Changed the rainbow wizard's unicorn so that it hones in on the nearest enemy.

Currently working on the dark wizard's power. Should be fun.

EDIT: So the behavior's a little odd but I kind of like the effect it gives.

And so far, it's not too OP. There seem to be a few ways to avoid it at the current gravitational pull.

Saw this in the Screenshot Saturday thread. Looks awesome! The Mode7-esque map is a nice touch.

Thanks!

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Just some little fixes tonight. Still trying to get a grasp on what I want to polish before trying to release the paid alpha. Part of me wants to redo the title screen and part of me thinks it's fine. I'm enjoying the minimalist menu setup because it looks clean and is functional at the same time and I don't want to ruin that with a complex logo.

Sound is also a place that's severely lacking right now. On top of all of the sounds being (hopefully) placeholders, something like 80-90% of all actions are soundless currently. Need to fix that but probably will just include more placeholders for now.

Tonight's fixes:

- Added a screen shake to a power for a wizard that I've only announced to testers so far.
- Put the invisi-wizard back in the game with the ability to turn himself invisible temporarily.

Man, I haven't kept up with this in ages. Looking back a few pages, I'm liking this new typography a lot more than previous attempts.

Okay, finally got the chain working for the flower wizard's power.



That's been on my to-do list forever so it's nice to finally have gotten that done haha.

Still need to work on the flower's movement though. It's still pretty meh.

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Also, finally showed this off today (it's been locked off in public builds since it was added).



The plan is to eventually add little profiles for the wizards, describing their personality or something. Other than that, it'll be a database of wizards, their powers, and who requested/designed them, if anyone.

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And...considering I started so late in the day and got distracted a LOT during that time, I think I'm done for the remainder of my first day back to development.

Good to see you back working on it.

Thanks! Yeah, life got me down for a bit but I'm back at it.

I've changed my mind on local multiplayer games. There are all these games festivals and get-togethers these days where these games really shine, and I think some games just play better locally than over the net. This looks like one of those games, so I personally wouldn't bother doing an online multiplayer version.

Submitting the beta/final to all the local multiplayer get-togethers could also be great exposure for you.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'd originally intended for the game to be. I have had plans since I began making it to submit it to all sorts of festivals/get-togethers.

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First update since returning to work on it. Apparently 90% of the stuff on my to-do list related to polish pertains to graphics, so that's what I'm working on! Unfortunately, this GIF also shows off the side-effects of locking powers to tiles when I don't lock player movement to tiles in a pretty horrible manner.

Other than a few graphical tune-ups, I think I have 3 wizards I need to fix powers for, two of which were redacted, so I'm going to get those and the graphical tune-ups done and then publish it before I have time to ruin my chances by adding 6 more wizards.

It's been too long since I've worked on the game. 2 months. Fuck that!

Back to work today. I started working on improving some of the graphics. Right now, I want to pick up where I left off, polishing some stuff, making a new trailer and then launching a paid alpha. I think I'm going to launch the alpha for $3, move it to $4 for beta and finish off at $5. Might change that in the future but right now, that's a place I feel people will be comfortable paying for it. I'm also thinking about offering a "design a wizard" option for $10 more than the price at the time.

The introduction of single-player will mark beta whenever that happens.

Also, I've had time to think it over and, during beta, there's a good possibility I'll add online multiplayer but it won't happen before single-player does. It'll also probably be direct IP connections. It's only a 4-player game and I genuinely just don't have the resources to manage a server for it at this point in time. Maybe if it sells well enough, I'll get enough money to pay for a computer to dedicate as a master server.

Anyways, if all goes well, I didn't have a lot I wanted to polish before attempting to launch the alpha so I'm not aiming for it to be far from now. A month tops, and that's only if I decide that I want to add a few more things on top of polishing it.

Build 19 is up!

Full changelog:

- Fixed Naked wizard's power so that the radius disappears on death.
- Made barnacle wizard's power level-wide.
- Reduced gold wizard's stun to 5 seconds.
- Orb spawn rate changed to be variable based on amount of players.
- Added a setting in options so that you can change how much power is lost at death (defaults to 1).
- Lightning wizard's lightning now strikes at the position where the power was activated, as opposed to the first collision with the tilemap.
- Earth wizard's boulder now goes away after 5 seconds if it manages to get stuck somewhere.
- Added the following wizards:

• Potato
• Generic
• Bacon
• Egg
• Fog

- ...and one more wizard.
- Modified peppermint wizard's attack spawn candy canes across the 3 tiles in front of him.
- Level selection arrows now disappear if you're at the end of the list.
- Blood wizard's power now shoots in the direction of the nearest player rather than shooting in random directions.
- The mushroom wizard can now only have 3 active mushrooms at a time.
- The ice wizard's power now causes other players to slide around.
- Made fundamental changes to the way levels are loaded to allow custom levels to run without crashing the game.
- Mode selection arrows now disappear if you're at the end of the list.
- Temporarily removed the Dark and Invisi wizards.
- The rainbow wizard's unicorn is now twice as tall.
- The naked wizard's area of effect is now 50% larger.
- Fixed custom music support.
- Fixed orbs spawning on top of each other.
- Fire wizard's pillar now goes in three directions.

Okay, for now, I made it so that the fire wizard's pillar goes three directions (up, left, right) rather than one so that I can see if that fixes the problem or if I need to redesign his power altogether.

New build should be up in about an hour.

Finished the new volcano level. Now I just need to work on the fire wizard's power and the new build will be ready.

EDIT: Oh, and I fixed custom music for levels and the issue with orbs spawning on top of each other.

Temporarily pulling the Dark and Invisi wizards. Not sure what I want to do with them and testing has revealed that there are likely a few more issues than intended with the Invisi-wizard's current power so I'm going to pull them while I work on fixes and reconsider each of their powers.

I also prototyped a menu for potential "profiles" that would give each of the wizards a bit of backstory but I'm not entirely sure if I want to do that yet. The code is there in case I want to though.

Other than that, I am almost done with build 19. I have to rebuild the volcano level, finish deliberating about what I want to do with the Fire wizard, add one more wizard that I'm not going to announce yet (added!) and then it'll be ready.

I reworked the Subterranean level. Not sure how this'll work in practice but I like the look of it.

EDIT: Just tested it out. It's surprisingly easy to navigate. Should be fun to play on.

Yeah, the generic wizard's power turned out a lot better than I thought.

Lightning: If it still doesn't end up working out, I've considered making it briefly shock the platform that it hits, as well.

Invisi: Yeah, I've got to work with it either way so there's a good chance I'll end up changing it. Haven't fully decided on what it would be changed to though.

Peppermint: Would making the candy canes taller help or do you think he needs a new power altogether?

Naked: I'm wary of changing him so that he's able to move because then he'd mimic the gold wizard too closely, only with a wimpier stun and no invincibility. Gold wizard's invincibility is arguably the only thing that makes his power possible and I just don't think, especially with the current radius, that the naked wizard would have any shot of survival the way the gold wizard does. However, if you could put up a convincing argument to that, I might consider changing it.

Flower: Mostly just cosmetic changes. I want to make the flower look more like it's attached to the base but I also want to make it move around more smoothly.

Mushroom: For Build 19, I decided on a 3 mushroom limit. Not entirely sure this will work out well but I wasn't liking the idea of the timer as much in practice.

New wizards: They're all on the list. Going to prototype them once my list of things to fix with the older wizards shrinks a bit. In specific, with the mirror one, it sounds cool but I'd be cautiously optimistic about it because essentially having two of you creates a different kind of imbalance.

One-way platforms: Someone else just asked me that the other day so I'm going to try and work with it. I am really not sure I can do platforms you can fall down through. The non-animated sprites lead me to believe that lots of people are going to be really, really confused about randomly dropping through platforms at certain times.

Level making: Yeah, it is a pain in the ass currently. I am probably not ever going to make a fully integrated level editor but I want to make one you can load Tiled maps into and graphically create .lvl files with. You'll still probably have to manually edit levels.lvl but it's at least a little better.

EDIT: I'd actually never had anyone test custom levels (everything I make I include at compile-time) up until this morning when I decided to test it. I realized there was a major oversight and that they wouldn't work because anything not included at compile-time can't be loaded the way I was loading them. So I changed the way it works and now it should be fine.

EDIT2: Added a to-do list to the testing forums. Might still be a few days off for Build 19.

The peppermint wizard's attack now does this every time unless you're facing a ledge.

Lots of good ideas. Okay, responses incoming...

Bugs:

- Maximizing: Yeah, I know. I've been trying to figure out why it does that and if it's a bug with my code or the library I'm using for a while now but I put it on the backburner when I made everything fullscreen-with-automatic-size-change.

- That should be fixed in build 19. I can't remember if Build 18 has the annoying bug where they spawn in lava but that's fixed too.

- I haven't observed this one and have died in air a lot but I'll look into it.

Technical Improvements:

- That's an oversight, so I'll get that fixed asap. Just got around to doing that with the wizards, actually. >.>

- The title's placeholder. I have NO idea what I want to do with the title yet but what's there will definitely be replaced at some point.

- Will do!

- I had it set up so that every player's keyboard controls could control menus originally but I got a lot of complaints that it was confusing so I unified the menu control scheme.

Powers:

Yeah, right now, they're all prototype runs of powers, trying to decide what fits based on the wizard and what doesn't, what needs replaced, all in order to get the power system in and running, primarily.

- Earth: It'd be ridiculously easy to make the boulder larger. The reason I didn't is because I didn't want it to completely mimic the boulder trap but I could easily undo that change.

- Fire: That would be cool. Hmmm...

- Ice: I'm going to work with it so that players slide around a bit more. I noticed that it pretty much is just a speed boost right now.

- Lightning: For build 19, I changed it to strike where the player was standing when he activated it, rather than the first collision with the tilemap so hopefully that helps.

- Barnacle:

- Blood: That's a good idea. I noticed that, especially when you're near a corner, the random directions always seem to trend towards that corner instead of the other 75% of the level that isn't only a few tiles away. That could be a good fix for situations like that.

- Cloud: I keep hearing that he's one of people's favorites.

- Coffee: Haha, awesome!

- Dark: Working on this one. The level blackout seemed cool in theory but it definitely hurts the dark wizard more than it should. If I ever add random level effects through pickups or whatnot, the blackout could be a nice one but the power definitely needs replaced and I am going to get that replaced once I have an idea for that.

- Invisi: I'll have to think about that for a bit longer but it does sound cool.

- Love: That's an interesting idea. It couldn't last too long or it'd be OP but otherwise, that could work.

- Ocean: Yeah, I've gotten that opinion a lot. I'll raise it one tile this build and we'll go from there.

- Peppermint: In Build 19, I'm going to set it so that 3 tiles in front of him spawn candy canes.

- Rainbow: The unicorn is going to be a block taller in Build 19.

- Sun: I can do that. I was worried that, even though it covers a large part of the level at some point, it would be a bit underpowered.

- Naked: Yeah, that's the suggestion I keep getting. My other idea was to increase the effect radius.

- Chaos: Haha, I keep getting mixed opinions on him. I might end up shortening the effect's timer but otherwise, that power is staying.

- Flower: Extending the effect radius is on the massive list of improvements I have set up for that specific power.

- Gold: Hahahaha. Good to hear it. :D

- Mushroom: They are permanent until run into but it's another thing I've gotten mixed opinions about so I am probably going to set up either a long timer or a limit on the amount of mushrooms there can be at once.

EDIT: Forgot to respond to part of the post. xD

New wizards:

- Sprout/Bean/Seed: That'd be interesting. Maybe he can climb it as a way to escape but others can't? For the wall to be effective, he'd have to be able to shoot through it while others couldn't. Otherwise, either he can still be shot at, defeating the purpose of the barrier or it would just kind of sit there, and people would learn to go around it after a while.

- Laser: That sounds pretty cool. I'll have to prototype that.

- Time: Haha, I can try and implement a wizard like that. Might take some time to get the numbers right though.

- Black hole/Void: That was the other idea that I was given for the dark wizard. A black hole. What if I just combine those?

- Gravity: That's an interesting idea. I've been given the idea for a gravity wizard before but never quite like that. The idea always involves reversing gravity for everyone but the gravity wizard but Kat pointed out that that might not help the gravity wizard as much as people think so I've yet to try and implement that.

- Hobo: Haha, not quite sure what kind of power he'd have that would actually be useful.

- Mirror: That sounds really cool. I'd definitely have to prototype it to make sure it wasn't too OP though.

Game modes:

- Challenge: I'm hoping to give enough options for play settings eventually to be able to set up stuff like that or be able to just ignore it altogether.

- Other game modes: Interesting ideas. Not sure how the Hot Bombomb one would work out but Juggernaut could definitely work, and I'm wary of adding a zombie mode because of the stigma recently.

I'm definitely adding team modes soon though and possibly increasing the player limit to 8. Not sure how that's going to work out but it's a possibility.

Okay, got the last of these 5's powers in. The potato wizard shoots a giant potato into the air that rains smaller potatoes down like a cluster bomb.

@AlphaMember: Haha, awesome!

@rundown: We'll look into it but I'm not 100% sure it'll fit on the sprite.

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Generic wizard's power. It's a reference to a movie.

Out of the above, I've got the bacon, egg, and fog wizards' powers implemented.

The fog wizard covers the level in fog, which clears out within a certain radius around the fog wizard.

The bacon wizard shoots 3 projectiles affected by gravity left, right, and up.

The egg wizard shoots an egg that covers 3 tiles in egg that stuns other players.

Awesome! Can't wait to try this out. DH1 was great.

I could, if you want, go through each ability and rate each one, sort of like a point system. As long as it isn't overwhelming for you.

I'll post some ability suggestions later.

Yes! Any feedback is greatly appreciated. The cloud and gold wizards were the first added abilities. By the time I got to the "plainer" wizards like the original four (earth/fire/ice/lightning), I hit a point where I just wasn't sure what to do. Other than the ice wizard, who's seen a positive response so far, I vastly overestimated how useful they'd be in practice.

For the fire wizard, in specific, I was considering making it so that it shot in 3 directions or, I was given the suggestion to make it so that the fire wizard could move while the power was active.

I'm also pretty concerned that the level-wide powers that cause status effects are vastly underpowered, despite adding variety.

But yeah, none of the powers are set in stone and since I started testing the powers, I've already considered ripping out and replacing a few.

Lastly, orbs - I will definitely try out both losing none and losing one on death and see how it works out. I understand that it's pretty frustrating to lose all of them on death and I'm working to find a perfect balance between using powers too little and using them too often.

EDIT: Added a setting in Options that allows you to chance how many orbs are lost at death. Probably should have done that earlier. Going to gather feedback from here and see what works best.