Towns Catch-all

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I just came across another Dwarf-fortress inspired game in early development: Towns. The game is described as a city-builder/manager and a bit of a rogue-like with some exploration thrown in for good measure.

It's in alpha and is built in Java. The newest version is set to come out in a few days. Here's a Spanish gameplay video.

Hard to believe there was a time when we didn't think of Dwarf Fortress as a genre.

Neat.

I like how he's even got Dwarf Fortress' guitar soundtrack going on.

Towns 0.30 released. Here's a two-part gameplay walkthroughs from the dev with English subtitles (turn on closed captioning):

0.37 is out with a new UI, monsters, and building enhancements. There's a 20 in-game day demo available. The full version is 7.50 Euros (~$10). Here's a video of some of the new features.

From what they're planning, it sounds like the game is going to become a nice mix of Dwarf Fortress and Majesty.

I think I downloaded the demo for this after RPS wrote an article about it. Thanks for the reminder, since this looks like it'd be something I'd like.

Can I craft the puppy into puppy armor?

They're up to 0.42. Here's the change log for the newest version and a video showing off the new features:

Add: Priorities panel (F3)
Add: Roads (living entities walk faster here)
Add: Animations for living entities
Add: TTF Font
Add: Heightmap a-la Transport Tycoon
Add: Food values on food items tooltip
Add: Save options
Add: Use of user folder for savegames and options
Add: New special values for map generation (_WATER_1_, _WATER_INF_, LAVA_1_, LAVA_INF_)
Remove: Barracks (now everybody can be a soldier!)
Remove: Transition tiles
Change: Speed of living entities reduced
Change: Stockpile points are removed if you place a zone over it
Change: Turns to build thing on benches changed to 70% if a roof is present
Change: Turns to build thing on benches changed to 85% if the builder is underground
Change: Warning "Sure to exit without save?" panel
Change: Water system uses slopes now
Change: Faster seeds at map generation (so the game starts early)
Fix: Enemies won't try to break opened doors
Fix: Crash when build a building only with doors
Fix: Prefix/suffix percentages are set to 5% again
Fix: Little improvement in the minimap render routine
Fix: Improved a little the save/load game performance
Fix: Item issues when delete the zone under it
Fix: Lag if no mats when build a building
Fix: Draw the roofs/big items (ie. trees) when his base is outside the screen
Fix: Citizens recalculate their path if while they are following it other citizens blocks the path with walls
Fix: Minor graphic glitches

Neat! It has the terrain mechanics of DF but with a more streamlined and graphical interface. Reminds me a lot of Settlers. It certainly isn't either game, but it does fill a niche right in the middle. Looking forward to this one.

I bought this through Gamers Gate but don't think I got a password to get updates. Anyone else do something like that and have some advice on what to do? I actually wanted to play with the latest updated this past weekend.

tboon wrote:

I bought this through Gamers Gate but don't think I got a password to get updates. Anyone else do something like that and have some advice on what to do? I actually wanted to play with the latest updated this past weekend.

I think you have to redownload from GG.

Edit: I should add that I think GG can be a day or two behind when it comes to uploading the newest versions of the game.

ebarstad wrote:
tboon wrote:

I bought this through Gamers Gate but don't think I got a password to get updates. Anyone else do something like that and have some advice on what to do? I actually wanted to play with the latest updated this past weekend.

I think you have to redownload from GG.

Edit: I should add that I think GG can be a day or two behind when it comes to uploading the newest versions of the game.

Thanks! I will look at the version GG has this weekend if I get the chance. Last weekend, Towns was at 0.41 and GG was still at .40. I don't follow the game enough to be aware when they release new versions unless someone posts here, so GG may have been slow to update.

Yay, it looks like they fixed the weird text spacing! I had a hard time getting into previous versions because the text made my eyes bleed. Definitely looking forward to trying this new version!

0.45 has been released with some major additions. Full patch notes.

The biggest addition is the new heroes who will come to your town if you meet the requirements, adding a bit of a Majesty feel to the game.

I downloaded the demo of this some time ago, but never got around to playing it. Today, I happened to see it mentioned in a comment over on RPS and downloaded the latest demo (0.45b). For such a simple game, it hooked me solidly for several hours, sufficiently so that I dropped the $13 on the full version just to support the development. In all, I basically lost an entire day of productivity to this strange little gem. It really is a touch of DF mixed with Majesty, with some DK humour for spice. I've already had my money's worth just today in terms of entertainment. I'm looking forward to seeing how this continues to progress.

Played a couple rounds of the v7 demo this weekend while I waited for A Game of Dwarves to be released. I might come back to it once I get bored with AGoD.

Honestly I couldn't get into it really. Just tried the demo and got to the point where I was thinking about finding iron and such. Perhaps it just pales too much to dwarf fortress for me. I kept thinking, I've done everything I'm doing in the game before except more. Perhaps I'll wait and see on a few more patches but the demo only made me want to play dwarf fortress really. Oh and violent trees are so cheap...

Permabetas have taken much out of me.

It just came out on Steam today. Looks interesting so far.

hannibals wrote:

It just came out on Steam today. Looks interesting so far.

Oooh, it's done? I have a pre-order somewhere.

So do I, need to dig that up.

It's still in beta as far as I know. Steam keys will be sent out in the coming week, according to their forum.

garion333 wrote:

So do I, need to dig that up.

Badump.... Wait for it....

Tish

So, I got this. The tutorials are not in order, so you'll need to read the descriptions after starting one, and back out if you don't know how to make the pre-requisites, like buildings or zones. The tutorial directions are somewhat vague - you're told to build walls out of wood, but do they mean wooden walls, or log walls? It's the latter.

There are pull-out menus on three sides, each with a variety of things to make and build and zone. Actions are ordered not by telling someone to do something, but by clicking on an object and choosing the action (for things like digging or harvesting or chopping wood), or by choosing something to be made in a pull-out menu.

So it's a bit, um, old school. Frustrating for ten minutes or so until you get the hang of it. And then, somehow, it becomes intriguing. It looks to me like there's an awful lot of methodical systems building here, to allow you to make things that bootstrap you into more complicated things. After you lay out a woodworking shop - excuse me, "carpentry" - you start to wonder what you can make with it, and you realize a lot of stuff uses wood AND stone, but you haven't gathered any stone yet, and what's with the other 30 or so items you can build to make things, and where should the next building go, and what should it do...? I think this really *is* DF-like in possible complexity.

More to come another time. Just got my feet wet so far.

Old school? More like DF-inspired.

The combat looks rather... lame I guess. Entities just run into the same tile and hug each other to death. Combat in DF one way or another is devastating with limbs and blood coating the walls. I once hit a wolf in the jaw with a hammer in adventure mode and knocked out all of its teeth for instance.

I'll wait for a sale I guess.

Tamren wrote:

The combat looks rather... lame I guess. Entities just run into the same tile and hug each other to death. Combat in DF one way or another is devastating with limbs and blood coating the walls. I once hit a wolf in the jaw with a hammer in adventure mode and knocked out all of its teeth for instance.

I'll wait for a sale I guess.

That sounds more like Gnomoria, which has similar looking combat but it's accompanied by text descriptions similar to DF.

Tamren wrote:

The combat looks rather... lame I guess. Entities just run into the same tile and hug each other to death. Combat in DF one way or another is devastating with limbs and blood coating the walls. I once hit a wolf in the jaw with a hammer in adventure mode and knocked out all of its teeth for instance.

Don't you mean an ASCII character was placed next to a lower-cased "w" and a line of text told you that's what happened?

What I miss are things that menace with spikes.

LobsterMobster wrote:

What I miss are things that menace with spikes.

DLC?

Old school? More like DF-inspired.

How is DF not old school? It looks like Rogue or some other late-70's game where the text map is vomited up on a printer every turn.

It also apparently manages to be a text-based resource hog.

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