Comments - RedButtonGames

Rather than responding to every version of this comment, the basic reason is the project began with a small team, one full-time programmer and couple other part-time contributors, but the full-time programmer (myself) got a full-time job, moved across the country, and got married over the past 6 months. Obviously transitioning to a part-time schedule would be tough enough, but the development pace suffered during this transition.

Now that I'm in a more stable situation, I'm ramping development up to a healthy pace, and carefully bringing on more people to replace the full-time slot that was abandoned. I still really love this game and more importantly want to see it grow to what I envision, rather than the Alpha version that currently exists.

I'll go into more detail in a Red Button Bulletin soon ("real" soon, not "next update" soon), but I wanted to respond to the wave of comments, especially for people who were frustrated by the silence over the months.

We'll have to look into cInput2 - that's something we hadn't considered up to this point, but as with many problems someone else in the Unity community solved it.

The intention is to disable all mouse actions when using a menu, but we still have a few edge cases to identify.

Yup! Or rather, there will be a good variety of things to interact with, which may become enemies or allies.

Thanks for the feedback! Both of those are great points, which we've noticed in the past before.

The edge-scrolling issue will probably be tweaked in the next update. As far as the menu icons go, those will be tweaked at some point, but we'll probably focus on getting more in the game before revising the UI too much.

Nope! But we did have a shift in staff for the game, which has slowed development. We'll probably address this soon in a blog post, since we're getting updates out much slower than we originally wanted.

Sorry to hear that. Hope you track the project so you can keep up-to-date on added features.

There isn't a plan to offer an adventurer mode, instead focusing on gameplay closest to the "Fortress" mode in Dwarf Fortress.

As far as features we're adding, we're developing in a very iterative way, so we're not sure what features will be in the final game. If a feature isn't fun, we'll cut it, and if we get a new idea that sounds fun, we'll add it. Since the game is so early, most of the focus has been on major systems and interactions, and we intend to make things as fun and deep as possible. That's not a direct answer I realize, but hopefully that gives you some idea of what our philosophy is.

One notable way we're hoping to expand upon the DF idea is to have external areas to interact with (villages, dungeons, hordes, etc). Rather than having trading elves wander in from a random location, you'll know what village they're from, see them approach, and have an idea of where your tower exists in the world.

As you mentioned, we're early on in development. We released the alpha early on purpose for multiple reasons - and one of them is what you mention. It'll be easier to find a way to differentiate by being transparent about the development process, and by noting feedback from players.

This is something we'll be improving over time as we gather a larger following. Before publishing on Desura, we had a very small following - so it was more useful to spend time developing and planning. We don't know if that means setting up a forum, but more active communication is becoming a higher priority.

One system at a time is how we're tackling development. DF wasn't built in a day, month, or year...and all the cool stuff comes out of an interaction of systems. We have some notions of how things might interact, but we don't want to get too attached to any one event or experience until those systems are built.

We're aware of how ambitious the project is, which is why we wanted to be transparent about the development so early on, rather than work in the shadows for months (years?) before having anything to show. We're not expecting to catch up to DF quickly, but it's the type of game we're shooting for. DF is the easiest game to point to for what we want to build, since "chaos simulator" isn't a very wide-spread term.

In response to this comment and d10sfan's below, we don't see a reason not to publish to Linux once we upgrade to Unity 4. Right now we're still using Unity 3, but knowing that there's a demand for Linux may cause us to upgrade the project sooner rather than later.

The game is still in Alpha, so the game is more of a sandbox at this point. As development of the game moves forward, there will be multiple groups to interact with, such as orcs, villagers, dragons, etc. However, you'll be able to determine how you interact with them. You could ally with the villagers to push back the hoards...or do the opposite, and pillage and plunder.