Hello everyone, time for the montly Dev-Blog!
This Monthly Dev-blog will be focus on what I was working on during this month, replying to a few question I've seen recently and finally on the upcoming features.
Work done
Since last Monthly dev blog, I was mainly focused on 0.8.1 and 0.8.2
0.8.1 was focused on implementing proper modding into the game
0.8.2 started as a simple fix for an artifact bug and greatly spiralled into an important code rework arround Artifacts, I'm going to go deeper into details later.
0.8.1 - Modding update
So far i'm very happy with the modding possibilities of the game,
it's still very early in the life cycle of modding, but, well it's starting.
I've made an example mod and a guide on how to start creating mod.
The information are still a bit barebone for now, but I'll slowly improve it over time, it can be hard to find a balance between working on modding and working on the game.
I plan to make a few additional mod myself (to give more base for modder and to fulfill some request I wouldn't implement into the base game for various reasons)
Technical debt and refactorisation
So far, since the release of 0.7, players could have the impression the developement of the game is slow.
I'ven't seen players complain about that overall, but I think some person may think it is the case.
Content-wise, the additions were quite scarse, Over the last 6 month, there were no new difficulty added or tangible content.
Content wasn't my focus so far.
0.8 update, more than just an addition of avatars and talents, was also an important rework of the code of the game.
Developing a software (and especially game) create a technical debt, this is often the case when you add feature that are not planned at the very begining. As a developer I often have to do the choice between doing thing quickly or doing it "properly" (this is not technically correct as there is no definitive proper way to make thing).
However, the "properly" part of doing something depend on the scope of the feature.
and experience.
I'm much more experiences now that I was when I started Rogue: Genesia, and I can much more easily design robust and future-proof system into the game.
I'll take for example Artifact that received an important refactorisation during update 0.8.2:
Artifact was made during the very early part of the game. I had no idea of the exact scope of the game back then.
So how do I make an artifact that increase your stats ? Simply make a check if I own the artifact and increase the stats during the stats calculation.
However while this is a simple and quick implementation, it can become a problem if I have 50/75/100 or even 200 different artifact, I am going to increase the stats calculation code to take every case possible ?
It'll quickly become a long code of repetition, can easily create bug, is an huge issues to maintain and actually is not that performant...
i've create Technical debt.
This is one of the factor why I've not added many artifact since the release of the game, because the current system is simply not made for and adding more artifact would just make the rework harder and longer to do.
So while someone reported to me a minor bug about Broken statuette not updating the stats correctly during survivors (it only referesh after you leveled-up). I took a look, and quickly noticed I had two choice :
- make a 5 min patchwork that will just make it even more of a pain to make a proper system later
- spent multiples day reworking the whole artefact system to fit the new need
After doing the first choice for many previous similar situation I've decided this time to go for the second option.
The new system made artifact a separate object (code wise) which would listen to events that are now called at the place where the old artifact implementation was.
This has good advantage :
- Very slighty improve performance, where before I had to check if I owned each of the artifact, now it only call the owned artifact without have to check if I own each of them. (the performance gain is very low)
- made the system much more flexible and created space to add more artifacts
- Greatly increased the speed at which I could add artifact, especially if it does multiple things at once
- Made artifact moddable (having hardcoded artifact mean modder had to patch function using CLI cursor, and could easily lead to issues if multiple modder wanted to implement similar artifacts)
The total rework of the artifact took about 1 week.
about 3 day for artifacts themselve, but since artifact was seriously intertwined with other system (stage objective and pick-up) I ended up having to refactore them too, applying the same approach as artifact, making them much easier to add new content for them and making them moddable.
Of course, remaking those system create a lot of bug, which can take a lot of time to find and fix.
Now you can imagine the same process went for the Enemies, Stages, Difficulties, Gamemodes and Cards.
avatars and talents were designed with this approach from begining so refactoring them wasn't needed, but it still took time.
Two other important time-sink during the developement of Update 0.8 were
- The animation of avatars Avatars design usualy take between 2 to 6 hours, each having 3 animation is about 1 to 2 week of work time, and finally having to draw victory and game-over sprites
- UI elements Making an Menu is about 1 to 3 day of work each, having to design the UI and coding the logics.
All those factor lead to a huge developement time for minor content addition during those last few months.
And now ?
While there is still a few refactorisation I would like to make, they are much less important and are post-poned for later (Right now I'm thinking of Achievements and Soul-Shop upgrades, and likely challenges much later)
Those new refactorisation and rework of the game allow for a much easier addition of contents.
and I can share with you a few of the addition that are comming with Update 0.8.3.0
New stage type
2 News stage type has been made so far that should increase diversity. more will come over time
Elite Swarm stage
They are a bit self explaining, they are basically the Swarm stage, but with ONLY elite monster.
These will only appear in zone 3 or more, and are a bit rare.
Arena
Arena will be stage were the camera is fixed and unzoomed, and you cannot leave the screen
They are slighty harder than normal stage.
I'm thinking of adding a bit of structure into these stage.
New stage Objectives
Wanting more diversity into the run, new stages objective has also been added
as a simple objective, some elite stage will simply ask you to kill a set number of elite
There will also be a rare stage objective where enemies are much more likely to drop gold and you goal is to find a set value of gold
I'm also experimenting with a stage objective where you have to defend the shop-keeper for a set duration, and keeping him alive reward you with gold coins as well as a shop instead of a reward
Optional Objectives
Finally one last thing I'm currently experimenting with for the 0.8.3 update is the addition of option objective which will increase the end of stage reward.
Replies to a few concerns
Before I talk about what is planned for the next month, I want to replied a few question/concern I've noticed
Optimisation
The patch is still being worked on, as I'm not directly working on I still can't give a set ETA, there is hope for it to be ready for update 0.9, but I can't give any promises.
Crashes
I know a few people are having crash with the game.
From looking into it, the crashes seam to be due to the game taking too much ressources (ram and vram)
This issues is very likely to be fixed with the optimisation patch.
Pet DLC
There will be 2 different Pet DLC, each costing 1$, one for a dog and another one for a cat.
The reason I'm making them DLC instead of including it with a game update is that it was a popular request from userbase to have pets following you. I personally don't think they are an important addition to the game and they are actually a bit of an investment to add int othe game (animations, design).
Making them as paid DLC is a way for me to mitigate the cost of the adding something I don't think is important while making the community happy, however to make sure it's not a paid advantage, they will be stictly cosmectic, they won't serves any purpose.
However, I've noticed than making them "useless" annoyed a part of the community.
After a bit of reflexion, I've made the pet having multiple "behaviours":
Behaviours are small AI component of the pet that control it's action, the pet will choose random behaviour everytime the previous behaviour is finished.
In the vanilla game, the pet will have 2 behaviours, idle and walking along the players
The catch is that these behaviours are moddable. adding or removing behaviours with modding will be possible.
I plan to release a mod after the DLC release that will add a simple "fetching" behaviours where the pet will pick-up collectible for the player.
This is I think the best way to keep them as cosmectic while allowing player who want to have trully useful pet be happy.
(of course adding more pets via modding will be possible)
"I would have preferred more progress on the game itself, and what it offers itself, over anything to do with modding"
This is something I've seen when I talked about artifact refactorisation (to make them moddable), and I think is shared by a few players.
While it's true a bit of time went into modding, as I explained above, this is often more complex, and striking the balance between modding and progressing the game can be difficult.
while it look like I spent a lot of time into modding. I would say I spent about 5% to 10% of my developement effort toward modding.(it's even likely I've spent a little bit more effort toward writing these monthly dev blog than modding)
Modding is too hard
There is a balance between having an easy modding and having a complete modding.
You can't make a modding that allow lot of thing to be easy and available to everyone especially when you are an Indie developer, knowing nothing on how to make a game modable when you start working on it.
My target for modding difficulty/possibilities was RimWorld/TmodLoader.
so far I think the possibilities and difficulty of modding for Rogue:Genesia is alongside these game.
Also, just recently, Chendrak released EasyCard. which is a mod that allow for anyone to make card easily filling up json and adding an image.
There is also a pack of card made by PlushPaws using EasyCard
You also are more than welcome to come on the discord if you have any question about modding or need help
0.8.2 Nerf
I've also seen some people concerned or even complaining about the recent "Nerf"
First off I don't think they did much more than reading the patch note before complaing.
The "nerf" affect both the player and the monster, and was made so it's shouldn't be much different than before.
from the feedback I had, many players didn't even noticed any changes.
The goal of the nerf wasn't the made the game harder but to reduce the uncontroled powercreep you have arround Zone 3. i've seen many complain from begineer player slow and unfun fight with enemy in zone 3.
The main reason being they simply skip to much of the damage source and end-up having good survivability but very low damage, leading to a boring game.
After collecting a lot of feedback of a long period (I've seen this appear multiple time on the Steam forum during those last few month) I've decided to greatly reduce many of the Damage multiplier you can find (making the stacking a bit less important) balanced the enemy health arround that
(to give an idea of the nerf, Necromancer (zone 3 boss) health went from 5 billion to 250 Million)
Nerf also reduced Huge Health bonus card, that simply pulled player toward those boring build, seeing a +40% health bonus is much more appealing that a +0.2 base damage.
(however proper tank build are still possible and fun)
Too much Typo/spelling mistakes in news/Changelogs
I prefer to spent my time working on the game.
And english is not my first language :).
And then?
Right now, I'm waiting for the pet's animation to be finished before seriously starting to work on Update 0.9, that will like other Major update follow a lenghty beta phase with players.
Until then I'm working on 0.8.3 update and likely a few minor patch depending on the time required for the hired person to finish.
So I would target for a start of 0.9 update developement to be for Early May and the release of 0.9 targeted for June or July 2023,
Release of update 0.9 will also see a price increase of the game from 4.99$ to 6.99$
0.9 Update will add C-rank difficult into the game (both Survivors and Rogs Mode)
the definitive scope of 0.9 is not yet confirmed, but I would like to add 2 major additional features:
- Zone variant Goal would be to have variant of zone to add more diversity into the game. For example, having a snow forest biome instead of the normal forest biome for the first zone
- Stage modifier Those would be "Curse" or random afixes to stage, modifying how they work. Like increasing the like-hood of elite spawning/ they maximum number Changing the zoom level Disabled a random weapons ...Inverting your controls (I know you're gonna hate that) (nothing definite yet, still thinking of idea for that)
This will also be acommpagnied with neccessary content (cards, events, artifact...) to accomodate for the increased lenght of games and QoL additions (Monster list in encyclopedia...)