news one and two

First!
GoodSir finished a lot of new art for Fallen, including New Loading screen.
Here it is, enjoy:

Second, I have presented Fallen at devmeat meeting for gamelinch.
It was.. funny, because I took wrong brunch with broken AI. ^_^
That was embarrassing.
Still, I got handful of good advises. I think, I see the way, how to "power up" Fallen! 

Ha ha! We have moved a second play test up to end of the month!
No problem at all! GoodSir draws art. He finished a lot already.
As for me, I working on vidget technology.
Ahhh. thats mostly technical stuff, but..
well. You see, when I have finished this engine I was so proud of it!
The peak of my skills, cool, high level architecture. 
Hooray, I thought.

Then, I learned and learned a lot and asked myself, why I spent about a month on skill book?
Why?
ahhh. again. You know the answer, the engine wasn't high level enough!

NO, no, no! I am not going to rewrite the game, that's would be stupid!
I'll make a shell for legacy code and then, try to level up my engine for future work.

Yeah, this is a system engineer.

Roguelike dev, I love you! I made me programer, game designer and now, system engineer. 

How to fail a roguelike development (Guide from the Evil Wizard) #1

I have read enough articles how to succeed in roguelike development, how to create nice roguelike, but never heard about the dark side of the development.

The receipt of failure.

Of course, I don’t expect you to follow my «advises» and intentionally try to fail your project!

No and no! But maybe, just maybe, these articles could be helpful to my dear readers, the fellow roguelike developers and players!

So, my little boys and girls, you decide to fail a roguelike?

It requires some effort and dedication, but with the counsel of Evil Me, you will succeed to fail. Mu- ha-ha-ha.

Sorry..

My first admonish: never ask yourself about the purpose of the features, just add them!

You want to create great roguelike of all ages and all us know, rogueliks are about features.

A lot of them!

Foodclock? Never hurts! It served well in generations of the roguelikes! It would shine in yours!

Poisons and potions? Great stuff! Add them before you even planed your creatures.

Scrolls? Every roguelike has scrolls, add scroll as first item ever!

And so on..

I repeat again, the question: «why do we need it?» is stupid and disastrous!

Never question the features, simple add them to your game from the very beginning of the development.

Keep them coming and you’ll fail successfully!

Your humble servant, the Evil Wizard.

timer time

Oh my!
I spent a lot of time trying to fix that timers!
You know, when you press 'i' once, but game opens and close inventory dozen of times, until you release the key.
Yeah, yeah. Easy job, but for some reason, it wasn't 'that' easy and eat up a lot of time!

By the way, about timers.
I used none to prevent flipping effect, even I was speaking of them about a month.
That's the story, the solution was so simple.
You should think out of the box.

What do we have left?
Menu, music and few fixes.

14 days before the 2nd playtest

We have two weeks until the second playtest release.
I read the Development page and feel satisfied.
It looks like, we have fixed nearly everything we have planned and added couple of useful features.
Yet, Fallen didn't a finished game with a solid gameplay, of course.
But it wasn't a plan for the second playtest.
First playtest revealed a bulk of sharp edges, mostly technical ones!

It would be the same Fallen you have seen, but fixed and polished.
The third playtest will have gameplay enchantments. That's for sure.

About development progress:
Mostly technical, like game menu, fixed timers, press key mouse key once go dozen of tiles and so on.
This is important changes, but could be noted if they aren't done well. ^_^

Art update

GoodSir finished first mushrooms.
Catacoms looks better and lively now.
Of course, it isn't the last graphical update, scheduled for the end of July playtest.

Download page

Reopened "Downloads" page.
There would be links to every release of the Fallen.
Also, added current  "in progress" version there, because it is  bit strange to reopen page with no new content.