itch.io

Indeed, there will be more ways to obtain mithril and souls, and more ways to spend gold (all the upgrades will also scale higher). But I still like mithril/souls being a limiting factor that prevents you from obtaining every upgrade too early.
Thanks for the feedback!

-I think the lagspike might be due to the game autosaving in the late game. Not sure what to do about that.
-Soon the 7 miners won't be mandatory as I will rework the progression.
-There will definitely be more AA options in the future.
Thanks for feedback! :)

Hey thanks for the feedback, though I'm not sure what metrics would really help me. I just hope the game is running well for you at that point? Hopefully you get 60+ fps still with everything disabled in the settings? Game is CPU bound due to physics simulation, so as long as that isn't a complete potato it should be fine. Though there must still be work done to optimize stuff further.

Atm mithril mainly drops from killing dens and in the very late game less of them die mainly because den's HP scales of % of mountain's HP, which can get exponentially/absurdly high after a point. But I will be adding more ways of obtaining mithril, as well as having a tiny drop chance from normal damage.

Thanks for the wishlist and your kind words! :)

Aye the prestige upgrades will get reworked soon, and the early game's speed after prestiging will get improved. Thanks for feedback!

Thank you! Not sure yet, I'll probably have a steam demo ready in the next few weeks, and the full release hopefully in a couple of months.

You're right. I uploaded a hotfix. Thanks for reporting!

Game is CPU bound, so as long as the lemon has a fine-ish CPU, it should be alright, even if it gets a little bit sour in the very late game. :)

You just put them into C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Mountain_Eaters

You can move buildings to an empty slot without swapping since the patch that came out 14 days ago.
And the patch 4 days ago increased ore physics among other things, intended to make the bulldozer/runner issue you're talking about a bit better.
So it seems like you should really download the latest patch hehe! :) The saves carry over automatically. You can also follow the game here or on discord to get a notification when a new patch releases.

Thank you for the feedback and wishlist! 

Haha, awesome. Thank you! :D

But the numbers should be shifted to the right, that was you fatal flaw, foolish Kirby! XD

Lol, sus...

But, we have already sold our souls to THE GREAT MAW!

Sadly you can't import into browsers atm because of some JS and GX WebAssembly issues I wasn't yet able to solve. But you can import into desktop version which runs significantly better.

I believe this should now be fixed in the new patch. Thanks for reporting!

No you can't buy the game yet, you can only donate when you download it for free. Thank you for the steam wishlist! :)

Lol thanks, that's kinda a high honor, since I hate making random new accounts. XD

Awesome, thanks! 

-Yup, way to check dwarf stats is on the TODO list.

-A slider in player's hands would be a bit weird, but I am constantly improving performance and tuning the mountain reclaiming, so that it feels good and not like it takes too many ores too fast, so that beautiful gem piles can stil form, but at the same time keeping in mind performance impact, which is a hard thing to get right. However I will be adding higher value ores, so that instead of dropping 2-3 small ones, you drop 1 high-value one, especially in the late game, helping reduce overall count.

-Dens should protect mountains from normal hits, but a lot of hits like dynamite and laser deal damage to both at once.

-I probably won't add dwarf selling since there's not much reason for it (btw you won't be forced to buy 7 miners in full release), but I might have to increase max building height to 5. Though atm even with 4, you can build all current buildings + all future ones, with potentially only missing one slot, which could be a fine strategical decision, though I assume most players wouldn't be happy with that so I'll prob need more slots lol.

Thank you for feedback. Glad to hear your kind words! :)

When FPS drops below 60, since ore physics are tied to it, they start moving in slow motion. I suggest playing on desktop where performance is a lot better.
Additionally yeah, in the late game due to various factors such as high force scaling, the ores can spend more time in the air than on the ground, which I don't like since I prefer seeing big beautiful gem piles. This will be improved by diminishingly scaling and capping force, as well as slightly increasing gravity, and hopefully making mountain reclaiming less aggressive as I continue to improve performance. But I'm open to other ideas how to make this better.

As for the souls, well, it's suppose to be a rare resource that you might not necessarily get to always use on every single upgrade, however I will be certainly adding more ways to obtain mithril and souls, through artifacts, prestige, boss kills and rituals.

Thanks for feedback!

PRAISE THE MACHINE GOD!

Yup I agree, I will be improving the look of the panels in the next patch.

I just felt like in the late game runners would be just standing in the pile and constantly spamming YEET, almost never gathering up a beautiful pile and walked it back to the base. I think both ways look cool though. And with this nerf, in the late game, you are constantly still seeing YEETs triggering, just not as often from the same dwarf.
Increasing it per carried ore would work kinda similarly in the end, you'd still have similar set odds of YEETing before the pile is full and runner returns, but less chance with bigger piles makes a bit more flavorful sense I suppose.
I am not yet entirely sure of this change and it will become clearer as the game develops, but if I do keep the CD, I was thinking of adding a T4 prestige upgrade that removes CD. Then the next rank of this upgrade would also make runners start the game with gorilla arms T1 already bought, as a real late game powerful/fun prestige upgrade (and btw at this point I'm also thinking of making prestige tier equal PP cost)

I think this could happen in the very rare case the runner got stunned during the post-deposit wait timer I recently added, and then when he went to deposit again the timer didn't reset so it made him think it's time to rest. I believe I have now hopefully fixed this and it's not because of another reason. It will be up in the next patch. Thank you for an informative report!

Heh, I could definitely add more super rare sounds like the current "itai". Would have to found a free fan version that's not copyrighted by Disney though lol. And what are some other iconic screams I could use I wonder?

Glad to hear that, thank you! :)

Indeed, I was also considering this. Would slow the game down considerably though, and most upgrades that make early game faster would have to be in T1-2. Plus most later upgrades that have multiple tiers would need to have only 1 rank, maybe two, otherwise it would be very costly. But yeah I could see this being the way.

Well, souls are suppose to be a strong limiting resource so you maybe can't necessarily buy everything each run. However some of the flamer upgrades might be too costly, but also in the full game there will be a couple more ways of getting souls, both in prestige and through powerful rituals.

Yup, allowing swapping buildings into an empty space is on the TODO list.

Well I suppose if ignoring carry capacity is a viable strat initially, then more power to the players figuring it out. :)

Ah I see, you actually meant an extra window showing a tree, kinda like Age of Empires 2 tech tree. That seems unnecessary for this game, especially when a lot of unlock conditions are just requiring units like scientists.

There isn't necessarily any difference between good PC and a potato, because the GPU doesn't really matter. The game is CPU intensive because the most performance costly thing are all the many physics-simulated ores. What do you mean by visual options needing to be better addressed? I am planning to sort them better, group them in terms of purpose/fps-impact.

It's true that outline is necessary late game, plus it has better readability, but I do kinda like no-outline for the style. It's sad it's difficult to make it more readable without increasing panel opacity.

Well if you hover over Prestige resource and then open it, it's explained. And the prestige mechanic is well known in incremental genre. The tutorial also mentions it. Could be more clear I suppose. But yeah you don't need to prestige at all to beat the game currently. In the full game there will be DPS/PP-check walls/bosses though.

I think you're mistaken because the way the system works, the mountain and calamities can't keep the screenshake even if it's disabled. But you're right that the screenshake option didn't persist between prestiging. I fixed it for the next patch.

Yup I plan to add options to disable different particle types, not just all at once. Plus a dynamic particles culling system, so it's hopefully not necessary to disable them at all.

Artifact reveal panels have already been improved in the latest patch I released. They now always appear at the left side, don't close other panels, don't overlap for the most part and don't dim the screen and block other clicking.

Yeah sure with cheats you can make turrets go offscreen since there's no limit, but in real game the exponential scaling is such that can't really happen. Still, since players will play endless mode for long time, I will make them start stacking from left to right again. The bigger problem is being able to stack dwarves off the top of the screen. It will be a difficult task to solve this. It's not an easy fix, because what would you do? I can make them start stacking/overlapping over each other from the bottom up again (which will likely be the solution), but what determines when they start doing that and to what height? The ratios/distribution between different dwarves? And how is it all recalculated when player uses Swap Buildings? Very annoying, especially if you don't want to have any kind of extra GUI or player input for it.

Sure, player can focus only on one unit, but only up to a point, and they won't be as efficient. For example, ballistas are great and killing dens, while flamers amplify all other damage.

I am doubtful that ignoring capacity and increasing only speed will make runners more efficient, since obviously if they can carry more rocks, it's like they made multiple routes in one go. Plus obviously you can upgrade both. Unless you mean a specific build in a certain point in the game.

What do you mean by "a discoverable tech tree image"? Like next to the text of the name of the upgrade needed to unlock?

And yup, there will be prestige upgrades for ore clicking, such as +power and +AoE, and possibly chance of big explosion/YEET.

Thank you for testing and the comprehensive feedback!

You're right, it's a bug, it will be fixed next patch, thanks!

I was thinking that after level 50 you'd start getting PP only every 4-5th mountain kill and then after level 100 you'd stop getting them entirely (except maybe for boss kills). Because atm it's easy without prestiging to just start melting mountains after certain point and rank up so much PP that you quickly run out of PP upgrades to buy. But this kinda goes against the flavor of prestige, as well as what you've been saying of wanting to be rewarded for more progress. The outlook might of course be completely different when more upgrades and mountain levels/bosses are added and health is probably buffed.

Your difficulty mode sounds kinda cool, but even with just current 108 PP max, you'd need like 200-300 mountain kills to get that much PP, which seems impossible to do if the mountains already killed don't yield PP, because of how exponentially ridiculous health scales.

But I was thinking of having some kind of "Ascensions" system, where maybe after you unlocked all PP upgrades, you can infinitely keep buying certain upgrades, or maybe reset the entire PP tree but get a powerful permanent buff, and you can do this infinitely. This way you could keep playing and get really far, or even maybe each ascension the game also gets harder (though what would this entail, just more HP and more dens/calamity spawning?).

As far as losing goes, initially the idea was that calamities/dens could also destroy buildings, or at least slow them down, as well as actually kill dwarves/runners, but that wasn't very fun and didn't add much but frustration. However I will be adding a few ways to lose / be forced to prestige, such as a DPS/PP-check at say mountain level 75, probably in the form of a boss. Plus probably another key-like gate at lvl 100 or so, where you need unique artifacts obtained from forging/alchemy/spelunkers to progress.

As for challenges, there will be steam achievements, plus maybe if the game's scope doesn't get too big, a late game prestige building that gives players hard quests/challenges that they need to complete either in a single run or through multiple runs.

Thank you for the feedback and encouraging words! :)

I'd love to add android support if the game has successful launch on steam, but not before, because that's a big undertaking as the game isn't designed for mobile. Besides having to rework GUI, the performance would be the biggest issue, and since I'm using physics with so many ores it would be very hard to optimize that.

A DP (dynamic programming) table stores exact, optimal solutions to subproblems to solve a larger problem, guaranteeing an optimal solution but potentially requiring large amounts of time and memory. A heuristic is a shortcut or rule-of-thumb approach that finds a good, but not necessarily optimal, solution quickly. DP can be combined with heuristics to make the problem more manageable, such as using a heuristic to prune states in the DP table, or by creating a heuristic based on the structure of the DP solution. 

DP table

Indeed. Thank you!
When I determine my loot it uses damage + calamityDamage + luck + gem-luck + other modifiers to determine value dropped and then fills it with value of ores and amounts of them, plus luck can cause overfills and lucky hits on top of that. It's kinda overkill for a game like this. But basically DP is way more accurate, but slower, which in my case wasn't even remotely necessary. Let me just paste this google AI overview because it will explain it way better than I could haha. (Doesn't allow me to paste picture or long text here so posting in reply)

LFG!

Thank youuuu

Awesome, thank you, glad to hear that! :)

When bulldozer or runner deposits the ore, it is marked as deposited, so it can no longer be reclaimed by the mountain (even if it somehow happens to get mixed back with others). YEET also marks it as deposited, which actually makes more sense with the latest patch, where YEET is way more successful. However the mountain's reclaiming did still count deposited ores for other purposes, which inflated the count for that short period, but I have now made it ignore deposited ones as well, for the next patch.

Bulldozers have been buffed in the latest patch and will continue to be tweaked. Gold costs are a bit cheaper too, though they still cost 4 mithril which might be a key factor to consider yeah, though in the future there will also be more ways of obtaining mithril. Rune of Speed and Machine now affect them. They now have 7% static dodge, which kinda represents being lucky, tho I'm not sure if I'll make dodge be upgradable since it doesn't make a lot of sense, unless maybe I call the upgrade "Expert Driving/Drifting" or something lol. But they might get a shield that upon consumption implodes in a shockwave that destroys all nearby rocks. And the way bulldozers protect runners is that if the runners are below the bulldozer, the rock will hit the bulldozer and not the runners. It's not major, but it's something. And yeah in the late game rocks rain like crazy, but at that point I assume you also have laser-cannons and other turrets.  Though I do agree turrets could in general be better and not have to rely on lasers so much (there will certainly be more upgrades eventually, like chance of rocket salvos and railguns etc). Also I think I like the idea of bulldozers not being able to be damaged whilst resting, probably as part of an upgrade. I think I will also buff base repair to 40% and scaling of servitors by slightly for the next patch. But I must be careful, it feels like turrets and bulldozers are treading the silver line between being too good and too weak, depending on how many rocks rain and how many you buy when, it's a tough thing to balance well.

Thank you for the feedback!

Sadly I haven't yet figured out how to easily import it into browsers since of some annoying GX WebAssembly/JS issues. :/