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[Schwiggy]

I just played the latest available build. It's really enjoyable, and the difficulty is just right for a casual rogue player. 

[st33d]

Cheers.

Code is pretty much as playable as it was before with the addition of new features. However the framework for the new combat system needs be put in and the monster AI fixed once and for all.

The next build going up will have an debugging option in the menu to create any possible item in the player's inventory. This is for reproducing bugs - and it's already proved helpful in creating a framework for all existing animated items to belong to and future animated items with little effort.

[st33d]

Note to self: Change applyStun() to check that it's not applying a lower stun duration

[st33d]

NEW BUILD

NEW PHYSICS

NEW RENDERER

AI STILL SHIT

LINK IN MY SIGNATURE

CLEAR YOUR CACHE!

[baconman]

So far, I'm really really liking this new build. New Game option may need a selective cache-flushing command, as I only did one restart, got to the 3rd Floor and the sprites locked up. The GUI was still fully functional (and btw, EFFIN SWEET), I could equip/unequip stuff at that point. Also, may be an intended effect, but equipping flies on my minion caused about a 3-to-5 second delay in his appearing on a new story.

Traps are balanced about right from what I've played, although the pit traps are hard to avoid (as they should be!), and there was one level occurance where I had to repeatedly navigate to a teleporter trap until it decided to nicely warp me to a later part of the level I couldn't access otherwise or simply walk around the teleporter (it was in a tunnel between the rooms).

Physics are solid for the most part, although there was one time I clipped a far right wall by holding right and dropping (looking for hidden passages), and one time the minion dropped 5-7 tiles down, and got stuck INSIDE a corner tile (which may have been offscreen when he dropped). Nothing that rendered the game unplayable though, and it did feel a lot more smooth when not fighting which is good. RR always did do an impressive job with providing a sense of impact during combat.

The little rats and spiders make the scene feel a lot more alive and menacing, too. Tracing that lockup is all that really needs fixing. If it helps, my starting point from that floor was at the center of the dungeon. Seems a little predisposed to putting exits in the lower left, but it could just be the RNG and my mystical luck breaker. I've also lost 5 consecutive games of Monopoly on the exact same space too, so if your own experience here contradicts that, then happily disregard it.

Rock on!

[mokesmoe]

If you walk slowly onto any trap, it will fire and miss you, and then you can safely pass.
Teleporter traps can never break a level.

[Paul Jeffries]

I like this a lot.  I think it could do with performing an action automatically closing the menu, however - having to select the action and then manually close it isn't particularly intuitive and doesn't 'feel' as good as it should.  Also, it took me a while to figure out that to use exits I had to select an action - I assumed that since picking up items was done with the up key, things like going through doors would be as well - not a big deal since I worked it out in the end but it seems like an inconsistency in the design.

The only other crit I can think of is that it could be clearer what the three bars in the corner of the screen actually represent.  You figure out that the big one is health after you've been hit a few times but it'd be nice to have this marked on them somehow.

[st33d]

Physics bugs may be down to the minion not entering the level properly. I've used this new physics engine at work and it's rock solid. Any physics issues I'm certain are caused by elements outside of the physics engine.

Adding stairs to the up key has been mentioned before, but comes with the flaw that you wouldn't be able to pick up items in front of the stairs.

I've been requested to make the hot keys map to anything and multiple actions, but it's several months work. I'll just allow hot keys to be mapped to any key (including movement keys and the same key several times over) and set up some default hot key mappings for common actions. I disagree with auto-exiting the menu, that's what the hot keys are for. Once I've set up defaults it should feel more natural.

Thanks again for playing guys. I just need to focus on re-building the AI, then the graphics can be reworked (I lost half of the graphics when my old PC got killed by a virus) before adding new items and races. Source code will go up when I'm happy with the AI.

I notice that no one has mentioned anything about the new stun-stomp. You can still crush-kill if the victim has no room to be knocked back into. A stunned animation is on the way and new weapons will have stun and knockback modifiers.

[AlexMdle]

Adding stairs to the up key has been mentioned before, but comes with the flaw that you wouldn't be able to pick up items in front of the stairs.

Doors push items away virtue of a cold gust of wind or something :V

[st33d]

Tying the decision to exit the level into a commonly used key for movement, item collection and combat is fundamentally a bad idea when any other key would work just as well.

Leaving the level could be disastrous in terms of polymorph enchantment (the overworld removes polymorph), as well as the fact that besides items/monsters, entering a level creates it from scratch. Even if you return to a previous level. A fact I do not intend to change because chaos and dungeon restructuring itself in front of you is a game play element.

I imagine everybody has forgotten what I said about throwing chaos spells at walls.

I haven't.

[st33d]

Note to self: set SHOOT / MELEE / THROW states to weapons to define their options. I want to have a gun-sword (SHOOT+MELEE) and make it possible to throw daggers at monsters.

I'm uploading bug fixes at the moment as I get them done. Currently changing the AI so they have intelligent-brown-trousers-pathfinding. At the moment they just run blind and end up jittering at critical choice points.

[st33d]

CRITICAL UPDATE

I've installed new tech into the AI. The NPCs now use algorithm I've come up with that I've named Brown*. It's an adaptation of the A* algorithm designed to find the most efficient escape route.

Before, the monsters used very basic AI to avoid the player. Now they should have perfect information to avoid the player.

Please play test and do report any situations where the monsters get stuck and confused. Especially your minion. The AI is holding up the rest of the game and I really need to seal the deal.

Clear your cache - link in my signature.

[mokesmoe]

The AI feels good. Searching doesn't work, and my level 1 bow I gave myself one hit killed goblins, which felt too powerful. I guess bows are pretty rare normally though.

[st33d]

Cheers, I'll look into that.

Chests aren't twinkling either.

Weapons I need to balance after I've added the full list with stun and knockback. I'll try to add some bar-chart tools so the menu when it comes to the balancing phase.

Thanks for checking out the AI. If you can still pull off that trick where you can dupe them into running into your feet, I'd like to know. Hopefully the new fear AI should have taken care of that.

[mokesmoe]

I haven't been able to get any creatures to follow me up ladders anymore, not even goblins that would climb faster than you.

I did have my minion attack a secret passage that I didn't know existed, but I think I was right next to it when it happened. I fell right next to it so maybe the minion thought I tried to stomp it? I might have hit it without noticing though.

EDIT: My rune throwing seems to not work sometimes. The rune just dissipates in front of me instantly.

Though the use of my light/teleport bow, enemies that are teleported away still try to follow me, even through walls.

[st33d]

Okay, I've fixed those issues. Thanks for spotting them.

The minion considers secret passages enemies, I quite like the fact that sometimes he'll discover one for you because it teaches the player about secrets. It's like he's running about at the beginning of the game and showing you what to do. That's what a good sidekick does.

The rune throwing thing is weird. I did spot that runes weren't set to ignore decapitated heads, could that be it? May have been caused by another error. I'll watch for it.


Well. I'm actually ready to go and update the graphics now. A lot of them were lost when my old PC got eaten by a virus. When I decompiled my graphics library I discovered loads of content I'd added that isn't in my graphics folder. I need to rebuild that and add new animations for stun and put in the graphics for new races/items.

It's looking like I'll actually fucking finish this thing

[baconman]

Searching works fine. You just have to hold still a few seconds after you activate it. It picked up all secret passages (although many with nothing inside of them, but I still leveled up by breaking them open) and traps within about a 10-tile radius of the Rogue. Noticed that weaponry has become decisively scarce - through my 5 plays, only my first game featured weapon pickups, and that was just a dagger and a mace.

Might look at the New Game command, or again, it could be my typical RNG luck at work... lol

[st33d]

Searching was actually broken, I uploaded a fix.

I plan to implement distribution bubbles for content so that there are clusters of items and monsters together. It's just a basic scatter for now.

Currently working on graphics. I've built a new sprite sheet file, recreated a lot of missing graphics, updated old graphics and managed to draw all the poses for the Rakshasa monster.

[JobLeonard]

I enchanted a dagger with a teleport rune - it teleported away. So far so good. Then I ran across it again. When I picked it up it remained stuck in the level, in other words: an infinite source of daggers.

[st33d]

Well spotted. Will fix soon.