Hi,
The Dungeon update is finally released! A lot was done under the hood. Everything is not yet visible as worlds need to be bigger and the lore to be more developed to add more complex dungeons. But I am very happy with the work done and can't wait to see where it goes with the future updates.
Dungeons
I completely reworked the dungeon generation technology. It now uses graph grammars to generate the abstract structure of the generated dungeon. I started investigating this technology during the Summer 2023 and I finally implemented it in the game!
While the old dungeons were just a bunch of rooms connected to each others with an entrance room and a boss room. I can now easily generate much more interested dungeon structures. I am only starting to use this technology and will take advantage of it more in the future, but the newly added puzzles illustrate its power.
Puzzles
I already implemented three types of puzzles.
The first one is the classic Sokoban puzzle: you must push crates on buttons to unlock the door. You can notice that I had to implement movable objects and physics for the buttons to make it work. If you have suggestions on how these features can be used, feel free!
I called the second one the Hamilton path puzzle (yeah not a very attractive name, I know): you must walk on each button exactly once. It is inspired from a puzzle in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.
Finally, I also added a maze generator. It is quite simple for now. But I have some ideas to make the mazes more interesting.
I started to prototype a fourth puzzle generator. But if you have ideas about other concepts of puzzles that may be fun, feel free to send me a message!
I would also be interested in your feedback on the difficulty of the already implemented puzzles. Let me know if you find them too easy or too hard!
Traps
New traps were added. In particular, there are now traps that throw projectiles and swinging blades.
There will be more in the next updates!
Combat
I started to implement a lot of things but I didn't have the time to use them at their full potential yet.
Ranged Combat
I implemented ranged attacks for monsters. For now, only the eyeballs use them.
I also tried to add archers but the attack speed of bows is currently too high and the archers were way too strong. So I need to balance the weapons before being able to add them.
Status Effects
Status effects were added. This will enable to add a lot of future features. For now, only slimes slow you down and snakes poison you.
I will add more status effects in the future, and the ability to apply poisons on your weapons so that you can also give status effects to enemies!
AI
I reworked a bit the AI of enemies. Humanoids are now running when they attack you.
Both humanoids and monsters will now search for you if you attack them from afar.
I also started to think about more interesting attack patterns for monsters. I already reworked the spiders.
UI
In the quest journal and the dialogue window, "important" names are now highlighted by using an italic font. Let me know what you think about it and if it helps.
Other Changes
- Bugfix: buff bar didn't update correctly
- Bugfix: regions destroyed by arrows entering a not-yet loaded region
- Bugfix: Thieves Guild initiation quest failed to be generated
- Bugfix: the message for the discovery of a village now appears when the character effectively enters the village
- Bugfix: issues with the French translation
- Improvement: better spider animations
- Improvement: characters complain when they are hungry
- Improvement: replaced the lockpicks by a lockpicking kit in the Thieves Guild initiation quest
- Improvement: all the quests should mention the same location name as the one displayed on the map for more clarity
What's Next?
I always wanted to do more but I am still satisfied with what I delivered in this update. And I am confident about being able to release the two others "big" updates in 2024 (Lore and World Generation).
I will now work on the World Generation update which will allow to generate bigger and more interesting worlds. There will be more space in the world to generate more intriguing dungeons. And the full potential of dungeons will be reached with the Lore update that will allow to associate background stories to places and dungeons.
If you face any issue or have any feedback, feel free to come on the Steam forum, the Discord server or send me an email.
Have a good day!
Topics that start a quest now have a small icon in the dialogue window.
