Hello everyone! Another pretty big update with some new content and lots of bug fixes and general polishing.
The main area I was focusing on with this update was The Orc Fortress and The Dark Temple, getting their bosses setup with appropriate new loot, adding a few additional enemies, vaults, special levels etc. This continues the work I've being doing in the past few updates, going down the dungeon from top to bottem and filling in any content 'holes'. At the same time I'm working hard to get the game as bug free as possible and trying to catch any little details that need polishing.
As is always the case, I'll be spending the next week or so responding to any new bugs or issues that have cropped up with this update so please let me know if you spot anything, or something doesn't seem right. With that out of the way, onto the update!
Dungeon Structure:
- A lot of this is just reintroducing some structure that existed before I did the big Level-Gen rewrite a few updates ago and had not yet being carried forward into the new system.
- Extended the length of The Orc Fortress and The Dark Temple from 4 levels back to 6 (like how it was in December). There are so many connections and special features in this branch of the dungeon that it was feeling very cramped with only 4 levels. Note, I refer to Orc/Temple as Tier-3 in my notes so will be doing the same throughout this update.
- Added some additional zone entrance vaults for the first branch: Core, Ice Caves, Sewers.
- Added new zone entrance vaults for the second branch: Arcane Tower, Forge, and Crypt.
- Reintroduced the library as a set feature on Tier-3 level 3. A lot of people were missing this feature and I think it gives a nice, known resource that the player can dive towards before heading into the first branch.
- Reintroduced the runes at the branch ends and Tier-3:6 and the locked gate to Yendor on Tier-3:6.
Bosses:
- The Orc Fortress: Minotaur King w/ Hammer of Crushing
- The Orc Fortress: High Shaman w/ Totem of the Beasts
- The Dark Temple: High Priestess w/ Amulet of Healing
- The Dark Temple: Drachnid Queen w/ Drachind Web Bow
- The Dark Temple: Demonologist w/ Crown of Intellect
New Monsters:
- The Dark Temple: Summoning Statues (trying to make summoning a bit of a sub-theme in this zone).
- The Dark Temple: Mind Flayer
- The Orc Fortress: Orc Berserker replacing the Axe thrower. I'm trying to have the set of enemies in Orc be more melee, tank and healer focused while Temple is more ranged, caster and summoner focused.
Level Generation:
- The Dark Temple: new level generator w/ connected circular rooms. Another sub-theme of sorts I'm working on to differentiate orc and temple. Orc should have more square rooms and levels with lots of hallways and choke points. Temple should have lots of wide open spaces and circular rooms and structure.
- As mentioned above a bunch of new zone entrance vaults for the branches coming off of Tier-3.
- A bunch of new vaults and special levels.
New Items:
- Scroll of Flash Freeze (an alternative to hell fire).
- Potion of Amnesia which allows you to forget a talent and recover the points.
Mechanics:
- Staves now work off of a separate staff damage stat that is effected by intelligence rather than dexterity. I'm sort of back and forth in my own head whether range weapons and staves should be treated the same or separate but the consensus I got from you guys was that it just 'felt' better for staves to run off of INT. In my own testing this definitely made casters easier to play (they had gotten a lot harder previously having to split their stats between INT and DEX).
- Reverted wands to work on charges again since its really nice to have items that can be spammed repeatedly to get you out of tough situations. Charms will continue to work as before w/ an MP requirement and will be adjusted a bit and reintroduced into the game (they were previously not dropping normally since they overlapped w/ wands). So moving forward there will be two classes of consumable items: charged w/ no requirement and cooldown w/ an MP requirement.
- Closing the inventory screen while encumbered will now set your current movement points to 0. Previously you could walk around encumbered (which prohibits quick move), take off a single piece of gear and have full movement points to spend. I decided to have it set to 0 when closing the screen so you don't accidentally lose all your points while fiddling gear between slots.
- Teleportation now clears enemy agro. Makes scrolls of teleportation a lot more useful.
- Magic Power now effects the power of wands and scrolls. Increasing damage or duration where appropriate.
- Spider webs, and vines that are created by monsters or the player will now overwrite simple objects like blood, grass, bones etc.
- Fearing an enemy that is constricting you will now cause them to break constriction and run away.
- Player will no longer waste a turn trying to use the stairs if he is immobile. Got killed due to this and quickly fixed it :P.
Balancing:
Still holding of 'true' balancing until the end of the project once everything is actually in a finished state, but continuing to poke and prod as we go along where it seems appropriate.
- Disengage damage multiplier nerfed from 2.0, 3.0 => 1.6, 2.4 since this ability is pretty insanely OP given its cooldown resetting mechanic which allows it to be chained many times if used cleverly.
- Mystic Skull Helms HP bonus from potions nerfed 3HP => 2HP. This thing was getting out of hand in the end game sometimes giving 30+ HP.
- Beast Master Nyx net now lasts half as long. Previously getting caught in this was a near death sentence unless you had an escape option.
- The random move chance from confusion was significantly reduced. Getting confused was waay to painful previously and without a potion to cure it, it was very hard to even run away.
- Reduced the number of monsters in some vaults that were a bit over the top.
- HP per strength significantly increased from 2 => 4. Looking over a lot of the formulas comparing stats on items, talents etc. and the growth curve as the player progresses made it apparent that 2HP per strength was to low compared to other stats. Just consider that +10melee Damage from STR is insanely more meaningful then +20HP. +4HP might be overshooting a bit so feedback here is appreciated.
- Healing potions used at max HP now also grant +4HP (should this be higher? Same question with energy potions and max MP?).
- Storm Shot now has a long cooldown like berserk and weapon shield since it can basically clear entire rooms of enemies with a single use.
User Interface:
- Added a [G]oto menu accessible with the G key that can be used to automatically path between levels. A feature that has been missing for a long time.
- Added a mana number to the player when using text display (you can toggle it in the options). Was annoying to me to have to glance up to see how much mana I had.
- Some behind the scenes work so that you no longer have to restart the game when switching between text and bars for HP/MP display.
- The inventory key (default C) will now close the merchant menu.
- Removed the drop button from the inventory (just toss an item outside of the menu to drop it now).
- Cold bar will no longer show up if the player has sufficient cold resistance to ignore it.
- The description of cold resistance now includes the immunity to ambient cold description when > 20%.
- If an enemy is killed in the same turn it agros you, it will no longer popup !!! blocking the damage next.
- Fixed targeting on chakrams and tunnels shot to be a bit easier to aim.
- Chakram/tunnel shot no longer shows hidden enemies.
Bugs and Crashes:
- Fixed charge targeting around corners (was previously getting blocked)
- The smoke that trails out of charging enemies should now have a big cloud and small cloud to better indicate direction.
- Fixed PC facing wrong direction after charging
- Fixed locked doors having the wrong frame when opened.
- Getting killed by a trampling enemy will no longer have the enemy standing on top of the player.
- Knocking a boss into a pit and killing it should drop the loot as near to land as possible.
- 'Closed' tiles near to the Upper Dungeon:1 start position so the player doesn't start immediately surrounded.
- Fixed flame webs not damaging the player
- Fixed fire mages casting fire storm without line of sight.
- When trying to fire a weapon at an enemy and there is a hidden enemy between, you will no longer get the 'No Clear Line' message but rather just fire the projectile and it will hit the hidden enemy, revealing him. This one took a lot more work then expected fiddling with targeting code.
- The above also applies to abilities that fire projectiles like fire ball i.e. a hidden enemy will not block the targeting but will then get revealed when the projectile hits them.
- Fixed a bug where the merchant was double stocking items. Basically level gen would fail (it often does) and re-gen a few times, but since the merchant inventory is global it was being stocked each time.
- Shooting gas pots with fire will no longer insta burn the gas.
- Quick move will no longer allow you to move away from charm.
- Vanish talent should provide 100% stealth (even when adjacent)
- Vanish will now break when attacking an enemy or using abilities.
- Blinking away from constriction will now cancel the constriction.
- Fixed bridge walls blocking projectiles.
- Flame Spinner Spiders will no longer take damage on their own webs.
- A charging enemy that is immobilized (ex bear trap) will now stop its charge.
- Fixed enemies summoning orbs of storm or battlespheres on top of fire shrooms and traps.
Thats it for this update! Please let me know of any bugs or issues, as mentioned at the top, I'll be spending the next week cleaning up any mess I've accidentally made.
The plan for the next few updates is to finish up each chunk of the dungeon with 1.36 handling core/ice/sewers, 1.37 handles crypt/arcane/forge and 1.38 handling Yendor. That should pretty much finish up all the content I'm planning to add then I'll be turning my attention to finishing up character development, classes races etc. After that, its mostly just final debugging, polishing, fine tuning and balancing.
Thanks as always for all your feedback and support!
Update 1.35.1 - July-06-2020
- Fixed crash with Icicle Strike.
- Fixed lockup when auto exploring w/ Ogre near traps.
- Fixed Chakrams not working unless you had a range weapon equipped.
- Seperated staves and ranged weapons in the acquirement menu now that they function differently.
- Strafe Attack Rank-2 now allows you to strafe attack while sprint moving
- Renamed movement points to Sprint Points so the abbreviation doesn't conflict w/ Mana Points.
Update 1.35.2 - July-07-2020
- Fixed Noxious Armor giving negative resistance (yes that was a typo lol)
- Fixed Icicle Strike not hitting the first tiles
- Fixed Icicle Strike targeting being blocked by low cover (despite the projectiles passing over it)
- Fixed Icicle Strike shooting through walls
- Fixed a bunch of glyph room vaults in The Sewers and The Crypt having their walls tunneled through. There is a more subtle version of this bug that is still breaking walls and resulting in odd missing walls that still needs to be fixed.
- Bosses w/ Blink Ally ability will no longer blink Orbs of Fire and similar targets.
- Chakram projectile was invisible (just a visual error)
- Merchants and other friendly NPCs will no longer spawn on bridges (added a check for adjacent pits)
- Dominated Evil Eyes (or other enemies w/ confusion) will no longer cast confusion on you.
- Tab auto attack will no longer target Battle Spheres and other damage immune targets
Update 1.35.3 - July-08-2020
- Fixed crash opening chests in sewers 4/4.
- Fixed the description of the Range Mastery talent to not include staves.
- Fixed the description of the Strength attribute to indicate +4HP
- Fixed a crash when charging enemies on bear traps that would result in the player and the enemy overlapping and crashing the game.
- Amnesia will now remove the ability associated with the talent from your ability bar.
- Bear Trap talent now has correct icon.
- Fixed the 'hit box' on stat lines in the character menu when mousing over and highlighting (it was off a bit).
- Fixed a bunch of glyph room vaults that had their walls broken by tunnels
- Minotaurs will no longer try to charge you through low walls (bridges).
Update 1.35.4 - July-11-2020
- Fixed Orbs of Fire becoming inactive after using a teleport scroll.
- Fixed enemy berserk crit attacks breaking through weapon shield.
- Fixed: If Shield Wall (or any other status effect) is used AFTER getting constricted, it was wearing off when constriction wore off.
- Fixed: Ogres (or anyone slowed) were not able to use Sprint Move if the destination tile was diagonal to them. The safety check to prevent them from normally diagonally moving was preventing the Sprint Move.
- Mousing over fountains, chests, or enemies in unexplored tiles will no longer display the green select box, allowing you to scout unexplored space with your mouse.
- Fixed a level-gen crash in The Core.
- Fixed: web was not always landing and was dealing 1 point of damage. I had accidentally overwritten the code with the code for the Drachid Web Bow.
Update 1.35.5 - July-13-2020
- Fixed a level-gen crash in The Dark Temple caused by open edge tiles on the map. Console log was: "Cannot read property 'isStandardDropWall' of null".
- Fixed another level-gen crash in The Vault of Yendor where the same level-generator could be used 3 times in a row (very rare) and run out of vaults on Yendor:3 resulting in a hard crash.
- Fixed: when Shield of Ice was used at low HP (ex. 1HP) the player would take at most 1 damage to the Shield of Ice HP. There was a cap to prevent negative HP that was not taking into account the HP pool of Shield of Ice. Player will now take full damage to Shield of Ice HP pool.
- Slow enemies will no longer move diagonally when they are unaware of your presence.
- Fixed: Sleep bombing and then dominating an enemy would result in an ally that never woke up. All allies will now automatically wake up when the Deep Sleep effect wears off.
- Wands will now scale their buy/sell price based on the number of remaining charges.
- Fixed/added descriptions for Hammer of Crushing and Drachnid Web Bow.
- Added Controls Menu button to the Main Menu.