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[dustinaux]

Beta testing has started it’s first phase, so a lot of work this week has been fixing some bugs and improving usability in general, plus the usual drawing more art. Unfortunately I’m running out of pretty screenshots to show you without giving too much away but here’s the new and improved map!



This will show when you click on the smaller map in the top right.  I may change the mini version to just floors and walls since adding items makes it a bit cluttered and you’ll be able to see what things are in the large version…

Also stuff is hidden on the map in darkness until you explore the area.  There will be a spell and item to reveal the map and also reveal secret areas as well.

[dustinaux]

So it’s looking like the game will be released in January.  I could rush and finish by the end of December but with the amount of work remaining and holidays coming up I won’t have time to have a well tested game then. I don’t want to throw away so many months of work by releasing a buggy game a few weeks earlier. Accurately estimating the time it takes to make something probably has the steepest learning curve of anything in software development… it’s incredibly difficult.

Remember… I’m just one guy who’s been working on this the last 8 months, the last few months nearly every day, but whose life still consists of more than just this game. It’s common to see indie developers treated like companies instead of people, which is missing the biggest thing that sets indie developers apart from a AAA company: A company may have a CEO or PR person as a face, but the company itself exists solely to profit from the thing it produces. The vast majority of indie devs however are people trying to make a living doing something we love, with our own lives, friends, and unrelated hobbies apart from our work.

That being said, in this respect I am very fortunate to not be a hugely known developer with hundreds of people demanding what you should do and most of the above paragraph comes from what I’ve seen of big-name devs, not myself. Most all of you all reading this are amazing, rational, supportive people and I thank you for that. <3

AAAAAAaaaaannnnnyway… check out this sweet telekinesis spell you can use to grab treasure, stat gems, or gold from a distance!



Updates leading up to the release will likely have less screenshots because I’d like to keep some of the later stuff a surprise to find while playing the game, and a lot of the work I’m doing now is stuff that would make for pretty boring gifs and screenshots. Here’s a list of a lot of the stuff I did this week… some things took a while, some not at all, but most everything not too great screenshot material, or just new stuff I don’t want to give away.

Art: 1 NPC
Art: 17 Items
Art: 2 Monsters
Art: 4 Spells
Sound: 5 Sound Effects

Feature: Name display on hover/hold for hotkey items
Feature: Hover text for enchantments
Feature: Enchant equipped equipment directly instead of unequipping, enchanting, then re-equipping
Feature: Adjusted floor sizes and layouts to be unique for different sections of the cave
Feature: Revealer Spell
Feature: Telekinesis Spell

Bug Fix: Selling stuff the shopkeeper owned
Bug Fix: Item scrolling getting stuck
Bug Fix: Health bar blinking when full
Bug Fix: Junk selling showing buy prices instead of sell
Bug Fix: Runaway bug that makes you get stuck on an enemy
Bug Fix: Found artifacts list displaying equipped items correctly
Bug Fix: Item Scrolling numbers not updating correctly
Bug Fix: Killing an enemy while running away still moves you on the runaway path
Bug Fix: “Can’t Enchant Text” blocking mouse clicks
Bug Fix: Adding an enchantment to an enchanted item doesn’t default to the new enchantment
Bug Fix: HP/MP regen numbers showing when hp/mp is full
Bug Fix: Stat gem text shows too late
Bug Fix: Numbers not shown on cave screen health bar
Bug Fix: Flying enemies positioning
Bug Fix: Missing tiles in secret areas of jungle ruins
Bug Fix: Floor number shown in town
Bug Fix: Enchanting effects reset to default when crafting so making multiple potions was extra clicking
Bug Fix: Escape Wings shown in loot this run
Bug Fix: <1% chance of secret areas not being connected to their tunnel (this was fun to fix /s)
Bug Fix: Loot stats on escape were not correctly updated

Minor Change: A few changes to NPC dialogue
Minor Change: Added current level to status screen
Minor Change: Skill tree end nodes made larger
Minor Change: Color adjustment for jungle ruins area

[dustinaux]

After a Christmas break I'm back at it, finishing a second phase of testing for the game. I test the game myself before sending it off to testers to fix the obvious issues, which becomes very time consuming due to the nature of this game.  Since it's a roguelike and relies on good balance of everything working together, if you make a significant change, you really have to start over from scratch to get an accurate read on how the difficulty is deeper into the cave. Plus there's the randomness… different play styles… lots of stuff!

But I did notice while playing today that I was enjoying it more, which is a great sign from someone whose spent around 1000 hours working on this game. Normally it feels more like work than playing a game because I tend to fix bugs as I come across them, but a lot of stuff has come together and I found it fun to decide what to enchant, what to buy and sell, what potions to craft…

So what's new? Here's a simple bestiary menu that logs the monsters you've faced:



The monsters scroll just like items do, and you can select one to view their stats.

Here's a look at the settings menu I haven't shown before because *yawn*:



Notable here is the smooth filter which you can toggle on and off in-game, as well as the battle speed option which is actually new these last two weeks:  After the first few floors of the cave monsters start doing more damage and more strategy is involved, so I've added a battle speed option to slow down battles if the player wants. This gives them more time in battle to think about whether or not to use a spell or potion, or to run away.  Both the player and monster's attack delays are simply doubled on the slow mode so that the outcome remains the same.  Fast is the default and is the speed you've been seeing in gifs of earlier updates.

What else? I added MP cost to enchanting:



15 MP per ingredient used.  It felt overpowered before when there was no MP cost, plus this was my original intention anyway! I just finally got around to implementing it.  Enchanting is very very useful and tends to play an important role in the game, and allows the player to customize their play style. (Potion crafting still only uses ingredients and no MP.)

Lastly here's another screen of the ice caves with a few new enemies:



Still looking at a January release date, though it's going to be 80 floors for the flash version.  I never came up with an idea for the bonus floors (and items!) beyond 100 for the paid versions, so I am going to just use the 20 floors from 80 to 100 as the extra floors for the paid versions.  These floors I have a very clear plan for and items already designed so development on this will be much less stressful, which is the one thing I need after I release the flash version. After working most everyday for the last two or three months, I was somewhat dreading releasing the flash version and then having a few more months of hard crunch-time to get out the premium content which I've taken basically zero time to plan since my focus has been on the flash.

Now before you grab your pitchforks hear me out here! 80 floors of this game as larger, fully random floors with all of the extra gameplay features is still a crazy amount of more content than the 100 floors of TEC1, and time-wise 80 TEC2 floors will still take longer to complete than 100 of TEC1. Also enemy spreads are different; still gonna be more monsters in 80 floors of TEC2 than 100 floors of TEC1.  Items too! Plenty more items. So although the floor number is lower than originally planned, rest assured the flash version's still gonna be a killer game.

[Mixer]

Looks really good! I like how you can dig and change the world, adds to the game alot! Perhaps you could add some lighting/visibility, so you can't see the whole screen at once. I think being more restricted in what you see could add more suspense, so you don't know what is around the corner before you progress. Maybe. Looks good!

[dustinaux]

This week's summary of new stuff:

Here's a guy in town that will sell you a different artifact after each run:



The final spell, “Transmute” has been added.  It will let you enchant any regular item into an artifact.  I'll probably need to boost the MP use up for balancing though:



I've also added some “fog of war” to the actual play screen that you can see a bit in the following gif. Before the addition wider resolutions like the mobile versions and pc version would have an advantage of seeing more of the floor than the flash, so this keeps the gameplay the same, plus it matches the minimap display.



I'm in the middle of a new tileset and plenty of new monsters, so you can look forward to seeing that next week!

[dustinaux]

A lot of final stuff was done this week to wrap up the main part of the game, and the final testing phase has started.  The only stuff left for the flash release is fixing anything revealed through testing, the museum functionality to store artifacts, a credits screen, and a few more npcs.

I think I added some smaller features this week but they must not be big enough for a screenshot and I forget what they were. My brain's fried from testing all day yesterday.

Enchanted Forest part of the cave:

[dustinaux]

The flash version for The Enchanted Cave 2 is now released on Kongregate! You can play it here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/DustinAux/the-enchanted-cave-2

[Osteel]

Congratulations on the release, it's a great game! I loved the original and I know this will take up some hours at work haha.

[dustinaux]

The premium version is now released for Android!



The premium version compared to the flash version is $3 for mobile and includes:

-20 extra floors with an extended storyline
-4 playable characters
-New Game+
-more NPCs and quests
-more monsters
-more loot

iOS is coming soon! (Currently still in the "waiting review" stage of app submission)
Steam will be a bit later after I some company and tax stuff gets verified.

[alvarop]

Can't wait for steam version! I'm hyped.

[dustinaux]

And the premium version is now available for iOS! :D

[dustinaux]

And finally - The Enchanted Cave to is live on Steam!

[alvarop]

 

[dustinaux]

A few months and several updates later, a linux version is now available on Steam! :D

http://store.steampowered.com/app/368610