After last month’s health issues I was able to catch up on what I didn’t quite finish. I ended up accomplishing a whole heck of a lot more than I anticipated in October! Here are the updates:
Steam Store Page Translated
¡Hola! The descriptive content on the Steam store page is officially in Spanish (Latin & European), French, and German.
Old Crone NPC
I’ve added a new NPC to the gang! She actually is already in the game – she blesses you with upgrades when you level up in battle – but now she has a permanent home at the beginning of the realms of the gods. She will greet you, explain a bit about the realm, and bless you with a randomly generated upgrade to kick off your battle. She’s blind and has a floating skull and somehow has the ability to grant you super powerful blessings…there must be more to her than she’s letting on…
BIGGER Levels!
Initially I designed this first level to be quite small. It was mostly so I could test the other systems of the game, but I grew tired of running back and forth on a single plane…so I made it bigger and more complex. Now there’s a lot more verticality to the level, I’ve updated the background to make it feel even more overgrown and I’ve also updated the enemy spawning logic. Now after enemies spawn, they will check at what altitude the player is, and if on a different floor, the enemy will despawn and respawn on the same floor as the player but at a random distance.
Disciple Actions
When the player assigns a disciple to a job, the disciple will walk to the appropriate room and an icon will appear over their head that signifies what task they are doing.
Crosshairs
I’ve added a crosshair so that the player can more easily intuit where they are pointed. At the moment the default weapon shoot in the direction the player is facing, so this crosshair should help communicate that behavior.
More Tutorials
I also implemented tutorials for basic movement actions (running left, right, and jumping) in first Realm the player will enter. This should weave together with their initial meeting of the Old Crone who will also explain a few basic pointers to the player in her intro.
Main Menu at the Citadel
I also finally implemented a main menu for the Citadel portion of the game…this was sorely needed but unfortunately I just kept kicking this can down the road. Still needs a bit more design polish, but it’s sufficient for now.
Focus in November
Polish the new-player-experience: Ensure the tutorials are adequate and they trigger at the optimal times.
Fix saving & loading: A few things have broken in the save-game/load-game system since I’ve introduced these new game-states for tutorials. This may take a bit of time for me to debug since I wrote the save-game system almost a year ago.
The Blighted Realm polish: Now that I’ve made the level design for the first roguelike level more complex and larger, I need to polish the background illustration and incorporate a few more elements to make it a bit more compelling.
NPCs at the entrance of the Blighted Realm: At the moment the player is welcomed to the roguelike level by the Old Crone who bestows a gift upon the player. I plan to incorporate a few more narrative-focused NPCs into that initial area of the level to set up the story a bit more and set expectations for the player.
Onward & upward!
Bobby @ Long Tooth Llama