It's been a very long time since the last update which I apologize for. Quarantine laziness coupled with overall motivation problems led to a lull in programming for me. I worked on a few side projects to get my creative juices flowing again and I feel I'm back in the groove of things. This update mainly focuses on the map, subsequent updates will go back to adding more content in the game and fixing any issues I come across along the way!
Notes
- This is a HUGE update that adds a brand new concept to the game I feel is going to have a big impact on your enjoyment of the game: branching paths on each floor that allows you to choose which room you go in to next!
- The biggest detriment I felt that was holding the game back was the singular floor generation system. It worked to an extent but your ability to get through the floor was weighted just a little too much on luck. If you got a floor that was too hard, you basically had no alternatives. You HAD to get through those rooms to continue the game.
- Now I've adopted a 4-path system where each floor has 4 paths and these paths branch into each other to allow you to have many more options in the overall decision you have behind which rooms you go in to. This fundamentally changes how you go about progressing through the game and I really hope I found a good mixture of new concepts interlocking with the old system the game used.
- This new system brings about several changes such as full-heal rooms spawning in intervals throughout the floor instead of randomly, logic that prevents more than 3 combat rooms spawning side by side, and the removal of those death bonuses you can choose after you lose the game.
- It goes without saying that this update is not compatible with old saves. As always I apologize for this but these major changes are happening in early access so that the full-release version sees as little overhauls as possible.
Bugfixes
- Added additional cleanup code that aims to make the game run more efficiently without increasing lag as the game goes on
- Fixed a seed bug that would not make the same floor spawn if you put in the same seed
- Fixed the game adding to the enemy stat multiplier every time you loaded into the starting room after the final floor instead of when you enter the room for the first time
- Fixed the Lifebreaker's Put Down crashing the game
- Fixed the Bloodseeker being able to cast Tear Away on untargetable party members if it used Bloodlust beforehand
- Fixed the Deathbringer crashing the game post-combat if it had Cheat Death unlocked
Overhauls
- Floors no longer spawn a single path, there are now 4 paths that branch into each other. This change brings many new concepts that I hope are seen as improvements over the original formula. Firstly, no more than 3 combat rooms can spawn side by side on one branch. Secondly, full-heal rooms no longer spawn randomly and now are encountered in intervals throughout the floor (the interval is larger on harder difficulties). These rooms spawn about every 6th room. Non-healing and non-combat rooms are inhabited by all the other room types (gambling, sacrifice, treasure, potion, etc)
- This new update to the floor system also sees the removal of the death screen rewards system. I had that in place because I was trying to prevent scenarios in which you encountered a series of combat rooms that were impossible to get through on your own. You could spend some resources to help you get through these encounters. However I feel with the new path system, the guaranteed generation of full-heal rooms, and floor generation rules that prevent combat rooms from bunching together, I feel this system is no longer necessary
Changes
- The statistics and spell list icons during gameplay now glow if any character has points to spend instead of glowing only if the current character has points
- I changed the statistics/spell list glow to be more efficient as well as no longer getting off-sync
- Combat rooms no longer spawn more frequently on harder difficulites, they now only increase the chance of fighting more enemies per encounter. Harder difficulties now increase the distance between full-heal rooms
- Full-heal rooms now give you a choice to give your party a 25% damage buff or a 25% damage buff for the next combat encounter
- Map rooms now allow you to see the entire floor while you stay in that room. Once you leave the map room you no longer get to see the whole floor so memorize which path you want to go down before you leave!
- Treasure rooms items are now generated for a random character
Buffs
- Buffed the Bandit's Worthy Sacrifice to grant the Forgotten King increased Maximum Health equal to 50% (30% initial + 20% upgrade) of its Maximum Health instead of 75% (50% + 25% upgrade) Current Health
Additions
- The game now runs on 64bit architecture, allowing it to use more memory which should help performance
Known Issues
- When you use the enchantment room to scale an item to a character's level, the item's new properties don't immediately apply. You have to unequip and re-equip the item to get the new values
- There seems to be an issue with enemy generation if you play the game for a long time. I've gotten reports of the game attempting to generate multiple enemies but there only being one in the combat room with the game throwing an error. I'm trying to figure out where this issue is stemming from
- The game experiences rare crashes when doing specific things that are really hard to pin down since I can't recreate the issues. In almost every scenario a solution is to restart the game. You'll have to do that until I can figure out the problem
To-Do
- Repair Room. This room will allow you repair your items, removing negative conditions or applying positive ones. This room will also allow you to upgrade your item rarities, for a price of course! This will allow for your items to have better multipliers than they otherwise could get from spawning naturally
- Run modifiers. I want to add some optional modifiers to make the game more interesting. Maybe something like permadeath or persistent buffs/debuffs to make any given run easier/harder for the player
- Change the way Shatter works. Right now Shatter is in a weird spot because the way it works doesn't necessarily make it a good buff. It currently converts all Damage Taken into Divine Damage, but this makes any damage increase effects you have not apply, which could make you deal less damage than you would have. The Marauder's Deep Cuts has a Shatter with a temporary change while I figure out what to do with the buff
- Change the way enemies level up. Right now they are always the level of your party members, but I feel this makes the experience multiplier worthless. An idea I have floating around is giving the enemies a set pool of experience based on your run length and current floor, not affected by your experience multiplier. This would mean you could curve faster than enemies, which will make the experience multiplier a stat you will actually need to take care of if you want to get ahead
- As I put in more enemies and more spells, I get a better understanding of what my code is capable of. I want to make spells that are extremely dynamic and unique for each class. I'd like to spend some time going through older classes I've made and see if they could use any sort of tweaking to bring them up to my current standards