Hello everyone! Hope your all doing well! A pretty major update this time, basically a first pass rewrite of The Vault of Yendor.
When I started this update about 2 months ago I had a pretty humble objective: The Vaults hadn't been touched in a long time and I just wanted to add some extra levels and enemies so that they wouldn't be quite so lame. We are just about at the half way point of development with another year and a half to go so I wasn't particularly concerned with finalizing anything at this stage. Really was just looking for a bit more content in this section of the game.
While doing the initial design work the vision I had in mind was: this is the final zone in the game so it needs to test everything the game has been teaching up to this point. It needs to be a distillation of the mechanical essence of the entire game. It also needs to be the most thematically dense part of the game since this is Yendors actual doom gauntlet, the section of the dungeon where his character is most prominently on display.
Naturally this led to a series of pretty deep design rabbit holes where I started trying to define exactly what the core combat experience of the game is as well as what Yendors character is like and how he manifests it in the dungeon which is sort of an extension of his galaxy sized ego. So a huge amount of the work of this update ended up being pure, foundational design work. I feel like I've cracked open some pretty deep design veins that are gonna pay off massively over the rest of the development cycle.
I've tried to inject as much of this insight into this initial set of Vault levels as possible but honestly, achieving this level of polish was never the goal for this update. So I ended up sort of spinning my wheels these past few weeks and getting burned out until I remembered that this update was supposed to be pretty humble and modest.
So I'm releasing it now in the form it was always supposed to take: a rough first past, a prototype for testing, analysis and feedback. I feel like even in this rough state its vastly superior to what we had before and taken together with all the design insights that will be guiding future updates, I'd say the last 2 months has been extremely productive.
VAULT OF YENDOR STRUCTURE
Large and Small Levels:
I have divided all the vault levels into 'Large' and 'Small' levels. This refers to both the physical size of the level and also to the length of time it should roughly take to complete. According to my own testing and balancing a 'Large' level should take about 2:00 and a 'Small' level should take about 1:00 to complete.
The 'Large' levels are big, long, messy, and chaotic. They have a high likelihood of getting out of hand if your not careful and many of them may be total meat grinders if you don't tackle them perfectly. They will also have the more complex or elaborate level wide mechanics and will be where I'll be investing a lot of the 'art budget' to create some unique and memorable set pieces.
The 'Small' levels by contrast will tend to be much more focused, fast paced challenges. They can be thought of as a very hard 'skill check'. Do you understand how to deal with THIS unique challenge. Many of these are just a single tough fight in a very enclosed space. These will often be the more gimmicky or highly specific levels.
Zone Structure:
The Vault of Yendor is now 5 levels long. The first two levels are 'Large', the next two levels are 'Small', the 5th level is the Boss level with the 3-Phase Yendor fight. I'm hoping to create a nice little tension wave here that includes some massive, challenging fights in huge impressive arenas without having the whole thing turn into a grindy slog.
So we start things off with a bang with the two Large levels. As mentioned above, this is where I'll be investing a lot of 'art budget' into making these 'Large' levels really impressive looking. Just as things are in danger of getting grindy, we rapidly progress into the two 'Small' levels. This is followed immediately by Phase-1 and Phase-2 of the Yendor fight which should also be relatively fast paced. We finish things off with the giant Phase-3 Yendor fight as the finale.
I'll be refining this whole arc over the next year and a half but I think that this basic concept of: BIG, BIG, SMALL, SMALL, SMALL, BIG, REALLY BIG, is a really solid structure. Overall in terms of total timing, the entire Vault-of-Yendor + Yendor boss fight is supposed to only take about 15mins. Given a total game time of about 60mins we really shouldn't have more than 1/4 of the game time be spent in the end game.
VAULT OF YENDOR LEVELS
Over the course of working on this update I ended up accumulating a mountain of level ideas, design write ups, and rough prototypes. A lot of these were very specific, gimmicky, or mechanically complex. For this first rough pass I decided to narrow the list down and focus on a set of more 'generic' levels. These are levels that are very easy to template: randomize spawns, waves, object placement, mechanics timing etc. I figured that this is the best way for us to get a really solid 'core' set of levels with a ton of variety.
There are now 48 unique levels, up from our previous 20, all of which have been reworked and included. The plan is to eventually have a pool of at least 100 levels for the final game release. Most of the future levels will probably be more specific, more elaborate, and more gimmicky. This should give us a nice mix of generic but highly varied levels + gimmicky, complex, and highly specific levels. The level selection will probably take this into account to assure a proper balance in each run.
Portal-Waves (new): waves of enemies spawn repeatedly on various portals. By changing what monsters spawn, the number of spawns per wave, the delay between waves, we can get a lot of variation for each static level layout.
Steve (new): Rethlits little friend now has his own set of levels! Steve is invulnerable and will chase you around the level while waves of enemies spawn on various portals. Only once the last enemy is killed will his shield come down. There are currently 4 Steve variants with sprites by Rethlit and Celtius The Dragon. This is an easy place to add future variety by just making more and more Steve variants.
Lich-Walls (new): lots of skeletons that start very close to the player. Drop walls break open at a pretty rapid pace releasing liches into the level. You either need to use water or other objects to poof the skeleton corpses or else deal with the liches immediately when they enter the level.
Slime-Tanks (new): big levels full of toxic waste and slimes. The new Slime-Tank object will 'suck' a damaged baby slime in and 'spit' a full health adult slime back out. This is def one of those levels that can be 'solved' quite cleanly but has a tendency to get wildly out of hand if you are not careful. This is a pretty quintessential 'Large' level.
Sentinel-Waves (new): Uses the same Portal-Waves spawning mechanics but spawns Sentinels (from Arcane-Tower) and summoners. The main idea here being that if you don't kill quickly and cleanly the Sentinels will Mirror-Image and the Summoners will summon and you will quickly have a level full of enemies.
Three-Ring-Circus (new): Another good example of a 'Large' level. Player starts in a small room surrounded by enemies. After every [x] turns the entire outer wall explodes and reveals a larger ring with even more enemies. There are 2 walls that fall (so 3 rings of enemies), and then the final 'wall' will open a bunch of little nooks on the outer edge, all of which contain more enemies, one of which contains the stairs.
Summon-Waves (new): an experimental level that probably needs more fine tuning. Every other turn Yendor summons either a bunch of Spectral-Blades, an Orb, or a Crystal-Golem somewhere in the small arena. Except for the Golem they all have relatively low health. The trick is that you pretty much have to be killing stuff on every single turn or else the map ends up filled with enemies.
Arena (old): a varied set of levels that all start the player surrounded by groups of enemies. The main idea here is controlling the fights so you don't end up agroing the entire level at once. In the future this might get broken up into more specific level types.
Portal-Loops (old): I'm not really sure what to do with these levels. They are probably the easiest ones to skip or at least avoid most of the monsters. I'm still undecided on if this is a good thing or not.
Lich-Glyphs (old): bunch of skeletons in a big room. Again idea is to control the fights to not agro everything. Opening the glyph gates releases the Liches which will then start reviving skeletons as you search for the down stairs.
Quad-Hoard (old): quite extensively reworked. Surrounded by groups of enemies that you try to take one by one. Drop walls quite quickly start releasing elementals into the level which will agro the groups. This one can get messy very fast.
Golem-Maze (old): mostly just tightened everything up and added Haste-Totems and Speed-Floors to give the Golems a better chance of actually reaching you.
VAULT OF YENDOR MONSTERS
I'm trying to build up a roster of monsters that will cover every major mechanic that exists throughout the dungeon. I also want these monsters to synergize with each other in interesting ways as they are pretty much always fought in groups. While the challenge is supposed to be very high, I want to be careful to not introduce anything completely unseen before at this stage. As stuff continues to get worked on in the Vaults its likely that we will go back and introduce some of the more obscure and novel mechanics and abilities into the later part of the main dungeon.
The current roster covers the 'generic' monsters. These are the guys that can randomly populate our 'generic' levels. So these are designed in such a way that they should work together in interesting ways even when the exact group compositions are randomized. We probably need at least 5-10 more 'generic' enemies to fully complete this roster. In future iterations of Vaults-of-Yendor I will probably add a much larger set of specific monsters for use in the more specific and gimmicky levels.
Knight-of-Yendor: a basic melee unit that will heal all adjacent allies whenever he takes damage.
Demotaur: aggressive melee unit that tramples the player and lunges into range. He slowly gains melee damage every few turns while agroed.
Iron-Golem: the basic 'tank' unit, just a buffed up standard Golem. Slow moving, high HP, high melee damage, and grab. Do we want something more unique for the Vaults or is it appropriate to just test the player on a harder version of a common enemy type?
Shadowed-Assassin: the guys you really don't want to get hit by. Massive poison melee attack, Invisibility and Shadow-Step.
Crystal-Golem: same as before. A reflective enemy to 'skill check' range characters who have not invested in any other source of damage. I'm fairly certain that this enemy will be changed to something less tanky but more offensive. The test is: do you have non-range damage? Not: do you have enough non-range damage to burst down a high HP tank?
Cryo-Knight: a melee unit that attacks with a frost spear (so 2 range and deals slowing cold damage). He also summons Ice-Constructs adjacent to the player which are rooted in place but will melee you if you are in range. Initially I had him using Freezing-Clouds but this just ended up killing his allies. So the Ice-Construct is supposed to fill a similar 'zoning' role while avoiding friendly fire. He also summons Ice-Walls behind the player to block escape.
Shield-Knight: never finished the sprite on this guy (he's not supposed to be a golem). A basic melee unit that has a Shielding-Aura that makes all adjacent allies invulnerable to damage.
Sharp-Shooter: a basic archer that adopts the 'Sharp-Shooter' state which makes him immobile while drastically increasing his damage and range. At this point the range might as well be infinite (its currently 9.0), as 'Sharp-Shooter' state should indicate to the player: break LoS or kill him immediately.
Death-Watch-Archer: another basic archer with a slow moving, high damage, poison projectile. This 'checks' the box of having slow moving projectiles in the Vaults.
Arch-Mage-Fire: thematically this guy will eventually be redrawn as some kind of elemental type thing. Possibly a big flaming eye or something? High ranged damage, summons Homing-Fire-Orbs rapidly. Has a very high fire damage shield. He is basically a Fire-Elemental + Fire-Vortex.
Geomancer: this is the anti-choke point enemy. He's currently implemented as a squishy caster but could just as easily be a stronger melee unit. His main ability is Stone-Punch which causes 'fists' to punch from each cardinally adjacent wall and deal high damage. So hallways and corners will essentially deal double damage. He also summons stone walls behind the player to block escape. I want to keep the range of his abilities short so that player can still use choke-points while he is far away.
Lich: the 4 elemental lichs have been collapsed into just the Toxic-Lich. He works the same as before: summoning poison clouds and reviving his skeleton allies. He should generally only spawn with skeletons as they are immune to his poison clouds and benefit from his revive mechanic.
Mindbender: currently using the mindflayer sprite. Could this just be merged with the Evil Eye in Arcane Tower? A squishy caster that confuses the player for 10 turns! So you either need to break LoS or kill him. Casts Mental-Tether which summons a 'Tether' adjacent to the player which immediately 'charms' you. This means you can move around the Tether but can not move away from it.
Summoner: another one of those places where I'm thinking: should this be a generic, familier but harder version of a basic enemy type? Or should he do something special? Currently implemented with just Spectral-Blades and Spectral-Orbs but at a higher summoning rate than anywhere else in the game.
Priest of Yendor: our only pure support unit (we need more). Heals allies, smites the player with a fast cool-down and casts Torment. Again the question arises: make him unique and surprising? Or just make him a buffed up priest?
PLAYER BALANCE:
Just some random balancing I did while testing these levels over and over again. Not really any firm feelings here. Very likely to change again (and again), before final release.
Shield-of-the-Guard: 50% Max Block => 30% Max Block
True-Shot-Bow: 7DMG => 6DMG
Recovery (Base): 50% Healing => 100% Healing (of Healing-Shroom)
Recovery (Greater): 125% Healing => 200% Healing (of Healing-Shroom)
Shadow-Step (Base): 20CD => 10CD
Shadow-Step (Fast): 10CD => 5CD
Shadow-Step (Vanish): stays at 20CD
Rage (the general mechanic): reduced the delay at which it begins to decay: 2T => 1T (its still pretty broken)
Shock (Base): Damage 8DMG => 12DMG (even with the 1T stun I still found it quite difficult to get value from with the 10T CD).
CONCLUSION:
That's it for this update! Despite the majority of work during the last 2 months being spent on fundamental design, I think this is still a pretty hefty update. There's obviously still mountains of work to do on Vault-of-Yendor (I've got pieces of it all over the 'floor' right now), but I think this achieves the initial objective of giving us a lot more variety and laying out a rough draft for future work and refinement.
My plan for the next update is DEFINITELY to try to take it a bit easier and focus on some clean up and bug fixing. I'm also planning to devote a bunch of time to doing a big world building pass and inject a load of Yendor flavor throughout the dungeon. The last time I tried to do an 'easy' update I ended up doing the giant equipment rebalance soooo.... I'll try to be more disciplined this time :P
Hope you all enjoy the new levels. Please let me know how they are playing! Suggestions for future level types or enemies or whatever also greatly appreciated!
HOT FIXES:
Hot Fix 1.27.1:
Fixed NAN damage on lava in Yendor boss rooms.
Fixed a staircase in Golem-Maze that would not be accessible to ogres.
Yendor will now start agroed and spout his dialog lines.
TP Scroll will keep you within the current arena in Yendor boss rooms
Game will no longer crash on reading empty signs (signs with no long text).
Hot Fix 1.27.2:
USER INTERFACE:
Unusable Ability: when you don't have MP/SP/CD still select the ability and just display 'Out of mana' for example when you click. This stops misclicking and moving when you quickly select an ability and then click. Credit to Random595 on this one!
Fire-Ball (Extended): desc now notes perfect-aim
Fire-Ball (Focused): desc now notes 1 tile AoE
Fire-Ball (Big): desc now notes 3x3 tile AoE
LEVELS:
Vault-of-Yendor: will not spawn 1-3 'good' shrooms: blink, invuln, power.
Three-Ring-Circus: now uses correct VoY wall tiles. This may change in future to some kind of circus tent or like a theatre curtain tile set.
All signs now use just a mouse over Title and Desc. You don't need to click to read.
Bosses in Branch-1 now all generate with same chance. We had a higher chance on the new bosses for testing.
BALANCE:
Life-Spike (Healing): Range: 4 => 6 (no penalty)
Life-Spike (Healing): Duration: 5 => 4 (no benefit)
Force-Bow and Force-Staff now have a Power-Shot like ability instead of 25% chance to knock back. This unifies them with Force-Lance and Force-Hammer.
Force-Lance and Force-Hammer (and bow/staff) all now have CD:5 => CD:10. They should be worse than the actual Power-Shot talent.
Mana-Tap is now an enchantable stat ex. Crown-of-Thought-Theft
Removed resistances from Yendor. I'm actually planning on removing resistance for a lot of casters that arnt explicitly elementals like... elementals. In some future game where the player has much more freedom to tackle the dungeon non-linearly and build up alternative gear and equipment sets, resistance heavy areas are fine. But for Rogue-Fable-IV you shouldn't get punished so severely for not having the correct elemental counter.
BUGS AND CRASHES:
Fixed a level gen hard crash in Ice-Caves:4
Fixed Steve crashing when killed by Discord. He now has an additional layer of invulnerability that guarantees he really cannot take damage from any source.
Fixed: levitating down a pit on Zone-Level:4 will now always land you in the entrance room of the boss arena. Fights like Kocha break if you don't start by passing through the portal.
Fixed: boots of grounding were not building past +10% ability power