Hello everyone!
One last update for Sigil of Kings before the end of the year. There is no overarching theme; just updates that I think you might find interesting!
Potions and more
There's a flexible enchantment system under the hood, but that doesn't mean that each item can do anything. It has to somehow make sense, even in a high-magic world. To introduce such a restraint, here's the current categorisation of items and effects:
- Potions: Boost your attributes, health, mana, or resistances, either temporarily or permanently.
- Bombs: Deliver devastating area effects like stun, poison, or fire to your foes.
- Oils: Temporarily enhance your equipment, offering tactical advantages without overpowering permanent buffs.
- Scrolls: Cast one-time magical spells with instant results.
- Tomes: Improve your skills or teach new abilities.
- Wands: Channel magic for powerful, single-use effects.
- Special Items: Unique objects like statuettes that conjure creatures, or any other effect really
Now, when you find a potion, the potion image has to somehow communicate what is the potion: strong or weak? permanent effect or temporary? Is it a bomb, oil or something you consume? For this reason I've made a semi-automatic system that generates potion variations based on such parameters, so that a potion bottle image is created based on effect, strength (item level) and type (potion/bomb/oil). Different effects use different colours or even different bottles. Strength is represented by how full the bottle is. There is little content on this department right now, but will be extended later. Below is an example of using oil to temporarily augment equipment.
Dungeon stress test
There will be more content in the game that you can handle (yes, that's a challenge). To be able to assess how the game currently handles multiple simultaneous dungeons existing in the world, I created a world with ~4000 dungeons and wrote some AI agent to visit them all. This test was eventually a success. So, would you be ready to face 4000 dungeons? Possibly not, but you're going to be spoilt for choice. My job is to also make them exciting of course. And maybe I should add an achievement for completionists :) Here below a bit of the bot gameplay.
Telegraphing attacks
Many skills are executed immediately when it's your or the enemies' turn, but some of them have some "preparation" delay. Also some skills target an area. An example is "meteor storm": a high-level spell that targets a large area, and after a while, fireballs come crashing at the specified area. If an enemy wizard casts the spell, you will be able to see the area that is being targetted for the whole duration of the spell preparation. This is important, as it gives you the opportunity to get out of the way and not become crisped. Unlike the forest critters in the below video.
Hover attack information
This is a QoL feature that can be very useful: when you hover over an enemy, there's a lot of detail on: what is the chance of hitting them, how much damage would you deal, critical chance and damage, but also the other way around: what is their chance of hitting you, damage dealt etc. The video below shows that.
That's it for now, have a happy Christmas and New Year and see you next time!