Dungeonmans News

[h3]Adventure for Everybody![/h3][p][/p][p]A big update with some meaty changes -- all additions, we're not finally banning all Rangermens. Let's dive in!
[/p][h2]New Difficulty Modes[/h2][p]When you start a new Academy you'll have a choice of four difficulty modes:[/p]

• [p]Heroic Adventure: Dungeonmans the way you remember. Death is permanent, the Academy grows as you play, adventure and danger around every corner.[/p]
• [p]Soft Adventure: For those who don't care for permadeath. Death is a crossroads -- you can choose to let the fallen hero pass on to glory, or have them wake up at the Academy, ready to deliver revenge beatdowns. Up to you![/p]
• [p]Desperate Adventure: Meta-progression free! The Academy simply explodes when you die, no carrying anything from one hero to the next because the story ends the moment your HP drops below 1. This is the hardest difficulty for Dungeonmans.[/p]

• [p]Fallen Academy: Play without the Academy, which means missing out on a boat load of features. There are crutches to make things easier to get by. This mode is boring, don't play it. The hardest mode is Desperate Adventure.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Daily Danger: Heroes of Legend and Leaderboards[/h2][p]At the Academy, right near the Headmaster, is a tome of great legends, stories of Dungeonmens past. Every player gets the same seed: The same hero, the same adventure, the same dungeon layout and monster placement. From there, it is up to you. [/p][p]Play for score! Either beat down the boss with as few turns and as little damage taken as possible, or scoop up as much loot and XP as you can within the turn limit. Challenge changes every day, and you can play as many times as you like. There's a daily leaderboard so you can dunk on your dozens of scrubby friends who also play Dungeonmans. [/p][p][/p][h2]Summertime Fun[/h2][p]A simple but delightful event that kicks off today and runs until 4 August. The Academy staff is wearing summertime gear, palm trees adorn the main walkway, and as you adventure you may discover scrolls that summon mighty... beachballs? Yes. The regular fun time beachball bounces around a dungeon as you kick it along, and every enemy bounced rewards greater loot and experience on death. Simple! Harmless! What a good time![/p][p]There is also Xespera's Orb of War.[/p][p][/p][h2]Autoexplore: Yes Really[/h2][p]You can turn it on in the options now. Press a button to have your hero move around the dungeon, picking up loot, opening chests, and seeking out unexplored areas. Autoexplore stops if there's danger nearby, you still have to fight the monsters yourself. [/p][p][/p][h2]MonoGame Conversion[/h2][p]Thank you XNA for a dozen plus great years! Dungeonmans has made the conversion to MonoGame, hopefully ensuring additional longevity and the ability to run on more machines as time and operating systems march on.[/p][h3]"Wait so does this mean there's a Ma--"[/h3][p]I can't promise that any Mac or Linux builds will see the light of day, but I can say that I'm actively working on getting dmans running on a Mac. I have to figure out the logistics of it all and, yeah, we'll see. It would be great to see dmans running on everything.
[/p][h2]Bug Fixes / QoL Updates[/h2][p]"Too many to list" lol I just didn't write them all down. But here's some major fixes/changes:[/p]

• [p]Updated some double secret edge case deep lore dungeonstuff involving a truly uncommon interaction between 1) swearing too much 2) a very dangerous book.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug with Seize Opportunity if your first jump tile is the one you started in.[/p]
• [p]Detonate Deadpulse is more effective now. The damage type changes if you have a Wizard Staff equipped, and in all cases the more Deadpulses you have on you, the bigger the damage from the detonation.[/p]
• [p]Increased Trevor to 9. [/p]
• [p]Added a confirm dialog to alt-f4 and the close button, but you can tell the dialog to go away forever if you like.[/p]
• [p]Ironbound Foomcrawlers shouldn't slow things down as much as they did before. The full animation of firing the purple shell will only play if you're going to get hit by it. They also rocket jump less when far away.[/p][p][/p]

[h2]Soft Adventure? Autoexplore? What gives?[/h2][p]I had someone come by the Twitch dev stream a few weeks back and talk to me about their experience. They've been playing since the kickstarter days, a true decade-long Dungeonfan. They asked about autoexplore, knowing my stance on it was very much Against, but they told me that they'd gotten older now and their hands hurt so much it that playing games like dmans started to become quite difficult.[/p][p]That was the critical hit, the arrow that found Smaug's one missing scale. I re-evaluate my stances often, and this time I realized I could make more people happy if I changed some things, so I did.[/p][p]Games are meant to be fun, and while I fully believe in a stiff challenge, I know sometimes you just want to get away from the world for a little bit. And there's a part of me that always felt bad for that one player who had a crummy work week and was just looking forward to kicking back on Friday night with a relaxing beverage and their favorite dungeonmans... only to die carelessly in the first 20 minutes of their session. Ruins the whole night, maybe the weekend! [/p][p]For some players, that sort of challenge lights the desire to get back on the horse and crush monsters anew. But for others, dang they just wanted to have a relaxing night after taking it in the sweetbeef all week from the VP of Accounts Mungeable or whatever work situation they're in. Now I can make both sets of players happy.[/p][p][/p][h2]Sale this Week! [/h2][p]To celebrate all this new excitement, it's now as easy as possible to get your friends to play Dungeonmans: give them a link to the store page and five dollars. The sale runs until next Tuesday (I think) but you can also choose to act like you only have minutes to spare and gift as many copies as possible.
[/p][h2]Feedback / Bugs / Critique / Adulations Welcome[/h2][p]The easiest and best place to communicate with me is at the Dungeonmans Discord:

Dungeonfans Academy[/p][p]
But I will also be checking steam forums -- primarily this post, you can comment here too. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all once more for years and years of grand adventure and fun, I hope this summer is being good to you! [/p]

[h2]Dungeonmans is moving to MonoGame![/h2][p]XNA is magic, and I have deep gratitude for the two operations (FNA and MonoGame) who work towards keeping the magic alive, years and years after Microsoft closed the book on their API. After a lot of fiddling, researching, multiple attempts -- it looks like I probably have a MG build of dmans working. [/p][p]Wanna help test it out?
[/p][p]The beta is cleverly titled "mg_beta", which you will be able to see once you enter the password "stremfstremf". I was told that passwords must be at least 12 characters. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Your saves should load as normal, things should feel the same, ideally you won't even notice a difference. But if you do, please let me know![/p][p][/p][p]The discord is the very best place to offer your help, but I will be checking this post thread as well. Thanks in advance![/p][p][/p][h2]Why?[/h2][p][/p][p]Could I explain it any better than this video? [/p][p][/p][p]In order for the dmans modding stuff to properly compile people's .cs code, I needed some more memory, and .net was being picky about how much I was asking for -- your machine could have 256gb of ram, .net still wants to put a hat on it at around 1.5gb. And so much of what was chewing up memory for this simple 2D game was music. I wanted to change to use smaller files than my .wavs, but XACT wasn't gonna let me load .oggs or whatever, so I started looking into different XNA evolutions...[/p][p]... and in the end I'm still using .wav files, but streaming them in via NAudio, which does save a ton of space, and hey also now my game is running on an actively maintained API. [/p][p]
"Port it to the Switch (2)!" aww you're very kind, thank you.[/p][p]
[/p][p][/p]

I wanted to post an update on the state of the Dungeonmans mod tools, since there's been a little confusion, which is mostly my fault.

For years the only modding was via heroskins or editing game .txt files. The heroskin stuff remains unchanged. The .txt file editing was always sketchy, since new builds pushed via Steam would override them.

Now, you can add your own new content in a separate mod folder, which won't be stompled by Steam updates. You can also add other people's mods in the mod folder as well.

[h2]Example Mod[/h2]
https://github.com/jim-adventureprogames/dmans-tutorial-mod

That's a rich example package which will give you lots of things to play with if modding games is your bag.

[h2]Wiki and Instructions[/h2]
https://dungeonmans.fandom.com/wiki/Mod_Packages

Always a work in progress, this wiki is growing through my efforts and others', and has instructions on how to add your creativity to the game.

Want to add a whole new set of powers and masteries? You can do this!



[h2]Steam Workshop?[/h2]
Status: probably. It's something I'll build into once I get a groundswell of support from modders. Until then, it's tough to justify the effort.

[h2]Can I Mod In A...?[/h2]
Also probably! And if not, talk to me and maybe I can help make it happen. I have already worked directly with multiple people who are working on mods to help craft the feature set into what it needs to be. You could be one of those people!

[h2]Thousand Review Milestone![/h2]
Thanks again to all of you who continue to enjoy the game, we're closing in on 1000 reviews, which is a pretty great thing imo. If you're having fun crushing monsters, feel free to say so in a review.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for making December 2024 one of the most joy filled Dungeonmonths in memory. The 10th Mansiversary Celebration was a delight to hold, and I really appreciated those of you who engaged with the new Crushmas holiday content. Let's take a look:

[h2]"What Does Crushmas Mean To You?"[/h2]

If you managed to defeat... well, perhaps endure the Grympiff, the game asked you a question. The answers I received are all here:

http://www.dungeonmans.com/crushmas

Some are certainly more involved than others, but I appreciate each and every one of them. What an absolute delight.

[h2]The Future of Dungeonmans, Year 11 and Beyond[/h2]

This is where the post goes into some long winded windup thanking the users for everything and explaining how all suns must set, all good things, in the nights dreams delight, flights of angels sing to thee, fight the break of dawn, and etc etc etc blech

naw, not here. Let's be real, I probably shoulda stopped messing with this game a while ago, but I cannot. So there will absolutely be more Dungeonmans content down the road. But, it may be a little bit.

For one thing, I've got to pick back up with work on Eye of the Commando:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3016480/Eye_of_the_Commando/

There's a lot left to do to get EotC out of Early Access, and I'll be spending the largest share of my dev time on that project for the next few months at least. Give the game a looksee if you haven't already, maybe it's for you? Maybe it's for your friend?

As for dmans, well

• The Outdoorsmans is being monitored and I'll be improving it over time.
  
• Specifically, more boomerangs!
  
• Surely the very last bug in Dungeonmans will be fixed any day now.
  
• I have another holiday event in mind, and you haven't seen the last of the Grympiff.
  
• oh and last but not least at all
  

[h2]Modding Dungeonmans[/h2]
I've been working a bunch on this and would love to see some mods happen! I'm slowly documenting things, working on the public wiki some nice stranger made a while ago, and hoping that all of this is worthwhile.

Is it you, dear reader? Are you someone who wants to mod Dungeonmans and is willing to deal with some early (you know, for a 10 year old baby game) crust in the mod system? If so, please drop by the Discord and let me know. If you aren't a Discord user but are interested in modding the game, post a comment here telling me as such and I'll work with you.

You don't need to tell me if you want to mod the game, but if you do you'll get a little bit of support and can help make the tools better for everyone involved.

[h2]Parting Thoughts[/h2]
I'll be a little quieter here on Steam after the Mansiversary, but not gone. I'm on Discord every day, I live there, it's nice. But you can also catch Adventurepro Games development on Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/profile/madjackmcmad.bsky.social

Oh, and, if you are one of those people who's always saying things like "Madjack let me throw more money at you, my money throwing arm is itchy and I already bought all your other games!" do I have the link for you:

Dungeonmans Crap on Sticker Mule

If you wanna buy some Proof of Stremf stickers, Triger pins, or other bits and pieces of Dungeonmans game and stream crapola, please do so! Every little bit helps, this indie racket is tough if you aren't getting front page reviews on PC Gamer ;)

Thanks everyone! It is my great hope that 2025 balls out for all of you in the most riotous fashion.

* Once again, multiple item turnins at the Academy have been fixed.
* Starshards should work again for recipes and the starshard orb.
* Boomerangs should show up in Mysterious Objects from History, and the Blacksmithing Blueprints menu respects them now too.
* You can use a Boomerang in your offhand with Battlemage. Your ranged weapon is still the staff in your main hand, so you'll cast Bolt of Foom with it, but you can also use Boomerang abilities. OP? Probably not. We'll see!
* I'm back from holiday vacation times, please continue reporting bugs in the Discord ːstremfː