This update brings, among other stuff, the cursed sarcophagi mechanics and spatial sound system.
Cursed Sacophagi
They are a mixed bag - some contain great treasures but others are packed with deadly enemies. Take a gamble, toss the coin. Who knows, maybe it will be your lucky day. Or maybe it will be Archdemon's lucky day. Either way, it's better to clear the area before opening one, just in case.
Note: When playing on Daredevil on higher difficulties take extra care around Cursed Sarcophagi, they can spawn multiple bosses!
Spatial sound
The game now localizes the sound sources spatially, meaning that when an arrow hits a monster near the left edge of the screen the sound will originate from the left speaker. This required a lot of under the hood changes to the audio system since at time tens of monsters get hit at the same time all over the screen, but the final effect enhances the atmosphere of the game and we think it was well worth the effort. GIF totally not related:
Stop! Hammer time!
Other significant changes
Besides above, this update bundles a lot of fixes, quality of life improvements general polish and tweaks. The complete changelog is available in the game and at the end of this post.
Among many others: Legendary Icebolt and Fireball trigger chance increased from 0.1% to 10%, however it triggers only on the kill, not any damage as it used to.
Magic Robe now damages boulders, has visual effects tweaked and cooldown reduced by 20%.
Meteor now tries to predict where the target will be when meteor impacts and aims there.
Skeleton Belt legendary variant trigger chances increased tenfold.
Holy bolt completely reworked - now can target any kind of monster and damages them for 50% maximum health. However, a monster can be targeted by holy bolt only once. The legendary variant might spawn additional bolts on the hit and target any valid targets in the vicinity.
We also discovered two ancient bugs (there were more bugs obviously but those two were like Methuselahs of bugs) that survived since time immemorable. When card activated a shiny effect passed over it and it used geometry 100 times more complicated than required, it was the most complex render call we had in the game. Performance impact was probably minimal because rest of the game is well optimized but we fixed it nonetheless, obviously. The second one will impact the gameplay - frozen monsters thawed after 16 seconds instead of 8, as was intended. This is also fixed now.
Also, fountains got visually overhauled with animated paper-textured liquids, glowing eyes, and ambient light.
This change will require saved dungeons to be re-generated if there were fountains in them, but we hope that nicer fountains will be worth it :archduck:
Official Discord Channel
If you don't feel like posting on the steam community but would still get in touch with other players we have created an official Disord channel.
We will try to hang out in there as often as possible but due to real-time nature of it when you want to make sure we get your feedback please use the in-game widget, shoot us an email at [email protected] or post in the forums.
Anyway, without a further ado, here is the invite link: https://discord.gg/qD4uWKu
The complete changelog
Below are the changes introduced in this update. The list is not complete, there were tons of typos fixed and smaller bugs squashed but more prominent ones and changes affecting gameplay and balance are listed.
Version 0.91.15269+ 22nd February 2018
- Cursed sarcophagi added, like regular ones but cursed (open to toss a coin and see whenever you get a lot of loot or a lot of trouble)
- Enabled spatial sound, on two speaker setup source of sound should be now localized depending on wherever the sound originated from in the game’s world
- Archdemon now uses unique bouncing fire missiles, as a part of groundwork laid down before Archdemon quest level overhaul (that is still in the works)
- Added a quick throw animation to hero when tossing bombs
- Visually polished fountains - liquid now has paper texture, is animated, and statues have glowing eyes and delicate glow from liquid
- Fire won’t damage boulders anymore
- Boulders now receive damage from shockwaves
- Quality of life: now holding down shift will block clicking on doors and staircases
- Ghost hidden outside of map won’t block Rogue’s arrows anymore
- Due to popular demand we shortened key descriptions in binding option (so Mouse.2 became m2)
- Added scaling to critical strike and spider spit animations, for more readable and menacing effect
- Boss missiles will now disappear on boss’ death
- Frozen monsters now will have special visual effects applied
- Fixed Antipope’s cards spawning always two monsters instead of intended 1,2 or 3
- Loading game ended ongoing cards effects, this will no longer happen
- Trigger icons were swapped in tutorials on Steam, this is fixed now
- Quality of life: improve tooltip and descriptions in card discovered window
- Quality of life: in case there are not enough slots or mana to equip discovered card there will be option to close the window and automatically open inventory
- Added fancy ornaments around card in card discovered/identified window that change with card rarity
- Fixed: ranged monsters would fire at player on trigger even if there was no line of sight
- Boss Statue poem will start after the cinematic camera pan
- Fixed a discrepancy in Remedy description
- Improved visual effects on stairs marker when level is clear
- Holy bolt reworked - now can target any kind of monster and damages them for 50% maximum health. However, a monster can be targeted by holy bolt only once
- Meteor card now tries to predict where the target will be and aims there. Impact radius increased two times. Legend now throws explosive ice shards, not fire shards
- Fixed: Monsters were frozen twice longer than intended, this is no longer the case. Was 16 seconds, will be 8 seconds now
- Linked monsters visuals improved - added shake and more visible red blink when attacking the master monster. New effects for unlinking, circle under slave monsters and number of slaved monsters will now be visible even when not in light radius
- New visual effect for ending a link to summoned monsters
- The blinking start indicating position of last objects on level won’t blink during cutscenes
- Mighty Blow visual effects diversified between levels
- Charge card - Polished visual effects
- Bomb cards changes - now each bomb has a chance to bounce that increases with card’s level instead of set number of bounces
- Chaotic Ring changes fixed to match description, now crushes whole shields in one click on level 3
- Meteor card is now smarter, it tries to predict where the monster will be when the rock hits and aims accordingly. Light dimming power and delay between strikes decreased
- Hourglass visual effects improved. Added fullscreen effect for legendary effect trigger.
- Magic Robe cooldown reduced from 5 to 4 seconds. Orb's visual effects improved.
- Disarmor visual effect tweaked (monsters jump when hit with a lightning, electrical discharges on monsters) and legendary chance increased from 15/30/45% to 50/75/100%
- Legendary Blade Storm slow chance increased to 10,15 and 20% (was 1,1.5 and 2%)
- Legendary Skeleton Belt now will properly work for potions. The card proc GFX will be no longer triggered by monster misses but rather on potion use to increase readability
- Legendary Helmet now spawns twice as big stun shockwave, should reach every monster in light radius
- Legendary Throw mana drop chance increased to 2% and amount changed
- Changes to legendary Icebolt and Fireball - chance to trigger storm effect raised from 0.1% to 10% and above, however it triggers on target death not receiving damage.
- Legendary Rejuvenation description made clearer
- Changes to Magic Robe: orbs now deal damage to boulders as well as icicles. On level one they deal one damage, on level two they destroy icicles and boulders and on level three they don’t get destroyed themselves.
- Monster that enters Rogue’s melee range will also be selected for shield breaking on the controller without the need for switching targets.
- Added ice decal ground effect to frost nova card
- Polished tutorial object visuals
- Optimized card highlight visual effect 100x
- Optimized several particle effects
- Talking to healer now instantly replenishes health and mana (just like picking up vials)
- Daredevil icon will no longer persist on slot button after character was deleted
- Visual polish: Characters now flex a bit when jumping/landing
- Next locked slot used to glow for a few seconds once the player found enough gold for it. Now it will stay delicately highlighted the whole time it can be afforded
- Fixed: Completing a quest boss level won’t award the same amount of experience as the previously completed flexiscope anymore
- Fixed a bug where once stunned flying monsters would never play wing flapping animations again
- Fixed: Sound playing in loop when pedestal was selected on controller
- Fixed: Goatchanters glow flickered when they bleated
- Fixed: Daredevil red sprite now will disappear when deleting daredevil character slot
- Fixed controller buttons handling in the engine, previous implementation could have caused buttons to get stuck on rare occasions
- Fixed LT and RT icons swapped in GUI on Steam Controller
- Fixed counting progress for "Bronze Division achievement"
- Fixed idle animation sometimes overriding colorize applied to a character by external effects like being frozen
- Fixed tooltips being displayed over objects not on screen in the bestiary window
- Fixed discovered monster families counter in stats windows, should display correct value now
- Fixed stairs marker would exit level with a single tap on controller sometimes
- Fixed: dead monsters will no longer get stunned
- Updated chromium libraries
- Added pad support to a few rarely used windows
- Added tutorial for upcoming quest mastering mechanics (not yet implemented)
What's ahead?
We are working on a better way for community translators (who are super awesome, big thanks :paperheart:) to translate the game files. The current mode is cumbersome and can get chaotic after updates when a lot of changes are introduced to string tables. Once the new system is up and running we will add currently complete community translations to the game. We estimate that will happen by April.
Then there is the good news, not-so-good news, and good news situation. The good news is that we are toying with an idea for a whole new game mode/core mechanic that would be more CCG (collectible card game) than the current mode. Assuming it works as an internal prototype we will make it publicly available for you to test. Then we will be able to determine if we should develop it further.
The not-so-good news is that in that context we re-evaluated the production and marketing schedule. We used historical performance data to create work time estimates as realistic as possible and it looks like the release we initially planned for around Q3 will get delayed. While this is not a terrible delay it should give us more breathing room not only to prototype the new experimental core mechanic but also to add more cards we planned and avoid crazy crunch that would affect the quality.
That last part is important because the other good news is that one member of the team will have a kid around the time of originally planned launch (again, something we didn't exactly plan for :D). Those of you who had kids or even been around a newborn for longer than 10 minutes know too well how it can turn your brain to mush, so we will have fewer hands on board for a few months. The upside is that in 18 years we might get one more team member!
As always,
Stay safe in dungeons :archduck:
Konstanty