Dyson

Hello everyone,

The pre-purchase for Eufloria on Valve’s Steam distribution service is now available. Get 25% off by pre-purchasing before we release the game!

Go get it!

If you can’t see a purchase link over there right now, drop by the page in an hour or so, and it should have popped up by then.

We are also working on getting our own store and new web site ready. More news soon!

No, this isn’t a plug for the excellent Zombie Cow Studios point and clicker (whoops – it is now), but just a note to say that entry for the naming competition is now closed.

We’ve received an overwhelming number of entries, and it is going to take us a few days to go through them and gently pluck out the finest and most delightful name you lovely people have come up with. We’ve taken a quick peek through the hundreds of mails and found some names to go in pretty much every category from outrageous all the way to sublime, so it should be entertaining!

We’d like to thank everyone who entered and we will be back soon with the results.

(Image credit: waferboard)

Right people, big news. I am quoting a press release to give you all the relevant info. (Not because we are pompous, but because it is quicker that way.

PRESS RELEASE – 24 September 2009

2009 Independent Games Festival Finalist, Dyson, To Be Renamed By The Public Via Contest on IGN’s Direct2Drive

Special 25% off pre-order discount available now on Direct2Drive

Indie game “Dyson,” a 2009 Independent Games Festival finalist and the festival’s Grand Prize and Direct2Drive Vision Award nominee, is to be published as a full commercial title under a new name to be chosen by the public via a contest sponsored by IGN’s Direct2Drive.com.

The game’s original name was inspired by the work of theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, which was suitable whilst it was a freeware exploration of procedural gameplay. The game has since adopted a commercial dimension, which made the developers, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May, feel that the name was no longer appropriate.

To reflect the new status of the project and to honour the loyal fans of the game, the developers have teamed up with Direct2Drive, IGN’s digital download store, to invite fans and other members of the public to come up with a new name for the game.

The competition will launch on Wednesday 23rd September, and the rules are simple:
Find a new name for Dyson (www.dyson-game.com) that best encompasses the mood and themes of the game. For those that haven’t yet played it, a demo is available at FilePlanet (Download here). Name ideas will be submitted directly to the developers, who will pick and announce the best name by Tuesday 29th September.

Direct2Drive will offer prizes for the winning entry: a copy of the as-yet-to-be-renamed Dyson, as well as any two digital PC games available on D2D. Contest details can be found at the content page and name suggestions can be emailed directly to . A pre-order of the game is currently available, with 25% discount, on Direct2Drive, until the game is released. The Game Formerly Known as Dyson is slated for release approximately 20th October 2009 and will host a large number of improvements and new content.

The game’s commercial version features:

A single player campaign boasting over 20 levels
A skirmish mode against AI opponents with highly procedural (and replayable) original levels
Integrated LUA Scripting allowing for enormous modding potential
A unique soundtrack of over two hours of music created by Brian Grainger, AKA Milieu (www.milieu-music.com)
New unit types that expand on the game’s unique aesthetics and gameplay
A massive improvement in AI
An improved and almost completely mouse-based interface
Many visual improvements

Original inspiration for the game can be found here in this: previous blog entry.
For further questions contact Rudolf Kremers at:

Here’s the link to the preorder page: Click here!

So there you have it! Please have fun and help us out at the same time!

Rudolf

Hey all, just a quick note to say that the linux version (direct link; download page; just the patch files) has been updated to hopefully be a bit less pernickity about what libraries it wants… do let us know if it’s easier/harder to get it working than before. I also update the download instructions (specifically, wine instructions were telling you to work an old version of mono, and i added the winforms package as this seemed to help one chap get it running on 64 bit).

Massive thanks to everyone who has sent in reports, patches, etc. You’re awesome!

Hello all,

Somebody recently asked us to start a Dyson Facebook page, which I dutifully set up and is quietly starting to attract a friendly crowd of people. However, I just realized that we didn’t tell anybody about this, or indeed some of the other ways to get news about Dyson.

So, for those who want to know more:

Dyson on Facebook
Twitter (I started using twitter and am including Dyson related content)
Alex, Rudolf (1, 2) and Brian’s websites

We will try not to be too boring!

Dear Friends,

As some of you have already noticed we have decided to publish the game later than the hoped-for July release, and will now release the game in the Fall. After some serious thought we decided this was the best course of action due to a number of factors, all to do with providing an extra high quality experience.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hi all,

We just released version 1.20 which is the version we used on the IGF showfloor. We made it a bit smoother all around, added an attract mode, and changed the rules slightly.

To take an asteroid now, you will have to plant a tree there. It makes more sense this way and lets the belt be completely barren instead of covered in trees at the start of a game.

Also we added an attract mode, which kicks in if you leave the game in the main menu for a while. You can play while the game is in attract mode, but you’ll have the AI ‘helping’ you and the camera may take on a life of its own. Just quit out to the main menu if you want to play normally.

DOWNLOAD IT

Any questions/comments either leave them on the blog, the forum or email them to us.

Enjoy!

Hello all. The subject of t-shirts and merchandise keeps getting raised, so we decided to experiment with an online shop selling Dyson-themed apparel. We are not doing this to try to cash in, but mostly because there seems to be a demand for it, so we have only added a few bucks on top of the base price. (3-4$s only, it is mostly a service to those of you who like this stuff! )

See what you think: Alex and Rudolf’s Dyson-Game shop.

If this is successful we may expand into a European shop as well to ease the shipping cost. Comments below if you have any.

How did we get here?

Within a few days Alex and myself will be on our way to San Francisco on our way to what I can only describe as a “Dream come true” event. One moment we are entering a purely quality motivated small and fun competition, and a few months later we suddenly find ourselves up for several awards, including best game, at the prestigious Independent Games Festival. WHAT HAPPENED!!!??

A major reason why we have stuck with Dyson and why we feel so strongly about it is the superb and utterly supportive feedback we receive from you guys and gals. A great little community seems to have sprung up around the game and it is growing every week. We are completely humbled by the amount of people that play the game, February for example saw 50 thousand downloads from our site alone, not even including mirrors. Them’s silly numbers! 0_0

So a big thank you and virtual bear-hugs to all of you who have downloaded the game and those of you who are telling us what you think of it. Our forum deserves a special mention as it is such a fun and positive place. All we can do on our part is to try to make the game as good as we can, which something we are working very hard on.

First the festival though, and will make sure there will be photos and footage of the event for readers of the blog to peruse. If you are visiting yourself please come by our booth and say hi! We will also for the first time finally meet our audio and music genius Brian Grainger (Milieu) in person. Such are the strange ways of web-based game development.

Anyway, to finish this post we want to share some news:

First: We have picked up a distribution deal with the sponsors of the festival, direct2drive, who in our opinion are building up a very impressive catalogue of independent titles for digital distribution. We are quite honoured that Dyson is deemed to be strong enough to feature alongside the other great games in the service. (Have a look, the selection is great!)

Second: Alex and I are enjoying working together so much that we decided to do another game together after Dyson. What this game will be is not going to be known for a while (even to us) but between us we have a wealth of ideas and concepts to choose from, all sound like good fun to us.

Right, have to pack my toothbrush now and prepare my laptop for Dyson demonstrations to press and other interested parties. We may or not be able to blog a bit while we are over there, keep an eye out on the major news sites anyways in regards to the general coverage of all the great games out there, but have a peek here once in a while you never know

Hello everyone,

DOWNLOAD DYSON v1.10

We released version 1.10 of Dyson! It is the public demo that will also be made available at the IGF site for the Audience Award.

This version contains new music from Brian, which is really superb. We love it. We think the new version is worth the download purely for the music.

We also reworked the font code so now the game has really smooth fonts instead of the old pixel font, which was hard to read and didn’t really fit with the theme.

This also meant we had to redo the tutorial, which is now a bit nicer again.

There is a new level (level 2), which is designed to help people understand more how the attributes work. We also changed some of the balancing in the levels.

There are a few other tweaks that you may discover if you’re a seasoned Dyson colonist see if you can spot the changes! Don’t be looking in the build log! I know your tricks!

Have fun!