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[JasonPickering]

Okay. got a build for everyone to test out. you can fight eyes and witches, give it a go. one thing I did remove as a test for this is health. 1 hit and you are dead. it actually upped the tension and I was quite surprised how different it feels and I think I might keep it this way, possibly adding a protective shield pickup which will absorb one hit. the game is all about placement and tactics now. witches are still a little random in that if two spaces are the same distance from you they will randomly choose one. I might need to change that. so give it a try and please leave some feedback. I feel I am getting pretty close to being able to nail the mechanics down and start creating content. then I am going to start making a lot more art/rooms/guys and will start searching for a musician.

Try it

Note: there is a bug where sometimes 2 monsters will be placed on top each other. I am trying to get this corrected, but haven had much luck yet.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Liking the changes, adds more strategy but kept dying from the witches when two blocks away and couldn't really figure out why? Also think the pickup shield for one hit will be a good addition. Not a fan of the navigation block highlights. Feels a bit too intrusive and after I realised I could move two spaces it felt unnecessary. Also the red hit border when attacking the witch is on top of the character when I think it would look better below.

[st33d]

I think this works well.

There needs to be a pause between getting hit and the kill screen obviously. (Otherwise you don't see yourself getting hit.)

I did come unstuck however when I was in a room with two eyes around a corner and there was no available option other than suicide. I imagine spells could be used to trigger a monster to chase in such a situation.

It would be interesting to see what it would be like to fight a monster that moves a bit like a chess knight (they move to a diagonal but do so in an L-shaped step).

[JasonPickering]

thanks for the feedback guys.

Franklins ghost: yeah the witches have a ranged attack. they can strike you when you are one or two spaces away even across water. I think I need to show this better, perhaps have them shoot a fireball at you or something. do you think that would help?

yeah I dont know what style to do the navigation blocks in yet. one thing I am going to add is a toggle. clicking the player will turn the highlights off and on. allowing some people to use it. oh and the red border is actually under the witch, it just so happens that it lines up with the orange band on her hat and makes it really noticeable.

st33d: yeah there is still a lot of polish that needs to go in getting timings right, adding effects. the players always face the same direction to, even when attacking something behind them.

I have had that eye problem once. I am still trying to figure out what to do with it. if I should randomly place monsters, or would it be better, to custom build each room. I can build them fairly fast, but i would need to make a lot of rooms. I am already custom designing the rooms, but not the monster placement.

I think I might do something like that for the knight idea. It will probably "teleport" to make the programming easier.
 

[Franklin's Ghost]

Think the added effect of the witch attacking will really help and make it clearer. Also think the toggle for navigation block highlights will be a nice feature.

[JasonPickering]

what did you think of the actual design of the highlights? just the outline. do you think something else might be better?

[Franklin's Ghost]

Think the outline is ok and get's across the movement. I'd try also seeing how it looks with the whole tile being darkened with a slight tint, so it's a bit more subtle. But maybe that won't work at getting things across as well.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah I have tried many things so far. It's hard to see what works best. I hope to have a new build up tomorrow with a few fixes and a third enemy. The rat that moves every other turn.

[JasonPickering]

Hey Guys. Wondering if anyone would like to test out a newer build? I completely redid the movement engine, to make the gameplay a little more tactical and was hoping I could get some people to try it out and then answer questions to help me out, instead of just posting to the forums. so like beta beta testers.

[Glyph]

I could go for some testing.

[Franklin's Ghost]

I'm happy to test too.

[Byrono]

I'd Like to test.

[JasonPickering]

thanks guys. i will be sending out a build after I get potions in and working. hopefully this weekend.

[JasonPickering]

might as well talk about my current goals. see what you guys think. some of this might be repeated from earlier.

basically an enemy was dangerous if there were an odd number of spaces between you and the monster. a skip turn would make the game easier, but would completely  break the game. So I set out with that in mind and came up with a solution taken from many tabletop RPGs. basically your main character has a Move range and an attack range. usually the move range is 2 and the attack range is 1.

the player can move 1 or 2 spaces in a cardinal direction. this means they need to think about how they move to get the enemies into position. I also upped the tension by giving you no health, so one hit kills you and combat is deterministic. enemies never miss.

enemies have also changed. the current build has 3.

a witch: has an attack range of two and paths towards the character.
a Rat: has an attack range of one and moves every other turn( might swap the every other turn to the witch)
an Eye: has an attack range of one and only moves towards the player, when the player is directly in line with it.

each enemy has different AI, and each needs to be handled differently.

my next goal is the addition of potions. they will be one time use and bestow a bonus until the next turn. some examples are +1 move, +1 Range and Shielded from damage .

also I will be adding Traps. but these are not ordinary traps like in most roguelikes. these will be quite obvious tiles. the first will be a spike trap. it will pop up spikes every 5th turn damaging anyone standing on the tile. this can be good to lure monsters on to the spikes.

finally I am toying with some kind of class/race bonus. where each time a player performs a specific action(like killing an enemy) a bar is filled, when the bar is filled they receive a free potion. it will always be the same type of potion. It might be a combination where race decides the action required and class decides the potion received. like a ranger always get a + move and a warrior always gets a + attack.

Edit:
Today's Screenshot Saturday

[JasonPickering]

hey guys. Looking for some feedback on an art thing. do you think the levels work better with or without the checkered pattern?





the main purpose of the checkers is to tell where enemies are space wise. is it really needed?

[happymonster]

I like the checkers.

[st33d]

More subtle, subtle occasional floor textures would be good as well.

[JasonPickering]

so you guys think a checkered pattern with slight variations in the tiles?

[Franklin's Ghost]

Yeah I like the checkers and think slight variations on tiles would work well

[JasonPickering]

thanks guys. I am redoing the entire floor loading system so its good to get this out of the way now.