Dev Log

[coyot]

Lars, could you put 1.0.30 on the test server? And if possible, give guidance as to why 1.0.27 won't pick any updates for me? What should I look for, any log?

[larsiusprime]

I haven't posted version 1.0.3 anywhere besides kongregate just yet I'll be uploading it to the test server momentarily

[larsiusprime]

Update:

Been distracted lately because I've been working on a solution to distribute the download build to kongregate customers.

The good news: it works! Pretty damn well, in fact. It's as secure as downloading it from our store, and it uses server-side validation to make sure you're a real kongregate customer (not that I care about pirates, but I DO care about bandwidth).

The bad news: it just occurred to me that Kongregate might have a teensy tiny problem with us distributing .exe files on their site. Anthony's my usual contact person at Kongregate since his day job is Developer Relations over there, but he's on vacation so I'm waiting back on confirmation on this feature. If they nix it, the only solution that would work is distributing unique download keys, which means the feature probably won't happen at all unless my friend in Germany can hook me up with a miraculous solution that's both easy and secure.

Anyways, the bottom line is that I'm back to regular work and updating the test server, and HOPEFULLY pushing out a public patch on Friday while I'm at it.

[larsiusprime]

Update:

I'm experiencing that bug Coyot has been reporting about a hanging loading screen (it's trying to access the localization data but not finding it). Version 1.0.31 test server upload is delayed until I fix this.

[larsiusprime]

Update update:

While I'm working on the test server update, I just spoke with Emily Greer of Kongregate, and apparently Kong is rolling out official support for downloadables now! So, we won't have to roll our own solution after all, and this is probably totally going to happen now!

[larsiusprime]

Yet another update:

Just figured out the problem with the locales. Turns out I wasn't copying them to the right location as part of the build script. This is fixed and version 1.0.31 will be hitting the test server soon!

UPDATE: It's up. Dated

[larsiusprime]

Okay, so version 1.0.31 seems stable, so I'm going to push it live to the update server. Wish me luck This'll take an hour or so.

UPDATE: Files are up on the update server. I flipped the switch on the update descriptor on the linux files which I'm verifying now. So linux is live, windows and mac to follow shortly.

Kongregate version might have to wait 'til Saturday, or Monday.

Glorious. Found a bug in the linux version. Rolling back... (I forgot to modify the export script. Fixing....)

[larsiusprime]

Okay, FINALLY got the download version updated to version 1.0.32. It seems to install correctly on all my test machines, so I'm going to call that good for now

Kongregate version will be updated to version 1.0.32 on Monday.

[larsiusprime]

Alrighty, news:

First of all, I've fixed some of the various bugs that have cropped up in 1.0.32. Chief among them, status effects that don't stack correctly. No more perma-frozen revenant! This will be fixed in version 1.0.34, which I will try to get onto the update server soon.

Also fixed a bug with parsing the localization text that resulted in garbled text for bow #12, and some other various sundry things.

OTHER BIG NEWS:
We are launching on the various digital distribution portals, including steam on October 30th. Turns out Steam was just waiting to hear from us, we thought we were waiting on them - anyway, cleared up that miscommunication and I'm frantically uploading files.

I will post version 1.0.34 to the update server and kongregate as soon as we can verify it doesn't introduce any other new bugs.

UPDATE: uploading the build now. Already updated the index page, file should be done in 10 minutes.

I am still getting isolated reports of black-screen bugs in version 1.0.32, but they don't seem to be universal. Can anyone who was experiencing this in version 1.0.32 try 1.0.34 and let me know if that has problems, too?

[larsiusprime]

Fixed the black-screen bug - turns out I was trying to read from the config.xml file in an unsafe way, so if it wasn't found it would hang on startup.

This is fixed in version 1.0.35, which is live on the test server now. I've also fixed a few other bugs - most notably the status effect stacking problem, which was leading to perma-frozen enemies. Also fixed some text glitches, double damage bugs, and other sundry things.

Ran version 1.0.35 through a browser test and it seemed okay, so I uploaded it to Kongregate. This version also solves a bug where some registered kong users weren't getting the extended demo even after logging in.

I'll upload version 1.0.35 to the public update server tomorrow if no huge bugs are found in the download version.

[coyot]

The extra 37MB in the form of deqf_air_steam.swf is not on purpose in the DL version, right?

[larsiusprime]

Nope, that's a packaging anomaly, I'll be sure to remove that next time around

[Hollow]

So, what's the plan once you guys get on Steam? I'm assuming you sell for full price in October-November-December, then go 50% off during the Christmas sale, then join the Humble Bundle 3-6 months after that?

That tends to be the plan for most indie games.

[larsiusprime]

Well, the plan right now is this:

Our current price of $9.99 is technically a "33.33% off" discount, we've decided. When we launch on steam, this will be our launch price, effectively a 1-week launch sale, and after that we'll go to $14.99. Based on all the data, I expect most of our sales with Steam are going to come during deep discount periods, so we need to give ourselves a little room to go down.

To take the edge off the higher price a bit, we've been talking about no longer selling the soundtrack separately, and bundling it with every new sale from then on.
We'll also be participating in every single sales promotion that Steam invites us to. I have no idea what we'll be asked to participate in, if anything, but I can't foresee us answering anything but "YES!"

As for the Humble Bundle... who knows. I've been emailing those folks continuously for months, I even got a response back a while ago, and they said they'd consider it, but obviously we've fallen through the cracks there. Honestly, right now I'd be satisfied if they just let us into the beta for the Humble Store web widget so we can replace FastSpring once and for all. I'd be delighted to get into the HIB, of course, but I must admit I'd feel kind of weird about what it's become if being a proven success is now a prerequisite for consideration.

[larsiusprime]

Spent all day fiddling with settings on our Steam panel. Finally got the builds working on Steam - that was a rush! From my developer's account I can now download, install, and play the game from the steam client. That's awesome! Still working on getting the mac build to work.

In doing all this, I found a new way to package the installers. Apparently you can create a "standalone" package that packs in all the Adobe AIR dependencies, so you don't have to run that cheezy installer thingy and worry about whether you have the latest version of Adobe AIR or anything (or bother installing/updating it). I figured this out because Steam prefers if your game can install "silently", ie, without having to prompt the user with any kind of message. So, now, on Mac and Windows, I can deploying a build simply by copying a folder with a bunch of stuff in it, with an executable that you run in the top directory. The only downside to this is that the user can't get the latest security updates to adobe air automatically, but I can always package those in to the next release/patch myself.

I think I'll still keep the regular installer for the main version of the game, but the good news is this means the experience will be better on Steam, and we have an option in our back pocket for players who have trouble with AIR on Mac/Windows.

This sadly won't work on Linux, as it's a feature of Adobe AIR 3.0, and the last supported version on Linux was 2.X something.

I have no idea how/if we're going to deploy the linux installers on Steam, but I'm on some sort of Valve Linux mailing list now so I should get some answers soon.

It looks like nobody's reporting any major problems with the version 1.0.35 build on the test server, so tomorrow I'll push it live.

[coyot]

I can see a lot of open bugs out there - and while there's no really critical issue, I think that several are either very low-hanging fruit or things that look a bit embarassing when they happen.
In the first category are all typos, and in the second I would include 564 and 543 for sure.

[Hollow]

Mn... the $14.99 price point worries me, because I love playing Defender's Quest so much that I bought it instantly once the demo ended on Kongregate, but I can't find myself thinking I would have impulse bought it at that price. At a glance it's a tower defense game with only six units and 2D graphics. Compare with:

Dungeon Defenders: $14.99
Orcs Must Die! 2: $14.99

$9.99 is a nice, safe impulse buy price that most people feel alright with shelling out for, and 25-50% off during the Winter Sale would pick up plenty of stragglers.

But then again, I'm not a marketing guy or a game designer, so you guys probably know more about this than I do. I'm just happy it's going up on Steam.

[larsiusprime]

The main reason for the price bump is entirely oriented around Steam's obsession with sales, and I admit it's a bit of a calculated risk.

At $15, I agree we're starting to edge out of impulse buy range, but based on the data we expect most of our purchases to come from deep discount days, and Steam loves to mark things down by as much as 75%. At this markdown, we'd be selling for something like $3.75. If we stuck with the original price, we'd be all the way down to $2.50. So it's more about giving ourselves a bit of a floor rather than raising the ceiling. So while those other games with 3D graphics might make the base price comparison a bit difficult, I expect we'll be more willing to participate in deeper discounts more often than they will.

And we can always bring the total price down later if it turns out to be a huge mistake I imagine we'll also probably want to try a pay-what-you-want promotion or the like after it's been out for a while and sales start to slow down.

So, the good news is we know everybody like deals and we'll do everything we can to participate in them

@coyot: Working on it. Already fixed the "can't preview locked skills" thing, working on the rest of it. This'll all go into 1.0.36+ and will hit the test server... monday probably. Saturday if I'm lucky.

[coyot]

Thanks for the fixes. And my comment on prices would be that this game will sell a lot based on friendly recommendations. 10 or 15 dollars? probably not a big deal - people who are just "browsing" the catalogue won't probably buy that any often IMO, at either price. And if they've heard about the game and it's replay potential, they'll pay 15 gladly IMO

[larsiusprime]

Latest updates:

1) Got the steam versions uploaded and running in the steam client on my developer's account. That's really cool.
2) Got all the builds to all the various distributors. Took all yesterday to upload everything to every place.
3) Fixed a bunch of small and medium sized bugs just now for version 1.0.36, let's go over them really quickly:

-The "super cultist doesn't die" bug keeps rearing its head in rare edge cases, so I've thrown even more safeguards after it this time. Now it slows the game speed down to 1x when zelemir shows up, zelemir's attack now has stun just in case the thing somehow doesn't die, zelemir will cast the deathzap spell at three separate trigger points should the creature escape the first one, and on top of that, in the worst case where it just gets through it will not cause any damage. It sill LOOKS like it will, which is the entire point. Now on the worst scenario, it should just be a weird story glitch and not ruin the battle.

-Let you preview locked skills in the skill tree

-Various legacy situations where you can have more than one unique item. The inventory will now only let you have 1 instance of a unique item. Books are now unique.

-Fixed glitch with wave indicator.

-Fixed "enable/disable" visual glitch on character preview panel

-Noted that "Niru missing a skill point" has been fixed some time ago

-Fixed some typos.

So, although I didn't see any immediate new problems during bugtesting, possible side effects and new bugs related to these fixes might include:

-Books no longer working
-Enemies no longer hurting Azra
-Other weird visual glitches
-Etc

Hopefully everything will be clean.