Hello everyone! A quick turn around on this one compared to the last few updates. I feel like I'm really starting to get into that 'last year' gear in terms of just grinding down 'the list'. A little bit of everything in this update but a big focus on User Interface. The new targeting/bounds system is pretty fantastic. A big thanks to everyone who chimed in on Discord.... some time ago... when we hammered out the design for this thing.
The plan for the next update is probably similar to this one. I'll just keep knocking things off my list and trying to get as much animation and level assets as possible into the game. Possibly considering tackling the combat log as well.
Graphics and Animation:
Block: Block, Reflect and Damage-Shield animations now fade out rather than instantly disappearing.
Block: Block animation no longer pauses gameplay.
Charge: Removed hit and knockback particles as they just overlap a lot with the action.
Charge: Added the same animation as Trample when you hit your target.
Fire Ball: Added the same sparks and glowing beam as Fire-Projectiles
Life-Spike: Added the same sparks and glowing beam as Toxic-Projectiles
Berserk: Added a new, unique animation to Berserk and War-Cry
Flash-Freeze: Now uses the same freeze animation as the ability Freeze.
Flash-Freeze: expands out in a 'wave' from the player with an expanding ring animation.
Hell-Fire: expands out in a 'wave' from the player.
Freeze: Tuned the lighting and delayed the appearance of the Ice to sync with animation.
Summon-Monsters: Added a slight delay when summoning multiple monsters (looks cool).
Summon-Monsters: Summon-Piranhas and Summon-Sharks now use same animation as the standard Summon-Monsters.
Jump Animation: Lunge, Disengage and Charge now have a little jump when performing the action.
NPC Death Pop: a white sprite that lingers for a few frames with a slight scale 'pop'.
Freezing Ice: When an ability freezes water we now set the Ice frames correctly.
NPC Facing: NPCs like the merchant and librarian will now turn and face the player when talking.
NPC Idle: Idle enemies will now occasionally shift their facing so they look like they are looking around.
Lava Particles: occasional little particle 'pops' coming out of lava.
Levitate Bob: A slight bobbing on the player when he is levitating.
Game Mechanics:
Flaming-Clouds now count as a light source in Palace-of-Shadow dark levels.
Doors now close automatically after 5 turns. I think this is actually a great little way to add a bit more terrain interaction to combat. We already have doors everywhere and until now they only ever mattered until they were first opened. Now they can block the player for an extra turn when he is fleeing, or block enemies that you are kiting backwards for a turn. Not game changing but its nice that a common element in the game now has a bit more functionality.
Enemies will now path through portals if it is the only route to the player.
Players and NPCs now actually step on portals to use them (it looks better)
Rotate-Projectile-Attack (think ballistas) now have the 4 'facings' share diagonal edges. Previous implementation was very strange with say the upward facing direction including the left diagonal edge but not the right diagonal edge.
Slow-Projectiles will no longer eat mushrooms or trigger traps.
Hell-Portals (Boss Warlock + Normal Warlock): Destroying the portal will NOT poof the imps (you MUST prioritize killing it).
Hell-Portals (Boss Warlock + Normal Warlock): Destroying the actual Warlock will NOT poof the portal (you MUST prioritize killing it)
Removed the 'Deafened' status effect and replaced with 'Confusion'. It doesn't make sense to me to have two nearly identical status-effects.
The 'Power' effect now simply raises damage by 50% for both the player and NPCs. I intend to use this effect more often on NPC abilities and the previous implementation was quite messy. We lose a few edge cases with the old 50% ability power but I think its worth it for the clarity and consistency.
NPC-Shout has been simplified to now use just a 6 tile noise flood. Previously it had both a 4 tile noise flood (that can go around corners), and also a 6 tile LoS check.
NPC-Shout now passes under doors with a -1 noise cost. So its now possible for a fight to agro enemies behind a door if you are close enough.
Totem-of-Healing, Tome-of-Arcane-Power and other Buff-Source type summons will now also apply their buff to the caster.
User Interface (Game):
You are now prevented from Auto-Exploring when starving (a popup is shown).
You are now prevented from Fast-Traveling when starving or if nearby enemies (a popup is shown).
You are now prevented from resting if starving (a popup is shown).
When using the Goto-Fountain hotkey a popup will be shown if 'No Fountain'.
Picking up items now has a small popup animation showing the item.
We now show NPC block points on mouse over description (including temp block points).
Status effect text is now colored green for beneficial, red for detrimental, white for neutral.
Characters now hide their status text (above their heads) for a few frames when animations are playing. This just makes it a bit cleaner to see the animation.
Added custom death messages for: Reflection, Toxic-Waste, NPC-Lunge, Slow-Charge, Fast-Charge, Rocket-Punch, Extendo Punch, Flaming-Cloud, Freezing-Cloud, Tornado-Suck.
User Interface (Targeting Bounds):
This ones huge and has been on 'the list' for ages since we hammered out the details in a long Discord thread (thanks guys!). Spent a bunch of time getting the actual sub-system working behind the scenes and ended up using it all over the place. I took the system that was pulsing bard songs and just totally generalized so that I can pass any list of tiles and have a bounding box (more of a blob) drawn around them.
View-NPC-Targeting: holding the View-Target key (default is V) you can now hover over any NPC and see the range/bounds of all of his abilities. The abilities are color coded in the text desc and the colors correspond to the bounding boxes. Most of the healing and buffing abilities have been left out of this system for clarity.
Ability-Targeting: this one is optional (you can turn it on/off in options), but if on then whenever you select an ability to use the same system is used to display the valid range/bounds of the ability.
Range-Attack-Targeting: if the player tries to use a range attack and is out of range or blocked in some way then we pulse the range/bounds of the valid targets.
User Interface (Targeting Bound Pulse):
Since I now have this easy to use system I figured I'd use it for any NPC abilities that might have slightly unclear targeting. This is just a way to continuously 'remind' the player how these abilities are targeted.
Pulse the targeting/path of Fast-Charge, Rocket-Punch, and Swoop just as they fire.
Pulse the targeting of Rocket-Punch just as it fires.
Pulse the AoE of Tornados each time they do their Suck ability.
Whenever a stationary totem casts, it pulses its AoE to make the range and bounds obvious.
User Interface (Menus):
Now allow holding back space to delete seeds.
Enabled num pad keys for entering seeds
Color coordinated wins/losses in game records as green/red (easier to spot streaks)
The librarian now uses the standard text menu rather than her own wonky custom menu.
Added Goto option for Tome-of-Knowledge.
Goto option for Tome-of-Knowledge now shows what talents it has.
Goto option for Librarian now shows which talents she has.
Items, Equipment and Talents:
Speed Points: Reduced many items that had 2SP to 1SP. I think Speed Points should be harder to stack up, similar to Block Points. Based on my own testing this mostly just means that characters that previously would hit 7-8SP now end up with something like 5-6SP which is still plenty.
Slippers of Swift Thought: Can now be enchanted to increase the MP gained when sprinting.
Phantom-Bow: 7DMG => 6DMG. Every time I get this bow it still feels OP lol.
Athletics: 2SP => 1SP on the base talent. Similar to the change to items I feel it should not be so easy to stack a ton of SP.
Monsters:
Skeletons in Sunless desert now leave behind bodies just like skeletons in The Crypt.
Salamander-Pyromancer: 2 Wisps => 3 Wisps.
Summoners now summon their monsters adjacent to themselves (but on the player side). Corrupted-Ent, Entling-Elder and Fungus-King still have the old 2 range.
Power Aura: I want to introduce the concept of 'Auras' earlier in the game rather than having them show up just in Vault-of-Yendor. I think they are a great way to make the combat more spatial. I'll be looking for more places to put them in future updates. Power-Aura replaces Inspire on: Goblin-Captain, Bojack-The-Berserker, Captain-Danarr, Centaur-Knight, Orc-Captain, Skeleton-Captain.
Healing Aura: replaces Group-Heal on: Dervish-Minstrel, Pirate-Minstrel, Dark-Elf-Chorister, Orc-Drummer.
Dark-Elf-School-Master => Dark-Elf-Force-Mage: Force-Shield and Wall-of-Force
Dark-Elf-Librarian: Summon-Spectral-Tomes and Summon-Arcane-Tome (she's taking the Arcane-Tome from the School-Master).
Level Generation and Assets:
A variant of caves would often generate as an almost complete ring. The generator now searches for this condition and cuts a small tunnel so that the cave is not purely linear.
Added maxOffset to items that appear on tables (paper, cups, books etc.) so that they can place themselves with a bit of random offset.
The Sunless Desert: added 5 Vase variants
The Crypt: added fire braziers to the top of walls, alcoves full of skulls in walls, flags to platform walls.
The Palace of Shadow: added candles, towels, 5 potted plant variants, shelves with potions (or possibly shampoos and oils in the spa), small tables, paper on tables, book shelf variants.
The Palace of Shadow: added a new 'Spa' generator.
The Palace of Shadow: converted an older generator (just a bunch of water) to also be a 'Spa' variant.
Hot Fix 1.35.1:
I went a little overboard with this one....
Big thanks to Rethlit who provided solutions for some of these.
Jump now prevents input until the player has actually completed his jump (so you can't double jump to the moon or across pits)
Fixed visual bug with bee-hive walls displaying wrong frames
Fixed charge crunching an enemy into a wall with levitation resulting in the player veeeery slowly returning back to center.
Steam leak animation on Clockwork-Overseer incorrectly had pipes included.
Double and triple doors now reset their close timer correctly (all synced up).
Power-Shot can no longer be targeted on the player (was making him go invisible for some reason).
Trees in Ice-Caves will no longer spawn on statues (a lower level fix that should catch any other weirdness)
A Phantom-Bow firing from Storm-Shot will not longer have the side projectiles hit the player on the reflected bounce.
Fixed drop-wall rooms in The-Ice-Caves (and other zones with different cave floor frames) so that the walls remain hidden until exploding.
Freezing-Cloud will attempt to 'freeze' lava every turn so that it works as expected in Caldara when Obsidian floors disappear.
Stepping off of Oil into lava will not crit hit you (changed the order of updateTurn)
Helm of Telepathy should work in darkness and when blinded
The green cursor will always show when mousing over darkness (so you can line up shots but cannot use it to pin point enemies).
Fixed crash/bug in Clockwork Overseer when destroying the vents (it occurs after saving/loading the level).
Blind landing on your ally (or somehow on an enemy) will not blind the player
Hammer of Crushing will now count solid 'clouds' (walls of ice, force, bone etc.) as solid
Charge will now count solid 'clouds' (walls of ice, force, bone etc.) as solid
Webbed, Netted and Frozen will all now burn off in lava even if the character is lava immune (Obsidian Golem)
Players allied will no longer get the benefits of Power Glyph Floors
Kocha cannot come out of her Golem if she is surrounded by npcs
Fixed impassable little nook in level generation of Upper-Dungeon:Mines
Need to visually display the maxHp regen cap on mouse over desc
The grab sprite (tether thing) is positioned wrong when you save/reload games
Key Config menu now displays key names as [,] instead of [COMMA] so that everything fits in the boxes
Grab (Brass-Shackles) will now break if you sprint move away (Rethlit)
Fixed another crash with Soul-Warden when he cannot find a valid location for his summons (apparently was already fixed? Rethlit)
A smite that has begun casting, will complete even if blocked by an opaque cloud.
Axes and Spears now hits allies if they are the ONLY valid targets (so you can Power-Strike your allies for example... for science). Rethlit
Necrotic-Staff now correctly sets the 'killer' flag so that Precision (Resistance) for example, will work correctly (Rethlit)
Yendor Level (Invuln Trail): once the stairs wall had blown, stepping on it and then letting the invuln glyph fade would visually make the floor tile look like a wall (you could still walk through it).
Fixed a bunch of spelling mistakes
Added canOpenDoors:false to Spider-Swarm, Arcane-Sentinel, Orb-Of-Force, Swamp-Fungoid, All three Spectral-Tomes
Brass Shackles will not apply their effect if they are in the shield slot and the player is wielding a two handed weapon.
Fixed a crash in which an ally was constricted when you exited a level (his constriction effect now no longer had a constrictor npc)
Lunge, Charge now all work on the Goblet-Shield again (broke something with the Ability-Targeting-Preview)
Dash-Attack now works on the Goblet-Shield. I'm pretty sure this never worked before as there was a very obvious bug that occurred when doing it.
Sprint-Attack will now target the Goblet-Shield. It was hard code disabled for some reason. If anyone remembers a valid reason why this was done let me know lol.
Goblet-Shield is now treated as 'alwaysAgroed' I had never noticed that apparently it spot agros you and pops !!!.
Player Summons (Weapon, Shield, Orb, Skeleton) all now use the safer summon code that NPCs have (fixes various crashes)
The Kraken Tentacles will now be properly immobilized by bear traps, nets etc.
The Kraken body cannot move in such a way that he 'stretches' out from an immobilized tentacle.
Arrow-Storm and Elemental-Overload will now only activate when in range (Orc Archer was the specific problem here but soln is general)
Dominate cast on an NPC that is standing on a Force-Shield-Floor will now immediately remove the Force-Shield
Added additional safety checks to Force-Shield-Floor status effect for cases where it was not being removed correctly
Discord (Order) now takes priority over other forms of Discord (it replaces the lesser status effect).
Made Celtius-the-Dragons 'safety nudge' more 'safe'. It will nudge him when he gets stuck against a wall now in 'snake form'.
Discord (Order) will now prevent Stone-Punch from casting (for some bizarre reason it was inheriting from Melee-Attack)
Stone-Punch now shows correct targeting when View-Targeting the NPC
Auto-equip charms will now just go: Melee, Shield, Range for priority
Used the newer, safer summon method in a whole bunch of places that were still missing it.
Fixed a crash in Soul-Warden when respawning Lost-Souls
Mushrooms will no longer spawn on Obsidian bridges in The-Caldera Core level
A monster caught in the players Bear-Trap will be released if you throw a new Bear-Trap (causing old one to poof)
Thurg-the-Earth-Shaman will poof his Mud-Balls when he dies (so you don't end up with golems resisting the poof)
The Pigapult bomb telegraph will now be redrawn if you exit and reload the game (and a bomb is 'in the air').
Hot Fix 1.35.2:
Mechanics:
Yendor Portals are now special in that: Enemies cannot pass through. When the players passes through it clears agro.
User Interface:
Options toggle to: prevent resting when starving (default to on)
Options toggle to: prevent explore and fast travel when starving (default to on)
Tome-of-Knowledge: displays contents on mouse over + mini-map mouse over
Librarian: displays contents on mouse over + mini-map mouse over
Talents:
Revert Athletics to 2SP/4SP
Hot Fix 1.35.3:
Hell-Portals: Killing the portal poofs the IMP (killing the warlock still does not poof the portal)
Hell-Portals: 20HP => 10HP
Hot Fix 1.35.4:
Reduced agro range by restricting it to a circle shape (instead of square).