Finally - it's live!
I’ve been excited to get this one live for some time now! If you’ve watched the Dev Blog from this week, you’ll already have a pretty good idea of some of the new parts to this patch! If not, all good - I’ll break it down in text form below, and also couple it with a list of the full patch notes!
I did just want to start by saying a massive thank you for the support on the video this week! I was given lots of lovely comments about how much you all enjoyed that format, so I’ll 100% try to get those going more often! I’ll try to keep them to 10-15 min and aim for one every 7-10 days, or as soon as I have some stuff to talk about.
And as usual, I can’t go without thanking you all for the Positive Reviews - its amazing to see such support, and I can’t wait to keep growing this game over 2021 and beyond! As a solo developer with no marketing plan besides "hopefully people who stumble upon the game find it interesting...", reviews go a long way to helping make Vault the success I'd love for it to be!
Onto the details !
(As a note: this has been on the Beta Branch for the last few days, where I’ve managed to fix a few issues that were around. I’ll be monitoring things closely for the next 10 hours or so to ensure that nothing goes wrong, and hotfix any issues that appear straight away!)
New Intent System
So, one of the major issues with Vault was its presentation of its systems. Originally, I thought I would be expanding content in the form of more classes, cards, encounters etc by now - however one thing I’ve been told a lot is; Vault has a lot of content currently - it just doesn’t present it awfully well.
So, the new Intent and Tooltip system is a massive push to address this. Firstly, all monster cards have been reexported and setup to allow for these new changes. It also means that enemy names aren’t baked into the artwork, which was something that was supposed to happen a long time ago. Chalk that one up to not knowing what I was doing when I started the project!
On top of these changes, what a creature is planning to do is now presented, in short form, on the card. No longer will you need to mouseover to check the details of what's happening (something which was often forgotten/overlooked). Also, Passives were very easy to miss. A little strip of orange text under the creature name - it often lead to a lot of confusion! No longer the case! All passives now are presented as icons under the card in the “buff/debuff” strip, making them super noticeable at a glance.
I’ve also adjusted which tooltips show when you mouse over the card (just their intent/passive details and sub tooltips, no longer a wall of all their buffs/debuffs). A few other small things also, but hopefully these changes make digesting enemy details easier and more approachable at a glance!
Tooltips
Tooltips, tooltips, tooltips. Probably the one thing I get feedback on a lot - the game as a lot of them! The first step was to trim down as much of the text as possible. In some cases, I also adjusted the spell/card to have less tooltips intentionally. The next step however was to make these damn things more digestible! Here's what I’ve done :
Tooltips are no longer just a blue heading with a wall of text. Their text block is broken up with keywords highlighted in blue to make it easier to parse quickly.
Each has their own icon associated which will appear next to the tooltip, and also next to the heading, to make things easier to pick up at a glance.
Small changes to font sizes and positioning to make things less overwhelming.
So far, feedback has been great and I really hope these changes are a step in the right direction for everyone!
Spells
Spells have been tweaked! I spoke about this in the video, but the goal was to take steps to make Spells better, in an attempt to compete with that class spell spot that synergises with your spec so well. A lot have been deleted, some have been changed and even more have been added!
Soultithe
The Sacrifice spec got a little card expansion, with a few new toys being added in to help with Soultithe/Threshold builds. I’ll speak more about this change in the next Dev Blog as I being to shift focus to expanding card pools even more.
New FX/Sounds
I’ve managed to find a new FX artist who has been delivering some incredible stuff! This is just the start of what's to come, as I slowly replace all the royalty free FX with new, exciting custom work! More of this to drip feed through over the next couple of patches.
Fatigue!
More info on the why behind this to come next week , but figured it should be pointed out! Fatigue is now automatically applied to all creatures at the end of every even turn.
Optimisation
As I try to do every few weeks, I wanted to run a little optimization pass over this patch. With the new tooltip system adding a bit more overhead on the code base, it was important to relook at where I could refactor and trim down a few things. After profiling, looks like I’ve eked out quite a bit more performance - hopefully that translates to you all as well!
As always, I’ll list the full Patch Notes below. Sorry if this post comes off a bit disjointed, pretty exhausting last few weeks leading up to all this! I’m excited to finally have this live and shift focus to another area of the codebase!
Feel free to leave any comments, or log any issues in the Discord or on here and I’ll personally respond as quickly as possible! Thank you all for making Vault what it is, and I hope you continue to enjoy your time cleansing the hallways of these evil apparitions...
All for now,
Josh
1.3.33
+ UI/General;
- Class icons are back for cards!
- Clearing Introduction will unlock Hard as well as Normal.
- Creatures that take half damage from Bleed will have their Bleed number reflect that.
- Corrected a number of typos
- When discarding the cards will move up so you can see the keywords now.
- At your start of turn draw, any Affliction cards drawn will position themselves at the far left of your hand.
- Purging cards won't scale them down so much, so harder to get them 'stuck' in limbo.
- Floor 1 will now have a selected Mob Room which will give a Booster Pack in addition to its normal rewards.
- Continued tweaking of Spawn rules to ensure less double up fights.
- Have adjusted the sound on Doggy Pats
- Combo now has its own Orb similar to Corruption.
- Changes to how the floating battle text is displayed.
- More sound effects across the board.
- Fatigue will now be automatically added at the end of every second turn.
- Started replacing/adding new animations/FX for attacks.
+ Monsters;
- Card redesign, with shortened attack information shown on the card! (No need to mouseover anymore)
- Redcaps won't sync Attack anymore, nor will they dual Refuge.
- Tooltips on Enemies have been redone to fit the new structure. Status Effects/Debuffs won't show on mouseover, to avoid overload. This can now be accessed by mousing over each item.
- Loaded piglets will increase Battle progress by more.
+ Artifacts;
- Clarified Utility Belt - the card is added to your hand.
+ Spells;
- Lembas Bread : Removed.
- Sunder : Increased to Vulnerable 3.
- Cripple : Increased to Weak 3.
- Return: Cooldown reduced to 3.
- Energy Tap: Cooldown reduced to 3.
- Leverage: Apply Weak 1 to all enemies. Deal 2 Shii thrice to all enemies.
- Sacrifice: Threshold/Reduction increased to 10 and 3.
- From Dust: Deal 14 damage. Slay: Heal 5, and, if you are at full HP, Block 5
- Nightmare Steed: Increased to 2 Shield Walls.
- Blood Give Me Blood changed to Swarm: Your next single-target card played trigger +1 times. Cooldown 3.
- Massive change Swamp Witchs' spell - more info once you defeat her!
- 7 brand new Spells! (They're good!)
+ Card Changes;
- My Father's Curse: Unleash 50% (75%) Corruption. Recur 1. Rebound.
- New: Ceaseless: Uncommon Buff, 2(3) cost: Each turn, the first time you spend Combo, Combo 1(2). Expel.
- Grasp: Upgrade damage reduced to 10.
- Death Blade: upgrade now remains at 2 cost, damage reduced by 1.
- What Lies Waiting: Upgrade now grants Corruption rather than Soultithe, plus is also Draw 3.
- New: Proliferate.
- New: Dirty Soul.
- New: Debt Repaid.
- New: Veil.
- New: What Was Owed.
- New: Abyssal Unity.