Little Devil - Update
A big one this time. The core of this update is a complete rework of how levels get put together, plus a stack of bug fixes that were long overdue. Let's get into it.
Level Generation Overhaul
Rooms used to be hand built, every enemy placed by me, one at a time. That doesn't scale, and it meant every playthrough of a given room felt the same.
Rooms are now assembled procedurally, based on two things: room size and enemy difficulty. Bigger rooms can support more enemies, or fewer high threat ones. Difficulty also scales the closer you get to the exit of a floor, so things ramp up naturally rather than feeling random.
Spikes and turrets now follow the same system. Rooms roll for hazard placement independently, clustered so they read as an intentional danger zone rather than randomly scattered spikes. Turrets space themselves out so you're not just facing a wall of overlapping gunfire.
Enemies now arrive through portals rather than just appearing. A few portals open, enemies trickle out, and then the portals close. It looks better, and it gives you a beat of warning before a room gets going.
While all this was in the works, enemy behaviour got a pass too. Ranged enemies will now actually use their range, rather than sitting still until you wander into melee distance. Melee enemies without a ranged option will now close the gap instead of idling. Camping at the edge of a room is a lot less viable than it used to be.
Visual Updates
- New CRT filter, tuned for better clarity without losing the retro feel
- General lighting pass across rooms and scenes, since a fair amount of detail was getting lost in the dark
- Traps now have a subtle glow around them so they're easier to spot
- Minimap room icons recoloured to a warmer gold tone, much easier to read against the dark map background
- A proper loading screen, instead of levels just appearing
Feedback Improvements
- A new on-screen indicator when you lose an item, so it's clear what just happened rather than just noticing your inventory changed
- Death screen now shows a killer-specific quip and icon for whatever got you, rather than a generic message
- Optional auto coin pickup, with a magnet effect that pulls nearby coins toward you (off by default, toggle it on in settings if you'd rather not manually grab every coin)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a serious bug where some enemies would die visually but never actually clear from the room, leaving doors locked
- Fixed enemies occasionally becoming completely unresponsive after being reused (not attacking, no collision, nothing) - this took a while to track down, deep pooling issue
- General stability improvements around enemy spawning and room transitions
There's also been a fair bit of work going on behind the scenes on the development side of things that isn't really player-facing yet, but keeps things moving in the right direction.
As always, thank you for playing and for the bug reports. This update in particular came from a lot of "wait, that shouldn't happen" moments during testing, so if you spot something odd, let me know.
A full State of the Game post covering everything else in progress will follow shortly.