news & new site

I'm in the midst of moving everything over to my new company, Eyehook Games LLC.

Anyway, there's some news on the new site:

http://www.eyehookgames.com/

Check it out. At some point, I will be pointing eyehook.com at the new site as well.

TBD content from eyehook.com will survive the transfer to the new site.

If there's something you absolutely can't live without, let me know!

Epic Dungeon 1.2 Now Available

Epic Dungeon 1.2 has passed review testing and is available now.

All you have to do is start up Epic Dungeon and follow the prompts to upgrade.

Enjoy!

Epic Dungeon 1.2

I've just submitted Epic Dungeon 1.2.2 for review test. So, hopefully it should be available in a week or so (assuming no problems are found...).

Changes:

• Added new difficulty levels (easy, normal, epic)
• Added awardments (and an awardment chest that contains rewards, depending upon the number of awardment points you have earned)
• Added a new platforming event (you'll see...)
• Added 4 new encounters
• Added new items
• Added the "Reaper" (epic difficulty only)
• A few graphical enhancements
• Save system improvements (should be fairly invisible, but will hopefully fix a few lingering problems people have been having)

That's it. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9yB0-9RfK4

Thanks again for playing Epic Dungeon!

Epic Dungeon Progress Update

Just thought I'd fire off a quick note about the most recent patch progress.

Completed:

• Ported to XNA4 (see previous posts on why this was important)
• Added Awardments (currently 24)
• Added Difficulty Levels (easy & epic)
• Added a Platforming Mini-game (dont' worry, it's skippable, if you are morally opposed)
• Updated the save system (faster & more robust)

Still to do:

• Balancing the difficulty levels
• Figuring out the final list of Awardments
• New Encounters
• New Trap(s)
• New Map Layout(s)
• New Items
• Testing, testing, testing

That's about it. I'm definitely making some progress, but it'll still be awhile before the patch will be available. (By the way, when it does come out, it'll just give you a dialog box asking if you would like to update Epic Dungeon when you start it up, so there's isn't anything special you have to do.)

Have fun!

Epic Dungeon Progress Update

Happy New Year!

First off, the December 2010 sales numbers are in. 22,546 people tried the trial version of Epic Dungeon and 11,577 purchased it (thank you!). Considering the fact that I expected to sell a few hundred copies, I'm pretty amazed.

Epic Dungeon is currently rated #9 out of 1,559 Xbox indie games. Thank you for your 5 star ratings! They really do help with sales and keep me motivated to continue work on Epic Dungeon. (If you haven't already, you can rate Epic Dungeon on the download page from the marketplace--thanks!)

In terms of the next patch, I have basically finished converting Epic Dungeon over to XNA 4.0. So, that's a huge hurdle out of the way. There are a few things that I plan on cleaning up over the next few days, then I'll be able to start working on making Epic Dungeon, erm, epic-er! (I'm still finalizing the list of features for the next patch, so no firm dates yet for when it'll be out.)

Thanks again for all of your emails and tweets. It's been great getting feedback, and I hope to implement some of your suggestions in future releases!

What's next for Epic Dungeon?

First off, thanks to everybody that has played Epic Dungeon! I've really enjoyed hearing your comments and feedback.

My first big action item for Epic Dungeon is to convert it from the XNA 3.1 framework to XNA 4.0, since there is a cutoff looming that requires all Xbox Indie games to use XNA 4.0.

This is going to require a fair amount of effort, because there are some rather significant changes to the API. I have a lot of reading and head scratching ahead. But, on the upside, once complete, I'll be able to continue development on Epic Dungeon.

I'm hoping to get this done by the end of the year, but with what I'm looking at right now, it's hard to tell. Fingers crossed!

On to more interesting topics, here are some of the things that I'd like to start working on after Epic Dungeon is converted to XNA 4.0.

1. Multiple difficulty levels. I'm really happy with the default difficulty, but I know that permanent-death can be a turn-off for some people, so I'm considering adding an easy mode. Also, I'd like to an add an Epic difficulty level for those that have conquered Epic Dungeon.

2. Some kind of medal/reward system. There are a lot of opportunities for adding interesting gameplay variations, and let's face it, everybody loves unlocking these. :)

3. More map layouts, more items, more encounters, more, more more... Maybe even boss battles in the long term. There are a lot of things that can still be done.

4. Online high score boards. To be honest, I don't ever look at these, but definitely a frequently requested feature. My main issue is that I want to add more content to Epic Dungeon which will have an effect on the length of the game and the difficulty level, and I'll feel locked in one competitive boards are in place... Anyway...

5. More game modes. Another frequently requested enhancement is an infinite mode. I really wanted to have a goal (survive 50 levels) for the initial release, but I definitely see the draw of an infinite mode. Technically, this isn't too hard, but it will require me to do some thinking about how I want to handle encounters, and it will require a lot of testing to get a good balance.

Things that will have to wait for a sequel...

1. Multiplayer. I'd love to have co-op, but currently, I think it's going to require some pretty major changes, so that is going to have to wait.

2. More classes/separate skill trees. I'm toying with a few ideas for the skill tree, but I think I'm going to hold off on completely separate skill trees for a sequel, because this will require a lot of work and balancing.

Ok, this is turning into a wall of text, so I'll stop here.

Thanks again for playing Epic Dungeon, and I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions!

Epic Dungeon 1.1c Released

Epic Dungeon 1.1c has been released.

Changes:

- Teleport scroll now works correctly on level 50.
- Save system improvements.

More details coming soon.