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[Destral]

That hex-based one reminds of the Giant's Causeway. Looking good!

[Calum Bowen]

jus' dropping by to say this looks fun and i've had a listen to some of sam's work for it and it's gonna sound as good as it looks.

[Chris Pavia]

That hex-based one reminds of the Giant's Causeway. Looking good!

Nice, I haven't heard of that before, thanks for the link! Into my reference folder it goes...

jus' dropping by to say this looks fun and i've had a listen to some of sam's work for it and it's gonna sound as good as it looks.

Thanks!

[Sam English]

i've had a listen to some of sam's work for it and it's gonna sound as good as it looks.

Thanks, Calum! You're the man.

[Chris Pavia]

Final 2 environments:

[Chris Pavia]

Got bored of always seeing a random stream of tokens on the board, so I implemented a system where I can design patterns that act like a mask, and a bunch of knobs to tweak to control how random the tokens in each pattern are. Currently in the middle of implementing patterns for all 40 enemies, most of which have multiple patterns in sequence.

[Chris Pavia]

New video showing off the environments in motion:

[Franklin's Ghost]

Environments are looking lovely and like the curve you've given them

[eigenbom]

very nice

[Chris Pavia]

Thanks guys!

[Inanimate]

Hexagons. So many hexagons.

[Chris Pavia]

They aren't just for sci fi anymore!

[Chris Pavia]

I've been neglecting to mention things regarding the redesign I described earlier. I implemented an extensive redesign I described previously to fix the problem of never looking at the characters (energy meter, split between battle phase/puzzle phase etc). When I went to do some user testing however, everyone liked the original version better! They felt the new game seemed to play slower, and using combos to directly attack enemies was just too much fun compared to using them to power up on energy bar which activates the battle phase. In hindsight this seems obvious, but that goes with being too deep into your game. There were some small things that were an improvement (simplifying progression formulas), and I was still making progress on the backgrounds, so it wasn't all bad.

So I went back to the drawing board to fix the problem while keeping the original gameplay. I've had another idea for fixing it in the back of my head for awhile, but I didn't want to use it unless I had to because it makes the game look even closer to that TheatRythm game. But taking the puzzle and moving it up into the area with the characters and enemies was the most straightforward solution. So now the puzzle pieces come on the board from behind the enemy, pass over it and down the alley, terminating directly in front of the characters. I tied each rail of the puzzle to the character it ends in front of, which looks cool when a skull token gets to the end of the rail in front of the archer for example, then explodes damaging that character. Having the tokens obscure the enemies kind of sucks, but I partially fixed it by reducing the number of enemies in each encounter from 4 to just 1, so that each enemy can be larger and more readable. Plus when the enemies or player use a special attack, the puzzle board disappears and you can see everyone clearly.

As I mentioned on twitter, I'm going to try a different way of doing the special attacks than what I originally planned. They will be very short, simple, button-mashing mini games like in WarioWare or the Mario and Luigi RPG games. For example, if the healer uses his Raise Dead ability to revive a character, the puzzle fades out and a ghost will appear in the field and the player will have a short amount of time to swipe furiously to lead the ghost to the dead character. If he makes it in time, the character is revived. Or if an enemy uses it's shockwave ability, the player will have to press a jump button at just the right time to get the party to jump over the shockwave, or else they'll take damage. I've implemented a few of them so far, and they are a nice change of pace from the puzzle gameplay, although I have to tune it so they don't occur too frequently.

[Chris Pavia]

Player Character Special Abilities:
Each character has 3 specials that are gained at specific levels. Making combos fills up each characters energy meter (in addition to the normal attacking functions of combos), when it is full it unlocks one ability at a time. So, to activate the 3rd special, the character must fill up the energy meter 3 times without activating their lower level specials prior (to keep them from using them too often).

Each special is a simple button-pressing mini game that lasts about 5 seconds on average. The Fighter's specials all relate to dealing damage directly. The Mage's all involve manipulating the puzzle board. The Healer can heal, revive, and buff players. The Archer debuffs enemies.

I'm aiming to tune it so there will be 1-3 specials used per battle.

-Fighter
#1 - Fighter slowly jabs at enemy, pressing the attack button at the moment of impact does a critical (more damage), and increases the speed of the attack animation. Ends up being a machine-gun like attack if the player times the hits well.
#2 - The fighter jumps into the air, and repeatedly slams down onto the enemy. Each slam does damage, but if the player taps the attack button at the moment of impact, damage is greatly increased.
#3 - Similar to #1, but several different attacks are randomized in sequence (each with a different anim length) so that judging the timing is more difficult (and will hopefully look like a berserk/frenzy attack).

-Mage
#1 - The puzzle board token scrolling speed is reduced greatly for 10 seconds.
#2 - The puzzle board freezes for 5 seconds, and the player can tap on any tokens to turn them into Mage tokens. Used to set up a powerful  Mage attack.
#3 - The puzzle board freezes for 5 seconds, and the player can tap on any character's base token (the blank round ones) to turn it into the corresponding character's attack token. Sets up massive combos.

-Healer
#1 - 5 seconds to rapidly tap on any/all characters to restore a small amount of HP with each tap.
#2 - A ghost appears on the field, and a button appears in front of each KO character. Tapping a button makes the ghost move toward that character. If the ghost reaches the character before time is up, he/she is revived.
#3 - Tap any/all characters to create a weak shield around them that will absorb some damage. Continue tapping to increase the strength of the shield.

-Archer
#1 - Poison arrow that deals chip damage periodically for the rest of the fight. The player quickly swipes to fire arrows, with the direction of the arrows determined by the swipe vector. A target appears at a random point around the enemy. The player must hit the target once to inflict the poison status, and each successive hit increases the chip damage. Each time the target is hit, it switches to a new spot and shrinks slightly.
#2 - Arrow that reduces enemy attack power. The interaction is the same as the poison arrow, but the target is smaller and intermittently blinks to a new location.
#3 - Armor shredding arrow that reduces enemy defense. Interaction is the same as previous, but the target is smaller and always moving.

[Chris Pavia]

Finished up the Game Over logic today. Now when the party is KO'ed or they beat the final boss, the Game Over UI is brought up, stats are tracked, displayed, and used to create an overall score based on performance (for things like leader boards and whatnot). The specifics of the scoring formula and stats being tracked will probably get another pass after hitting beta.

[Chris Pavia]

Updated the special abilities post above, fleshing out the Archer and Mage abilities.

[Calum Bowen]

really beautiful environments and more great music - serious nostalgia in the rpg battles and it looks like it's got a solid puzzle mechanic!

[Destral]

It's good to see you making tons of progress at a quick pace! The new special abilities sound very cool, I look forward to firing hundreds of arrows with the archer's special, even if most of them miss :D

[Chris Pavia]

Thanks guys!

The metal version of the soundtrack is up for your listening pleasure: http://vikingguitar.bandcamp.com/album/dungeon-hearts-metal-soundtrack

As for special abilities progress, I've got 2 more to implement for the player characters, then it's on to the enemy special abilities. Once those are done all the gameplay will have been implemented (although needing lots of tuning and polish).

[Chris Pavia]

Updated the fighter's special attack descriptions in the post above dedicated to specials. I've also designed it so that each character has a distinct style of interaction:
Fighter: Timed button presses
Mage: All puzzle-based interactions (the puzzle disappears for everyone else's specials)
Healer: Button mashing
Archer: Swiping