Does this actually happen? I honestly can't remember :P
Justin Wang
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A member registered Jan 27, 2016 · View creator page →
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Agree on all points. When I initially implemented it I was doing all my testing in The-Upper-Dungeon where it works a bit better due to the players more limited mobility options. It likely needs an overhaul or just replacement in the later dungeon levels. I like the idea of 'strafe attacking' enemies to punish the player for excessive kiting in the later dungeon levels!
Thank you very much! Practice mode will definitely be a thing and should be easy to implement. The hoard mode would take more time so would be time permitting some time later in development (there are a number of alternate modes I'd be interested in implementing). I do want to do a special Arena level in the Orc Fortress that has some kind of wave mechanic though.
I'm definitely planning on implementing a full and optimized keyboard layout sometime during Early Access. I also prefer to play all other roguelikes with pure keyboard controls. My plan is just to force myself to play with only the keyboard for a month or so and just keep working on it until it feels fluid and natural.
Controls in general I think need a lot of work to add all sorts of little options to speed up and optimize play in general and it never hurts to have more options that the player can toggle or configure or else just ignore.
I think the character screen, inventory and talents will likely be the biggest challenge just to get something that works nicely, looks good, and doesn't detract from players that are just using the mouse. Probably the letter prefixes like your suggesting but with the option to disable them for people using mouse that don't want their char screen cluttered up with letters.
I think rather than overhauling the entire system it might work nicely to have many items that currently grant additional speed points to instead grant +1 (or -1 technically) to SP regen speed. Imagine in the extreme case that there are no, or very few items that grant raw SP and so only the most absurdly DEX specialized character could ever get more than 5-6.
I'm also somewhat uncomfortable about speed points when they are more than around 5-6 for the same points your making i.e. stopping time just feels somewhat odd once its more than 1-2T and also the crazy long time to regen them (I often forget to rest with SP heavy builds).
Great ideas that will be worth exploring! I'd love to see the Fire Mages talents synergizing like this. Fire Orb is also pretty lame in its current incarnation so could definitely benefit from some reworking.
Another similar path I'm eager to explore is to have the things like vines, webs, etc. create burning clouds instead of instantly spreading. This would help differentiate from the shock spread mechanic, allow the player to create additional flame sources and just look really really cool as the fire mage sets whole swaths of the level on fire.
Oh yes! That will all be turned back on in their current broken state (I'll fix the talents that were not working as well). I'm pretty sure it was just a 1-2 line toggle that has them disabled in the web release.
I'm not planning to tackle races right off the bat (want to get some momentum going on adding new content finally), but I will be doing a first pass on races some time in the nearish future.
*edit* err I might have misread your comment, I'll be turning them back on for the Early Access version. I don't want to include stuff in the web release that is obviously broken. For Early Access I'm more comfortable including them in that state since its well... Early Access.
From Dan R on Discord:
*edited a bit to add paragraph breaks*
I had some thoughts re: “Game Design: Combat”: Design tension
Agree completely, the loop of fast-fast-fast-pause-think-slow-done-fast-fast-fast is really good and a strength of this game.
Tactical complexity and priority targets: “I am trying to intentionally introduce enemies that when encountered in a group become the Priority-Target and must be eliminated as soon as possible. By introducing these Priority-Targets we get a lot more varried tactics in the combat since, based on the enemy group composition, layout on the Game-Board, and abilities available to the player it can take quite a bit of work to actually kill the target.”
Absolutely, except that the current limit on talent points hurts that, primarily because talent points are so precious that everything ends up reverting to the same standard build with a few tiny changes. As an example, say I’ve got a warrior and I’m attacking a group with some melee, some ranged, and a healer in the back. I want to get to that healer first because its buffs are really bad. I can use blinks if I have them, but I may not. I can try to kite around corners until I can loop behind, but “not using abilities” is kind of boring, particularly if that’s my only option. If I had any of charge, dash attack, jump (over intervening obstacles), blood portal, flame portal, shadow step, sprint, etc., etc. that would be great.
But in the upper levels of the dungeon, even if I find them in tomes or books, I’m probably not putting points to those, because I need them for power strike, fortitude, and shields up (for example). Like if I’ve only got 6 talent points to use by the time I reach the librarian, I’m probably shooting for 2 points in each of those, rather than spreading them out amongst other things.
Similarly for mages - mana is so scarce that I’m not only drinking all of my potions right away for the permanent gain, I also pretty much have to put two points in mental clarity as soon as I can. I’m not likely to put any points to one of those big mobility talents until I’m halfway through the game, so the drive for tactical complexity in the upper dungeon is just lost.
Like as an ice mage, I’m almost always going to put my first point in freezing cloud, my next two in mental clarity, then my fourth in either shield of ice or freeze. Who has time for, say, dash attack or sprint? Maybe I consider them for talent point #10 or 12, but by that point, I’m deep in the side dungeons. So I really like the concept of tactical complexity, but I think it works better if we get more talent points, with a large variety of talents such that each run, we’re picking different options. Maybe one time, I get blood portal from a tome with a point in it. Maybe the next I get sprint.
Incidentally, this is why removing the free “+1 talent point” from tomes is a great idea - it encourages trying something new. And also incidentally, the talent point stinginess really discourages new players from trying new talents. If I’m a new player and I don’t know whether blood lust is really useful, I’m probably not going to take it from a tome even to “try it out” even if the other talents aren’t that good, because I’m not going to waste any of my few talent points in it. (edited)
Heck, I just had a run where a tome had four talents that I thought were “meh” compared to my other options, so I just picked one randomly with no intention of ever putting a point in it. That feels bad, man. Like you win the proverbial lottery, and then the lottery person says “oh, but before you get your prize, you have to pay all of the taxes up front. If you can’t, no prize for you.”
tl;dr: tactical complexity is great if there are many ways to approach a situation. Having few talent points drastically reduces the number of ways to approach the situation. Better would be more talent points, and more “wild” talents that don’t appear in the stock character sets. Similarly, re: more frequent but weaker abilities: “Since each ability is weaker and is unlikely to finish a fight all by itself, its much more likely that the player will use a wider variety of abilities during a fight. This increases the tactical complexity of the combat as the player is using a much wider range of abilities rather than just 1-shotting things.” Absolutely, but we need more talent points for that. I’ve had several runs where my ability bar ends with like three-four talents (the rest of the points being in passives).
Also, more talent points addresses one of your concerns under hard counters: “Reflection, elemental resistance, protection or strict immunities all fall into this catagory… the trouble arrises from the relative short length of the game and the linearity of the dungeon. There simply isn't enough opportunity for the player to build a character to overcome hard counters…” More talent points means that, say, a fire mage can also pick up life spike or confusion, which will help if the first side dungeon is the core, or a ranger can pick up an AOE spell or power strike to fight reflective golems.
Absolutely agree and its been on my list since RFIII. Will definitely be implementing this one in EA.
For a long time I've held off simply due to the thinking that "the need for a chat log implies the game isn't giving enough information on screen". But pretty much everything your saying is true in terms of acting like a learning and analysis tool to help gain a deeper understanding of the game.
I think having it hidden by default, and having the option to have it minimized and then expand when you mouse over (as well as an option to keep it up all the time) is a great solution. It sort of puts it in its proper place as: here's a useful thing you can totally look at when somethings not clear, but its not a thing you really need to pay attention to normally.
Waaah? I actually can't remember how the Goblet shield is implemented. I know its really really weird. I'll need to look more closely into this.
From my vague recollection I swear the whole table is an object and the shield is a multi-tile invisible NPC sitting on top of it. I can't remember if the goblet as an item is actually on the table before you break the shield. If what Randoms saying is actually true across a wide range of objects then it might have destroyed the goblet section of the table while it was still an 'object' and before it had a chance to create the goblet 'item'.
I wonder if this has been a thing for a long time and no ones ever cast burst of flame directly on top of it since it was difficult to get flame clouds onto it.
I also REALLY like it and have been wanting some kind of weapon sets or quick swapping for awhile now but never knew how to balance it. How does quick swapping not just mean the player essentially has EVERY weapon equipped as long as he's willing to to manage the swapping?
Tying it to SP is a great way to not only give this a decent restriction but it helps continue to expand SP into a proper 'game system' which seems to be a sort of running theme lately.
This is definitely going to have to be an EA thing since it will need quite a bit of interface stuff but I think you've solved a problem I've had for awhile here so big thanks!
Multiplayer of any sort would unfortunately require a totally different game i.e. not turn based. Single 1v1 duels might not be quite as arduous but would take so much technical resources as to just not be worth it. Anything multiplayer is a massive technical headache not to mention a major design nightmare so its not something that can just be added as an afterthought.
That being said, a future project with a multiplayer focus and with shortish proc-gen runs with some kind of slow persistent character development is definitely something I've being thinking about for years.
I think once we get into Early Access there will need to be at least a solid month block devoted purely to the Yendor fight itself. Possibly even 2 blocks with one earlier in development and one closer to the end. I definitely want to pretty much completely rework the existing encounters and add a lot more. Like many things, for Web-Release there just isn't any time but this is certainly something that will be getting lots of attention later on.
We must think alike :P
https://www.kongregate.com/games/Justin_wang123/star-co
https://www.kongregate.com/games/Justin_wang123/space-frontier
Damn that was like 8 years ago lol.
Hi there, thanks for the feedback! Glad your enjoying the game so far. This project is still in its very early stages as I'm expecting at least another 3 years of development so my answers here (and really all my answers) are likely to change and evolve as the game develops.
Last time I checked the 'constricted' or 'grabbed' status effect SHOULD be removed as soon as you knock the enemy back or he's knocked out of position from any other source. So if this is not true then yes that's definitely a bug as knockback is intended to be the main counter to these effects (besides avoiding it in the first place.
Right now during Alpha and for the upcoming Web Release, races are not being worked on at all and will in fact be disabled for the web release. Balancing this game has proved to be pretty tricky and with all the changes to combat, character development and map generation I'm trying to focus on Humans only. The plan is to readdress races once the game reaches Early Access on Steam and the base Human game is reasonably balanced, refined and tuned.
A skill, items or racial abilities that reduces food consumption is definitely something that is possible in the future. I am hoping though to get the balance to a place where most players would likely find this unnecessary and would opt for something else to spend points on or equip in a slot. The Hunger mechanic is intended to just be a bit of a 'push' to keep the player moving and fighting efficiently. Its not supposed to feel like a ticking doom clock that's constantly pressing down on you.
I think I'd be quite unlikely to do anything to remove the movement penalty from Ogres as I feel like this is pretty fundamental to making them play distinctly. In my mind, the races are the place that I'd like to introduce these kinds of drastic changes to the base game play and to give the option to remove this sort of defeats the purpose. I'd rather buff up the Ogre in other ways while maintaining the penalty in order to make the race play more distinctly.
Like I said, this is all subject to change. Please feel free to offer up any other suggestions, critiques or just loose thoughts that pop into your head. This project is frankly far to complex at this point for me to keep entirely in my head and hearing what other people are thinking is immensely valuable to me.
I'm gonna have to look into this more closely prior to Web-Release (so in the next month or so). I've got a couple of different machines (including a mac) that I can test on with different browsers. One thing it might be that others noticed was you have to have your local storage enabled or else it either won't run or pretty much stops working immediately.
Update 12.1:
- Fixed boss vaults spawning where they were not supposed to.
- Fixed the crashes in Orc-Fortress (Mess-Hall-2)
- Fixed a crash in various zones where switches were unable to be placed.
- Fixed a crash (an infinite loop in fact) in Dark-Temple, Iron-Forge and possibly other zones as well that use the Tunnel-Generator.
- Removed the uncomplete/empty Yendor level.
Heh trust me, I'm impatient as well with it sometimes. Generally with game dev, it tends to be a bit of a waste of time to try to keep everything 100% balanced while developing simply because everything you do tends to swing it wildly one way or the other. The ultimate goal is for the base game to either be the same difficulty as RFIII or even a bit easier since I'm planning a whole ranked system of increasing difficulties for those who want it.