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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsThe Enchanted Cave 2 [Win/OSX/Linux/iOS/Android]
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Author Topic: The Enchanted Cave 2 [Win/OSX/Linux/iOS/Android]  (Read 18725 times)
dustinaux
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« on: June 18, 2014, 11:06:41 AM »



Premium Version:




Background: The Enchanted Cave 2 is a sequel to my most successful flash game The Enchanted Cave which launched in 2009, and has several millions of game plays across the web.  I finished a mobile port of the game for Android and iOS in January 2014 for some necessary experience in launching mobile games.

Following a successful kickstarter I quit my programming job to go full time indie during this game's development!

The Game

The Enchanted Cave 2 is an RPG with heavy roguelike elements featuring a randomly generated 100-floor dungeon of monsters and treasure. During a typical run you'll find both normal treasure and artifacts, with the difference being normal treasures are for that run only, while artifacts and other stat increases, exp, and gold you keep permanently and can use on future runs when you successfully escape. (Artifacts inspired by the Ancient Cave from Lufia II)

Music

The legendary Grant Kirkhope is writing the music for this game. Grant is the composer for games such as Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye 007, Kingdoms of Amalur, and many more.

You can hear one his tunes for the game in

.

Battles



Battles are fought automatically, with the default being your hero and the monster attacking one another until one dies. You'll be able to use consumable items or magic during battles, and also have the choice of running away. The game is most definitely not a hack-through-every-monster-you-see game. Instead, monsters are stationary and game strategy relies on determining whether or not the reward of fighting that monster is worth the health lost, along with the tactical use of equipment and item/spell usage.

Examples:

Treasure chest and a stat gem are behind a weak rat --> Fight it!

A stat gem is behind a goblin dealing medium damage --> Stat gems are permanent, so it may be worth it if you have the health...

Small bag of gold behind an orc that deals big damage --> Ignore it!

Another orc guards a passage you can't see the end to --> Fight it? Ignore it? Use a powerful consumable item against the orc? Use an item or spell to skip the orc? Use an item or spell to see reveal what's at the end of the passage? Plenty of options will open up to you based on your play style.


The Town



The town is built around this mysterious cave attracting travelers from all over to try their luck at finding some treasure in the cave.  A couple explorers go missing in the cave each month, but the greed for rare and powerful artifacts is enough motivation to take the risk for most explorers.  Although the number of missing explorers has been on the rise recently...

The town provides a bar for the townsfolk and travelers to congregate to share stories or offer quests you can take on to complete in your next run through the cave.  There is also a museum to display any artifacts you've found in addition to acting as a renting service for taking an artifact with you into the cave if you've got the cash.



Crafting

A crafting system is planned to provide plenty of customization.  Use ingredients found to create health potions to let you explore more that run, or create a better weapon, or enchant a weapon or piece of armor with a specific ability.  You'll even be able to enchant a normal item into an artifact to keep permanently.



A few more gifs:

Magic Pickaxe Item:


Secret Areas:


Skill Tree:


Telekinesis Spell:


Updates

I plan to post descriptive updates weekly in addition to little things here and there so stay tuned!  Follow me on Twitter to keep up on the latest TEC2 news!  Grin

(This post is regularly modified with new screenshots, check the end of the thread for the latest stuff!)
« Last Edit: August 17, 2015, 10:23:13 AM by dustinaux » Logged

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dustinaux
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« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2014, 07:04:16 PM »



Added stat gems, and got a start on combat.  I should have an update on that with a nice animated gif or two pretty soon!
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« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2014, 05:04:33 PM »

Week 9 Update

Combat, treasures, and stat gems!



I’m very much for allowing the player to play as quickly as they want.  It takes a bit of extra programming work sometimes to do so, but I think the experience is so much nicer when you don’t have to needlessly wait.

You’ll notice in the gameplay gif that there’s no mandatory waiting on opening chests or grabbing gems.  There are still animations, but they are dynamically based on the player’s position, so you can open a chest and immediately move on.  To go along with this quickness, the game data – the items and stats – are updated instantly when you activate a chest or stat gem, despite the animation appearance, so the state of the game is instantly advanced.  Stat gems simply have to be walked through to collect them, as shown by the final move of clicking on the chest and the stat gem being collected as well.
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« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2014, 05:31:50 PM »

I really enjoyed the first Enchanted Cave. I'll be following this one.  Smiley Hand Thumbs Up Right
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dustinaux
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« Reply #4 on: June 27, 2014, 01:56:53 PM »

@andrewjb Awesome, the sequel should be a lot better! Grin

Been working on the new inventory scrolling today!  Here's a 8 second youtube vid:


The goals in mind were to make the UI as useful as possible so that you can find the item you want quickly.  Icons overlap one another on the sides to stay out of the way but still give an impression at a glance as to how many items you have in the current tab category.
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« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2014, 09:55:15 AM »

Crafting!



I’ve been working a lot on some UI stuff, with most of it being the crafting system.  Here’s the basics on how the system works:  Ingredients can have one or two properties each with an amount of “potency” or “power”, and you’ll be able to combine any two ingredients to create a potion of your choice with up to two of the properties.  Two ingredients with the same property will combine their powers to give a bonus to that enchantment.  Equipment will be able to be enchanted at altars in the dungeon basically the same way as potions but with the additional ingredient of the item you are enchanting.

This formula I hope will prove to be very simple and easy to use, and should allow plenty of options for passive skills to be learned to improve your crafting, like the ability to craft potions with more enchantments.
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« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2014, 06:06:31 PM »

Flamestrike, the first magic spell has been added!



The UI shown in these gifs are getting much closer to what the final look will be.  In order to get the magic working, I had to complete some basic functionality for the hotkey bar at the bottom, where you’ll be able to assign any item or spell to use or equip with a single click/tap/button press.

Graphically I’ve reworked a lot of the colors in the game to unify the palette, as well as improved my pixel-scaling script I use for some of the graphics for cleaner and smoother edges of sprites.  I've added some smaller wooden chests to be for crafting ingredients only to help you decide if a chest is worth it or not, and I’ve moved the “found item window” down to the lower left more out of the way, because clicking it will take you directly to that item in your inventory:



Also got a basic minimap added to show the current floor and player position.  I’m thinking about having it clicked bring up a larger, more detailed view of the floor, where treasures and monsters are displayed if you have the right items or magic spell to see them.  Also thinking about a fog of war type deal in conjunction with items or spells to affect that as well, but I’m not too sure on that just yet!
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« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2014, 09:03:52 AM »

Took a break last week, but I’m back at it this week, having been mainly working on getting the shops up and working. Here’s a screenshot of the progress:



If you have played the mobile version of Enchanted Cave, you’ll notice the format’s basically the same. The shop’s inventory is up top with prices and your own inventory is at the bottom. Just need to add some buy and sell buttons in the right area.

Shops will likely be on every 10th floor, with an exception on the first floor probably. Shopkeepers are mostly members of the town who have chosen to set up shop in the cave. Each one will be different, unlike the first Enchanted Cave which was perhaps a bit unrealistic. Smiley
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« Reply #8 on: July 30, 2014, 09:46:01 PM »

I enjoyed the flash version, and I ended up buying the first one for my android. I'm excited to see how this one turns out.
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« Reply #9 on: August 07, 2014, 03:02:49 PM »

Working on some more of the town art this week, and finishing up some random bits of stuff here that were left hanging, like equipment and hotkey functionality.  I spent all day yesterday improving a tool to convert PyxelEdit maps to Tiled maps which should speed up my workflow.  I’ll be sharing that tool and writing a good bit about that after this post in case anyone is interested!

Here’s an update on the title screen and town.  Since the last tiny screenshot of the town there’s been a massive overhaul in the color palette into something that works better for the mood of the game, and together as a whole, I think.

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dustinaux
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« Reply #10 on: August 12, 2014, 04:32:39 PM »

I was a little behind on my weeks so here’s a quick update of just some more screenshots of stuff I’ve been working on!


A shot of the bar / inn where all of the travelers gather and you can find quests to take.


Another shot a little south from there


Spiders and shrooms!
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« Reply #11 on: August 12, 2014, 04:38:52 PM »

Overall this looks really cool.

One really nitpick comment.  The rocks sprits that form the edge of the cave interiors look like they have outdoor lighting (light coming from upper left).  It gives a bit of a weird effect.
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« Reply #12 on: August 12, 2014, 09:17:17 PM »

Overall this looks really cool.

One really nitpick comment.  The rocks sprits that form the edge of the cave interiors look like they have outdoor lighting (light coming from upper left).  It gives a bit of a weird effect.

Thanks!  You're right the cave has lighting like that, but I think I like it that way since it's a bit more visually interesting than flat ambient light everywhere, even it's a bit unrealistic.  Realistically there isn't a light source shown anywhere so it should be pitch black.  Torches and dynamic lighting from them would be awesome, but that would be way too much extra work for what I'm looking for. Smiley
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« Reply #13 on: August 22, 2014, 10:56:20 PM »

What’s this button do?



Secret areas are now working! I need to populate the rooms with more hidden stuff including some objects to add to the story, but they are working great with map creation now. The blue area of the secret room in the minimap won’t be there by default but rather by using certain items or spells.

Also, I don’t know if I was ever up front about an experience system in the sequel but there is definitely one planned. Something to reward you for all those monsters you’ve defeated time and again. Here’s a sneak peek at the skill tree in good ol’ pencil and paper format:

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« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2014, 08:26:34 PM »

More like a few days instead of a week, but last week’s update was late so here’s a quick catch up. Been working on shop functionality, and giving the UI a slightly new look. I’m pretty confident in making some great functional UI that’s quick and simple to use, but making it look good is entirely different! Regardless, here’s the updated screens of the shop and equipment:





Next update should be some skill tree stuff!
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« Reply #15 on: September 03, 2014, 12:18:39 PM »

This week focused on customization!  TEC1 didn’t really have much in the way of customizing your character to your own play style with stats, but the sequel definitely will.

First up, the skill tree!  There will be an experience system in TEC2 for each defeated enemy, with a number of skill points rewarded to spend in the skill tree.  Maybe 3-5, possibly adjustable with in-game perks; the actual amount will have to be decided when I’m balancing everything out.



The tree is broken up into 3 sections of magic, combat, and miscellaneous skills, so if for example you’re focusing on being a mage, you really will only want to look at the topmost section where all of the magic-related skills are, like magic power and max MP.  Magic spells themselves will be unlockable through the skill tree, which I think will work much better than finding them in spells like the original game.  Spells can play a big role, so I think giving the player the choice of when to acquire certain spells is much preferable to the luck of finding them in a chest.

I also finished some implementation of the “choose gems” as I’ve been calling them.  There are regular stat gems that boost a certain stat, but TEC2 will also feature multicolored gems which can be used as any stat you want, offering more character customization:



Lastly, I’ve been streaming some of the game development on Twitch lately!  (Here’s my channel!).  If you’re unfamiliar with Twitch, it’s largely a streaming service for watching people play games, but there’s some developer streams as well.  I basically stream whatever’s on my computer screen and talk about whatever I’m doing and viewers can talk to me and one another in the chat window.  When streaming I’m always open to any questions about TEC2 or games in general so come hangout!  I don’t have a schedule of when I stream, but will try to give at least a half-hour heads up on my Twitter, and will stream something for at least a couple of hours, so hopefully you can catch me on sometime if you’re interested.
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« Reply #16 on: September 10, 2014, 07:24:16 PM »

Was working on a bit of random things this week, like a little title screen fade into the gameplay:



The specifics will be altered later to include a character select after clicking play, and probably a continue button to quickly continue with the last character used which would look like the above.

A good bit of work was also done on the bar/inn interior where most of the NPCs will be.  No NPCs inside yet, but some basic furniture is done.  Still a lot to do, though: (not an in-game screenshot)

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« Reply #17 on: September 11, 2014, 04:23:28 AM »

I love the first part of this game.
You are doing great, but why did you changed artstyle? It's now low-detailed, ragged, looks worst than in original game.
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« Reply #18 on: September 11, 2014, 05:59:54 AM »

I love the first part of this game.
You are doing great, but why did you changed artstyle? It's now low-detailed, ragged, looks worst than in original game.

There will be an option to turn off the filter in effect to have crisp pixel art.  I think you're in a tiny minority of today's gamers that prefer the pixel art. :/ But you'll have the option to have the pixels back for the "retro" look.
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« Reply #19 on: September 11, 2014, 06:03:12 AM »

Omg, this is just procedural in-game filter? Can you please show some screenshot without the filter? Grin
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