The latest patch fixes some serious bugs for a small portion of players.

Patch Notes v1.0.1

• Fixed a game freeze due to scheduling climax battles in the past. The game would to freeze at the time of the climax battle is supposed to occur.
• Fixed a crash with some GPUs due to deleting null buffers.
• Fixed a video memory leak.
• Fixed an issue with shrine clues being revealed at game load. Sometimes clues were not awarded when they should have been and were then being awarded later on game load. Now all clues should be awarded immediately when a book is shelved and never on game load.

[ 2020-06-25 00:36:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Lord of Dwarves v1.0 Live!

Lord of Dwarves Early Access has ended and the v1.0 release is now live! The release also contains a new bonus game mode, Challenges! I hope you enjoy everything Lord of Dwarves has to offer. It has been a long road since development began in 2013. After all these years the 1.0 version has finally been released. What started as a hobby turned into a massive passion project and finally into a full fledged, content-full game. I'm really happy to have been able to include three diverse game modes that really vary how Lord of Dwarves is played. The full Campaign takes you through a series of adventures and objectives while teaching you the basics of the game. The extensive Sandbox lets you customize the game to vastly different play styles. Finally the brand new Challenge mode gives you objectives to complete that focus on specific aspects of the game. I'm very happy with where Lord of Dwarves is. This project was a huge one man endeavor, my personal Mount Everest. At 442,954 lines of code I really can't believe how big this game got and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

New Game Mode: Challenges

In addition to Sandbox and Campaign, there is now a third game mode, Challenges! Challenges are independent scenarios with a specific objective to accomplish. Challenges often highlight a small set of game mechanics allowing the player to focus on those mechanics. Often challenges have a specific starting state or special game rules which allows the player to focus on the challenge and not be bogged down with unrelated tasks. There are 21 challenges in all ranging from combat, construction, trap making, and even raising a bunny farm. In one challenge you will need to prepare for the imminent arrival of a vicious ettin. In another the surface is overrun with monsters and you will need to grow mushrooms underground to survive until you are strong enough to fight them off. One of my favorite challenges has you lead a single dwarf to prepare and defend against an attack by 15 goblins. I really hope you enjoy the challenge mode. I had a lot of fun creating and testing each challenge. See if you can complete all 21!

[ 2020-05-23 07:08:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

After over six years in development and just over one year in early access, Lord of Dwarves is releasing its 1.0 version! It has been a long development process. A game I started on a whim, Lord of Dwarves turned into a massive hobbie project and finally into a full game with loads of content.

Lord of Dwarves 1.0 will release on Saturday May 23 at 12:01am PDT.

Honestly, I was happy with the game state when it first released in early access. It had two major game modes - sandbox and a full campaign. It also had all the major gameplay elements I originally envisioned. Early access allowed me to receive some surprisingly great feedback from players who were very enthusiastic about the game. Their suggestions led to some much needed gameplay, balance, and quality of life fixes. I personally consider this early access a great success. There was always one bonus feature I wanted in Lord of Dwarves that I never talked about - a Challenge mode. I'm happy to say I was able to add this mode over the course of early access. Even after all these years programming and testing Lord of Dwarves I still had a really good time playing all the challenges. Maybe I really just made this mode for me - but I hope all of you enjoy it too!

New Game Mode: Challenges

In addition to Sandbox and Campaign, there is now a third game mode, Challenges! Challenges are independent scenarios with a specific objective to accomplish. Challenges often highlight a small set of game mechanics allowing the player to focus on those mechanics. Often challenges have a specific starting state or special game rules which allows the player to focus on the challenge and not be bogged down with unrelated tasks. There are 21 challenges in all ranging from combat, construction, trap making, and even raising a bunny farm. In one challenge you will need to prepare for the imminent arrival of a vicious ettin. In another the surface is overrun with monsters and you will need to grow mushrooms underground to survive until you are strong enough to fight them off. One of my favorite challenges has you lead a single dwarf to prepare and defend against an attack by 15 goblins. I really hope you enjoy the challenge mode. I had a lot of fun creating and testing each challenge. See if you can complete all 21!

[ 2020-05-03 18:56:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch has been a long time coming. Although I've been continuing to work on Lord of Dwarves on and off I guess the truth is I needed a break. I didn't even realise it at first, I was still working on it here and there, but yea, after 5 years of consistent development I just needed a break. I started working on Lord of Dwarves in 2013 and it does a lot. At 432,099 lines of code it has been a lot of work to get it where it is. I'm happy to say that even at day one Early Access I'm happy with the product I delivered, a full campaign, sandbox, tons of features, and more. So I'm back to finish all the changes I've been making and release them in a final version. Soon I'll be releasing a 1.0 version and with it will come a surprise. There is a game mode that I've always wanted to put into Lord of Dwarves which is now almost complete. I've been having a lot of fun developing and test playing it, so I look forward to finishing it and getting it out to all of you!

Patch Notes v0.23.0

Major Improvements

• Dwarves now pickup multiple seeds and plant them all instead of picking up one seed at a time.
• Dwarves now pickup multiple water to water plants instead of picking up one water at a time.
• Added an engage range to each post (guard, archer, safe zone). Assigned dwarves will only engage monsters within that many squares of their assigned post.

Improvements

• Construction technique is now saved to file.
• Accessories are now stored on tool racks
• When monsters are present dwarves will no longer equip items unless those items are on a rack. Prevents dwarves from running out into monsters to equip gear.
• Dwarves now speak up if they are assigned to 'Man Posts' but are not assigned a post.
• Added a Tannery recipe to turn soft leather into hard leather. Useful if you have an excess of soft leather.
• Monsters climb ladders and scaffolding much more slowly. Prevents sieging monsters from overcoming your walls so quickly.
• Monsters placing siege ladders now takes 4 times as long. Prevents sieging monsters from overcoming your walls so quickly.
• Increased monster sap time by ~50%. Prevents sieging monsters from breaking through your walls so quickly.
• New sandbox options to turn off monster escalade (climbing) and sapping (digging). Located in the creatures tab under the advanced sub-tab.
• Added armor stats to the dwarfopedia
• Added a Dwarfopedia entry for shields.
• Finalized construction technique options.

Bug Fixes

• Whitecap mushrooms now properly spawn whitecap spores (instead of redcap spores)
• Fixed a bug where Spiders and Demon Hounds could squeeze through two diagonal blocks that should prevent movement.
• Fixed a bug where dragging list items between lists would significantly widen the lists. This was especially noticeable in the Military window Guard Posts tab.
• Made the dwarves window less of a cpu hog when open.

[ 2020-04-05 19:20:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch has some important fixes to memory issues and even an bug that can freeze up the game. Also a few improvements that came from player suggestions. Thanks everyone for providing feedback. If you have any more thoughts on balance or anything else, let me know.

Patch Notes v0.22.9

Improvements

• Mousing over a workshop now displays what the workshop is currently crafting.
• Added optional minor and major boons to all campaign levels to make them easier if desired.
• Dwarves only consider the first 2000 items for optimal hauling. This greatly improves performance where there tens of thousands of unhauled items. The value can be adjusted in the options menu.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug when displacing features that could cause game jerkyness or game freezing.
• Fixed a bug that could lead to crashes due to memory issues.
• Soldiers and militia now start with the proper combat skill.

[ 2019-05-28 04:59:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's been longer than I wanted since the last patch due to unexpected life events. We came home to find an inch of water in our apartment. We had a whirlwind week moving all our stuff (including my development machines) to a new apartment. The machines are (mostly) back up and there are a number of good improvements in this latest patch so I wanted to finally get it out. I also have a number of changes brewing that change the save file format. Whenever I finish those changes the old save files won't read in the new version. But don't worry, there is an option to run the old version and load old save files if you want to finish a game in progress. I'll post more info when that release comes.

Patch Notes v0.22.8

Improvements

• Increased the power of some advanced traps.
• Significantly increased the power of Stone Fall traps. They were way underpowered for the work involved.
• Moderate buff to all warefare weapons (metal-tier weapons).
• Melee combatants will move around less often when trying to find a target to attack.
• Injuries now provide only half the move speed penalty. Too penalizing before.
• Added a tool tip to the Creature Window move speed to see a breakdown of why the creature has that speed.
• Great Club weapon is now much more lethal and reduces move speed much less. This makes great weapons viable in the early game.
• Orcs on campaign level 4 no longer increase in strength so quickly.
• Crops & vegetables now grant more renown. Makes farming attract more dwarves.
• Planted seeds & seedlings now appear in the dwarfopedia renown tree.
• Animals will use ladders & scaffolding less often.
• Added a parameter to turn off auto pause when new dwarves spawn.

Bug fixes

• Civilians assigned to a post would sometimes not attack at all. Fixed.
• Domestic animals no longer set off traps.
• Fixed a bug with scaffolding on top of a ladder. Dwarves could move one way but not the other.
• Seasonal & yearly large invasions were switched. Selecting large seasonal invasions would cause large yearly invasions and vice-versa.
• Fixed a bug where clicking a shrine location would send the camera to the bottom corner of the map.

[ 2019-05-05 16:58:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

There are two notable changes for this patch. 1) I've received feedback about dwarves getting stuck while building walls. So I added a couple new algorithms in the upper left corner preferences window to help prevent this. Please try them out and let me know what you think! They basically force the dwarves to build from the bottom up - there are tool tips in the game that describe them in more detail if you're interested. Please let me know how you like the new algorithms. 2) A number of players suggested that having a market window for each individual market was time consuming and tedious. I hadn't thought about it before - but they were absolutely right! Now each type of market (human, elf, gnome) has a single market window which aggregates up the goods from all merchants present. It's much nicer. Thanks for the suggestion everyone!

Patch Notes v0.22.7

Major Gameplay Changes

• Added two alternate construction algorithms that can help prevent dwarves from getting stuck while constructing walls. See the Preferences button in the upper left and let me know what you think of them!
• Markets of the same type now all share a single Market Window. If there are 10 human markets, the goods from all 10 markets will be aggregated into a single human market window. (Thanks to everyone who made this great suggestion)!

Improvements

• Non-dwarves are slowed when moving through a dwarfs space.
• Added stats for weapons to the Dwarfopedia (armor to come in a future patch).
• The auto scaffolding algorithm now searches for locations that need scaffolding from low z to high z. Improves the scaffolding build order.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where civilian hunters would not hunt most of the time.
• Fixed a possible crash when dragging an item from one list to another and the game auto saves during the drag.
• Fixed a bug in some uncommon pathfinding that caused more work to be done than needed.
• Projectiles are no longer seen if the viewed layer is below the projectiles position.
• When flying creatures die their corpses could fall onto fences & pillars which are normally inaccessable. Now they fall next to the fence/pillar.
• Subterranean monster spawns could be accompanied by a message for every monster that spawns. Now only one message appears.

[ 2019-04-15 00:03:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch has some minor design changes to farming to reduce some frustrating micromanagement. Additionally, there are some changes with how dwarves engage enemies to make them choose better targets. Also bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who is reporting bugs!

Patch v0.22.6

Improvements

• Dwarves will no longer wander slightly out of their post (due to idle movement) while monsters present.
• Dwarves now prioritize attacking an adjacent monster much more than a distant monster.
• Produce grown by crops can stack up on or off the plant. Previously once a crop grew, another would not grow until the first was hauled away.
• Crops no longer die in winter. Instead they grow very slowly in winter. Prevents seed loss which otherwise required significant micromanagement to prevent.
• Sylvan shrine now halves maturity time of crops.

Bug Fixes

• A number of dwarf shrines (battle, guard, etc) used to apply to all creatures. Now they correctly apply only to dwarves.
• Soldiers had a slightly higher alert status when dormant monsters were present. Should only be at that status for non-dormant monsters).
• Fixed a bug where crop field trees would die earlier than intended if they did not get enough sun or water.
• Fixed a bug when deleting items from scroll areas (e.g. deleting posts from the Military Window). Sometimes the scroll bar would go away and leave gui widgets unreachable.

[ 2019-04-08 03:34:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

The latest patch is live. Been spending a lot of time looking into bugs. Thanks to everyone who is reporting issues and improvement ideas! Keep them coming.

Patch v0.22.5

Improvements

• In Sandbox mode pressing the Select Start Position button in a dense forest could freeze the game for a short time while trying to find positions for all of the starting items. Now existing features (trees, tallgrass, etc) are removed from that position before placing the starting items.
• Added a option to limit the frame rate for graphic cards that have overheating issues.
• Night brightness is slightly higher for all game modes.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a number of bugs preventing domesticated animals from eating and drinking.
• Fixed a bug preventing all creatures from generating idle paths that go up and down ramps/stairs.Fixed a bug where trying to create a workshop/market/trainingArea/trap of one type would use the ingredients of a previously selected type. Building would fail.
• Cooking & butchering animals now properly skills up the cook skill (instead of the needlesmith skill).
• Cremating creatures animals now properly skills up the smith skill (instead of the needlesmith skill).

[ 2019-04-01 06:02:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Here are the notes for the three patches that have been released since early access launch. Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs and providing improvement ideas, keep them coming!

Patch v0.22.4

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug in the Furnace Workshop that always showed 0 dwarves even if you had some dead dwarves that could be cremated.
• Fixed a bug where Markets could not be demolished except by a dwarf with both the build & engineering jobs. Now a dwarf only requires the build job (e.g. a Laborer) as intended.
• Fixed an issue with the camera jumping through the terrain if it was moved during a game save.

Crash fixes

• Fixed a crash when a dwarf spawns while dragging a squad between stations.
• Fixed a crash when mining. Monsters spawned due to mining could cause the game to crash. (This one was a giant pain! Thanks to everyone who sent me example logs and game saves. You really helped me figure this one out!)
• Fixed a possible memory stomp issue (future crash) when going to the title screen from in game.
• Made some code more resilient to crashes.

Patch v0.22.3

Bug fixes

• Hardened code against crashes when moving items in window lists.
• Fixed an issue where bad picking results from the GPU could cause a crash
• No longer crate shadow buffers when shadows are set to None.
• Address issues with some Intel HD drivers.
• Added a video param to control OpenGL glFlush & glFinish calls. Manually setting this may work around some buggy Intel HD drivers.

Patch v0.22.2

Improvements

• Added options to reverse the camera controls.

Bug fixes

• Fix bugs with the helpful red circle appearing in the center of the screen, in the wrong place, or off screen.
• Fixed bugs with windows disappearing or moving to the lower left corner when the game is minimized. (Really this time)
• Allow the camera to move slightly off the edge of the map to better see the edges of the terrain.
• Corrected various in game text.

[ 2019-03-25 14:17:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

After over 5 years in development I'm happy to announce that Lord of Dwarves is available on Steam! Lord of Dwarves is a survival-kingdom building game with a focus on grandiose 3D building and leading your dwarves to defend those buildings. Guide your kingdom to ensure your dwarves survive, build, and prosper. You'll need to gather resources, secure food sources, craft weapons & armor, build structures, and defend those structures against monster raids that include sieging.
If all the content is there, why early access? Lord of Dwarves contains all the features I set out to build over 5 years ago including a full campaign and sandbox mode. You can buy into early access knowing there there is a full game here with tons of content. But that doesn't mean it's done! I'm releasing in early access so I can improve the game even more based on player feedback. I want to hear what you think will make Lord of Dwarves a better game. Features

• Fully constructible/destructible 3D block world
• Full length Campaign and Tutorial
• Extremely customizable Sandbox mode
• Fresh game play objectives like "build a stone tower 8 blocks tall" or "chop down an evil forest"
• Control over 100 dwarves
• Invaders siege your custom build structures
• Tiered resource system allows for ever more powerful weapons, armor, & crafts
• Random procedurally generated terrain with millions of blocks

I'll leave you with some quotes from pre-release players: "This game is a real gem, I'm surprised nobody has found this" "The game you have is just fantastic, awesome job" "Nearly blew my mind when I realized I can dig underground"

[ 2019-03-08 08:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

After more than five years of development I'm excited to announce that Lord of Dwarves will release in early access on March 8, 2019. What is the development status? Lord of Dwarves is feature complete. The full campaign and sandbox mode are done. The game is very playable and fun. Then why early access? If the last five years of development has taught me anything, it's that I want to keep tweaking and balancing the game to make it even better. But I don't want those ongoing tweaks to prevent fans from playing a game which is very content full and fun. Hence early access. You can buy into early access knowing that there is a whole game here with tons of content. Also know that you can email me with your thoughts for improvements. I want to hear what you think will make Lord of Dwarves an even better game.
I'll leave you with a quote from one of my Alpha testers. ... there's enough playable content and depth that you probably could've gotten away with an Early Access release, but holding back and wanting to put out something of quality is a rare, but good, thing these days." (Note: this quote references Lord of Dwarves as it was 2 years ago)

[ 2018-12-16 22:40:00 CET ] [ Original post ]