The Dwarves of Glistenveld News

Hi everyone! With many of the game's upcoming features temporarily on hold, this has been a good opportunity to get some real bug-fixing done and review some of the existing designs.

This update includes improvements to performance, soft-locks, black screens, saving & loading, gameplay, AI and UI fixes, but also a bunch of quality of life features and design changes to better suit how the game has evolved over the past few months.

Features & Design Changes:

1. Caltrops - These little spikes will no longer damage your units! After some revision, we decided your dwarves should be smart enough to tiptoe over them. Instead of damaging allies, caltrops will just slow them down.
   
2. Careless Trait - In light of the change of design to caltrops, this trait has been changed to: 'Takes double damage from enemy traps & defences'.
   
3. Mining - Units will now prefer mining through the mining-zone you've placed, instead of through walls that haven't been selected for mining. Also, miners should no longer mine owned walls unless they were specifically instructed to.
   
4. All Items UI - Clicking items will now show you where they are in storage. You can click these items in the storage UI for a description.
   
5. Right-click Actions - With a unit selected, when you right click one of their instruction zones, an option now appears to prioritise that instruction (except when the result would be no different than the default action). With multiple units selected, all possible interactions (from each unit type selected) are now included in the list.
   
6. Beds - Now have 6 rotations. Before you place a bed, scroll the mouse wheel to rotate them the same way you would a wooden door!
   
7. Tech Tree - Spaced out the tech UI and added flavour-text to each technology.
   
8. Minecarts - Various improvements to how these behave, tracks not joining, and fixed some issues with saving & loading. See the blog (link below) for more info on minecarts.
   
9. Workers Assignment UI - Left clicking an instruction zone presents the assignment UI. This UI has been revamped and has new functionality, including 'set as default'. This new option allows you to customise what units are automatically assigned to any new instructions of the same type.
   
10. Fish - Rebalanced to last longer, reach further but provide one less fish per harvest. The total amount of fish you get from a shoal is more or less the same as before, but fishing instructions should take a fair bit longer to deplete.
    
11. Bones - More flavourful descriptions for how those units met their makers. Will now fade over time.
    
12. Cave-ins - Will no longer spawn tiles that can cause further cave-ins. Cave-ins further away now have a more subtle screen-shake effect.
    
13. Frenzy - Frenzied ally dwarves will stop attacking one another once the frenzy effect has been lifted.
    
14. Battles - Units will no longer clump up in battle. Your warriors will now actively attack enemies within a radius, and other classes will also attack if they're adjacent.
    
15. Doors - Spiders, bats and other enemies will no longer find a way through these... Goblins can still break them down or mine around them.
    
16. Auto-pickup - Resetting a mobbit trap will now also pick-up the left-over items on the same tile. The same applies to opening chests and breaking barrels.
    
17. Various QoL Improvements - For example, when queuing crafts, the number you have queued also appears in the mouse-over tooltip.
    
18. Caverns Mode V0.40 - The reputation objectives now have counters, some fixes with clan interactions, more generation variety and some resources are now easier to find, including springs and roots.
    

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Cutscenes - Fixed the intermittent black-screen issue with playing cutscenes. Cutscenes no longer switch the game to windowed mode for the cutscene.
   
2. Flickering UI - Fixed some issues in full-screen where certain UI elements such as instruction zones would flicker. The steam overlay will no longer flicker in windowed-mode.
   
3. Performance - Optimised code to make large, busy maps run a little better. Still more we can do in this area.
   
4. Mouse-panning - Moving the mouse to the edges of the screen would sometimes stop panning the camera.
   
5. Recipe Info UI - Fixed bug where this UI would no longer show after interacting with the tech tree.
   
6. Engineering Instructions - Engineers would give up too easily when building walls or moving buildings. Fixed some bugs involving multiple engineers attempting the same job at the same time.
   
7. Crafting - Fixed some bugs where certain crafts would get confused and the wrong version of the craft is performed.
   
8. Cobblestone - Fixed bug where engineers would refuse to build cobblestone where there's a full pile of items.
   
9. Voice-Overs - Added a few more voice-overs for switching classes etc..
   
10. Saving & Loading - Minecarts no longer soft-lock after a load. Various unit information was being lost. The effects of certain traits were stacking after a load. Mushrooms were losing growth data, and sculptures their sculpture data. Choosing a unit's level abilities was sometimes broken on a load. Caverns mode was losing cave generation data on a load. A bunch of these issues have been retro-patched so that existing saves should be ok again, though we weren't able to do this for everything.
    
11. Autosaves - No longer autosaves when you have no more units, and will autosave to an 'Unnamed' folder if you haven't named your playthrough yet.
    
12. Pathfinding - Units weren't using the most optimised paths to reach places. There was a flaw in the heuristic. Units should stick to cobblestone paths a little more now.
    
13. Defend Zones - Warriors will now be much more pro-active about patrolling around defend zones.
    
14. Instruction Placement - Certain instructions like mining or building bridges wouldn't highlight the right tiles in certain places. Build instructions in caverns mode wouldn't always let you build where an ally or enemy has also decided to build something.
    
15. Low Health Notification - Now appears a little sooner, before it's too late to do something about it!
    
16. Enemy/Ally AI - Various improvements to AI teams, including their base-building design and dealing with cave-ins.
    
17. All Items - The UI for items that only exist on the HUD wasn't properly aligned with the other items. These HUD items are now also clickable to explain how they're used.
    
18. Various buildings, scenery and items were missing descriptions. Using tab to cycle units or buildings wasn't always working.
    

We've also released a blog post discussing the recent addition 'minecarts' and how to make the most of them: Minecarts in TDoG.

That's all for now. If you have any ideas, feedback or recommendations, don't hesitate to let us know!

Hi everyone! This is a slightly smaller update, mostly with some fixes, but there's also a new tech in the tech tree (see below).

Features:

1. Initial Loading - When the game first starts up, you are greeted with a loading screen, but until now it had no loading bar. We've added a spinning cog that will spin as long as the game is still loading something, so that you know the game is loading correctly! We've also significantly reduced the initial loading time by cutting out a chunk that wasn't necessary.
   
2. Minecarts & Tracks - A new tech in the tech-tree that allows you to build minecarts and rail-tracks for them to ride long, allowing you to quickly transfer items into storage and keep your miners mining. Units can also ride them, however they will only jump out at designated stop zones (configure the tracks to set them).
   
3. Caverns Mode V0.37 - A new build of caverns mode with a number of fixes, including fixing the 3 button room, switching tracks to old tracks that are harvestable, and a new starting condition: Schematics Everywhere. In this condition, schematic caves appear much more frequently, and schematics appear in more cave types; so you can develop your tech tree much sooner!
   
4. Cobblestone - You can now place cobblestone under buildings, so there's no longer any need to plan ahead or move buildings around to make your base look just right.
   
5. Support Posts - Slightly increased the radius in which support posts are effective, so you don't need to build as many.
   
6. New SFX - Sound effects now play when you click dust, water or cracked walls.
   
   

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Instruction Panel - The buildings in the 4 categories of the instruction panel have been shuffled around to better achieve the following goals: 1. The most used buttons are closest to the mouse, 2. Adjacent buttons make sense together, 3. The arrangement is aesthetically pleasing. These may still require more work, but it's a lot better than it was.
   
2. Multi-Unit UI - You can now shift-click a unit in the selection panel (at the bottom) to deselect that unit, making it a little easier to manage your selection.
   
3. Selecting Enemies / Items - In some circumstances, the game wouldn't let you select an enemy, or pick up items, if they're standing on a building belonging to a different team.
   
4. Holding Units - Replaced the text with a hand icon. We've also reworked it so that units coming out of battle no longer appear held (since this was confusing).
   
5. Storage-full Notification - Should not be quite so spammy when there are lot of units trying to drop items in storage. Clicking on the notification will also now point to the unit in question.
   
6. Chatterboxes - Some dwarves are spawned with the 'Chatterbox' trait, and could be real nuisances with dialog popups. We've significantly reduced the frequency that the chatterbox has something to say.
   
7. Resting in Beds - When units go to rest in a bed, if there was a dwarf standing on it, they would sleep on the tile beside them. They will now push that dwarf out of their way instead.
   
8. Structure-warning Icon - Ally/enemy teams were placing these icons in random places within the fog-of-war, due to some flawed logic with the hard-hat ability.
   
9. Instruction Panel - Added missing tooltips, and now remembers which page you were on in each category (currently only applies to infrastructure).
   
10. Cracks - The graphic to show that a wall has cracks in it has been tweaked to be more visible.
    
11. Fish / Bubbles - Sometimes fish would either spawn or get stuck on-land, particularly in caverns mode, leaving a trail of bubbles on the ground. They will now dip back into nearby water instead.
    
12. Visibility - Sometimes buildings would appear on (black) tiles that haven't been explored yet.
    
13. Super-ultrawide Monitors - Attempted to fix some UI anomalies and changed the default settings for these resolutions.
    
14. Dialog Interjections - More balanced, based on the nearest unit's arch-type, instead of tending to give the same specific interjections.
    
15. Movement Orders - Your dwarves should no longer complain so much about telling them to walk on water or into walls, if there is a path close enough anyway.
    
16. UI Boundaries - Some UI windows could be moved around and moved outside the screen; they will now stop against the screen boundaries.
    
17. Various other fixes, including enemy teams revealing wall tiles to the player, stone walls generating building rubble when mined, and other missing tooltips.
    

Let us know if you run into any issues, or if you have any feedback or suggestions!

That's all for now, have a good week!

Happy Easter everyone!

New Features:

1. Easter Mode - For the next few weeks, easter mode will be available! In easter mode, there are easter eggs sprawled about each map, and mobbits are larger than normal. You can disable this under Options > Gameplay > Seasonal.
   
2. Tunnels - Tunnels have a new feature in both the campaign and caverns mode! In some levels of the campaign, you may find goblin scouts appearing from some tunnels. If they see a threat they may even bring reinforcements next time. If you want to keep their numbers now, you'll want to either avoid them or wipe them out. In caverns mode tunnels chosen at random will glow red and start spawning random enemies.
   
3. Goblin Warriors - A new class of goblin that focuses on exploration and combat. These guys can call for reinforcements, so watch out! More details in the recent blog post (link below). We've updated the campaign and tutorial with these guys.
   
4. Wells - A new tier 2 tech for the tech tree is 'Wells'. Wells are a building that upgrade Claims, and further increases your population cap by 1, while also having a lot more hitpoints. So for example, if you claim your first spring, you can then spawn 3 new dwarves. If you then upgrade that claim to a well, you can spawn a 4th dwarf.
   
5. Iron Tools - Iron tools used to be part of the smithing tech, but has been moved to its own tier 2 tech. Smithing has gained the ability to make helmets instead (see below).
   
6. Helmets - Now part of the smithing tech, helmets are a wearable armour item that protects your dwarves in 2 ways. First, that dwarf will no longer suffer critical damage when they fumble in combat. Second, when they're low hp and a hit would normally defeat them, the helmet is broken instead, protecting them from that last hit. More details in the recent blog post.
   
7. Caverns Mode: Clan Colours - In the latest caverns mode (V0.36), you can now choose a clan you played with in the campaign, and your dwarves will match the name, colours and emblem that you chose.
   
8. Caverns Mode: Starting Conditions - Also in the latest caverns mode, you are given the option of how you start the game. There are 3 options for this release: 'Regular start', 'traveling settlers' and 'goblins everywhere'. Regular start is the same setup as before. Traveling settlers starts with 6 dwarves and no buildings assembled, but the adjacent caves are already connected to you. Goblins everywhere is like regular start, except that a) goblin camps more common, b) goblins can randomly appear in almost any type of cave. If you're looking for an extra challenge, give this one a try!
   
9. Dwarf Names - We've done some work on our name generator, and now dwarves will have much dwarfier surnames! More details in the recent blog.
   
10. Meals - We've removed 'Moderate Meals' and renamed 'Basic Meals' to 'Meals', which now provide a fair amount more nutrition than the ingredients that went into them. There are now 3 recipes: The first crafts 1 Meal, the second 2 meals, and the third 3 meals, each taking the same time to craft. This allows you to craft a lot of meals rapidly if you have the food variety to do so.
    
11. New & Altered Abilities - We've made a variety of changes to abilities. Some replaced, some added; the full details can be found in this blog post: Root-pulling Stubborn Guzzlers. As a quick summary, for miners: Structure-sense and hard-hat have been merged, heavy-hauler and toothed-pick are two new level 5 abilities, and tunnel-vision is a new level 8 ability. For foragers: moisture-eyes has been replaced with root-hugger, root-puller is a new level 5 ability, and creature-friendly is a new level 8 ability. For warriors: rock-puncher has been replaced with wall-puncher, and back-breaker is a new level 8 ability. For engineers: reconstruction is a new level 8 ability.
    
12. New Traits - We've added 7 new traits to the game. Negative: Accident-prone and berserker. Neutral: Stubborn and Kleptomaniac. Positive: Thinker, guzzler, and candle-bright. See the blog post link above for more details.
    
13. Walls - When you build walls now, your clan's emblem will appear on top. Coupled with this change, allies will no longer mine walls that belong to you. This problem was most noticeable in caverns mode.
    

Fixes & Improvements:

1. CPU Usage - Fairly significant improvement to CPU usage. We shifted some performance hungry threads to the back-burner, as they were (most of the time) non-essential.
   
2. Caverns Mode - Bug fixes and balance improvements: Some of the quests and objectives weren't working properly, and one of the trade-stalls was supposed sell schematics. It could be really hard to find roots so roots can now be found on the edges of caves, plus rivers should now have fish. Various cave generations would conflict, resulting in tracks underwater or buildings blocking paths; we've resolved most of the conflicts.
   
3. Dwarf/Goblin AI - Both dwarves and goblin AI teams now build more buildings, and work and fight more intelligently. More work needs doing, as they can still get stuck in certain circumstances, but it's made progress.
   
4. Smarter Engineers - If Engineers are carrying the right materials, they will now build from what they're carrying, instead of returning to storage first. This may not yet be the case for bridges / walls. Carried items are also taken into account when enabling building options in the instruction panel.
   
5. My Fort - The last level of the campaign was fairly easy to beat. On top of introducing goblin warriors to this level, we've made some improvements that means it requires a bit more strategy to succeed without sustaining losses.
   
6. Storage & Food Barrels - When using the 'Move Building' option to move storage or food barrels, the items contained within them will also be moved. This allows you to quickly move your storage zones around or place food barrels further along in the map.
   
7. Food Barrels - Now displays a graphic showing the food that's contained inside them. Mushrooms, fish and meat are shown if any of those are contained inside the barrel.
   
8. Saving & Loading - Some fixes to saving & loading. We noticed that meals and tools weren't being saved, and some stats were stacking. Storage configurations were also not being saved.
   
9. Particles - Some particles associated with units weren't scaling correctly, including the red outline when a combat ability was active.
   
10. Trade Stalls - There were bugs with trade stalls having multiple dwarves standing in them, and also being unselectable. This should now be fixed.
    
11. Attention Dialog - The little popup speech-bubbles when a dwarf has something to say were persisting and becoming outdated. Most of these should now erase themselves if attention is no longer needed.
    
12. Minimap - Some levels, especially caverns mode, the minimap was creeping off the edges of the UI. This is no longer the case.
    
13. Dwarf-List - The dwarf-list UI is now much more compact by default, so that it doesn't impede so much on the game view. If you click 'Show Abilities', the full UI emerges as before.
    
14. Cooking Station - The crafting queue icons were being erased in some circumstances, making it appear that all the crafts had been completed.
    
15. Selection & Instruction UI - These UIs have various updated icons, and we've added some graphics for the stances and equipment sections.
    
16. 'Use' Buildings - Most buildings that don't actually have a function when performing the 'use' action on them will no longer give you that option.
    
17. Steam's Stop Button - In the steam library, after you hit play, the button switches to 'stop'. This stop button was having trouble stopping the game from running, and it would freeze instead. This is no longer the case, and the game will now stop on command.
    
18. Various Bugs - Fixed a variety of bugs including tomes not doing anything, idle AI walking onto beds or traps, and some UI problems with the world map screen.
    
19. Also, the feedback form is now back in action!
    

We've released a blog post talking about the latest changes, including a few screenshots: The Easter Update.

Please let us know if you run into any issues, or if you have any feedback or suggestions for us, tell us about it either in the Discussions board or on our discord!

That's all for now, have a good Easter!

Hi everyone! We have an exciting new update for you today; a new game-mode, loads of new content and improvements!

New Features:

1. Caverns Mode - A new mode in which the environment will generate and develop around you! You have a basic starting cave with a few random resources, and as you mine out you'll discover more random caves. There are currently over 30 different types of cave to discover; some are brimming with resources, some hold other clans, others feature dangerous new enemies. Give this mode a try, and see what you can find!
   
2. Minimap - The minimap now shows what part of the map you're currently looking at, with a rectangle. It also now features exclamation marks where your objectives are located.
   
3. Damage Counters - When any unit or building is damaged, hit counters will now appear as small numbers above their head, indicating the amount of damage dealt. The hit counter appears red for regular damage, yellow for critical hits, and green for healing.
   
4. End of Level Statistics - When playing the campaign, at the end of each level, you'll now be presented with a window showing statistics. This includes: time in map, dwarf count, goblins defeated, and some teaser information like schematics collected 0/2, indicating whether or not you've missed some. We'll be adding to this list in future updates.
   
5. Spiders - Currently only featured in the new Caverns mode, we talked briefly about them in our last progress report. There are still a few features to add, like the knock-out effect, but they already have a neat spawning ecosystem. All I'm going to say is, I'm really happy with how the eggs have turned out.
   
6. Cobblestone - A new buildable floor which gives units a small movement speed boost (found on the second page of infrastructure).
   
7. Wooden Doors - A new rotatable building that allows you to block most enemies from entering, while allowing allies through. Wooden doors can however be broken down, like any other building.
   
8. Coal - New mineral used to fuel forges, craft lamp posts and used as fertiliser for saplings. The sprite will be updated in a later patch.
   
9. Iron Roots - Similar to regular roots which also produce wood, however iron roots can only be harvested using an iron sickle.
   
10. Spawning Mist - Areas of high moisture will now randomly spawn mist. If you didn't already know, mushrooms and saplings grow quicker in areas of high moisture.
    
11. Storage Full Notification - Replaced a rarely-used storage counter with a 'storage full' notification, indicating when your units can no longer find room in storage.
    
12. New Sound FX - Ballistas now have loading & firing SFX. Goblins will voice more often during combat.
    
13. Various New Items - Including potions that heal, tomes that level up your dwarves when activated and small artefacts used as currency with Clan Kindlewick (currently only found in Caverns mode). Also features the iron sickle, which is a new tool craftable after unlocking the Smithing tech.
    
14. Forager Crafting - Previously, the engineer would craft and build mobbit traps and saplings. This is now the work of the Forager.
    
15. Storage Configuration - Now features an 'All' checkbox, making it easier to restrict storage areas to specific items.
    

Fixes & Improvements:

1. AI Performance - We've made some major improvements to the performance of AI, and pathfinding. Before this update, there were points where an AI unit would get stuck and cause a drop to performance as a result. Now however, getting stuck is no longer an issue for the engine.
   
2. In-game Dialog - The appearance of in-game dialog has been refined. The name of the unit talking is separated from their dialog, and colour-coordinated based on clan.
   
3. Dwarf Classes - Small balance improvement to damage dealt by each class. Also any dwarf trying to change class that is obstructed will now give up, instead of spamming the player with voice-cues.
   
4. Campaign Improvements - Various levels in chapter 1 of the campaign have undergone improvements. We've introduced granite and coal, and many of the idle Fishbeard dwarves that you encounter will now be mining and foraging. We've also made the last enemy in chapter 1 a little harder to beat.
   
5. Tutorial Improvements - Improved clarity in places and made some dialog more concise.
   
6. Main Menu - Maps that you haven't played yet will now appear with a '(New)' next to them. This data hasn't been logged until now, so as of this update, everything will have a (New) next to it until you play it.
   
7. Unit Cap UI - The UI in the top left now better explains how the unit cap works when you hover over it.
   
8. Structure & Moisture Indicators - No longer prevent placing buildings.
   
9. Various Sprite Updates - Moderate meals, minecarts and a few other entities have undergone improvements to their graphic.
   
10. Many smaller refinements, such as a bolder bevel for buttons and headings.
    

Once again, please let us know if you run into any issues. Also, if you have a play of caverns mode, please consider sharing your experience of it with us, either in the forums or through the feedback form. What you like or don't like, what you think we should work on next; any feedback you give is gold!

That's all for now, enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Hi everyone, hope you've all had a good start to the new year! It's been a while since our last post, so I thought I should give you all an update on our progress.

We resumed work on The Dwarves of Glistenveld a couple weeks ago. We're still in the middle of adding some new content, including new buildings, resources and a proper introduction of granite to the game. We've been trying to follow the principle that any new features should be functional when they go in, or at least clearly indicate that they're not implemented. That way when you see new content in the game you can be excited about it, without worrying about whether or not it works. That does mean however it can take us a bit longer to release new features, while we try to make sure it's all working.

For those of you who feel like your dwarves don't get around quick enough, the next version will feature: Cobblestone. Found under infrastructure, you place it like you would a building and it converts the ground into cobblestone, which provides a small buff to movement speed. So if being speedy is something you like, try putting well-fed, hyper dwarves on a cobblestone road!

                    

We've also been working on adding buildable doors to the game, which will block enemies but allow allies through. Originally we tried implementing it as a cleverly textured wall that dwarves can toggle, but we just couldn't get it to look or behave right. In the end we decided to make it a rotatable building in which the player chooses how it's placed using the mouse wheel. It'll have a placeholder sprite for now which we'll work on later when we have time. Note, some enemies will be able to break your doors down or get around them; so Dungeon Keeper fans, watch out!

There's a new mineral going in: coal. We've been meaning to add coal to the game to fuel forges and fires, but this alone wasn't enough of a reason for us to introduce it. After a bit of research and brainstorming however we have some other uses for coal now, like a fertiliser for farming, and with a few ideas to balance it we feel there's enough now to justify adding it to the game.

Now we have the sprites for them, we've been working on a new enemy: Spiders. Spiders are incredibly agile creatures, and can get around rocks and other objects that would normally block a unit's path. They also place down sticky webs and have a poison attack that drains a dwarf's stamina before eventually knocking them out. So don't go exploring a spider's nest by yourself! While spiders won't appear in the campaign until chapter 2, we will be introducing them as part of a new map we've been working on, which leads me onto the final update for this post:

We're planning on releasing an early version of a new mode called 'Caverns' as part of the next update. You start in a single cave and it generates the world around you as you explore. One thing I noticed as I was testing this map is it's a great way to present all the features of the game in a single level, and that we feel is something our game has been missing. Although it's less guided and there's no main plot to follow, it's already a mechanically and aesthetically vibrant map. Still, this mode is early days, and it does have a few remaining issues, so I don't want to build up too much hype for it yet.

Anyway, it shouldn't be long now before the next update. As usual we will accompany the update with patch notes in the news feed. So, stay tuned, and have a good week!