The Next Release
I’ve already got a huge amount of feedback for v2.0 by mail, on reddit and on the announcement post. I am very happy and thankful for this! Thank you everyone who played it, given feedback or made videos! Currently, I am fixing some of the things I have received feedback on. I am planing to do a small update fairly soon (I’m hoping within 1-2 months), mainly with bug fixes and quality of life changes. Some of the things I’ve already implemented are:
- Bump statues/braziers to close doors
- Bump stairs instead of standing on them and activate (to avoid the fact that it was impossible to wait on stairs before).
- A nicer and larger item-display panel with headings (similar to the new target window).
- Fixed some of the reported issues listed at the end of the FAQ page.
The v2 Releases
I am still highly motivated to work on the game and I have many ideas I want to implement into TGGW. The reason I chose to rename the releases to v2 (except that there were so many changes from release #7) is that I am going even more experimental from now on. I want to make TGGW a more deep and complex game without making it hard to learn or understand. I don’t follow a strict plan since I have realised that I work at my best while I’m inspired/excited over an idea. But I have a huge list of ideas that I want to implement, and you will be able to follow the evolution of the game on this blog.
In v2 you can expect anything to change, even core mechanics. Since TGGW is fairly stable it is an excellent way for me to design a more complex game around, and I don’t want to think of anything as written in stone. By renaming the releases to v2 it feels as if it is a new game which can evolve in any way.
Release Cycles
I will try to have a bit shorter release cycles with v2, but since I plan to add huge changes I cannot promise that they will actually be shorter. However, almost one year between releases (like between #7 and v2.0) definitely feels too long. More continuous updates would also mean that I could get feedback earlier.
> More continuous updates would also mean that I could get feedback earlier.
Definitely. It’s more “agile” this way.
You’re on your way for making TGGW a notorious one amongst the classics. Or at least I hope it too. 🙂
Thank you very much! 🙂 Guys like you who cares a lot about the game really helps motivating me!
TGGW is just so cool. It’s so different to all the other roguelikes out there, and I legitimately think it could become one of the classics.
I have a suggestion. After being killed by a flaming bat with an ice potion but no weapon, I was wishing that the ice potion could somehow reduce the damage I’m taking from this Firebat. How’s about ice potions temporarily increase your fire resist, by, say, 25%? This’d add an interesting use to a currently, somewhat worthless item.
It is a bit tricky right now since potions have exactly one effect regardless if you coat it or drink it. It would be a bit hard to communicate as well that a potion does different things whether you drink or coat it.
I would definitely not say that ice potions are worthless if you have a weapon or gloves though…
Well, it could always do both. And you can coat on gloves? I had no idea!
If it does both, then monsters would get increased fire resistance every time you hit them with a coated weapon. But maybe that can be interesting…
Yup, you can coat gloves 🙂
Thank you very much 🙂 I am really happy people are interested in it, it makes it even more fun to work on!
I just started to play 🙂
How can I put ammo into the small quiver?
and a typo from the tutorial, that last “then” is them i guess:
“You can now get very detailed information about monsters when examining then with x.”
Hey, great 🙂 I hope you enjoy it!
You use quivers and other containers by selecting the item you want to put in it and then press ‘1’ (<1> is displayed next to the container if you have only one).
Be careful though, there’s a bug that crashes the game if you press any number that is not assigned to a container. That is fixed in the next release.
Oh, thanks! I thought that that red 1 is a point of Fatigue :). Maybe another color would be better there.
Ah, and thank you for the typo! 🙂
ugh… i lost a saved game, after i started a tutorial… somehow the tutorial has connection with the first save game slot?
and:
– “surprise” isnt there in the game reference.
– no info about the item stealing alien in the what’s new tutorial
Hm.. can you explain how the save was lost? You can no longer save in the tutorial and the tutorial have no connection to saved games.
The reference document currently only describe effects, surprise is not an effect but a mechanic. It’s not yet in the manual either, but you can read about how it works here: http://www.thegroundgivesway.com/light-noise-part-iii/
It is also explained in the “stealth and noise” tutorial.
The aliens are there for you to discover 🙂 Not everything is listed in the tutorial…
I start a game, then save it (to the first slot).
Then I start a tutorial, and quit and abandon.
The first game slot is empty.
If finish the started tutorial normally, then the game save is still there at the first slot, but if i start it it will be a tutorial. And… if i finish this tutorial, the stair will take me to an other dungeon level(where isnt any stair).
I hope it is understandable 😀
Haha, I just tested exactly that. You are right! This is very weird and not good at all! Thank you for reporting, I will fix that!
Even if not an effect I concur that it would be cool to have “Surprise attack” listed in the reference page.
The idea is that I should eventually update the manual with all the mechanics. Although that will take some time.
On the other hand, putting a small text about all core mechanics wouldn’t hurt and would be much faster than updating the manual. Will think about it!
I think, I killed the alien and game crushed 🙁 (I’m not totally sure it was the last damage, but i think so.)
and i think there are some problems with brazers:
– I can’t close a door if there are two of them next to it(at the two sides).
– and they can make items unreachable:
http://oi64.tinypic.com/29bfzlt.jpg
http://oi67.tinypic.com/2v13pfk.jpg
Thank you very much for reporting!
Do you maybe still have the savefile from when the game crashed? It would be helpful to me.
Yes, in the next release you will be able to close doors by bumping braziers.
As for the unreachable things. In the first picture I think I know the problem, in the second it’s not really blocking. You can walk on lava to reach it. I don’t consider it a problem.
Why are braziers taking one space though?
I imagine those being no more large than a regular pillar right?
I experimented with having braziers walkable but you would burn yourself (take fire damage), but that was no fun. It actually never occurred to me to just make them plain floor. At least small braziers could maybe be of that type. Interesting actually. I will think about it!
This would also fix a number of path finding errors I’ve noticed for enemies leaving corridors into rooms where there is a brazier two tiles infront of the door. Instead of fleeing into the room, they’ll walk back and forth around it.
Yes, it would actually make some things simpler (easier to close doors as well). I am thinking quite seriously about it. Somehow I am just attached to the idea that they take up space, it just feels better to me.
There may be chances to get burned when in Combat mode because of the stress, not in Exploration mode.
Or they could be IN the walls, like the torches in Brogue.
> There may be chances to get burned when in Combat mode because of the stress, not in Exploration mode.
A little bit hard to communicate the mechanics behind that, I think players would just avoid stepping on the altogether. Also I don’t think it would add too much to gameplay.
Better would be to lower fire resistance when you stand on them.
> Or they could be IN the walls, like the torches in Brogue.
Wouldn’t work that well with how they generate light currently, also I experimented with that earlier and it really does not look good in TGGW for some reason.
Game crashed with an unhandled exception after I believe I shot an “Alien” to death with a short bow.
Thank you for reporting! Another player reported a similar bug so there’s definitely something broken there. I will investigate!
>I am going even more experimental from now on.
Sweet.
🙂
I just had a super exciting run; with speed rating boosted to 9, a fully identified inventory and reasonable meele and magic capacity I decided to dive quickly after lvl 8. I even started to hope that I might get my first win. Unfortunatelly my hope was proven to be an illusion by a band of 4 barbarians at lvl 13. Having had such a blast I really wished I could retry the same run, or at least hear about other players’ experiences in the same run. Thus, despite I know nothing about the random generation mechanics of TGGW, I wonder if it is possible to play with certain seed numbers in TGGW as it is the case in Brouge. If it is technically possible would you consider to give the player the capability to see (and thus choose) the seed they play? This would also allow periodic contests as being done in Brouge forums, which is a feature I believe strengthens the community and makes me go back to Brogue from time to time..
Sound like a fun run indeed!
Having seeded runs like in Brogue has actually been requested quite a lot (a little bit to my surprise). It should not be too difficult to do technically.
Personally I think they go against the philosophy of improvising your progress, and the whole concept of unknown levels/items (playing again with the same seed would be cheating).
However, I definitely see the appeal to share seeds with others and have competitions and such. It is surely something that can be used to build a community around!
So since it has been requested a lot and is fairly easy to implement it would make sense to add it. I’ll think more seriously about it, thank you very much!
Competitions could be so interesting if we would be able to play online through a web app.
This could help gather A LOT of data, bugs, etc for BtS.
Also, that could make the game playable by Mac and Linux users which I think will soon be crucial if the game has to get more visibility.
Those things would be really great for the game! Especially playing online. Unfortunately this is where I lack a bit in resources, skill and motivation. I could ask for help of course, I know there are many helpful and enthusiastic people out there.
I am developing the core game quite heavily right now so I am not sure it is a good idea to start these projects in the near future though.
I can be wrong, but I believe that treasures are not pre-randomized for the game, so participants will get different loot on each run from the same start. Which makes seed competions kinda pointless.
By the way, I like new release a lot. Still did not dive futher 10th level, but had so much fun. Notorious water elementals are gone, but the dungeon have plenty new surprizes. Last time I was frozen to death by party of ice fungi and butterflies. And I thought an ice room would be easy with my complete cold immunity…
Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed some crashes in process.
Can confirm that aliens are nasty creatures and collapse all dungeon when killed: http://i.imgur.com/tX1kbqE.png
Also, some maps works that way:
http://i.imgur.com/6hYuu22.png
http://i.imgur.com/6O3mBYb.png
I wanted to add save files too, but was clumsy and overwrote them.
And some minor things.
You mentioned that:
*>>“ring of vision” is renamed to “ring of seeing” (to not give impression of altering the vision attribute).*
At the same time potion of vision still gives you “see invisible”, but scroll and wand of vision just raise vision. And the wand that provides “see invisile” is called “of perception” and not “of seeing”. All of this can be a bit confusing.
And grinding-related bugs are not completly gone. As example, when i coat my rusty knife with oil it becomes “knife knife”. And I don’t always want to spend energy points to re-equip it.
Hey zennaris, good to see you here again! I’m happy you like the new release 🙂
Yes, the there are both new defences (like magic resistance) and new dangers (like lowering resistance). I think it makes it a lot more interesting. I wouldn’t think a cold immune character would die to ice…
> treasures are not pre-randomized for the game
Yes, I actually didn’t think of that. Floor treasure is generated at the same time as the dungeon, but container items aren’t. That means I would have to restructure some things before implementing seeds.
> Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed some crashes in process.
Thank you for reporting. I have found and fixed the alien crash already. That map crash got reported once also, thanks for confirming!
Ah, yes, there should really be more consistency with the vision/seeing/perception naming, I will take a pass and adjust those, thank you!
I am aware of the coating-with-oil-bug as well.
Now that I have some proper experience with v2.0, I had a few suggestions. Just, little things.
– The Goblin Master has Open Melee, yet the spear he drops, gives closed melee! What’s going on here?!
– I noticed that standing on large boulders gives a bonus to vision and melee, for obvious reasons, yet flying, which also raises your height, doesn’t. I mean, I can see why you wouldn’t for balance reasons, but I reckon flying could do with some buffs.
– The enchantments for ranged weapons feel really… not interesting. I mean, sure, 7 ranged is awesome, but to my knowledge, there are literally two enchantments. Hows about you add enchantments for the other stats good for ranged players? Like vision, or speed.
– Magic resist is a really cool concept, and whilst I like the idea of only mages being able to do it, I feel like there should be epic creatures of stone or some shit that are resistant to magic anyways. Now, this is sorta done with like, armour,or resists, but you can still teleport them, or slow them, or even alot of the time, disease them! Hows about you add another way for creatures to get Magic resist.
– On a similar note, it’d be really really cool if there was a shield enchant or something you could get that just massively raised your magic resist.
– I’ve had a few cases where I’ve been way on the other side of a huge corridor from a slime room, when all 10 or something fire at me for 0-2% chance to hit because I end up in light. It takes like, a minute for each turn to pass, and is really annoying. Maybe you could make pressing z or something skip messages?
I think that’s all. I really wanna emphasise again, just how great this game is. It’s actually my favourite roguelike.
Just had another idea for a ranged enchantment. There could be some sort of thing that gives a chance to not use ammo when you fire.
Really good idea!
Thank you very much for your input Roneitis!
> The Goblin Master has Open Melee, yet the spear he drops, gives closed melee! What’s going on here?!
Bug! He should have closed melee.
> I noticed that standing on large boulders gives a bonus to vision and melee, for obvious reasons, yet flying, which also raises your height, doesn’t. I mean, I can see why you wouldn’t for balance reasons, but I reckon flying could do with some buffs.
I agree and I have thought about it. However, with the current system it is a bit hard to “link” effects together (like flying + melee boost). There would be no way to communicate that the melee boost comes from the flying. Of course a potion of flying could give melee boost AND flying status, but if you lose the flying status the melee boost would still be there. For this reason I try to not link effects together like that. I might if I come up with a good system.
> The enchantments for ranged weapons feel really… not interesting.
Agreed. Will think about new ones 🙂
> I feel like there should be epic creatures of stone or some shit that are resistant to magic anyways
> it’d be really really cool if there was a shield enchant or something you could get that just massively raised your magic resist
Yes, so basically magic resistance should not only be tied to Mp. That is a good idea and something that I have thought of. There are probably going to be changes in magic and magic resistance, but I’m not really sure how yet.
> I’ve had a few cases where I’ve been way on the other side of a huge corridor from a slime room, when all 10 or something fire at me for 0-2% chance to hit because I end up in light. It takes like, a minute for each turn to pass, and is really annoying. Maybe you could make pressing z or something skip messages?
I guess it’s the animations that takes time, not the messages. A little bit hard to fix right now. What should be fixed is that they shouldn’t fire at 0-2%.
> It’s actually my favourite roguelike.
Awesome! That makes me really happy 🙂
Flying bug happened again, and I confirm it is after a bat cast Fly. Uploaded some screens here if it helps: http://imgur.com/a/AzoTM
Also backed up ‘slot0’ save file just in case.
Other notes/suggestions:
1. Some items aren’t showing their On Hit affects in description window (e.g. lightning flail, longsword of flames)
2. Invisible, but enemies still track me. Intended?
3. After unrusting worn equipment, seems to be no benefit unless i re-equip.
4. Unconscious enemies can still “block” attacks
5. Eagle did a knockback attack, but it knocks me towards him; He ended up killing himself this way. Or is the KB direction random?
6. potion of vision should be potion of seeing? same for ring
7. suggestion: rod of curing also cure nausea
8. coating weapon in potion of mutation, has no effect on hitting enemies
9. suggestion: higher chance to avoid detected traps; I mean you can see them
10. suggestion: make pickaxes break less frequently; one-time use pickaxe is all too common (or maybe it’s just me)
Thanks for confirming the bat. It is very very weird, it seems it uses its fly ability as an attack… it never happened to me. I will investigate, thank you very much!
1. hm ok, will check that.
2. Yes, they can track you by noise. You can see in the target window how/if/why they can see or hear you. However, they can only use area attacks or melee attacks against you then.
3. ok, that’s a bug.
4. yes… however this currently only applies if you use a reach-melee attack against them. I will probably rework the mechanics there somehow anyway.
5. haha that must have been funny 😀 Yes, the direction is random although it shouldn’t be.
6. Yes, I need to rework vision/perception/seeing names for consistency.
7. good one! Will do.
8. No, monsters cannot be mutated so that is useless… for now.
9. There is already. You have a 20% bonus when detecting traps.
10. They already break less often than in #7. On the other hand, they seem to be rarer now because they are tools (tools are generated less often than weapons), so the break-risk may be reduced further.
Thanks for your input! 🙂
Could you send me your savefile with the bat? I don’t manage to reproduce the bug.
What’s best way to send it to you?
Send it to the mail address under contact in the sidebar (don’t want to write it in the comment to avoid spam).
I found what appears to be a bug. Meat can still rot in the ice bag.
More general feedback: nonlethal damage is actually really annoying in the early game, especially when it takes an unusually long time to find a weapon. Combine that with floors split into several sections only accessible by stairs and the game becomes a nightmare. One time I didn’t find a weapon for 4 floors, and every single floor required entering from diffent staircases to fully explore. To get to the main entrance for level 3 I actually had to go all the way up to level one, and since I hadn’t found anything lethal yet so I had to refight everything. Worse yet everything with poison or disease eventually forces you to rest, and thus fight everything again, including the thing that poisoned you. I was very happy when I finally died on dungeon level 4, diseased and poisoned with no food, but not as happy as if I could have found a weapon.
Anyway the point is I think nonlethal damage should be removed entirely. Maybe you have a good reason for including it, but to me it makes the early game unfun, and makes survival even more dependent on finding a good weapon.
Also, its wierd that a damaging reach weapon allows you to kill all of the unconsious enemies, but a damaging not reach weapon does not. All weapons should be usable against unconscious opponents, not just reach.
Hello and thank you very much for your feedback!
Yes, rotting meat in an ice bag is a bug. Will be fixed in the new release.
As for the non-lethal damage. This actually comes up from time to time so I might put it on the FAQ. It is one of my favourite mechanics of the game and I know many players like it as well. It has to do with mindset I think, but of course it may be that you simply don’t like it. Anyway, here’s how I’m thinking:
First of all, it is intended that you have to fight all the monsters again if you don’t kill them, or choose where you rest very carefully. There is nothing that says you have to clear levels since there is no XP in the game. Don’t explore places that are too dangerous or that would leave a lot of dangerous unconscious monsters. Avoid rooms with fungi if you can (at least in the beginning).
Secondly, I see it as fully viable to win the game weaponless. Dual wielding fists are very powerful (with the drawback that monsters come back). At some point you will find *something* that can kill monsters though (wands, rods, missiles or a melee weapon). Not all characters rely on melee.
Third, finding a weapon is an important milestone but it may very well not be until level 6 or so if you’re unlucky (it will be very different from game to game, in some games you might find 3 weapons on level 1). However, it is not that bad, you will find some way to continue. But there are many other ways than melee that is viable to survive. Personally I find this milestone very fun as it changes how you play. I also find non-lethal damage interesting because it makes decisions of where and when to rest more important.
Fifth, I think non-lethal damage is one of the things that makes TGGW really unique and different from other roguelikes. I am more likely to base it even more on it than to remove it.
Sixth: yes, it is weird that reach weapons can be used to kill unconscious monsters and should maybe be removed. I find it acceptable at the moment since reach weapons are quite rare. I am also planning to play around with other consequences of killing unconscious monsters.
When it comes to stair labyrinths, this is also something that I really like. It is one of the few things that forces you to explore and backtrack (otherwise you could always take the first stair you found and there would be no danger in leaving unconscious monsters behind).
So in summary, yes I have a reason for these mechanics and I am sorry that you don’t like them. I encourage you to play some more, I remember getting comments that some player didn’t like the non-lethal damage at first, but grew to like it as they played more. Anyway, thank you very much for your opinions!
Just reporting a few more things I found in my last run:
– The enchant name for the anti-acid resist shield enchant is spelt wrong (corrotion vs corrosion)
– It’s a bit incongruous for the Amulet of Speed to give the same amount of speed as the Ring of Haste. All the other amulets are stronger than their ring counterparts (Magic, Health, Peace/Deflection, etc.). However, I do realise that 2 speed would be rather significant, and if you don’t want to go that far, I suggest you add some other effect to it. Could it perhaps stop you from getting your speed stat drained? That could be an interesting mechanic in general actually…
– Why do Heavy Gauntlets leave your fist damage non lethal, whereas iron gaunlets make it actual damage?
– I could see it being possible to get stuck if you have no where to drop your items and you take enough gear off to over fill your inventory without enough energy to put it back on.
– I think item upgrade chains are somewhat under utilised, especially ones which require multiple NPC’s. Like, make your quaterstaff an ironstaff, then a shockwood staff, then you go to the alchemist and get it made faster or something and improve it’s stats. Or if there were branching options, like making your whip either a lethal barbed whip or a longer 4 square reach whip.
– I got this weird bug wherein m two potion belts are linked together? Putting items in one fills both, and both have the number for both next to them. Then I tried to duplicate chocolate milks with it, and got two separate non-stacking chocolate milk items, and dropping the second crashed the game.
– I somehow ended up with a snowball trap I don’t remember picking up, and it’s asking me to identify it, as if it were enchanted. Trying to set it crashed me.
Thanks again!
> The enchant name for the anti-acid resist shield enchant is spelt wrong (corrotion vs corrosion)
Thank you!
> It’s a bit incongruous for the Amulet of Speed to give the same amount of speed as the Ring of Haste.
Agreed. The idea is that speed is already extremely good. I will think about it.
> Could it perhaps stop you from getting your speed stat drained? That could be an interesting mechanic in general actually…
It is an interesting mechanic indeed. I am thinking along the lines of having attributes “sustained” somehow. It might show up!
> Why do Heavy Gauntlets leave your fist damage non lethal, whereas iron gaunlets make it actual damage?
Heavy gauntlets are not that efficient in melee, iron hurts a lot more 🙂
> I could see it being possible to get stuck
Hm yes, but it seems very unlikely, there should at least be consumables or something to use up.
> I think item upgrade chains are somewhat under utilised
I really like the idea with multiple NPCs! That would also be very easy to implement right now. Branching is also something that I have been thinking about. Good ideas!
> Bugs
Those are really really weird bugs indeed. Were the bugs in the same run? It seems like the item-state got corrupted.
– Yeah, I just accidentally almost got myself stuck once, because IIRC, I was nauseated… (which I’ve found to be a huge risk actually. It’s a really interesting mechanic. Perhaps there could be some way to offset it…)
– And yeah, alot of those bugs were in the same run. I also had a moment later in the run where picking up a potion belt removed the one that was already in my inventory…
Hm yes, didn’t think of nausea. It might be a real risk to get stuck then.
That weird bug will be really hard to find, but I really hope it is very rare. Thank you again for reporting!
Found a couple more bugs:
Every time I kill an alien the game crashes.
I got “Your rusty iron gauntlets break!” but my rusty iron gauntlets were not broken, and were in fact still equipped to my character.
Thank you for reporting! The first one I knew (and have fixed), the second one I didn’t, will look into it!
A couple more:
Not sure if this one is a bug. I attacked an enemy with a weapon and it broke. I forget what the weapon was but it dealt lethal damage. The enemy was knocked unconcious. This might not be a bug because it sort of makes sense that a breaking weapon doesn’t deal lethal damage, but it was wierd.
This one is definitely a bug. An armoured goblin cast panic on me. It was in melee in me and the log only said “The armoured goblin uses panic [40%]” but I received the temporary stat changes and I examined the armoured goblin with x and the armoured goblin did not receive the stat changes. I’m not sure what caused this as I’ve seen goblins correctly panic themselves while in melee with themselves before.
I continued playing and the same armoured goblin cast panic on me several more (sometimes failing to use panic) times bringing my speed up extremely high. It then correctly used Armour on itself. Later another goblin from the same group, a goblin guard used panic on me, so whatever the bug is it isn’t with just the armoured goblin. The goblin guard wasn’t even damaged… I don’t know what’s going on.
Some additional info to hopefully improve the chances of you finding the bug: I had 115% armour, I found the goblins in a wooden room with 2 armoured goblins, a goblin archer, and a goblin guard, and no other enemies. I wasn’t under any special status effects. screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/X4gQI I can also send you the savefile if you want.
Thank you very much! Yes this seem to be a severe and weird bug. It is most likely the same bug as sometimes makes bats cast “fly” on you. I think I’ve solved it for the next release, but I have to test some more to be sure.
Technically not a bug, but if you coat a reach weapon with something positive, like say, a potion of health, you can apply it to yourself infinitely. This exploit should probably be removed, since infinite health is game breaking.
Yes! Noticed it as well! Definitely a bug, already removed in the development version, thank you very much!