next »

[Raku]

I enjoyed playing the demo! It is hard, but I really like this difficulty, personally. I took my time and tried clearing out everything I could, and beat it in maybe an hour or so. I accidentally discovered how to hover too.
I did encounter a bug, (maybe?) where after dieing once, every new floor had a treasure chest that was already lit up, even if I wasn't next to it at all. It could be out on the edge of the blackened out map all by itself. It happened on every playthrough after that one, as well.

Loved the class select randomizer at the start, and loved playing through the treasure obstacle courses. It took me some experimentation to understand what made the chest turn green or not (what changes if it turns green? less valuable treasure inside?)

[Glyph]

I enjoyed playing the demo! It is hard, but I really like this difficulty, personally. I took my time and tried clearing out everything I could, and beat it in maybe an hour or so. I accidentally discovered how to hover too.
I did encounter a bug, (maybe?) where after dieing once, every new floor had a treasure chest that was already lit up, even if I wasn't next to it at all. It could be out on the edge of the blackened out map all by itself. It happened on every playthrough after that one, as well.

Loved the class select randomizer at the start, and loved playing through the treasure obstacle courses. It took me some experimentation to understand what made the chest turn green or not (what changes if it turns green? less valuable treasure inside?)

Thank you! I'm glad someone beat the demo

Yeah, the difficulty's at the point where it needs to be now, I think. The initial demo had some problems but it seems that the update patched them up nicely.

I didn't know about that treasure chest bug, so I'll take a look into it. Was the chest giving off a radius of light, or was it just above the darkness on its own? And are we talking about chests in the ruins, or were you seeing dense darkness in the caves somehow?

The chests actually have three states, something which will eventually be explained. They start out gold, and turn silver if you hover (or use some cheating spells), and bronze (greenish) if you take damage. As you deduced, the treasures are less valuable in silver and bronze chests.



So, I'm working on mutations and new classes - and what better to cover both than the Mutant class?



Mutants usually don't start with a mutation (since it would be annoying to look it up every game and could, in the worst case, encourage scumming), but because of their unstable genomes, they gain one at levels 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. These will always be positive or neutral mutations, but when gaining a mutation from another source (as any class can do), it's a matter of luck.

So I slapped a few of the currently implemented mutations onto this guy and gave him a spell I'm prototyping. The double-attack mutation may seem very good, but it does take a little longer, both to execute and recover from (though in the gif the bear wasn't glowing while recovering, I'll have to fix that. Also the yellow of the mp bar not disappearing).

Next up, I hope to talk about another new class. I have some more hopefully-passable spell placeholder art to draw beforehand, though.

[Raku]

Oh, I meant on the overworld map screen, not in the platformer parts. Like, when I'd be put into the map, there would be my bear, and then off somewhere else, a random treasure chest map square was already uncovered. I haven't been able to recreate it since then, though.

I'm happy to say that I actually learned about how the treasures changed colors from experimentation! I think it's really good, and has that whole risk vs reward thing that works so well.

The mutations thing sounds exciting and I can't wait to see more about this game!

[Glyph]

Oh, I meant on the overworld map screen, not in the platformer parts. Like, when I'd be put into the map, there would be my bear, and then off somewhere else, a random treasure chest map square was already uncovered. I haven't been able to recreate it since then, though.

I'm happy to say that I actually learned about how the treasures changed colors from experimentation! I think it's really good, and has that whole risk vs reward thing that works so well.

The mutations thing sounds exciting and I can't wait to see more about this game!

Ah, seeing treasures on the map is one of the innate abilities of the Rogue. It only has a chance of revealing them, though. I assume you were playing as one. Paladins can see health rooms and Duelists can see battles, as well. Another class will have a high chance to see traps too, when I make that one.

[Raku]

OH! that makes perfect sense now. I was playing a rogue at the time. Thanks for clearing that up

[Glyph]

Maybe it's pretty obvious, but the above level is procedurally generated. The system for generation is one I devised a long time ago -- basically, levels are made of rectangular rooms like in Spelunky, but the rooms can be of undetermined size and connect at any point. The code for it was incredibly complex and there are still a few kinks in the system to iron out, but I'm leaving it as it is for now.
Anyway, don't get too excited -- normal levels in the game will still be templated, and the plan of attack for that is still to have a lot of levels and minivaults. But for a certain sprawling horrorscape deep below, this system will see use.



In the demo, Acolytes had the Lightning spell, but that was because their real spell wasn't implemented yet. Lith finished the art for Pain, so now Acolytes are back in business. As you can see above, Pain is a powerful short-range spell that takes a while to cast. Acolytes, with 1 Dexterity, are particularly bad at casting it. However...



You can convert your recent wounds into spite to quicken this spell. It's not ideal, but it gives Acolytes an interesting set of options and plenty of playstyles to grow into.

[Glyph]

Back from the grave!

I obviously expected to be slowed down somewhat by going back to college, but I've let other things get in the way. Anyway, just expect development to move a bit slower now... but I'll still try to update semi-regularly.

A fair deal of new spells, items and classes have been put in, but are unfinished to varying degrees. So I'll just show what I worked on today.



Ghosts are mischievous and yellow. They want nothing more than to welcome you to the afterlife in a swift fashion.

More to show soon, hopefully.

[Raku]

Oh man, I love it. very Goemon.
Also it would be funny if the ghost had some unique text for when you kill it, due to how unorthodox it is for a ghost do die. I understand that might be pretty tedious to put in though

[Glyph]

Nah, it's not tedious at all, and I was thinking about that actually. I'll probably make it say 'dies again!' or something

[Rat Casket]

That ghost animation! <3

Your brother is so good.

[Sarge]

Good game, enjoyed it very much.  I'm not very good at it.

My only complaint:  When the controller is selected I would still like the Enter key to confirm/submit name.  Every time I type a name I hit enter, sigh, then hit START on the controller.

[Cranky]

Just played through the demo and I liked it a lot. I had a lot of fun, great work so far.
I haven't encountered any bugs, although there was a treasure room where the only way forward was blocked by a spike, but maybe I just didn't figure out how to go through there if there is a solution to that.

A couple of thoughts about gameplay related things:
- I think the blue knight with the yellow cape has a weird hitbox, it seemed like I was hitting his leg sometimes and he was unaffected by it.
- I found it weird that enemies that are clearly 2 tiles tall don't have any hitboxes on their heads
- When enemies are in hitstun and flashing (the one enemy that displays an exclamation mark when hit does this I think) it feels like I should be able to run through them without getting hit while they are stunned. I would often times run into enemies after hitting them when I am cornered thinking that it would be fine since they are stunned.
- the floating skull enemies could maybe display a small red timer after death so the player could be better informed about the impending explosion.

The next couple of things are my thoughts on the difficulty curve, feel free to ignore it, since it isn't anything too major and just my personal opinion:
I think the difficulty is fine, its definitely making me feel like "next time I'm gonna make it farther" every time, but that isn't really what I want to talk about.
I felt like the game wasn't really doing a good job of introducing me to some of the enemy types very well.
What I mean by that is, that for the player to learn what a particular enemy does often times means to put yourself in harms way, as that is the only way to trigger their attack. Observing some enemies didn't convey very much information at all. I think it would be better to give some enemy types a "stupider" AI, at least in the first couple of rooms, so that their attack patterns are exposed to the player from a safe distance. Like make the blue knight attack thin air sometimes and the wall clingig bug drop down randomly without you standing underneath so that the player gets the chance to know about their ranges/patterns without having to die to them first. Like bone throwing enemies in castlevania that throw their bones regardless of where the player stands, a way to convey information basically. Some enemy types were already doing this, like the 8-way laser shooting guy and the poison mushroom thingy, I enjoyed their design a lot more in comparison.
I also liked the mage design a lot, after fighting the brown mage, the player immidiatelly knows what to expect once you encounter a blue one, the similarity in visual design conveys important gameplay information, and I liked that a lot.

When playing at first, it felt like the game wanted me to play "hit&run" style, but was already introducing elements that hindered my movement, like spikes, bats and the floating skulls. You might think about delaying the introduction of those elements for the second floor, so that the player can be better taught about hit&run tactics. Basically first reinforce the notion of hit&run by giving them room to maneuver and only after take that room away by introducing those elements that control space.

Like I said, feel free to ignore these suggestions, they aren't really anything major.
I am really excited about this game, very promising so far

[Low_Chance]

Played a bunch, really digging the demo. Thanks for releasing it.

One thing: When I try to dash-slide through Knights, I almost always get hit and most of the time, they don't get stunned. I think it's worked correctly a few times, so I suspect the issue might be that the hitbox/sprite matchup for the knight is somehow confusing? I can slide-dash pretty reliably through all the other enemies.

Anyway, great game, really digging it. It has that "one more run!" quality already.

[Glyph]

Here's a frog. More interesting name forthcoming... maybe. They spew arcs of freezing water at you, but they will do it even when you're not around (as per Cranky's suggestion).

Good game, enjoyed it very much.  I'm not very good at it.

My only complaint:  When the controller is selected I would still like the Enter key to confirm/submit name.  Every time I type a name I hit enter, sigh, then hit START on the controller.

Yep, I've found myself doing the same thing on several occasions. I will probably just make it recognize Enter and Joystick Start regardless of key configuration, since neither of those can be used to type names with anyway. It's on the list!

I haven't encountered any bugs, although there was a treasure room where the only way forward was blocked by a spike, but maybe I just didn't figure out how to go through there if there is a solution to that.

You can make it through that room by sliding with good timing, but I've since removed it. The window to get it right is way too small, turns out.

A couple of thoughts about gameplay related things:
- I think the blue knight with the yellow cape has a weird hitbox, it seemed like I was hitting his leg sometimes and he was unaffected by it.
- I found it weird that enemies that are clearly 2 tiles tall don't have any hitboxes on their heads

Yes, the knight's box and the head thing have been gnawing at me too, and the solution is to introduce separate hitboxes and hurtboxes. I've been putting it off because it's a little extra work to set up on my end, but it's 100% going to happen, and should solve both of those issues.

- When enemies are in hitstun and flashing (the one enemy that displays an exclamation mark when hit does this I think) it feels like I should be able to run through them without getting hit while they are stunned. I would often times run into enemies after hitting them when I am cornered thinking that it would be fine since they are stunned.

I'll consider this, but it feels a little weird to be honest. It would be hard to determine when exactly the enemy can hurt you again. I recommend sliding when cornered instead.

- the floating skull enemies could maybe display a small red timer after death so the player could be better informed about the impending explosion.

I'm trying to avoid clutter on the screen, but I'm relatively confident that I can modify the explosion windup effect to be more obvious on its own. I'll try something involving shaking, scaling, and perhaps blending.

I think the difficulty is fine, its definitely making me feel like "next time I'm gonna make it farther" every time, but that isn't really what I want to talk about.
I felt like the game wasn't really doing a good job of introducing me to some of the enemy types very well.
What I mean by that is, that for the player to learn what a particular enemy does often times means to put yourself in harms way, as that is the only way to trigger their attack. Observing some enemies didn't convey very much information at all. I think it would be better to give some enemy types a "stupider" AI, at least in the first couple of rooms, so that their attack patterns are exposed to the player from a safe distance. Like make the blue knight attack thin air sometimes and the wall clingig bug drop down randomly without you standing underneath so that the player gets the chance to know about their ranges/patterns without having to die to them first. Like bone throwing enemies in castlevania that throw their bones regardless of where the player stands, a way to convey information basically. Some enemy types were already doing this, like the 8-way laser shooting guy and the poison mushroom thingy, I enjoyed their design a lot more in comparison.
I also liked the mage design a lot, after fighting the brown mage, the player immidiatelly knows what to expect once you encounter a blue one, the similarity in visual design conveys important gameplay information, and I liked that a lot.

When playing at first, it felt like the game wanted me to play "hit&run" style, but was already introducing elements that hindered my movement, like spikes, bats and the floating skulls. You might think about delaying the introduction of those elements for the second floor, so that the player can be better taught about hit&run tactics. Basically first reinforce the notion of hit&run by giving them room to maneuver and only after take that room away by introducing those elements that control space.

Good points, and I agree with most of what you've said. Knights slashing thin air is kind of silly, but I could see beetles falling on their own, and so on. I think it's not too much to ask that the player learn that standing in front of a knight = bad, but I'll try to keep trial-and-error to a minimum. Later enemies will be based off existing templates, at least to some degree. For example, the magus is based off the mage, as you mentioned. I'm expecting players to remember that things that carry swords can probably slash them, though.

Played a bunch, really digging the demo. Thanks for releasing it.

One thing: When I try to dash-slide through Knights, I almost always get hit and most of the time, they don't get stunned. I think it's worked correctly a few times, so I suspect the issue might be that the hitbox/sprite matchup for the knight is somehow confusing? I can slide-dash pretty reliably through all the other enemies.

Anyway, great game, really digging it. It has that "one more run!" quality already.

Thanks for playing! Dashing through knights is definitely possible, but trickier than it needs to be right now. I think the hitbox/hurtbox separation that I mentioned above should help fix this to some degree.

In other news, the Alpha Beta Gamer blog was nice enough to give this game a feature! I certainly appreciate it, since I'm content with never doing any PR ever

[Raku]

I'll give my two cents and say that I thought the skull explosion was fine, it can only surprise you the first time it happens anyway. I appreciate that this game has no hand-holding or assuming that the player isn't smart enough to understand things about it, I like that a lot.

[Low_Chance]

This might be an embarrassing question, but what is up with those seemingly-unbreakable red and blue pots scattered around? Are they purely decorative or do they have some purpose that is unlocked only by a certain item/spell/class?

I have to say I wasted a fair bit of time dancing around on one trying to get it to do something (or getting enemies to attack it, etc.)

Are these... troll pots? Included only to cause me emotional anguish? If so, hats off to you, sir.  

[Rat Casket]

Pretty sure the pottery, at least at this point, is decoration.

[Glyph]

Yeah, the pots/crates/etc. are just there for decoration. Or unending torment and long sleepless nights, whatever floats your boat. I was toying with the idea of a mimic enemy though, so the pots may see use eventually.

I got around to separating hitboxes/hurtboxes. It actually wasn't that bad, but I had to do some thinking to make sure I didn't overdo it. Nothing to show, so I'll ramble here instead

Every enemy already has a hurtbox that is also used for collision with terrain. Problem is, that box is generally several pixels inside the visual boundaries of the sprite, so that's why attacks that should have connected were whiffing. The solution is to keep that hurtbox how it is but then add a non-collisive, non-damaging hitbox. The first solution that came to mind was for each enemy to perform rectangular collision checks for attack-parented instances each step, but there was a problem. Initially, I was taking advantange of GM's collision events to handle whether or not an enemy is hit, but throwing out rectangles outside an enemy's mask isn't the same. Collision events are performed for every instance of the specified type in contact with the object, every step. Since enemies don't become invincible after being hit, they also store objects that have hit them already into an array so they don't get hit again. But it's perfectly fine for multiple instances to connect with the same enemy in the same step. The same couldn't be achieved with throwing out rectangles without a while loop through all existing attack instances for each enemy -- which will get really slow really fast. It's obviously a very convoluted and bad solution, so I dwelled on it for a bit before going ahead.

Anyway, the solution did end up being quite simple. Every enemy spawns a hitbox object when it's created, which has a mask different from (and larger than) their hurtbox. The object follows their target around invisibly and uses GM's collision events to check for attacks via collision events like before, then passes all the necessary info to the related enemy and it handles things from there. Such a simple solution, and I think it's already making things a lot better. You can hit a knight/wizard in the head now, for one thing

[Low_Chance]

Yeah, the pots/crates/etc. are just there for decoration. Or unending torment and long sleepless nights, whatever floats your boat. I was toying with the idea of a mimic enemy though, so the pots may see use eventually.

All joking aside, part of my confusion was that the pots being brownish red and blue made them seem like analogues of the red and blue apples, which led me to associate them with health and magic. In order to spare future morons from confusion, perhaps a different color set for pots? Or some other sign that they are not interactable?

[Glyph]

Been working on deities. They're mostly concepts so far, actual gameplay related stuff is up in the air. I have to balance flavor and usefulness for all of them, which means a lot of scrapped ideas. It's still a lot of fun to think about, though.

Yeah, the pots/crates/etc. are just there for decoration. Or unending torment and long sleepless nights, whatever floats your boat. I was toying with the idea of a mimic enemy though, so the pots may see use eventually.

All joking aside, part of my confusion was that the pots being brownish red and blue made them seem like analogues of the red and blue apples, which led me to associate them with health and magic. In order to spare future morons from confusion, perhaps a different color set for pots? Or some other sign that they are not interactable?

That's a good point, though no immediate fix comes to mind. That correlation gives me an idea for a "Transmute Pot" spell, though