Dwelvers News

Dear Dwelvers community,

This week I've not been able to work as much as I normally would because one of my children has been sick. She is better now and I've taken the time I got to focus on creatures fight or flight behavior. There are many small things the creatures does that can affect the outcome of a battle, such as when they should be scared, what enemy they should prioritize, where they flee, and how fast they can return to battle.

By making improvements and tweaks to these behaviors the battle gets much more interesting and less frustrating. Read more about it below.

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Creatures will now flee towards their beds if possible
• Creature courage restored faster
• Creatures will now focus on one target even if being hit by many
• Creatures sleeps in their beds until fully healed
• Creatures now flees traps
• Creature attack prio changed
• Enemies starting in player prison will no longer wear equipments
• Ghost no longer flees

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Mission 4 now impossible on Impossible
• Enemies coming from waves will not try to find my dungeon again after destroying hostile objects in the vicinity
  

Thank you all for playing Dwelvers and coming with feedback, it is really helpful! And please don't forget to leave a review if you like the game ;)

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

Dear Dwelvers community,

This week I've fixed something I think many of you have been longing for. There have been a lot of comments on the suicidal Imps out there and that some of you want to slap them! Well, I feel for you! I noticed that instead of actually fleeing from battle they seemed to enjoy running straight into them.

[h2]Improved Fleeing[/h2]
So I sat down and tried to figure out what was actually wrong here and came up with the following.

• Imps could actually be called for help into battle (which is a big bug).
  
• When imps are fleeing they try to go straight to the Dark Mother room (meaning they could run straight through enemies wanting to get there).
  
• If the enemy is close to the location they are fleeing they flee to other rooms (still could flee straight through the enemies).
  
• If there are task like digging or transporting wounded they didn't care if there was enemies nearby or in their path.
  

So the improvements I've made is the following

• Imps have their own pathfinding when doing jobs, this pathfinding avoid enemies and is also used by scared creatures in general)
  
• Imps will not do a job that is close to an enemy or where the path to the job is blocked by an enemy.
  
• If the imps starts to flee it will use a pathfinding algorithm that seeks the safest location to flee to and at the same time avoid as many enemies as possible getting there.
  

The fleeing pathfinding algorithm to find the safest place is prioritized in the following order

1. Find a location that are out of sight from all nearby enemies.
   
2. Find a location that are as far away from the enemy that is chasing you as possible.
   
3. Find a location that is as close to the nearest player owned room as possible.
   
4. If all these criteria's are meet, then stay there until you are not afraid anymore.
   

So hopefully you will enjoy these smarter imps and if you'd like you can comment on the their new behavior here.

But I also know that big changes like this always brings some unexpected behavior, so please report any abnormality you may find here at the forum.

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Creatures getting stuck on surface
• Bug (18.7.0) - The next wave shows the party that is coming next, but in reality it shows the party that appeared the last time
• Bug (Beta 0.18.7.0): Skipping mission intro reveals entire map
• Bug (Beta 0.18.7.0): Wave timer stops when all portals are destroyed, but it's not greyed out and shows the wrong message
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Creature pathfinding on surface doesn't work too well
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Enemy arrow animation is...weird
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Creatures can't reach rally flag on surface of portal #3 in mission 3
• Bug (Beta 0.18.6.0): Very difficult to get into one particular impanzee room on Mission 8
• Bug or Feature? (Beta 0.18.7.0): Can't build roads along edge of the map
• Is it just me or is mission 6 exceptionally difficult early on compared to the previous ones?
• 18.0.5 - Enemies coming from waves will not try to find my dungeon again after destroying hostile objects in the vicinity
• Bug/Feature (Beta 0.18.7.0): Not enough coal in Mission 1
• Bug (Beta 0.18.6.0): Incorrect grammar in Achievements

Thank you all once again for playing and helping me make Dwelvers better than ever before!

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

Dear Dwelvers community,

Thank you once again for all your support with playtesting and coming with suggestions. I really love the discussions on the forums on how to complete the campaign at impossible. You are way better at playing Dwelvers than me :D

So another week another update, here we go!

I've mainly been focusing on balancing the waves and doing some tweaks with how the creatures battle each other. You can read more about it below!

• Creatures no longer stands on top of each other when fighting. - With the next version I've added a "force" separating creatures that stands to close to each other. This makes large groups of enemies easier to handle as they can not attack you all at once.
  
• Waves now come together - With the next version all enemies spawned from a portal will now slowly walk together towards the player. No longer will the dwarfs run first separating the group.
  
• Enemies will not drop as much equipment as before - in the next version I've added a random chance for the enemies to drop their equipment. I've learned that the crafting room looses it purpose if the player can get all the equipment from the enemies.
  
• Endless flow is now longer an option - I have removed the endless flow option and balanced the waves even more so that after wave 15 the waves will have a more logarithmic grow and not just get infinitely stronger.
  
• You can now skip mission cinematics - I added this option after request from a user.
  

• Mission 3 stuck building a bar room
• Mission 6 is too hard!
• Prisoners and ghosts all bunch up in one corner of their rooms
• Campaign - lvl 6 - Wave meter greyed out and said I needed to destroy more portals but subsequent waves spawned anyway
• Campaign - lvl 6 - No objectives after getting the gold from trade
• Issues with creatures entering portals in large quantities
• Imps don't enter the surface while creatures are rallied there

Thank you all for playing Dwelvers and please do a review if you like the game :)

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

Hi all,

Thanks to a report from a user here at the forums I found out that some of you probably get the error "Failed selecting combo box item! Selected index is out of bounds!" when starting Dwelvers.

The issue is now solved, and I really want to both thank you for making me aware of issues like this and at the same time apologize for letting issues like this into the release.

Thank you once again for all your support!
/ Rasmus

Dear Dwelvers community,

The Steam forum has really been booming with support and I thank you for all the feedback you have given the game.

I saw you reported some crashes and I have solved some of them. Keep sending me dmp files if you experience more crashes. Especially with this version as I had to do a fix which will enable me analyze the dmp files better.

This week I have been focusing on solving bugs. Next week I will focus on the enemy waves as they seem to be somewhat unbalanced for some levels.

[h3]Bugs solved[/h3]
All solved bugs have been moved to the sub forum "Solved bugs"

• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0) Crash at loading
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Error message on launch - "Fullscreen failed (DXGI_ERROR_NOT_CURRENTLY_AVAILABLE)!"
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Creature squad ID numbers run from 2-5, instead of 1-4
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Creating a new save file from menu should appear at top of the list, not the bottom
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): You can cheese King Henry's guards when entering the throne room
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Dungeon Heart's voice fades out if camera is moved away
• Bug (Beta 0.18.4.0): Steam overlay really doesn't work well with Dwelvers
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Using the #1 flag (all creatures) after placing other flags crashes the game
• Bug (Beta 0.18.1.0): Cheesing the castle on mission 8 crashes the game

Thank you all for playing Dwelvers and see you next time :)

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)