Game News Dungeon Rats, Iron Tower Studio's Age of Decadence dungeon crawler, officially announced

[Melcar]

Nice. Party based AoD. Too bad no native Linux client. Pass.

 

[Goral]

BTW, this game would be ideal for multiplayer but I realize that it's impossible to do with your budget. We can dream though.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

How hard will the combat be compared to AOD I wonder? Will you guys introduce some elements to spice up encounters? Like pushing someone over an abyss, fighting on a collapsed bridge, using ropes, in these tactics games I love to have additional objectives and secrets ways to finish the encounters, you know catching the enemy rogue before he runs from the map etc.

And it gives me ideas for TT sessions.

 

[Tigranes]

BTW, this game would be ideal for multiplayer but I realize that it's impossible to do with your budget. We can dream though.

We demand a play-by-mail option!

 

[FUDU]

Jakby ktoś chciał zabrać się za tłumaczenie na polski to jestem skłonny pomóc, chociaż mój angielski jest średniawy. Może właśnie przetłumaczylibyśmy chociaż interfejs/opcje + ewentualnie początek rozgrywki, by zarysować fabułę i pozwolić graczowi poczuć dekadencką atmosferę? Pozwolę sobie zawołać Polaków, jeśli tutaj nie uda się zebrać ekipy to nigdzie się nie uda.
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Updated my ignore list

Updated my hit list.

1-800-Lithuania.

 

[Goral]

BTW, this game would be ideal for multiplayer but I realize that it's impossible to do with your budget. We can dream though.

We demand a play-by-mail option!

Elhoim
How hard would it be to have a damage count and a timer during fights so that we could compare who killed the quickest or who dealt the highest damage?

 

[t]

Pozwolę sobie zawołać Polaków, jeśli tutaj nie uda się zebrać ekipy to nigdzie się nie uda.

I'm in.

 

[Elhoim]

How hard will the combat be compared to AOD I wonder?

A similar level, but would also depend quite a bit on party composition. A solo run in the "AoD" difficulty would be much harder than in AoD. There are more enemies, and the facing bonuses are much higher than in AoD. If you are surrounded you are quite on your way to death.

Will you guys introduce some elements to spice up encounters? Like pushing someone over an abyss, fighting on a collapsed bridge, using ropes, in these tactics games I love to have additional objectives and secrets ways to finish the encounters, you know catching the enemy rogue before he runs from the map etc.

Unfortunately not, as many of those things would require changes to the underlying engine. To be more specific:

- Pushing someone towards an abyss: Tiles only have two states: passable or unpassable. An abyss would be a tile that should be unpassable (not being able to walk over it), but also should be able to "receive" a pushed character. Characters can only be pushed into passable tiles. Also would require the character model to "fall", via animation or by setting the height of the abyss tile lower. But tile height also controls camera height. As you can see, LOTS of things to change.
- Fighting on a collapsing bridge: I assume you meant that the bridge is collapsing as you fight, changing the "state" of tiles. Similar to above. Would also require a system that checks which character is standing in those tiles that change and affect him with something.
- Using ropes: You mean something like in the new XCOM in which you can throw ropes and grapple to reach other locations? No system like that. We could add some interactive objects for something like that, but it would be hand placed instead of being a system.

It's something we would like to take a look into for the CSG, but for an AoD game in this engine it's not worth the development time required, as they are fundamental changes to the grid system which has connections to many systems in the game. Basically, a pandora box that might break many things.

Now, what do we have? The focus is more on the enemies. We have fights with lots of varied setups, and handcrafted enemy dispositions. Good mixes of melee, ranged and "alchemists". Several new creatures, including a worm that moves underground. You can place your characters before the fights, plus some choices open up alternate areas for placing them.

ElhoimHow hard would it be to have a damage count and a timer during fights so that we could compare who killed the quickest or who dealt the highest damage?

Quite a bit hard. For all fights? We could track how many turns it took you to beat a particular fight, but in a "dev" way by storing it into a variable. Properly doing it would require some kind of interface, something that outputs a file for comparing or something, and I'm not really sure it's worth the time. What I would do is some kind of "Final Stats" screen when you finish the game in which we show some of the achievements, but it's definitely not something that could be done before release. We need to focus in polishing what we have instead of adding new things at this stage.

 

[Elwro]

I think a mildly interesting feature of such a game could be to provide .txt files after you finish the game or your party is wiped out with roguelike-like trivia. Especially for those who play ironman. I can see some people could be into posting such files on forums for bragging rights etc.

 

[ghostdog]

How about... Dungeon ROUSes?

Spoiler

 

[Jaedar]

So how does facing work? In AoD you just automatically face towards the last thing that attacked you (or you attacked) iirc.

 

[Tigranes]

Elhoim given that this is going to be basically a series of set-piece fights (right?), surely some of them could introduce hand-placed elements that are more in line with AOD's skill-based style. E.g. use STR checks or whatever to collapse a nearby whatever, creating impassable tiles (though engine wise maybe it's also difficult to transition to a new physical map with a fade to black), manipulate a cache of explosives which basically sets off the existing alchemist's fire effects across predefined spots (or, upon failure, in certain other predefined spots); an ancient device gone haywire so that if you step on it, or push enemies into it, they teleport into random spots on the map or into a particular destination spot.

 

[Vault Dweller]

We don't have time to add anything of that sort (basically a layer of battlefield modifications).

 

[made]

Will make spiteful comments on Codex if game doesn't provide dungeons full of rats to kill like the title implies.

 

[Elhoim]

Elhoim given that this is going to be basically a series of set-piece fights (right?), surely some of them could introduce hand-placed elements that are more in line with AOD's skill-based style. E.g. use STR checks or whatever to collapse a nearby whatever, creating impassable tiles (though engine wise maybe it's also difficult to transition to a new physical map with a fade to black), manipulate a cache of explosives which basically sets off the existing alchemist's fire effects across predefined spots (or, upon failure, in certain other predefined spots); an ancient device gone haywire so that if you step on it, or push enemies into it, they teleport into random spots on the map or into a particular destination spot.

They suffer a bit from the problems above. For example, you collapse something. What happens if there's an enemy there? It's not only setting the tiles to passable, but making a system that recognizes which enemies are there and what happens to them, like pushing them somewhere else, damaging them, etc.

As Vince said, we don't have time to add a proper layer of battlefield modifications properly, kinda like D:OS does, for example. Whatever we could add, would be clunky and feel tacked on instead of part of system.

 

[Tigranes]

That's disappointing, but fair enough. The set pieces in AOD were fun and varied enough that good execution of the mechanisms already present will go a long way.

 

[Zanzoken]

So how does facing work? In AoD you just automatically face towards the last thing that attacked you (or you attacked) iirc.

I'm curious how this works as well. Do side/back attacks get bonuses? Or is it based on how many enemies you are surrounded by? Or maybe something else entirely.

 

[GuiltyofBeingTrite]

When are you going to reveal that this is actually Barkley 2?

 

[Elhoim]

I'm curious how this works as well. Do side/back attacks get bonuses? Or is it based on how many enemies you are surrounded by? Or maybe something else entirely.

It's like in AoD, which had these bonuses but they were smaller, with bonuses for side/back attacks.

 

[Ivan]

Vault Dweller starting your game name with the word "dungeon" is a terrible idea. There are already 40 RPGs on steam that have the word dungeon in it, many of them are very well known. Consider synonyms that are less common like crypt, mausoleum, catacomb, ect. worst case scenario: someone googling dungeon rats gets wiki pages about rat enemies in dungeon siege or dungeon defenders or darkest dungeon.

maybe not CRYPT

Crypt of the Necrodancer

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Underworld of Decadence ?

 

[Bubbles]

Darkest Decadence

 

[Excidium II]

Lurker Kings

 

[Lady_Error]

Prison Break

 

[Modron]

Darkest Decadence

Decadent Decadence for that Divine Divinity feel.