Game News Tomes of Mephistopheles - ARPG Alpha Sale

[FUDU]

GOD DAMN DEVS STOP TRYING TO SELL ME YOUR UNFINISHED GAMES

What are you talking about? AAA devs have been releasing alpha code for years, then finish the game only after you've already paid for it. (If your lucky.) They're just trying to emulate the big boys.

 

[Morkar Left]

This is an alpha funding project. By purchasing Tomes of Mephistopheles right now, you will be getting it at the lowest price possible, you will be able to download early alpha version immediately after the purchase and will be granted all future updates for the title for free, including final release of the game.

That has to be the worst trend to come out of MineCraft; Indies convincing themselves that their product will increase exponentially in value.

At least it has hopping skeletons.

Depends on the game and how playable it already is. It worked great for M&B; I played the demo and enjoyed it that much that I spent 15$ to get the full version. The beta was already good enough to warrant the pricetag for me. Having a completed game later was a bonus.

Since the game is openworld and randombased I think the sales model is a good idea. But I would recommend him to allow mods and support them. That made M&B really successful in the end.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Looks like a 3d version of The Gauntlet; my indie funding pre order money is on the never-will-happen obsidian rpg.

 

[zratchet]

http://www.daemonforge.org/tom/changelog_full.txt <- keep watch here for updates.

 

[Metro]

Thank you guys! There are many, many more cool features and dungeons to come

If R&D on outdoors will be successful, you will also have outdoor areas with villages and towns!

That sounds pretty sweet~

 

[zratchet]

 

[MisterStone]

Bros, I know how much you love to hate on Indie developers (god forbid someone would actualyl try to make a good game rather than bitch about how bad games are), but if they cross roguelikes with Ultima Underworld and Dungeon Master and come up with a decent game, I WILL BUY THE FUCK OUT OF THIS. I am not sure how I feel about crowd-sourced development funding, but this looks like a damn fine effort to me.

I wish we could get the devs out here to talk about it...

 

[uowaep]

heya. <- dev here

 

[Baron]

^ Quick! GET HIM!!!

 

[uowaep]

^ Quick! GET HIM!!!

hehe nice.

A feature like fully destructible environment always goes very heavy on the performance.
Each wall has to be a dynamic entity (as opposed to static geometry, which it usually is, making it far less performance heavy) in order to be able to change not only its looks but also its physics.
I really hope the dev has considered this and found a good solution, or else this game will start a lagfest on bigger levels. And I'm sure everybody wants bigger levels :D

Each room and wall is a dynamic entity. These entities spawn and despawn around players in chunks as they move about the dungeon allowing for miles of space. The tiles are culled on the client so that only nearby tiles are drawn. This allows for multiple players to be all over the dungeon because just spawning a few entities in Darkpalces doesn't hurt anything if you're not drawing them. The only limitation is that the highest number the engine can handle with good accuracy is 16777215, but that many objects would never be spawned. The real limitation is that the further you go out in space, the bigger your origin vectors will become, but when you look at it, it's not really a limitation at all. Each tile is 512 units wide and 256 tall, so do that math. It ends up being too far to walk, and that just accounts for the positive space. Negative space is used as well but 1 less byte is available. 16777215/512 = ~32768, so that's 32768 tiles in width for the positive space. Since height is only 256, you get twice as many tiles for the height. 10 units seems to be about a foot, so 1677721.5 feet, 5280 feet per mile, 1677721.5/5280 = ~317.75 ... so ~ 317 cubic miles doubled + the negative space. Also, from what I hear from the engine developers, you can go pretty far beyond these numbers before the accuracy loss really makes a difference. So that's sort of the minimum i would say the world size can be as my guess.

- daemon

 

[Metro]

heya. <- dev here

How's the preorder response been so far?

 

[uowaep]

As you can see here, we've sold a few. Could be better ofc.

 

[EG]

245 copies sold .... 2,755 copies to go

My condolences.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

As you can see here, we've sold a few. Could be better ofc.

At least you are not motorsep, that guy lacks serious PR skills :-\

 

[uowaep]

Well, we live in a funny world today don't we? It's acceptable for the average citizen to berate and insult anyone and everyone, but if someone representing a company shows some realistic human emotion, he's committed the ultimate sin. We're all human. I mean you guys gotta expect people to lash out when you show them total disrespect. We're not perfect.

- Peace (It's better than being pissed off all the time.)

 

[Licaon_Kter]

His reaction was rather inflamatory, I get it, it's your friend and all, but like I said there, alienating your target audience will get you nowhere. (Well there are always interviewers willing to hear an "indie dev fighting the bad trolls" ; any publicity is good publicity, right?)

 

[Stabwound]

I have no idea where the "shitty graphics" comments are coming from, especially on a Linux open source forum. It's not like these people are even playing games like the majestic Skyrim, and besides, the graphics in this game are actually quite atmospheric and well-done for the type of game it is. I'd love to see a "90's dungeon crawler" like they're talking about that has comparable shadows and shaders, etc. The current graphics style is perfect for a game like this. I'd like to see really dark areas that require torches/light source to navigate; those are always fun and atmospheric to me.

I'm definitely interested in this game. It looks like a realtime first person roguelike, which is +++ in my book.

I think the biggest mistake is having those terrible old videos, with the rainbow bombs and "destructible walls" that aren't still available. It sure gave me a bad impression of the game.

As for the dev's angry comments, I'll agree that basically insulting and provoking his niche customer base was a rather dumb idea. But whatever. I would guess that the trollish comments are partially because of the news post that thread is based it. It really comes across like begging, which isn't good. I don't think they expected the actual email to be posted, though.

I'm not totally interested in paying for what is mostly a tech demo with no guarantee it will ever become anything more. Maybe a Kickster route would have been a better idea?

 

[Metro]

Linux users are pretentious fags, anyway. That said, you can't respond to trolls. As far as getting more publicity... I dunno... maybe try and get in contact with the Dungeons of Dredmor guys (they seem like decent people) and see if they'll give you a mention on their twitter or whatever. It's sad that a moron like Total Biscuit is to indie developers what Johnny Carson was to comedians back in the 80's. If you get his 'blessing/publicity' you'll sell a ton of copies.

 

[EG]

We're all human. I mean you guys gotta expect people to lash out when you show them total disrespect.

Not only do I expect them not to lash out, I expect them to take what positives can be found and get back to work.

Fighting the good fight against the Internet plebs is worthless to you and entertaining to us.

(first person rouge like is to rougelike as action rpg is to crpg)

 

[uowaep]

Well, I'm not going to try to justify anyone getting into a flame war. I've had my share of 30 page flame wars back in the day. I don't do that sort of thing anymore. Some people are just new to the whole troll experience and don't know how to deal with it yet. We're here to offer you guys a fun game, that's all.

 

[Metro]

One word, friend: Kickstarter.

 

[EG]

One word, friend: Kickstarter.

It does appear to be a good time to "back" inXile and ride their coat tails, don't it.

 

[felipepepe]

Stupid question: Doesn't blowing a long tunnel through thick stone walls just to get past one wodden door seems like...dumb? Can't I just blow the door (or the walls beside the door)?

 

[uowaep]

Stupid question: Doesn't blowing a long tunnel through thick stone walls just to get past one wodden door seems like...dumb? Can't I just blow the door (or the walls beside the door)?

It's alpha. The wood doors will be destructible, but as you get deeper in the dungeon there will be stronger metal doors. Also, as the dungeon webs out it becomes more useful to use bombs than to backtrack and blow up doors or find keys.

 

[Stabwound]

The game looks good. If you had a kickstarter campaign I'd probably throw a few bucks at it. I can picture the end product being the type of game I'd like to play, if character development is at least somewhat detailed, with nice loot and stuff. I'm a big fan of roguelikes and dungeon crawlers, and this seems like a cool mix of them. Like a real-time Dungeon Hack.