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[jonbro]

another graphics pass! darkened everything up.

Also:
- got rid of all the 4 way traps, replaced with one way traps that rotate every turn
- new trap hint graphic
- added a new level with pressure plates that blocks the exit until you hit both of them
- new two step chaser (ai that goes towards you but takes two steps)

[Zav]

A very nice game, sir

[jonbro]

started adding a new world!

Here is how it currently works.

in world one, you have a chance to see the stairs to world to on levels 5-7... if you ignore them, you can continue to the end of the dungeon, and collect your prize. If you go down the stairs then you start in the new world, level 1. Rinse and repeat for 6 worlds or so (for 30 total levels) where the last world probably just has 5 levels total.

the new world is an ice world, and contains the following (so far)
- ice distance shooters that freeze you for 3 steps
- snails that freeze the floor
- frozen floor that you just slide across, until you hit a wall / enemy / other character
- roaming enemy that freezes you, then ignores you until you unfreeze
- chasing enemies that move double steps

planned new stuff for this world:
- ice mage (mage character that can freeze enemies)
- ice walls, you can break them down to move through them
- yeti, can knock you back
- mammoth, has 3 (rather than 2) hit points.

other planned worlds include (in classic no imagination video game developer amazingness): tech, lava, garden

[jonbro]

(god that imgur jpg compression is ROUGH)

[jonbro]

it feels like so much, but I think I have just been messing about / showing other games / working on other games.

- added an overworld allows direct access to the dungeons (also will have a little tutorial section, a tavern, the highscore list, and a monster zoo)
- made some tweaks to make the ice world harder
- added the ice mage, yeti and a 3 hit guard

[slothwerks]

Didn't know there was going to be an overworld, but for some reason that's really exciting!  Seems like that'll add a lot of depth/sense of progression.

Can't say enough how much I like the art direction you've taken

[jonbro]

so, the overworld is going to be effectively a really nicely dressed up menu system. All the unlocks are going to go into it, as well as the highscore table and the options menus and stuff. It will also be a place to stick silly jokls and maybe some world stories and stuff. Hopefully it won't let people down too much :D

thanks, sean is doing a killer job on the art.

[jonbro]

project still alive and kicking

- added tech and desert worlds
- added swapper enemy
- added cobra, scorpion, and normal snake
- added poisoned state (to support above)
- fixed innumerable bugs
- added builder character (can make new [breakable] walls)
- tech world has pads that disable disableable characters
- new graphics for a ton of stuff
- added a store (converts gold to hearts)

I know I should do a testing release, but I think it will need to be a ton closer to functionality :0. I have been showing it to people in person, and there are still a ton of things that need to be done. Hopefully will get close to a release mode soon tho.

[jonbro]

new lineup.

- did a pass through all of the player colors and unified them a bunch
- got the replays working a bit better so that I can find bugs more consistently

most of what I have been doing is cleaning up little bits to get it closer to actually showing testers again. Basically getting the overworld tighter, and the ending screen tighter.

[jonbro]

Still trying to find ways to push towards an incremental release, had a good discussion about painful bits of the experience. So have decided to change the level structure into something more linear, rather than the 4 possible good endings of increasing goodness, we are just going to have one good ending, and a bunch of bad endings.

also:
- added a ninja character
- did mockup to fix the ui

[jonbro]

made an absolutely huge change to it today:
- added chests that give you one point when you hit them, but spawn one monster

SO SO MUCH BETTER. So I actually spent probably an hour playing the game, both trying to beat it, and also doing score runs. I think it is almost to the point where it can support deep play. It is interesting how having these breakthroughs tends to open up interesting other avenues of problems, like now I am seeing a bunch of decisions in the game that are boring that I need to tighten up.

i.e. I took out the miners secondary action which was turning walls into gold. now he just turns wall into empty spaces. And it also needs to have some decision in place about what character you choose to take with you into the dungeon, because right now you just pick up every character you come across for the 2 extra hp. Also that opens the question of certain builds being better than other builds. And now I am wondering if I can do something with streak scoring.

Anyways, a whole world of delightful options has opened in front of me, and I am excited to share the game with people again.

[jonbro]

more work to get this ready to send to testers again. Also was messing about with custom ways to play the game. So: no health pickups, doubling the number of chests on the levels, no gold run. Oh man, am I excited about the fact that these types of runs are even possible! it is like I am making a real roguelike or something.

So anywho... if you want to play a build of this, drop me a note, I will add you to the list of people. Am aiming to have a build later on this week hopefully? who knows though, the future is exploding with possibilities, so I might just keep it to myself.

[jonbro]

worked on the ui mostly today, but spent a bunch of time just tuning gameplay and fixing long standing bugs as well. In addition to the in game ui, was also working on game over screens and that type of thing.

also am just spending time trying to beat the game on a regular basis, and then tweaking it harder. So, removed the priests ability to heal himself, removed the ninjas ability to hurt the things that it is zipping through.

I am pretty sure that I am going to need to do another pass on the animation system, right now it is setup such that animations are non-blocking in the game, but I want to encourage people to look at the results of their actions, so I might make the animations block input again.

[jonbro]

did an announcement of the game today on our website.

http://luckyframe.co.uk/works/nightmare/

I have been doing tons of contracting work for the past week so not much changes from my side, other than strange balance fixes.

[jonbro]

got a little play testing done on friday, tightened up a bunch of shit
- strange overlapping issues
- spawn issues
- inaccessible exits
- some enemies caused deadlocks
- lowered the difficulty significantly

I think there are probably still progression issues in place though. I just sent out another build this afternoon and took a quick pass at porting to touch devices.

After I did that, I added a whole new character that I have been putting off for weeks. Necromancer that raises a 1HP skeleton to work with your team.

If you want a build, please drop me a note, and I will PM you the link. I might be a little slow, because I am trying to incorporate feedback each time I get it.

[happymonster]

The new UI and map graphics looks great!

[jonbro]

lots of changes in the past few weeks:

- added a single (passive) item inventory slot. Right now, there are 6 passive items, but I think there could be more. Once you pick up a passive, you can't pick up another one on that character, so there is an opportunity cost. Some of the passives are hp / hit power things, some get you more gold with less tradeoff.
- made multiple types of chests that drop increasing gold for more enemy spawns
- fixed tons and tons of bugs that I have been overlooking for weeks.
- tons of new audio is in the game. So so so much audio, holy shit.
- smoothed out the level progression. Trying to find the point where it isn't random if you win or not. This is tricky.

the new passives are
- one hit kill (once per level)
- max hp + / max actions -
- max hp - / max actions +
- ignore environmental effects
- don't spawn enemies when opening chests (once per level)
- hp+ on kill (once per level)

Going to have to drop the overworld at least for the initial launch unfortunately. We just can't afford it. Probably fine, because we had stripped it back to the point where it was basically nothing, and what is even the point of having that at all. Going to do a more standard menu system, because there are about 5 menu screens that I need to implement. We are approaching crunch time now, I fear, and I have to move to another country at the same time :0 So basically, woo!

[jonbro]

AGAIN. If you want a build, PM me, I have the link ready to send to YOUUUU.

[jonbro]

Tons of changes this week, as we rush towards release.

new title screen
in game options menu
added the golden guard enemy type
new particle effects on gold pickup and priest healing
previews of special actions for distance charcters (mages, archer and ninja)
display of the facing for the patrol enemy
performance fixes (less sprite loading, faster level enum checking)
new music
tutorial
acid boots (ignore environmental effects) now work
new chest graphics

[jonbro]

just uploaded a new build for testers
- added tool tips on nearly everything (still missing environmental effects tooltips)
- fixed some bugs in the tutorial
- made a major gameplay tweak that didn't actually seem to change things much: 1HP potion and 2Action potions.

I am working on the steam integration today, so I will have to swap to giving out steam codes for the game I guess? :/ no big deal I suppose.