[Reaver]

Alright, it's time to talk about the final two classes...



First up is the Reaver. They're a Str/Int blend, and their starting spell, Magic Claw, works best with a good mix of both. Their main downside is their bad starting Dex (2), which makes casting spells slower than Magic Claw right off the bat a liability. But nobody's perfect, as they say.

Oh yeah, and if the last enemy remaining is a beetle, it will turn red and move faster now. Watch out!



And next is the Veteran. The Veteran is truly a powerful class, starting with 4 Str/Dex/Int and three relics equipped, each giving +1 to one of those stats. Not only that, but the Veteran has a very useful ability that increases the rarity of relics found from chests.

So, you may be thinking that this class is way overpowered -- why wouldn't you just play as a Veteran all the time?



...And here's the drawback. Veterans never gain stats from leveling up - only max HP and MP. So your power is strictly limited to what relics and spells you find. The Veteran's special ability helps with this, but it's an uphill battle.

Next up is altars and deities, for real. They're the last generic map feature!

Shops are mostly done:



They're pretty self-explanatory. They come in all varieties, from expensive rarities to bargain bins, with specialty shops in the mix as well. There will also be some less generic hard-coded shops that will appear at points. Next up: more work on gods -- yet another journey to Menu Hell!

There are also two new classes I have yet to mention. They are missing stuff but I hope to get them finished soon.

@coldrice: Thanks!
@SolarLune: yeah, Smash was the inspiration for the 'wall slam' effect and pause. I also gave enemies some minute hitstun after being attacked to make things feel more crunchy.

It's time to talk about some new stuff...



There's a very small probability of a wooden chest spawning in enemy encounters. These chests contain temporary buffs that might aid in the ongoing battle, so put them to good use if you're fortunate enough to find one. The agility potion increases the player's Dexterity by 10, allowing for greater mobility, critical damage, attack speed, and so on.



The might potion raises the player's Strength by 10. This pretty much guarantees a one-hit kill on every enemy, and they will probably be sent flying from the impact (maybe a little too far right now).



The potion of brilliance raises your Intelligence by 10, and also makes all your spells cost nothing to cast temporarily, so spam them to your heart's content. The timeout warning for this particular buff displays in 'danger yellow' since using a spell as it runs out may expend mana that you might rather have conserved.



Lastly, this mixed concoction raises all of your stats by 4. It has the longest duration of the bunch as well.

That's all for now as far as wooden chests are concerned. There will be more stuff to find in them whenever I think of it, but I'll leave that for you all to find in the next demo ('Before Summer' is the current approximation on that one...)

Lastly, I worked on the menu a bit:


I figured the menu song could do with being more cheerful. As a side note, the checkered background effect was achieved by recursively drawing squares based on some parameters and a lot of trig. It turned out just being a more resource-heavy rotated checker background, though. Oh well.

That's it for now. I'm working on shops, so maybe I'll have something to show for those soon.

Thanks for the heads-up SolarLune, it was a tedious process but I've finally managed to rehost all of the images in the thread on imgur (the only problem with it is that it goes down often, but oh well). I also took your advice and used Copy for file hosting, with Dropbox remaining as a mirror option. Now, hopefully, there shouldn't be any more problems

I should get some good work done in the next few weeks, at least after the holidays pass by. So expect to hear more from me. For now, here's another song I was working on, for a new area. I'm aiming to revamp or remake almost all of the existing music, but it's going to be a slow process. https://soundcloud.com/blockdude11/summoning-grounds

Time for a little update, I guess...



Drakes like to fly high above the ground and pelt you with exploding fireballs at their leisure. Their attacks are pretty easy to avoid, but will swiftly incinerate any flammable bears in their path. On top of that, their tough hides resist physical and fire damage. Drakes probably won't normally appear in the cave area.

And also in the gif, you can see the bear using up- and down-angled attacks. These allow for better reach (especially in the air), and the downward attack has the added benefit of bouncing you off of opponents. The actual animations for these attacks are just placeholder, they should end up looking better soon.

If you're asking if the project is dead, no. I just didn't have so much free time this semester so it's on the back burner. During the upcoming break I was hoping to get back to work, though.

Btw, good job mushyisland! I'm glad you made it past the (inordinately large) learning curve.

"no immediate fix comes to mind"

change the color of the pots bruh.

Never!

Yeah I missed the whole '1 dungeon only' thing from the vid. I actually wouldn't have minded multiple procedurally generated dungeons, if it were done right (Pikmin 2 instead of TES).

Too early to tell if it's a good thing or a really bad thing. Actually, same thing applies to the entire game, I s'pose. Here's hoping it's a return to form, something like DeS maybe (I would say DkS but pretty sure this game isn't going to be open-world like that)

Didn't really notice any latency, except on rare occasions. I think it's still peer-to-peer though, so it might be more hit-or-miss than if it was truly server based. My brother and I played a whole lot of online team battles together, and finished the final team event match as well, on hard (it was quite unforgiving, we ended up going with a vampiric and auto-heal set and both playing as Ness). Team battles online were fun, but were 2-minute timed matches instead of stock, which was a bit annoying, especially when people would abuse the timer.

The Melee>Brawl argument is a pretty common one, probably soon to mold to Melee>Smash4>Brawl. You have to understand that this is a competitive viewpoint though, and that Brawl and Smash4 will probably blow their respective predecessors out of the water for the average player. Only for a serious player will the subtle options that make Melee a better competitive game matter whatsoever, and even then, those options (Wavedashing! L-cancelling!) are invoked in arguments as though they are glorious design choices beyond reproach instead of esoteric mechanics that I personally am glad to be rid of. Also most Project M players that I know are assholes who do talk of these things as though they are perfect and immovable, so that doesn't help my viewpoint at all.

It feels good after so many years of playing Brawl to move on to something else. When it comes to lasting appeal, I can only hope that it will stay as interesting to me as all the games before it, but since I don't see any glaring issues as of yet (off on a tangent but: nothing on the scale of tripping), I really think it will. And I think, unless you've been secretly praying for wavedashing to make a return after all these years, that core experience shouldn't disappoint. And if you have been praying for wavedashing to return, go play Project M already...

High praise aside, Pac-Land is the ugliest looking stage ever. At least it's kind of a fun one (Not that scrollers are great to begin with, but its hazards aren't too obtrusive). Also it fortifies my baseless rancor toward Pac-Man.

Yeah, or even

if (abs(cos(x/5 * pi)) == 1) ...

 

if ((x mod 5) == 0) ...

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/dewitos.asp

 


@gimmy: only a majority of Sonic games suck. Generations was actually good. But now it seems like they took everything they learned with that game and threw it out the window. Oh well, next time

Thanks for uploading the jar. The browser version didn't work on Opera for me.

I made it all the way through the dungeon. It seemed a bit daunting at first, but once I figured out the dungeon gimmick it wasn't too bad. I was playing with no sound on, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt, but it seemed difficult to tell that the fountain room was rotating. I'm assuming some audial cue played when walking behind the western tree that I missed though. The final fight was a little tricky, as it was hard to tell when the slugs would attack or veer away, so it was difficult to prioritize. Maybe if the groups which were imminently dangerous would show that somehow? Lastly, a small gripe: the color palette for the final fight and in a few other rooms made it difficult to tell what was going on exactly. Maybe if the ground colors were more desaturated in these areas it would work out.

Glad to see some progress on this. I'm glad you're still having fun making it

I'm excited to play another dungeon, but I can't get it to run in-browser, so I'll have to wait for you to update the .jar link. Let me know when that's ready, though!

I was bored today

question: do you two live away from a major city? i just walked to my local target (in the chicago loop) and they had ten copies just lying around

i'd think it would be harder in a major city, not easier, to find a copy. if the opposite is true, then that's a major whack in the head for me

Small college town, so I guess supply is low and demand is high in my case. Guess this makes me an outlier, though.

As for the cut-down argument, I agree in some capacity. No item commonality settings (other than on/off) or advanced options for Smash Run do leave something to be desired. But as for the content that's there, beyond the nitpicks -- 50-some fighters, an abundance of stages, and all that other shit under Games & More has given me plenty of stuff to do. Also 100something challenges to complete if that's your thing. The online play is pretty impressive as well, unless you run into someone playing off of a toaster. It's great to play with my brother and a friend with perfect connection when we're hundreds of miles away though, and same goes for anonymous matches.

I do feel like there's a lot to miss out on if you don't have friends that have the game, though. I've pretty much gotten every use out of it thus far, from StreetSmash to local Smash Run, so I don't feel like I'm missing much. This is a game reliant on friends, though, so this almost goes without saying.

Yeah, I was quite sure before the game came out that it was one I had to preorder. I'm not a fan of the concept of preordering in general, but I was definitely right about it - all copies of the game were gone from my town in a night, and subsequent shipments emptied quickly too (I know this since I had a friend who wanted to obtain a physical copy, but eventually he gave up and got it through the eShop).

Same goes for the Wii U version, I will once again predict (it's a safe bet, though). I went and preordered that one tonight. Nintendo has all my money on lockdown

And some Wii U version differences:




...Event mode! Board game mode!? 8-player! Stage editor! Mewtwo!

> Wonder aloud where Guts Mountain could be, and also contemplate the whereabouts of the seemingly elusive Death Kings. Hope that you are secretly a Death King and that you will find a badass scythe or something later on to cement that ideal. Ask demon hat if witch coven has any Death King scythes laying around.

> Determine surface's gender