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[Kassoon]

Rogue Legend 2 is a sorta Harvest Moon meets Zelda meets Recettear meets building meets roguelike. I have a real interest in procedural games and advancing them beyond "interconnected boxes with randomized spawns" that tends to be the common result. Something as polished and varied as a Zelda or Dark Souls dungeon, but made procedurally and endlessly.



In a normal RPG or D&D there's a full cycle in play: Explorers map the land and discover the dungeon, merchants sell the party gear and supplies, adventurers clear the dungeon and get the loot, and sell to the craftsmen that make the gear.

There's lots of games that explore these concepts on their own, but nothing has really tried to bring it all together. Imagine a game where you can run a shop, and sell goods to adventurers. Or you can be those adventurers, and go into procedural dungeons to collect loot to bring back to town to sell to the traders. Or you're a trader, buying and growing components to craft all new gear and supplies. Or just explore and live off the land. All in the same world, and you can do one or any of these things at any time.



The benefit is everyone can play in the same world together without needing to be interested in the same things. Maybe combat and dungeons aren't your thing, and you'd rather set up a farm and raise animals, or brew potions, but still play with your friends. So one of you can be playing playing Zelda, while the other Harvest Moon, and both your contributions are meaningful and helpful to the other. And I love Harvest Moon, it's the ultimate chill-out game, and it's inspired almost every game since to feature farming or raising animals. Though you gotta admit, your animals are just sort of input machines. They sit in the barn, input food and brushing, output produce. I always wanted to take them wth me, not just riding around on a horse, but what about raising a Cow Warrior to go with you on quests, and more breeding options and stuff to do with them like Chocobo racing in FF7.



t's essentially 4 game modes in one. Harvest Moon style chill out farming and building, grow crops, raise animals, build stuff, and sell it. A merchant game where you run a shop, buy inventory, sell your goods, play the market. Explorers hunt for rare components, find exotic locales, and live off the land. Adventurers buy goods, complete dungeons, and return to town with treasures in tow. Each should be its own adventure, without requiring you to grind out time in the other stuff.

You can check out more at my website: https://www.kassoon.com/rogue-legend-2/

[TammiDev]

It looks really cute. I love Harvest Moon. Following this

[Pixel Noise]

Seems very ambitious - but what you've got so far looks and sounds great! 

[Kassoon]

Thanks guys!

This was a hectic week! This is the most "in progress" of an update we've had since it's a bunch of new stuff that couldn't quite get done in a week. There's a basic combat system, a basic new UI, and some incomplete texture changes. That said, yay combat!

Since the game is 3D now, it meant there needed to be a more 3D combat system too with lock-on and cameras and movement. While the initial combat (and initial targets) are pretty basic I'll be adding more with each update. There will be elemental weaknesses and creature types, special abilities, special maneuvers (dodging, blocking, backstabs, etc), taming, and a party system. It feels like it's been a while since I've *added* ugly placeholders to the game with all the work recently to remove them.



As you can see from the base system, I'm going for a bit of a mix between realtime action and turn-based rpg. It's important to me that the combat system remain accessible and not require super-twitch reflexes to enjoy, while also adding options for more advanced players seeking greater challenges and maneuvers. So you lock on to a target, your initiative fills based on your speed, you select an attack based on what you have equipped, it charges based on its speed, you path into range and then execute the attack.

Hotkeys are incomplete (for both targeting and ability selection), there's poor feedback for damage dealt/received, you can't click for targeting yet, and enemies lack healthbars. Those will all be in for the next update, which might be another mid-week one.

There will be additional timing-based maneuvers like dodges and blocks (and elemental resistance) to reduce or negate incoming damage, but it'll be largely optional for the players that want to tackle the greater challenges. Hunting game around your home won't ask much of you, tackling an underground dungeon at the end of the world will take everything.

Dodges and blocks will be pretty familiar if you've played much Dark Souls, and a bit of any Mario RPG. When an enemy is about to attack, you can attempt to dodge out of the way. If your timing is good, you'll dodge getting hit completely. However, rolling uses stamina and eats up a bit of your initiative. So if you mess up the roll, not only will you get hit but your own attack will take longer.

Blocking has both a passive and active effect. Equipping a shield in your hand lets you raise/lower your shield while in combat. While a shield is raised any attack you take to your front will cause a percentage of the damage to be absorbed by your stamina instead. If you don't have enough stamina, you'll be stunned, so keep an eye on it. When an attack is incoming, if you press the block button with good timing the incoming damage will also be reduced. Choosing to block or dodge will come down to your personal playstyle and how much risk you're willing to take. For stealthier players, I'd also like to add ambushes.



For taming I want a dual approach. I know there are some players that want to tame every animal they meet and don't want to engage in combat at all. So there will be a taming system and a capture system. Capturing a creature involves fighting it and trapping it, whereas taming involves befriending the creature instead. The choice will again largely come down to playstyle.

[Pixel Noise]

I just realized what this makes me think of - Ultima Online. It was the taming that just made it click for me - because UO had the exact same approach you are taking. You could play that game for 3 years and never fight a thing, and still have a meaningful experience, whether it be crafting, harvesting, taming, etc. I've never seen a game quite pull that off since - the complete separation of gaming styles, where you could do as much or as little of any certain type as you liked.

Big shoes to fill :D  but it sounds like you've got all the right ideas!

[Kassoon]

You know, I never actually played UO properly, but I did code for a shard like a decade ago when that was a thing. A flipped experience, but I'm familiar with it. Anyway for me playstyles are really important. I love Zelda and Dark Souls, but it's so inaccessible for so many. There are tweaks that exist in that space though. Like I know a lot of people that would play through Dark Souls with me if they could just heal. Or instead of me what if it was an npc you were going through it with? Or what if you just want to walk around and explore the world and lore they've created without fighting? It's unexplored spaces like those that I've wanted to try out. Anywhere there's an NPC I feel there could be a player there instead, playing something that's fun and engaging, and impacting the world.

MMOs sort of dip their toes in that, but at the end of the day they're still about combat and grinding. There's games like Recettear, Harvest Moon, Minecraft etc that show those other roles can be fun. It's bringing them together and having them influence each other in the same world that I'm focused on.

[Kassoon]

At a glance

* Added many new animations
* You can now hold stuff. Certain objects will appear in your hands when held. A few for now, I'll be continuously adding more.
* You can target/attack friendlies
* More combat feedback
* Added enemy healthbars
* New distant terrain
* Chickitoos now don't want to die
* Domesticated animals will make friends, and will mourn their friend if they die
* New female face
* And more but I don't want this to take up the whole post



There's a brand new animation system and a whole bunch of new animations! In fact the only old animation that remains is the placeholdery general-purpose "use" animation. There's also a host of new animations for things like combat. As a part of this new system I finally put in models for holding certain things.



It's not everything yet, but you can have a trusty mushroom shield. Or mushroom club.



I spent several days trying to migrate the animation system over to Unity's Mecanim system, then about two hours rolling my own. Mecanim is decent but very very fiddly, I could have easily spent the entire week just tweaking and working on the animations and transitions. A script-based solution became much more appealing. Unfortunately, it means I wasted almost half the week on it.



In the previous build you may have noticed that the distant terrain was a bit abstracted and "odd" in its lighting behavior. At first I thought it was a lighting issue, and had to use an unlit shader to get it to even work. This week I discovered that this is just a straight-up bug with one of Unity's rendering pipelines, one that's apparently been there for over 2 years unfixed. It's "fixed" by using a different rendering mode, which may have some unintended consequences with different hardware.



Wild Chickitoos are wary of you now, and will also run away when attacked. Makes for more of a hunt. Once domesticated they're much more friendly. So much so that they'll make friends! Domesticated animals will get attached to each other, and will get really upset if a friend dies. Oh, I also added the ability to target and attack friendly targets, if that's the kind of thing you're into. This allows you, for instance, to butcher your domesticated animals for their meat. Those are probably two unrelated things in the same paragraph.

[flipswitchx]

Just wanted to say super cool idea I hope this project goes far =)

[Kassoon]

Apparently I broke expressions, and some other things. That was a buggy build. Should be better now!

[Kassoon]

Boy, was THAT ever a challenging week of code. I've decided I'm going to stop wiping saves since we're close to beta and we've had a bunch recently, so your saves should stay intact. A save failing to load should be treated as a bug and will be fixed. I've already had to write several save file converters to keep true to that this week.



Secondly, world gen is now threaded and occurs when you're customizing your avatar. So now when you start a new game it should load up pretty quick and dump you into the customization screen. You'll be stuck there until the world is generated, and you can track its progress in the corner. When I work on better world gen systems I'll likely add a visualization so you can watch the world be made as it goes. Plus there will be more customization options so you can play with it longer.

Unity's new networking system is finally in a stable enough position to use, so that's what I've been doing this week. They make it fairly easy, but unfortunately due to the nature of the game it ended up difficult. If you have a static map you get it up and running in very little time, but since every server will have dramatically different worlds from each other, those worlds need to be synched when you join. And since world files are currently around 40mb and growing, sending every joining client the entire world isn't really feasible.

This meant I had to write a lot of low-level client/server packet interaction stuff and basically abandon Unity's fancy high-level system almost immediately out of the gate. To solve this I use world streaming, where pieces of the world are sent to your client as needed. This means I needed to compress the world in realtime on the server since the packets need to be as small as possible, so I had to write an RLE compressor for chunks that gets updated on the fly as the world changes and as clients need them. That's still a bit too big when taking entities into account, so I also gzip compress them. Unity doesn't support gzip and hasn't for years for some reason, but fortunately after a bit of digging I was able to find a Unity-friendly implementation of it. The low-level RLE and gzip compressed piece of the world is then sent via a reliable fragmented channel, meaning the packet itself is cut up into smaller pieces and reaches the client at different times, then is reconstructed, gzip uncompressed, turned back into normal world data via reverse RLE, and is then finally usable by the client. SIMPLE.



I also wrote a bunch of optimizations on top of it so clients and servers wouldn't get hammered with world requests. Oh and since the packets are fragmented and packet loss is a thing sometimes the chunks just won't arrive and you're stuck with a big hole in the ground, so there also needed to be error handling for when a client is waiting on a chunk for too long. Once a client has a piece of the world they won't need to be sent it again, and can instead be told when it updates so they can update their local copy. Which is much more like normal how-it's-supposed-to-work multiplayer.

[Kassoon]

At a glance

* Added dedicated server
* Added chat
* Added freebuild mode, where you can craft without materials
* Added Public Freebuild Server until matchmaking is done. It won't always be up, but it's a server you can play on without needing an IP.
* Tons of server functionality, interactions, etc. This took a ton of time and involved a variety of things but I can't think of a way to describe it besides "server functionality."
* New sunset
* New way of handling interactables that's a bit more multiplayer-friendly
* Made chunk loading on multiplayer clients a bit faster
* Fixed issue with server validation
* Fixed issue with combat
* Fixed a bunch of the reported bugs

The trek through functioning multiplayer continues! Special thanks to you guys for your patience during this, multiplayer is always the most janky, time-consuming, and complicated part. A lot of games take months, so we're making pretty good time.



Part of the difficulty for RL2 at least is the amount of interactions and getting them to sync across the server. You can shake trees, throw items around, set up shops, etc. In a lot of games of this type, those items are static, ie just another block. Thus all you need to sync is whether or not it exists. To shake a tree for instance I need to make sure all the trees are synced properly, tell all the clients who shook what tree, spawn a stick on all clients, have its position update properly if it rolls down a hill, and so on, and this needs to be done for everything.



That's what I spent a lot of the week on, getting interactions syncing across clients, handling crafting and updating the inventory on both the client and server, having inventories and the actions you take save on the server, and so on. I also rewrote how interactions are handled with objects to make it a bit more multiplayer-friendly. This means all objects need to be recalculated, so old saves wouldn't work anymore. HOWEVER, to stay true to my word I wrote a save converter to update all objects in the world to the new system. That'll run the first time you load up an old save. There may be some glitches and oddness, and I might so a couple hotfixes this week as stuff is found. That said, we have a decently functional multiplayer now, albeit a glitchy one.

Some multiplayer staples were added as well: dedicated servers, chat, and a freebuild mode. In freebuild you can craft anything so it's mainly just for building. I've added a Public Freebuild Server to the server list that you can connect to and fool around on. It won't always be available (it's using one of my computers), but it's a place to gather without needing to coordinate and trade IP addresses.

[Kassoon]

Most of the patch notes

* Tools and such are properly synched on the client
* Fixed being unable to craft a carpentry bench on freebuild
* Inventories and inventory positions are properly saved on server
* Fixed some multiplayer issues with crafting
* Better support for interacting with objects in multiplayer
* Fixed error with creatures
* Fixed server error with factories
* Fixed visual error with world in multiplayer when removing blocks and reconnecting
* No really there's like 30 more. If you want to see them all you can here: http://kassoon.com/rogue-legend-2/devlogs/

 You may not have noticed, but there were actually 4 updates this week. I was doing daily builds and may continue to do so as multiplayer is worked on. Both because it makes it easier to spot issues, and since I've been playing on the freebuild server with people every night it seems sensible to have us all on the latest version as I fix and implement stuff.

Anyway, I've talked already about all the syncing and stuff that goes into multiplayer, and you can see in the more detailed patch notes exactly how much there is to do and how involved it is, so let's talk instead about some of the stuff in the works.

I'm working on a new dungeony tileset:



That's neat.

Oh, who's this happy fellow?



Bet he has a cool story.

New UI is coming along and mostly waiting to be implemented



Hey that looks way nicer and more convenient.

Look at those sassy faces!



Why, you'd need a whole face and expression editor to handle all of those! I wonder who will implement that?

[Kassoon]

At a glance
* Added basic combat dash - jump in a direction while locked on
* Added Masonry Bench
* Added Brick Dungeon tileset
* Time and rain actively syncs in multiplayer
* Added combat to multiplayer
* Added some death support for multiplayer
* Added combat dash to multiplayer
* Prevented certain debuffs from saving
* Improved multiplayer movement for other players
* New worlds have more rocks
* Added basic window slopes
Rest of the patch notes are here: http://kassoon.com/rogue-legend-2/devlogs/

Multiplayer is feeling pretty good now, that's exciting! That took longer than I thought it would (the programmer catchphrase), but I've been playing with people most nights on the freebuild server and it's been a good time.

The dungeon tileset I teased last week is in now, and it's lookin pretty nice:



 I saw too many... cubes on the freebuild server, so I figured it's time to start getting the more interesting tilesets and items in. Specially since worldgen is next. It's made on the masonry bench which I have BIG PLANS for. Bigger than any other factory has been, at least. That's me downplaying it a bit, since combat is next. *That's* me being a tease.

My plan for the next week (or two) is to get combat feeling good and fun and set up a little pvp arena on the public server. I've talked about it before but the basic idea for combat is dodging, blocking, stamina management, elemental combat, and the three basic archetypes: warrior, archer, mage.

New UI and some new creatures will also be coming before combat is done. I'll be doing creature spotlights whenever I add one to the game. A bit of lore info about each, their culture, etc. Since all creatures will be capturable, it helps to know a bit about them, no? I've also started doing weekly lore posts on facebook and twitter as I start to ramp up for proper world gen.

[Kassoon]

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone! I don't know how many other countries celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, but we sure do here in Canada. No worries though, on Canadian Thanksgiving EVERYONE is Canadian! Unless you don't live in Canada, of course.

This week was a mix of multiplayer and combat. And this:



We've been building stuff on the freebuild server. Once combat is nicely finalized I'll be setting up a little pvp tournament, with prizes. This will serve as our stage, and a nice little showcase of what you can do with the new tileset. Even more tilesets are on their way!



Creature Spotlight: Water Grek



Originally believed to be the result of runaway adolescents falling into elemental plane portals, Greks are a permanent, persistent, and problematic fixture of the world. Fiercely territorial, racist, and dumb, Greks are simply best left alone, and can be scared off from most raids with a sufficient defense.



Water Greks make their homes on beaches and scuba dive for wreckage and scrap to build their homes in the shallow water. Water Grek homes are made out of a mix of rocks, clay, and rotting wood. They haven't developed gills like a lot of water elemental creatures, so they're forced to use snorkels or the rare scuba gear they can manage to steal from humans. Though not smart enough to upkeep them, even a broken rebreather is a badge of pride amongst their kind. They like to decorate themselves with different clam shells and barnacles, and can range from a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors, or a rotten mish-mash. A constant nuisance to fishermen, Water Greks will often try to poke holes in boats that they see as a threat to their shallow domain. Plus, it makes for more wreckage and scrap to plunder later.

Full patch notes

[Kassoon]

This isn't an update, but I wanted to share this really cool castle that A Player Named Brutus made:

[Kassoon]

New UI is in! Looky:



Not 100% yet. There's going to be better health orbs, a compass, and less spammy crafting, but it's a definite improvement.

There's been a lot of cool stuff getting built on the freebuild server. I recommend checking it out if you've been shying away from multiplayer. It's also been seeing more traffic, so you might bump into someone.

Combat is feeling pretty good. You can play it as a souls-y twitch action game, or just hang back and play it turn-based. I tried to make it so there's pros/cons to both as well, there should hopefully be a fair amount of depth once it's all in place.



Course what all that means is "it's feeling good in my internal tests." There's still some animations and feedback missing, and there needs to be a number of abilities and progression in before a player cares, but it's at the point where I can be like "it's going to work you guys for real." It also means I can start implementing those things.

So, I'm going to work on some combat abilities and more multiplayer functionality. Then, world gen. Then we'll be in "game dev beta." Which is like an actual beta but you keep adding features and I'm not totally sure what the word means anymore.

[Kassoon]

 Now to put in all the combat stuff. I have an ability system all set up that combines elemental counters with mechanical counters. For combat builds I'm focusing on 4 main archetypes: Tanks, Healers, DPS, and Controllers, with more specific subclasses within each. You're probably familiar with the first three, but I'm taking a different sort of approach to all 4.

Tanks like to take hits and keep their allies safe. Instead of using an aggro system where you force enemies to attack you and get yelled at if anyone else is forced to participate, enemies will attack whoever they want and every class will have ways of dealing with that. Tanks will primarily try to get in the way, restrict an enemy's options to attack others, punish enemies for attacking allies by buffing allies and debuffing/damaging enemies and become stronger when they're getting hurt and allies are not. They'll place zones to enhance their allies and generally try to direct the flow of combat. Core class: Dragoon, Tinkerer.

Healers heal, naturally. Lots of games have tried to do funky things with healers, and whenever I try those games as a healer I'm always annoyed, so I think the core focus of healers is solid. Additionally though healers will also be the primary buffers, and some versions may dabble in dealing damage as well. I've always liked the concept of a healer that deals their dps through enhancing their allies. The buff and debuff system allows 1 buff and 1 debuff each per player, so carefully choosing which to apply and when will require some careful thought. Core class: Conduit.

DPS both deal damage and enhance the damage of others. Their abilities rely primarily on combo effects to eke out extra bits of damage, so properly setting up your chains and maintaining control over the battlefield will be key. Solid preparation and a plan of action will be important. Core class: Assassin, Wardancer. Which leads to...

Controllers are like a secondary purpose DPS, but they prefer to poison and debuff enemies and control the battlefield by moving enemies and placing damaging zones. Herding enemies into a chokepoint with walls of force and fire, sapping their ability to deal and resist damage, throwing them into your tanks and then draining all their health away. Core class: Alchemist.

[Kassoon]

I got sick on Wednesday. I'm still sick today. Here's some sick frog gifs



























totally sick frog gifs, bro

* You can place containers in multiplayer
* Camera now only auto-rotates when manually moving (with controls) and not when auto moving (like when you click on something and path to it)
* Added camera auto rotation to options if you want to disable it completely
* Changed how placing blocks works, it should be much better now
* Fixed errors with crafting in multiplayer
* Fixed issue where you couldn't reconnect to a server after disconnecting
* Fixed issue where you couldn't connect to a server after certain menu navigation
* Smoothed out the movement of auto camera rotation and made it actually function like it should so you may actually want it on
* Added mouselook in first person view
* Holding down lock-on button (tab) will quickly reset the view
* Fixed some distance errors for building that could make placing blocks sometimes wonky
* Fixed a few cases where block placing wouldn't work as it should
* Fixed visual bug that could sometimes happen when switching from hammer to block
* Adjusted Chiko/Paratoo health
* Doubled damage across the board
* Target element is now visible on their nameplate
* Title screen is a touch less bland
* Attackers will override your target if you're not in combat
* Added multicrafting so you don't need to spam click as much
* First person camera is now like a proper fps camera
* Smoothed movement in 3rd person auto camera even more
* Inverted auto rotate camera option, you may need to re-enable or disable it
* Fixed consumables being consumed twice in multiplayer
* Removed symbols and special characters from chat
* Fixed some more UI glitches when chatting
* hunger/thirst/sick bars no longer pulse when empty
* Fixed error with candles and some other furniture in multiplayer
* Made trees more likely to fall over
* Rain/snow shouldn't follow you underground
* New nameplate
* Fixed duplication bug with placing buckets

[Kassoon]

Something that's always bothered me is how buffs and debuffs rarely seem to matter. They're almost always there, but they don't make a noticeable impact on your decision making in combat. A lot of times they don't even matter and are relegated to a single "buffing" class. So how do you make a system where buffing/debuffing matters and impacts your decision making?

Step number one is you make buffs and debuffs less annoying to deal with. The reason they tend not to matter is because most players want to ignore them or forget about them. Players do that because they're usually really obnoxious to deal with. A collection of icons on some corner of the UI that you have to hover over to check on, or read about in a menu somewhere, and are otherwise out of your peripheral. My system does this too, so I needed a way to involve them more in the combat UI. Thus the Target HUD is born:



This lets you see what effects are currently active on your target at all times, making it easier to both have and choose abilities that are dependent on certain buffs and debuffs.

The other problem is information overload. A lot of RPGs will just run wild with buffs and you can end up with a target that has 15 or more buffs and debuffs on them at a time. The more effects there generally are on a target, the less impactful and important each individual buff is, which again lowers the importance of buffs overall. It changes the buff system to that of spinning plates, where the only goal is to maintain uptime on as many as possible, rather than actually making choices about which are important. Also, it makes the buff situation impossible to decipher. Even with a dedicated HUD telling you the active effects, if you put 20 on there nobody is going to read it.

In order to solve the second problem, I limit you to 1 buff and 1 debuff each that you can have active on a target at a time. This has several effects: it clears up the target HUD such that you will only be dealing with 1-2 active effects most of the time, it places a greater importance on which buffs you choose to use, and makes the whole system simpler to understand while expanding tactical depth. Choosing between shielding yourself or increasing your attack becomes a more complicated decision when you can't just do both. Note that this is a per-player restriction, so if you have a Party Of Five then each player can have a buff and debuff on the target, meaning a potential max of 5 buffs and 5 debuffs on a target. I'm alright with this as I think group fights should probably be more complicated, but if it doesn't work out I'll change it. So, we'll see.



If you stalk me on facebooks you've probably seen this, but I've added a drill. I found building underground a bit obnoxious, so I added this to make it easier. It's currently freebuild only, but when used it quickly digs in a cone on front of you. Anything you dig out this way is destroyed, so if you're looking to collect blocks you'll still want to use the hammer.

[Kassoon]

Combat is done now. Yey! All that's left for this milestone is the last few multiplayer features and world gen.