Caravel Games

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More April Goodness from Caravel - 04-11-2012

Here is some great news from Caravel that you shouldn't miss! There is new bonus content available and our hugest game sale ever!

"Flood Warning" expansion now available

Flood Warning is an excellent exclusive expansion pack designed by TFMurphy. It features four challenging levels that highlight the new 4.0 engine game elements and is produced at the high level of quality of Smitemasters Selection holds. This bonus content is automatically made available to you for free when you buy DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder and register your order on the forum. If you've already purchased the game, Flood Warning can immediately be imported directly into the game via CaravelNet or downloaded through the "Purchases" tab of your Caravel Forum user profile.

You can read more about the Flood Warning expansion pack and player feedback on the Caravel Forum here:

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=33489


Super Sale! All previous games are 75% off!

Now, for the next week up to April 18th, all previous Caravel DROD games are temporarily available for purchase at 75% off! That makes them only $4.99 through our site! If you've been waiting to pick up one of our games for cheap, now is the time. This sale applies to the downloadable versions of "King Dugan's Dungeon", "Journey to Rooted Hold", "The City Beneath" and "DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale", and you still get a free month of CaravelNet service for each game you buy.

Also, the "DROD: The City Beneath" Deluxe Limited-Edition CD Boxed Set is temporarily available for only $14.95, and all Smitemasters Selections are now over half-off at $3.99!

You will see these sale prices automatically reflected in your shopping cart when you order. This sale is for the next week only.

http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games.html

After registering your order on the Caravel Forum, you can either download KDD, JtRH and TCB as standalone games, or you can also install them right into your DROD:GatEB install from the in-game level selection screen while logged into CaravelNet. This allows you to have all the games conveniently located in the same installation and playable in the latest game engine.

DROD 4.0.1 is released

You can download an updated version of DROD:GatEB for both demo and full versions through our site. It contains some minor bug fixes to the game engine and a few rooms. If you've registered the game, just click the Downloads link at the top of the forum while logged in to download and install the newest version of the game.

DROD 4.0 source code is released

If you're interested in taking a look at how "DROD: GatEB" is programmed, you can now download the game's C++ source code from our site and talk about it on our Development board.

http://www.caravelgames.com/sourcecode.html

--Mike

Thou Hast Received an Eighth! - 04-03-2012

This April 1st, Caravel has the best news it has had in ages. Read on!

"DROD 4: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder" is released

DROD:GatEB is now completed and available for purchase. The game costs $19.95 and can be ordered on the Caravel Games website.

http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games_2/GatEB.html

All who preordered the game and registered their order to a Caravel Forum user account can download the game by logging in on the forum and clicking "Downloads" at the top of the page.

I am happy to say that player feedback about the new game has been quite positive. A demo version of the game is also available for download from the above page if you'd like to try out the first part of the game before buying.

DROD:GatEB is available in Windows, Linux and Mac OSX Intel 64-bit versions. Hopefully we can also have an OSX Intel 32-bit version also made available relatively soon. You can select the version you want when ordering, and then you will receive a registration email from Caravel following a successful order. This e-mail will let you register your game license to a forum user account so you can download the game again from the forum in the future. You will also receive a free month of CaravelNet service.

As mentioned before, producing this game was a community effort, and everyone's effort shines. As DROD is an experience that continues to grow from year to year, it's hard to adequately credit everyone who has ever had a hand at some point in producing something that went into this latest game. Still, we'd like to recognize each individual who is getting credited with contributing to some aspect of the game, and my deepest apologies if there's anyone that we missed. This game likely would not have been released this year -- and definitely would not have ended up at its current high level of quality -- without the help of everyone here.

Producer
Mike Rimer

Concept
Erik Hermansen

Level Design, Feature and Element Design
Jacob Grinfeld
Larry Murk
Henri Kareinen
Terence Fergusson
Neil Frederick
Mike Rimer

Programming
Terence Fergusson
Mike Rimer
Gerry Jo Jellestad

Linux Port
Gerry Jo Jellestad

Music
Jon Sonnenberg
Brian Richardson

Art Assets
Erik Hermansen
Brett Boyette
Gerry Jo Jellestad
Wai Lam
Mike Rimer
Jennifer Loeser

Concept Art
Brett Boyette

Story, Script, Continuity
Jacob Grinfeld
Erik Hermansen
Terence Fergusson
Mike Rimer
Eytan Zweig
Jennifer Loeser
Tom Brouws

CaravelNet Game Interface
Matt Schikore
Terence Fergusson

Voice Coordination
Mike Rimer
Jacob Grinfeld

Voice Talent
Michael Abbott
David Ault
Samuel Benner
Chris Marks
Daniel Mellman
Ryan Peterson
Brian Richardson
Seth Rimer
Mike Rimer
John Rogers, Jr.
Johannah West
Logan West
Maurycy Zarzycki

Sound Effects
Mike Rimer

Voice Editing and Mastering
Mike Rimer

Testing Coordination
Mike Rimer

Testing
Eytan Zweig
Wai Lam
Chris Marks
John Williams
Seth Rimer
Sean Hunt
Markus Theelen
Tom Brouws
Brad Wall

Level Description Texts
12th Archivist
George Wanfried
Ryan Berry
Lance Nathan
Annatala Wolf

Thank you, everyone!

Eighth Annual People's Choice Awards

The favorites for the 8th Annual People's Choice Awards are in, and you can view the winners of each category here:

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=33232

A big thank you to Trickster for running the event this year! Special congratulations go to George Wanfried (Chaco on the forum) who received the "Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement". George has produced and published several top-notch holds, including last year's Smitemaster's Selection, "Finding the First Truth". George, you have given the community an inestimable gift. In recognition and as a token of our thanks, we grant you lifetime CaravelNet service.

Architecture by Hand -- Winners

Voting for Dischorran's monthly contest, "Architecture by Hand", has completed. Congratulations to Penwielder for taking 1st place! Please select a prize from the Prize Pile for your victory.

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32870

Thank you everyone. Till next time. We hope you enjoy the new game!

Mike

Spring Storm Hits the Caravel - 03-03-2012

Oh, faithful Caravel follower! Recently, the wind has been picking up about the Caravel. A Caravel is a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship, and our ship has entered a veritible storm of activity. We have about four projects going at a time these days, with improvements being made to the Forum itself and CaravelNet service. A couple of these projects can be seen already, while others are nearing completion. For the rest, they're a bit premature to talk about because they're still in early stages. But, I'd like to let you in on a sailor's view of the storm that has picked up around the Caravel.

DROD 4: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder -- Beta

We now have all assets completed for the upcoming game, "DROD 4:GatEB". Erik Hermansen has created some beautiful new art for this game. We have over sixty minutes of new music written by Jon Sonnenberg, and three new room styles crafted early on by artist Brett Boyette. A master level development team has worked long hours to make the rooms in this game a treat to experience.

This title is aimed at players new to DROD as well as veterans. The game starts easy and has a smooth learning curve. It should not be that hard to complete for anyone with a little determination. There are also optional end-game areas that are challenging enough for everyone who wants to turn up their brain activity from poached to simmering. If DROD has seemed too difficult for you in the past to get far into, then you should be pleased by the design that went into this game, making for a painless blend of fun and challenge. As part of this design, we only have a few completely new game elements included in this release, and we lower the velocity at which game elements are thrown at the player. One new element is a new terrain type, shallow water, that changes game mechanics around it in fundamental ways. We are preparing a substantial special bonus that highlights the new mechanics for everyone that purchases the game.

Also, the level layout is designed to be more forgiving. We have multiple hub areas that let you explore in different directions. So, if you get stuck along one path, you can take a break from that area to go explore in other directions until you receive the inspiration you need to complete it. We also have more seamless room hints functionality built into the game engine itself for when you are stuck on a certain room.

We are now entering a closed beta cycle in order to add some final polish before the game becomes publicly available for purchase. This game has been a long time in the works, but it has come together quite nicely in the end. Our early testers have provided positive feedback about the latest versions, and we are expecting a good release. Stay tuned for more news over the upcoming weeks and an official release date. We are hoping it fits our historical seasonal storm patterns!

New member of the Caravel dev team

I want to take this moment to recognize forum member skell, who has been hanging around as an upstanding community member for a long time. He has expressed much enthusiasm and interest in working on Caravel projects, and he has joined Caravel as the newest member of the dev team. We've typically been tight-lipped about upcoming projects, but one thing I will share is that skell is the driving force behind the Other Big Project that has appeared. Join me in congratulating skell on his new position!

This event happens to coincide with some other nice things that skell worked on previous to this point, so I'd like to give acknowledgment to these items too.

Hints and Solutions Board 2.0

Schik and skell have been working jointly behind the curtain to make some new forum magic appear. One of these is the new and improved Hints and Solutions interface. This tool provides you a nice overview of whatever level you're looking for, letting you pan around the rooms and seamlessly showing you hint topics available for each of the rooms. There's a lot of nice work put into this, so try it out!

Homemade room styles for download

Schik has added another dash of awesome sauce to CaravelNet, immediately available in the "DROD: The City Beneath" 3.x game engine. All available 3.x Custom room styles are now available for download in-game in TCB. While connected to CaravelNet, new styles will automatically be downloaded into the game whenever you download and import a hold that uses those styles in-game.

Don't Ask Award
We have another "Don't Ask" Award to hand out. This time it goes to forum member skell!

Skell has been a significant force on the Caravel seas. Separate from the work already mentioned above, Skell worked with Schik to get the Caravel API released. Skell added a lot of features to the interface while Schik worked on the server-side backend to the API. As mentioned above, Skell took a partially written revamp to the Hints and Solutions searcher and, using the Caravel API, finished it up and polished it to a fine sheen. Without his help, this exciting new feature would have taken much longer to be released, and would have been missing much of the polish. Great job, skell!

Skell, please choose a prize from the Prize Pile for your awesome contributions as a token of appreciation.

Eighth Annual People's Choice Awards

Each year, the Caravel community holds the People's Choice Awards. In this event, you can nominate your favorite DROD level sets published in 2011 to receive one of several awards. This year's People's Choice Awards is being run by forum member Trickster who has been quite active on the forum in 2011 and has infused a lot of life into the community this past year.

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32686

Nominations are open until March 10th. Shortly after nominations have closed, Trickster will list the nominees, and community members will start voting for winners. Anyone with a Caravel Forum account can participate, so come join the fun!

Architecture by Hand -- Contest Voting

Submissions are in for the February forum contest. There are some neat levels here displaying hand-drawn art in the holds. Come download these holds to play in "DROD:TCB" and vote on your favorite!

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32870

New holds released

There have been several new usermade holds released over the past six months that I've neglected to mention in the newsletter. TFMurphy helpfully compiled a list of these. As you can see here, architects have been busy!

DROD Holds:

Catacombs 2
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32654

the boss lair
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32653

the zone
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32636

Hinterlands
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32616

Suwako Prizes
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32613

Puppet Master
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32540

war21
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32522

war20
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32498

Dan's Dungeon
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32431

A Strange Creature
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32335

Puzzle Mix
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32273

Complication
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32267

Jmit'
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32254

Riddle of the Bar
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32203

Uncle Mike's New Place
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32118

Architectural Market
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32070

Aurora's Palace
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32018

-------

"Phew!" is probably what you're saying if you've read down to this part of the Illumination. As you can see, there is definitely a lot going on. We have a high-energy, bustling community here that I'm glad to be a part of. Thank you, everyone, for adding your drive to the Caravel storm!

Mike

Dueling Bars - 02-10-2012

In our last Illumination, we presented a contest related to guessing the game title appearing above the Progress Bar for Caravel's Next Big Project. Congratulations to TripleM for being the first to guess the new game title correctly:

Gunthro and the Epic Blunder

TripleM will receive a free copy of the game when it is released.

But that's not all...!

As you might have noticed, there is now not only one Bar on the Caravel Forum, but TWO! Madness! Nothing has yet been spoken aloud, but the Interloper Bar appears to have moved right on in and is now running its own Bar Puzzle. Clicking on the second bar will periodically drop goodies your way!

What could "The Other Big Project" have in store for us? Is this a Progress Bar space race? Just a friendly match among Bars? A full Bar-on-Bar rivalry with no holds barred? One thing is for certain -- when there is a Progress Bar competition, these bars each seem to want to work that much harder to get to 100% first! Good luck to all the Bars in this duel where everybody wins!

Architecture by Hand, an official forum contest

Dischorran has contributed a neat forum contest for February. In it, you draw a DROD level by hand, then use the "DROD: The City Beneath" level editor to import images into the game. All floors, walls and pits in your level must be of the "custom image" variety.

You have until the end of February to submit your entry. Winner receives a free prize from the prize pile, and all entrants receive a contest credit. Earn eight contest credits and you can request a free DROD game.

Check out Dischorran's demo level on the contest thread here:

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=32662

This contest looks like a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to trying out all of the submissions once they're in. Good luck, everyone!

--Mike

Holiday Season and Strange Letters in View - 11-19-2011

Just a couple quick notes in the Caravel November news for our faithful followers.

Progress

The progress bar for Caravel's Next Big Project has been inching upward, and we expect to enter beta testing early 2012. In anticipation of this event, LETTERS have started being revealed over the bar. What could these letters mean? Speculation runs rampant in Caravel's sixth Bar Watching thread:

http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=29658

Are the letters a reference to an island newly risen out of the ocean of the Eighth? Something having to do with the Grand Event? Is it an obscure mathematical reference to DROD's Turing completeness? Some odd AR event? Well...it's most likely the title of the new game. In place of a traditional forum contest in November, this time whoever guesses the phrase correctly first wins a free copy of the upcoming game as soon as it is released! (Sorry, anyone in the inner circle who already knows the answer is excluded from guessing, but you will receive a free copy anyway.) Just post your guesses in the Bar Watching thread above to participate. You must match the answer precisely to win. Good luck!

Holiday Cheer

Meanwhile, Caravel is promoting a holiday sale starting now through the end of the year. If you've been waiting to buy any of the DROD games until the price comes down, or you are thinking to gift a copy of DROD to a friend, then this is your chance! Use the following coupon code, containing the first letters in the Bar's mystery text, when placing your order to receive 50% off everything on the Caravel Games website, including previous SmS downloads. (Sorry, no SmS preorders through this method, please.)

gateb2011_50

Have a great holiday season, everyone, filled with joy, peace and good will.