DR4X News

Hey guys! Its Untrustedlife here. This week has been very busy, and very stressful. So I had nearly no time to work on the game this week. I think I just need a bit of a vacation this week. There is still dr4x work being done, its just mainly on the art front this week.

I don't want to go into detail as to why this week was so busy and so stressful as its mainly personal.

I will talk a bit about my future plans though.
I'll be honest. For a steam early access game. DR4X has completely flopped. I don’t know what I did wrong. This is my first steam game and only my second unity game and the reception of those who have tried it is nearly 100% positive.

I think that what I have accomplished so far is a really fun and weird game and many others agree with me.

However previous games i've made on other platforms have had much more traction. And i mean orders of magnitude more traction.

I have nearly 60 changelogs, dropping one every week without fail for, I don’t know how long. So lack of activity certainly isn’t a cause.

DR4X is now on 3 platforms, steam, itch and even gamejolt, so lack of platforms certainly isn't the case.

My roguelike RLDR however has thousands and thousands of downloads not just on itch but on my own website as well, and you can find it here: https://untrustedlife.itch.io/roguelegends-dark-realms-0182 and I was certainly not doing weekly changelogs for that.

Despite this complete failure I will of course keep working on the game, as it is mainly a passion project and i'm not going to let that "flop" affect my passion. This is my game, my passion, and if you like it great, if you don't great, spend your time playing something else.



But I think I learned a few things:

1. As you can imagine this has been kind of demotivating for me. And lately I’ve been trying to add more "visible" things to catch more eyes, but I think that was the wrong approach. Why do I care so much about the amount of downloads, I didn’t used to care. My perspective has changed. I want to get back to that old perspective.

2. I have too many ideas not all of which are equally fun to work on, I need to prune them a bit, down to the fun stuff.

3. I’ve been trying too hard, I force myself to have new content every week and I force myself to make visually interesting changelogs and I force myself to do weird little polish things when I have no fun at all doing that.

What I will be doing from now on:
1.i'll be focusing more on the parts of the game i'm having loads of fun developing, like adding new content (New win conditions, new monsters, new secrets etc) and more fun secretty secret things for players to find.

2. I'm going to stop trying so hard to make visually interesting weekly changelogs in the vain hope that I’ll get any new players on it and I’m going to focus on what I have fun doing with it.
Making changelogs might show that i'm actively developing the game but now that dr4x is on 3 platforms its getting kind of tedious.
So the changelogs will be more like my old changelogs from now on. Maybe with a smattering of dev logs like this one.

3. Polish?? Who cares. Polishing things isn’t getting me more downloads and isn’t fun, and I'm in early access still. The polish can wait.

4. I'm not going to force myself to have new content for the game every week, if I have new content, I’ll have a changelog, if I don’t, ill make a devlog instead or I wont post anything. Forcing myself to do things isn’t fun. Sorry but that’s just how it is going to be from now on.

Thank you SiomplyFunGaming for helping me realize that by suggesting, months ago, that I stagger the dev logs more. You are cool as hell.
See his channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/SimplyFunGaming

Thank you to my Artist friend Grimwit, who also helped me realize this.
Follow him on twitter
https://twitter.com/Sir_Grimwit

For the final section I want to thank all those people who have so far reviewed my game, helped me out by making videos on it, and to everyone who plays my game. You are the coolest people alive, and I hope you stick with me while I work on this. Because there will be some wild new content added soon.

Also, I don't say this enough, spread the word. If you like the game talk about it.


I also made a Minecraft mod this week, check it out:
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/stairs-in-the-woods

Also JOIN MY DISCORD!
https://discord.gg/9mH6Pky

This week i actually was more focused on getting all my games onto gamejolt and making the game pages on there than working on the game. And the stuff i did work on is [NODEOSERROR]
Anyway letsa go...


-The most obvious change this week is that I finally added a way to customize the "breathing room" you spawn with on maps in the options menu.


-I also updated the veteran guard unit portrait from last week to an improved portrait

Can you spot the changes?

-I added more veggies and fruit to the vegetable and fruit generators that are used in various places in the game including city names, tavern names, food names etc.

-Added more hints to the loading screeens

-Optimized [NODEOSERROR]

-Added new signs and dialog to [NODEOSERROR]

-[NODEOSERROR]

-Added new NodeOS Program.

-Made it much harder to [NODEOSERROR][NODEOSERROR]




-Fixed bug where [NODEOSERROR] had incorrect texture


-None this time that I remember


-Play the game.


None

This week was mostly polish stuff.
Anyway letsa go...


-I briefly no clipped out of reality

-Improved several of the graphical shaders

--The improved shaders include: cavity vertex shader that added toony white line effect and subtle shadows when a surface is at an angle (You know what i mean if you've played)

--Shadows in general

--CRT shader

--VHS Shader

--And Several more



-Selected units now get an outline that appears around their model, which is a desaturated version of their player color, that also shows through buildings and looks very pretty.

--This should make it easier to play especially as the mushroom things


-Enemies that are marked as attackable now get an outline determined by whether attacking them would have advantage disadvantage or neither.

--if a unit on a building would be attacked it is highlighted instead of the building.

---This makes it easier to see when you wont be atatcking the building, but rather the unit on it

-General code optimizations, clicking on a bunch of units real fast should be significantly faster and more responsive.

-Added new town guard unit portait.


-Added new veteran guard unit portrait



-Fixed a bunch of invisible code warning issues

-Fixed a real odd bug, You may be asking yourself: "Will he give more details", and my answer is Nope.

-Fixed bug where for a couple days there the treasure chests appeared above the fog of war due to new shaders.

-Fixed bug where sometimes unit that is attackable wouldn't highlight as attackable when hovering over tiles you can move to.

-Fixed bug where toony vertex shader added weird lines to trees, now they look smooth as intended, this has been a bug since the beginning.

-Fix bug where easy save tries to save and load the outline object on a unit resulting in loading the save failing


-None this time that I remember


-Eh, backrooms or something.


None

Hello, I’m posting this a day later than usual because I was up programming until 5 am and decided to go to bed instead of working longer.
So I ended up getting some sleep and it is now nearly noon.

There are a lot of changes this week and most of this was live as of last night.

I didn't decide to take screenshots for these because I already am posting the changelog late and I want to get it out and start on the next update. (That and family is visiting me today)

Anyway letsa go...


-Added new Goal
--Ultra Super Deathmatch., where you have to kill all other factions except wildlife

-Added New Goal
--Last One Standing, where you have to kill just every single faction

-Made wildlife lairs and other factions NOT spawn within 4 tiles of the spawn location of the human player, giving the player 4 tiles of breathing room.

--This makes the game much, much more playable

--I didn’t have time to make this customizable, but expect that tomorrow

-Forest trolls now have a more forest troll appropriate death noise

-Added new flag that allows pikemen to damage a unit as if they had a hard counter bonus without granting that unit the cavalry anti-archer bonus

-AI now understands pikemen better as in, they will go after those they have bonuses against more often

-Added new secretty secret stuff

-Improved shadows and lighting

-Added new hints

-Added new office minigame
--This is one i've been working on in the background for awhile

--It isn't complete still but hey

-Goblin Updates
--Gave goblins a new goblin pikeman unit, which has a bonus against cavalry

--Made it so when training goblin units the command buttons are color coded for easiness on the eyes and to make their commands more readable

--Goblin pikemen can promote into Goblin Legionnaires



-Fix bug where "0" tech shows up on buildings in factions that have researched a global research item

-Blacksmith cost corrected on capital cities

-All units that weren’t displaying their hard counter bonus icon that should have now do
--EG, Cavalry archers now display a horse and bow icon, since they have both bonuses



-Buffed Rust Spitter Faction
--Made rust spitter Majors cost 9 and have an upkeep of 9 for bandit sub factions instead of 15 and 12

--Made rust spitter majors cost 15 and have an upkeep of 15 for wildlife factions

--Made AI smart enough to use repletes like Mines

-Buffed Gremlin Factions
--Reduced Miserable Poppet for green gremlins cost from 200 misery to 75 Misery

--Reduced Miserable Poppet build time to 2

--Reduced Fleshy Kennel cost for brown gremlins to 200 Misery

--Reduced Coral Tower cost for dripping gremlins to 100 Misery

-Kingdom Balance Changes
--Markets now cost 35 gold and 6 iron

-Wildlife Balance Changes
--Hell Goat is now classed as cavalry for the purposes of hard counter bonuses

-Goblin Balance Changes
--Made Goblin Legionnaires more expensive for cube cult

--Goblin fortresses now generate +2 gold and +2 misery instead of just +1 gold


-Try goblins now.


None

Hey guys! Added some fun stuff this week. Also continued on my quest to balance kingdoms.



-The boss in "Mirefield's Troubles" now has the correct unit portraits.
--I have also buffed the boss slightly
--It has more health, power, defense, and armor


-GSTBTBTU now utilizes the wizard bear portrait


-Removed Wendigo from "Standard" lair rotation, they are a cryptid
--They still can show up for other reasons though, eg on young worlds or as a result of random events

-Added forest trolls
--Forest trolls have unique art and so do their lairs
--Forest trolls have stealth
--Their lairs spawn in forests
--Forest trolls have entirely different (though still similar attributes) stats from other trolls, but maintain the same passive and active abilities
--Forest trolls are overall more expensive to train and maintain than other troll variations
--Forest trolls have some secretty unique stuff going on
--Forest trolls have very notable lore relavance


-Gave saber toothed bear lair a new unit image




-Fixed bug where capital cities had incorrect numbers for some economic buildings (Mines/Markets/Guardhouses/Inns)

-Fixed spawn bug introduced with economic updates to AI last week



-Gave guardhouse +1 fire damage

-Gave Mine +0.5 gold production

-Gave Market +0.5 gold production

-Gave black market +0.5 gold production

-Removed bog troll from "Here Be Dragons" setting

-Added Forest Troll to "Too Many Trolls" setting

-Added Forest Troll to "Dark Forest" setting

-Added Forest Troll to "Here be Dragons" setting

-Added Forest Troll to "Strange Humanoids" setting

-Added Forest Troll to "Here Be Darkness" setting

-Removed Bog and Swamp trolls from "Realm Of Horror" setting

-Aadded forest trolls to "Realm Of Horror"


-Try kingdoms NOW


None