Dwelvers Journal - 2014.04.19 - Left to do before releasing Dwelvers Alpha v0.7

[Rasmus]

There's always the 90-day trials on Microsoft's site (Visual Studio Downloads). You could copy your current project files to another computer or VM to see if the additional features are useful safely.

Yeah its really cool, you set it up and it produces a report that shows you all the method calls that happen when you run it in debugger, and how much time they took. Its a good idea to profile your code (esp in perf critical products like games or servers) at least once in a while so you have some idea of what's really happening when your program is actually running. In big shops, profiling is also not done as often as it should be, but its a shortcut to trying to figure out how fast your code is through static analysis.

I didn't know that. That sounds extremely useful and is probably exactly what I need. I will give it a go after the next release, I have managed to optimize the game a lot since the last release, but I still know there are a lot of things that could be done better if I just had the time for it.

[Sebt]

Yes Rasmus, you'll not be a "Rocket Keyboard" anymore, but "Warp Keyboard"! :p

[Seriously Unserious]

Forget warp keyboard, why not go to transwarp keyboard?

[Rasmus]

Haha, right now I definitely not feel like any I deserve any "warp keyboard" title Stupid sewing machine took longer time than I expected.. But now it is finished and can be used for sewing together leather and hide armours

Now I am going to finish up all the creature animations so that they all can sit and eat at the bar

[Mello Tonin]

It happens. At least you have one more thing checked off the list of things to be done, and you may even get a break on something else you thought was going to take longer than it will.

[Seriously Unserious]

Haha, right now I definitely not feel like any I deserve any "warp keyboard" title Stupid sewing machine took longer time than I expected.. But now it is finished and can be used for sewing together leather and hide armours

Now I am going to finish up all the creature animations so that they all can sit and eat at the bar

OK, so your mouse is stuck on maneuvering thrusters only, but I still say you have your well-earned "warp keyboard" title.

[Rasmus]

The Impanzee and Cyclotaur animations have been added so that they can sleep and eat when owned by the player. I removed the todo on the Fishman because I don't think he should be eating at the table and sleeping in a bed as everyone else, he should be sleeping in water and eating directly from it as well, therefore I have disabled the player to own the fishman creature for now, because it will probably take a couple of days to add that extra feature into the game, and time is something that I don't have much of :S

The fishman will instead be added to the player in future releases, but not now..

[Mello Tonin]

That's cool. Something you might consider when making a bed for the Fishman is that you might not need much of an animation at all. I could imagine something similar to the Imp's bed, except instead of having a concave stone to lay on, you could have the concave part replaced by water. When the Fishman needs sleep, he could jump into the water and disappear under it. Then you would just have some Zs and bubbles on the water surface as the sleep animation.

One problem that I see with the Fishman getting food from the water directly is that sometimes fish can be really far away from your central dungeon. I guess if you really wanna make it so that he gets food from the water you could just make sure that fish spawn closer to the Dark Mother's location always. You could also make it so that where he sleeps and eats is the same place. Imp's could deliver an X number of fish to his 'watering hole' and this could also cut down on the amount of time put into animating this.

[Seriously Unserious]

Those are good points from both Mellow and Ras.

The fishman could have an animation to eat fish from a bar if no fish are nearby for it to eat, that would cover the issue of fish spawning too far away from the DM. Mellow's idea of a fishman bed consisting of a small pool of water for it to dive into when it wants to sleep should handle the sleeping fishman problem. In fact, eating fish from the bar could even allow them to be human controlable now, with the other features added in a later version to make the fishmen more unique.

[Lotanis]

Hiya folks I havnt been gone... was just making quick check ins for the last months Sooooooooo happy and exited for the new release!! cant wait to try it out! Great job Rasmus and the team. it looks awsome!!

[Sebt]

Welcome back Lotanis.

Yea I can't wait for the new release too.

[Rasmus]

Thanks to the new feature that vines grow out of the roots and are extractable I could check of a couple of items from the list. I made it so that when the imps are picking the vines they will have a 50/50 chance to get either wood or rope from them. I didn't plan on having the ropes directly extractable from the vines, but this will work nicely as a place-holder for now.

The butchers table has also been postpone, the bones will now drop for killed enemies instead.

I am not sure I will have the time to implement the group / squad system before the release, I plan to implement it, but it is possible that I will make a lighter version of it before the steam release.

Back to work

[Seriously Unserious]

Great work ras! you're really knocking stuff off that list in a hurry! +2

[Rasmus]

The bat creature and the language fixes are now checked of the list.
The language fixes took me a day because I decided to give the game a Swedish translation as well.. So much text

I have also been tending to some of the new bugs that has been revealed with all the new features..

Btw, the options is still available for those of you that would like to translate the game to another language before the release, the only thing I can offer is some free steam keys and a mention in the game credits I wish I could give you something more but that is all my budget allows at this point :S Just post a message below and I can set you up with all the language files. A little warning is that it will probably take between 5 - 10 hours to translate the game depending on how good you are at it.

Now I am moving on to the piggeh and the dark mother, I were going implement the piggeh earlier, but apparently I lost some files that I couldn't get from cobramode until now. Also, the new Dark Mother look have been fixed, just going to fix the animation before I show a gif image of her

[Mello Tonin]

Nice! Yeah you gotta represent the homeland! I wish I was more fluent in Spanish so I could help you on that translation. I only know enough to show I have some proper manners and find out where the bathroom is. Actually, I know those in a several languages which I think is a good idea. You never know when you might need to find a restroom in hurry while you're visiting Japan, Germany, Mexico...oh wait it's a certainty in Mexico.