Hi,

it has been some time since the dungeon crawler challenge was over. There were many things left to do in my game submission, but I was relatively satisfied with the result and I was tempted to call this a game and move on to other projects. However, things never turn out as you expect. I was contacted by someone who offered me to write original music for the game. He asked me about the current status and about my plans for further development. His name is Neil O'Rourke and the portfolio on his Soundcloud page and Youtube channel impressed me. Somehow, his request motivated me to continue the work on this project.

The version I handed in for the challenge was 0.1.0. The goal now is to make a stable 1.0.0 version with no major bugs and some of the features I cut due to the time restrictions of the challenge. I would like to briefly present the new features:

Custom Music

Of course, this was the fact that caused me to continue developing the game. I liked the CC0 music, I originally selected, but Neil did a great job on tailoring custom music for every section of the game (you can listen to some of the tracks on his Soundcloud profile). I think my favorite track is the wizard's house music. It combines a mysterious atmosphere with the cozy feeling of a warm fireplace within a hostile town.

Bug Fixes

Version 0.1.0 had some bugs. First of all, the collision handling code was bad. I already improved it, but it still needs some refinement. In some cases it is possible that the player glitches into a wall. In that glitch case, it was possible that being inside a wall caused a segmentation fault. This problem is fixed. Further, I improved the enemy AI and the enemy attack timing so that they behave less unfair if the player is running from them (they were biting way you too quickly).

Another bug was the broken fullscreen mode on some systems, which has been fixed now. Further, the player can toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode at any time using ALT and ENTER.

Also the framerate-dependent animation playback has been fixed. As well as the fact that dead enemy bodies prevented you from picking up the loot.

Customizable Keyboard Settings

I extended the main menu of the game (mainly because I like the new title music so much and I wanted the player to spend more time in the menu in order to listen to that music). There is now an "Options" button, which allows the player to customize keyboard and mouse button settings.

More Enemies

The original version had three enemy types: A rat, a black rat (which was stronger than a usual rat) and a ghost. Due to the fact that rats are not the kind of terrible monstrosities one would expect inside a demon's dungeon, I decided to add some more enemy types:

• Bats (they belong into a cave and are an alternative to rats)
• Depth Worms (mysterious creatures that appear though holes in the ground and spit acid slime on you if you come too close)
• Skeletons (the classic undead warriors, carrying a sword and a shield)
• A Skeleton Mage (an undead warlock, throwing lightning balls at you)

The different enemy types are located in different sections of the dungeon. More detail on that in the next section.

Lower Dungeon Section

Again, inspired by Neil's music, I decided to add a lower section to the dungeon with the current dungeon being the upper section. The lower section is darker, colder and inhabited by undead creatures (see above). I even implemented ground-level fog in the engine, because I wanted the lower section to look more hostile.

The lower section can be reached by using a ladder. The new section also introduces a new item: The toxic mushroom and another non-enemy NPC (but I won't spoil every detail here right now).

Time Schedule and goals

The goal is to extend the game so that it offers about twice the length of the original challenge submission by adding the lower dungeon section and the new NPCs, enemies and items. The world now contains more decorations and story-related elements to intensify the immersion (despite the stylized graphics).

The idea is to create a playable beta version until the mid of August and provide it to a limited audience in order to test the game and release a stable version after implementing the feedback from the beta test.

Finally, I want to thank Neil for his great work and his interest in my game. Further, I thank you all for reading and I would like to provide you some new screenshots as a foretaste to the 1.0.0 version.

Best regards,

Carsten

Screenshots