Hello everyone!
A very different update this time. The past 6 months have been pretty crazy with tons of new content added a breakneck pace. Following the Vault of Yendor update I ended up getting pretty monstrously burned out. Lack of motivation, hating the project, doubting its value, questioning my choice to be a game dev, blah blah blah, the usual stuff. Honestly at this point I'm not even really phased by this anymore. A few weeks of taking it easier and I'm over the hump and chomping at the bit once again to get moving.
I've decided to take a bit of a break from the endless push of new content and focus the next few updates on:
Clearing out as many bugs and crashes as possible as they have begun to pile up again.
Working on polishing up a bunch of the level generators. Mainly by adding some purely aesthetic assets to try to really sell each level type as a 'real' location.
Adding a whole bunch of text based lore and world building to the game. Something I've been sitting on since the end of Rogue Fable III.
Of the three goals this update focuses almost entirely on #3. I've been planning this work since pre-production and have been sitting on a growing document of ideas over the past few years so really this is just a matter of implementing a bunch of stuff that's been quietly fermenting in the background. This is a total change of pace from the last bunch of updates and its been a massive breath of fresh air to work on something so completely different.
So update 1.28 is mostly a lore and world building update with a few other odds and ends. The next few updates will cover a more balanced spread of the 3 goals outlined above. I've still got a mountain of actual content I want to get implemented before the end of the year so I'll see how long I can keep this up until I get the itch to start building new zones, enemies, bosses and classes again.
Update 1.28:
I'll put this at the top so that its clear what's actually being added with this update. If you want some more explanation as to how I intend to handle lore I've got a whole mini document below this section.
World Building and Lore:
The meat of this whole update is a massive amount of text added to the game to help flesh out the games world and backstory. This all exists in world as signs, notes, unique object names etc. Its my intention to eventually have a staggering amount of this sort of text held in lists which can be randomly placed into the world in each run.
So the lore and backstory of the world is only gradually revealed to the player over the course of many runs (assuming you want to pay attention). I'm not trying to a tell a 'story' rather I'm trying to create this sort of ambient sense of logic and coherence. Currently this update is adding literally hundreds of lines of text implemented in a bunch of different ways:
Signs: all written by Yendor and placed everywhere in the dungeon. These are typically rules, policies, and reminders to his minions. A huge amount of world lore can be conveyed simply through whatever Yendor is yelling at his minions.
Announcements: I've added some new Yendor announcements that occur when the game begins. I intend to eventually have a pool of these for every zone transition in the game. This helps to characterize Yendor while also letting him slip in some lore about every zone in the game.
Books: I've added tags to many tables in the world where Table-Objects can randomly spawn. I want to eventually have many types but books are one of the most basic one. These are books written by Yendor (allegedly) that he has graciously distributed to his minions as reading material.
Magazines: another Table-Object. These are external publications with articles featuring Yendor. I plan to have a bunch of different magazine types each focusing on some different thing. Yendor of course gives all sorts of absurd interviews and makes many contradicting outrageous claims.
Fire Mage Rework:
I want to redefine the Fire Mage as the most simple and streamlined version of a caster. He should be the most straight forward caster to play and likely the first one that new players come to grips with and start getting wins. His focus is entirely on damage output with basically no utility. So this is a first attempt at creating a Fire Mage that is just: different forms of raw damage.
Ignite (Tier-2): A single target spell that does not require clear LoS to target. Has +1 range compared to Fire-Ball. Deals 12DMG (same as Fire-Ball) and then 25% damage over 4 more turns. So it deals double damage compared to Fire-Ball but on a single target and with much more permissive targeting. I'd like for this to be one of the highest, if not the highest, single target damage ability in the game.
Fire Nova (Tier-3): A target based AoE nuke that also does not require clear LoS to target. Has +2 range compared to Fire-Ball. Deals 12DMG (same as Fire-Ball), but has a much larger AoE. Given its large AoE, long range, and permissive targeting you can pretty much always get value from this spell every time it comes off the 10T cool-down. I'd like this to be the most straight forward and highest damage AoE spell in the game.
Fire-Portal (Tier-2): He still has this spell but I'm looking for ideas to replace it with something that is damage based. Probably not another direct use ability but rather some kind of buff or modifier. I want the Fire-Mage to have 0 utility.
The balancing on the numbers probably will need some tuning and balancing but the main idea I want to get with this class is just: simplicity but power. He's very good at killing enemies but he's gonna need some cross-class talents for utility. Every other casting class in the game should be tempted to take his talents as they just provide such easy to use raw damage.
His Wall-of-Fire ability will be replacing the Ice-Mages existing Ice-Cloud ability. Probably with a range reduction and no cool-down. His Burst-of-Flame ability will be reworked eventually to go on a Geomancer class where you can target any stone wall and cause a similar sort of 'burst' pattern of stone shards.
Bugs and Crashes:
I'll be doing a lot more work here in the next few updates but I've still tried to knock out some of the more serious issues.
Fixed a hard crash in VoY when pressing G to bring up the Goto-Menu. To many fountains on the Yendor boss level crashed the game as the menu did not have enough buttons.
Kocha Duplicate: took a while to figure this one out but it was caused by the Melee-Golem lunging into the wall and killing itself in the same turn. One Kocha was ejected due to the lunge crash, and one was ejected as the golem just died.
Kocha Golem Negative HP: was caused by the same bug above. The golem was not actually correctly destroyed and so when Kocha reanimated it, it had negative HP.
Vault of Yendor scripting would break if the player exited and reloaded the level.
Completely rewrote the entire Level-Controller system to fix a whole bunch of weird crashes and bugs. This often showed up as Yendor scripts running in completely unrelated levels. There were multiple reasons this could occur so I just ended up rewriting the whole system from scratch as previously it was a duck taped together mess that had grown out of hand.
Conclusion:
That's it for this update! Most of the actual content is 'hidden' under the topic of: I added a bunch of lore text and signs lol. I'm going be creating a new thread in Discord if anyone would like to suggest additional text lines, signs, notes etc. I definitely plan to have way way more of this stuff by the time the game actually fully releases and I'd love to get some contributions from the community.
The plan for the next few updates is to continue adding more lore, to add a bunch of flavor objects and rework many of the generators, and most importantly to try to make some progress on cleaning up a bunch of the long standing bugs, crashes and issues. The plan is that text and sprites should have a low chance (not zero lol), of introducing new bugs and crashes so hopefully I can actually make some progress here.
Justin
Hot Fix 1.28.1:
Abilities and Talents:
Shadow-Step (Power): nerf to one turn
Monster Balance:
Shark (Nerf): Damage MHigh => Medium
Challenge-Vault: 3 Sharks => 2 Sharks
Steve is now dominate immune.
All clockwork enemies are now vulnerable to shock.
Enemies now face the player when they initially agro (purely visual).
Entlings heal in water the same way Golems heal in lava.
Item Balance:
Fixed a bug. It now grants 4MP + Potion Count
Totem-of-the-Beasts (Nerf): Charges 5 => 3
Lighting-Forged-Staff (Nerf): 9DMG => 8DMG
Lighting-Forged-Staff (Nerf): remove item ability (spreading shock is powerful enough)
Crown-of-Brilliance: 1INT, Mental Resistance => 1INT, 1Mana-Tap
Crown-of-Brilliance: Make it drop from Wobi-the-Warlock (instead of Crown-of-Thought-Theft)
Charm-of-Draining: 1Mana-Tap => 2Mana-Tap
Orb-of-Flowing-Thought: 1MP-Regen => 2MP-Regen
Hammer-of-Crushing: -1DMG
Environment:
Tile based 'steps' are now all unstable. Unifies it with the actual up and down stairs. Adds more terrain interactions.
Descriptions:
Killing-Strikes: "Attacking low HP enemies with physical damage will perform a killing strike."
Sleep-Bomb (Smoke): "Creates a cloud of smoke that blocks enemy vision."
Shadow-Step (Power): "Gives the player one turns of the Power buff."
Life-Spike (Stackable and Healing): added space between the first and second sentence in both.
Spectral-Shield (Magnetic-Pull): "Clicking on the spectral shield will pulls all enemies in range towards the shield."
Spectral-Orb (Arcane-Bolt): "Clicking on the spectral orb will perform an arcane bolt between the player and the orb."
Fixed Mind-Bender desc (he had the mental tether text).
Bugs and Crashes:
Crash: when returning to a level in which an NPC is standing on top of a Blade-Glyph trap.
Crash: using a portal in which the destination and all adjacent tiles were blocked by NPCs
Crash: killing Bright-Shadow the turn after one of his golems goes inert causes a crash
Crash: in crypt, drop walls blow up and then when moving over a previously opened door the game crashes.
Crash: Vampire Lord can crash when one of his bats is created on a blink shroom.
Bug: Dash-Attack (Recover SP) was not working at all
Bug: Summon monsters (ex rat flute) onto a blink shroom can cause most to not spawn (crash text but no crash).
Bug: Flash-Freeze had different targeting for water vs npcs. Now unified to work on all visible tiles.
Bug: Level gen will no longer place side-vaults adjacent to solid objects on walls. Often resulted in holes or gaps.
Bug: When leaving a level, enemies are not only fully healed but their wounded HP cap is reset.
Misc:
New version of Random595s Impossible-Difficulty-Challenge.
What does Lore and Story Actually Mean in Rogue Fable?
This ended up turning into a mini document so I've moved it down here so that the actual update is clear.
First off, I have no intention of trying to tell a traditional story. There is no narrative arc centered on the player that progresses within a run or between runs. Given the unique mechanics of rogue-likes in which thousands of players field hundreds of characters through the same dungeon, a linear plot does not make any sense in my mind. There is no 'chosen one' and the player's quest for the goblet is not the 'story'.
Instead what I want to do is focus entirely on the dungeon itself and Yendor as a character. This is pure world building in its most raw form. I want to use signs, notes, announcements etc. to create the sense of a living, breathing, coherent world that exists entirely independently from the player. Yendor and the dungeon itself are the main characters of the story. The endless hoard of mysteriously replicating adventurers are treated as this constant nuisance and irritation.
All the world building and lore exists in world as physical objects and descriptions. I want it to be completely optional and unobtrusive by design. There are no forced cutscenes or dialog trees to navigate. Nothing in the lore and backstory is required to beat the game. The player can completely ignore everything and still play the game as a straight dungeon crawler. But its my hope that for those who do pay attention, the world will become a much richer, stranger, and ultimately more interesting place.
The Most Realistic Fantasy Dungeon EVER!
This is the backbone of all the world building and lore. I want to create the most realistic, logical, and coherent fantasy dungeon EVER! The twist here is that I'm not starting with a realistic world and asking: "what kind of a dungeon might evolve here?". Instead I want to take the generic Fantasy Dungeon, as depicted in every game, movie, cartoon etc. and treat every bit of its absurdity, and silliness with absolute, literal sincerity.
So we have this space in which dozens of different species coexist. Where most of the minions seem to spend their time either standing around or patrolling randomly. Where levels range wildly from libraries to sewers to natural looking frozen ice caves. Where an evil overlord sits gloating and flexing in the depths of this crazy fun house dungeon plotting various 'schemes'.
I want to treat this all as 'truth' and then ask over and over again: what would it take for this to exist? How could this actually be built and maintained? What kind of a mad man would create such a place? I want to treat this with absolute earnestness. I'm not trying to parody or make a joke of fantasy tropes I'm trying to essentially explain in pain staking detail how such a world could actually exist and function. The sort of 'stuff' that comes out of asking these questions is, in my opinion, both hilarious and very interesting.
Why is there a fire zone and ice zone right next to each other? How is that actually maintained? What possible purpose could this serve?
Why do monsters just stand around in random spots waiting for the player to show up?
How and why do all these different species of monsters coexist in the same space?
What do they eat? Where do they sleep? Where do they go to the bathroom? What do they do all day?
Why is there a giant Ice Dragon in a chamber with entrances to narrow for him to fit through?
Why is their a seemingly ancient crypt in a fortress that is otherwise inhabited by living creatures?
What possible purpose could this whole insane place serve?
And perhaps most importantly... what kind of a mad man would build this?
The whole goal (and joke) of the lore and world building is to endlessly answer these questions. So take any dungeon or fantasy trope, put it into the dungeon in its purest form and then ask: why, how, for what purpose? What comes out of this is utterly absurd and unhinged but my hope is that it all has this strange sense of internal logic. Its my dream that after being exposed to enough Yendorian Flavor a players will just start to fill in the blanks themselves. It becomes almost like a mini-game to try to explain why something exists, how it functions, what it means in terms of the overall dungeon.
Four Pillars of Cheap Flavor:
Given the realities of solo development, my 'budget' for injecting lore and flavor into the world is extremely tight. I also think that 'story' in a roguelike should be ambient, environment based, not shoved in the players faces with unskippable cut scenes or giant text dumps. So I've settled on these 4 pillars for placing text directly into the game world itself.
Unique Object Names:
Any object: table, barrel, bookshelf, bone pile, can be given a unique name to reflect its purpose and context. This can all be done without having to create endless new art assets. A table in a mess hall becomes “Mess Hall Table.” A table in a prison becomes “Torture Table.” A barrel in the ice caves might be “Frozen Ale Rations.”
This allows a single asset to serve dozens of distinct purposes, depending on where its placed and how it's labeled. I can essentially 'explain' large amounts of how the world works just by uniquely labeling objects in rooms and areas. All of this at the cost of some text.
Some objects are uniquely suited to this. Things like crates, barrels and sacks ask the question: what's in them? Books and magazines can use the same sprite but have different text for their titles and contents. Pipes spewing water in the sewers can have their descriptions list what sorts of crazy toxic stuff is pouring out of them.
Signs:
Signs are placed all throughout the dungeon, serving as literal labels for areas and subzones. They communicate that the dungeon is not a random sprawl, rather, it’s an organized, labeled, and internally structured space. It also helps sell Yendors neurotic character where EVERYTHING has to be obsessively controlled and organized.
Furthermore signs can be used as notices, reminders, announcements, orders etc. This is how Yendor officially communicates with his minions. Any guard room, kitchen, training area, hallway etc. can have signs on the walls written by Yendor that help convey some piece of world logic or narrative. This is Yendors formal voice: trying to maintain order, enforce rules and project authority.
I think a lot can be revealed about how the world works based on the sorts of orders and rules Yendor makes for is minions. We can describe not only how the dungeon operates but all the sorts of things that have gone wrong purely by having Yendor 'yell' at his minions through passive aggressive, bureaucratic, sign postings.
Notes:
Notes are the more personal, informal counterpart to signs. These are direct orders, complaints, or rants from Yendor to his staff. They help reveal his personality: petty, obsessive, self-important, and slowly unraveling under the weight of managing this logistical nightmare. These notes expose the reality of dungeon operations: constant breakdowns, endless delegation and rules clarification, and Yendor’s perfectionist misery as he tries to keep this whole crazy place running.
The Fantasy Dungeon is inherently an absurd concept that would be nearly impossible to actually create and maintain and notes are a great way to convey Yendors constant frustration at trying to keep this whole place operational.
Announcements:
These are the big theatrical broadcasts that trigger on starting the game or at zone transitions. They’re Yendor’s stage voice, delivered via some magical dungeon-wide PA system. Here, Yendor performs his role as dungeon overlord, complete with monologues, villainous gloating, and mockery of the player. He is performing for the player, for his minions, for the goblet and probably for himself, in the most bombastic and ridiculous fashion possible. This is Yendor as he WANTS the world to see him.
This is also an easy way to inject lore about the zone you are entering. Yendor can slip in bits of lore in his zone transition announcements. If I end up adding these announcements before the player fights bosses or triggered by other events then we can also use this to inject some additional lore.
Narrative Devices:
This is a list of various little 'tricks' that I'm trying to use when writing all this textual stuff.
The Worlds Most Unreliable Narrator:
Basically every piece of lore in the game is in someway 'spoken' to the player through Yendors voice and Yendor has an ego the size of the sun. He's not only an unreliable narrator, he's so absurdly smug and confident that he acts like this gravitational black hole that just collapses plot holes and inconsistencies. Challenge him on some absurd detail and he'll not only affirm that its 100% true but he'll come up with some even more absurd meta explanation on the spot while sneering with contempt.
Dozens of contradicting origin stories for the goblet? Your puny mortal mind simply cannot comprehend its magnificence. Absurd things with seemingly no purpose maintained at enormous expense? You just don't 'get it'. Totally convoluted, ridiculous evil schemes... bruh its ok, not everyone has what it takes to be an evil overlord.
So we have a crazy world, built by a crazy person, and that crazy person is the only persons voice we can hear. This puts us in a very strange, and very open ended place where what's canon and non-canon become this very blurry line. Furthermore, because there is no conflicting voice of reason, the craziness ends up becoming... consistent? It should even start to seem totally logical and coherent. That's the sort of tone I'm going for.
Fantasy Tropes Taken Utterly Seriously:
For whatever reason (madness?), Yendor has this vision in his head of the platonic, ideal fantasy dungeon. To him it is just self evident that he NEEDS a fire themed area, an ice themed area, a crypt, multiple elaborate doomsday devices, a prison to lock up princesses, traps to thwart would be princess rescuers etc. He considers the construction and maintenance of such a space to be some sort of high brow art project and views himself as this tragic yet heroic tortured genius.
Of course building and operating this sort of place is an absolute logistical and engineering nightmare and this is what a lot of the lore and world building deals with. So in a sense the whole dungeon and its operation can be divided into two different broad categories:
Some trope or stereotypical feature that Yendor MUST have because...
All the infrastructure, rules, policies, regulations etc. that help maintain these absurd features.
So a lot of our lore and world building then just builds on these two categories. Half of the text is Yendor gloating and flexing about how clever, artistic and creative he is for creating... whatever. The other half is him tearing his hair out trying to make this whole crazy thing actually function.
Past and Future Tense:
Many signs and notes and even his announcements will reference past events. This is so easy to do and there are so many variations but the result boils down to: the dungeon exists in time. It has a past. Stuff happens here with or without the player.
As a basic example signs posted in guardrooms, kitchens, workspaces etc. starting with: "Due to the recent incident.... some absurd new policy or rule." I don't even need to explain what the incident was, but the implication was: something happened (probably involving loss of minion life), and now Yendor and the dungeon have been forced to react with some new policy.
In the same way signs, notes, announcements can reference future events. Upcoming meetings, training, staff events. Plans that are in motion and are about to reach some new stage. Construction projects that are in the planning stages. Really anything that's going to happen... in the future. Again this creates this sense of time passing. The dungeon not only has a past it has a future. It exists whether the player is there or not.
Arbitrary Numbering:
Whenever possible I want to label things with totally arbitrary numbers. Storage Room 7, Mess Hall 3 (south), Hallway 44B etc. Honestly it can just be randomly generated. The idea is simply to convey this sense that the dungeon is way bigger than the player ever sees on screen at once. It also helps to reinforce that idea of Yendor trying desperately to order and regulate this inherently chaotic and unstable place.
This also should put the question in the players mind of... is any of this even real? By not real I mean you should start to question (with horror) if Yendor actually imported 10,000 tons of sand to make an indoor desert and intentionally burred ruins in it because... Are the stones in the crypt weathered because they are ancient or did Yendor pay some contractors to do that? Is every pile of rubble or bones actually numbered and tracked in some insane spreadsheet? If proc-gen messes up and generates a dead end hall but the hall is labeled Hallway-7B... was that intentional?
Minion Voice (Through Yendor):
While the monsters and minions are never given a voice themselves we can learn a lot about them through Yendors signs and notes addressed to them. All the things he reminds them of, scolds them for, pleads with them to do correctly, I can use this to convey:
General laziness, bickering, and incompetence.
Stuff they do during work hours or in their free time: stop building pillow forts in the dormitory's, stop sneaking into the pipes for a nap during patrols etc.
Species specific quirks: ogres constantly eating everyone, orcs being rowdy and unruly, dark elves being these total snobs etc.
Are the pirates actually pirates or is he paying some dudes minimum wage to stand around shouting YARRR all day?
The kind of strained, bureaucratic relationship Yendor has with his staff
Player Voice (Through Yendor):
Same idea here. The player is never given a voice or a backstory but Yendor is totally aware that hundreds of nearly identical plucky young heroes keep crashing through his dungeon. He's fascinated by this phenomenon, he studies it, he probably has plans to weaponize it.
So as I talked about before, the 'story' of rogue fable is basically told completely from Yendors perspective and not the players. The players are treated like this outside force, this plague, infestation, this constant naissance that Yendor and his dungeon have to keep reacting to.
Its kind of meta but basically the in universe lore is totally aware of the absurd mechanics of roguelikes. Just as the dungeon is sagging under the weight of trying to maintain so many conflicting tropes, Yendor is going a bit crazy trying to understand where the hell all these guys keep coming from.
Not a Parody:
The last an perhaps most important point to make. I don't want to make this a parody of fantasy tropes. I'm not trying to write jokes, break the forth wall or have the universe be self aware. The in game lore is never winking at the player. Really its the complete opposite tone I'm going for. As far as Yendor is concerned being the greatest evil overlord and building the greatest dungeon is just this self evident life goal.
Everything about the world should logically derive from Yendor trying to fulfill and maintain this insane dream of his. Instead of trying to write: haha funny, its more a matter of like... reverse engineering. Once you accept the basic premise of Yendor as a character then the lore and world should really just write themselves.