I don’t have a launcher/auto-updater written yet. So GoG users would have to constantly check the site for updates. 
[quote=“Rayvolution,post:501,topic:48685”]
Postpone it for as long as possible. We talked out it before, but let me reiterate:
- DNS is unreliable
- TCP connections are unreliable
- antivirus software will lock/delete/corrupt your new files (between checking the digest and loading resources from them)
- spiffy SSDs are notorious for being… full.
Writing a launcher / auto-updater that has workarounds for all this madness, and has a proper UI, is a lot of work.
You’d typically want a two stage launcher, as you want to auto-update your launcher - as there will be bugs.
TL;DR: Let Steam do the heavy lifting for you, until rolling your own is worth the time spent on it.
[quote=“Riven,post:502,topic:48685”]
… and if I could just chime in here on mine & Riven’s experience doing this… it will never be worth the time spent on it, sadly. Which is a shame because it was nice.
Cas 
[quote=“princec,post:503,topic:48685”]
Yeah, to be honest, I lean more and more to not bothering with it every day. Not to mention all things aside, if I make a launcher/auto-updater that means I have the flip the bill for the bandwidth off my own server(s). I already “pay” Steam for their services, so I’d rather they flip as much of the costs as I can get away with, and bandwidth is a real quick biggy, especially during update periods.
That and the honest truth is GoG, Desura, D2D and all the other digital distro services combined really aren’t going to make much of a dent in overall sales/exposure. The best reports I’ve seen is games getting 15-20%~ of their sales from off-Steam, and most of those had a large chunk that were direct sales from their official website. Seems it’s less than 10% of the sales actually come from the other services. The reality is a lot of those users may of bought it on Steam anyway, they just opt’ed for the “DRM Free” environment of the other sites when they were given both options. 
Lets also not forget the logistics of just having to manage tech support on even more services, juggling Steam and my official website isn’t a big deal. But it would be annoying if I had to track 4-5 sites at once.
So yeah, long post short, while I still plan to eventually go to the other sites, I lean more and more to not bothering. Honestly what will probably end up happening is I’ll throw the game up on those sites after I’m done updating it, it’s shelved and I’m moving on to new things. That way I don’t even have to code a launcher/patcher.
Guess whose buying this today ! Having £11 , buy some pot noodles , or a few cans of tomato soup.
Bug located: A crash occurs when the path is blocked for some people , say for instance I build a fence that isolates the village centre from the rest of the map , the game will crash immediately.
That’s been long on the fix list. But I’ve been ignoring it, since it’s related to a part of the path finding system that won’t exist soon anyway.
Also, in the final game, you won’t be able to wall yourself in (Monsters will just start tearing down your walls if you do!) so it’s probably not a good way to be playing right now. 
where on the fix-list is the “non-steam-release” ? … wouldn’t mind playing even the wrong way.
Entirely new path finding system? I swear you built this entire game around your original path finding system?
Yup.
If I ever have a non-steam release again, it won’t be for a long, long time.
InDev 13 is here! This new stable build introduces a ton of new content, tweaks, a better GUI, smaller (but much less resource intensive) maps and many other features.
Originally it was going to be even beefier, but I’ve decided to push some of InDev 13’s planned features into InDev 14 so not to keep you guys from receiving a update for a while. Don’t worry, there are no delays. The content you will be getting in 14 you would of gotten around the same time anyway, I just decided to break up InDev 13 into two updates so you can get some of the features a little early.
So, I hope you enjoy the new features!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This build WILL break all your previous custom maps. You must use the map converter found in the Retro-Pixel Castles install folder to continue using them!
You can report bugs over at the official website’s Support and Bugs Forum, or on the Steam Discussion Board.
InDev 13 Change Log
- New 256x256 map size.
- Added a console based map converter, to convert your maps from the old 512x512 to the new 256x256 system. It can be found in the Retro-Pixel Castles install folder.
- Due to the decreased map size, frame rate, memory usage, and system requirements have dropped dramatically.
- Added new “Wheat Wind” track.
- Converted “The Quiet Forest” and “Hunted” into 8 smaller maps.
- Removed all of the Developer’s Choice Maps, except the ones that were originally “Small” or “Medium” sized maps. (Others will be re-added once the authors convert them to their liking.)
- Added a bunch of new tile sets; Sandstone (In Red, Black and Tan), new Rock (in Black, Brown, Red and White).
- Added two new foods, Turnips and Potatoes. But they currently still think they’re carrots.
- New map tiles property loader, that helps decrease load time.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes walls would not connect together correctly.
- Drawing in the map editor now no longer replaces the same tile if it already exists.
- Main Menu now loads random maps from the Official Maps pack.
- Added a “Recent News and Announcements” box on the main menu.
- “Stone” resources renamed to “Rock”.
- New resources: Boards (Refined logs), Stone (Refined rock) and Crylithium (Refined Crystals).
- Harvesting buildings can now refine the resources brought in into the new refined resources listed above. For example, the Lumber Mill will manufacture boards, and the Crystillery will manufacture Crylithium.
- Completely rebalanced all the building requirements. Many advanced buildings require the new refined resources.
- Added the Small and Regular Crystillary, used for harvesting crystals.
- Added the Cullis Gate, a large Essence Collector like building that will build up and discharge large amounts of energy attempting to summon new villagers into the game … or other things.
- Rebalanced many of the building costs, and magic based buildings like the Essence Collector and Fire Bolt tower now require crystals to be built.
- Added some new particle effects to the game to use with the new Cullis Gate.
- Added some blue fire flickers to the Essence Collector.
- Essence Collectors and Fire Bolt towers no longer generate essence.
- Essence Collectors and the new Cullis Gate are now fueled with Crylithium.
- Essence Collector’s maximum energy reduced to 250.
- Re-added the “Category” frame icons to the Play and Map Editor GUIs.
- Added a pause button for buildings.
- Completely redrawn the bottom pop out GUI in the play mode.
- Completely recoded and redrawn the population tab. The new population tab now lists how many villagers are not employed, homeless, have a mate, or are pregnant along with some other miscellaneous information.
- Added a new buildings tab, based off the new populations tab. The new building tab lists how much total housing you have, how many total workers you have and many other useful tidbits.
- You can click on buildings or villagers in either of the two new tabs to center on them. (Note: Currently, in low resolutions sometimes the center may be under the GUI)
- Many miscellaneous GUI artwork improvements.
- New Mob: The Skeleton. They do not have much health, or hit hard. But they’re extremely fast and can sometimes run past your towers.
- Lowered the monster spawn rate substantially.
- Fixed a bug in the map editor’s info panel that would not detect if you’re trying to use a map name already taken.
- Moved the resource bar in the play mode to above the top GUI.
- Removed the water sparkle trail from Essence.
- Added a new objects tab, when you select an object to build in play mode a small description of that object and the requirements to build it will be displayed.
- Fixed a bug that was causing lag when looking for resources on ground.
- Fixed a bug where villagers would pick up resources to use they shouldn’t need, and set them back on the ground.
- Added the Kickstarter Backer’s names to the villager name pool.
- Updated the Credits page, adding the additional Kickstarter Backers who submitted their surveys late.
- Added all the Kickstarter Backer’s quotes to the game.
- Fixed the lag some users experienced in the credits page.
- Fixed a localization issue that would cause some user’s copy of the game to crash attempting t find game resources (Thanks to: khadgar.rumnheim for finding the solution!)
- Tons of under the hood code cleanup.
So you like having it on steam? Is the experience good all together? I really hope to one day release to steam.
I enjoy it. Right now the sales are slow, because I’m in Early Access and in Pre-Alpha. But that’s expected. Overall it’s been a great experience and good exposure. The more the game gets developed the more daily sales I make, so that’s a good sign for the future.
That’s good, and expected! Sales won’t be good until you’re out of early access. Imagine sales days too, like the winter sales and stuff!
yeah, Early Access really only brings in good sales if you get REALLY popular (Like Kerbal Space Program or H1Z1 for example) I think most Early Access titles really don’t see many sales. But really, Early Access isn’t about the money, it’s about the feedback. So I don’t mind.
That and I still actually get sales, so it’s not like I’m NOT making any money. I’m no doubt making a lot more now than I ever have in gamedev.
Yea, the feedback is the best part of the early access program. You can fix all issues and add all suggestions.
I’ve been following your progress for quite sometime, since before the kick start and such. Congratulations on your recent success!
Thanks
Finally got my new revamped path finding system working, that uses terrain costs and no blocked tiles. Making things that used to be “blocked” like mountains passable, but only when no logical path is found.
It’s going to be used in a new system that will allow monsters to start tearing down the map if they can’t figure out how to get to your villagers. It was quite a challenge because in A* a lot of the speed comes from ignoring blocked nodes and thus limiting the amount of open nodes to check (The heuristics that slowly guide A* in the right direction being the other major part), but without actual blocked nodes it took some trickery to get the system fast enough to be usable since all the nodes that would of previously been considered blocked, were now open instead just with extremely high movement costs.
Also some thanks to ra4king (for help that shortly after my above post) pointing me to using Collections.binarySearch() to inject new open nodes instead of .sort(), speeding up the main while loop.
gfycat:
@Rayvolution: use a PriorityQueue for the open list. It is much faster than inserting values into a sorted array.