First Fiendish Furniture Foray



Greetings and well met, friends

Today is a good day, for it is also patch day!
While it isn't a big patch, it's got some nice fixes to make up for it. The majority of the work went on finishing repairing issues caused by the previous big patch, while also working on the atmosphere a tad. You can expect new 3D visuals for certain objects, and a lot more props littering the field... at least for the first floor and the Halls of Pain!


Another notable change is the music! There is a new track composed by our master musician De1th. You'll hear it as soon as you beat the Lower Dungeons.

There were also, as always, many balance changes. Most players feel as if the Wand and Bow dominate the game, while melee weapons (especially two-handed ones) fall heavily behind. I slightly nerfed ranged weaponry and buffed melee, and I will experiment in this manner a few more times. If it doesn't pan out, then I have several ideas for bigger re-vamps. We'll see how it goes!

There are also some hidden changes and additions, which I believe are best when revealed organically through a playthrough. Of course, if you've played the last version - feel free to skip this one, for I don't believe there is enough new gameplay differences to warrant another go. 

Another thing: For those of you who prefer using Linux, I attempted to create a Linux build of the game. Since I don't have a Linux machine, the build is flimsy at best, with some things missing, but it functions. It too will improve with time, but it is a good a time as any to set it out into the world for those who wish to play but don't have a Windows OS.

We are slowly approaching a state where I think the early parts of the game is finalizing. Of course, we're still missing a tutorial/introduction, but I think those are best saved for last.

Until next time!


Full log:

-New 3D Visuals, Music, Props
-3 New Item modifiers
-New Level 1 Room
-Fixed bugs with returning to previous levels sometimes crashing
-Saves should work everywhere without any issues
-Items play a dropping animation/sound when they spawn
-Added secret World Object
-Added ability to open/close doors
-Reintroduced shadows
-Fixed some AI behavior
-Balance changes with melee weaponry
-Buffed a buff enemy and his posse
-More tooltips and various tooltip improvements
-Various smaller bugfixes

1/3/2023 Edit:
Fixed an issue with regards to levels breaking if you go back and forth between floors a lot. It was another case of "works on my machine but breaks anywhere else".
There also have been reports of players getting stuck on doors, but I haven't been able to replicate this. Should this happen to you, please let me know!

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Comments

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(+1)

Played through the first few levels until I got to the pup-up and then played through a part of the burrow levels.

I can safely say that the graphics are overall getting pretty good. I like the exterior in the later levels. Makes the location actualy feel like a tower. Tiles, shadows, everything looks good. Only "subpar" thing I can think of are some enemy/player animations and effects (Skulls make way too big explosions when they die), but nothing else struck me as bad.

Suggestion: Try to add more variety to the flooring. Different tiles for different rooms or patches of dirt where some tiles might be missing. Puddles and patches of gravel/rubble might be also nice.

New furniture is a good addition. Dungeons now don't feel as empty. Only minor problem I encountered was there being multiple kinds of barrels, some which can be broken while some can't be. I quickly adjusted to it, since the breakable barrels actualy look different, but I think it is something worth looking into. 

I noticed items having a sound effect when they drop. Good addition. Adding some kind of glint effect for items that just dropped might be good too.

Only thing that I find lacking right now is the sound. 

Footsteps are probably the biggest offender. They are very repetetive with no variation. They stopped being a problem once I got to the upper levels, where the new music kicked in (sounds good by the way), because it was louder than (and better) than the music at the lower levels, so I paid more attention to the music than the sound footsteps. 

One suggestion is to simply add more footstep sound effects, maybe pitch shift them randomly every time they are played to make them seem more random.

Other suggestion ties to my previous one. If you decide to add more floor types, you could also add more types of footstep sound effects. Gravel, rubble, wood, puddles and so on. 

Same goes for attack sounds and moster sounds. There isn't enough variety right now and it is much more noticeable (to me atleaast) right now than it was before, since the game looks much better but doesn't sound that well yet.

Also, the music is good, but it isn't that long, while the levels it plays on are so it loops quite often. I would suggest playing multiple music tracks randomly in one level instead of looping only one track.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else I disliked about the sound or graphics. It is obviously improving and I bet even the things I suggested are alredy on your to-do list.

Now for the gameplay.

I actualy got through the game with using melee almost exclusively. Ranged weapons are still better, since I kited a group of trolls and lost zero health, while fighting them would cost me multiple potions, but atleast I was able to get far instead of dying on the first level like last time.

Speaking of trolls, I would suggest slowing down the attack animation on some enemy types. The cultists with large hammers were actualy interesting to fight, because I could actualy "dodge" their attacks. They were attacking much slower than other enemies. With everyone else, I just pretty much walked to them and held the LMB. Ranged enemies were the exception, where I just circled them, waited for most of them to fire, got close, hit one of them few times and retreat again. Couldn't use the shield arts because I had two handed weapon at that time.

Sadly, melee is pretty boring. My magic playthrough last time was quite fun since I had quite a few abilities that I switched  between quite often.

Ranged combat is pretty simple, but you have to actively dodge and avoid enemies.

Melee is, most of the time, just staying near an enemy, holding LMB and drinking a potion if necesary. 

I know you are working on this. I just wanted to say that that there is still a lot of work to do with the combat, but you are heading the right way I believe.

Also, I think you should really add secondary gear slot for faster weapon switching as soon as possible. I believe it could make players switch between weapon types more often and thus making combat more interesting. Switching weapons through the inventry while fighting is anoying so I mostly just don't bother.

Bugs:

Minimap is drawn over text boxes.

Holding and draging item in the inventory sometimes picks the item and drops it back instantly. Couldn't replicate it with 100% accuracy, but It was hapening mostly when I was moving the mouse over an item, then pressing the LMB when my mouse was still moving. Minor anoyance.

And that's pretty much it.

Overall, this is an improvement on all fronts from previous versions. Everything is better and nothing got worse. There is still a lot of work to be done but you are getting there.

Questions:

Unique items are just random drops, or are there some secrets that guarantee unique item?

next question. Found these orbs in one room. Are they just decoration, or is there purpose to them? They look very different from other furniture I saw.


(+1)

Thanks for the review as always!

I'm eagerly awaiting your war update so I can give Sinathir another go and live out my dreams of being a Kobold war commander
To answer your feedback:


I agree with the footsteps, they're very boring and I'm looking into having the sound be modified based on your armor and the type of floor you're walking on (since a fancy hall wouldn't be made of the same tiles/ floor type as a moldy dungeon). Sounds in general should start getting addressed in the next major update, since this one was mostly focusing on visuals first.

I agree that melee is still boring. Other games, like Diablo 2, had a lot of melee skills for the combat classes (like the iconic barbarian whirlwind, jump, or fast attack skills). Since there's only 2 skills right now, and neither of which are particularly exciting, this leads to combat really being a LeftMouseButton simulator. I'm hoping that similarly to balancing, this issue would resolve itself with the addition of more skills over time. If the issue persists despite having 5-10 combat skills, then it would be time to look into implementing major changes.

Secondary Weapons (a back scabbard of sorts) will be coming soon as well.

To answer your questions:

Some Uniques are guaranteed, like the Wounded Paladin's shield in the Halls of Pain side-room that drops after killing the named guard. Others are fully random drops that have a very low rate to drop. They will most likely only drop if you're lucky, or from the special gold chests, but there's only 2 of those currently in the game.

The orbs are just decoration. They show up from time to time, and I'm still experimenting with how "unimportant" visuals should look and behave. The goal is to have junk to make the rooms feel more alive, but at the same time they shouldn't be distracting. Same with the barrels, I'll probably darken their textures so they fade more into the background instead of popping out visually

Thanks again for the excellent feedback!

I won't make it for this demo day. I wanted to release a smaller patch, but that will take slightly longer too. I will still hang around and play other games though.

I was interested in the orbs since I read the introduction and the text I showed in the picture, which made me believe these were important in some way. 

Another suggestion, try to give rooms a "purpose" furniture wise. I think this is alredy in the game, since I saw rooms full of torture equipment or rooms full of bookcases, but I think turning this up a notch would be a good thing. Things like bedrooms, dining rooms, and more "normal" rooms in general would make the levels feel more believeable and alive.

Another thing that might be nice to loot into would be destructible furniture. When I was playing, I was often hiding behind barrels when I was being shot at. They broke after one projectile but it was really interesting and fun to hide behind them while fighting melee enemies while ranged ones were shooting at me and dashing behind another barrel when the one covering me broke after getting hit with an arrow. Really sounds like a thing to experiment with a little and maybe turn it into a proper mechanic.

(+1)

The destructible furniture.. that's actually a really, really good idea 
I'm actually embarrassed I didn't think of it myself
I will try and get it done for the next patch

As for Demo Day, I think the best practice is to submit every 2 DDs, so that there is enough content for the game to feel fresh. That's how I do it, anyway

Thanks again for the suggestion.