Hello everyone! It has been awhile for sure. I wanted to finish up the concepts and polish up the rewrite before I made another News announcement.
I do want to inform the community of somethings before we get started. We're 7 months in front of our Roadmap schedule. Our plan was to release The Surface Q4 of 2024. We didn't plan on working on it this early, but we're really ahead of ourselves. The rewrite was never planned until the community gave their feedback and suggestions, and of course the rewrite technically never set us back since we're still in front of schedule as per what the Roadmap shows. Most people have said that our 1.0 update is "a continuously delayed release", but that's beyond false. The Surface was put on a bit of hold until the rewrite, polish and the new mechanics/features were implemented and it's being worked on! As I mentioned, the rewrite was never planned until we received feedback and it's basically an entirely new game because of it.
I do want to show some examples of what to expect with the new mechanics. Today, I'll be showing you how Mining, Combat, Dwarven Book, Floors and Placeables will work. Whilst there's still more to do, I want to show some teasers to keep everybody informed. Please bear with us!
These examples are in testing mode to show you the newly made mechanics so expect the final result to be different.
Areas come to the Dwarf
This will remove any wasted time between Dwarves running around going to the next material/tile. The original idea was to make it seem like you're digging further, but it ended up not being executed well since it was all a huge time waster for the Dwarves and Player.
Dwarves don't walk to materials and they come to the Dwarf.
Areas cost materials, but are Infinite
Yes, areas will cost materials. Originally, I thought the concept of how the areas act now was okay, but it ended up removing a lot of the "idler" aspect to the game reducing that nice grind factor.
Areas will cost materials to unlock and if you do not have enough materials to unlock an area, it will restart back to the beginning and go from there until you have enough materials to unlock the next area.
Floors now cost materials
Current Build, Floors have a chance to unlock by resetting floors.
Floors will cost materials and you can choose which Floor type to spawn. Floor Type determines Dwarf Behavior since Dwarf Behaviors were completely removed.
Floor Combat/Loot and Enemies
Currently, enemies spawn near Dwarves with Combat Behavior assigned. Dwarves will have to move to enemies to be able to eliminate them. Like the mineable tiles, it could take awhile to walk to an enemy and end up wasting precious time before finally eliminating them.
Enemies will spawn in front of the Dwarf on a Combat floor type. Combat Floor type will have two behaviors: Attack and Loot. It's slower, but a Loot Floor Type will take loot from a Combat Floor overtime and you can set Dwarves to loot faster on a Loot Floor than on a Combat Floor.
New enemy drops have been set as well and as you see, all the loot information is all displayed under the Dwarf.
Dwarven Book
As you know the Dwarven Book was completely redone. It's all fully implemented and when you unlock new floors and other features you will unlock more upgrades in your Dwarven Book.
Now, how this works is when you purchase any of these Stat items, the timer will start to count down and when it reaches 0 it will increase the multiplier. This multiplier is global for all Dwarves and Floors, but it takes a good awhile for it to start actually helping, but you will notice changes as it does upgrade.
Transferring Dwarves
Dwarves Window, I removed the drop down for Floors and added buttons instead. It's easier to see your Floors and which one you have selected. The buttons for Dwarves are now based on Floor Type and Floor count.
Transferring Dwarves is different in the upcoming update. Currently, you had to spawn a Door after 1 floor reset. I changed it so now there's a Transfer Button in the Dwarves Window and the only requirement is to have more than 1 floor.
What's Next?
I don't have an ETA when this will be out. I'm still working on all the new features, mechanics and changing some things. It's a lot of grunt work. Once I'm finally comfortable with everything I'll start back on The Surface and get that going. Thank you for your patience, support, feedback and suggestions! I do hope you all enjoy the new teasers!
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2220570/Dwarves_Mining_Idle/