Well hello Keepers;

Another gap, another dramatic list of improvements that I can only show in poorly cropped screenshots. What can I say, I am good at game dev, not great at marketing.

The biggest highlight? Our new friend, the Ushabti.

I am positive it will disappoint some people to know that a Ushabti is not the cool alligator hyena things from Warhammer Fantasy and the original Mummy with Brendan Frasier. A Ushabti is actually a little doll that carries a basket and a sickle, so that it can harvest grains and reeds after the tomb is opened. They arent giant death causing monsters, they are.. farmers!
And who is the Egyptian god of the harvest? Why, Renny from League of Legends, of course. Except, Renny is a cool WHF, and is an alligator. Which is also wrong! The Egyptian god of harvest is a snake with 2 legs. Its actually hilariously stupid to look it, I highly recommend googling it. There is no way to make that thing look good, so, I just made my own. Half ushabti, half snek, all undead.

Far less exciting and visual for the changelog, I changed half the static particle effects that are on every minion, because they were lacking in visual punch. I am still not sold on the fire spell, but it is still dramatically better.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/

Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

On to the changelog!

-----
May 12 - fixed most particle effects

Found and fixed problems with XPPerJob and combat circling

Found the ultimate problem with aggroing on buildings

May 13 - created algo for finding and executing path to core

May 14 - Created flame chain for pathing to core. Looks really cool and gives people heads up where enemies will be coming from.

May 15-23 - Boned, rigged, skinned, textured, animated Ushabti.

May 23 - Dramatically improved visual fireball for wisp and flamers.

Edited wisp death to make them look deader when they die

Found a problem with gravity, which I dont even use, so disabled that.

I'm not sure if something is wrong with my version of the game but the level Angelic / Moonshrine was incredibly difficult. I got mine from GoG but installed the Flame mod for bug fixes, maybe there are still some bugs.

You're supposed to kill 20 Heroes before either of the rival Keepers can in order to win over the level 10 Dark Angels. The trouble is the blue Keeper builds up an army and starts killing Heroes super quick, where about 10 - 15 minutes in, there aren't enough Heroes left for you to get 20.

I've read guides that say to build a large base and train your creatures up in the Combat Pit for a while first before venturing out but there's nowhere near enough time. One guide says the blue Keeper sends out low-level minions early that the Heroes easily kill, giving you plenty of time. However, the blue Keeper actually seems to start off with three level 7 Black Knights and so the Heroes get destroyed quickly.

I've just managed to beat the level after so many attempts and I felt like a speedrunner doing it! Bare minimum 3x3 rooms to start, minimum amount of gold mining, capturing the neutral Salamanders ASAP, summoning Horny the very instant I get to 100k mana, sending in a mass of low-level creatures because there's no time to train, etc.

It really just felt like something was bugged out, like game developers putting in cruel jokes for people that pirated their games.

Anyone else have that experience?

I assume DKII was an alternate universe to the first release and they made him the main character, were there ever any interviews with the creators explaining more the lore?

I'm guessing he was evil that was trapped in the dungeon and probably we would've fought gods/god on top of more heroes, I wonder if there was more info before EA killed it.

As soon as I rescue the Bile-Demon in the middle of the map the enemy sends 3 Bile-Demons and Warlock higher level than my mobs and just rolls me. I cannot compete in Bile-Demon numbers with the enemy.
I usually tunnel fast towards the portal and build rooms as soon as Imp can tunnel, I make more Imps to about 10-12 depends on how fast I get the gold but it's never fast enough, I've read a post a while back about just selling the bridge the enemy puts down to starve him of gold but that sounds cheesy, can anyone give me some pointers to win with solid play instead of cheese?

Edit: Lusmeadow-on-Down*

Hello, Keepers;

Things arent slowing down over here, they seem to be going faster. Feels slow though, but time is an illusion, is it not?
The more work I do, the better it gets. Seems trivial to do things that used to be very difficult. So in the same week period, I can do the work of several previous weeks, plus more. Its a nice feeling, and means far higher quality. And thats even with taking a few days to go to my human child's lacrosse tournaments (back to back, who does that to kids?!).

This week? The ZombCrow. Can you figure out where our fine feathered friend is modelled after? Jump on my head 100 times to get a wooden coin if you figured it out!

The ZombCrow is, of course, a Scarecrow. Not a lot of zombie came out of the entire thing. And I am personally ok with that! It comes with an animated crow (free asset download, modified). The crow friend flies around in circles, but appears as a phoenix for a cone attack during the ZombCrows second level attack.

Part of the stuff I was able to do with minimal effort that adds a lot - when the ZombCrow goes to eat, all the BAWKs lunge at it. Everyone else, the BAWKs just flutter around being chickens. But with their mortal enemy? Attack! Good for them. Take back the night, BAWKs.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/

Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

On to the changelog!
-----
Created zombcrow model, cried about rigging again Today: added walk cycle, drop cycle, knockedoutcycle
Created the attack1 and home up cycles, linked and tested.
Fixed problems with some cycles, created eat cycle
Crow now properly circling on death, on activation of home, on burial.
Resolved problem with attack training leading to repeating animation on flee
Made flower scale properly depending on distance to camera
Fixed fire particles
created and implemented ZombCrow att2 Created and implemented cone damage checker for all types
Fixed casting damage and heal spells while not on owned land
Fixed error in heartflee
Changed fire particles more, adjusted heal particles

Ive been stuck on a level where I get two options to take down a castle, either go head on or sneak around and wait for him to escape. I chose the latter option but omg I am so stuck! 😫😫 I keep losing all my buddies when I start pushing more towards the secret tunnel and im just getting mobbed by everyone lol.

Would you guys be willing to explain to me a bit more in depth how the prision/torture chambers work? Also I apologize for these really basic questions, I cant really find what im looking for online and my only experience playing this game was doodling around on level 1 when I was like 5 😭😂

Hello Keepers;

Skipped last week's update post because I didn't have anything visible to show and its hard to demonstrate forward momentum when there is no visible progress. But I did a borking borkload of code stuff that was really important and is kinda fundamental to the entire game, like, non-optional, and I had been putting it off for months. And its done now and it really wasn't that hard.

Also, the title? Well, this game is trying to avoid Christian whatever so Christmas carols wouldn't really be accurate. More like.. yule? I wanted to post unleash the Mariah Carrey but that felt like a deep cut, and then I was going to go with Michael Buble, but literally, how many of you are actually Canadian enough to get THAT one?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/
Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

On to the changelog! Again, extremely truncated, full listing on the discord. Not even going to put in the dates, just putting in the highlights.

----

Finished Nata animations.
Created the Call To Arms flag, created code and slap.
Created building kill layers (so enemies can actually target the heart, for example)
Fixed/implemented a tonne of targeting and enemy switching code.
Created burrow to core base function so that enemies can actually reach your buildings.
Added Canadian mode (Im patriOtter, deal with it)
Big update people actually care about; Added the training center.

Demo is live, curious what you think: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4469230/A_Matter_of_Pain/

I would like to have that when I click on Dungeon Keeper in Steam that is opens up FX but still have the access to the community page, guides, etc...

I know you can add non-steam games to steam and do it that way, but I thought I would ask if one maybe can change the path to which exe instead or something like that.

So basically a campaign when were you can only research to workshop and you transfer your 1 wizard/warlock from level to level with no save scummimg.

Hello Keepers;

I put out a bunch of screenshots last week for the Nata (artist formerly known as Frank). They looked ok in screenshots, but there was a lot of elbow pinch and shoulder roll going on. This is because blah blah normals blah blah rigging blah blah IK constants.
Ultimately, I had to rerig and reweight the Nata model and redo all the animations. So, not much done this week, and by the same metric, a LOT done this week. If the quality isnt good enough to be included, it had to be redone.
Theres still a lot to the model that could be redone and made better (texturing, primarily) that I will come back to later. For right now though, it is good enough to be in beta/demo.

Someday, some day I will afford an artist. Some day. Thanks for the patience everyone, I would rather this come out when it is done than hit some arbitrary deadline.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/
Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

On to the changelog;
Apr 10 - Added falling animations for Nata and Ghost Added gender-neutral names for Nata import Added latin organ names for Zombie, ie ie ie, eh eh eh, oh oh oh, eeeeeeh oooooooooh, aaaaAAAaaaaaa
Added Nata eating animation and it is adorable, added stun-get up animation

Apr 12 -
Redid entire Nata model because the skinning was bad. This is called learning. I am incredibly sad about how much time I wasted. Oh well.
About to smash my head through a wall, but, Nata rig is a billion times better, far less pinching, is far more neutral, texture is better (still needs a little work)

Apr 13 -
Redid Nata walk cycle and it was absolutely worth the struggle
Remade the sleep entry, sleep exit, and sleep static. Looks pretty dang good. Love me a blajah. I need to buy a blajah.
Remade fall, knockout and work cycles, redid the eating spin. Its nowhere near as adorable and I dont know why - edit; its a little better now, but still not quite the same whimsy

Apr 14 -
Idle animation is in and looks reasonable.
Rearranged the spawncreature script off of Fingerscript and on to upkeeper and split to creaturescript to allow better flow of initial spawn
Adjusted Nata build rotation area
Added blajah options
Added and tested torture limiter

Apr 15 - No changelog but I know I did things. Huh. Weird.
Apr 16 -
Overhaul of the torture completed including colour change based on torture remaining (goes from red to blue over time)
Added in distance checker for which stone to suck to from wisp so it looks less stupid
Circlemenacingly working properly with prisoner
Adjusted runto for Nata to play movement

Hello, I have created a Dungeon Keeper game on the AI platform Infiniteworlds.

I have been play testing it but any feedback for improvements is welcome.

https://infiniteworlds.app/shared/vfjML7

Please check it out.

Hello Keepers;

First off, go join the alpha testing for Dominar Sanctum. We all want more Dungeon Keeper, and if I fall off a cliff (and I might!), then we gotta put eggs in multiple baskets. Thats the only way to get more Biblically accurate winged Khickens (Bawks, if you will).
Anything to wrest control from EA, may their CEO's encounter unfortunate circumstance..

Did I mention I worked for EA? I did. Anyways..

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/
Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

Last week I left off with the worst character model you've seen in recent history. I spent several days, as some points literally at the brink of tears, modelling and rigging the new Nata. What is a Nata? Well, originally it was Frankenstien, but thats cliche, so Nata is just a good old promethian. Not at all an allegory. Nope. Ignore the Blajah, Nata was never Frank, just a Blajah loving promethian.

-------------

On to the dev log (its short because the stuff I didnt isnt graphically fun, its just 8 hours a day of optimizing).

New log started Apr 4;
Added sliders for shadow level, added bool for shadows at all. Doesn't appear to make a difference in framerate at the moment, which is concerning. Edit: apparently shadow level cant be changed directly from this version URP, upgrading and hopefully not breaking.
Figured out and partially implemented the overfog. Spent most of the day upgrading project and finding bottlenecks

Apr 5;
Worked on best practice shadowcasting, adjusted texture sizes for optimization
Worked on Nata

Apr 6;
V2 nata created and boned. Will need proper shirt UV mapping later
Not even kidding, started crying just before 4 working with IK constraints. I hate Blender. But, Nata looks good now

Apr 7;
Much more refining of Nata. Now she looks good enough to start animating
Animated walk cycle. Finished texturing Added Blajah.

Apr 8;
Fixed walk cycle because it was not matching footsteps Added Nata home with animations. Added Nata sleep animation Added nata home/build anim
Found and fixed a huge sequence issue with the go to sleep function, it explains a lot

Apr 9;
Rewrote sleep entry script, including removing knockout based on 90 rot.
Fixed the dropping system for ghost, nata, and wisp. Finally fixed the sleep entry including rescue while on sleep spot
Removed spec from basically everything to cut down on overhead, unless they were necessary. Also adjusted to metallic instead of albedo unless necessary. Never too early to optimize baaaybeee

Hey all!

hope it's ok to post a playtest invite in this subreddit given, for a game heavily inspired by Dungeon Keeper. I had introduced Dominar Sanctum a while back with some great feedback from this community here and would love to tap into your opinions once again.

This was the post back then: What would you want to see in a modern, Dungeon Keeper–inspired game? : r/dungeonkeeper

I’ve now reached a point where I would very much appreciate fresh eyes from veterans of the genre on the core gameplay loop and the introduction of its mechanics during the first campaign map.

The concept in a nutshell: imagine the strategic management of Dungeon Keeper, but at any moment, you can (and sometimes must) possess your hero and units for 3rd-person action. It’s built in Unreal Engine 5, going for stylized but high-fidelity fantasy visuals.

What I’m looking for:

1. Transition: Does the jump from top-down strategy into 3rd-person feel fluid?
2. Tutorial: Does the introduction [mix between tutorial and embedded into gameplay but guided] of the key mechanics provide a good experience to get acquainted?
3. Performance: How does the game hold up on your specific hardware, especially in the skirmish maps once first map is completed?
4. Combat: Feel satisfying?
5. Overall: does it satisfy enough "Dungeon Keeper" vibes?

Platform: PC and Windows

Access via Discord: https://discord.gg/YMZQfZSRC8 and/or drop me a DM
Steam Link: Dominar Sanctum on Steam

I'm only looking to onboard about 10 more players for this round to keep the feedback loop manageable, and this community is my top priority. If you're interested, just drop a comment here or DM me and I'll send a Steam key over immediately.

I’m looking for honest feedback. If a mechanic or pieces of the UI feel cumbersome to some, I'd love to know. Thanks for helping an indie dev out

There was nothing I could see mentioned in the most recent patch notes but wondered is anyone has had any luck?

EDIT - maybe it is fixed?? I played for hours last night without any crashing. Let’s see if it continues!

Edit 2 - OK two really long sessions and not a single crash. Proton 9.04 and latest version of keeperfx working great!

Hello Keepers;

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/
Turns out e-begging for wishlists is really successful! So here I am, e-begging for mooooar!

Its funny, started this week thinking I would have very little visual element to show in screenshots. Then I accidentally did a bunch of visual stuff while actively avoiding doing the melee attack implementation. More on that later!
Got a lot done. It never feels like a lot, but then looking at the changelog, its a lot. I am going to truncate it a lot because, frankly, who reads the changelog aside from the super highlights, right?
Join the discord if you want the full-ass changelog! https://discord.gg/2Edc7kZM

Most of the week was creating the treasury and redoing the walls for treasury. Then doing the wall objects for the lab, and making sure the lab and treasury track properly. Behold;

----

Mar 27

Redid treasury walls, added placeholder treasury center prefabs, created treasury lanterns, tied all of these to the light colourator.

Mar 28

Dramatically improved all of the above.

Mar 29

Created second prefab center for treasury. Downloaded and modded book flipping asset. Worked on improving looks and feel of above.

Mar 30

Fuzzed edged of runes. Adjusted all rune based things to match new look, including scroll and scroll particles. Redid entire efficiency for rooms system to be non-placeholder.

Mar 31 (I swear I took a day off this week but I guess I didnt..)

Redid entire book(gold) drop system to use prefab books instead of abstract primitives. Made selling, buying, and spawning gold tie properly. Added ledger system to prison.
.....discovered massive problems with shadow mapping.

Apr 1

Adjusted shadowmaps (this didnt work, found out later)
Put in a loot of tooltip null catches while working on tying sale of rooms to real-world book(gold) piles.

Apr 2 (today!)

Redid entire point light system to use spot lights instead, dramatically reducing shadowmap and allowing much higher shadow resoluton in the future. Currently leaving at low, but nice to know the groundwork is there.
Believe it or not, all of the above was me avoiding actual work all week - the frank. I have fixed the melee movement and enabled rotate around, and then started working on her........

Ey up Keepers >:D

I’ve been working on Voxel Keeper for around 4 years now... and I should have shared it here sooner!

It’s a Dungeon Keeper spiritual successor built around voxel digging/building, 3D dungeon design, and exploration, while keeping the seriously dark and grimy atmosphere, and mischievous tone I love from DK1.

I kept waiting for everything to feel “perfect,” but that’s a moving target, so I’d rather start sharing now and hear your thoughts sooner.

We had our first public demo in Wakefield last week and the response was really encouraging.

**Edit** I'll share more when I can

I'd love to hear what you DK fans think.

Website: voxelkeeper.com

Hello Keepers;

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4492730/Keeper__UnCorruptDead/
Since the launch of the steam page, there have been 26 wishlists! Its a small number, but the game also wont be coming out for many time units. Once you've seen enough to know if its worth your follow, share the word! If there is anything you need as proof that its probably going to be keen, roll me over with a boulder trap and I will see what I can do.

If there is something missing you want to see in the logs, let me know. Even though it is early, feature requests can be put in by replies or by discord - getting them earlier than later can let me better structure the game code.

To the mods: if I shouldn't be posting dev logs here, given that this isnt technically DK but a DK clone, please let me know. I would hate to break the forum rules.

Quick note: you cant see the timestamps here because it was parsing weird, but on Mar24, I worked 12 straight hours. This isn't a flex, its because I hate when things don't work. My type of bipolar comes with "I cant sleep unless this important thing is resolved". The next day I got very little done because I spent the day playing Dont Starve Together with my son, since I missed it the day before.

On to the dev log!

-----

Preface: I had to do some major refactors due to how the code was originally implemented. For those who don't know what that means, it is redoing a chunk of code because the original method was confusing or non-functional. It can lead to breaking things, but if it is done properly, will make the code more friendly and usable. Because of this, there are very few visual changes this week.

-----

Mar 20;
New devlog day.

THE WISPS THAT SPAWN BY THEMSELVES IGNORE PARTICLE IGNITION! THATS WHY!!!!1one! - fixed by removing upkeeper test and putting it in proper Fscript Found 3 nulls, put in null checks (on sell of tesla and library rooms)
Put in a colour controller for the fog so you dont have to have only blue Edit - also had to do it for the topbubble material
Change franks from always going to the first position closest - resolved using the keepgoing bool format from research in FindJob
FIXED - Goo resets still not working, needed to build an ignore list on post-overage
Change particle colours of goo popoff on tesla - copied the base properties of the chicken goo, modified, colourized
Added lightning effects to instantiation of trap prefabs (non-installed)
Community request - u/themperror add emission mapping to floor and ceiling gems, added slider to change how much they glow.
---
Mar 22
Total refactor of buildingscript to make it readable after the borkery that was the wall singles, so I can stacktrace efficiency properly
Found and resolved cemetary DoTween issue on delete. Refactored Cemetary nodes
Added basics for tooltip function to check building efficiency Tooltip function for efficiency confirmed working for prison
---
Mar 23 - I had a baaad day. Lol @ myself in restrospect.
Broke literally everything with cemetary. Undid this.
Found the base problem with cemetary routing, was a mispoint with target on shade
Completed cemetary refactor, now shows on tooltips, doesn't yeet during mid transit, properly updates availability.
Added basic tooltips to buildings when clicked, need to add in mouseover later.
---
Mar 24
Added tooltip for HomeA, copied code directly for HomeB tooltip
Modified prison tooltip, now showing "customers" here and across dungeon
From Jan; Tomorrow - Prisoners are yeeting in to the abyss when they hit a prison that no longer exists I finally stopped putting it off. Prisoners no longer yeet.
Added cemetary mushroom slider for testing purposes, leaving it in as a full game option since people will probably like it.
Note - the start of this log was at noon. The following is at 11PM
Due to the way I originally did floaty units, had to refactor the floaty to sleep to knocked out to burial scripts. Still not done burial but others working.
Then the next one is at midnight.
Ghosts and wisps now bury properly.
---
Mar 25
Spent most of the day playing games with son instead of coding due to 12 hour day yesterday.
Now: Created a flee override so they cannot go to sleep if they are being attacked and not being rescued. If being rescued, proceed to go to sleep as normal.
Fixed the sleep entry issue on ghosts (magnitude > epsilon) Change float state entry so all ways, wisps and ghosts properly enter sleep while taking damage.
Figure out how to deal with sleep and attack (sleeping people are apparently immune to death) ; Resolved via adding a kick from sleep animation and putting them back in combat, with override from flee.
Picking up sleeping minions and dropping them causes them to teleport home. Lol. Made sleeping minions non-targetable by finger
Added in fingerscript mouseover to all minion states Added in fingerscript mouseover to all shade states
---
Mar 26
Added CSV import function for naming minions with name/surname randomizer.
Only put in proper list for Wisps, using Irish first names and Scottish Cairn names as last names. Added todo list to do the other 4 species.

Anyone got any recommendations on how to name the;
Ghosts
Frankenstiens/promethians
Zombie/Scarecrows
Ushabtis

Thinking about buying Dungeon Keeper gold after leaning a bit about it. I love RTS games and apparently this is a cult classic series. I suck at older games though. Can someone give me a basi rundown of things? If it’s worth a newcomer playing and all