We demoed Vagante at MAGFest last weekend, and the response was terrific! We managed to get a ton of feedback, as well as show off our game to hundreds of attendees who’d never heard of it before. There were also so many other great games in the indie showcase; and it was great opportunity to finally meet some fellow indie developers too.
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We were a little bit busy with convention preparation last week, so you’ll find that today’s update is a little bit smaller than the previous ones. Despite this, you’ll find several significant changes in this biweekly update.
Control Scheme Update
We’ve consolidated all three of the old swap actions (Melee Swap, Ranged Swap, and Spell Swap) into one. The new swap works by holding the swap button and then pressing the associated action key (Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, or Cast Spell). While this may take some time to get used to, we think it’s an overall improvement to how the controls feel.
Reducing the number of buttons dedicated to swap freed up a button, which we’ve now turned into Walk. Walking answers an issue many players were frustrated with: the lack of fine-control in movement, especially when dealing with ledges. Walking also gives us another way to modify other actions, so you’ll find several affinities have been reworked to use it as a modifier.
MP Regen Stamina
In previous versions of Vagante, magic tended to be overpowered. The potentially infinite mp available to players encouraged long periods of waiting for mana to regenerate so you could safely chip away at enemies at great distance.
We’re always looking for ways to reduce grinding in Vagante, so this update introduces the concept of MP Regen Stamina, a limited resource which fuels all magic regeneration. This resource can be restored by exploring the level or reading books/scrolls, and it’s also reset per each level. If you run out of MP Regen Stamina, you’ll become magically exhausted and your mana will not regenerate.
These changes, like all changes in Vagante’s alpha, are experimental. We’re trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, so your feedback is invaluable to us as we move forward. Many thanks once again to the active contributors in our forum.
Bugfixes
- Fixed several impossible or unreachable rooms in the Caves and Forest
- Fixed crash associated with the Spriggan Boss in the Forest
- BossWorm will no longer spawn in Shop rooms
- Holy Reincarnation now modifies stats instead of max hp (fixes infinite hp exploit)
- Frozen zombies will not fall through levels
- Fixed strange collision issues when using Blink while touching boulders
- Can no longer use poison potions on ranged weapons
- Fixed exploit where player could shoot infinite arrows
- Fixed cursor movement in the grid layout of rebind controls menu.
- Fixed teleport sometimes failing to find a valid location and killing you
- Fixed segmentation fault with breakable walls
- Fixed broken spell targeting
- Fixed bug where Dragon AI would get stuck
- Fixed skeletons eating pork chops
- Fixed skeleton projectiles going through walls
- Reflection ring attribute now works correctly with arrows
Balance
- Spell ranges decreased, int-contribution increased
- Stat affinity bonuses reduced from 2/2/2/2 to 1/2/1/2
- Potion effects now last until the end of the level
- Alchemy Affinity 3 reworked: now increase effect instead of duration
- Reworked bow/throwing aiming: can now aim downwards
- Pork Chops can no longer be found by checking all walls
- Demonic familiar projectile count increased, range decreased
- Zombies no longer revive indefinitely.
- Acrobatics Affinity rebalanced. Rolling now also uses new Walk button
- Wand Affinity rebalanced. Now also uses new Walk button
- Divine weapon now uses MP, and also uses new Walk button
- Made bombs more predictable: less bouncy, and no chance to explode on impact.
- Using a teleport scroll will close your inventory
- Spear animation damage frames increased slightly
- Chaos Shrine effect chance increased
- Fire Shield mana cost and duration increased
- Blood/Gold cost shrines now require player to be standing still under them
- Magic quiver mp costs rebalanced
- Snake Eater background now also gives +1 rPois
Features
- New control scheme (Changed the three swap buttons into two new ones: Walk, and Swap)
- New “MP Stamina” system
- New Gamma correction shader available in Settings
- New Tutorial
- New SFX
- Item: Speed Boots
- Spell: Blue Firebolt
- Spell: Shockwave
- Holy Affinity: Divine Weapon now has different projectiles depending on weapon
- Fancier Player Menu switch animations
- Mouse cursor will now be auto-hidden after inactivity
- New Backgrounds:
- Synchronized
- Death’s Acolyte