Ann: Depths of Peril

[speeler]

We finally released Depths of Peril this week.

Depths of Peril is a single player action role-playing game (rpg) with strong strategy elements. You play as a faction leader protecting the barbarian city, Jorvik, by destroying threatening monsters and completing quests. At the same time, you compete with rival factions to see who will rule the city. Barbarians choose their leaders by fighting to the death!

As a faction leader, you must deal with rival factions through diplomacy, trade, and in time, war. Between battles and raids against other barbarian factions, you build the most powerful faction possible, to withstand your enemies. Building the power of a faction involves exploring a fantasy world, slaying dangerous monsters, solving quests for the city, avoiding deadly traps, and plundering loot to share within your faction.

But in this world, actions actually have consequences, so take care. Annoying the powerful and aggressive Legion of Fear faction will cause them to declare war and destroy you. Ignored Orc uprisings in the Black Forest will cause even more trouble. Protect ally covenants that are being raided, because friends are hard to come by.

Here's a link to one of the screenshots to show in general what the game looks like: screenshot (http://www.soldak.com/images/screenshots/orcs2.jpg).

(Dan MacDonald Edit: this looked purdy enough it needed to e in the thread)
http://www.soldak.com/images/screenshots/orcs2.jpg

There are a few more screenshots and much more information on our website (http://www.soldak.com/), you can download the demo here (http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/28/65/), and you can buy the game here (http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/29/66/).

Feedback is always welcome.

[WickedEwok]

Wow that looks very nice! Congrats!

[ZeHa]

The shot is beautiful! It's 3D, but it doesn't look 3D, and that's what makes it really superb! I'm not an RPG fan, but perhaps I'll just try it because of the looks ;)

[Jack Norton]

Impressive screenshots! may I ask what tools you used to make it (torque, irrlicht, ogre, etc) ?

Best of luck!

[speeler]

Thanks guys.

Actually it's our own engine.

[JGOware]

If the game is half as good as the screenshots, it deserves a better website design. Just my .02 ;) .

[electronicStar]

The shot is beautiful! It's 3D, but it doesn't look 3D, and that's what makes it really superb! I'm not an RPG fan, but perhaps I'll just try it because of the looks ;)
Yeah, it seems that they didn't use vertex lighting , which gives the appearence of drawing to the screenshots. very original.

[Adrian Cummings]

Not played the demo yet - but it looks really nice and has that initial eye candy factor to draw you in.

[mrkwang]

D/Ling Demo. Looks interesting.

Will leave or PM feedback.

[mrkwang]

If the game is half as good as the screenshots, it deserves a better website design. Just my .02 ;) .

I agree. Little bit better website design could make more visitors try your demo & even purchase.

And edit Contact page little bit more. It's too... difficult to understand, to send my question to where.

- Customer Service.
- Press Contact.
- Business Contact.

This will be better.

[speeler]

Yeah, the website could probably be improved. :) But don't let that stop any of you from trying the demo or buying the game. Most of my energy has been focused on the game and not on things like the website and that shows.

[mrkwang]

Tried demo around 30 min - 1 hour. Could be fun and good hack & slash game with MMO style twist, but...

- This game is NOT easy to read.

There are many messages / sentences / quest informations in this game, and all of them are NOT easy to read, including MAP.

You think player will not read them, of course. But if there are some messages / sentences / quest informations, they must be easy to read, whether players read them or not.

Your game is fun. That's why I played around 30 min - 1 hour. But everything is hard to read. That's very bad thing for a good game.

And the most annoying thing was 'Help' message, when player could meet at the start of the game. '?' mark glows all the time, and when I open it, they are very hard to read. So I erased all of them, after tried 5 '?' marks.

Consider more readible design. That will make your game sold much better.

And try [Fate] by Wildtangent. That's another [Diablo] style Hack & Slash game, and everything is easy to read, at least for me.

[speeler]

What specifically do you mean by hard to read? Bad wording, font not good enough, etc? Also what resolution were you running the game at?

[mrkwang]

What specifically do you mean by hard to read? Bad wording, font not good enough, etc? Also what resolution were you running the game at?

Well. It's not easy to explain, because there were too many things regarding to hard-to-read situation. In fact, almost everything in the game (and outside the game) are hard-to-read.

Anyway, I think you are not very sensitive to easy-to-read design. For example, your 'Contact Info' in homepage is very hard-to-read. I'd pick some other examples, to compare.

Your Contact Info
http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/19/52/

Indygamer.blogspot.com Contact Info
http://indygamer.blogspot.com/2005/06/staff.html

Wadjeteye Games Contact Info
http://wadjeteyegames.com/contact.html

Popcap Press Room (w/ Contact Info)
http://popcap.com/press/

Not sure this comparision could explain about 'hard-to-read' & 'easy-to-read' things, however hope it works.

As I told you with earlier reply, your game is fun. But everything is hard-to-read, in game & even homepage. I'm kinda core-to-the-Indie-Game, so endured it to play around 30 minutes - 1 hour. But how about others?

I think you'd stick to make them more easy-to-read design, really.

[papillon]

Attempt to run the demo crashed repeatedly.

Try to launch - screen goes black, resolution switches down, then 'has encountered a problem' window pops up.

Details of error report mentioned

AppName: depthsofperildemo.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: nvopenal.dll
ModVer: 5.10.2917.0 Offset: 000090ca

[speeler]

It looks like that is a sound card issue, what kind of sound card do you have?

[papillon]

umm... my sound stuff says NVIDIA nForce on it? Where do I look for the specs you need?

< occasionally clueless with hardware

[speeler]

Ok, that's what I thought. It seems that there have been driver issues with the nForce cards in the past with OpenAL. Can you update your sound drivers and try the demo again?

[papillon]

Okay, with updated drivers, it runs.

Unfortunately it has the typical RPG problem - even for an RPG fan. Being suddenly confronted with a huge new confusing interface is exactly that - confusing. What am I doing? How do I do it? What's going on?

Possibly because my graphics card is old, possibly because the resolution is so low, everything looks a bit fuzzy, and some of the text is hard to read. There are tons of '?' hints, but not an easy or unobtrusive way to go through them all looking for information. They seemed to be almost endless for a while - there'd be three showing down there, and I'd click on one and there would STILL be three showing...

I felt a bit confused about what I was supposed to do and why.

I stumbled around, found a lantern that said left click to use, but clicking on it didn't seem to do anything.

There are lots of NPCs around but none of them seem compellingly interesting in any way, and talking seems to produce lines at random.

I did feel a lot like I'd fallen into an MMORPG newbie zone without any other players around. Unfortunately I'm not a big fan of MMORPGs, which tend to feel bland and unrewarding to me.

So my initial impression - Work on the first five minutes! Give me a hook, make me excited about playing! Get me DOING something and present the critical information about the game in an interesting way while I'm doing it.

[DrWilloughby]

Tried this out and I thought it was really engaging through the tutorial, but once it dumps me off on my own I felt completely lost regarding the greater strategy of what I should be doing. Really nice RPG basics with a really confusing meta-strategy. (it would be nice it I got a lot more strategy hints and tutorial after the first few basic missions, basically help me through my entire first game). The player should really never start out losing on the very first level.

[speeler]

And edit Contact page little bit more. It's too... difficult to understand, to send my question to where.

The contact page should be much better now.

Possibly because my graphics card is old, possibly because the resolution is so low, everything looks a bit fuzzy, and some of the text is hard to read.

I'll see what I can do on my end, but if you can bump the resolution to 1024x768 it will look much better.

[LilMain]

Very beautiful! May I ask what languages you had used?

[speeler]

Very beautiful! May I ask what languages you had used?

Assuming you mean programming language, the code is all C++.

[Matt2East]

Looks great! Congratulations!

[speeler]

For those that aren't sure what to do after the tutorial, the manual that ships with the full game is actually online at http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/30/69/ if that would help.

[Leon]

I've been playing your demo off and on for a few days, so I figured I'd give you some feedback and actually(hopefully?;)) be useful. :)

1: Graphics are okay, but get a step up for having a definite style to them which is nice. I like the use of bright colors and lighting. Some of the monsters are very cool looking, such as the Saurian, Kodiac and Sand Amorph. The components system is always a welcome to any game.

2: Randomized areas and dungeons are fun, and seeing different groups of monsters not getting along was unexpected and kinda neat.

3: The concept of each clan fighting for control of the village is pretty neat, but seems slightly shallow in actual play. I wish there was more interaction with the town. I like the idea that certain things can happen to the town such as the poison in the water supply, thieves stealing from the vendor but beyond those quests I don't feel there's enough.

I realize the main part of the game is going out and adventuring, but it would be neat if the town had more interactions with it, maybe something useful for the four extra companions I had just standing in the guild house to be doing. Working on/building town improvements?

4: I never got a handle on when exactly I got crystals and how many I got for what(My influence rating?). It would be nice to get a counter in the corner somewhere that gives a sound effect off when you get crystals.

5: I was surprised when I finished the demo and was told that by purchasing the full game I'd get to move past lvl7, visit more areas and get different items. The demo has every feature of the game so I kinda feel I already have the game and I'm not left feeling, or thinking, after beating the demo that I gotta get it to play X feature.

I think you need to limit your demo a little more so there's more reason to buy the full game.

Hope some of this was helpful to you. I enjoyed your demo very much.

[AlexN]

We finally released Depths of Peril this week.

There are a few more screenshots and much more information on our website (http://www.soldak.com/)

Feedback is always welcome.


The game looks nice, but the website needs more work. Congrats to the game and good luck! :)

[Nexic]

* Website needs to be better. How about integrating some of your in game artwork into the design? Some renders of characters, scenery etc.

* Host the download on your site, it's a pain in the ass going to others that bombard you with ads, make you wait in queues, make you sign up etc. These services are nice to have as a back up in case you have a surge of traffic but don't use them by default.

* Would be nice if you could choose male and female versions of each class. Seemed like if I wanted a rogue or priest I had to play a woman and vice-versa with warrior and mage.

* Game crashed and kicked me back to windows, without an error message, during the character selection process. Windows XP.

[mrkwang]

It's on the mainpage of Fileplanet at now.

Grab your screen capture, and let others know about that. :)

[speeler]

Yes, we are on the front page of FilePlanet right now which is nice. :) The demo on FilePlanet is actually an updated demo with all of the new changes since the first demo (a few suggested in this thread).

We also have updated our website some. What do you guys think of the new changes?