Q & A

[zebramatt]

Personally, I'm not even particularly averse to all enemies giving experience. Upping the requirement to level up each time would balance it out; and some rate of diminishing return for the normal enemies - such that killing your fiftieth, say, gives you an absolutely piddling amount and killing your hundredth gives you nada - would combat farming.

[superking]

I like the diabolo approach- when you kill enemies, no more respawn and you can clear out areas, but when you exit the game everything has respawned. That way, I dont have to fight the same pack of dwarf skelebots everytime I go through the Atrium, but next time I fire the game up and go to the house, they are there to fight me again.

I think that's a good way to do it, yeah -- I never actually played Diablo.

say WHAT? In the name of game development and awesomeness, you should take 6 hours out to play Diabolo II! It reminds me of this game in a number of ways, and it gets EVERYTHING right- GUI, loot, balance, variety and character progression.

I think its important that killing regular enemies gives some benefit, just considerably less benefit than killing bosses and looting caves. That way, you dont feel like you are wasting resources when you mow through enemies, but you are only mowwing through enemies in order to reach bosses and caves.

Having different enemy types have a % chance to drop a quantity of instantly applied health or mana would be good.
Having them give a relatively small quanitity of experience would be good, so long as it is way less efficent than other ways of getting exp (that way, farming is inefficent).

Re: basic monsters dropping loot- how about they drop loot occasionally, but the only type of loot they drop are scrolls for summoning that type of friendly monster  that way, you can go and kill dwarf skelebots until you have a few summon dwarf skeleton scrolls, then unleash them on the next miniboss !

[BobTheJanitor]

Personally, I'm not even particularly averse to all enemies giving experience. Upping the requirement to level up each time would balance it out; and some rate of diminishing return for the normal enemies - such that killing your fiftieth, say, gives you an absolutely piddling amount and killing your hundredth gives you nada - would combat farming.

I'm not opposed to it either. In most RPGs, the trash mobs that wander the world usually give a tiny amount of experience. Something like 1/500th the amount needed to the next level wouldn't be uncommon. No one is going to reasonably sit around killing 500 skelebots to level up when they can just go fight a few bosses for the same effect. But the much more important effect is the fact that it feels like you're doing something productive, even if it's only barely so. It's the same reason old school arcade games had score points. They don't do anything, they don't mean anything, but they give you the mental feeling of accomplishing something because you can see the numbers go up.

[EfrenCecht]

I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?

[x4000]

In terms of Diablo / Diablo II, or other games that I should play to steal ideas from, I'd generally rather not.   I figure that the power of Diablo is such that a lot of games become a bit too similar to it for that reason.  It's kind of like how everyone aped Tolkien for a number of years after LotR.  I've played a number of Diablo clones, so I get the idea, and I've played some precursors to that general type of game (Demon Stalkers was my favorite as a kid).  I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel, but I am looking to not make a Diablo clone.

I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?

You'll need to be civ level 6 for them to do it, I think, but if you've cleared them then they I think automatically give you the benefit at the nearby towns.

[Professor Paul1290]

Do you think it would be better if enemies respawned off-screen or while you're not in the room?

I don't mind enemies respawning, but I do find it irritating that they respawn right there where I can see them and they can pose an immediate threat. If they instead waited until the player left the room before respawning then I think it would be much more comfortable, at least for normal rooms. Boss rooms should probably still keep spawning enemies.

[x4000]

I have planned changes coming up for today's new release, folks, with regard to monster spawning and such -- running short on time, so I'll skip explaining it in detail for now, but it's taking into consideration a lot of what has been said here as well as elsewhere.  I don't mind at all if folks continue to discuss the matter without me, but I'll be most interested in participating after you see the next set of revisions.  Cheers!

[zebramatt]

I thought my patch sense was tingling.

[EfrenCecht]

You'll need to be civ level 6 for them to do it, I think, but if you've cleared them then they I think automatically give you the benefit at the nearby towns.

I am civ level 6, hit "end turn" a few times but my resources didn't increase

[Fiskbit]

Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

Super Bat Puncher (NES)

[zebramatt]

Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

Super Bat Puncher (NES)

That game looks excellent!

[Commiesalami]

Do you ever get to build more buildings at higher levels?  Or is it just the graveplots, houses, wells, and farms right now?

[keith.lamothe]

I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?

An example on how to use them:

1) Build a woodcutter building in your settlement.
2) Assign someone to work it.
3) Mouseover your wood stockpile in the upper right corner, it will show expected production amounts.
4) Go clear out the guards of a wood deposit in a region within 3 tiles of the settlement.
5) Go back to the settlement and check that wood stockpile projection again, it should be about 50% higher.

I have some ideas on making it a bit more interesting, but those are the mechanics I put in to get them at least initially tied into the whole system and give us an excuse to drop more bosses into the world

[BobTheJanitor]

I have a Q looking for an A. Are there plans for more footstep sounds? I could be wrong, but it seems at the moment that it's pretty much the same noise regardless of what you're walking on. I can't help but think, as I run across these snow fields, that a more traditional crunching snow noise wouldn't go amiss. I seem to recall sound artists traditionally use the noise of cornstarch being pressed to make that noise, actually. I don't know why I know that.

Also, the areas without windstorms and just falling snow can be pretty dead silent, maybe an occasional distant gust of wind noise, or something? Obviously I haven't even stepped out of the ice age yet, so I don't know what else is out there for other eras. I don't know how far along the sound work is either, so I don't know if I'm just preaching to the choir or not.

[tigersfan]

Both of those would be really good Mantis additions. (hint, hint ;-) )