Earliest Access Feedback and Reactions

So, just for fun, I built around 4 farms, 2 kitchens(loaded up with like 500 bread in queue), a large bunkhouse, and a chemist, then left them alone for a day. Surprisingly enough when I came back I had only lost 3 colonists and only had a moderate cult thing going on and laudanum use, they seemed to do better without me being there....

 

I actually really hate this feature in some games. In stuff like Supreme commander it's great, because you're zooming in/out all the time and it's not too aggressive. It would be nice to be able to turn it on/off.

 

First I want to say - I am so glad you guys are doing Earliest Access. Being a huge fan of Dredmor, I've been keeping an eye on this since the beginning and being able to get my hands on it, even in its earliest stages, is awesome. I love playing games as they grow and evolve with occasional updates, and Earliest Access seems like it will be that on steroids. Seeing a game so early in development is fun too, and I knew exactly what to expect thanks to the detailed posts on the website. As a government software developer who has always dreamed of working on games, I'm super excited to have a front row seat to watch (and even participate in) the whole process of bug reporting, bug fixing, balancing, and adding content.

First impressions were good; startup was smooth and it runs well. My PC is relatively new but I do start to notice some slowdown when my colony grows over 40 citizens (it seems like this got better after 27C too). The learning curve was a little steep - it took me a couple sessions before work crews, job administration, and crafting really became clear to me, but I was mostly able to figure most everything out eventually. There were a couple mysteries that required some forum browsing (HUNTING JOB BUTTON??) - but nothing a simple tutorial and some UI love couldn't take care of.

I've had a couple failed colonies and a couple successful ones. I'm enjoying finding efficient ways to keep everybody fed and assign jobs for maximum colony growth. It's a really good sign that there is already enough "game" implemented to keep me occupied even without a lot of the conflict and more complex systems that have been teased. I am excited to see how upcoming content and more complex systems will throw a wrench in my currently idyllic (if somewhat cult obsessed) colonies.

Keep up the good work GG!

 

Absolutely loving it so far. Even in this state, so much of what excited me about this project is visible.

In many ways, CE is an ideal product for me. I just got back into gaming a few years ago after a long hiatus, and part of that return was reading stories about Dwarf Fortress and other experiments, learning that there were these mammoth failure-engines and hyper AI ant farms which allowed for constant novelty and weirdness.

Then I got Dredmor. I have to say, that and FTL are the two games I've played most in my entire life. I go back in, again and again, in Dredmor's case largely because the mechanics and aesthetics are perfectly satisfying. Rolling a new character feels like assembling the barrel of a rifle, or driving a new car. There's this sense of all the parts combining and being made with care. That's why I wanted to be part of Earliest Access, to help you guys make something like that again, and to be inside it as is happened.

I'm brimming with ideas, and I'll keep sharing and discussing in the design forum. One question I have, is whether middle and upper class housing has been implemented yet. I've only built middle class housing once, but once it was built no one would enter it except to pass through. I also hope the option to dismantle buildings is added soon, I can get overzealous when building.

For the next newsletter, I for one would be interested to hear how this campaign has been going, now that you're seeing money coming in from sales. Are the results expected? Amazing? How does this sense of the community that's waiting to play vs ready to play impact any of your design timelines (if at all)?

Lastly, would it be helpful for us to send you or post somewhere our specs? That way whenever someone submits a bug or crash report, you could have an existing file with their specs and check it with their report.

Thanks for all your hard work, and let me know if there's any way I can help more!

 

played a new game after latest revision,

Stockpiles do work a bit better but still not sure what triggers them to use it, will have plenty of spots and stuff sitting around it and no one is putting stuff in there even tho I have idle workers.

Actually lost a few folks to the fisher people today and basically the first time I had more than 1 death, but not really a good early warning system in place yet and even tho once in awhile I get an icon pop up, it doesn't zoom to location so have to cover every square inch of ground looking for them.

Also had a kitchen stockpile bug that never noticed before, while trying to make cabbage stew, my workers were stuck in stockpile and wouldn't come out of it after grabbing the cabbages. I cancelled the assignment but the work job screen still has that work crew assigned to cabbages. Tried deactivating work station, turning off the work station jobs and while this did get them to drop the cabbages I couldn't clear the status of making stew so they wouldn't do anything else. I finally quit because my kitchen became useless.

I still haven't found a clear reason while some parts are not buildable on, some games I have no problems building on most of the map and others I get huge chunks of non buildable spots yet the ground is even that I can see. just don't get a grid on them.


Also built a house for lower peons and lol forgot the door but built it anyways, thought was going to have a sims type starvation death as guy trapped inside but let me add a door, but this did cause a graphics glitch with door.

will wait for next update to try some more but have built everything I could except for major houses, Not sure what prestige unlocks yet but still like the idea behind this game, keep up the good work.

 

I Just want to make bread D:
Bullet Points:
*Workers (more specifically the Overseer) just keep admiring or cleaning instead of working. -with a full crew-
*Why do fish people have to be pricks lol.
*People sometimes refuse to build buildings (even with appropriate materials/builders). -Rare, but has happened-
*Interesting Script Issue where everyone was walking but going nowhere. (includes wildlife).

My first game started with the inevitable route of starvation, death, and then cannibalism. So, I worked around that issue and tried "in vain" to make a prosperous wheat field and a kitchen worthy of my growing colony. I had the wheat field no problem; my only issue was the bakery (and most other shops). They would constantly admire the machinery or clean the place not doing the intended task. I tried giving them workers, building there little desk thing (bakery has none; I assumed that was like a teacher podium or something). I made sure my stockyard was full of wheat if not over flowing. Am I missing something? Is coal necessary for the bakery's ovens? Wood?

Other questions: Does making a work group specifically operate workshops make that workgroup choose a location or divide them between several shops? Reading over the forum I see that people may needed to be manually told to make wood into lumber. I'm figuring the same may be said for wheat. In which case that needs to be changed as that is very "alternative lifestyle".

Fish people: They are everywhere. For little reason it seems. I never gathered any caviar because I seen one of the fishies huddled over one with a job talking about its eggs. For fear of repercussions I've opted to avoid it as a cheap readily available food source, yet I still find myself murdering the poor "things born of unmarried parents".
What I personally would like to see: Less fish people unless you screw with the eggs/caviar and a fish people hierarchy. Variety is always a good thing. Maybe even other crazy types of enemy creatures; perhaps from events?

Building: For whatever reason I cant build a house with a lot of beds (they like to build one bed and call it good). Sadface that I actually have to make homes. I would like to not have to micro manage buildings like the bakery. It would be nice to have a necessary maximum requirement of a single person who is competent enough to gather the materials and produce the good.

Having only made it about 30 minutes into each game because I fail at city planning and reading minds (even when prompted). I'll be happy to report more things I see when I can get further. I will make a loaf of bread. I will make it.

 

The change to how planks are crafted has greatly changed the way I play the game. In my mind, the first thing the colony needs to secure is a supply of food. This is accomplished mostly through cabbage farms and some occasional foraging. The next thing to be secured is shelter. Here is where the path diverges.

Before, I would build a Lower Class home and put the various furniture in it. All the overseers and their work crews would help with chopping lumber, refining planks, and assembling furniture. This needed to be done so that the people would sleep, eat, and chat indoors and avoid the various problems that homelessness causes.

What happens now is that I have to chop down and amass 50 or so pieces of lumber before starting the construction of the Carpentry Workshop. It needs to be first because all other buildings require planks for their furniture. When I construct the Carpentry Workshop first, I lose 1/4th of my available work crews permanently to staff it. This starts an endless chain of vagrancy and sloth which permanently removes the colony from my control.

If I begin building houses first, there is another type of lock that gets caused by not having enough planks. If I construct the workshop before chopping the wood, the work crews will never get the opportunity to chop lumber and start producing planks because there aren't enough crews. Again, the colony is locked and beyond my control.

There aren't enough work crews to do the jobs and there aren't enough ways to assign them to tasks. On one game, I had a crew that I assigned to only do forestry and hauling work get assigned to a Ceramics Workshop. This led to a bit of confusion when I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't do anything even though I had a dozen or so unworked clay blocks sitting outside.

 

Huh.

I didn't actually know you used to be able to make logs into planks directly. So I've always built a Carpentry Workshop first, and so long as you start cutting down logs and getting a train of planks made I've not had an issue with the process.

 

I got to say, building housing requires furniture, which is just an f-ton of lumber, and at this point no one seems to demand it. I focus on constructing workshop first usually in this order: Kitchen, Carpentry, Ceramics, Refinery, whichever. Once you have a few buildings, the colonists seem pretty happy to sleep on the floors in shifts. At least they're inside!

 

Psh, they need to have a Lower Class Hovel as proper society and morality demand. I refuse to have my people sleeping on workshop floors like dirty hobos. What if they catch the Hobo Plague? Or if someone devours their forbidden Hobo Meats? There will be an unstoppable tide of shambling, bindle-carrying beanmongers and the world will be quickly overrun.

After watching a little more closely, I'm not sure if the colonists sleep at all. It looks to me like they only sleep and subsequently cry/complain about it on the first night. After that, it looks like only the new recruits sleep, and then only for their first night.

 

The music is great. Really, really great. I loved the soundtrack from DoD, and my expectations for CE's soundtrack have been exceeded. Haven't heard a single track I don't like.

 

Noticeable. Confusing.

I keep thinking something bad is happening when the music changes.
Instead, I just need to listen for gunfire.

 

Yeah some of it kinda feels like musical mis-cues because nothing much really happens. I get a spoooooooky mix-in when cultists talk and I get a notification, but since cultists don't DO anything I kind of filter it out. I hear the combat music, and I think last time I picked out a night-time theme, but among the rest I'm not picking up that much. I assumed that was because the current variants are all "colony is running and normal things happen" stuff, with the rest coming later?

 

The transitions between songs are quite smooth. But, as the above posters said, the more morbid/somber versions of songs seem to be arbitrary or over-reactive. I'm sure this will get ironed out as more morbid and somber things can happen to (read: utterly destroy) your colony.

 

Just got the game Seems to run fine except it got my graphics card up 80°!

I was running it fullscreen at 1920x1080 resolution. I'll let the heat wind down then I'll try windowed 720p.

My system is a desktop not a laptop and usually games sit around 70° with something like Battlefield 4 hitting 75°


Windows 8 64-bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660


- EDIT -
Dropping to 1360x720 windowed made a large difference and my card now sits at 71° steady. I tried turning off Ambient Occlusion as that effect is usually a card warmer but the floor does not display if I turn Ambient Occlusion off.

 

It's quite noticeable when it changes to combat music, otherwise it seems fine.
Also, I know you guys are trying to push a vegan agenda, but is there really need for dramatic music every time one of the plebs kills a dodo? It's not as if they'll go exti-- oh wait

 

I just thought I should point out that 80C is perfectly safe for a GTX 660 (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-660/specifications lists thermal max as 97C), and not too excessive. Either way, it would be a cooling problem, not the game itself.

Of course, the game is still kind of taxing, but that's just how frontier life is. It takes a lot of resources to display all those cabbages, after all.