(I'm reminded of a principle that I seem to recall seeing or hearing some time ago, suggesting that a boss-encounter should essentially be a test of skills taught during the level.)

Was it possibly this video?

...

Hmm... I don't think so--I don't recognise the channel. It's possible that I had it from someone else who did watch that video.

That said, this was quite some time ago, I believe, and at the moment I don't seem to remember clearly at all the nature of my source. ^^;

I've been thinking about my experience thus far with the first boss, and have a few thoughts that might be worth sharing.

First, however, two caveats:
 
1) I've concluded that, as a player, this probably isn't my type of game--it's not "for me". While I really enjoy the core mechanics--combat especially--and find the aesthetic and mystery very appealing, the repetition and high difficulty curve gets a bit tiresome for me, I find. However, as a developer I find it very interesting indeed, so I'm not going anywhere!

2) I'm somewhat dozy today, and may not be at my best. ^^;

As a result, perhaps take my thoughts with a grain of salt!

All of that said, my thoughts:

I think that I know why I have such trouble with the first boss:

First, it's capable of near-filling the combat arena with fire, making it somewhat hard to dodge. Now, in part this space-filling comes down to positioning: the fire only fills all that much space if one is near to the fellow on the left, who spews fire in addition to the burst produced by the boss. However, keeping to the right incurs the risk of being caught with too little space in which to dodge.

If I could reliably roll immediately on being set ablaze, this might be less an issue--but it seems that there is often a small delay (a result of being stunned, or low on stamina, perhaps?), just enough that being set on fire more often than not takes a large chunk of my health. With only two healing flasks available (and little time to dig into my inventory for healing consumables), two or three fires can potentially kill me. It does seem that I can entirely escape the burning effect with a well-timed roll, but I haven't figured out quite what that timing is.

Second, it took me some time to realise that I was being slowed down by a lack of stamina. To a veteran Souls-player, this might be obvious--but I'm not a veteran Souls player.

Thinking about it, I suspect that these points become issues in part because they're introduced (more or less) in this boss encounter: the boss is the first creature to use fire (and thus the burning status effect), and the first creature that's likely to drain one's stamina by itself. As a result, it's possible for a player to enter the fight without having learned the relevant skills, and the somewhat-hectic experience of a challenging boss-fight might make for a poor context for learning.

What I might suggest then is having these things appear in minor form before the boss fight--perhaps a creature that spews a little flame, and one that's sufficiently meaty that it alone is likely to drain a first-time player's stamina, teaching the importance of keeping an eye on that bar. (I'm reminded of a principle that I seem to recall seeing or hearing some time ago, suggesting that a boss-encounter should essentially be a test of skills taught during the level.)

(Of course, these suggestions might run counter to your design goals--in which case, just disregard the suggestions above.)

All that said, if the above two were the only problems, then I suspect that I would have defeated this boss by now. I think, ultimately, that its difficulty is just a bit higher than my skill, especially once its aggression seems to increase as its health drops low. In my defence I'll note that I believe that I have brought the boss near-death at least twice!

A thought:

It might be worth giving the player at least one additional weapon, and perhaps one additional item, before they reach the first boss.

I suggest an additional weapon primarily so that the player can at least start picking a play-style that suits them--and do so before being challenged by a boss-fight. It might also add a little more variety to the early parts of the game.

The additional item is less important--I simply feel that, as with additional weapons, another item might add a little more variety to the early-game.

Okay, according to AutoPatcher, the DirectX 9.0c installation isn't compatible with Windows 8.1. I did a little searching of the YoYoGames forum, and found this thread, which seems to bear up this assertion: the responses there indicate that it's not compatible with Windows 10, and looking at a page to which they link there--which appears to be a Canadian(?) equivalent of the page that would have taken me to the direct-download page to which you linked--the system requirements go only as high as Windows 7. The advice given then is to "[j]ust download something free on Steam that uses DirectX, run it, and Steam will automatically install all needed runtimes". :/

Hum... This has me hesitatant regarding the experience that will be had by some of the players of your final version. :/

For myself, I might at a later stage see whether DirectX 9.0c can be coerced into installing under WINE...

Interesting...

I'm currently running a fair few updates, both because a number have piled up over time and because I think that I told AutoPatcher to simply install all of the relevant-seeming redistributables that it had. It's taking some time, but once that and perhaps some other updates are done, I intend to have another shot at running the game!

Out of curiosity, what is it that GameMaker relies on from DirectX 9? I wouldn't think that it would be actual functionality--I would expect later versions to include 9's abilities--so is it doing something in a manner that was deprecated, then dropped?

Right now in the alpha there's only 3 abilities, so only 3 levels to gain, but we plan on adding passives that augment your abilities and other stats. The plan is around 20 levels. So 3 active, and a bunch of passive upgrade decisions, and maybe 1 big choice at level 10 to further define your class (big things like dual wield).

Aah, I see! I'll confess that I don't think that passive abilities occurred to me when writing my previous post. ^^;

I don't think that I've mentioned this before, but looking back at your screenshots and gifs, I rather like the stylisation of your health bars. ^_^

Forming a team is unlikely since my current residency is east asia where nobody cares about games (let alone indie games).

Your team members needn't be local, I imagine: there are a number of means of collaborating via the internet, and thus potentially doing so with people from very different parts of the world. Given your location, time-zones might be an issue (well, unless you're collaborating with people in Oceania, I suppose), but not necessarily an insurmountable one, I feel.

Hmm... Actually, one question, if I may: Are there plans for a new demo?

Heya! We don't have any plans to create another demo for Wizard of Legend. The next step for us would be to complete the game as soon as possible and send out the beta keys to our backers so we can get some feedback before release. :D

Ah, fair enough!

We're currently planning on having about 120 spells in the game, though this number may increase as we love creating spells.

Wow, that's an impressive--and ambitious--number of spells! Will most of those be variations on other spells--i.e. different values for damage and effects, perhaps different numbers of projectiles, etc., but not different behaviours? Or do you intend to have one-hundred-and-twenty highly-individual spells?

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, this week's screenshot/gif: a short clip of the leaves of the forest waving in the breeze:


Unlike the preceding two weeks, this week past was quite productive, I feel! ^_^

Indeed, so much so that I'm not going to attempt to list everything that I added or changed--even conveying a subset in full turned into a rather long post! As a result, I'm going to attempt to condense this week's entry, primarily into a few vignettes:

The outer stones shine in the daylight. Where those distant had once seemed flat, almost "unreal", the reflected light lends them a sense of "solidity", I feel. Up close, "brushstrokes" can be seen in their shine. The leaves of the vines on the outer walls shine similarly, variations in their specularity somewhat breaking up the otherwise-simple, straight line of light reflecting from them.

(A technical aside: One change made to the specularity is that I removed the application of the dynamic shadows to specular highlights. This is something that I'm a little uncertain about: On the one hand, I have cases in which it seems better without, specifically those cases in which the shadow would have been cast by the surface being lit--one example being a wall that faces away from the light, but which has a tilt that allows the view-vector to reflect towards said light. It also produces some interesting half-shadows when overlapping shadowed areas. On the other hand, however, there are cases in which the surface being lit should have even its specular highlight shadowed, primarily those cases in which another surface is casting the shadow. I suppose that, ideally, a second shadow-check is called for--but that seems likely to be rather expensive.)


Stone shining in the light

The leaves of the outer forest, and those of the trees in the courtyard, can be seen to sway gently in the breeze. The upper leaves sway the most, being least protected from the wind; the low branches of a sapling in the courtyard are all but untouched. The taller trees in the courtyard rustle a little as their leaves move.

(On another technical note, this wasn't the first time that I've attempted to implement such movement. I recall that on that occasion it didn't work as intended: the leaves clipped the walls in an unsightly manner, and breaks showed between the parts from which they're made. Returning to it this week, it was... surprisingly easy, actually.)

That breeze can now be heard blowing, rising and falling as it does. While inaudible at ground level, where the walls and trees hem it out, it becomes more pronounced the higher one climbs up the pyramid.

(This is still a work-in-progress, however--in particular, I want to change the sounds that I'm using for the breeze, aiming for a set of sounds that blend a little better than do the ones that I'm currently using.)

Animals now call from the surrounding forest. Every so often a sound like a footstep, or something falling, can be heard in the leaf-litter. From time to time something flutters through the leaves. On entering the pyramid, however, these sounds fall away.

Even the level-editor has changed: aside from simply adding a few new items to be spawned, objects can now be moved in a manner that I find rather more intuitive and useful.


"Brushstrokes" in the highlights on the fallen stones

That's not everything done this week by any means! There were adjustments to parts of the level, experiments with both grass and particles (neither of which worked out, I'm afraid), at least one bug-fix, and an attempt at improving performance (if this helped, it doesn't seem to have done so to a significant degree). And there may be other things that I'm forgetting besides.

And there I shall leave it for this post--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

This is probably the kind of thing that will need to be (thoroughly) playtested to see if it works well and feels good.

Hmm... Fair enough.

Then imagine a totally freeform game with no classes. You could be 10% Fighter, 30% Rogue, 60% Mage. This is a fine system but I think it makes the game somewhat harder to balance. Lots of not-useful skill combinations, and potentially OP ones.

But doesn't your current approach produce much the same thing? If I change jobs twice, I might well end up with a spread just as you've given above. The only advantage that I see is that you might be able to specify which abilities are disallowed for each combination of classes--the wizard might lose "Magic Missile" when switching to fighter, and "Fireball" when switching to rogue, for example.

However, as you say, this is all likely a matter for play-testing!

Interesting!

I like the new enemies--they have an interesting design, and a form that seems likely to make them easily distinguishable, I feel. ^_^

Regarding the abilities, will players level up only a few times during a full run, or do they get more abilities than they can have active? If the latter, do they give up abilities to gain new ones, or can abilities be swapped in and out of "active" status during play, or between areas, perhaps?

I'm glad to see that the pre-alpha has been released! ^_^

If I may, I'd like to report my feedback here--simply put, the game doesn't run for me (beyond the menus, at least), and thus I'm not in a position to answer most of the questions in the feedback survey. :/

To be specific, I'm getting the following error:

Code:

FATAL ERROR in Vertex Shader compilation
ShaderName: shader_draw_black

memory:67:22: error: syntax error, unexpected NEW_IDENTIFIER

at gml_Object_DayNightCycle_Draw_0

The menus run well; the error above only appears when I attempt to start a new game, I believe.

I believe that I get the same in both Windows 8.1 and WINE running on Ubuntu Linux.

My system is as follows:
Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series
CPU: Core i7 2.4GHz (4-core)
Memory: 8GB
Graphics: GeForce 840M, 2GB (+Intel integrated)

(The game should be running on the GeForce card--I'm reasonably confident that I have Windows 8.1 set to just run everything on that, since I had some trouble with the mechanism that it uses to automatically detect which card it should use.)

The menu-music is lovely, by the way. ^_^

If I may offer one piece of critique from my experience of the menus, it might be a useful to have the menu-cursor wrap around between the top and bottom--that is, when one presses "up" with the cursor at the top, the cursor jumps to the bottom, and vice versa when one presses "down" with it at the bottom.

Ah, I don't think that I was aware that you had a thread here! I think that I've already responded to the main of the above on Twitter (I'm @EbornIan there), albeit with tweet-born brevity, but nevertheless did want to leave this as a short "hello". (As well as enabling notifications for this thread!)

Hmm... Actually, one question, if I may: Are there plans for a new demo? The "museum" demo was fun, but there was only one, static combat encounter and not much dungeon to explore (that I found)--I'd really like to have a shot at a level--even if short--that's closer to the intended experience, I believe! (I'm also eager to see any changes in the keyboard-and-mouse controls, since--as I believe that I commented via Twitter--I didn't really like those used in the "museum" demo.)

Overall, this update seems rather promising! ^_^

You will be able to bring SOME skills from the previous job, but not all.

Hmm... I do worry that it might feel as though time and points spent on skills left behind might feel wasted, and that multi-classing might be discouraged. Does the player at least recover the JP spent on such skills, allowing them to purchase new ones?

That looks like a good start at the least, I think! ^_^

One piece of critique: right now the fade looks a little sudden to my eye; perhaps have the tiles fade in a little more slowly, and thus (hopefully), a little more smoothly.

[Monsters]

Monsters got a big overhaul. They now have an aggro system tracking who has done what to them. They can (potentially) lose interest in combatants as well, for example if you don't hit animals for a long time they may simply wander away. They will also evaluate aggro vs. range; if someone far away hits them, that will be less tempting than an angry target nearby.

There are also some new basic monster 'attributes', which are basically behavior types, that can be mixed and matched: starting with Greedy, Berserker, and Timid. Greedy monsters will pick up nearby treasure. Particularly greedy ones will actually fight other monsters for treasure, or even stop fighting something to pick up loot. Timid monsters will panic at low HP and run, though they will fight if cornered. Berserkers fly into a rage at low health and will hit anyone or anything nearby.

Ooh, these changes seem promising--I see the potential for some interesting gameplay and tactics arising from them, the "attributes" especially! (Even just offhand, I have the idea of attacking a "berserker" monster in a group of others, then backing off and letting it deal some damage against them before they finish it off. )

(On which note, one idea might be to allow the player to drop any item--including gold and treasure. This might be useful around "greedy" monsters, it seems to me.)

I'm certainly eager to test it out

Likewise, I'm eager to try a build at some stage, I believe. ^_^

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, this week's screenshots--and indeed, this week I actually do have a little bit of visual progress to show! I intend to go into more detail in the body of this post, but in short, I've implemented reflective specular highlights in the main "sunlight" shader:


The dark stone of the pyramid.


The bright stone of the surrounding wall.

(One of these days I might even get around to changing the window-title... ^^; )

That shown, on to the past week's work:

Once again, the bulk of the week was devoted to sound effects--but as shown above, not all of it:

Up until this past week, I've been using a fairly simple approach to "shininess"--essentially an addition on top of the diffuse shading. Near the end of the week, however, I was inspired to attempt something slightly more accurate in my general "sunlight" shader. Specifically, this approach reflects the camera's view-vector around the object's surface-normal, and compares the result to the light-vector. Put another way, it approximates light being reflected directly off of the surface of the object, and thus only producing a visible highlight when the viewer is looking in more or less the direction in which the light would be expected to "bounce".

As I recall, I hesitated to implement this: I was concerned that it undermine the somewhat-painterly aesthetic that I'm aiming for, that it would, essentially, look too realistic. Nevertheless, I tried it--and having done so, I believe that I quite like it, and think that it retains a slightly-painterly feel around the edges.

I do still want to experiment a little more: I have an idea that might make contribute towards that aforementioned somewhat-painterly aesthetic. But even if I end up returning to this form, I think that it's an improvement over what I previously had.


Light on the stones

(In the case of the "player-light" shaders, I've concluded that the light is sufficiently close to the camera's position that the difference would be fairly small, and thus that it's not worth implementing this change in those shaders.)

On a side-note, I also made some tweaks to the grass- and "vertex-splatting"- shaders--but those are less interesting, being primarily a matter of getting the brightness of the two to match, I believe. I also had yet another shot at improving my representation of grass, but with no success.

Returning to sound, then, I made a fair few changes. This continues to feel like a somewhat-slow process, and I'm not happy with all of the sounds that I made, but nevertheless I believe that some progress has been made.

Perhaps most interesting is that I'm implemented the playing of various small "miscellaneous forest" sounds amidst the more general "wind in the leaves" sound that can be heard near the outer walls. This, I hope, will make the forest feel more "alive", more like a place in which things live and move. I'm still in the process of adding new such sounds; right now I feel that I have too few, and not enough variety.

I also discovered at some point that a number of my sounds were perhaps too soft: I had been working with my computer's volume perhaps a bit high (as indicated by other sounds being a bit too loud). As a result I went back and adjusted the volume of a number of sound effects. (Not all, admittedly--there were a few that I felt were fine at lower volume, as I recall.) A side-effect of this was that I found a few sounds to be less-pleasing than I had thought, and thus replaced them.

Otherwise, a miscellany of sounds have been added or changed, I believe: rope-climbing sounds have been added (although they're still work-in-progress, I believe); the aforementioned "wind in the leaves" sound has been softened a bit, and the underlying "hiss" made less loud; there is now a sound played when moving a particular (hidden ) stone; and I made a single, high, echoing chime to be played when "something good" has happened--although I decided against that sound, and have set it aside.

That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^

Heh, I kinda like the way that they just flop apart. ^_^