Hello everyone, it's time for the monthly Dev-Blog
This Dev-blog will have fewer things than usual as I've decided to make September a "break" month
(which was more of a "work less" than a total break as I'm completely incapable of stopping work completely)
I would like to thank everyone who was supportive of me. I usually don't reply to you, but I've read all of your comments, and it was the reason I was able to take the whole month as a "break"!
Unity
Let's start with what has been a serious source of stress for an entire week.
It ended up in an acceptable situation (only affecting games with Unity 2023+, with a set cap on cost, and only counting unique users based on sales data). The approach was unacceptable, and it's a clear indication that Unity Technology, as a business partner, is not something I can trust again in the future.
Rogue: Genesia will stay on Unity. I don't have the means to switch engines. At best, it would take months of work, and at worst, it could literally kill the game.
However, it is clear to me that my next game won't be made in Unity.
While, in the end, the new fee doesn't affect Rogue: Genesia, it still hurt my motivation and overall productivity. I can tell I'm working much slower than before, even after my month break has ended.
The direct effect of that is that I'll push back the equipment system. It won't be part of the 1.0 release. I was already very hesitant, and this whole debacle made it clear I want to focus on other aspects of the game rather than adding yet another system to it that I wasn't sure would work 100%. Depending on how well the 1.0 release of the game does, I'll probably try to implement it in a 1.1 version of the game or make it a separate mod.
Result of Equipment and Weapon Modifier Polls
As usual, the results are publicly available:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1guX1ZkHKDn0_7b3UofE2Fbcoeo6yuXKjbAoIvlYe1w4/edit?usp=sharing
Equipment System
What Type of Equipment System Would You Prefer?
So far, most people prefer either presets (19.7%) or a hybrid system (46%), with only 13% of players preferring fully procedural items.
16.7% of players would prefer no equipment system. It's far from a majority, but also significant enough to warrant consideration. This is why I'm still thinking of possibly making it a mod later on. From the data I gathered, some players fear it might require too much grinding (which is not the goal of the feature, and I may tweak it if I do implement it to avoid grinding).
Another feared issue with it would be that it slows down the game too much, which is also why I don't want it to be managed in a run. Also, having too many items dropped could end up being a hindrance.
Finally, there is the issue of it being too powerful, which would require some balancing. One way I'm thinking of addressing this is by having the stats given by the equipment scale with the player's level, to make it less trivial in the early game while still providing a good performance boost in the late game.
How Many Equipment Would You Like to See Dropped per Run?
Most players would prefer a reasonable amount of equipment to be dropped. A few would like to see a lot of equipment, similar to the amount you could get in a Hack & Slash game, but that's not the goal of the equipment system.
I think having a chance to drop per boss with one guaranteed (or two on higher difficulties/challenges) per run would still bring enough items to quickly fill out your equipment slots without it feeling like a slog to manage between each game.
Additionally, it could be sped up with a good comparison system and a large enough inventory so you don't have to clean up after each game.
How Many Equipment Slots Would You Like to See?
There is no clear majority, but the tendency would be to have a high number of slots with varying slots depending on the avatar selected.
Should the Equipment Be Upgradeable Using Soul-Coin?
A clear majority wants a way to upgrade their equipment with Soul-Coin.
This could also be a very good Soul-Coin sink for players who have maxed out their Soul-shop (especially considering how much a Soul-Coin sink has been requested on the Discord).
Would You Like the Equipment to Be Craftable?
There's no clear majority, but there's a tendency toward non-craftable equipment with the possibility to reforge/customize their stats using a form of crafting. This crafting could involve other equipment, a new resource type, or simply soul-coins.
Another possibility would be to make some preset equipment craftable, requiring other procedural equipment with specific stats. This means the majority of equipment wouldn't require crafting, but it's a cool way to aim for late-game gear.
Should Equipment Have Rarity Tiers?
There's a clear majority there.
I believe having rarity tiers would work best to make equipment easier to spot, especially if the stats are craftable/reforgeable. It would encourage players to improve a piece of equipment rather than endlessly grinding for a 1% better attack equipment.
There's also the possibility of upgrading an item's rarity to improve its stats or stat slots.
Equipment System Conclusion
From the poll results, it looks like players are quite positive about this addition to the game, with a non-negligible portion of players who don't want to spend time on this sort of system or fear it might add grinding that would make the game boring.
Making equipment pieces less common but much more customizable would make them more interesting and create a better bond between players and their equipment.
This would also prevent situations where a legendary item found becomes obsolete due to common items shortly after. It has given me a much clearer idea of what could be an engaging and interesting equipment system, which is somewhat different from the initial vision I had, but I'm more confident in it.
However, the new vision I have for it would require much more development time than I can afford to allocate for now, especially combined with the major motivation loss due to the Unity debacle. I believe it's best to postpone its development until after the 1.0 release.
There's a possibility it may never be developed (if income from sales after 1.0 is too low to hire developers to continue working on it), but it's too soon to decide on that yet.
Weapon Modifiers
Would You Like Weapon Modifiers to Be Added to the Game?
I'm also quite confident it's a good addition to the game. So unless there's a clear majority against it, I think I would have made it. Having a clear majority in favor of this system is a clear indication that the idea is at least worth implementing and checking if players like it.
In What Other Ways Would You Like Weapon Modifiers?
This section was only replied to by 16.7% of voters as it only applied to people who thought of modifiers in a different way. I wanted to gather some data on other ways players would prefer it to be implemented or get some ideas I hadn't thought of.
63% of them would prefer it to be applied outside of runs, but I don't think it would be suitable for the system in the way that you would have to pre-define which weapon would have which modifier. This removes a lot of adaptability and variability in runs, especially as a modifier on a weapon would be better on another weapon depending on your exact build.
45% would prefer them to be applicable to multiple weapons. I can see why some players may want it, but I believe it removes a part of the decision-making process. However, it may be interesting to think of a way to apply some modifiers to multiple weapons later on.
Some of the other custom responses describe exactly how the modifiers system works and are likely from people who have misunderstood how the modifiers system would work: Weapons can have multiple modifiers, but a modifier can only be applied to a single weapon.
Update 0.9.1
While September wasn't the most productive month, there is still quite a lot of stuff that I've worked on! The main thing delaying the update is the making of the Snow-themed enemy.
I think they will be the only enemy to be made for an alternative biome (at least until 1.0) as they take a lot of time, and would easily delay updates later on, as it's a very time-consuming task for the artist I've hired.
However, this taking a long time is not a waste for me, and it allowed me to work on some major refactoring that I planned to do for 0.10, so a lot of groundwork was done during this month.
Terrain
A major refactoring of this update is how the terrain will now be handled.
Until now, the terrain was simply a very, very big plane, with a particle effect spawning a lot of grass/smaller foliages, and a script spawning large foliages/gameplay elements (like crate/shrines or trees).
This update completely removes that. Now, the terrain is generated around the players as they move around. This first means better grass performance (and denser grass) as the GPU doesn't have to generate and cull 1 million foliages when the game starts (Yeah, it was a pretty quick and dirty approach).
Secondly, this means I can make more interesting terrain features, using a Wave function collapse approach. It still takes a lot of time to add some variety to terrain, so it's not a high priority right now. For example, deserts will have some rare oasis, or forests having paths (and rare cemeteries that spawn skeletons).
Finally, this was a required prerequisite for the new biome to appear in 0.10's B-rank.
New Difficulty on profile creation
A new profile difficulty is now added, "Casual mode," when you are creating a new profile.
This new mode is aimed at players looking for a very casual experience, without the fear of death/difficulty.
What does it change?
Players cannot be killed (except once the timer becomes red in Survival mode).
Players gain +5% damage for each level-up and x1.01 damage for each minute.
I know many players like the current difficulty of the game, and some think it's too easy, but a number of players don't aim for any challenge in the game and simply want a chill experience where they can destroy thousands of monsters without any worry. (Leaderboards are disabled on this difficulty)
In addition, the main menu now has a small text under your profile so you know which difficulty you are playing in. I may want to look into adding a proper colored icon for each profile difficulty later on.
Weapon Modifiers groundwork
In preparation for Weapon modifiers, a lot of internal code got changed to convert a few cards into weapon modifiers. This shouldn't change the current behavior, modifiers are directly applied to all weapons for now.
Soul-Cards affected so far:
Fractal, Ice Spirit, Fire Spirit, Thunder Spirit, Divine Smite
Input System Refactorization
While it's still using Unity's Input system (as it's very good), the game now has a wrapper put on top of that to properly handle and register modded inputs, making it more modular. The rebind menu is also now automatically generated based on the inputs, so there shouldn't be any missing binds.
Gunslinger Rework
Gunslinger received another slight rework.
One issue that I noticed with Gunslinger is how specialized each of his weapons are. Revolver's path is very good for bosses but lacks against groups of enemies. Shotguns are good for packed enemy groups and bosses but weak against heavily armored enemies.
Finally, the SMG path was good for weak enemy groups but inefficient against elites/bosses.
This pushed me to make most weapons more "averagely" useful and not design them too much based on their uniqueness, striving to make them useful in most situations.
I felt very limited in design by the avatars overall, and I spent some time thinking about how to improve the avatars. I made this change: he no longer has weapon caps.
Avatars can still only use one weapon at once, but he can now swap between his weapons. I removed the exclusion of different weapon paths (so you can own both SMGs, shotguns, and revolvers).
Weapon reloading/shot delay continues even when the weapon is not selected, encouraging players to play in a more aggressively swapping style.
Finally, this would allow the addition of cards that add bonuses/modifiers when the players swap weapons.
In addition, I added a new tier of weapons (Heroic). Heavy Machinegun can be upgraded into Dual Gatling, Sniper into a railgun, and Scattergun into a flamethrower.
I'm also thinking of increasing the monster count (at least up to 66%) for the gunslinger as it's more adapted to dealing with slightly larger enemy groups.
Rogue: Genesia 1.0
While I think the 1.0 release of Rogue: Genesia is still multiple months away, we are slowly getting closer to it.
There is still Update 0.10 to be made, and then Update 0.11 which would be quickly followed up by 1.0 as it'll bring the final polishing and clean-up of the game.
Originally, I didn't plan for anything much after the 1.0 release of R:G outside of bug fixes and minor content/QoL improvements, and I'm still not sure if there is much I want or will be able to add later on.
Sure, I could still pump out more worlds and higher difficulty levels, but I'm pretty sure I would be over-extending my ideas and would make much less interesting stuff.
This is also why I don't plan to make extra content as paid DLC, at least, not content I would make myself. There is the equipment system that I may work on after 1.0, but I prefer to not continue being full-time on it afterward as I would like to start working on my next game then.
There is the serious possibility of hiring someone to continue working on R:G after the 1.0 release, where I would only be there to validate the ideas/direction the game will continue to take while giving me much more free time.
They could also bring fresh ideas to the game. But that will greatly depend on the revenue R:G will generate post 1.0, as I'll need funding for my next game. There is no sure way to know how much I'll have available by then.
My Next Game
It's been in pre-production for quite a bit of time (9 months now), mainly polishing the idea, how the core concept would work together and the features to be added.
At this stage, no concrete work has been done yet outside of a few concept arts during my free time, as I would find it weird to start working on a new game when R:G isn't even out of EA.
It won't be Rogue: Genesia 2. I don't have any plans for such as of now. I'm not excluding the idea in the far future. Nor will it be a bullet heaven game (nor a visual novel to appease someone's worries).
The next game concept started as "what happens if you take a Rogue-lite, but you don't lose your run progression". It's very different now from the idea it was back then, and it wouldn't even qualify as a Rogue-lite anymore.
This is also a game I won't be working on alone, contrary to R:G. I'll be working in a duo with someone I've known for years and greatly trust his technical ability.
I prefer to not share too many details about the game here, as there is a lot to be defined, and I would prefer to have a tested solid prototype before seriously committing to the concept.