We have a ton of fixes, tweaks and controller updates that we have bundles into this update. I will break down most important points below.
Razer Chroma
We now officially support Razer Chroma RGB backlights. This is important for two reasons. All of you who have Chroma enabled keyboards, mouse or other peripherals can now enjoy Book of Demons in a cool RGB glory. The second reason is equally important - we are taking part in Razers' marketing events later this month and this might generate additional exposure which is crucial to our marketing outreach efforts.
The full list of effects now available includes:
- Health and Mana indicators on F5-F8 and F9-F12 respectively (also on keypad and mouse). We use fewer keys but rightmost key dims as the parameter value gets lower for fluid visual feedback. Additionally, health is tinted green when the character is poisoned.
- Equipped cards highlight keys bound to their slots. Type of card equipped is color coded exactly as they are presented in-game. Additionally, when the card is not usable at the moment it's dimmed. And when it's on cooldown it's also indicated by gradually making the key brighter. These keys and health/mana bars are rendered on top of other effects as they are utility indicators.
- When the card becomes usable or its passive effect is triggered respective key flashes gold
- When the card is used by the player a shockwave originating from the key it's bound to is rendered on the keyboard. Of course, it's in the card's color.
- These are additively rendered so they make for a nice ripple storm when the player is in the middle of intense combat :paperdeath:
- When the character is frozen the keyboard mimics on-screen effect and "freezes" in blue color on the edge rows and columns.
- When the character is poisoned again the keyboard mimics the on-screen effect and "bubbles" of green spawn at the lowest key row and make their way upwards.
- Level up, level clear and card identified/discovered notifications now have fast "swipe" effect on the keyboard, each in a different color
- Mouse midsection and mousepad glow in the color the current dungeon is tinted with. This creates a cool ambient effect at player's desk that compliments the in-game color scheme.
- Upon death, the keyboard gets "flooded" with red to mimic the on-screen effect.
- When player is stunned headset blinks yellow to mimic the yellow stars on screen
Margaret prepared a demo video highlighting some of the effects on Black Widow keyboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td3UOPGo3eU
Controller support
We are continuously working on better and full support for controllers. Plenty of bugs got fixed and quirks ironed out in this update. There is still a lot to do but controller support with mouse emulation turned off should be a much smoother experience now.
For Steam Controller users we recently added custom actions for cards using that can be mapped to extra buttons or radial menus for which we also added icons.
So what's ahead?
A lot :archduck:
The Rogue looms in the near future. Thanks to our brave trailblazing testers from the test branch with each update we are fixing a lot of bugs and balance issues related to the Rogue. She will go live later this year (I have explained the reasoning behind the wait here) and already tested and polished up to the quality of the Warrior and Mage classes. With her release, we will begin the long march to the launch and we will share a detailed roadmap of events we will do or participate in.
We are also working on adding all the sounds we would like to hear in the game (right now we have less than half of what's planned) and more one-liners for the heroes. We are also tinkering with audio system and might have a surprise for you later on.
Archdemon quest is being reworked. It's a lot of work and will take much time but from what we already did it's obvious that the improvement will be huge. Right now he is just an archdemon. Once we are done he will be The Archdemon with an extra duck on top.
We will have a rigid roadmap with more or less fixed dates for you before the end of the year, probably at the same time as the Rogue official launch.
Until then,
Stay safe in the dungeons :archduck:
Konstanty