Imp City, underground creature keeping and dungeon building

Varkas

Long ago I had been working on a project, inspired by dungeon keeper, to let the player build and underground dungeon and attract creatures to work for them.
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6206

Recently it came to my mind again and I felt some interest to work on it some more. So I dug up the old source code and dusted it up some, gave it a new build system and a new home on github:
https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city

Today I've published a first release which is actually just little more than the last version that my archives contained:
https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.17

I have a few ideas how to expand the game, and usually during autumn and winter I actually have sometime for software development, so with some look there soon will be more to show.

Major change in v0.17 - one now has to use the left mouse button to drag the map. Old games all used the right button, but somehow after the break that didn't feel right to me anymore. The rest was just some adjustment of sound and particle effects.

I can't really tell if my published versions will work on other peoples systems. But I think they should.

ffaf

Glad to see this back on track, will be interesting to see in which direction you will take the project!

Varkas

I'm not even sure myself. Right now I'm working to expand the research that minions can do in the library, both in advancements for the dungeon itself as well as to unveil treasure maps and locations for raids.

Options to let the player furnish the dungeon, as in to make it more attractive to minions are on my list, but there are also a lot of graphics which I need to rework just to make it look better to the player too.

And the idea that after acquiring some special artifacts, a keeper can get access to a new, better place to build an even mightier underground kingdom.

But till then it's a lot of work, write and fix code, improve sounds and gfx.

Varkas

Research was broken in the v0.17 release, each time a creature made a discovery, the attempt to open a dialog crashed the game. This got fixed in the r0.18, and for the time being, upperworld quest have been disabled. Research now unlocks new rooms.So, one has to do some research first before one can built a forge.

https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.18

Varkas

A new room type was added, the laboratory, which attracts new creatures to perform alchemy studies there. Some vegetable graphics were improved and some creatures got better lairs.Overall the v0.19 is a cleanup release though to get a good starting point for new development work.

https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.19

Varkas

Currently I'm mostly fixing old and new bugs, also work on visual improvements, little animation details or bigger, like light effects for some of the rooms. The upper world expeditions are stuck, because I cannot decide how I want fights during such expeditions to be played. In the old code, it was totally automatic. There were two reasons for that. One logical, the expedition is far away from the dungeon at such times and the player is supposed to be the dungeon master, so they can't really do anything there. The other reason was that I just was (and still am) lacking the graphics needed for such fights.

Recently I found a solution how to do such fight with only little extra graphics, so the latter reason isn't completely valid anymore, and I think many players will actually want to get involved and control their creatures in such fights, instead of relying on some auto-fight mode. (Which could still be offered if someone doesn't want to do such micro management).

Once I am decided on details like these, upper world expeditions and raids will be completed and turned on again.

Here, a preview of the light effects. The libraries now have lights to help the creatures actually read the books.

PeterOlsson

I have been playing a lot of Dungeon Keeper in the past so I thought I ought to test this.

I can certainly see a lot of similarities with Dungeon Keeper but also some differences:

I thought it was interesting that the imps used a lair (they didn't in Dungeon Keeper).
I see no "heart" to protect, and no enemies, so after playing for a while and having researched all the room types there wasn't much purpose to the play but maybe these things will come later...
I missed a map feature to get some perspective. Especially in the beginning when I didn't know how large the level was or if there might be any enemies.
One of the most special features of the original game was that you could go inside the creatures and walk around and fight. Some even had different eye sights (unfortunately this wasn't implemented in the "3D" version). This was the only way you could directly control the creatures. Are you planning anything like that? I understand if you're not because it's probably difficult to implement but it would have been awesome. :)
I also missed an overview where you can see how many creatures of each kind that you have. Personally I find it fun to "collect" different types of creatures and if you know you only have one or a few of a certain kind then it makes you feel more special about them.
The time aspect is interesting. I'm curious how/if you plan to have it affect the gameplay.

Some bugs that I noticed:

Digging all the way to the edge (to the southeast) caused the game to hang. It didn't always happen right away but soon after.
The imps can walk through the dirt when excavating. By removing excavate marks you can even trap imps in rooms that are not connected to the rest of your dungeon.
After playing for a while I started to have some pretty bad performance problems (high CPU usage) until it eventually became unplayable. I should probably mention that the computer I played on was a pretty old laptop (more than 10 years old).
Moving the view by dragging the mouse was very buggy for me. Sometimes it worked but sometimes it jumped back to the old position that I had dragged previously.

It also seemed like the imps perhaps got distracted by some rooms, like the library or laboratory, maybe because they rather engage in that room? Look at the following screenshot:

That block of dirt stayed marked like that like forever (I don't know if it ever got excavated) and they never put floor on the ground tile in the corner of the room. I had a similar issue with a library where they didn't excavate a room from the library but when I marked another route to it they started immediately.

I hope it didn't sound like I was complaining. I liked it and I look forward to see new versions of it. 👍

Varkas

Thank you very much for testing and the feedback! I'll try to answer the questions as I can.

Indeed there is no dungeon heart. My plans are to have fights happen outside the dungeon, and if the entrance should ever be discovered, the player must relocate the dungeon. I never liked the idea to fight another keeper in the original, so in Imp City the player will get options to send creatures to raids and expeditions on the upper world. This is currently incomplete in the code, and deactivated in the releases, and also there are some open detail questions on exactly how such an expedition or raid shall happen - fully automatic, or with player interaction? I'm undecided yet, but I think I'll activate the fully automatic version soon, so that people at least get an impression what the actual game will be about. Raiding the upper world for rare artifacts and valuable treasures. I might still add a sort of shrine or something as heart, where creatures check in and out if they quit service for you.

An overview map is a good idea. I'll add that to my to do list.

The feature to possess minions and act through their hands is interesting but out of reach for my coding and graphics skills. Very unlikely to come, due to that.

Creature list, general statistics. Missing indeed. Will come later.

The time aspect is mostly for the expeditions and raids. They will take time, so while the party is away you have less workforce in the dungeon, and if they should be overdue, you can assume something went wrong. So the player needs to know the time and when to expect a party back.

Imps can stuck due to a number of reasons (creatures likely too). I hope to identify the conditions and fix the problems step by step. Right now I can only confirm, yes one can trap imps by confusing their AI. Their pathfinding might be less than perfect too.

The performance problems might be related to this. If creatures cannot find a path, they try again and again, and depending on circumstances this can really eat a lot of CPU power. Also a thing I must look into. In general I want this game to run on low end computers and even system like a Raspberry PI 3.

And yes, the camera has a problem. Dragging only works properly if you hold the mouse still, press and then move. Pressing the button while moving the mouse confuses my code. Definitely a bug which I must fix.

The screenshot seems to show a problem that slipped into the v0.19. Imps are too "thick" in terms of pathfinding to pass through the gaps between the alchemist equipment. They can't get to the block in the middle or the ore mound at the bottom. It's fixed meanwhile.

Thanks again for the test and the feedback!

Varkas

A new version is out! It comes with improved map dragging, "leaner" imps that can move through lab spaces, sleeping poses for some of the creatures and simple light effects. It also has a creature limit based on lair space and overall dungeon size, to prevent overcrowding and explanatory mouse-over messages for some map features like resource mounds.

https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.20

While this was mostly bug fixing, I've also been working on the quest system. So far, quests are randomly generated to locations near and far, and presented to the player in form of treasure maps which the dungeon creatures find now and then - usually in the library. Some, maybe even many of the maps are fake, but who knows without sending some creatures there? The maps also come in varying qualities, encrypted, damaged, and sometimes pretty clear and precise. The success of an expedition will depend on that - and the combined skills of the party that you send.

Yet, it needs some planning. So quest proposals are collected in a tome. The results of each expedition will also be recorded and can help the next expedition to be more successful, e.g. by reporting the strength of guards, or how to actually find the place.

New expeditions can be started from the tome, but the party assembly screen is too incomplete to show right now. So here are an example quest proposal and the tome with some accepted quests.

To be continued ...

Varkas

Most of the basic questing code is done now. There is a dialog to assemble an expedition party and some simulation for the actual journey. Short journeys are pretty safe. The creatures may or may not find the location, though. Some maps are just fake, sometimes the creatures in the party are too stupid, or just plain unlucky and return with empty hands.

So far all treasure is gold and silver. Once the player aka dungeon keeper levels up, there will be quests to find valuable artifacts too, which in turn attract more powerful creatures.

There seem to be some bugs in the code to integrate returning creatures into the dungeon again, but I'm positive I can solve that.

Varkas

The new version is out, including the quest code and a newly styled main UI. I think the quest code needs some adjustments though, because some expeditions will need 100 days or more to return. Not sure yet if I just will make the time pass faster in the game or adjust the quest durations. Maybe a bit of both. Returning creatures drop the treasures just in the entrance hall now and appear on their lairs, also something I want to improve. But anyways, here are the versions for Linux and Windows:

https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.21

PeterOlsson

The game is more interesting now with the quests but I was a bit confused by the expected number of days that was displayed. At first when I click "Assemble Party" it often show a pretty high number of days but when I start to select creatures it becomes much fewer days. After sending away the expedition it sometimes displayed a negative expected number of days.

I noticed that empty expedition parties were a bit buggy:

If you just click "Start Expedition" directly you will start receiving bogus quest reports from time to time.
If you select at least one creature and then deselects all of them before clicking "Start Expedition" then the game will crash.

Other bugs that I found:

It's no longer possible to remove the digging marks on the dirt tiles.
The entrance disappear (but still works) if you build a library on top of it or if you build any other room and then remove it.

I also had an interesting situation where the imps seemed to get stuck on the bookcases and dropped a lot of gold from seemingly nowhere. :)

Varkas

Thanks again for testing.

I hope I can expand the expedition feature and also add some more activities like researching a technology tree structure to give the player more choices. And send creatures to hunt game as food for the carnivores to come.

But progress is slow, and bugs keep escaping my attempts to test.

First, good news. The crash after deselecting all party members is fixed.

It a bit related to the high travel times shown at the start. An empty party is initialized with a speed of 1. If you add creatures, the speed is based on the slowest party member.

Now if you remove all, the speed goes to zero and causes a division by zero. That's fixed now, but I need to give a better initial estimation of the travel time.

Ah yes, the digging marks. I had seen the problem but forgot to take a note and also forgot about it. I'll fix it. I know the reason and it's only some coding work.

And right, I must somehow protect the portal space. Thanks for reminding me :)

But the imp ai keeps me puzzled. In this case that you showed, and some more, I have no real idea what is wrong. I managed to trap imps with bookshelves though, so it's reproducible. Meanwhile I have prepared some instrumentation to get better insights in the AI while the game is running, so I hope that I can fix at least the biggest problems. Might take some time though.

Thank you for testing! I've added all your findings to my to-do list and at least for three of the four I already know how to fix them. Thanks again :) This really helps.

Varkas

I've published a new release, but I found a lot of bugs just the evening when I wanted to get it out, and so there were a lot of last-minute fixes, some pretty deep in the code. I feel worried I might have broken things.

Replaced "make treasury" and "make farmland" sounds.
Added a new sound for dropping coins.
Added iron ore and coal deposits (no function yet).
Fixed a bug where blocks marked for excavation could not be unmarked again.
It's no longer possible to start an expedition without any creatures assigned to it.
Expeditions only trigger one return message now.
Introduced silver and bronze coins. Forges now produce bronze coins, gold and silver only can be won through expeditions.
Made plants grow faster to reduce food crisis events.
Tried to improve imp path finding for digging and carrying jobs.
Creatures returning from an expedition now arrive in the entrance hall.
Fixed a bug where saved games with ongoing expeditions could not be loaded anymore.
Added new message icons

https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.22

PeterOlsson

You can save? How?

I still get multiple quest reports if I don't read the quest report right away. When I read the quest report (which will also bring the creatures back) it seems to stop.

The message icons sometimes end up on top of each other or with space between:

Is this brown area in the farmland a glitch or did my creatures eat the grass?

Varkas

Ah yes, I missed that. Indeed you have to click a message icon to make the creatures return for real and stop the messages. I've now changed it so that the creatures are placed in the entrance hall immediately and the message does nothing but show the text to the player. I hope this will work better. I plan to publish a new release next Monday, so there is some time to test this.

And something else that I had overlooked, the new message icons are larger and this confused the stacking code. Was pretty tricky to reproduce for tests and find the culprit line, but I think I've got it fixed too.

The brown area in the farmland definitely is a glitch and I have no idea right now how this can happen. At the moment I just can tell, it never happened in my tests. But I'll keep it in mind that it happened in your game.

And last but not least, you can save a game by pressing "ctrl-s" and load it again with "ctrl-l". I need to make some UI for that, and to be honest, it's not tested very well.

I have started to write a manual. It's incomplete but maybe it helps a bit:
https://gedankenweber.wordpress.com/imp-city-underground-creature-keeping/
Hotkeys page: https://gedankenweber.wordpress.com/imp-city-hotkeys/

Thanks again for trying the new version and reporting the mistakes! I'll do my best to fix all the problems and glitches.

PeterOlsson

Varkas The brown area in the farmland definitely is a glitch and I have no idea right now how this can happen. At the moment I just can tell, it never happened in my tests. But I'll keep it in mind that it happened in your game.

It has happened to me more than once. The easiest way to reproduce it is to build a very large farmland and wait a few days (game time). There could of course be something wrong with my computer but I don't think so because I experience the same with both Linux and Windows. The glitch seems to only happen in version 0.22, never in older versions.

Varkas And last but not least, you can save a game by pressing "ctrl-s" and load it again with "ctrl-l".

Thanks for the explanation. It works! I could have sworn I had already tested that. The left side of my keyboard is a bit glitchy so I probably didn't press the Ctrl key hard enough.😳

Varkas

Regarding the farmland glitch. I recently changed several things there. The snails spread seeds farther, seed more plants per time and plants grow faster, compared to the older versions. I remember there was some tricky code to detect ripe and "too old" plants which are supposed to disappear again. Maybe I introduced a new bug there. I'll check it.

Edit: I am able to reproduce it the way that you described. There is indeed a bug in the plant aging code. Plants use graphics past the intended limit.

Varkas

I hope I could fix the problem with returning expeditions and the farmland problem. Also there is a change included which should prevent the entrance portal from being deleted.

Changes since v0.22:

Expeditions really should trigger only one return message now.
Powersnails seed plants faster now.
Improved message icons.
The entrance hall got a new floor. This also helps to prevent accidental removal of the entrance portal.
Message icons should stack properly again.
Dwarf wyverns now require 4 gold or silver to join, killer beetles 30.
Dungeon reputation now actually goes up if creatures find workplaces they like.
Fixed a bug where food plants grew too old and caused graphics glitches in farmland areas.

Downloads for Linux and Windows:
https://github.com/Varkalandar/imp_city/releases/tag/v0.23

I hope this version will be good enough to last more than a few days. The next development steps will be to expand existing features, more research, more production, more and different quests. Also, a first ranged creature that should be in reach of my graphics skills, porcupine sharpshooters. But all of that needs some planning first, many open questions about the details, user interface and such.

Varkas

A small update what is happening. I thought, the player could use some more incentives for doing quests, instead of waiting for the promised stronger creatures just to do more quests with stronger creatures.

So, I changed the map to let the player start in a smaller, rock enclosed area. To access spaces deeper underground, the player needs to collect some artifacts. This is the other big feature I'm working on, to expand the quest code for artifacts. At the moment I have a name generator for beginner level artifacts (easy and silly ones), and expanded the quest generator to make use of them.

The ancient dried frog of Lonza
The unholy linen cloth of A'kr't
The ruined carved pumpkin of Heinmut
The divine urn of Kan Tu
The reinforced rabbit's paw of Umemonr'tconer

Furthermore, only the areas of the map near the already excavated areas are shown to the player, so there is now a sense of exploration, where mineral mounds could be. What is still missing is something like a maximum room size to prevent the player from just creating one huge underground open hall. That would just cave in, so I need to add some code to tell the player to keep some earth blocks to stabilize the ceiling.

It might take another week or two though to get it all work properly.