I found a small problem with throwing items, it seems if you throw an item right onto a barred gate, the gate will be unable to be opened until the item is picked up.
A small thing but I thought you should know.
Secondly, the spot where the note drops in front of the portal seemed to drop a ton of notes, I kept up picking multiple copies of Count Jessica's note.
Thanks for these as well!
That note was spawning accidentally each time the area was reloaded until player reads it instead of only once. It also spawned the portal multiple times and each time it shined brighter because of multiple stacked lights :).
I can't seem to find any issues with items in the same tile as gates, apart from the game prioritizing picking up loot before interacting with the world, which is intended. Was there something else wrong?
PS. I have modifiable movement speed :). There's three settings: Slow, Normal, and Fast. Slow is the current one, Normal is the new default which is slightly faster, and Fast is even faster.
Thanks for the reply!
I don't think there's a major problem with the gates being un-interactable if an item is on the same tile, there's no layout where you shouldn't be able to drop or throw an item to clear up space to pick up an item on top of a door so you can open it, but I just wanted to let you know about that interaction.
I was wondering if secret rooms would come into play if not were already in here (I do know about the one secret area behind the portrait past that boss with the curved sword, but I mean more common secret rooms steadily mixed into dungeons.).
I had a devious thought to share about being able to use empty potion bottles on puddles of blood from more eldritch monsters to make potentially useful/dangerous potions to use or throw, maybe having the player use a bottle on 3 or so puddles in order to fill up a bottle, and bring it back to the alchemist to whip up something, with possibly random results, a way to better use empty bottles and bring in some risk and reward in terms of the potion's effect.
The current map generation doesn't support secret rooms, it would be quite painful to add those. It's a nice idea though and I've been thinking about it as well, but due to the current room placement algorithm it wouldn't work without a completely new map generation. The map generation should be anyway revamped because it sometimes generates too long corridors.
It's funny that you mention the blood collecting since that's what I've been thinking about as well, and an alchemy system too. The way I would do it, if I implement alchemy, would be mixing blood and another ingredient and it would give a random negative effect and a known positive effect. There's already the alchemy table prop nicely waiting.
For the secret room subject, one way you can bring in secret rooms without altering the current map generation too much is to have it generate walls with subtle hints opening into clickable stairwells, having the secret rooms be completely separate maps to load then be generated along with the dungeon level.
Could also make them time based or have some other hazard in them to keep the dire eldritch danger intact, say some creeping horror slowly consumes the hidden rooms forcing the player to kill what enemies they can and retrieve what they may before getting out for the room to be sealed up afterwards.
Sorry if I'm being a bit bold suggesting all this.
As for the alchemy, sounds perfect! I'm guessing the beer and wine are the ingredient you were considering to add to the mix, or to be part of it.
Nothing wrong with suggestions. Sometimes I get good ideas from those when I'm stuck by giving suggestions a spin and end up with something completely different I wouldn't have thought otherwise.
Secret rooms being separate maps would work perfectly. I'm probably adding some sort of vault system as well at some point so that could work for it too. I've been also thinking about those hidden areas for extending the dungeon for optional branches.
On that note, I'm probably at some point extending the main game as well. I already know how the plot would continue, but I'm still struggling if it will thematically fit the game.
Alchemy would be basically blood + another ingredient like leaves or something similar to that. But mixing beer and wine isn't a bad idea as well. I'd probably add another alcohol type, spirits, so there'd be some variety.