The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians
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Category Archives: Weekly Update

Final Weekly Update : Treasure Hunt

Posted on January 13, 2016 by manutoo
Hey, that's me ! :-)

Hey, that’s me ! :-)

And this is the final weekly update.

At least for the time being ; maybe in the future I’ll come back to add a Rogue Mode to the game. Or Dungeon Guardians 2. We’ll see… :)

But for now, let’s see what has been accomplished the past 10 days.

I finally found the energy and the time to put the Treasure Hunt in the game. This is a chained series of riddles, more or less easy, designed mostly to test the player’s memory and observation skill.
This hunt features a new extra non-combat item, as well as alternate weapons (eg: 2H tank weapon).

This little extra in the game makes it now really complete, especially as there was a series of rooms & places that didn’t make much sense till now, because they were destined to be part of the Treasure Hunt.

I also wrote a complete documentation with a mini-tutorial for the Map Editor : http://steamcommunity.com/app/409450/discussions/2/458604254469667698/ .

On the Steam front, I added the Trading Cards. And in bonus, you should be able to get the OST as free DLC on Steam within a few hours !

At last,  the after-release service is also more or less done, as I got only very few bugs and requested features to add in the game since a few weeks.

So the main work is done now, almost 4 years after the development started, back in February 2012.

I will still take care of any reported bug, and will very likely add some extra requested features if they are easy to implement, but my mind will now be able to switch to my next game (Tennis Elbow Manager 2, a tennis manager game).

I’ll still likely write a postmortem for the game at some point : maybe in a few weeks, or at a milestone for the sales (ie: when the game will have paid me a somewhat decent salary :mrgreen: ).

I will also maybe write a mix between a game design analysis and a game theocrafty article on the game. A full game design analysis would feel too much of self-cannibalism, as I don’t have enough distance to be objective enough on the perception of the different gameplay mechanisms.

I will also try to contact GOG again, now that the wishlist got more than 300 votes. Maybe it’ll be enough to make them change their mind. If not, maybe knowing that Dungeon Guardians is the best selling FPV Dungeon Crawler released recently will help as well… :P  (ok, this is a relatively easy feat, as there’s not much FPV Dungeon Crawlers, but still, it’s nice 8-) )

That’s all for now. Thanks to have followed this blog, I hope you have enjoyed the ride. Me, I surely enjoyed it, and I’m a bit sad it’s kinda over now. DG took the best part of my mind for most of the past 4 years, and it has been an incredible experience !

See you in not too long time (hopefully!), and Happy New Year ! :)
(I’m french, we have till January 31st to wish it ! :-P )

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54th Weekly Update : Steam Workshop

Posted on December 14, 2015 by manutoo
I finally will be able to rest a bit ! (Screenshot by Logort)

I finally will be able to rest a bit ! (Screenshot by Logort)

Last week got its up & downs.

I’m nearly dry, and working on system stuff (ie: the Steam Workshop integration) is really not as fun as creating games.

But I did it, I’m finally finished with it : the game now loads Workshop Dungeons, export and then load Mods to & from the Workshop.

Hopefully, it’s bug free. It may require a bit of polishing, though ; I’ll see what need to be done depending of user feedback.

Right now, in the Workshop, there’s only the No Spiders Mod that I have uploaded by myself (for our arachnophobic friends :) ) : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=573850100 .

Note: to see the workshop items, you have to own the game, as it’s still not officially released at this point. I’ll do that once I’m sure everything runs smoothly, hopefully for Xmas… :)

So now, I guess I’m good for some serious holidays. I’ll stick around to fix any reported bug or glitch, though. I might also take a few hours to add Steam Trading Cards & Badges to the game. Hum, that sounds like half-holidays, but I’ll take that, that’s better than what I got lately..! ;-)

I’m still thinking about the Scavenger Hunt, but still no plan nor release date for it…

So I’ll do at least a couple more Weekly Updates, plus a Post Mortem by February 6th at maximum, to celebrate the 3-month anniversay of the Steam release… :P

Cya soon !

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Posted in Development Diary, Weekly Update | 2 Comments |

53rd Weekly Update : Store Stories

Posted on December 7, 2015 by manutoo
Maneuvering around big Dragon boss (screenshot by MardoG)

Maneuvering around big Dragon boss (screenshot by MardoG)

Ok, on last week, my productivity lowered to the average one of a corporate employee… :mrgreen:

I took care of the Mac Appstore version on last Monday, managed to do a couple of small updates, but I didn’t have too much mood to get into Steam Workshop, so I only started the heavy work on Friday, and on Saturday I released an update that allows you to upload your custom Dungeons to Steam Workshop, but now it’s still not possible to play them for other users. It should come very soon, though.

But don’t run away right now, I have 3 important news ! :)

  • Dungeon Guardians has been released on the Humble Store, and you can grab it here : https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/thefallofthedungeonguardians_storefront ; for the moment, it only offers a Steam Key ; I might add a DRM-free version once the update rhythm will have settled down though (ie: it’s very painful to maintain many different versions when there are important updates every week)
  • the game has also been released just a couple of hours ago on the Mac AppStore, as you can see here : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fall-dungeon-guardians/id1063189004
  • an user set up a wishlist for Dungeon Guardians on GOG ; it seems only a couple hundred of votes may help the GOG Team to reconsider the game, so don’t hesitate to vote for it if you’d like to see a GOG release : http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/the_fall_of_the_dungeon_guardians

So this week, hopefully, I’ll finish everything for the Steam Workshop, so maybe we’ll see a couple of small user dungeons by the end of the year… :)

Cya next week !

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52nd Weekly Update : Modding SDK

Posted on November 29, 2015 by manutoo
Dark Crypt (screenshot by fR0z3n.s0u1)

Dark Crypt (screenshot by fR0z3n.s0u1)

Last week went smoothly.

I still did a little bunch of bug fixes, but they were mostly for very special cases.

So I had time to finally work on a new important feature : the Modding SDK, including multi-mod & incremental mod support for the game !

You can find the SDK here : http://steamcommunity.com/app/409450/discussions/2/492378806378228784/ .

It even comes with 2 small Mods : 1 to replace the spiders by skeletons, for players with arachnophobia  ; and 1 with all the built-in portraits of the game, to change them or add new ones.

Except that, I got the answer from GOG : they said it looked like a good & interesting game, but were afraid it was too much of a niche game for their store (translation : it didn’t sell enough on Steam). :(

Actually, sales on Steam are not too bad and I’m relatively confident we’ll get to the point where the game will be worth the money and time invested in it.

Now, only the Steam Workshop support is missing. I hope to able to do it all this week, although I don’t have much idea of the amount of work it represents : it’s going to be a surprise..! :-P

I also should be able to publish the game on the Mac AppStore.

After that, I’m not sure where it’ll go. I still want to add the Scavenger Hunt to the game, so maybe I’ll finally do it… Or maybe take intensive holidays… Or maybe start to fiddle with my next game (ie: Tennis Elbow Manager 2, a tennis management game)… Or write documentation for the Level Editor and Modding the game…

Cya next week to see how everything will turn out ! :)

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Posted in Development Diary, Weekly Update | 7 Comments |

51st Weekly Update : Blog’s 1st Anniversary, time to look back a bit ?

Posted on November 23, 2015 by manutoo
Xmas in a Haunted Dungeon ? (screenshot by Hellbishop)

Xmas in a Haunted Dungeon ? (screenshot by Hellbishop)

Exactly 1 year ago, I wrote the 1st post of this blog.

Development had started more than 2 years before that, but that post can be seen as the limit between “I’m doing that to enjoy myself” and “I’m going to have to sell this game if I want to do more like this ; and to do so, I have to finish it”.

After that post, I almost never stopped to hurry, or at least feel impatient to finish the part I was working on to switch ASAP on the next one, hoping to finish the game soon.

Now, the game is released, but it’s still a bit early to do a real Post Mortem, especially as I’m still not sure where we are headed in term of sale volume.

So let’s talk about past week.

Work rhythm finally noticeably slowed down : most of the days, I had free time between end of my work and going to sleep ! :-P

I still did a good bunch of little fixes, changes & enhancements, as you can see in the ChangeLog here : http://steamcommunity.com/app/409450/discussions/0/490123727974362306/ .

I finally fixed the Linux input issue (by doing my own version of the text input), but I still didn’t start to work on the modding stuff. It should be very likely for this week, as the bug reports & the feature requests start to dry down… :)

I still didn’t hear back from GOG. I’m not sure if it means they’re not interested, or if they are crawling under the game submissions, or if they are just very busy with the end of year business. Hopefully, I’ll know soon enough.

Cya next week for more news !

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50th Weekly Update : Patch Week

Posted on November 17, 2015 by manutoo
Pally vs Skeleton (thanks to Agent Cooper for this nice screenshot!)

Pally vs Skeleton (thanks to Agent Cooper for this nice screenshot!)

Alright, it’s getting better ! :)

I still worked a lot last week, but less frenetically (at least since last weekly update) and got some well deserved sleep, but probably still not enough rest, because I spent a lot of time watching Let’s Play videos on Youtube.

These videos shown me that a lot of players don’t want to spend 2 minutes to read in detail the description of their abilities, and thus just smash the buttons without much idea of how to organize their fight. Game is forgiving at start, but the difficulty quickly raises up so I wonder if they’ll make it to the level 5 or not.

Except that, Dungeon Guardians should arrive soon on the Humble Store (but still through Steam Keys), and I contacted GOG but still haven’t got any answer from them.

So next step is to put the game on the Mac AppStore, but before that, I’d like to add the Modding support to allow adding custom portraits.

And even before that, I have to create my own text input field for the Linux version, because my attempts at bypassing the Unity3D bug seem to have failed… :-?

Cya next week for more news !

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49th Weekly Update : Steam Release !

Posted on November 11, 2015 by manutoo
It's done !

It’s done !

Pfffffff… (for the last time ?)

If you follow this blog, you know that normally I publish the weekly update on Sunday or Monday.

Today is Wednesday. That says it all, no ?

No ? Ok, so let me explain..! :mrgreen:

Last Friday I released The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians on Steam, like this :

Naively, like I always am, I thought it’d be a bit rough, with a few little bugs & fixes to do here and there, but it’d settle within 24 hours.

How wrong I was ! It took me almost 4 days to fight bugs and integrate in emergency popular requested features into the game, so everybody could enjoy the adventure nicely.

I think with the last update of this morning, it should be (nearly) ok. And I will be able to finally get some rest, before doing a bit more bug hunting (text input doesn’t work on Linux coz of an Unity3D engine bug :roll: ), and then switch to Modding support (SDK + Steam Workshops) and getting the game published in other Stores (GOG, Humble Store, Mac AppStore).

In term of sales, the game did an ok start, but nothing fancy, I’m still not on my way to buy a Porsche (or more important, fund a more ambitious sequel). But within 6 months or 1 year, I may be able to get my investment in money and time paid back.

Hopefully, it’ll catch on with Christmas season, with the help of the additional stores and maybe a bit of marketing (if I get some ideas or get lucky :) ).

That’s all for now, cya soon for the next weekly update !

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Posted in Development Diary, Marketing, Milestone, Weekly Update | 3 Comments |

48th Weekly Update : Rogue Done !

Posted on November 1, 2015 by manutoo
Hungry Bone Dragon!

Hungry Bone Dragon!

Pffffffff (again), I finished the Rogue and I’m glad I did because I’m near implosion ! 8-O

The week has been ok without too much bumps (except in my neighbourhood, but that’s another story, hum, stories actually, which include birds, dogs, bugs & dead mouse amongst other annoying things), so I managed to do the 2 final specializations of the game : the Duelist, a Rogue tank spec, and the Ranger, the only spec able to use bows & crossbows in the game.

For the Ranger, I cheated a bit… :oops:  I didn’t do anything too special for him (except the bow/crossbow) so he’s kind of a patchwork between several other specs. But except if you do plenty of runs with many different parties, you will likely never notice that… :-P

Anyway, the game is now fully done ! It just needs to be proofread by an English native speaker, as well as to get the French translation (I’ll get to it :-? ) and the German translation, and then I’ll need to build all the different versions correctly (Windows / OSX / Linux) and it’ll be all set to be released for next Friday on Steam, yippee  ! :mrgreen:

Cya soon for more news !

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Posted in Development Diary, Weekly Update | 3 Comments |

47th Weekly Update : Assassin !

Posted on October 25, 2015 by manutoo
The 1st Rogue specialization : the Assassin

The 1st Rogue specialization : the Assassin

Pffff, hard week, hard times… :-?

I still had to do many little things this week, including more bug hunting than expected, so I could finish only the 1st Rogue specialization, the Assassin.

Result is pretty nice, though, with a very special gameplay, that may be a bit hard to apprehend (the Man at Arms is much easier to handle), but the Rogue ought to be a bit more technical than the warrior, no ? :)

I just started the next specialization, a tank one, so I hope this incoming week I’ll be able to finish the Rogue, if nothing unexpected comes through.

I set the release date on Steam on November 6th, which should give me the time to get the game proofread and do the French translation.

But I’m getting super tired, especially as I’ve got an army of birds waking me up almost every day around 6:00am (but I swear I’m not a egg snatcher pig :mrgreen: ).

I’m almost there, so hopefully, I’ll hold !

Cya next week to check how it’s going… :)

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46th Weekly Update : Steam & Mac OSX

Posted on October 18, 2015 by manutoo
Ice Dragon

Ice Dragon

Another good week of work !

The game is now available to play on Steam, with Steam Achievements, for anyone who already bought the game from here . And the Steam Store page is visible here : http://store.steampowered.com/app/409450 . The game should be available to buy on Steam within a couple of weeks.

I also built & packaged the Mac OSX version for ManaGames.com (but still not for Steam), and it seems to be working nicely… :)

Things have been less crazy so I even have been able to rest a bit..! :P

So now, we’re just left with the Rogue class (and maybe the Scavenger Hunt, if I get the mood & energy) and the Steamwork shop integration and it’ll be all done.

Goal for next week is to do almost 2 Rogue specializations ; I’m not sure it’s possible or not, but we’ll know that soon enough ! ;)

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