scale back my Defenderās Quest time and work on something, anything, else, so I donāt go insane. Rest assured, Iām still here to support the project and stuff, and Iāll still answer your emails and posts, but Iām going to give myself some ā20% timeā now that the main grind is over.
Hereās what Iām doing this week:
http://www.fortressofdoors.com/2012/11/ ... quest.htmlPermanent thread for that project here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=587Lars, gonna tweak healers more? Even in 1.0.51 the first dark level is a pain for level 8 party , simply not possible to get perfect unless I get very lucky.
How about making Ether flash 100% light without damage (and points increasing duration), and Holy Light 100% light with small damage to all and BIG damage to dark? (Big as in āon par with ice mageā)
Yeah, I think we can do something like that. Iāll keep you posted when I start working on the next patch.