Update 10: Ender: The Endening
Finally here. The biggest news: I did a test run of the game, from beginning to end (without devmode!) and it's winnable. It's WINNABLE. You can beat the game from beginning to end. Crafting also seems to work, so far. Haven't had time to test it, but looks promising:
Ok, there are massive narrative gaps and balance issues, but the foundation is set. I've never gotten this far before in making a game, ever, so it's a big achievement for me and couldn't be more pleased with myself. I will probably take a break for a few weeks after this, but definitely come back and flesh out the content. There's tons more I can add.
Final updates:
- Crafting implemented!
- New basket upgrade added, to increase wheat and wood capacity
- Stone and Iron resource discovery progession padded out a bit
- Dungeon progression is smoothed out a bit, with some extra steps
- Defending gets less effective if you repeat it every turn
- Fixed a few bugs, e.g. skill progression always saying "gathering skill"
Known Unfinished Things
- Money balance isn't well-tested - progression on the game depends on getting the first round of upgrades. It shouldn't normally be possible to get into a dead end, but it may be. For example, playing around on the currency exchange and losing money, might get you into a dead end where you cant afford the necessary upgrades to progress the story.
- You can have too many people in a party - you are only supposed to be able to have 4 people in the active party. Trying to make more than 3 adventurers (plus you) in the active party might break the game.
- Could not get a final boss fight - you just get a msg when completing the final dungeon. Anticlimatic, I know. But to make a special event like a boss fight, doesn't work with the standard explore and combat functions, so entirely new code would be needed.
Crafting
It was a bit of a rush, but crafting works! There's a bug for complex items - when displaying materials, it shows "object", but rest assured the creation process does work (and if you dont have enough materials, it'll then tell you more clearly what you need and how much. Probably won't get time to implement more than that by tomorrow.
Oh, and you start the game with a range of gear - enough to beat the game directly, anyhow. Have fun!
Defend tweak
It was too easy before to endlessly defend in the first dungeon, losing 1HP a turn until you die, then heal and repeat, grinding your "Defense" skill quickly. I found myself doing it even though I made the game! Patient players can still grind, but it shouldn't be that powerful.
So, defend now gives decreasing returns, each time you use it consecutively, its reduced by 0.1 (10%), down to a lowest of 0.1 per turn. Just taking a 1 turn break will "reset" it.
Progression Smoothing
Stone and iron-ore discovery has been shifted to one step later. Instead of having stone automatically upon discovering the cave, now you have to explore the cave first to find stone. Likewise, once it becomes a mine, you then have to explore the mine to find iron ore.
After exploring the mine, instead of going straight to a classic dungeon, a tab called "Deeper" opens up, exploring deeper into the mine. You can encounter slimes here. Next, it changes to "Tunnels". Finally, once you finish exploring tunnels, the tab changes to "Dungeons" and proper dungeons open up.
Finally, the Party menu doesnt open up until you've reached these proper dungeons now.
This all pads it out a bit more nicely.
Exploring is still a bit overpowered. When exploring, there's a 3/4 chance for combat. But you still get some % of exploration added. It's lower than if there was no combat. However, its easily breakable. E.g., just enter combat at 1HP, die instantly, repeat. You lose all combats but each time gain a little %, up to 99%. Combat can't push exploration past 99% so you have to win at least one combat to beat a dungeon. It doesn't "break" the game, since you can repeat dungeons and farm for XP regardless.
Still, it's not the best. I'll probably have to rethink that system one day.
Most probably, I'll do something like I did with the defense tweak. Encounter rates are still high, and encounters still give some exploration %. But... each lost combat gives less exploration % - so entering combat, fleeing/dying and repeating will give less and less exploration %, down to 0%, so that you can't game the system. Winning a combat will reset the exploration % rate back to normal, and will also lower the encounter rate, so the chance of multiple combats in a row gets less and less. Dying or running from combat will increase the encounter rate, as well as lowering exploration gains. So basically, you will be far better off winning combats.
Next steps:
Possibly get a chance to fix and tweak small things before deadline
Write a postmortem in a day or two.
Take a break!