Summery of weekly updates over on the Netherguild Discord
Hey Steam peeps! Here's a glimpse into what I've been working on in February.
Upcoming Steam Demo
I've been working recently on setting up a Steam demo of Netherguild!
As many of you already know, Netherguild has had a demo on Itch.io for a long while now-
-however, setting up a Steam demo on top of that will let Netherguild participate in Steam festivals in the future, as well as letting more players and Streamers access the demo.
On the Steam demo release day, the new demo will be the same as the Itch.io demo + a few small additions, improvements and fixes (an update will also be pushed out on Itch.io when it happens).
Also, big thank you to LRadikal and Daedrin on the Discord (as well as the rest of the Discord community) for helping me make sure that the Steam demo works properly on Linux!!
Walls & Pits Update
As you might've noticed from some of the concepts for the new areas I posted before...
The edges of these areas are basically a massive 'pit' - which brings us to the subject of this section, the 'walls and pits' update!
A brand new game mechanic that's being added to Netherguild...
The thing about pits, is that similarly to walls, players and enemies can't step on them, however, you can shoot over pits, and push units into them.
Wait a second... pushing units into pits? just how would that work...?
What happens when a character falls into a pit:
First up, they receive fall damage equal to a percentage of their max health.
Afterwards, if they die, XP and effects are activated normally.
However, if fall damage isn't enough to kill them, they'll appear on the next floor below!
Damaged and angry, in a random room.
This turns pushing enemies into a powerful "finisher" move (especially against higher HP enemies that can be pushed), or a "panic button", but overusing it can have negative consequences... (like missing out on loot or having way too many enemies pushed away to the floor blow you).
What about fallen player characters?
I plan for them to appear as a sort of 'oddity' - as in, when approaching them you'd be able to choose to return them to the surface.
They might be able to join you if you have room, or fight alongside you if they dropped into an area with enemies.
This system is still work-in-progress, I hope I'll be able to show you more of it next month!
Small UI improvements and more
As I was wrapping up the update from last month, I added a bit of more polishing to the UI!
Initiative
Initiative order UI is looking snazzy with icons and shorter descriptions (to the right).
Hiring screen
I added this neat little effect for character hiring that looks a bit like drawing cards.
It fits since characters have randomized backgrounds (and therefore some different skill trees, personalities and more) on top of the four current classes.
The effect appears every time there's new characters in the guild, or when you choose to randomize the character backgrounds.
Bonus: Faster Bow Animations
Something that has been suggested by the Discord community and playtesters in general (which I frankly wanted to add myself as well) was shorter animations for bow-shooting!!
This doesn't apply to "special" animations like the "piercing arrow" ability but pretty much to all the regular bow-shooting ones.
(Big thank you to both Naucitos in the Discord and Zorder on G.Round, who I explicitly remember asked for this addition.)
-Update End-
That's all for this update! Thank you for reading and see you next time (:
-David