Alpha22 is ready for you to test on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Besides adding support for all platforms, I've fixed a lot of bugs and issues that were reported by testers. Thank you all for helping out!

Alpha22 will be officially released soon, so this is the last chance to help with bug hunting. :)

You can opt into the testing branch by going into the game's properties in the Steam client, switching to the BETA tab, and choosing the branch 'dev'.

Please post any feedback in the comments below or on the community forums.

Alpha22 is ready for you to test on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Besides adding support for all platforms, I've fixed a lot of bugs and issues that were reported by testers. Thank you all for helping out!

Alpha22 will be officially released soon, so this is the last chance to help with bug hunting. :)

You can opt into the testing branch by going into the game's properties in the Steam client, switching to the BETA tab, and choosing the branch 'dev'.

Please post any feedback in the comments below or on the community forums.

It's slowly the time to wrap up the release of the twenty-second Alpha. The plans for this version were ambitious, but I had to postpone many of them, otherwise the update would have taken way too long. Nothing is lost though, as the remaining features will make it into Alpha23, and whatever is already done, will be out earlier.

So, what's coming in Alpha22? The main feature is the dedicated tutorial mode. I've already written a little bit on what it will look like here and here. The tutorial is almost finished, and I'm taking feedback from testers right now to make sure that it covers as many basics of the game as possible. As you can imagine, having worked on the game for 4 years, I can be prone to overlooking many things. :P

There are some other nice features coming along, like the 2-3 times faster saving and loading, smaller save files, portals reworked as dungeon furniture, and fixes in equipment management. These are not huge changes, but as I've written in previous posts, they involved a lot of work under the hood, and have easily taken at least half of development time of this release.

The other big features that I promised before, like the endless mode, content additions from the wiki, and key mapping configuration, are going to come in Alpha23, as I've mentioned in the beginning.

My plan right now is to finish up the tutorial. In the meantime, many Steam users are already testing the new build, and I've received quite a few bug reports, for which I'm very thankful. Once all the known bugs are fixed, and the tutorial is finished, Alpha22 will be ready. Sounds easy! I'm hopeful that it will happen in early June.

It's slowly the time to wrap up the release of the twenty-second Alpha. The plans for this version were ambitious, but I had to postpone many of them, otherwise the update would have taken way too long. Nothing is lost though, as the remaining features will make it into Alpha23, and whatever is already done, will be out earlier.

So, what's coming in Alpha22? The main feature is the dedicated tutorial mode. I've already written a little bit on what it will look like here and here. The tutorial is almost finished, and I'm taking feedback from testers right now to make sure that it covers as many basics of the game as possible. As you can imagine, having worked on the game for 4 years, I can be prone to overlooking many things. :P

There are some other nice features coming along, like the 2-3 times faster saving and loading, smaller save files, portals reworked as dungeon furniture, and fixes in equipment management. These are not huge changes, but as I've written in previous posts, they involved a lot of work under the hood, and have easily taken at least half of development time of this release.

The other big features that I promised before, like the endless mode, content additions from the wiki, and key mapping configuration, are going to come in Alpha23, as I've mentioned in the beginning.

My plan right now is to finish up the tutorial. In the meantime, many Steam users are already testing the new build, and I've received quite a few bug reports, for which I'm very thankful. Once all the known bugs are fixed, and the tutorial is finished, Alpha22 will be ready. Sounds easy! I'm hopeful that it will happen in early June.

You can now purchase the soundtrack of KeeperRL to listen to through the Steam music player. It includes the classic piano pieces from adventure mode produced by Marcin Brzozowski, as well as the fantasy tracks by Krzysztof Łoza. There are also bonus tracks that are not present in the game.

In total over a 100 minutes of music!

All proceeds from the DLC will support the two independent artists.

Follow this link to buy the soundtrack.

You can now purchase the soundtrack of KeeperRL to listen to through the Steam music player. It includes the classic piano pieces from adventure mode produced by Marcin Brzozowski, as well as the fantasy tracks by Krzysztof Łoza. There are also bonus tracks that are not present in the game.

In total over a 100 minutes of music!

All proceeds from the DLC will support the two independent artists.

Follow this link to buy the soundtrack.

I uploaded a testing build of KeeperRL Alpha22 to Steam. You can opt into the testing branch by going into the game's properties in the Steam client, switching to the BETA tab, and choosing the branch 'dev'.

For now the testing is limited to the Windows platform.

Please post any feedback on the community forums.

Below is a rundown of changes to this day. In another post I'll talk about the plans for when Alpha22 is going to be released, and how the new features that I've promised recently will be divided between future updates.

• Dedicated tutorial mode.
• Portals can be built in real-time mode, don't time out.
• Portals only work within a single map.
• Items equipped while controlling a minion are auto-owned by the creature.
• All resource numbers except mana deflated by a factor of 5.
• Added setting to disable Vertical Sync.
• Saving and loading 2-3 times faster.
• Smaller save files.
• Changed the UI highlight.
• Added to hints to role choice menu.
• Removed useless execution task.
• Fixed game speed dialog glitch.
• Improved research UI.
• Fixed scrolling in control mode.
• Prevented drowning of flying creatures that enter deep water that is in forbidden zone.
• Fixed tooltips in workshop overlay.
• Swapped storage colors.
• Changed tree and bush highlight sprite.

I uploaded a testing build of KeeperRL Alpha22 to Steam. You can opt into the testing branch by going into the game's properties in the Steam client, switching to the BETA tab, and choosing the branch 'dev'.

For now the testing is limited to the Windows platform.

Please post any feedback on the community forums.

Below is a rundown of changes to this day. In another post I'll talk about the plans for when Alpha22 is going to be released, and how the new features that I've promised recently will be divided between future updates.

• Dedicated tutorial mode.
• Portals can be built in real-time mode, don't time out.
• Portals only work within a single map.
• Items equipped while controlling a minion are auto-owned by the creature.
• All resource numbers except mana deflated by a factor of 5.
• Added setting to disable Vertical Sync.
• Saving and loading 2-3 times faster.
• Smaller save files.
• Changed the UI highlight.
• Added to hints to role choice menu.
• Removed useless execution task.
• Fixed game speed dialog glitch.
• Improved research UI.
• Fixed scrolling in control mode.
• Prevented drowning of flying creatures that enter deep water that is in forbidden zone.
• Fixed tooltips in workshop overlay.
• Swapped storage colors.
• Changed tree and bush highlight sprite.

Many changes have happened in KeeperRL land in the last few weeks. Most of them were in the game's internals, so they may not be very interesting to you, but they are important for development. I treat KeeperRL as a very long term project, so I spend a lot of time trying to improve its internal architecture. Badly written code, much like a messy bedroom, decreases your morale, and causes you to trip over things as you're trying to reach your goal. Not to mention bugs!

In this spirit I spent a whole week switching to a new serialization library, which is the backbone of the saving and loading system. The new one, Cereal is more modern than Boost serialization, and easier to use on multiple platforms. As it turned out, it also decreased saving and loading times about two to three times, and reduced save file size almost twice!

This encouraged me to do some cleaning and remove a few obsolete classes from the code. Traps, torches, and portals are now regular Furniture, much like all other static things on the map. This was an opportunity to rework portals a little bit, to make them more useful. From now on they will be constructed by imps, and will not time out. You will use them actively, just like stairs. I think that in such form they will be a great addition to the dungeon. Unfortunately, teaching the AI to use them for pathfinfing is a much bigger deal, so for now they are there only to the advantage of players. But I will revisit this problem later, because having the AI use portals, and be smart about it, would be really, really fun.



As another gameplay change, I deflated the quantities of all resources in the game, except mana. Everything now costs five times less wood, gold, iron, and so on, and you also receive less of everything. The only real effect is on the size of stockpiles that are generated, because every unit of resource in KeeperRL, except mana, exists in the game as an individual item. This used to inflate save file size quite a bit.

Going back to technical stuff, I noticed that switching off Vertical Sync in the window configuration, which ties the game's framerate to the refresh rate the monitor, fixes some severe frame dropping that I experience on the development build of the game. I'm not sure if this has much effect in the real world, but I added the option to switch off V-Sync in the game's settings. I'm also contemplating just switching it off by default. I need to research how other games approach this issue.

Last, but not least, I had some time to work on the tutorial. It's going to take the form of very small, detailed tasks for the player to perform as they build their dungeon. As KeeperRL is fairly complex, there will be a large number of these steps, so it's going to take longer to finish than I expected initially. This is what the tutorial will look like. In addition to giving you instructions, the game also highlights the relevant UI elements for the current task.

Many changes have happened in KeeperRL land in the last few weeks. Most of them were in the game's internals, so they may not be very interesting to you, but they are important for development. I treat KeeperRL as a very long term project, so I spend a lot of time trying to improve its internal architecture. Badly written code, much like a messy bedroom, decreases your morale, and causes you to trip over things as you're trying to reach your goal. Not to mention bugs!

In this spirit I spent a whole week switching to a new serialization library, which is the backbone of the saving and loading system. The new one, Cereal is more modern than Boost serialization, and easier to use on multiple platforms. As it turned out, it also decreased saving and loading times about two to three times, and reduced save file size almost twice!

This encouraged me to do some cleaning and remove a few obsolete classes from the code. Traps, torches, and portals are now regular Furniture, much like all other static things on the map. This was an opportunity to rework portals a little bit, to make them more useful. From now on they will be constructed by imps, and will not time out. You will use them actively, just like stairs. I think that in such form they will be a great addition to the dungeon. Unfortunately, teaching the AI to use them for pathfinfing is a much bigger deal, so for now they are there only to the advantage of players. But I will revisit this problem later, because having the AI use portals, and be smart about it, would be really, really fun.



As another gameplay change, I deflated the quantities of all resources in the game, except mana. Everything now costs five times less wood, gold, iron, and so on, and you also receive less of everything. The only real effect is on the size of stockpiles that are generated, because every unit of resource in KeeperRL, except mana, exists in the game as an individual item. This used to inflate save file size quite a bit.

Going back to technical stuff, I noticed that switching off Vertical Sync in the window configuration, which ties the game's framerate to the refresh rate the monitor, fixes some severe frame dropping that I experience on the development build of the game. I'm not sure if this has much effect in the real world, but I added the option to switch off V-Sync in the game's settings. I'm also contemplating just switching it off by default. I need to research how other games approach this issue.

Last, but not least, I had some time to work on the tutorial. It's going to take the form of very small, detailed tasks for the player to perform as they build their dungeon. As KeeperRL is fairly complex, there will be a large number of these steps, so it's going to take longer to finish than I expected initially. This is what the tutorial will look like. In addition to giving you instructions, the game also highlights the relevant UI elements for the current task.