Dredmor Patch 1.0.10 RC9 Feedback Thread - I Believe in The Lever Fix

Not a bug. Interior Dredmorating adds some easy monster zoos on level 1.

 

• Given the current state of the game, I'd say that the right pace is about a patch once a month. That allows three weeks for code/UI changes, and the final week for ironing things out, with possible XML changes in the last week if a balance issue needs to be fixed (something has an extra 0 and has ten times the HP it should, or whatever). Balance issues are largely in external files, so tweaking a few numbers there shouldn't introduce any new bugs into the code even if there is a balance change during the last week.
• Software Bugs are the biggest concern to me. If something crashes the game or doesn't do what it says on the tin then that's a big problem. UI issues are annoying, but nothing to rush out a patch for. Balance issues are the kinds of things that you should change a bit every patch to see if you can push players out of a playstyle rut, but should usually be approached slowly over time whenever possible. I think if the leaderboards could track what skills are being used by winning games then the players who aren't winning as much can try for better skill sets and you devs can also see what skills might need a boost because no one ever picks them.
• As far as things that I'm concerned about being addressed, most of the things I'm displeased with within the game are being gotten to over time. I often reflect on DoD vs other roguelikes and it holds up well considering how young it is. I used to be in the beta (and still am technically i guess), but the fact that the bug reporting "system" was to put it all in a public google doc was kinda... off-putting. At first I thought it was just a makeshift measure, but even now it's still being used instead of an actual bug reporting software system :/
• Steam Cloud is cool, and I guess I'll end up using it automatically since it's integrated and all, but I generally never save a game of DoD. I play until I die or win, and just alt+tab without closing the program if something else comes up. Steam Workshop for mods IS something that I'll be using a lot. I love the idea for mods, but unpacking archives myself and putting them into place is not at all a thing I want to be doing. I love package managers and automated setups and everything of that nature, so the Steam Workshop is a huge boon to me.
• I'm worried it won't be Thursday soon enough is all I'm worried about! (he said at 12:17am on thursday)

 

Wait... the crafting menu can't ever be mouse wheel enabled? Why not?

If it can't, could we at least get a checkbox or something so that it'll filter the recipe list to only show items that are currently craftable based on the player's inventory?

 

• Don't really have strong opinions on this.
• Balance issues are not much of a problem, but then again I'm still just learning the game. UI could use improvement but the problems are pretty minor. Software bugs are the biggest issue but I've been lucky enough to never hit any really bad ones.
• Those real bugs I've noticed have already been fixed.
• Haven't used Steam yet, can't comment on those

I also have to say it's very impressive how responsive you devs are to the community and it actually makes it a lot easier to ignore any minor issues in the game.

And yay, will have to give 1.0.10 a run when I get home!

 

It's in 1.0.10. There are options to show Have Ingredients, Have Skill, and Secret Recipes, each of which can be toggled on/off (just checked to make sure, I'm glad that works now!)

 

Delicious. The changelog only mentioned it for "ubercrafting", and I honestly haven't checked any of the RCs myself.

Oh, I see. Well, I'd just seen a few posts recently talking about it and linking to it like it was still a current thing. But yes, it was probably the best idea at the time to get the most bugs reported the fastest.

But then, where should members look to keep track of what bugs have been reported and what haven't? Not good to report every single bug because that just overloads the devs with spam...

 

Quoted for Truth. Without this, DoD would have been a blip in my radar, but you guys are so damned awesome that I'm determined to get up there and buy you a beer (and/or coffee if you need it more at the time) sometime this summer. I'm looking forward to Project Odin simply so that I can see deeper into your manic little heads.

 

1. No. It's better to have patches as and when they're ready. If you want to take one/two week breaks before working on patches (i.e. release on Day 1 Week 1, start next patch on Day 1 Week 2/3) that's fine, because it gives you time to collect feedback and see what needs to be done. But I don't think you should really set limits for patches. Maybe the smaller, easier, more immediate fixes should be fortnightly/monthly, but every three/four months have a bigger patch that fixes the harder issues and/or allows for some feature creep.

Edit: That said, I think this new method is great. The fans can pick up on things and give perspectives that you don't have, so in a way it's a mutual effort. You fix things that you may have overlooked (and as such improve the product), and the fans get their problems fixed. Good enough for me.

2. Well...
a) As long as skills are useable and enemies don't walk all over me; I'm not too concerned with balance being a little iffy.
b) If the game is performing and working fine, and not generating oodles of issues/incompatibilities, I'm fine.
c) If there's simple workarounds (e.g. move windows around) or no massive issue, I'm okay with them.
I think all three are, obviously, important but I feel a) is likely the most important one as an unbalanced enemy (or even player) can really have a negative effect on one's attempt, either by making it too easy - or, worse - too hard.

3. I don't think a lot's bothered me, and if I'm honest I've not been using the RCs, I've just been following the discussions. If melee has been better balanced and made stronger, then I'm happy.

I'm actually more bothered that I didn't know about hidden walls and stuff - I feel like there's a lot of gameplay things I'm missing, so I might have to go through the tutorial and see if it clears anything up.

4. Not really. I tend not to mod my games, or not mod them much (e.g. Skyrim), so unless you release stuff over the Workshop, I likely won't be using it. As for the Steam Cloud, I game on one PC and one PC alone. Unless something happens to my PC in the future, I can't imagine I'll see much use out of it. But I support your inclusion of those features, because I know from this site that the workshop at the very least will see use.

5. What's happening Thursday? Are you guys gonna be on GOG or GamersGate or something?

 

• I'd rather distinguish, like most software developers do, between a PATCH and a new version. Patches, for show-stopping bugs (which I would class as anything from Uberchests-not-saving upwards) should arrive quite quickly and be VERY small and tested and fix ONLY the problems they need to. No new features, just a fix. No breakage of backward compatibility - they literally just fix the problem at hand and NOTHING else. If we'd had uber-chests PATCHED the week they were discovered, I'd have got a lot more play out of the game. This should be the a/b/c moniker on the version number.
  
  But new VERSIONS should come on the schedule they are coming at. Once every six months if you want, that's fine. But when they arrive they should NOT generally cause show-stopping bugs or have hasty additions "just because" that are improperly tested or unbalanced and will remain so until the next VERSION. You shouldn't be PATCHING things like balance or new monsters, that should be a new VERSION, carefully tested. You sort-of do this with version numbers but you also sort-of don't (in that critical fixes are still lingering in something that's going to overhaul every aspect of the game too).
  
  Even if you have a version that then has to have an immediate patch - that's okay. But patches shouldn't take three months to fix a simple bug and also throw hundreds of other changes into the pot too (including new monster types and balancing that have had a week or two of testing and bug reports by only a handful of people). This is what I see as the biggest problem. People who have things like uberchest-saving are modifying their methods every time they play for MONTHS until a new version, a version which is then more likely to cause more problems than it fixes in their eyes (whether true or not, the idea of ripping out most of the SDL backends makes me wonder what problems I'll have). Most frustrating is if simple things that don't really matter but should get fixed eventually also don't make it into new versions even after months of other changes that most people won't see the impact of - things along the lines of the inventory having extra columns, Steam achievements not working etc. I'm not saying those particular ones aren't, but I'm guessing there will still be lots of people after this "patch" that can still find all their favourite niggles that they reported in 1.0.3 or earlier.
  
  
• Someone else said it: Bugs > Balance > UI. UI problems you can cope with. Balance problems you can correct in mods. Bugs, you can't do ANYTHING about as a user. I'm not certain that throwing in new diggle types and then having to immediately nerf them, and them pretty much appearing half-way through a patch, seemingly on a whim, bodes well for their balance for everyone (from new players to old hands) when it comes to release. I'd prefer more planning in terms of what you intend to fix in the next version, what you intend to insert, and then sticking to that and not getting side-tracked.
  
  
• You address problems, but it can take a while to filter through to the person who has them (and sometimes there's little communication about that). E.g. uberchests - the fix for that is taking a long while to filter into the people who reported it immediately.
  
  
• Steam Cloud - sure, if it's enabled. To me, it just means "remotely stored save game and settings". Does it also save things like window positions (e.g. inventory / crafting / horardic cube windows/)? Steam Workshop - I didn't even know what it was (400+ Steam games, never used it or touched things like TF2's Workshop etc.) so am incredibly unlikely to use it. It's just a big collection of user-created content? Unlikely to ever touch (I don't even use mods, which most here seem to do - perhaps this is why I find changes to the "base" game more impactful than letting mods do X).
  
  
• I haven't loaded DoD in a few weeks now, because my memory is truly awful and having to "remember" not to change levels, etc. to avoid bugs annoys me chronically and can cripple my character's inventory. I'll fire it up again once I see the update go up but, to be honest, if it's crippling again then it's unlikely I'll bother to play it much unless I see a lot of "urgent" dev activity to fix it. And I'd HATE that to happen to a game I've pumped hundreds of hours into and love (and which, incidentally, basically stopped me working on my own rogue-like that I've been planning for 10+ years...!).

Oh, and please, please. If you're putting out a version that says "X is fixed", make sure you're NOT putting out a version next week that says "X is TRULY fixed".

 

"champing at the bit" ;\

 

Yup, it's champing.

 

I'll take 1 minor mistake in a post that long any day. Give me some credit for successfully working in a rarely used saying. =p

 

I think that would be ideal.

 

If millions of people use "chomping at the bit", then it's not really wrong. That's how language evolves. Irregardless, thank you for the lesson.

 

You did that on purpose, didn't you?

 

Something for the future if it's not already known. I just had a Satanic Displacement Glyph pop me onto itself. It's not a major bug, just something that would be nice to get fixed sometime in the future.

EDIT: I am on Steam, so I don't have the official patch yet. I'm still using RC9.

 

Welcome!