As promised, I have uploaded a pre-release build of Alpha25. There are still various issues to be fixed and this version contains some placeholder artwork, but I believe that it's quite playable. I invite all seasoned players to take a look and post their feedback in this thread or in the comments below.

The new version allows submitting bug reports from within the game, optionally attaching a save file or screenshot. Please use this feature to submit as many reports as you like, including suggestions, minor issues or typos.

Please don't opt in if you are new to the game, as it's very unstable, and the tutorial doesn't work at the moment.

To opt-in into the build, please go into the game's properties, BETA tab, and choose the "dev" branch.

I haven't posted updates for a while, but KeeperRL's development has been quite steady. Among other things, I've done a lot of work in the UI department, of which you'll find a short rundown below.

Overhauled villains UI
I've received a lot of reports of players being confused and angry about being attacked by stronger enemies. While they always have a good reason for attacking, the game didn't do a good job at communicating this. With this update, you'll receive notifications about triggered villains along with the specific reason. The game will also tell you when you can pillage a defeated enemy or trade with an ally. In general, this piece of UI replaces the villains tab, providing the information in a much more player-friendly way.




Creature inventory and lying items
You can now inspect any creature's inventory or what items are lying on the ground both in the real-time and in control mode. Very useful when looking for items in your storage room or on the battle ground.



Bug reporting tool
I've made it possible to report bugs without leaving the game. You can optionally attach a screenshot or a save file, which is a big improvement over players having to find the file on their disk and email it to me. :P



Imp hauling AI improvement
Imps will now be able to pick up items from many locations before heading back to storage, instead of bringing items one by one.

In terms of features, Alpha25 is almost ready, and I'll be uploading a testing build to Steam very soon. The update will be released officially once Artur finishes some necessary artwork, and I iron out all remaining (known) bugs and missing features.

I've been working on the next KeeperRL update at full steam for the past few weeks. The changes have all been oriented around gameplay and not very hard in terms of programming, so they were great fun to work on. I'm happy to say that the development of the game has recently transitioned more into adding smaller features, polish and content, as opposed to revolutionary changes.

Let's take a glimpse at the new goodies. :)

Moat building
Constructing arbitrary water or lava channels is an important tool in the hands of a Keeper, so it had to find its way into the game sooner or later. An important issue to solve was how enemy AI should deal with players who completely surround themselves with a moat. As you may recall, I faced a similar problem when allowing to freely fill up tunnels, and the solution was teaching AI to dig into sealed-off dungeons. A similar strategy will be used to breach moats: enemies will simply build bridges over them. Everyone knows that dwarves carry spare wood planks on their backs in case they encounter unexpected bodies of water in their way.



Portals overhaul
Portals are great dungeon feature that allows instant travel between distant locations. Up until now they could only be used when manually controlling a creature, because KeeperRL's finely optimized path-finding algorithms didn't play nicely with such abuses of the laws of physics. However, I was able to find a reasonable compromise between speed and the use of portals, so now all your minions (and enemies!) will include them when calculating their shortest paths around the dungeon. Even complicated arrangements will work! Also as you can see, connected portal pairs will be color-coded.

Ego items
At the urge of the most dedicated KeeperRL fan, SoftMonster, I added the ability to craft so called "ego items", which are items with special effects, like a flaming sword or a helm of telepathy. To craft them you'll need a minion with crafting skills above 90% and with high morale, which will drop after the act of creation. With these changes I also modified the underlying architecture to make it much easier to add new item and effect combinations, so your minions will get a lot of new shiny toys!



Special minion traits
Having new special items, I decided to make minions a bit more special, too. Every new immigrant will have a small chance to possess one or more special traits, not necessarily positive. So now and then you'll attract a goblin with an unusually high crafting skill (necessary for ego items, btw), an orc with night vision or a harpy that's straight insane (watch out for her). A lot of interesting traits are in development, and I hope they'll add a nice twist to the immigration system. It's possible that special traits will come with special requirements, too.

"Stand ground" and "ignore enemies" team orders
This is a nice quality-of-life improvement when controlling teams. Outside of full-control mode, team members have always had a mind of their own, chasing unimportant enemies or blindly charging at a dragon while you are trying to get your whole team to retreat. Switching to full-control to get them to do what you needed was a very tedious option. The "stand ground" order forces the whole team to stay in place even if the leader moves away, and "ignore enemies" stops them from chasing anyone (they will still attack adjacent creatures). The first one is great when you create a formation that you don't want your minions to break, and the second one is best used when retreating or when you don't want your minions to get distracted while traveling.

This patch should hopefully wrap up bug fixing for Alpha24. I've also started working on Alpha25 already, and will give you an update on that in the next few days.

• Fixed graphical glitch/screen corruption occurring on some computers.
  
• Fixed crash caused by an AI controlled summoned minion (like fly) becoming team leader in full-control mode.
  
• Fixed crash involving a creature being killed instantly when arriving to a new site.
  
• Fixed movement glitch in ASCII mode. (ASCII mode features full movement animations from now on).
  
• Made the fire scroll catch fire immediately when read.

• Fixed a crash involving the "move now" command when minion is on an enemy site.
  
• Added more diagnostic checks for a crash involving controlled minion being killed.
  
• Added diagnostic check for a crash related to boulder swapping position with a spirit creature
  
• Added diagnostic check to task updating crash.

• Fixed a crash involving the "move now" command when minion is on an enemy site.
  
• Added more diagnostic checks for a crash involving controlled minion being killed.
  
• Added diagnostic check for a crash related to boulder swapping position with a spirit creature
  
• Added diagnostic check to task updating crash.

• Fixed a crash involving pushing a creature into fire
  
• Fixed a crash when player is killed by a scroll of fire
  
• Added diagnostics to solve a crash involving a team member getting killed

• Fixed a crash involving pushing a creature into fire
  
• Fixed a crash when player is killed by a scroll of fire
  
• Added diagnostics to solve a crash involving a team member getting killed

It's my pleasure to announce that KeeperRL Alpha24 is out! It's another big gameplay patch, bringing in many new features:

• Overhauled prisoner system. Enemies are explicitly tagged to be captured, and they retain their identity after becoming prisoners. Read more about the system here.
• Improved full control mode handling. Battles can be played in a proper turn-based manner. Read more here.
• Changes in mining: new challenges, and better progression. Read more here.

If you would like to continue your saved game from Alpha23, you can opt-in into the "Alpha23 save compatibility" BETA branch under the game's properties in Library. Make sure to opt-out of the branch to go back to Alpha24 when you're done!

The full change log:
Gameplay

• Prisoners retain their identity and can join your side if tortured.
• Prisoners can be captured outside of player's dungeon.
• Player must tag specific enemies that are to be captured.
• Prisoners can perform work like crafting, if they have appropriate skills.
• Prisoners can escape if there are too many compared to fighter units.
• Most mineral veins are guarded by enemies like ants, dwarves and golems, who will attack when the player tries to mine the vein.
• As most minerals are guarded, geology tech is removed.
• Changed steel to adamantium, which is mined and not smelted from iron.
• Added 'quarters', which can be used to create mini-dungeons for selected minions.
• Added 'hard rock' tiles, which take longer to dig out, deeper in the mountain.
• Added iron and adamantine doors.
• Creatures have explicit intrinsic attacks, like fangs or fists that can be chosen via UI when attacking.
• Time system is changed to explicit turns and 'half-turns' for easier control during battle.
• Creatures only have 3 speed options: half-speed, normal, and double-speed. (speed attribute is removed)
• Creatures with double-speed perform their second move immediately after the first.
• Boulders don't wound huge creatures like dragons.
• Some villages have a chance to be generated on the 'bones' of others.
• Healer AI prioritizes healing creatures that stand directly next to an enemy.
• Increased spell damage of legendary minions.
• Added maximum range for bows.
• Decreased mana regeneration rate in free mode when mana regeneration option is turned on.
• Kobolds are stronger and have spears.
• Improved eating AI, minions will try to leave the pigsty after having eaten.
• Changed AI code involving swapping positions, creature's won't get in each other's way so much anymore.
• Made cooperative AI assign better positions when mining close to each other.
• Removed tech number limit based on library size.
• Minions respond immediately to the player manually changing their activity (including waking up).
• Minion wakes up when it is assigned new equipment.
• Added hand torches.
• Burning objects emit light!
• Improved logic of injuring non-living creatures, which fixes the problem of killing them taking too long.
• Added caps to how much of the basic stats dopplegangers can inherit.
• Added minimum turn requirement to some higher level immigrants, which causes more low level immigrants to be presented early in the game.
• 'Prioritize task' order makes an imp drop their current task immediately.
• Decreased the 'unavailable zone' width on the map border to reduce memory usage.
• Reduced amount of stone dropped by boulder to avoid generating free stone.
• Reduced amount of gold dropped by demon dwellers.
• Made minions do other tasks when there is nothing to craft.
• Statues cost gold instead of mana.
• Creatures and items are teleported out of inaccessible tiles.
• Added the ability to push away smaller creatures.
• Removed the 'stun ray' spell.
• Added 'demonology' tech that unlocks demon shrines.
• Hallucination effect also grants telepathy.
• Added baby spiders and blind children to giant spider's den.
• Vampire lord drops a scroll of darkness, which causes a creature to become permanently immune to sunlight.
• Ghost gets a 'touch of insanity' attack, which causes creatures to be hostile to everyone.
  
• Succubus gets a 'touch of love' attack, which causes creatures to become peaceful.
• Robe gives spell resistance.
• Added invisible alarm trap to castle.
• Added priest to castle.
• Pig corpses don't emit gas.
• All enemy creatures heal slowly over time.

Interface

• New UI for managing team members: adding and removing from team, changing move order.
• New UI for interacting with other creatures, like attacking, chatting, etc.
• Added creature status (leader/fighter/civilian) highlights and descriptions.
• Added tabs to view team members.
• Added new buttons for toggling and exiting control mode.
• Attribute bonuses from equipment and buffs are visible in the UI.
• Added a simple animation for when creatures are wounded or tortured.
• Limb losses are represented on HP bar for non-living creatures, which don't have health and have to be chopped into pieces.
• New sprites for the demon tribe.
• New buttons under the minimap to open world map or scroll to keeper's location.
• Boulders can be pushed using the mouse.
• Summoned creatures remaining 'time to live' is explicitly shown in the UI.
• Total inventory weight and maximum capacity is displayed in control mode.

Fixes

• Endless mode highscore takes into account only time spent defending the base, and not wandering around.
• Optimized and fixed various issues with creature pathfinding.
• Optimized field-of-view calculations, which speeds up the game considerably.
• Optimized world generation.
• Stopped doppleganger from being able to consume itself.
• Doppleganger doesn't inherit effects granted by rings and other equipment.
• Fixed ancient spirit's spell attack.
• Minions pick up potions of melee, spell and ranged resistance.
• Chests and coffins spawn creatures further away if adjacent tiles are blocked.
• Reinforce wall order is removed when wall is marked to be dug out.
• Disallowed destroying bridges.
• Fixed digging orders persisting when tile was destroyed by someone else.
• Fixed trap removal and building floors under traps.
• Fixed 'sleep on torch' UI bug.
• Fixed level generation crashed caused by trying to place a blind creature.
• Fixed marking campaign base map as conquered when village is destroyed.
• Fixed drawing question marks on the main map.
• Fixed red dragon appearing on green dragon's place in the campaign.
• Increased female keeper spell damage to match the male version.
• Fixed issue with calculating influence area in campaign map.

It's my pleasure to announce that KeeperRL Alpha24 is out! It's another big gameplay patch, bringing in many new features:

• Overhauled prisoner system. Enemies are explicitly tagged to be captured, and they retain their identity after becoming prisoners. Read more about the system here.
• Improved full control mode handling. Battles can be played in a proper turn-based manner. Read more here.
• Changes in mining: new challenges, and better progression. Read more here.

If you would like to continue your saved game from Alpha23, you can opt-in into the "Alpha23 save compatibility" BETA branch under the game's properties in Library. Make sure to opt-out of the branch to go back to Alpha24 when you're done!

The full change log:
Gameplay

• Prisoners retain their identity and can join your side if tortured.
• Prisoners can be captured outside of player's dungeon.
• Player must tag specific enemies that are to be captured.
• Prisoners can perform work like crafting, if they have appropriate skills.
• Prisoners can escape if there are too many compared to fighter units.
• Most mineral veins are guarded by enemies like ants, dwarves and golems, who will attack when the player tries to mine the vein.
• As most minerals are guarded, geology tech is removed.
• Changed steel to adamantium, which is mined and not smelted from iron.
• Added 'quarters', which can be used to create mini-dungeons for selected minions.
• Added 'hard rock' tiles, which take longer to dig out, deeper in the mountain.
• Added iron and adamantine doors.
• Creatures have explicit intrinsic attacks, like fangs or fists that can be chosen via UI when attacking.
• Time system is changed to explicit turns and 'half-turns' for easier control during battle.
• Creatures only have 3 speed options: half-speed, normal, and double-speed. (speed attribute is removed)
• Creatures with double-speed perform their second move immediately after the first.
• Boulders don't wound huge creatures like dragons.
• Some villages have a chance to be generated on the 'bones' of others.
• Healer AI prioritizes healing creatures that stand directly next to an enemy.
• Increased spell damage of legendary minions.
• Added maximum range for bows.
• Decreased mana regeneration rate in free mode when mana regeneration option is turned on.
• Kobolds are stronger and have spears.
• Improved eating AI, minions will try to leave the pigsty after having eaten.
• Changed AI code involving swapping positions, creature's won't get in each other's way so much anymore.
• Made cooperative AI assign better positions when mining close to each other.
• Removed tech number limit based on library size.
• Minions respond immediately to the player manually changing their activity (including waking up).
• Minion wakes up when it is assigned new equipment.
• Added hand torches.
• Burning objects emit light!
• Improved logic of injuring non-living creatures, which fixes the problem of killing them taking too long.
• Added caps to how much of the basic stats dopplegangers can inherit.
• Added minimum turn requirement to some higher level immigrants, which causes more low level immigrants to be presented early in the game.
• 'Prioritize task' order makes an imp drop their current task immediately.
• Decreased the 'unavailable zone' width on the map border to reduce memory usage.
• Reduced amount of stone dropped by boulder to avoid generating free stone.
• Reduced amount of gold dropped by demon dwellers.
• Made minions do other tasks when there is nothing to craft.
• Statues cost gold instead of mana.
• Creatures and items are teleported out of inaccessible tiles.
• Added the ability to push away smaller creatures.
• Removed the 'stun ray' spell.
• Added 'demonology' tech that unlocks demon shrines.
• Hallucination effect also grants telepathy.
• Added baby spiders and blind children to giant spider's den.
• Vampire lord drops a scroll of darkness, which causes a creature to become permanently immune to sunlight.
• Ghost gets a 'touch of insanity' attack, which causes creatures to be hostile to everyone.
  
• Succubus gets a 'touch of love' attack, which causes creatures to become peaceful.
• Robe gives spell resistance.
• Added invisible alarm trap to castle.
• Added priest to castle.
• Pig corpses don't emit gas.
• All enemy creatures heal slowly over time.

Interface

• New UI for managing team members: adding and removing from team, changing move order.
• New UI for interacting with other creatures, like attacking, chatting, etc.
• Added creature status (leader/fighter/civilian) highlights and descriptions.
• Added tabs to view team members.
• Added new buttons for toggling and exiting control mode.
• Attribute bonuses from equipment and buffs are visible in the UI.
• Added a simple animation for when creatures are wounded or tortured.
• Limb losses are represented on HP bar for non-living creatures, which don't have health and have to be chopped into pieces.
• New sprites for the demon tribe.
• New buttons under the minimap to open world map or scroll to keeper's location.
• Boulders can be pushed using the mouse.
• Summoned creatures remaining 'time to live' is explicitly shown in the UI.
• Total inventory weight and maximum capacity is displayed in control mode.

Fixes

• Endless mode highscore takes into account only time spent defending the base, and not wandering around.
• Optimized and fixed various issues with creature pathfinding.
• Optimized field-of-view calculations, which speeds up the game considerably.
• Optimized world generation.
• Stopped doppleganger from being able to consume itself.
• Doppleganger doesn't inherit effects granted by rings and other equipment.
• Fixed ancient spirit's spell attack.
• Minions pick up potions of melee, spell and ranged resistance.
• Chests and coffins spawn creatures further away if adjacent tiles are blocked.
• Reinforce wall order is removed when wall is marked to be dug out.
• Disallowed destroying bridges.
• Fixed digging orders persisting when tile was destroyed by someone else.
• Fixed trap removal and building floors under traps.
• Fixed 'sleep on torch' UI bug.
• Fixed level generation crashed caused by trying to place a blind creature.
• Fixed marking campaign base map as conquered when village is destroyed.
• Fixed drawing question marks on the main map.
• Fixed red dragon appearing on green dragon's place in the campaign.
• Increased female keeper spell damage to match the male version.
• Fixed issue with calculating influence area in campaign map.