Don't do it- Don't keep this up

Since I got some time to burn anyway, here is an update on this issue:

(p/s: I'm not a developer etc etc)

From Something Awful forums:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3415180&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=63

"First off, a hotfix is now up for the load/save issue. You can grab it at http://www.gaslampgames.com/dredmor_hotfix.zip - unzip it into your Steam/steamapps/common/dungeons of dredmor/ and let it overwrite Dungeons of Dredmor.exe. That will get all old save games up and running (at least all of the broken ones that we have found so far.)

If the Assembled Goonery wants to test it on their broken saves, we can push this out in the morning as soon as Valve is back in the office and somebody makes the coffee. You might get what the folks on IRC are calling a "phantom save"; I'm not sure what that's about, but I think it's just because character saves are now using the full name of the characters rather than the first five letters as an index.

I'm not going to get into this in too much detail, because I'm tired and am basically running on nothing but fumes at this point, but here's some brief notes.

First off, let it be noted that I do, in fact, have my name on a Derek Smart Joint. (Graphics Programmer, Universal Combat: A World Apart. I was young and I needed the money.)

Second off, obviously this is our mess and we made it; now we get to live with it. I am not happy with the fact that we have been having teething troubles after launch. This is, bluntly, not how I want Gaslamp Games to be run.

The simple fact of the matter is that we were not expecting sales in the volume that we got, and we were not expecting the response that we got. I honestly thought we would make ten thousand sales during the entire lifetime of the product. We are... doing somewhat better than that, and as a result we are doing our best to try to deal with the fact that we now have to support a massive user base, with no money, no staff, and no time. Consequently, we have been scrabbling around trying to get everything sorted out, and when we were testing the reasonably large patch that was about to come out, this slipped through the cracks at the last minute. We didn't go back and re-test the savegames after we put together a last minute fix for a shopkeeper issue, and ka-blam, there's nothing left to do but to pick up the bodies. It's a mess, and our forums are probably on fire as well... I haven't had the heart to look.

So, yep.

To be honest, I agree with Abey Sinclair. I don't need white knighting; I've been a programmer for twenty-two years, a commercial game developer on everything from the Unreal Engine to the Aforementioned Derek Smart for eleven of them, and I've shipped enough stuff to know when it's Our Fuckup. And yep, this one was us. There's nothing to say other than "Sodding, Buggering Hell."

At the same time, I am happy that this is the *only* crash report so far that has been confirmed as reproducible in Dungeons of Dredmor 1.0.3. So that's good news. Obviously there is some other stuff that we will have to straighten out - vampirism, balance tweaks, whatever the heck is going on with the dual wielding, mod support, the planned social engineering stuff, and I'm sure there is at least one more crash bug lurking out there waiting to strike! - but we have now reached the point where I feel like I can finally sit down, stop running, and take a breather.

The only reason we put an achievement in for crashing was because we figured that the game was stable enough that this would no longer be an issue. Hence it might be coveted, instead of something that everybody now gets. Bleh.

I am, admittedly, surprised that this is an issue with a permadeath game. I didn't actually think that enough people would care that much about their characters and their runs in the worst case scenario that we broke the save game format. Shows what I know.

As soon as things calm down and I get this hotfix out properly, I will be building some serious regression testing for save games so that this Does Not. Happen. Again. It was on the TODO list, and we didn't get to it for this patch, because we wanted to deal with the Stairs bug and other issues. (Interestingly, the Stairs Bug was missed by one hundred fellow Goon beta testers over the course of a month and a half. It's been in the code base for five years. Go team.) As soon as I actually get a royalty cheque, we are also going to invest in some hardware to do more automated testing and hardware compatibility checking. We don't get paid for another forty-five days or so, which means we're all still eating ramen.

I am also going to take a few days off to try and catch up on my sleep, so I feel less stressed out about having an Indie Hit on my hands that I'm not totally sure how to deal with, to be frank.

Anyhow, as always, we are here to listen to your concerns. I want Gaslamp to be the kind of company that is awesome, listens to its user base, and puts out a good product. If we're not doing that, we need to know so that we can fix it.

That was a little longer than I thought, but oh well. Other than the save fiasco, how are people enjoying 1.0.3?

- nvining"

so maybe you guys could help with testing the hotfix now? Instead of arguing about programmers/game designers etc etc

 

Great find Srulz but can you leave a link to where you found this too? For all the lazy people so they don't believe your really good at making stuff up.

 

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3415180&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=63

I'm not actually registered in Something Awful, so I don't actually know how to get just a post, but it is actually on that page.

 

Similar statement is on their blog too, there will be a patch tomorrow for those who don't want to attempt the hotfix.

 

I don't think it's fair to call Gaslamp "crap developers" because a few bugs were missed before launch. I'm happy that they're working on fixing them.

I've had items that disappear when I drop them. I've had rooms and shops that had way too many duplicate weapons and armor in them. These things annoy me but not enough to throw a tantrum.

I've had fun playing this game. That's what matters to me.

 

Fortunately for me, I bought this game knowing that a huge chunk of the replay value came from making new characters.

 

@Karavan ... yeah maybe you and others should have checked what the update does before you and the others loaded up your save game.

It's right in the patch notes:
- Rewrote the save game format so we can add items without breaking everything. (Oops.) (This may also break current save games, although we tried our hardest to make sure this isn’t the case.)

You could have BACKED up your save game in hopes they fixed it or not played for a few days in hope there was news of a fix ...

Guess what there will be a fix ... go figure.

 

I think some people should get a sense of perspective. Certainly, they could have waited with the release. Certainly, they should have tested for savegame errors.

But this is a small indie team who won't get their money until.. what was it.. three weeks from now? And what they have done already is impressive. There is a hotfix for the saved games already. They have acknowledged they made mistakes and have been overwhelmed by the success of their game.

I am not saying people have no right to complain, but when big budget games fail to deliver I can understand the ire. When an indie game is released and it's already a lot of fun regardless of anything else -and- the developers are responsive to feedback, it may be reasonable to exert a little patience.

 

@Hmm-Hmm

Seriously right. Take Treyarch for example. They refuse to admit problems like people having more lag in Black Ops (Compared to other games, both COD or not) then any other game and they would rather blame the players for needing a better connection then try to fix the problem or admit about it.

Whether mad about their mistake or not, Gaslamp is one of the few to admit it and apologize for the mistake. Not only that but they are taking steps to prevent it from happening again. All this in about a week too.