Tower of Kalemonvo
Update .19 and Steam Page!
Ahoy and well met to all friends and strangers alike.
Today is a good day, for it is patch day, and I am very happy to see you here again.
To start, an announcement! I have a Steam page for the game now, how exciting!
If this project is something that you enjoy, I encourage you to add it to your Wishlist. You can find the page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2351860/Tower_of_Kalemonvo/
I never thought I'd make it this far, but here we are. Thanks again to all my friends and to those that supported me on this journey. This is but the first step to getting a proper release, but I am nonetheless very grateful.
Now, onto the actual patch. It's larger than usual, with many major changes that impact the entire game. I will try and keep it organized. Here goes!
Core Game Changes:
-Changed the way movement is handled. Maximum move distance is now reduced to a fixed 40 Unit amount. This means you can't select a room that you see on screen but that is actually a long ways away, and move there. This change is implemented to prevent many issues where a valid movement request would get interpreted as a long-distance request. You could easily encounter this on the Upper Halls, where trying to move to a corner of a room would be interpreted as wanting to move to a different room miles away. This will bet tinkered with some more, but the general idea is in place and working as intended.
-Added a basic "High Difficulty Option" which reduces starting HP by 20, and reduces level up Stat points from 5 to 4. Will experiment further with this.
-Balance changes across the board to make the game harder. Will be explained more in other points
-Changed Demo length. The demo now ends at the end of the Halls of Pain instead of the Upper Halls
-UI visual changes across the board. Things look better now!
-New trailer! Should appear on the game page momentarily.
Bow/Ranged Changes:
-Removed starter bow
-Bows and all projectiles are now much more accurate in determining where the player is aiming
-Bows have different animations timings. It takes less time to fire a projectile, but there is now more "reload" time after the projectile is fired until the player can move again.
-Fixed issue where having a bow/wand on your front slot would impact animations for melee weapons on your back slot - a check wasn't refreshed correctly making the controller think the player was using a bow.
-Added animations to wand projectiles
-Bow attacks will now be more accurate in deterring when the player is issuing a cancel command instead of accidentally clicking over/next to an enemy
Spells
-New Spell Wheel Visuals! Changed hitboxes to the spell icons - mouse can no longer escape the circle!
-Dark Pact and Holy Light (aka: the cauldron-spells) are now properly tracked upon use in the spell page. The player also groans in pain upon losing max HP/Mana
-New visuals for some spells and effects, namely all fire-based spells.
Items:
-A couple of new items and new item visuals. The new items are found in the last levels
Mapgen:
-Maps take less time to compute, and are now much larger. It will still take less time to generate as before, but now Upper Halls, the Skeleton Pit and the Breeding grounds will be about twice as large as before.
-Several new rooms and roomtypes across the board
-Menacing Obelisks now appear in the Upper Halls and Skeleton pit (they also have new modifiers!)
Enemies:
-Buffs to almost all enemies! Many larger foes now have a buff to their attack cooldown on their first attacks. Meaning, they will attack much sooner on their first strike. There are a lot of HP buffs across the board, mainly to Cultists and the Bloodguard
-Improvements to animations. Goats and Spitters shouldn't slide anymore!
-More enemies spawn in the larger rooms, especially noticeable in the Upper Halls.
-Fixed issues with Goats, Cultists and Faceless enemy types losing their changed colors on death.
-Changed Frenzy aura visuals and made the effects slightly more powerful
-Added a Lightning aura modifier
Player:
-Fixed issues with dropping items on your back encountering issues if the given item had a +Stats modifier
-Fixed issues with recolors. Items on the back now also get their colors changed on different statuses
There are also a ton of bug fixes, namely regarding:
-Interactions with doors
-NPCs causing collision issues with dropped items (couldn't pick up items near NPCs)
-Enemies stopping / AI breaking on certain conditions
-Minimap sometimes incorrectly clearing.
And many more.
Stay tuned for more to come. This was mostly a bugfix update. Now that the slate is cleared, I'll resume content creation. There are 5 new enemies waiting to be revealed! As always, thank you all for reading and see you next time!
Comments
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I didn't play this version yet, though I will do so tomorrow before the new version of Wolcen gets release. I have a couple of questions and suggestions for now, although some of these will probably not be acurate since I didn't play this version yet.
Hard difficulty
Not really a fan of those changes since I don't think it will make the game harder in a good way. Feels like you are weaker instead of the enemies being stronger or better. Personaly I would take inspiration from higher difficulties in the original doom. Enemies are faster, projectiles are faster and they hit harder. You could also alter enemy behavior in minor ways, like making them shoot multiple projectiles at one, give ranged attacks to some melee only enemies and give them less health over the board. This would make actual skill in dodging and using skills and arts properly much more important than stats but again, I didn't really try it yet so I might be off.
Ranged
While I like the changes to the bow (as it is inherently better than melee even with all the nerfs in the past because not getting hit is better than getting hit), I don't really get the decision to remove it from the starting weapon pool. Usualy it is a good idea to show all the options to the player as soon as possible, which the previous versions did. I still remember the frustration in one of the previous versions where I was trying to find a wand and I found the first one the second or third floor.
Spells
All nice changes. Still not fan of the cauldron spells taking away your max hp. I don't think I ever used them because of that. It would be slightly less demoralising if the debuff got lowered a little on every floor (You lose maxhp every time you use it, but you regain small portion in every level).
Maps
Large maps are always nice. Nothing to complain about here.
Enemies
Can't really comment on that right now. Will have to play the game first, but I have a bad feeling because I want to try using melee again.
I will write another post after I get through the game again. Here are some questions.
How high is the price going to be for the steam version? Bear in mind that I bought grim dawn for 5$, wolcen for 9$ or path of exile for free. Don't really have any idea my self how high I would price it.
What do you plan to do with the inventory? Mainly the old equipment. Right now I only carry good weapons for next level up and I fill the inventory with potions otherwise. Some use for old equipment would be nice because right now there is not much reason to carry anything except what I wrote above, since there are technicaly only two weapon types, both of which you can switch between. Golden goblin is a great idea, but it takes way too much time to get to it. Maybe adding charms like in diablo 2 would be a good idea. Inventory right now is pretty much a potion bag in most instances
How long is one playthrough going to be? Just a curriosity. If one run is supposed to take about one and a half hour, then the cauldron spells or lack of use for old equipment is not that big of a deal. It might be a problem if getting to the end would take five or more, since using those spells early on would make later stages much harder and filling your inventory with nothing but potions because there is not much reason to carry different weapons would get boring quickly.
And lastly, do you have any plans for endgame / new game plus? Unlockable difficulty modes, chalenge runs, things like that?
feel free to skip this version - I think it's always better to save playthroughs for versions with very clear and notable differences. this one is mostly bugfixes and overall gameplay improvements, but not a lot of content. the next version will contain new levels and enemies, and i recommend waiting for that one
to address your feedback:
>Hard Difficulty
i get what you mean, but i believe the -stats is a good starting point. i personally don't like games with difficulties that either increase health or damage, since that will either cause easy deaths with hard hitting enemies, or frustrations with healthsponge enemies. i think hardmode should be designed in terms of strategizing, where "easy" options are closed. you now need to choose between more constitution or more damagem, etc. either way, it's hard to tell since the game is still entirely "early/mid" game. the extra difficulty wont become apparent until "mid/late" game. you also aren't the only one who thought about this, so i'll tinker with the changes and see where it goes. i like your idea of different AI behaviors, though. it reminds me of changes in Serious Sam, where high difficulty would unlock enemy behaviors, which i always thought was fun.
>Ranged
i agree with you. i'm in an experimental stage, where i'm messing around with ideas like this and seeing how it changes the game. the main point i'm addressing is one that still holds true: why be melee when you can be ranged? i'm still thinking that it'll play out in a " range good early game, bad lategame" vs "melee bad early, good late" fashion due to the level design and enemy behaviors, but i want to use this time to mess around and see if anything interesting happens.
currently, the idea would be to allow the player to choose their starting weapon. that'll come with the introduction, because i too get frustrated when i want to do a wand build but the chance isn't presented to me.
>Spells
cauldron spells are really meant to be a desperation move. since there's no town/resupply, i wanted to give the player a last chance to heal if they're out of potions. it's not meant to be used unless the player is about to die.
>Price
$10 normal price, but $8 on release (2week or so discount). i'm basing it on what i'd pay for a game such as this - singleplayer, indie, with potential for issues due to a single developer -> i wouldn't pay more than 10, so 10 it is.
>Inventory
i want to make a random-spawning location similar to Golden Goblin that takes items and outputs things as a reward. another plan is for the NPCs to do something with items, but neither is started yet. it's true that there really isn't a reason to carry anything around that you aren't currently using. it's planned to change. charms are of course a staple of the genre, but i'm saving those for later once i am satisfied with how the inventory behaves normally.
>Length
The current endgame (End of Burrows 1) is about 40% of game length. all the future monsters are modeled or currently being modeled, and there isn't a lot of recycling yet. i'm hoping there will be a few extra levels soon enough, but my goals are about 6 hours for a "normal" run for players who play ARPGs, 10-15 for beginners, and 3-4 hours for "fast" players. after that, some "extra" things like timed survival, arenas, etc. therefore, the issues you mentioned (cauldron/inventory) do matter and i hope to do something about it soon.
>Endgame, NG+
i will absolutely have NG+, in the same way it is traditionally done: you spawn in level 1 with your character you beat the game with, and proceed forward through the game with levels being redone, and enemies which match the player level.
there are also things like arena/survival modes planned, since i think those would very easily be made to fit the current game. perhaps we'll see them sooner rather than later.
thanks again for your detailed feedback, your posts are always the most insightful and thought provoking feedback i receive anywhere. now that the crunch i had is over, i'm gonna take a few days off to play some DD games i didn't get around to yet
That was enlightening. I spent some time playing the game because I usualy feel bad about saying something I don't have much of an idea about so here are some revised thoughts.
Gave three tries to hard difficulty and gave up. With no bow, I pretty much had to trade blows with all enemies, which quickly lead to my death. It might be doable with enemies taking more time for first attack, but right now, you just have to get in there, slash and hope for the best.
Normal run went in oposite direction. I quickly found a wand and It turned in a cakewalk. Together with a life steal ring, I became almost unstopable. However, I was still using mainly my club and shield. Life steal with high armor was just too good.
This highlighted another problem. Without the bow, the first level is really boring since you can only attack in melee and have no ranged weapons or spells. Kiting with melee is almost impossible now, since enemies usualy smack you as soon as they reach you. So like I said above, get in their face and slash, chug potions if in danger and hope for the best. This also doubly hurts when you are unlucky and get no ranged weapon after the cauldron. Flaming skulls are now really nasty in melee.
Like you said, choosing a starting weapon would be nice. Being able to pick two weapons from all possible weapon types should be allowed too, since this will make the most boring part (first level), quite different on every playthough. There are a lot of weapon combinations already in the game with all the weapon types. And I would like to use a spear too because I usualy find them way too late when I already have my build focused around something different.
As for balancing ranged vs melee, my idea would be to make ranged weapons good againts single, strong oponents while melee againts crowds. With faster enemy reactions and speed, kiting is harder. But melee is also harder. Give melee weapons inherent splash / cleave attack and they will be both more fun and they will have one advantage compared to bows (excluding that vedge arrow weapon art).
As for my questions, everything sounds good. The game is still in development after all so there is a lot that could change.
Also, did you try experimenting with using prerendered 3D model images for item icons? You can get some nice results with much less efford than drawing them by hand. Put some filter on them or run them through an AI. Who knows, it might be usable.
And lastly, one bug report. I had scimitar and shield in slot one and wand and fetish in slot two. Wand gave +2 to my agility, totaling at 13. When I switched from wand to scimitar, the scimitar got droped down. When I picked it up, I equiped it instantly since my agi was 11, exatly what the wapon needed. However, my attacks were lowered. If I kept switching, the damage got into negatives.
Loading a save fixed the numbers being in negatives, but switching the loadouts still droped the sword and picking it and switching again lowered my damage again.
oh crap, i thought i fixed that bug, but i must've not applied it to the fetish item type as well. thanks for the report, i'll fix this and put it in a patch tomorrow.
yeah, i'll slowly try and lessen the giant randomization of level one bit by bit
as for the rest of your feedback, next patch should *finally* feature some splash damage mechanics, so we'll see how that'll pan out
for 3D - i tried it but in this case i simply prefer the look of 2D artwork. it's something i enjoy doing, so despite it taking more work, it doesn't feel tedious to do.
thanks again for the helpful feedback and the playtest! it's really appreciated it.