Hello everyone! Bit of a mixed update this time. First week was devoted to cleaning up bugs and the second one was spent adding another sub-zone. I'm planning to just keep chugging ahead on adding subzones with associated content for at least the next couple of updates. Pretty much everything else is basically 'on hold' while I work to get the dungeon rebuilt according to this new scheme.
Links:
Random595s channel full of fantastic tutorials and crazy challenge runs: Random595 Youtube
I post to Twitter semi frequently with stuff I'm working on: Twitter
Our discord: Discord
DESIGN STUFF:
I've done a fair bit of design work as well during this update and have mostly settled on what I'd like to accomplish for the first year of Early Access development at least as far as dungeon content. This breakdown and layout will be a sort of intermediary phase before work begins on significantly branching out the zones and making the dungeon much less linear. The following are the sub-zones I'd like to get implemented along with the bosses they will contain.
The Under Grove:
- Corrupted Grove: Spider Queen and Corrupted Ent
- Enchanted Grove: Centaur King and Fairy Queen
The Sunless Desert:
- Ruins: Mummy King and Snake Charmer
- Oasis: King of Thieves and either a mage or minstrel boss
The Swamp:
- Froglok Village: Witchdoctor and Giant Frog Mother
- Fungus Grove: Mushroom King and Swamp Siren
The Palace of Shadow:
Renaming this to be more general so that the temple proper can be made a sub-zone.
- Spider Temple: Drachnid Queen
- Arcane Academy: Warlock
- Temple: High Priestess
The Orc Fortress:
- Keep: Orc King
- Arena: Minotaur King
- Ogre Caves: Ogre Shaman
The Sewers:
- Troll Caves: Kraken
- Slime Pit: Slime King
The Core:
- Fire Temple: Efreeti
- Caldara: Flame Serpent
The Ice Caves:
- Ice Fortress: Frost Giant King
- Gnoll Village: Gnoll Shaman
The Crypt:
The Crypt will be altered to start with a an 'outdoor' graveyard area which will lead into the boss sub-zone. The zone might need a name change to be more generically undead/horror themed with Crypt saved for various sub-zones.
- Haunted Mansion: Vampire
- Crypt: Necromancer
The Arcane Tower:
- Storm Tower: Storm Boss
- Summoning Tower: Summoner Boss
Click Clock Keep:
- Train Station: Train Boss (not quite sure exactly how to theme this one yet)
- The Iron Forge: Forge Boss (likely a major overhaul of this boss fight)
Layout:
This is how I'd like the dungeon to look at the end of this first year. Basically every single zone will be split in half. The first half will be generic while the second half will be one of several sub-zones leading into the boss. The content I'm implementing for sub-zones right now is really just the first draft as all of these will need quite a bit more content, generators, enemies etc. in order to be able to properly fill 2 full levels. Most of the bosses are also going to get totally overhauled (as the Warlock did this week).
Class and Races:
I'd like to get all of the existing races fully worked out by the end of year and I'd also like to get at least 2 new classes implemented. Final balance and polish will obviously not come about until the game is complete but I'd like to get what we have at least a bit more solid than it currently is.
I'm starting to shift my thoughts on how many classes I'd like to add. Initially I was thinking 3-4 new ones would be good since most of the older classes are being seriously reworked. Now though, with my own ideas and the heaps of suggestions from you guys here on Steam and in Discord, I'm considering that we might end up with something more like 10 new classes (so double RFIII).
The game mechanics have progresses to the point where I think they can support this sort of variety and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of good ideas for new classes. I'm also willing to sacrifice say 20% in terms of balance and tightness if it gives us twice as much new and interesting content. Time will be the ultimate deciding factor, but I am leaning more in favor of 'more' as opposed to 'less' at the moment.
UPDATE 1.7:
The actual update this week, as mentioned above, is a bit of a mix. Spent a bunch of time trying to clear some of the mountain of bugs. Its still pretty mountainous but I'm trying to keep it somewhat in check while I press forward on content. Content such as The Arcane Academy! The new sub-zone for The Palace of Shadows complete with a totally reworked Warlock boss fight.
The Arcane Academy:
This will be the caster focused sub-zone of The Palace of Shadows and will consist of libraries, classrooms, laboratories etc. I'm planning to differentiate this from The-Arcane-Tower by making this sub-zone more 'people' focused as in its the place where Yendors minions study and practice vs the tower is more of Yendors private dude cave full of all his wacky magical experiments.
Much like the previous sub-zones this should be viewed as just a first draft, a rough sketching in of content. I have tons of stuff still in my notes that still needs to be added into this area. I'm planning to continue this sort of rapid sketching until I get at least the majority of the year 1 sub-zones implemented before going back and fleshing them out.
- Spawns whenever Danarr-the-Warlock has been selected.
- Dark-Elf-Apprentice: basic mage type with magic projectile and slow moving arcane arrow.
- Dark-Elf-Librarian: casts Curse-of-Silence that blocks spell casting and Summon-Spectral-Books from nearby bookshelves.
- Dark-Elf-School-Master: Force-Shields his allies and summons a Tome-of-Power that buffs the spell damage of all nearby allies until the tome is destroyed (same mechanic as regen/ice totems).
- Using the same walls as Spider-Temple with some new level assets but will likely get its own tileset eventually.
- Totems-of-Silence and Totems-of-Discord are placed throughout the levels. Planning to add additional totems (tomes probably) that boost enemy spell casting when in their radius.
- Totally reworked Danarr-the-Warlock boss fight so that he now has 8 summoning circles that he can blink to and open hell portals on. Remade all his boss levels to incorporate this.
Dungeon:
- Renamed The-Dark-Temple => The-Palace-of-Shadow so that the Temple can be changed into a sub-zone for the High-Priestess.
- Smoothed out the danger level in Zone-3 and adjusted all monster levels: 7,8,10,11,12 => 7,8,9,10,11. This removes what was previously a pretty big jump in difficulty in the mid game.
Misc Content:
- Added some additional boss vaults to The-Sunless-Desert
- Replaced two Pyro-Turrets in Yendor Boss room with Obsidian-Golems as the turrets are now much stronger.
- Reworked a bunch of static levels in The-Core, generally tightening them up according to the new level design philosophy.
- Tightened up a bunch of The-Arcane-Tower boss levels and reduced the number of monsters a bit.
- Added monsters to the Click-Clock-Keep zone line vaults (they were missing).
- Bombombers now have an ignite state which makes them move 'fast' for 5T after which they explode.
Player Balance:
Generally just trying to boost any player talents that are not just 'does a bunch of damage'.
- Sprint CD: 20,15 => 12,8
- Jump CD: 20,15 => 12,8
Graphics
- Sunless Desert rocks have better shadow (works on both sand and cave)
- Clockwork-Sentry Sprite
- Clockwork-Bomber Sprite
- Clockwork-Armorer Sprite
- Clockwork-Shield Sprite
User Interface
- Allow player to still mouse over tiles when dead so you can see stats of enemies.
Bugs and Crashes:
- Precision has had its description updated to reflect the armor penetration at Rank-II.
- Fixed throwing nets lasting way longer than 8 turns.
- The Clockwork-Shredders spawned in the special sentry level will no longer grant exp.
- Monsters spawned via portals in one of the Vault-of-Yendor levels will no longer grant exp.
- Fixed the rotating sentry clock things sprites getting all messed up when you leave and reenter the level.
- Dominated allies will not Force-Shield you every 3 turns unless you are in combat.
- Fixed a crash when Spider-Swarm-Eggs hatches on top of Spider-Glyphs (spawns were overlapping).
- Fixed a level gen hard crash in The-Crypt.
- Fixed the bug where a specific sequence of menu operations would result in continuously losing 100SR in ranked-mode every time you opened/closed the menu.
- When the Tough-Bosses modifier is active, Yendor will now correctly start at his max hp.
- Fixed the bridges in one of the spider boss levels getting overwritten with walls when leaving/returning.
- Out of vision turrets will no longer be able to shoot you without turning. They will continue to turn even when out of LoS.
- Killing the last enemy with a speed point strafe attack will no longer result in 1 turn of the 'nearby danger' warning when trying to auto explore.
- Speed point strafe attack will now correctly attack with melee when in range.
- Fixed Burst-of-Wind not effecting targets that were far away/block by LoS from the player.
- Fixed a level in The-Core that had a gate but no switch.
- Player will now be able to still mouse over and see the description of tiles/enemies while on the death menu.
That's it for this week! Next update should be another 2 sub-zones, possibly 3 depending on how much detail I want to go into. Thank you everyone for all of your continued support and an extra special thanks to all of you who have positively reviewed the game! The reviews are massively helpful for winning the steam algorithm game! Hope you all enjoy the update!