Hey all!
It's been awhile since I last posted anything about last year's roadmap (or anything at all, oops), but I'm pleased to say that it's mostly just been a result of being so busy working on it. But rest assured, it is coming, and is currently planned to release sometime next month! I actually planned to make this announcement about a month ago, but as with any of these "soft" tasks, I always find it hard to justify spending time that could otherwise go towards development. Sorry for the dry spell!
Anyway, let's get in to what the Mezztik's Marvels update actually does so far, because it's a long list! And of course, I won't be spoiling *everything*, some of it you'll just have to play and discover on your own.
Let's dive in!
Mezztik's Marvels is, at it's core, one part optimization/cleanup and one part content; compared to future updates, this means it's more about quality of life changes, new mechanics, optimization and patching up existing systems than, say, adding new worlds into the main progression. Those will come later! But don't worry, there's still plenty more to do in Mezztik's Marvels alone.
Backend Rewrites
The first big item on the list, just to get the boring stuff out of the way first. This took a huge amount of time and effort, all of January and more in fact. The long and short of it is that previously, DASHPUNCH had no convenient way to store data for things like items, geogems, enemy behaviors, and a host of other things; any data that needed to be associated with, say, an item, was just stored directly in the object itself at runtime. Enemy behaviors were all coded individually for each enemy, with only a small number of shared functions.
Needless to say, this ALL needed to get ripped out and redone if I wanted any hope of future development. So I did! I'll spare the gritty details, but enemies now share most of their code with each other, which is organized into a series of "sub-behaviors" that they can each call as needed. Item and geogem data is also stored much more cleanly now, each one being given an ID that corresponds to their effect scripts and associated text in the lang file, making future translation trivial.
Going forward, adding on to these systems should get MUCH easier!
Quality of Life Features
Along the way, I've also been developing solutions to some of the pain points I've gotten feedback about. (Huge shoutout to anyone who's done that by the way, every bit helps!)
Let's face it, maps in DASHPUNCH get pretty big, and getting around them, trying to remember which rooms you've cleared, where points of interest are, gets tiring and annoying. Enter one of the most requested features: the map screen!
The map screen is something you can pull up at any time, provided you're not in combat. It displays symbols for every room based on what type of room it is, and whether it's been visited or not! Any previously visited room can also be warped to by clicking the symbol, letting you jump right back to use that Geogem you were saving, or buy new stuff from Vee's shop, anytime!
Speaking of Vee, NPC dialogue has also gotten a lot more robust. Talking with someone now opens up a menu with all of their dialogue options, meaning any special dialogue can be re-read in case you missed something, and makes their interactions with the player feel a lot more organic!
Also not seen here, any unread special dialogue will appear in yellow text!
The Chakra menu has also gotten a notable change; any unlocked Chakras can now also be disabled and re-enabled by clicking them again!
It's a small thing at the end of the day, but it's something I personally like. This allows people to easily set up challenge runs, or disable unwanted help without missing out on any extra content that might be part of the Chakra system. Keep in mind some effects wont be "properly" disabled until the next run though, like starting gold!
There's a host of smaller changes as well: better view scaling for really high or low resolution screens, all-new keybind and control bind glyphs for better readability, new item description boxes that take up less space, and more!
Geogems, Items and Character Building
For all the game's emphasis on picking a Legacy or two and building around it, it turned out there were actually very few ways to do this, since items are totally random, and typically didn't give stats directly. That changes in Mezztik's Marvels!
On top of a ton of item and Geogem effect reworks, Geogems have been divided into a few categories, and spawn in their own room type called a Gem Vault, usually in sets of 3-5. Each Gem Vault makes sure that the Geogems inside have an even spread of gem types; as an example, you'll always find a Geogem that changes your stats somehow. This helps alleviate an issue where the player's build is "stuck", simply because they can't find any way to change it.
Primary stats (STR, DEX, INT), will all start at 10, with all damage sources being readjusted to fit these new values. This fixes an issue were gaining stats that started lower was fundamentally more valuable, making DEX and INT setups quite a bit stronger than intended. In addition, common items now exist to simply raise each of these stats by 1, giving a more clear path towards ramping damage.
Finally, Artifact progression is being reworked; previously, there was a very opaque "artifact experience" system that was left over from super early in development that affected a number of Artifact stats in minor ways. This has been removed, and Artifact stats are now more or less constant. These experience values are still stored in the save data though, and might come up again later for a different system I've been cooking up. Stay tuned!
Of course, on top of these changes is a pile of entirely new items and Geogems as well, including some "cursed" items as mentioned in the roadmap. I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with them! Here's a small teaser you may have seen on the DASHPUNCH Bluesky account:
Achievements and Unlockables
Not everything added in Mezztik's Marvels is given out so freely! Also coming with the update is the first batch of Achievements, ranging from things that will happen by progressing normally, to small little challenges to look out for. These each come with a corresponding Steam Achievement, as well as an unlockable thing for future runs!
Final Notes
Whew, that dragged on a bit longer than I intended. If you actually read all that and made it here, thank you so much! There's still quite a bit I didn't even cover in these notes, but I'm saving those for the full notes once the update releases. But rest assured I'm still hard at work on the update, I haven't died yet. If you want to see more teaser and posts about upcoming content, make sure to follow the DASHPUNCH socials on Bluesky and X.
-DoubleV