Hello everyone! First of all thank you so much for 1,500 wishlists! I've been pretty silent as of recently as there's been a lot of movement behind the curtains, so achieving that number with almost no marketing efforts is honestly amazing. Thank you all!
As I promised last time, I wanted to try and make huge monthly posts talking about development and what I've been doing, and welp there's certainly a lot to talk this time around, so let's get rolling...! (get it... rolling...)
WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING
Sooo this past month has been a beefy one. After the success of the demo, I kept working on [REDACTED] as I said last time. But I started prototyping some new core mechanics for the game, and some ended up sticking...! (get it cause they're stamps!)
STAMPS
Stamps are a new major mechanic I'm introducing, and to summarize, they're my way to make Dice A Million scale infinitely.
If you've ever had a crazy strong run in the DEMO where you have the exact build you want, you probably noticed how it feels like nothing ever matters anymore and you have hit a ceiling. That's something that doesn't happen that much in other roguelikes and I came to the conclusion that it was because this game didn't have something that scaled infinitely, like stats in The Binding Of Isaac, relics in Slay the Spire, or planet cards in Balatro, if you've played any of those games, you'll know what I'm talking about.
So what do these stamps do? Good question. They raise your global multiplier for their respective face. This means, if you "level up" your 2 by taking a lot of stamps, every die with a 2 on its face will be multiplied at the end of the chain of dice & ring effects, ensuring they're useful both in early and it late game. And of course, a bunch of synergyes involving new dice and rings will be added to play around with this mechanic!
And what about dice with faces greater than 6? Great question (this guy's making a lot of questions...) I won't reveal it for now but I do have a solution for those, ensuring this mechanic is core to the game and used by every type of die!
Poor D666, don't worry honey, we haven't forgotten about you.
NEW DICE & RINGS
Of course, I've been also working on a lot of new dice & rings! Currently the demo has 57 dice and 36 rings. And the total in the current build of the game is... 91 dice and 52 rings! (so almost double the content, wow!)
As I've said before, my goal for the full release is to have 100~ rings and at least 150-200 dice.
I also want to make sure every single one of them has its place in the game and is unique in some way. So I'm carefully slowly designing and balancing them.
Here's a new favorite of mine, the Aquarium!
This one's really fun to play around with, and it can get pretty powerful with the right build. It's also one of the new set of dice that do their effect when they stay in hand, rather than when they're rolled, there will be more of these! Also be careful when handling the Aquarium, as it is quite fragile...
And speaking of fish... oh look, here's a new ring!
This one's for the keepers, for you people that keep that precious glass die in your hand until the end of the round to give an all out! For every turn that dice stay in your hand with this ring, they'll become more powerful! (I promise this is the last fish themed one)
OTHER FEATURES
I've been also working on new QoL features, new hands and other major stuff, but I'll save that for next time!
Oh and apart from all of this, I've been finishing up work on [REDACTED] and ready to get to work on the next [REDACTED]. I'm sure you'll enjoy it :)
PERFORMANCE ISSUES
Lastly, I wanted to make a quick note about performance, since I noticed the game does slow down a fair bit on lower end computers. From what I could test, the cause seems to be the CRT filter. Which is reassuring in a way, but probably has no quick solution I can push to the demo right now. I'm looking for a way to optimize the shader and make it run more smoothly, but in the meantime, if you're experiencing this issue, you can just turn off the filter in the settings menu and it should run a lot better, again, let me know!
WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING
Apart from me working on the game, there's been a lot of movement behind the curtains, some stuff that I can't talk about yet, and some that I don't WANT to talk about yet. Trust me you'll see...
MODDING
Soo, there's been some people interested in modding the DEMO as of lately! I just wanted to make clear that I fully support this and it's been amazing seeing what people might do with my duck-taped code (please modders don't judge me).
While I may not have the knowledge or the tools at the moment, feel free to shoot me a DM or a message on the discord server in case I can help with something!
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Speaking of the discord server, (which you should totally join btw as we're about to hit 100 members) I asked people there if they had any questions regarding the game or me in general, so let's get to them!
Q: Will cards receive a rework with rarities?
A: Cards function a bit different than other items like dice & rings, they're meant to be something you can rely on to fight against the natural RNG that dice have. For that reason, I didn't want to make a ton of them, just so it's easier to find the one you need. That being said, I do have plans of adding at least a couple of new ones to the standard set, and THEN make a separate card set, that will have cards that are more powerful or more weird in general. The goal is to make these separate pools, so you can still rely on getting your good old standard cards, but also get some cool new ones in some other way.
Q: If you could remove/overhaul a system in the game, which one?
A: That's something I can do, cause I'm the developer, duh.
The answer is very clear in my mind, and I wanted to talk about it in this post since it's something I've been working on recently, buuuut it sitll needs a bit more time in the oven sadly, so I'll save it for next time. It involves reworking a pretty major mechanic, so I'm making sure it works properly and feels nice to play! (so far testers have liked it!)
Q: What's your favorite flavor of icecream?
A: Coffee
Q: Why is everyone saying silly?
A: I don't know. I seriously don't know. for the love of god please join the discord server and find out for yourself.
phew, that's all for today. see you next time! :D