v1.1.20
I(n)cinerate is in and working, with placeholder animation atm.
Next patch (tentative):
Bosses (after all, why are you exploring this dungeon?)
New skills:
Mage skill might be elemental pets at tier 3; almost positively one of them will be a fire elemental, or ice golem. Doubt all 3 will be pets, but we'll see how it goes.
Fighters - thoughts include some sort of 'phalanx mode' - reduced speed for greatly increased defense, or maybe some sort of unarmed skill. Fighters are giving me the hardest time in coming up with ideas for skills :P
Clerics ideas include a pet heal for people who want to create pet classes. Fear will likely go in into the 'evil' cleric skill line.'
Rogue ideas include an idea maybe to 'teleport' within darkened areas (a shameless 'shadow step' copy, I know - I may not go this way simply for this reason). Probably will be a skill for conjuring ammo for ranger type characters.
Just some random thoughts; if you have any ideas for skills you might think would be a cool addition, send them to me. You WILL be included in the credits in the game, of course. B.
v1.1.18
Didn't have as much time to program as I wanted, but I did get a few things done.
Preliminary skill tree is in place; it's basic but functional. Now, you gain a single skill point at each level that you can spend in any category you want. Not all skills are in place yet, but ultimately, each category will have three tiers of spells. 'z' opens your skill tree.
In future patches, I may change the way skill points are awarded, or how the skill tree is laid out, but for now, the functionality is in place.
Quick buttons for drinking mana and health potions - '[' drinks a health potion and ']' drinks a mana potion. Currently, you will drink your smallest potion first.
One other note - the new mage skill shows up in the skill tree, but I didn't get the graphic finished, so it is currently non-functional even if you put a point in it. This will be finished tomorrow, but I wanted to get the skill system in place tonight.
Thanks for your time!
B
v1.1.15 - ADDENDUM
Just a note - I had to redefine some of the skill buttons, as I am running out of obvious key strokes for skills. I want to try and pick a key that is at least somewhat obvious for a skill, such as F for Fireball, but I am having to stretch a bit, as I ran out of the more common letters long ago. Everything SHOULD be current in the help file. I'll summarize some of the changes below:
(q) - (q)uickness - burst of speed
(a) - ice (a)rmor - mage's defensive shield (used to be (e))
(d) - (d)ivine armor - priest defensive shield (unchanged)
(w) - summon (w)olf - used to be summon (a)lly, changed for new system
(k) - summon s(k)eleton - used to be summon (a)lly
v1.1.15
With first version of the skill trees almost finished (and may go up in a patch tonight or this weekend at the latest), I am going to go ahead and put up a couple of the accomodating changes:
Players now gain 2 attribute points to spend on level up, with a cap of 20 on their attributes.
Rogue speed is no longer a constant, permanent +1 to speed as in the past. Now rogues can activate (q)uickness at a cost of 10 mana to give themselves a larger boost to speed, but with a fairly short duration.
HP and Mana totals tweaked yet again.
Monsters rebalanced.
Minor item balancing (hp and mana potions less expensive, weigh less, for example)
Note on the upcoming skill system:
The skill system I have settled on (at least for now) essentially works like this. You choose your class, and get a couple of skills determined by that class. From then on, you can buy ANY skill you want whenever you obtain skill points to buy them, the drawback being that each skill is affected by a particular stat (meaning while a fighter can buy a fireball skill, his fireball damage will likely be lower than a mages, due to int governing the fireball spell damage; likewise, a mage could buy cleave, but his cleave will do less damage due to low strength, and wading into battle with robes on may be an iffy idea.) Certain skills will require you to have purchased prerequisite skills first - nothing revolutionary here.
This system is fairly simple, and hopefully will be fun, allowing you to create the character type you want. Keep in mind that your initial class choice has other effects that are permanent - mages will gain more mana points from increases in intelligence, than willpower, for example, even if the mage has a heal spell.
The current patch is the last before the skill system goes in, and therefore is the last in which you will start with all the skills.
Finally, this is the first iteration of the system. I may, in the future, go back and rework the whole thing. Also, I am toying with the idea of making spells obtainable from books, rather than skills, and adding weapon specific skills, but I am still VERY undecided. Theres plenty of extremely complex roguelikes out there that already do this better than I could, so I am aiming for a little bit different experience.
Enjoy, and thanks for your valuable time!
B.
v1.1.12
Town portals can be found at certain levels, so you no longer have to traverse the same early levels over and over.
A few other new dungeon features to discover.
New camera mode. Use ( " quote) to toggle camera modes between Track (player always centered), and Loose (camera recenters on player when moving to the edge of the map, otherwise static view).
Use ( ' apostrophe) to manually recenter the view on the player when in Loose mode.
A couple of new monsters - Gorgon and Clockwork Automata.
Few new items.
New map type.
More to come.
B.
v1.1.10
I said I wasn't going to update again until the big patch, but this really needs to go up.
A MAJOR improvement to performance when using pets (summoned undead, pet wolf) has been included in this patch. Originally I was limiting the number of pets to 3 due to the inexplicable slow down which occurred when a pet was visible. Now, due to a fairly simple recoding of the display routine, I have improved the performance of the pet routine literally 1000s of times. You should be able to have as many pets as you want out now with little noticable slow-down.
Incidentally, there are some features in this patch which weren't supposed to go out yet, but were already in place before I figured out the pet issue, so you may see a few new dungeon features :)
B
v1.1.09 Small update today; I am still working on the next big patch with skill trees, bosses, and some other new stuff. In the meantime, I needed to make a few refinements that I might as well put out there.
Recoded Line-of-sight, originally this was a hardcoded range, now it can be altered by strength of light source, or spells.
Firearms are in - the game is headed mildly towards an early Renaissance era, where firearms and other technology is in it's infancy. Expect to see magic and low-tech combined. I will and keep this fairly restrained, and hopefully a little different from the other Roguelikes out there. There are so many pure fantasy, and I really need to offer something different. I'm certainly not going to be able to approach the complexity of, say, Incursion, but at the same time, I want the gameplay to be fun and accessible without being simplistic.
More significant balance changes - reworked how poison/stuns/confusion/etc worked, as it was just too lethal.
Thanks to those who are trying things out. I promise that a nice big update is in the works. B
v1.1.05
Due to the lack of a fighter update, I went ahead and added a small bonus for fighters rather than waiting for the next big update.
Fighters can now charge up a stunning (b)low attack to temporarily incapacitate their enemies.
v1.1.1
Clerics
2 levels of heal: h - lesser heal, shift+h - greater heal/cure
(d)ivine armor spell - reduces incoming damage
summon undead (a)llies - up to 3 at a time in the current implementation
Mages
(e)nergy shield - incoming damage subtracted from mana rather than hp
mages can tele(p)ort
Rogues
rogues can summon a wolf (a)lly
New monsters
New items, including scrolls
Changes to inventory, town, AI, visibility, etc.
Please note that a huge amount of code was added to the game, and balance has not really been addressed very much to deal with the new features. Balance is an ongoing process and will be MUCH better in the next release. For now, try out and enjoy the new features. In future patches, you won't start with every spell/ability like the current version!
Next patch:
Fighter love
Boss creatures
Skill trees
v1.0.98
Added support for numpad movement regardless of caps lock state.
Added resistances, damage and armor bonuses, to armor and weapons.
Corrected a 'bug' where the game would get stuck in a loop if players tried to descend to a level where there were not appropriate monsters designed yet. Now, the lower you go in the dungeon, the more dangerous enemies you will face, though lower level creatures can still appear. When more creatures are added into the game, this will be returned to it's original state, where monster are completely appropriate for their level (no level 1 rats on level 15 of the dungoen).
Added a few new creature types (drakes).