Hello everyone!
This will probably be the last of this series of house keeping updates. My wife and I are expecting our daughter to be born sometime next week and I'll be taking about a month off of active development as I help her out with the new baby.
Final Odds and Ends:
I'm very pleased with all the work thats gotten done these past few months in terms of cleaning up the game and getting it ready for the next major push of features and contents next year. We've now reached the minimum number of generators I wanted to hit for each zone and we are just 2 monsters short of having the minimum number per zone as well. This means the games content is now all nicely spread out and even with no major gaps. This should be a really solid starting point for going into serious sub-zoning next year.
On the bugs and crashes side the mountain of issues has been reduced to... well a slightly smaller mountain. I'm hoping to still get a bunch more of these issues worked out before the new year though of course I'll just keep hacking away at them with every update after that.
Next Development Phase:
In terms of where we are in the project, we're at about the 1/3 to completion point. I think most of the really major changes from RFIII have now been made which was really the main goal of this first 3rd of development. Next year is going to be primarily devoted to just adding a ton of new content both in terms of new zones, sub-zones, generators, bosses, enemies etc. and also on the player side with new classes, talents, races, items etc. I'm also planning a major expansion to Ranked Mode at some point with a ton of new modifiers and just generally polishing up what is currently still mostly just a bare bones prototype.
Update 1.19:
New Monsters:
Just 2 monsters short of hitting the minimum of 16 unique monsters per zone. Just need 1 more in The-Swamp and Ice-Caves.
- The-Under-Grove: Entling-Warrior - I wanted to add some slightly more 'boring' enemies to The-Under-Grove since it currently has such a ridiculous number of fast moving and swarmy enemies. The Entlings spawn in small groups, are slow moving and will root themselves into the ground, grow leaves and heal themselves after a 3T delay when they are low on health. These will likely get worked into a future Grove sub-zone with the Corrupted-Ent as the boss.
- The-Under-Grove: Entling-Archer
- The-Under-Grove: Entling-Elder - summons roots to attack the player
- The-Under-Grove: Centaur-Knight: A tankier version of the existing Centaur-Warrior with Inspire-Ally.
- The-Arcane-Tower: Crystal-Sentry: fast, flying, ranged constructs that spawn in swarms. Each sentry can Mirror-Image and create a duplicate of itself. The duplicates can also duplicate (with a 3T delay) so its important to quickly kill the root Sentrys.
- The-Swamp: Froglok-Fisherman: Melee + Summons Pirahna
- The-Ice-Caves: Ice-Giant-Priest: Throws Hammers, Heals, and casts Haste on his allies.
Level Generators:
The big final push that achieves the minimum number of unique generators per zone. Most of the future level generation will likely be pushed into sub-zones with new assets and more interesting and varied layouts.
- Arcane-Construct-Maze: was made last update but not actually added to the zone.
- Arcane-Storm-Pit: Bridges and platforms over pits with all storm type and flying enemies.
- Upper-Narrow-Tunnels: very tight windy tunnels
- Grove-Template-Square: forest variation with lumber camps at the top, cleared stumps in the middle and trees in the bottom.
- Swamp-Template-Islands: swamp variation with lots of little islands and bridges.
- Palace-Branch-Dining: fancy dining room for the palace
- Palace-Rooms-Spa: pools, steam rooms and plenty of cushions to lounge around on. Yendor really knows how to treat his minions.
Flavor Vaults:
Starting the process of adding a bit more 'flavor' to the dungeon. I want to better define the nature of the dungeon i.e. that the whole thing is actually the artificial creation of an eccentric and egotistical mad wizard. There were already hints of this in RFIII but I'd like to take in much further here in IV. Obviously all of this is essentially just set dressing and doesn't effect gameplay but I think its a fun thing to have in the back ground. Some things I've added so far:
- Bathrooms (Finally! Achievement unlocked!)
- Break rooms - for those hardworking minions when not on duty.
- Locker Rooms / Change Rooms - so that the minions can change into their uniforms
- Janitor Closets - a clean evil lair is a safe evil lair!
- Storage Rooms - for all sorts of stuff found on the levels. Obviously you need somewhere to keep all the spare rocks and skull statues so that you can replace the ones on the floor when they get worn out.
I'll be adding to this over the course of development. A lot of this flavor is simply going to be trying to make the dungeon feel like a space where Yendors minions actually live and work. There should also be a lot more industry such as cutting down trees in the Grove, pumping oil in the swamp, workshops to craft wood into the doors and chests found around the dungeon etc. I'd also like to emphasis how the whole dungeon is essentially the artificial creation of Yendors genius/madness. So like the desert needs to receive shipments of sand to keep the sand levels topped up, they keep storage rooms full of bones to replace those in the crypt that are getting grubby, maybe the swamp needs a de-filtration system to make sure the water stays sufficiently swampy etc.
Quality-of-Life:
- There are now portals at the end of the 2 branch zones that will take the player back to the main dungeon (Orc/Elf).
- Did a bunch of work on The-Core lava caves so that they are now almost completely connected. This should make it much less of a pain to navigate these levels.
Bugs and Crashes:
Was really pushing to finish the generators this update so was unable to devote much time here.
- Fixed level-gen crash for Orc-Template-Beast-Maze
- Fixed level-gen crash in Arcane-Tower (later levels) where Tomes-of-Knowledge or Merchants could not be placed.
- Fixed crash when dominating Dark-Elf-School-Master (Rethlit)
Conclusion:
Thats it for this update and that should be mostly it for the Odds and Ends Series. I'll likely still try to get another few rounds of bug fixes out as hot-fixes but once I'm done taking my 'break' I'll be pushing forward with next years main content updates.
Thank you everyone for all your support and feedback! Hope you all enjoy the update!
Hot Fixes::
Hot-Fix 1.19.1
- Fixed Crystal-Sentry crashing when using Mirror-Image over pits.