Today's update brings a lot of changes in preparation for the Rogue. Before you ask - the Rogue will be the next big update. I will try to explain the biggest changes below. Change log for this update is our longest yet, but few changes stand out.
First of all, the duck :archduck: held by the Archdemon on the cross-section is now squeezable for your and Archdemons' enjoyment.
New Cooldowns
In other news, big changes to cards' cool down system. Positive effect on cooldown concept is no more. From now on, all cooldowns are negative (as in the card cannot be used for the duration of cooldown and offers no special effects). However, fear not. Cards that used to have a positive effect on cooldown now have Timed Effect state after use.
In that state, the card has a golden glow that shows how much time is left until the effect is finished. As the effect timer runs out the glow will gradually turn red to alert the player.
Once the effect is done the regular cooldown will kick in. The minimal cooldown is one second now, meaning that cards that could have been used "back to back" now have a one-second cooldown. This change will make effects over time more readable and should make Skeleton Belt more useful (it won’t extend positive effects anymore but now it shortens cooldown on all cards!). Also, now Boots card can be found in Elephant variant, that will make the protection from flames last up to 30% longer.
Damage subsystem
We have also rewritten attack system, now many attacks will have different visual effects and elements will add tints to those effects. In the process, we also removed a lot of bugs and elemental effects will trigger more often.
Dialogue system
You will also notice that now all spoken text outside of cinematic scenes will be displayed next to a head of the person (or monster) speaking in the upper left corner of the screen. Gone are the days of crude text window obscuring center of the screen.
Sound
The effort to enrich sound aspect of the game is ongoing. A ton of new sounds made it into the game and much more will be added. Also, the Hell tileset now has its own music theme!
A lot of visual improvements
We have also added many visual improvements and tweaks, including some monsters' effects, easier to read font in gossips and so on. It's worth mentioning that now the type of equipped elemental damage card is reflected in how character's weapon (or staff) looks.
The complete change log
The change log for this update was so long we actually found a bug in the change log window itself, it had problems handling long change logs :paperdeath:
Here you can read the detailed list of all changes:
- Really important stuff first - Archdemons' duck can now be squeezed on the cross section screen
- The game has a new fancy book icon
- We also made changes to all tilesets and they might cause levels the player is currently on to be rerolled. This won't affect the characters or anything else
- In other news, big changes to cards the cool down system. Positive effect on cooldown is no more. Now all cooldowns are negative (as in card cannot be used for the duration of cooldown and offers no special effects)
- All active Timed Effects on cards will end when hero exits the dungeon, this includes Mana Shield card
- We have made huge "under the hood" changes to the damage dealing system, practically rewriting it. Visually the most obvious change will be different and better-looking shapes of the strike effects on monsters
- Fixed legendary Ice Bolt, it used to never trigger unless Fireball card was also equipped and then it would trigger all the time
- When monsters with golden shield are standing in flames and golden shield timer is sped up their shields will have a red tint to better communicate that fact to the player
- Bomb cards will now be better at targeting monsters that showed up after the card was activated
- Ranged cards like Throw or Cold Nova now will display their range in the dungeon when the player hovers mouse cursor over them
- Dialogue system has been rewritten. Now instead of a window over characters head all dialogue will be displayed in the upper left corner of the screen with a neat character's head icon. That way dialogues won't interfere with clicking and we will have more opportunities for one-liners
- Fixed line spacing in changelog window
- Added lots of missing sounds and made small improvements to a number of pre-existing sounds
- Fixed errors in Archdemon scripts that rendered him mute
- Added visual effects to Spell and Item cards on use, similar to the effect that was present on Artifact cards on proc
- Skeleton warriors now have more varied appearances, there are variants with missing body parts
- Level completed summary window now allows distribution level up points right in that window
- Tweaked monsters' accuracy modifiers granted by magical variants
- Skeleton Belt now works as a separate dodge mechanic, granting an extra 20% chance to dodge damage from skeletons
- Added a new type of tutorial - a small window that pops up on important events in a predefined area of the screen and goes away after a few seconds or when clicked. Right now it should appear when a usable card is equipped for the first time.
- Fire shockwaves no longer kill Fire Imps (this will prevent mass Imp suicide events)
- Re-enabled Antipope's visual fight sequences when changing states, 20x more awesome now
- Balance: Charge Card cost increased
- Balance: Teleport Card cost and cooldown increased
- Balance: Legendary Teleport effect trigger chance decreased from 100% to 50%
- The Cook and Antipope now have custom casting effects
- The Cook and Antipope now have custom casting effects
- Arcane bolts deflected with legendary shield will now deal damage to enemies
- All missiles deflected by legendary shield won't trigger card effects now since they are technically not player's missiles
- Fixed true damage being damped to 1 instead of destroying elemental hearts as it should
- Added poison death indicator. Now when monsters has enough poison to stacked to kill it a green skull icon will be displayed to the left of his health bar
- Poison now affects spiders when they stalk player on ceiling, spiders killed by poison when stalking fall to the ground and die
- Changed poison tutorial to reflect new poison mechanics
- Cards tutorial now mentions keyboard shortcuts
- Timed state tutorial rephrased to be more clear
- Rebalanced chances for card drops
- Polished Golem card effects
- Mage's missiles that fly too far and die will now fade out their light in a smoother manner
- Improved landing effects after monsters jump
- Added extra particle effects to casting monsters' staffs
- Tweaked NPC's nodding animations
- Current flexiscope depth is now indicated on the depth slider, so the players can see how much they will progress
- Fixed player not being slowed by monsters (only visual effects were applied)
- Increased font size in gossips for better readability
- Small visual fixes to quest bosses' intro scenes
- Font was changed in gossips, new one is not italic in order to increase readability
- Balance changes to various cards' cooldowns and costs
- Remedy card now protects from poison, stun and cold from level 1
- Equipped cards will now be marked as such in upgrade pane
- Added tooltip to the golden key, explaining that that mechanic is not yet implemented
- Newly found cards will now be properly marked as "unseen" with purple glows and as seen if equipped
- Item Cards' variants other than the equipped one will now show zero charges
- Equipped cards will now be marked with a green tick in upgrade pane
- Changes in Demonic Ring, among others fire now damages non-magical shields and shields are destroyed on fire monsters too
- Added tooltips to selected GUI controls
- Fixed progress bar in the Summary Window
- Cold attacks now will trigger ice visual effect on hit, same effect will be displayed on every click on an icicle
- Arrows now have nice fade on appear to make them stop "popping" into existence in middle of skeletons' heads
- Hell tileset now has its own music theme
- Cards "loosened" by charging goats won't get unequipped anymore when inventory was open and player clicked the card to fix it
- Unified use conditions for potion cards
- Slot buyout tooltips and confirmation windows now have more neatly formatted prices
- Adjusted visuals of monsters landing on the ground.
- Visual tweaks of magical monsters staffs
- Charge won't be stopped by enemy missiles
- Improved confirmation dialog text when switching Item Card's variant
- Avatar unlock progress bar cannot be moved with controller anymore (glitch was only visual)
- Fixed a crash when upgrade card was clicked in upgrade pane with cauldron open
- Fixed a glitch that caused points needed for the next rang to be incorrectly calculated in Summary WIndow after finishing a flexiscope
- Fixed minor issues with Teleport Card's shockwave
- Fixed an issue where Mage would change targets when trying to right click and attack target
- Fixed appear and disappear visuals of Skeleton Whopper
- Fixed an issue where some body parts on larger monsters would disappear abruptly when monster's death animation started
- Fixed ghost movement bug that caused ghost to warp in and out of map under some circumstances
- When avatar is changed in Summary Window the new one will be displayed (old one used to stuck around until the window was closed)
- Dungeon unfolding effect will no longer play at the same time as cutscene in order to avoid "sliding" effect
- Legendary Lightning and Staff of Lightning names swapped
- Visual fixes to some arrow types (added shadows and such)
As always, stay safe in the dungeons! :archduck:
Konstanty