Thanks, Tom, for setting up this Asking Chamber.
The new blue soldier type is the only new monster available in 4.0. What you're mostly going to see with respect to monster types is preexisting monsters used in new ways in the 4.0 engine.
We've crammed a lot of new monsters into each previous major release, so this possibly needs some explanation. So, sit awhile and listed to the ramblings of an old man...
So here I was, reading through the old thread about asking questions about "
DROD RPG"
prior to its release in the fall of 2008. In some ways, 2008 was the best of times and it was the worst of times. Some fun stuff to reminisce about there...
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=22016&page=0
Anyway, the reason I bring that up is that I see it's been 3 1/2 years since our last major release. Slower than our previous release cadence. We've been able to release SmS holds each year since 2008, but work on DROD 4 necessarily progressed quite differently than for any past titles. It will be interesting to hold a postmortem about GatEB sometime in the future. But, until we get to that point, I'll keep my ramblings at a high level. First, I'd like to share my thanks to the dev team as a way of explanation.
After TCB and RPG, the original Caravel dev team -- comprised almost solely of college and grad students -- moved on to other phases of real life, and DROD development had to take a back seat to that. Erik too moved on from running the company, and it was slow going developing anything at that point. The F&M project had just been started and was about one-third along when it went into limbo. Slowly, a new standing dev team came together to finish this game, and it cannot be overstated how much effort they have put into this release.
TFMurphy did a lot of development work on new game and scripting elements, and improving various aspects of the rendering engine, so he should stop by when he can to take a bow for all the great work he did. Jacob has also done a huge amount of work on room, level and overarching hold design. Level design was more tricky than usual this time around, and the level designers came through admirably. When this project started, Erik basically spec'ed it as an introduction to DROD mechanics. While DROD:TCB contained a whole pile of new game elements -- so many, iirc, that players even complained somewhat about the overload of introducing something new every level -- this game was going to be back to basics. There wasn't enough room in TCB to explore each new game element very deeply. In F&M, on the other hand, the focus was to provide a better coverage of various game elements, with a smooth ramp-up in difficulty and more open-ended areas. This seemed a significant challenge to me. When F&M came out of mothballs and we rethemed it as a proper DROD title, this challenge only seemed to increase. For instance, how do you represent preexisting game elements, while still keeping the puzzles and presentation fresh and engaging to fans? Highlighting Gunthro as the main character instead of Beethro is a way to underscore this reworking. I think the level designers did a great job rising to the occasion.
You can judge this for yourself, of course, when you play the game. In short, what you'll see most of is a richer use of 3.x game elements in connection with the new 4.0 non-monster game elements and scripting commands.
Anyway, came sit by the fire again when you're interested in hearing another tale. Now that we're at this point, there's plenty of new stuff, including monsters, planned for TSS, to compensate. But that's a tale for another day.
____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
[Last edited by mrimer at 03-21-2012 05:56 PM]
)
(I bet you could do some interesting puzzles with constructing tunnels, actually... hmmm XD)
