Note of the outskirts - blobber by Cryptrat

[CryptRat]

reading coordinates off the automap is annoying as hell when the numbers are so big you don't know which row/column they represent. Would be nice to have a small dot or arrow or something next to it so it's easier to tell which row is actually the 50th row. Right now, the most I can make out is which row is near the 50th row.

It's rudimentary but it should help :

I think I'm going to release 1.0.16 later today.

 

[CryptRat]

V1.0.16 released

Fixes :
- During fights, escaping from webs, tornadoes, furnaces or gas did not work. This was fixed.
- The description of the Spark attack of the sparkgun was fixed. I'm sure I had already done something but it was still broken anyway, maybe I only fixed the main description of the weapon back then.

Changes :
- In the map screen a dot was added to mark the position of the coordinate numbers.

 

[CryptRat]

I'll probably release a new version before the end of the week. Really not much in it, but no need to wait forever anyway.

So far the ice thing was fixed, you can cancel teleportation now, the position of traps and trees on the screen are slightly better. Default actions during fights should be once more slightly better too, a character who just equipped a weapon won't want to unequip it while a character whose weapon is not empty should not want to reload anymore.

 

[Fowyr]

while a character whose weapon is not empty should not want to reload anymore.

 

[CryptRat]

V1.0.17 released

Fixes :
- When stepping onto ice the party used to slide towards the direction it's looking at. The way the dungeon is built this could lead to unintended situations where the party would not stop moving when being pushed back by a force field after jumping onto ice below another force field. Now in these cases the real current direction of the party is used instead.
- An orientation check (to check if the party is lost) was forced when levitating over a hole just like when the party would fall down into the hole. This check made no sense and was removed.
- Some text fixes.

Changes :
- Contrary to other types of events such as shops, it was impossible to take stairs if you previously chose not to without getting to another tile and coming back, which in one point inside the dungeon would lead to a situation where you had no other choice than falling down into a hole. Now it works like other events, which means that you'll be asked again if you want to take the stairs for example after checking some character's sheet.
- The default choice of action in combat was improved. First a character who just equipped a weapon won't then want to unequip it, and vice versa. Secondly a character without a weapon will want to punch an enemy instead of guarding. Finally a character used to want to reload his weapon when his previous action was not available anymore and the weapon was not fully loaded, now he will want to reload his weapon only if it's empty.
- The position of traps and trees were slightly improved. It is specially noticeable when a trap is detected in the middle of a lake.
- It used to be impossible to cancel teleportation after using the item. A "Back" command was added.

 

[CryptRat]

I took a close look at the descriptions of the attacks of weapons. There were two wrong things. Ammo was not taken into account in the descriptions of the attacks in the character's inventory (it was in combat and in character's sheet, and since you can check the damage below the equipment it was not that much of a serious problem) but more disturbing it was also not taken into account in the numbers displayed in the character sheet and below equipment when the attack did no damage except directly from the effect of the ammo (why you got Damage : 0 from darts from blowgun). I fixed these descriptions for the next version. Which means there's not much more I need to check from now, maybe displaying names of savegame when saving, possibly checking why sometimes you're stuck on a shop tile and also eventually give incremental feedback on characters of combat but this one I must be careful about doing.

 

[CryptRat]

V1.0.18 released

Fixes :
- In texts ammunition was not taken into account in some places. This was fixed.
- The first time you walked on an unavailable shop (from which you were thrown out) after reloading a save game it was impossible to walk forward (before opening a menu and getting back). This was fixed.
- Thrown back status changes could be displayed more than once in the combat log. This was fixed.
- When an Insensitive character would lose the status instead of taking damage the displayed damage was not 0, now it is.

Changes :
- A save menu where you can directly select existing files replaced the simple save command.
- A feedback text was added to state when a character resists an attack which cannot make any damage but only inflict a status change.
- There was no particular text when failing the mental resistance test with a Braineater. It was added.

 

[ghostdog]

Didn't this game have an actual page here in the codex? I can't seem to find it. CryptRat you should post the link, and add something to your sig or something. Don't you know the basics?

 

[CryptRat]

I'm hiding sigs so it would be dishonest to have one.

 

[CryptRat]

I just noticed that the line of sight appears twice in a row in the character sheet in the last version, it's so glaring, I'm not sure how I could have missed that, anyway whenever I release another version it'll be fixed.


By the way I never asked but do you think it would be a good thing or not if you could use skill points to independently raise hp, regeneration, max weight, defense, range, intiative, critical and melee damage bonus (maybe resistances, maybe things I probably forget at the moment, maybe other things which don't really exist yet such as bonus damage from critical hits) ?

 

[Strange Fellow]

By the way I never asked but do you think it would be a good thing or not if you could use skill points to independently raise hp, regeneration, max weight, defense, range, intiative, critical and melee damage bonus (maybe resistances, maybe things I probably forget at the moment, maybe other things which don't really exist yet such as bonus damage from critical hits) ?

No. I enjoyed working around my characters' deficiencies, and it made items more impactful (items that increased carry capacity and hit points were huge gets for my party full of nerds, for instance). To let you increase those after chargen would lessen the impact of stat allocation and blur the line unnecessarily between stats and skills. Either that, or you'd have to make the gains from putting points directly into derived statistics so low that to do so would essentially be a trap option. I don't think it would make the game better in any case.

 

[CryptRat]

Thanks, we are on the same lines.

 

[CryptRat]

Update upcoming.

 

[CryptRat]

Map annotation is live.

V1.0.19 released

Changes :
- The automap can now be annoted.
- An introduction text now appears when launching the game and starting a new game.
- The special properties of opponents can now be seen in their description (like other info it requires some score in Bestiary to see those).
- Several code changes were made to create an editor.

Fixes :
- The line of sight appeared two times in a row in the character sheet. This was fixed.
- The option to choose between rolling and buying stats was not saved. This was fixed.
- The log could indicate that a trap or a monster two tiles away in a direction was behind a door when not and vice versa. This was fixed.
- Some text fixes.

 

[Fluent]

sorry if this is a silly question or something, but any chance u could put the game on steam? thanks.

 

[CryptRat]

Probably not in a close future, can I ask why?

 

[Fluent]

Probably not in a close future, can I ask why?

i just prefer a steam version of a game when it's possible for the convenience factor, but it's not a dealbreaker. i can pick this up sometime regardless. thanks for answering me.

 

[Butter]

It costs 100 USD to get a game on Steam, so it's kind of off-putting if you don't intend to charge for the game. Automatic updates are nice though.

 

[CryptRat]

Don't hesitate to archive the last version because the next one could look even worse, I'm trying to rework the environment quite a bit and this is not necessarily a good thing.

The beginning floor especially had parts with completely different and irreconcilable resolutions and color palettes, the green "background" of the bottom floor is also terrible, I will try to do something better, the blue floor with the electrical circuits and the black and white one I'll probably not gonna touch because they don't look as bad as the others, the purple one I'm not sure. Water and lava are drawn with code, ideally they'd need three things : some noise, rounder edges and corners and puddles on a part of the lake border tile or on close tiles to such a tile, I have not yet but I'm going to take some time to try things.

Possibly I'm going to add a couple of very simple difficulty options, two are already implemented and I am just not sure they're worth proposing : Save everywhere/In starting guild/Ironman (I think autosaving was properly implemented so that you would not lose all your progress because of a crash, also of course Save & Quit is always available) and bonuses/penalties to various enemy stats and specifically to the player's characters' resistances.

I wonder if I should implement some specific difficulty settings about status changes, either so that you (and your enemies) get from less (down to none) to more (up to basically critical hit = status change is automatically applied without one more resistance check), or possibly that you get those only during fights and not elsewhere and they're all removed at the end of a fight, on one hand I think a lot of people would rather want to play the game this way (like Etrian Odyssey rather than like Blade of Destiny) but on another hand that really goes against the overall PnP-like and simulationist approach of the game, the game is really meant to be a game for people who don't think hunger, identification and bandaging the wounds after a fight are busy work, that the character sheet should be filled with important main attributes and various utility skills rather than combat attacks and that these combat attacks should depend on the weapon (and probably even more people who like crazy dungeons and plenty of non-combat, PnP-ish ways to advance and find various secrets but that's not completely on-topic, even if it is in the sense of it's really a matter of take all or move on), I'm the first proof that the audiences for these two kinds of games overlap but I still really think the game is very different from Etrian Odyssey and I'm not sure a difficulty settings which would make it a bad version of this one instead of its own thing is worth it. So utlimately all this last babbling just to say I'll probably do nothing.

Automatic updates are nice though.

Yes, that's certainly a good argument anyway.

 

[CryptRat]

I recorded some gameplay in case anyone's looking for a glimpse of the beginning of the game, party creation and shopping end at 12:30 :

 

[CryptRat]

V1.0.20 released (includes complete gfx overhaul)

Major changes :

- The game got a complete graphics overhaul.




Minor changes :

- Combat feedback was improved, instead of feedback on characters being instantly applied there's now only a small lag between an action and the feedback.

- Two type of difficulty settings were added, a save mode and a stat modifier for the party and enemies.


- Images with a wrong ratio are now still centered in the displaying part of the screen.


- Displaying side walls was improved.


- Performance was improved.

There are a couple of wall tiles per level now instead of only one, also water lava and ice are more than a dev solid colour.

Some additionnal screenshots :

 

[V_K]

Is it DALL-E or Midjourney?
I'm a bit conflicted - on the other hand, the hallmarks of NN art are way too obvious, on the other hand, it kinda fits the setting?

 

[CryptRat]

Yep, it's craiyon, not sure how exactly it is related to DALL-E. The crappy art fits the heavy metal asthetic I envisioned, obviously faces can be pretty bad but overall the result is messy in a different way which is actually a more coherent and closer way to what I wanted to do, also easier to update with new stuff, than the precedent iterations.

 

[Abu Antar]

Yep, it's craiyon, not sure how exactly it is related to DALL-E. The crappy art fits the heavy metal asthetic I envisioned, obviously faces can be pretty bad but overall the result is messy in a different way which is actually a more coherent and closer way to what I wanted to do, also easier to update with new stuff, than the precedent iterations.

I think DALL-E changed name to Craiyon.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Wow, that looks terrific. Totally fits the tone of the game, as you say. This'll be great for a replay.