Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Early Dev => Topic started by: Ferret on October 18, 2014, 11:51:06 PM
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PC, Mac, and Linux builds download link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Development website: http://demon.ferretdev.org/
Hi. :) Demon's actually been cooking for some time now, but I figure it is far enough long for people to enjoy, so I'm announcing it here in hopes of trading fun and many deaths for yummy feedback. :D
Demon combines the monster collection mechanics of games like Shin Megami Tensei and Pokemon with traditional roguelike features such as challenging tactical turn-based gameplay, randomly generated dungeon layouts and encounters, and of course, perma-death. :)
Some screenshots:
(http://i.imgur.com/wuBXK2i.png) (http://i.imgur.com/wuBXK2i.png) (http://i.imgur.com/csl9PNT.png) (http://i.imgur.com/csl9PNT.png) (http://i.imgur.com/R83dIfs.png) (http://i.imgur.com/R83dIfs.png) (http://i.imgur.com/SrNoBJ0.png) (http://i.imgur.com/SrNoBJ0.png) (http://i.imgur.com/zrcwWRV.png) (http://i.imgur.com/zrcwWRV.png)
I'd love to hear feedback, comments, and suggestions, but even more than that, I hope you have fun trying it out. :D
Edits 1 & 2: Changed build download link.
Edit 3: Updated screenshots since the old ones were pretty dated.
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First impressions:
I like the idea. As far as I could see, the manual doesn't mention how to recruit new allies, so I had to figure that out (not difficult but it's still odd that it's not explained). Enemies seem extremely damage spongey - two allies and I were tearing into a foe with everything we had it just tanked the damage. They all seem to be like that.
There's definitely a lot of promise here, though. I'm going to keep fiddling with it and see how it does. Keep it up!
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:D Thanks for the feedback! Recruiting allies is in the manual... but now that I re-read it with your feedback in mind, it's pretty brief and seems poorly located. Party recruiting/management probably deserves its own section rather than being part of "Advancement". :) I'll update that in the next build. (This is exactly why it is useful to have people who never played before reading the manual: stuff that is 'obvious' to the developer can end up glossed over or under emphasized to the point it gets missed)
I'm glad you were able to figure it out though: if you don't mind, what helped you figure it out? (so I can do more of that in the future :D )
Damage sponginess is definitely present a bit at the start: the early monsters tend to be a bit lower than average on damage output to help with easing into the more unusual mechanics Demon throws at you from its monster collection lineage. :D If you grasp those quickly, it might seem to ramp up a little slow... but by Tower:5 or 6 you should be able to find some ways of dealing damage quickly if that's the strategy you want to pursue. :D Your starting build can also make a difference: Try including Debuff as at least a secondary so you pick up Expose (lowers target's damage absorb.) In particular, Electricity/Debuff is probably the highest total single-target DPS of the starting builds if you really want to obliterate things. :D
I'll keep an eye on it though, if it's consistently getting feedback of that nature, I'll see about slanting the early guys a bit more towards DPS and see how that does. :D I'd rather people not die much before at least Tower:3, but on the other hand, I don't want people to assume the whole game is spongy.
Thanks again for the feedback! :D
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I love the idea!!!
How many levels are there? How many monsters? Can we breed them?
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Agreed in full that this seems chock full of promise and heading in a good direction---definitely keep at it! 8)
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There are currently 17 floors to the tower, with approximately 60 monsters (not counting modified ones) total running around, all of which can be recruited. There are also a few human foes.. half a dozen or so... running about to make life interesting in various ways. :D You can't recruit those, but there may be other benefits to fighting them.
Eventually, it will be 30 floors with many, many more monsters. :D
The monsters can't be bred directly, but there are plenty of ways to get custom ones:
* Once a monster has been in your party for a bit, it will begin to gain Training Points. These can be used to copy its abilities to other monsters in your party. For example, Goblins have an ability called Low Profile that lets them duck under allied projectiles flawlessly. This is a great ability to pass on to other melee-oriented monsters if you want to use ranged attacks: you'll be able to shoot over their heads while they hold the line.
* Monsters have a chance of spawning "modified" (e.x.: Fiery Goblin instead of just a Goblin), giving them new abilities, resistances, and adjusted stats based on the modifier. Modified monsters can be recruited just like any other beastie (though depending on what you have to do to recruit them, the modifier may make things more difficult. :D )
* There are unique monsters as well, and even these can be recruited, but the conditions are often rather difficult (and in typical roguelike fashion, you only get one try per game... if they spawn at all!) Still, unique monsters often have unique abilities and/or especially good resistances and stats. :)
* Future Tech: I am thinking of adding a consumable item that lets you discard one monster to add a modifier based on its type to a second monster. For example, you could use it to discard a Jinn to add "Fiery" to any unmodified monster in your party. I would probably also cause unique monsters to have unique modifiers to offer through it. :) There may eventually be other items you can use to tweak your monsters in various ways too.
Thanks for the encouragement and well wishes. :D
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:D Thanks for the feedback! Recruiting allies is in the manual... but now that I re-read it with your feedback in mind, it's pretty brief and seems poorly located. Party recruiting/management probably deserves its own section rather than being part of "Advancement". :)
I read the manual three times and couldn't see it! :-\ I think with the party aspect being so pivotal to the whole playing experience, it could do with a prominent position in the manual. I find a lot of people aren't very receptive to feedback (even when they've requested it) so good on you for taking it on board.
I'm glad you were able to figure it out though: if you don't mind, what helped you figure it out? (so I can do more of that in the future :D )
Again, it was pretty straightforward. After failing to spot anything about it in the manual, I looked at the overall UI/HUD and saw a row of icons at the bottom. I thought maybe one of them might be connected to party recruitment so I moused over them until I found the right one.
Damage sponginess is definitely present a bit at the start: the early monsters tend to be a bit lower than average on damage output to help with easing into the more unusual mechanics Demon throws at you from its monster collection lineage. :D If you grasp those quickly, it might seem to ramp up a little slow... but by Tower:5 or 6 you should be able to find some ways of dealing damage quickly if that's the strategy you want to pursue. :D Your starting build can also make a difference: Try including Debuff as at least a secondary so you pick up Expose (lowers target's damage absorb.) In particular, Electricity/Debuff is probably the highest total single-target DPS of the starting builds if you really want to obliterate things. :D
I'll keep an eye on it though, if it's consistently getting feedback of that nature, I'll see about slanting the early guys a bit more towards DPS and see how that does. :D I'd rather people not die much before at least Tower:3, but on the other hand, I don't want people to assume the whole game is spongy.
Sponginess was the part I was less confident in criticising. I was conscious that it could be an intentional design choice. The thing is that I've played a few times now and so far I haven't managed to get off the first floor. Now, granted, I'm not a great player but the battles often end up feeling like I'm barely scratching the enemies (whether physically or magically) while they lop great chunks of health off me and my allies. Thanks for the tip on debuffing though - I'll look into it.
The other part is that first impressions can be crucial; if the first floor or two are very spongy, expect to lose players to impatience. With many, many games out there and only limited time to play them, a game that feels laborious at the beginning can suffer. Just my opinion, of course.
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:D Thanks for the feedback! Recruiting allies is in the manual... but now that I re-read it with your feedback in mind, it's pretty brief and seems poorly located. Party recruiting/management probably deserves its own section rather than being part of "Advancement". :)
I read the manual three times and couldn't see it! :-\ I think with the party aspect being so pivotal to the whole playing experience, it could do with a prominent position in the manual. I find a lot of people aren't very receptive to feedback (even when they've requested it) so good on you for taking it on board.
:D Don't feel bad about not seeing it. The burden for manuals is on the author, not the readers, if something can't be found the first time it's read, the manual's bugged. :) I've fixed it up nicely (I hope!), party management gets its own section in the next build's version of the manual. :D
I'm glad you were able to figure it out though: if you don't mind, what helped you figure it out? (so I can do more of that in the future :D )
Again, it was pretty straightforward. After failing to spot anything about it in the manual, I looked at the overall UI/HUD and saw a row of icons at the bottom. I thought maybe one of them might be connected to party recruitment so I moused over them until I found the right one.
Cool. :D The hotkeys and their tool tips are Plan B... though it's supposed to be in anticipation of people not reading the manual, not because the manual whiffed. :D Still, awesome to know it worked. :) Thanks!
Damage sponginess is definitely present a bit at the start: the early monsters tend to be a bit lower than average on damage output to help with easing into the more unusual mechanics Demon throws at you from its monster collection lineage. :D If you grasp those quickly, it might seem to ramp up a little slow... but by Tower:5 or 6 you should be able to find some ways of dealing damage quickly if that's the strategy you want to pursue. :D Your starting build can also make a difference: Try including Debuff as at least a secondary so you pick up Expose (lowers target's damage absorb.) In particular, Electricity/Debuff is probably the highest total single-target DPS of the starting builds if you really want to obliterate things. :D
I'll keep an eye on it though, if it's consistently getting feedback of that nature, I'll see about slanting the early guys a bit more towards DPS and see how that does. :D I'd rather people not die much before at least Tower:3, but on the other hand, I don't want people to assume the whole game is spongy.
Sponginess was the part I was less confident in criticising. I was conscious that it could be an intentional design choice. The thing is that I've played a few times now and so far I haven't managed to get off the first floor. Now, granted, I'm not a great player but the battles often end up feeling like I'm barely scratching the enemies (whether physically or magically) while they lop great chunks of health off me and my allies. Thanks for the tip on debuffing though - I'll look into it.
The other part is that first impressions can be crucial; if the first floor or two are very spongy, expect to lose players to impatience. With many, many games out there and only limited time to play them, a game that feels laborious at the beginning can suffer. Just my opinion, of course.
Oof. :( Yeah, a bit of early sponginess is one thing, but Tower:1 being that much of a jerk is a bit more frownysome, especially since from your posts it sounds like you've been summoning and recruiting allies and using your starting abilities (most of the T:1 deaths I've seen are before people figure out those things.) Malingees might be a good candidate for moving to T:2, and the pairs of goblins might also need a nerf. Were those the encounters giving you trouble there, or were there others?
I'll swap around the spawn table on T:1 and T:2 a bit, hopefully that can shift the difficulty to a bit gentler place for T:1 (by T:2 you're more likely to be 2nd level and have a full party, lone monsters, even if they're the nastier members of lowbie land, should go down easily at that point.)
This is awesome feedback btw, and exactly the kind I need: fresh eyes on the first stuff players see. It can be almost impossible to fully "pretend" to see something with new eyes, especially something you've been working on, not just playing. :) Thank you again!
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Posted a small update! Build links won't change, but here it is again for easy access: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akfvy4z8fmsavdm/AACrg9QrE7tcXDtLQOsYb_7Ga?dl=0
Manual has been revamped a bit, including a new section on party management and some re-ordering of the chapters. Still relatively short while hopefully containing everything you need to know about the basic game rules. :) Also adjusted the starting encounters on Tower:1 a bit: goblin pairs should be mostly lone goblins now, and malingees have a somewhat more generous recruitment mechanic.
I'm already working on the next more substantial update. :D I'll give more details about what that will include soon. :)
Edit: Build link did change after all. :P
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One of the things I enjoy with this game is the way recruitment works. It reminds me a lot of Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call (known as Nocturne elsewhere). Different monsters have different things they want before they'll join you. It's a nice touch. I liked that about SMT:LC (though was eventually put off by the tedium of the combat).
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I'm glad you're liking the recruitment mechanics. :) Shin Megami Tensei games as a group are pretty much my favorite games. :D Roguelikes are a pretty close second*. :) Part of why I started on this project was because I wanted to see if it was possible to combine the two together. :D
* ::looks around nervously remembering the name of this forum:: Er... I don't have to leave now do I? :( It's a REALLY close second I promise! :D
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I'm glad you're liking the recruitment mechanics. :) Shin Megami Tensei games as a group are pretty much my favorite games. :D Roguelikes are a pretty close second*. :) Part of why I started on this project was because I wanted to see if it was possible to combine the two together. :D
* ::looks around nervously remembering the name of this forum:: Er... I don't have to leave now do I? :( It's a REALLY close second I promise! :D
Lucifer's Call is the only one I've played so that's my sole point of reference for SMT mechanics. :)
Don't worry, roguelikes aren't necessarily my favourites either. I'm still waiting for someone to combine the best elements of Morrowind or Sid Meier's Pirates with a roguelike.
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May not necessarily be the most exciting thing ever, but going to try adding a very... subtle?... tutorial system in the next build. I kinda grumble at tutorials in general, especially intrusive ones. Based on your feedback and that of others, the tooltip bar and its mouseovers seem to have a fairly high rate of bailing people out, if only folks mouse over them, but unfortunately (and also based on some feedback) that doesn't always happen. :P
To try and encourage that, I'm thinking the tutorial system will light up a few of the buttons at appropriate times the first 3 or so times they're relevant, then stop doing that for the rest of the game (maybe even the rest of any game on that same computer.) For example, Summon would light up when you have a good, healthy ally to summon and an open slot for one, then never light up again after the first time you have the maximum of 3 allies at once out. The Activate Link button would light up when you're in the presence of a recruit-able enemy, never again once you've recruited a few guys. etc. Similar things could be used for Unsummon, Item, Teach, and Rest...maybe Explore too, but not sure I need to go thaaat far.
That would be it. I'm hoping the glowy buttons would be effective at calling attention without bothering anyone who picks it up quickly enough to need it. I've seen some similar tricks used for things like level up notifications and what not in other games, I'm kinda hoping I might be able to extend that technique (whose effectiveness+unobtrusiveness I approve of) into actually teaching these parts of the game, which are the ones that differ most from other roguelikes and are least intuitive in general.
Anyway, it may or may not be 'enough', but heavy-handed tutorials really grump me out. I'd prefer to take baby steps in that direction rather than overkill it. :D I hope to able to finish upgrade up soon, I'd rather be on something more exciting. :D
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It's a good idea. My only concern about it is that if the buttons glow only the first few times, people might expect them to always glow and then not realise they can use those buttons once they stop glowing. Have you ever had that experience where a level up indicator that usually glows suddenly doesn't glow for some reason? You don't realise you have a level up available when that happens. The inconsistency of having buttons glow at first and then not later could be confusing.
I don't want to sound negative - the glowing buttons are a good idea - just raising a point for consideration.
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It's definitely a good point. :) I like the basic idea of making the buttons glow... but if I always do it, it might be overkill (since I'm doing it for more than just the level up functionality.) On the other hand, if people get used to it and then don't see it, you're right that they might not realize it's just a tutorial function that quietly turned itself off.
On the other hand... hmmm. It might not be terrible for them to always light up. Let's see...
Summon: Lights up if you have less than 3 active allies and have at least one good candidate for summoning (i.e.: a monster with relatively good HP still)
Unsummon: Lights up if any ally is in danger.
Activate Link: Lights up if you could recruit a visible monster. Ignores monsters more than X levels below you?
Item: You've found a new *type* of item (i.e.: 1st healing stone, 1st spirit candle, but not 2nd healing stone) since the last time you opened the menu.
Train: When a monster gains its first training point OR when any monster becomes the highest training point count currently in the party. Disables when you open the menu, not went it is spent. (There are plenty of reasons not to spend training points immediately, so I don't think I can hold the glow until they're spent.)
Rest: Out of combat and party is not in peak condition.
Any of those strike you as "too pushy"? Unsummon is the only one that worries me a bit, though not because of pushiness.... there are times it's a very good idea to unsummon, even if an ally is not in danger, and I don't want people to think they can only do it when the button is lit up. I could also just leave that one out of the glowing fun times, and hope the other glowing buttons get them visiting the hotkey bar enough that they catch it. I guess it comes down to showing players that glow means "this is relevant to your current interests" and not "you can only do this now."
Option B might be to take a different approach: Only reveal the buttons the first time they become relevant, then they glow until used. In that case:
Summon: You start with this active and glowing.
Unsummon: Activates once you summon a monster and 'flares' to call attention to itself, but does not glow persistently. (Little iffy on this whole setup. :P )
Activate Link: Activates first time you find a monster you could recruit.
Kill Command: Always active, but never glows.
Rest: Activates first time you are out of combat and not in perfect health.
Auto-Explore: Activates once you summon your first ally.
Item: Activates when you pick up your first item.Portal Search: Activates once you find a portal.
Train: Activates when a demon earns a TP when you have any other demon in your party as well.
View Party: Always active, but never glows.
Discard: Always active, but never glows.
Help: You start with this active.
I think this approach might help avoid the false messaging problems of the purely glowing buttons approach...though coding it will be a little bit more involved. What do you think of these two ideas? :D
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PC and Mac Builds (new link, switched back to Google Drive): https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Bleh. :) Working on new player help is a little brain-numbing, but I managed to push through it over the last week or so and get in what I hope are some useful new player aids: banners that fill in empty party display slots with suggestions on how to fill them ('s' to summon if you have someone healthy enough to fight in your stash, or 'a' to recruit if you don't have anyone else and there's a recruitable enemy visible.) Also did the glowing buttons previously discussed. I doubt either feature is perfect yet, but hopefully they will help new players figure out the summoning system basics. Pretty much no chance of surviving if people don't pick up on those, so I'm willing to bludgeon it slightly for now. If I figure out better ways to handle it, I will. :D
Here's a screenshot showing these features in action:
(http://i.imgur.com/bBvfjsX.png) (http://i.imgur.com/bBvfjsX.png)
Next up will probably be an item pass. I've got plenty of "bail you out" consumables, but no items that feel like real rewards to find, stuff you can use right away that just does something awesome. So, that'll be next up on the update list. :D
I also switched from Google Drive to Dropbox for build hosting because Google Drive's interface is kind of horrible. Though, Dropbox + Chrome sometimes don't get along themselves... I'll keep an ear out for any issues there.
Edit: Added screenshot.
Edit 2: Switched back to Google Drive, grumble.
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I played the game with Wine on Linux, so my experience may be different from native Windows execution.
The program probably could not make the window large enough, so the window turned out to be somewhat compressed vertically, and all the graphics, including the font were compressed too, see the screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Q5biXqE.png
I liked the nice font in your screenshots actually, but I can live with the messed up font, not a big deal. I played a bit, collected some monsters, got to the second tower.
Then, I decided to switch to the fullscreen mode (by pressing F11), and after switching to the fullscreen mode the program could not get the right resolution, and switched to the worst possible, 640x480. Even after I recovered the game to the windows mode, it still tries to run in a 640x480 window, which is really not enough to play comfortably (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/mXd2KaA.png)
Could you look at the code that handles the size of the window? My screen (1366x768) is quite standard for a laptop, and it seems to be too small for the program. Of course, I run it in emulation, but wine is pretty good usually, so maybe the native Windows computers would behave similarly in this case.
If it is possible, it would be great to do output without hard-coding the dimensions of the window, so it adjusts to the window size the player choose?
Anyway, apart form this trouble with the screen resolution, the game looks interesting. I'd like to play it more and try the fancy features like breeding. For now, I cannot really comment on the most of it, since I did only basic things. The interface is pretty intuitive. What is strange is that you don't use mouse for the controls at all, but you actually do use it for showing information when hovering over something. It's not that important now, but maybe later when you will be polishing the game, you may consider adding full mouse controls too.
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Hey. :D Thanks for trying Demon out. :)
Sorry you ran into trouble with the resolution. At the moment, Demon only supports 1152x864, so the 768 vs. 864 there is the problem. I will look into trying to get it to behave better when it doesn't have enough resolution available on the system running it. With regard to the 640x480 resolution lock, none of my own computers are below the target resolution, so I'd never seen the behavior where it locks into a worse resolution after trying full screen mode.
Adjustable window size rather than fixed would solve things pretty nicely, I admit. :) I'll see if I can figure out what it'll take to get that working. It won't be able to go but so small though, with pixel perfect I can't adjust the size of the tiles/UI, only where and how many are on the screen: go too small and I won't have enough room to show everything without cramming. My first goal on this front will probably be seeing if I can trim down to 768 on the Y axis so I can include standard laptops: not as good as free resize, but probably much quicker to get implemented.
Mouse support's a weird one. I actually have more of it available than is currently used, but commented it out because it seems that the more of it you turn on, the more disruptive the parts still not mouse-controlled become to players. The biggest example of this was when I made the ability buttons respond to clicks: it suddenly became a very big issue that you couldn't also do that in targeting. Full mouse control is a fairly high priority item, but since it's pretty much going to be all or nothing, I'm trying to hold off for a little while I try to get the gameplay to a happy spot.
I'm glad you found it interesting and were able to get to Tower:2 despite the problems. :) I admit I'm kinda newb when it comes to UI / resolution related things, but even if it doesn't happen super fast I will address the issues with running on less resolution than it'd prefer and more mouse controls. Thank you for the feedback. :D
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Yes, I think that keeping the graphics pixel perfect, but just showing a smaller region of the map would be the best solution for smaller screens, unfortunately it may require special attention to UI elements positioning (the abilities, messages, etc), and it can get tricky very quickly :-\ So, whatever you come up with is fine, there is no pressing concerns now at this stage, I think. It may become more important when you will be reaching a wider audience ::)
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The mouse issue is a good one to raise.
So far it hasn't really bothered me in Demon but one of my pet peeves with some roguelikes is hybrid keyboard/mouse interfaces. If I'm moving around using my right hand on the keys (whether arrows or numpad) don't make me use the mouse for anything. Having to move my hand over to the mouse and then reposition it back on the keys again a couple of times a minute is deeply irritating.
Again, Demon doesn't do it enough to bother me so far, but I've played altogether too many games that do. I think putting careful thought into what you're forcing the player to do with their hands is a sorely underrated practice in roguelike development.
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I posted a new pair of builds (PC and Mac*) (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akfvy4z8fmsavdm/AACrg9QrE7tcXDtLQOsYb_7Ga?dl=0) that should fix the resolution problems on standard laptops. Now Demon checks out what resolution your system can handle and picks the best one it supports to use, either 1080x720 or its original 1152x864. It attempts to account for a certain amount of OS-level nonsense (Windows Start bar, OSX dock, window title bars, etc.) as well, so you won't get the 1152x864 setting unless you're actually running something like 1280x1024 for example. Unity doesn't allow me to detect the presence of such things unfortunately, so I just have to kind of guess, bleh. :)
As a bonus, this work seems to have also fixed the issues I was having w/ Retina displays causing graphical glitches/artifacts (probably because I found and fixed a small bug in my sprite code that was invisible at 1152x864 but quite visible at any other resolution.)
Only sad news is that in doing this, I confirmed that free resize will probably be a Major Pain: I had to make a seperate set of UI positions/sizes for 1080x720, there didn't seem to be a way to adjust them procedurally that got good results. I'm going to hope that these two resolutions are enough to cover most users and let it rest there for awhile at least.
* Koiwai, I could actually try a Linux build if you're interested, but I don't have any sort of direct access, even through friends, to a Linux system, so it's pretty much completely untried. :D
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Runs great, adjusted to my resolution (I'm runnig it on Linux with wine). I can test a Linux build too it you make one.
I got to the level 3 (or 4), where the game got a bit tougher, and the party got killed by three red snakes and two (?)fire demons.
Some monsters, if you want then to join you, ask you to kill other monsters (zombies, for example, or that strange brownish debuffing orb - I don't remember the name), and so one encounter may immediately lead to the next.The thing is that the game is now more complex than a simple chain of independent fights, that's pretty cool.
Also, I like that you make the game look really polished.
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Awesome. :D Glad to hear it's running better for you now. Sounds like you got the hang of things enough to make a little progress too. :) Ilomba (red snakes) and Ukobach (fire demons) are both among the nastier early game encounters, and both can be tough to recruit. I've lost a few characters to both of them myself. If they both showed up together, that's definitely going to be trouble.
Thanks for the compliments and the offer to try a Linux build. :) I'll make a Linux build next time I do builds (probably when I finish my current item push, going from 12 items to 35!) and we'll see how that goes. :D
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Whew. Other games are distracting. :) Curse you (and love you) Persona Q!
Still working on adding the new items, which has included a fair bit of interface work, such as support for scrollable lists (needed now than you can have over 30 types of items potentially instead of just 12):
(http://i.imgur.com/K4dTjVz.png) (http://imgur.com/K4dTjVz)
This build's taking a little longer than I'd like, but it should be worth the wait. :) The new items can do some exciting things, including three items that introduce some basic 'breeding' mechanics where you sacrifice one demon to make significant changes/improvements to another.
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PC, Mac, and (new!) Linux builds download link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Development website: http://demon.ferretdev.org/
Hey there. :) Been quiet for a bit during the holidays, but the 1/4 build with tons of new items to find as well as balance adjustments and bug fixes is ready to go. :D
The new items run the gamut from being useful tools for surviving nasty situations (everything from briefly charming an enemy to dropping a fiery meteor into a horde's midst) to powerful treasures that give access to unique mechanics, such as demon fusion, the process of sacrificing one demon to modify and power up another. :)
Here's a collection of screenshots of the demon fusion process:
First, you choose the demon to sacrifice. This determines what modifier will be applied to the demon you choose to power up. Modifiers (which before only appeared at random on demons you encountered) adjust a demon's resistances and stats, as well adding new abilities.
(http://i.imgur.com/QUms4sJ.png) (http://i.imgur.com/QUms4sJ.png)
Next, choose the target to receive the modifier. Usually you can only modify non-unique demons... but is there a way to modify uniques?
(http://i.imgur.com/cm30INI.png) (http://i.imgur.com/cm30INI.png)
Then you'll be shown a preview of what the combination you selected will result in. This makes it easy to determine what pairings will result in demons useful for your chosen strategy:
(http://i.imgur.com/ar3zO0r.png) (http://i.imgur.com/ar3zO0r.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/1eq4PK1.png) (http://i.imgur.com/1eq4PK1.png)
Confirm the sacrifice, and congrats, you are now the proud owner of a significantly upgraded ally!
(http://i.imgur.com/dRV31I6.png) (http://i.imgur.com/dRV31I6.png)
Enjoy the new build, and happy new year. :) Next up: a revamp of the dungeon art, and some UI changes based on feedback from players.
(Edit: Today I learned which button is Post and which button is Preview. Oops. :P)
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Happy to hear that you have made good progress with the game and there is a new release.
The Linux build works fine. Also, what's good is that the native Linux build runs with very small CPU load (compared to running the Windows build with wine ;D).
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Awesome. :D I'm glad the Linux build works, it's always a little spooky making builds I don't have the ability to test myself. :) Thanks for testing that out for me. :)
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This looks verrrrry curious and I just got back into MtG. Will have to try this out later.
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SMT + RL = AWESOME. Will play.
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SMT + RL = AWESOME. Will play.
:D That's the hope anyway. I actually started on this thing back when Atlus/Index's fate was looking really uncertain over in Japan and wasn't sure they'd be making anymore of my favorite game series. I'm glad it seems like things worked out for them, but I still want to make Demon. :D
The next build is mostly a feedback response build (had a lot of it build up while I was working on the item revamp, mostly covering some UI cleanup and alternate controls for doing important things), but I'm also trying out isometric dungeon art and I think I like it better than before. Here's a little before and after.
(http://i.imgur.com/A5QnGbF.png) (http://imgur.com/A5QnGbF)
(http://i.imgur.com/5crqlZn.png) (http://imgur.com/5crqlZn)
I still need to do variant tiles for the new isometric look (i.e.: torches, partially damaged walls, eyes peeking out of missing bricks, etc.) to mix it up a bit, but even with just the basic form I think I like it.
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You know, I was ready to give you the obligatory thumbs up for being a hardworking indie dev, trying your best etc., but what I was not prepared for was to be genuinely impressed by how much content already exists within the game, and the kind of insight in game design I've seen so far. Bravo.
...Was pissed that I couldn't get the headless zombie to kill the scientist in time :)
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Awesome, and thank you. :D I'm glad you liked what you saw, but I definitely still have a fairly long way to go yet. :) Many (not quite all) of the basic systems are in, but usually only with just enough content to get the point across. :D I can't wait until I finish everything else up and go deep diving into content creation.
By the by, Headless does make a pretty good buddy. Maybe next game? :)
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I think, I could get pretty far. I've got to the 10th tower and doing alright.
However, it was not easy to start. I died several times somewhere around 2nd-3rd tower, basically in the beginning. Finding a good starting combination takes time, but eventually I chose a pretty good one: 2 Electricity skills + Wraith touch, and a Malingee as the first demon. At the first few levels, also picked Slime, Gandayah, and Faerie demons.
Both electricity spells are strong enough to kill most of the the enemies, but because they use quite a lot of Stamina (SP), it's convenient to have Gandayah summoned: it shares with you its stamina, so you basically get a lot of extra stamina to cast your spells.
I think, Slime and Malingee are pretty awesome melee demons for the early stages. Although both have their downsides (Slime is weak to a lot of different damage types (e.g. Pierce damage), and Malingee has rather low HP). However, I used Melingee to train Pierce protection to the Slime, and used the Slime to train the Healing (Reshape) skill to myself and Malingee. So, their weaknesses were maybe not completely removed, but lessened at least.
Faerie and Gandayah were ok with their healing spells / buffs.
So, if somebody else has trouble in the early game, this combination was pretty successful for me and I would recommend it.
I'm really impressed by the depth of the game: Even though you are saying that there is not enough content yet, I'd say there is a lot of fun already! Well, there is probably more than enough for several runs. Dr West and the Headless were mentioned already. Usually, there are at least 1-2 unique monsters per level (those who are super tough, those who summon other monsters, a dude with resistances, etc).
Well, another great feature is the the metagame of choosing your best 8 demons: it is quite tough sometimes, particularly, when you want to take a new demon, but before you see their abilities, you have to discard one of the demons you currently have.. :-\ well, sometimes, it feels like losing your good friend ))
For me, levels 3-6 were the hardest. The first two levels seem to be intentionally simple, but then it becomes much harder, and it seems that the most fun uniques are also found somewhere there.
The game is very addictive, I played the whole night. 90% encounters make you think, and only occasionally 10% are simple nobrainers. Which is quite refreshing, most games get this ratio the other way around ;D
Is the tileset your original? Some monsters, especially the later ones, are very nice! On the other hand, some of the early game monsters don't look that good, imho. Maybe the tileset can be improved a bit.
One last thing, about the map. The basic map topology is fine: 2-tiles wide corridors make a lot of sense. The dimensions of the rooms are fine. What I mean is that once you get to a fight, there is very little incentive to move around, or use the terrain in any way. Do you have any plans to make the map more elaborate? That is, some features of the map that can be used in combat, adding another tactical dimension to the game. This is not necesarily a good thing to have, but I'm just curious about what's your opinion? What are your plans regarding the map generation?
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Getting to Tower:10 is pretty awesome. I don't get many reports of people making it that high. :) Congrats. :D
The early game is a little rough, and it's somewhat by design. One of the thoughts running around in my head when I started on this was how much I didn't like the "long yawn to Lair" I felt like the start of DCSS had turned into for me. Barring very very early badness (like player ghosts on D:3 with Lightning Bolt, Ijyb w/ a Wand of something terrible, Sigmund w/ a Haste Potion, etc.), the first several floors of DCSS seemed trivial to me unless I was playing a challenge character of some kind. This bothered me because, in a permadeath game (particularly one with DCSS' strong variety in possible builds), you're gonna see that beginning often. If it's easy enough to become boring once you get the hang of it, that's a lot of boredom you're going to be asking people to repeat. So for that reason, I've tried to make even the early game a little nasty-tempered at times. I'll acknowledge there's a risk it could turn off new players who get impatient with it, but I'm hoping that like you they'll view it as a challenge and work to find a way through it. :D
This sort of sentiment is also what brings in the relatively high challenge level intended for the encounters that you noticed. There isn't much point to easy encounters other than giving the player a chance to feel and see how powerful they've become and to let the tension drain off a little so the hard ones still feel exciting. Those things are important, but you don't need many easy encounters to check that box so to speak: the game is weighted to only give a couple of easy fights per floor. The rest are "at level"... or worse!
I'm happy you were able to dig into some of the depth in the early monsters. :D The starter monsters all have a lot to offer the player and each other, depending on what you're going for. As you discovered, Gandayah can be *very* helpful to a caster build like your Electric/Dark one. Not only do they funnel Stamina to you, but the passive they have and eventually teach you raises your maximum SP. With the help of one monster, you go from having just your own 100 SP to having access to 250 SP (its 125 + your 125) This is one of the ways to get spammy with big magic even early on. :D
Re: Discarding demons. The UI/documentation isn't so good on this yet, but should be able to right-click any demon in a list like that to see its character sheet. This also works directly on the game map too. The build I'm working on now will be adding an "examine" hotkey button and hotkey so that this functionality is much more visible (right now it's buried in the manual to the point of probably being invisible. :( )
The tileset is all programmer art done by me, so I'm not surprised it is a little iffy in spots (I had never done any art at all before this.) It sounds like I'm at least getting better at it as I go though, if the higher floors tend to be better. It used to be worse though, lemme show you my favorite before and after. :D
First, the malingee of today: A serviceable, if odd-looking fellow... but then, what is a humanoid that has been partially turned to stone supposed to look like anyway? :)
(http://i.imgur.com/7DmCcet.png) (http://imgur.com/7DmCcet)
Now, the malingee of long long ago... ugh it hurts me to even look at this again. :P
(http://i.imgur.com/n0nJWpV.png) (http://imgur.com/n0nJWpV)
The current art for the haietlik is probably the only art that bothers me as much as this guy's original art did, but snakes are a pain to do right, so I haven't gotten to him yet. Were there any others that stood out as terrible? :)
Re: terrain/environment. I'm still thinking about this sort of stuff, but don't have a lot of ideas I'm 100% happy with yet. The closest I come to that are with cloud spells (spells that create persistent effects in an area) and "summoning" spells (the ability to summon temporary minions... for example a Dark spell might allow you to summon a horde of temporary skeletons.) Ideally, cloud spells would work better in halls (not much room to freely move around/escape them) and summon spells would work better in open areas (much more room for the extra bodies to surround targets): if it works out that way, those could give incentive to change the venue depending on which of those spells the player and/or the enemy has. Terrain-level stuff like water, 'difficult terrain' ala D&D, etc. is possible too.. just still on the back-burner mentally for now.
Thanks for the playing and for the in-depth feedback. :) I'm glad you're having fun. :D If you do run out of content soon, don't worry, I've promised everyone the build after this one is a content push. :D
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If you don't mind, I'll comment more on the art. First of all, I like your art work quite a lot. It's very imaginative, and to get even better, what is needed is just practice more, and you will be really great at it.
I especially liked your lizards and snakes, as you said they were hard to draw, but I think they turned out to be pretty good! I don't have screenshots with the snakes, but I have some other good examples:
(http://i.imgur.com/3iGRlGz.png)
My main suggestion is about drawing humanoids. There are a few tricks you can use to draw then better:
1. When drawing a human-like creatures (or any other famililar object), many people have some sort of check list: a torso, a hand, anoter one, a leg, etc.. So, instead of drawing how the whole creature would look like, you get a certain list of pieces to put in the tile. The result is often some sort of abstraction or a stick figure (or a fat figure, but still very abstracted). I read that teachers suggest to draw not "what you think you see" (a human, an apple, an orc, or any other abstract term), but the colors you see (a big green circle, with a smaller circle on top, with a grey rectangle across it..). Maybe this is why your lizards and other monsters (where your drawing is more free form rather than the humanoind check-list-type) turns out to be more effective.
2. Unnecessary one-pixel features will be most likely invisible to the player, unless they zoom in. If possible, don't draw them. This is actually related to the previous point about the check-list type of drawing. 1-pixel features add noize without conveying much information to the player. Simplify the drawing.
This general suggestion works almost always for any drawing. For pixel art, there is another thing I should point out. That's the granularity of pixels. It is a constraint and we should use it to our advantage. In general, the goal is usually to mitigate this granularity, so that the player does not see the pixel grid. There is a very good text about it from PixelJoint (see link [1] below).
I took the liberty to edit your tiles a bit to hopefully show what I mean:
(http://i.imgur.com/c9lsTIr.png)
3. Also, try use color to emphasize the shape of the obect. Exagerrate features if appropriate.
(http://i.imgur.com/o794yj5.png)
Links:
[1] Tutorial from PixelJoint (http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322) (I especially like the chapter "Things to avoid", in particular, the "Jaggies" and "Banding" sections).
[2] Pixel Art Tutorial WIP (http://androidarts.com/pixtut/pixelart.htm) - very nice and clear.
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I don't mind a bit. :D Art's definitely my weak point, even if it is getting better. :D
Yeah, I figured out how to do snakes some time after I did Haietlik: I'm completely happy with Ilomba and Dipsas (not sure if you'd have seen those yet on T:10 unless they decided to put in an early appearance.) You make a good point about something I'd wondered about: even I'd noticed I seemed to have an easier time drawing the monstrous creatures than the humans. And yes, I was, at least loosely, making a checklist in my head for humanoids rather than just drawing them like I did the other critters. That was a really good insight. :D I will try the color and shape based approach you mentioned as I work on my new dungeon art for this build, and next build on the new characters.
Definitely a little guilty of the one-pixel thing, especially for eyes. I feel like it sometimes works, if there's heavy contrast in the color (goblins' yellow eyes on brownish orange skin, for example), but lately when doing things I used to do with one-pixel, I often go a little further instead (see the 'new' malingee in the previous post, with the slight orange halo around its eyes.) I still do this in some cases I probably shouldn't though (I think the player avatar still has white single pixel eyes for all the good that does. :P )
The ogre and goblin you tweaked there are definitely improved. I feel like their faces have a bit more character to them (especially the goblin, which went from a largely blank stare to having a hint of actual malice or cunning in its look... never thought I'd say that sort of thing about a 32x32 character sprite's 10x10 or so head), and I also think the ogre's simplified and smoothed out clothing makes it easier to see its girth. :D
I'll take a look at the tutorials you linked. :) Art was originally something I was doing only because there was no other way to do the weird monsters I wanted to do, and I expected to be terrible at it and not enjoy it. Somewhat to my surprise, it's one of the parts I enjoy most now and I'm starting to get better at it. :D Hopefully with help like this, I'll improve even faster.
Thank you for taking the time to write all this up, I really appreciate this. :)
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:)
(http://s29.postimg.org/a6m68bp4n/i_win_yaaaay.png)
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Holy crap, a win! Well, a win of all the current content. :D And by someone I didn't know before I started working on the game! Big congrats! :D
Did you get a screenshot of the score by any chance? I'd love to add you to the high score thread in the forum. :D
Holy crap! I'm still dancing around over here, and I'm not even the guy who won. :P
There's probably a hundred things I'd love to ask you but I'm going to try and force myself to be reasonable and stick to just a few. :D
1) Was the game fun? If it had any particular low fun or high fun points, what were they?
2) How did you find the challenge level of the game throughout?
3) How many tries did it take you to win?
4) What was your strategy/approach for winning?
5) Finally, any other suggestions, thoughts, or comments? :D
Ugh... must... not...bury... winners... in questions. I said I'd stop at a few and I meant it!
Congrats again, especially since you didn't have access to the Ferret Tip Line most other players have been able to use. :)
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Well, first of all, thanks for making such a cool game. Of course I enjoyed it; otherwise I would have quit. No screen shot of the score, but I think it was around 66XX.
1) Yes, game = fun. As others have noted, the high points in the game tend to come when fights get large and chaotic. You have a fairly limited ability to control what your monsters do, and I think most players learn quickly that a lot of success versus death has to do with time/turn management. For me, the high points were when I was wedged between a couple different groups of monsters, with my team in the yellow, wondering whether I should cast regenerate on someone or unsummon them. Choosing between limited options to get the best odds are what makes a RL fun.
Also fun: matrices. IMO half the reason for the success of the SMT series is the demon fusion mechanic. People love the grind, and they love slot machines. It's fun to look through the various possible combinations, something that feeds into gamer geekery very well.
The few battles I had with enemy summoners were also surprisingly fun. I like that they'll unsummon and resummon throughout, and if you kill them before whittling down their menagerie, all of their monsters a) become available to potentially recruit, and b) can also potentially overwhelm you because they are no longer bound into groups of 3.
2) I like the challenge level in this game. This is one of those games where you pretty much need to be dominating all the time, much like the SMT series. If things go south, they tend to go south quickly, and once they go south, you may be screwed. The few times I found myself in serious trouble (lost that egyptian jackal unique and my main healer while trapped between two enemy groups, for instance), I realized that unless I turned things around very quickly, even if I won this fight, I'd probably be so depleted that I'd lose the next one.
3) 3 I think. This ain't my first rodeo! This build was Buff + Healing. Previous two attempts were Mind + Dark (<-about as fucking useful as the mentalist in ADOM :P) and Melee + Healing (<- probably a mistake since monsters display huge preference toward attacking the player most of the time, but hey, I had no idea!)
4) Well, there are a few RL staples. For instance, you can stairway dance ala Dungeon Crawl. There should probably be some penalty for doing so. I backed down to the previous level more than once. Controlling the terrain is a bit more difficult when your monsters charge and attack enemies as soon as they see said enemies, but managing the circumstances of a battle are basically what a roguelike is all about. I did this as much as possible, waiting an extra turn to cast the speed buff, for instance, so that a turn with that buff wasn't wasted closing the distance to melee.
When fighting, 90% of what I did was buff with the speed spell and heal with regenerate (eventually peppered War Cry into there as well, and took the recover breath ability that lets you get stamina back, even though I had no breath weapon.) My stats were pretty even except for Cunning - I invested no points into Cunning.
Occasionally I would try to direct monsters with kill orders, but most of the time, fights were in 2 tile corridors, and enemy monster groups are pretty good at the "retreat and recover" tactic. Ultimately, I ended up with two heavy hitters and a healer and I let them do their thing. Tried a couple times to organize a different strategy, but this was just plain powerful and suffered less from stamina attrition, which is a huge problem if you are relying on anything other than melee, especially with the prevalence of the Infection status debuff. I suppose that this is intended to make players desummon/resummon more, but that's two whole turns, dude!
Anyway, I let my allies do their thing while I buffed, healed and unsummoned when they were about to die, occasionally popping in to take a few cheap shots. When high level allies acquired a range of abilities, their actions seemed more and more difficult to predict, so I focused less on what they were doing and more on what I was doing; I was the only sane member of my party.
Speed is a very powerful buff. Once I had a couple guys who could fight, Speed + Regen + Flesheater + Counterattack made them very hard to take down. I hate to say it, but probably OP (though it could be easily undermined by monsters who are immune to physical damage.)
Last, but not least, you can attempt to recruit certain monsters to get a free ally with no penalties, make an enemy go neutral, etc., even if you have no intention of keeping them. This has a huge effect and is begging to be exploited.
5) Haha, I'm happy to be an armchair dev and tell you all the ways you should make your game like the game of my dreams, but just like you're hesitant to ask a jillion questions, I'm hesitant to offer a jillion suggestions or comments. But if I were to keep it brief, I'd say:
a) demon fusion should be more random and the monster hierarchy should be way more expansive (obviously the latter must be a WIP)
b) you should be able to direct your monsters a little better
c) i really enjoy that you've created a wide variety of recruitment tactics - delightful stuff
d) please make the game open world, with persistent towns, shops, procedurally generated quests, procedurally generated monster types, and please ensure that the mathematically sound principles you are using to determine the ebb and flow of the tides on the perfectly scaled globe take into account the fact that there are now two moons in the sky
e) seriously though, this is the kind of game that NEEDS to be expanded!
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Thanks for writing up this feedback. :D This is a big help. :D BTW: 6600+ would put you in first place for this version so far. :D 2nd was 6100 or so.
I agree the large fights are probably when things get the most interesting. It's been tempting to try and stack the deck a bit more towards those, but I worry about that becoming overly taxing.
I've been pretty pleased with how the enemy summoners turned out. :) It's funny how just wanting them to behave like a human-controlled summoner (i.e.: not letting minions die) ended up leading to the other features you noticed (having to fight and being able to recruit survivors.)
Now wait a minute. :D What's wrong with Mind? :D Well, I don't expect everyone to like every build or anything. :D Mind's actually one of my favorites though: early access to Sleep makes a lot of things easier to deal with (a lot of chase captures become trivial when you can naptime what you're chasing. :D ) Ego Theft is iffy at first, but it shuts down other Mind-users, and once it can power something stronger than Hypnotic Gaze (like Madness or Alluring, or one of the area-effect versions), it gets pretty nice. It isn't flashy though.. it's probably one of the lowest damage starts. If you want to give Mind another chance at some point,I recommend Mind/Elec, Mind/Debuff, or Mind/Heal. :D
Speaking of Melee/Healing, I do have an odd issue with melee balance I'm thinking on at the moment though: players tend to think melee is weak/too risky for themselves, but tend to love it for their pets. A lot of the issue is definitely the fact that the player's death == game over. In theory, the AI doesn't aim for the player more than his allies (it's based largely on a combination of "how scary you are to me" and "how quickly I think I could kill you"), but right now, the player has a hard time getting on the good side of that second half of the equation. This will probably be addressable once I add Demon's equivalent of the "race" choice from DCSS: choosing your relic. The gauntlet characters wear now is basically the "human" option, but there will definitely be relics that favor melee in various ways and hopefully make it more viable. For the other side of it, a lot of people win with melee pets, but I'm not as sure that's a problem yet... keeping an eye on it though. :)
Stair-dancing probably needs more nerfing.. I've been nerfing it in steps, but I don't think it's where I want it yet. :) I've got a few ideas in store, one of the bigger ones being Demon's version of DCSS' timed portals. No timer, but if you leave a floor of the tower by the main tower stairways, any of these portals present close, even if you haven't seen them yet. That *might* be enough to discourage it... might even be too harsh? Dunno, but not quite ready to tackle that anyway so I've got some time to noodle. :D
The Speed buff spell was recently buffed to have more effect but being shorter duration. It is supposed to be pretty good, Haste usually is in any roguelike. :D But, I'll keep an eye on it.
Stamina + ranged/magic is something else I'm still wrestling with. On the one hand, being able to potentially get 4-5 free attacks on a melee is powerful and feels like it needs to have a decently high cost. On the other hand, the practical result is you maybe kill 1 or 2 melees than are out of stamina once the remaining ones get in your face... and some melees deny you the 4-5 hits anyway by charging into combat with you via Pounce or Bull Rush. I haven't taken a stand on this yet, but it's definitely on my mind.
Recruiting as a "diversion" tactic will definitely have a penalty at some point, some ideas I'm tossing around in my head:
* Distrust Spread: Failing a capture attempt horribly (ex: you start a chase capture and don't even follow it, something where it's obvious you just wanted it out of the way and never intended to capture it) may cause Distrust to spread throughout every character who saw it happen, not just your original target.
* Reputation: The negotiation mechanic already uses this in a very, very rough (and sadly nearly invisible) fashion... a high number of recentish failed captures might count against you, making future attempts you really want to succeed more difficult or even impossible.
* Bitter Enemy: Failed capture targets may attempt to escape the level and, if successful, show up later via ambush with nasty (and fully Distrustful) friends. In essence, some captures already have this sort of "dire consequences for failure" clause, for example, Chachapuma, which remain Heroic even after a failed attempt.
* Limits on Capture Attempts: Not as big a fan of this atm, but I've considered this too.
Re: the suggestions. :D
1) 100% agree. :D Expanding the monster list is definitely a high priority. I have to split my time between it and systems for now, but I plan to have a much, much larger roster.
2) I do want to expand the control options a *little* for monsters, but not too much. I definitely don't want it to turn into something where you feel like you have to micro them or need to micro them.
3) Thanks. :D I have more types planned too. :)
4 and 5) :D I understand completely! Don't worry, I don't plan to stop anytime remotely soon. Demon will be much, much bigger before I'm done with it. :)
Thanks again for playing and writing up the feedback. :) The current build is mostly responses to prior feedback (largely in UI areas) and dungeon art improvements, but next build will be a content push. So hopefully there won't be a super crazy long wait for a tower containing some new challenges for you to tackle if you're up for it. :) Cheers!
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How you like me now, Ferret? 2 for 2. :)
Do you have a forum or something? I would like to follow this game more closely... it's been the first RL to really draw me in for quite a while.
(http://s13.postimg.org/5a3palqnr/2_for_2.jpg)
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Alright you. :P Now I'm shifting from purely "awesome, someone loves Demon!" to a hopefully healthy mix of that and "cartoon villain fist shaking and vowing to come back stronger than ever" :P
I have a devblog and a forum. :D http://demon.ferretdev.org and http://forum.ferretdev.org/ respectively.
I'll confess, the forum is a bit.. lightly attended. Whoever said "if you build it, they will come" never made an internet forum. :P I do have about 3 other semi-regular users, but it's one of those things: not many people post there because not many people post there. Would love to have another person using it! Notably, it does have a high score thread, and you'd currently have #1 for this version. Post the screenshot in that thread and take the bragging rights! (The highest score ever was 14152 on the previous version, that was a 3rd cycle death.. you'd be #2 on overall high scores.)
BTW: In terms of content, the current build could be compared to the trip to (not to and through!) the Lair in DCSS. :D Fairly similar to DCSS, the Tower is intended to have 30 floors, plus a hefty amount of 'side' content you investigate as you climb up (you may have seen a teeeny bit of that side content already perhaps if the RNG has favored you, but what's there now is mostly just a "dungeon branches, do they even work?" sort of thing) This is definitely not intended to be as evil/deep as it gets. :D Be ready for future builds to get a bit meaner past the current "end game". :)
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(http://s13.postimg.org/vbfq87bfb/image.jpg)
Okay, my third cycle win with this guy. This time went Mind / Elec. Did not find Mind to be very useful except for putting certain enemies to sleep, which is how I recruited Victor. The fact that these Mind abilities interfered with the use of group buffs like War Cry cemented my opinion that Mind is not so great.
There was one point where my group was fighting about 12 other enemies (including the bikini babe unique) in a 2-tile hallway, and truth be told, I almost died. I'd initially tried the old go-to of turning a centaur into an allied hero. He was promptly torn to shreds and I was suddenly alone. Within a couple turns, I was majorly poisoned, stun-locked by the cavemen, and using every rune I had to try and put guys to sleep or charm them so I could get some breathing room to resummon. I think the only reason I lived was because of the Diehard trait.
But that entire scenario came about because I was being completely reckless - I voluntarily unsummoned my entire team in favor of one centaur who was surrounded on all sides. At this point - and I've sunk maybe 15 hours into this game off and on - I'm pretty confident that I could indefinitely extend this win cycle. So I do think that either the difficulty needs to be ramped up, or - and this is my preference - the randomness factor could be ramped up. You spoke about a temporary portal ala DCSS as a way of forcing the player forward. I think that's a great idea. Some kind of reason to take risks and push forward is essential to a good roguelike. Except in the case of TOME, apparently... still have no idea why people like that game. :)
Some other ideas to make the game more brutal: maybe the penalty for failing to recruit an enemy monster is that they pull something from the bag of misfortune, something akin to DCSS miscast effects. Maybe their buddies get stronger or they have a chance of summoning other monsters. Maybe there is even a chance of this happening regardless of whether you're attempting to recruit.
Maybe in addition to items on the ground, there are treasure chests or anomalies or whatever that might drop goodies and might also put you in a world of hurt.
This may be pushing it, but: in SMT, there is something like an initiative roll at the beginning of an encounter. Sometimes enemies are automatically hostile, sometimes they are asleep, sometimes they get the drop on you and automatically attack, and so forth. Maybe some mechanic to this effect? Enemies are "afraid of you" (accuracy down), "enraged by you" (offense up), "curious about you" (easier to recruit), "rushing you in a frenzy" (free pounce-type attack??) Stuff like that. I'd also like it if enemies sometimes initiated conversation, e.g. "You win! Let me live and take this heal stone!"
One thing in particular I've noticed is that auto-hit abilities are definitely the way to go. For some reason, these are often very inexpensive abilities to use, and in many cases, they also have at-will targeting available. Very, very strong. My vote would be: make them a little more powerful and significantly more expensive, or extend their cooldown (thinking of Punish and Agony et al.)
Last, but not least, I think that regenerate is overpowered. I like that Mend applies a status effect, but an auxiliary healer with the player casting regenerate makes for a really, really tanky team. Most of the time, a well-placed buff and a few regen spells, maybe switch out a weakened guy for a stronger one, is really all that it takes to win.
P.S. One thing that I love about SMT is that you really get to know your team. You appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, you know who does what, and you know what to do in a given scenario. I don't feel this yet from Demon. It feels like it moves too fast for that, and your demons are very disposable. In general, my strategy is "strong guys first, and if one is about to die, replace it with the next best guy." If that were my strategy with SMT: Strange Journey, I'd be all kinds of dead.
And, again, of course, thank you for hours of free entertainment :)
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Though I agree with you that this may be suggesting things are a bit too easy right now, congrats on Win #3 regardless. :) Easy or not, no one has managed that before as far as I know, even though there have been a few who have beaten the content non-consecutively several times. If posted in the Forum of Near Solitude (http://forum.ferretdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12), you'd have the #1 score of all time. :)
The Mind thing might be coming down to playstyle, at least a little: If you've fallen in love with the AE buffs, Mind's going to start on shaky ground, since it tends to ask you to choose between "cheap, high success, Presence-based" effects and "very expensive, moderate success" effects.
...but, I will say not helping matters is Mind is relatively under-represented in low level Demons at the moment, and that needs to change. I mean, Stone Soup is willing to throw Confuse at you on D:2, not sure why I soft-pedal and wait until Atua on T:7 or 8. :D This is something I hope to address in the build after this one, which will pretty much entirely be content. Fire, Ice, Elec, and Body (not counting physical attacks/passives that happen to inflict Body effects), and Dark suffer from this issue too: it takes a long time to find new, interesting abilities in these elements, often you only get access to basic stuff early on.
I definitely want to add some more ways to place the player in high risk / high reward situations. The suggestions you've made for that (DCSS portals, increased penalties recruitment going wrong, encounter modifiers, treasure/trap objects) are all strong ideas for this. :D
I've been looking at the auto-hit abilities, both from the auto-hit direction and the "maybe normal attacks miss too much" direction. The auto-hits are usually cheap because they have cooldowns + target restrictions... but I may be giving these restrictions too much of a 'refund' and/or undervaluing how nice free target and auto hit are. Most of these are the sort of thing it's hard to mathulus out a correct cost for, just takes iteration and feedback. :D Going to try out some tweaks in either the next build and/or the following content push build.
I did want to ask for more info on this one bit:
P.S. One thing that I love about SMT is that you really get to know your team. You appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, you know who does what, and you know what to do in a given scenario. I don't feel this yet from Demon. It feels like it moves too fast for that, and your demons are very disposable. In general, my strategy is "strong guys first, and if one is about to die, replace it with the next best guy." If that were my strategy with SMT: Strange Journey, I'd be all kinds of dead.
Can you give me any info on how the game feels too fast in this regard?
Thanks again for the awesome feedback. :D I'm pretty jazzed that you've had enough fun to play it 15 hours. It's early yet and I definitely still have a ton of work to do to get Demon where it should be, but it's encouraging to see folks can find a fair bit of fun in it even now. :D
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What is autoattack damage based on? Just strength?
I feel like every fight in this game is too isolated from everything else. There's no penalty to winning with a lot of damage, and no particular reward for winning efficiently. I can avoid any long term loss by sending my demons away before they die, and there's no time limit to stop me from healing to 100% in between encounters.
My favorite thing are all the different weird requirements to befriend the demons. Racing against a dog monster and feeding an unwanted minion to a reptile monster so they join your cause are both much cooler than a charisma check.
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Actually, my real favorite thing is the interesting tactical options that come from the recruiting system.
"Sure mister dog, I'll race you, let's go!" Then he returns a few minutes later and says "Why didn't you come?" But then he sees that all of his friends are dead and he is alone.
My least favorite thing is how everything misses all the time and all of my attacks feel weak.
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More feedback is yay. :) From the top:
1) Yep, basic attack damage is based on Strength.
2) I understand what you mean about fights being isolated. The full rest bit is largely by current design: the encounters are balanced assuming you get to do that (but of course, you don't always: sometimes monsters wander up to you, other times you're under a capture clock, and that's when things get extra interesting.) A food clock is the usual way of dealing with these issues, but I'm noodling a bit to see if I can think of any alternatives. I don't have any major objection to food clock mechanics, I just want to see if I can come up with any other interesting options. :D There are other answers that can work on an occasional basis, such as DCSS' timed portals, but I'm curious to see if there are other game-wide options as opposed to 'only when they come up' ideas.
3) I'm glad you're enjoying the capture mechanics. :D And yes, it's definitely meant to provide an alternative way to deal with combat. :) It might be a little TOO good at that in some cases... I've got it on my list of things to think about and address if needed. (That's a crowded list though.)
4) Base hit rate is going to be adjusted in the next build. I recently largely factored out level from the equation, which had been disguising the fact that the 70% base rate isn't all that great. I'm going to try 85% next and see how that goes. :)
5) The low damage bit is a bit trickier. Combat in Demon involves a larger number of combatants, and they use fairly good AI (including an instinct to focus fire, aim for low HP targets, etc.) The result of that is if attacks could 2-4 shot targets, there would be a fair amount of insta-gibbing going on. So, combat is balanced more towards 6-8 hits to kill a target: this is so that even if you run into a full pack of 4 or 5 enemies and they all manage to have a way to nail you on Turn 1, you're still alive on Turn 2 to have at least one chance to react. That one chance is important: one turn insta-gibs of the player or his buddies pretty much shouldn't happen ever (and I tend to get grumpy when they do in other roguelikes, looking at you ToME.)
The other way you could theoretically address this is by having enemies have less HP so that at least the player can 3-4 shot things even if enemies can't... but, in Demon, your enemies are also your allies. I'd have to tweak them when you recruit them in order to prevent them from in turn being 2-4 shot by enemies. But, at that point, your party has a pretty strong advantage over enemies: they're balanced to be 2-4 shot, you're balanced to be 6-8 shot.
Anyway, all of that aside, it's certainly possible that the numbers need to be adjusted: 6-8 may not be the right number to use, but I figured why I should explain why I may not have a lot of room to move on this one in Demon.
Thanks for giving Demon a try and providing feedback, I appreciate it. :D
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P.S. One thing that I love about SMT is that you really get to know your team. You appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, you know who does what, and you know what to do in a given scenario. I don't feel this yet from Demon. It feels like it moves too fast for that, and your demons are very disposable. In general, my strategy is "strong guys first, and if one is about to die, replace it with the next best guy." If that were my strategy with SMT: Strange Journey, I'd be all kinds of dead.
Can you give me any info on how the game feels too fast in this regard?
Well...
You'll stick with a group that has synergy for a very long time in SMT. Monsters unlock new high-level abilities that you only see after sticking with them for 5-10 XL level gains. You become acutely aware of their elemental affinities and weaknesses, because a lack of awareness there results in a very quick death. You'll plan out demon fusion candidates several levels ahead of time; you might even recruit a monster for the sole purpose of fusing it. All of those decisions are important and irreversible.
In Demon, while I might frown a little when they kill my Tudak, I know it's not a very big deal. He's not particularly different from any other bruiser for most practical purposes, and since I have no control over him, what differences exist I don't always notice - or need to notice.
Point being, in SMT, if I brought my skeleton knight [WEAK: IMPACT] into the floor full of club-wielding ogres, I'd just lose, and I'd lose for as long as I continued with this bad strategy. Affinities, weaknesses, and synergies are immensely pronounced. This gives every decision huge weight and has the effect of slowing down the player, making them think. The other main difference is that a slog through an SMT floor/maze/trapfest/M.C. Escher dungeon is so protracted and so very much about *attrition* that you can't help but learn the cruel logic of the game. With Demon, you don't really have to learn yet, and you don't have to know your allies. So, it's literally a quicker game, and emotionally... has less impact?
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Thanks for the extra info. :)
Gaining abilities with levels is something I'm looking into: it wasn't an option early on when the ability pool was small, but it is becoming more feasible as the ability pool grows and lessens the size of the pool of abilities I'd need to implement to hand out as evolution bonuses. I agree that it's a good way to add value to demons as individuals (I always was a little grumpy with Strange Journey for not really doing it, other than through the D-Source mechanic), and I also think it would give me way to help players have a few extra chances to secure "key" abilities (Cleanse, for example.) It also allows me introduce abilities *without* having to first put them in the hands of an enemy.
I've been a little gentle with how resistances/weaknesses work up to this point, mostly because the player always has one weakness and I don't want to turn into ToME or anything in terms of insta-death. On the other hand, as I was discussing with Vanguard, there's a definite (and not small) possibility I don't have the balance right yet on damage and health in general. It's almost certain I don't in at least some areas: the "team melee monsters" strategy is by far the most commonly successful at the moment. I'm going to take some steps to hopefully correct some of this in the next build, but the following content build will probably be where the larger part of that happens.
Thanks again! :D
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The 2/1 build is up and ready for play. :) PC, Mac, and Linux versions available here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web)
Lots of changes in this one, so let me just hit the highlights here:
* The new art style is in for the Tower. :D
* Fire attacks now sometimes cause Ignite, a brief damage over time effect.
* The base hit rate for damaging abilities has been increased, from 70 to 85%.
* Damage and healing (from direct effects such as Healing Charm, Mending, etc.) have been increased.
* Passive healing (Regen, Flesheater, etc.) has been toned down a bit.
* HP differences between demons have been smoothed out a bit. Demons used to vary as much as n to 4n in HP, now it's more like n to 2n. This was accomplished both by bringing up the lower end of the spectrum as well as toning down the upper end, so the result should be more "viable" ally choices and less reliance on HP-loaded "beef steak" monsters.
* Resistances and Weaknesses now have a bigger impact on the effectiveness of an ability. (Be very careful fighting enemies who can hit your main character's Weakness!)
* SP costs related to damage and range have been reduced.
* Several small UI and usability improvements, most of which will be self-evident, but of special note is the new Examine hotkey, which finally allows a keyboard-only way to get character sheets for enemy characters.
I would consider this about the halfway point of addressing the excellent gameplay and balance-related feedback I've received from folks here playing the 1/4 build. (In essence, it was the half I felt I could add into this build without delaying its release overly much.) The other half of things will be a bit more work to get done, but I'm okay with that, gives me a chance to see if these changes are headed in the right direction or not. :) *I* think they are, but I'm in that odd position where I suspect other people may be better at my game than I am. so we'll see. :D
Tradition more or less demands I post a screenshot, so here's one showing off the new dungeon art, some of the UI changes, and a couple of Gandayah learning about the new Ignite effect Fire magic can cause. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/mfusTtA.png) (http://i.imgur.com/mfusTtA.png)
Next up, a content and balance push. :) See you around, and good luck in the Tower. :)
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Nicely assorted heap of progress there---2015 definitely looking up for this project at this rate as you tinker away at it. 8)
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Nicely assorted heap of progress there---2015 definitely looking up for this project at this rate as you tinker away at it. 8)
Thanks. :D
Speaking of progress, I just updated the build at the links to the 2/4 version: nothing tooooo exciting, just fixes a couple of minor to moderate bugs and balance issues identified by players since 2/1's release. :D Didn't want these to have to wait for the next build since it was still in the design phase, so I went ahead and knocked them out now. :)
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A new set of PC, Mac, and Linux builds are out with a few more bug fixes and bits of clean up before I hide in a hole to do the artwork for 19 new demons and their abilities. :) Here's the link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Speaking of the new demons, the demons and their abilities have been chosen in part to address some of the balance issues discussed up-thread regarding melee vs. ranged/magic, in fact, all 19 of them are being added to the existing 17 floor tower. In particular, look for Fire, Ice, Electricity, Mind, Light, Body, and Dark to have significantly expanded options, both in terms of available abilities, and demons well-suited to using them. For anyone curious, here's the list of the incoming new demons:
T 1: Remora (Ice)
T 1: Will o' Wisp (Pierce/Dark)
T 2: Huo Shu (Fire)
T 2: Raicho (Electricity)
T 3: Zar (Slash/Mind)
T 4: Acheri (Body/Dark)
T 5: Bmola (Ice)
T 6: Lilim (Mind)
T 7: Demas (Fire)
T 8: Chindi (Body/Debuff)
T 9: Akateko (Dark)
T10: Eloko (Mind/physical)
T11: Shisa (Light)
T12: Oni (physical)
T13: Banshee (Mind/Heal)
T14: Vishap (Electric)
T15: Unicorn (Heal)
T16: Wendigo (Ice/physical)
T17: Ruler (Light/Buff)
Early reports suggest the 2/4 build did a fair bit to improve balance, feel, and pace of things, so I'm very excited to see where I end up after this next build. :)
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Ten pieces of character art for the next content push have been completed. :) Here's an Imgur album with a peek at these new friends/foes:
http://imgur.com/a/6WSoa#0 (http://imgur.com/a/6WSoa#0)
I haven't mastered everything in them yet by any stretch, but the pixel art tutorials koiwai linked earlier are helping a fair bit. :D Thanks again koiwai. :D
Once I finish the remaining nine pieces, the main tasks left will be ability icon art, implementation of the new demons, and adding them into the encounter tables :D A fair bit of work still to go, but I think this build will close much of the remaining distance on tightening up the gameplay balance.
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And here's the other nine characters, also with accompanying Imgur album. :D
http://imgur.com/a/tdNyY#0 (http://imgur.com/a/tdNyY#0)
The Yeti might be the best piece I've ever done. :D Little less happy with Lilim, Eloko, and Vishap, but I'm still new to wings, different humanoid poses, and "pudgy" humanoids so I expected those to be a bit twitchy.
On to the ability icons!
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I love the way this game looks! It's retro and awesome :D Keep up the great work. Are you planning on getting this on Steam?
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Thanks! Steam would be great... :D But, I feel like I have a long way to go yet before I can consider that. :D
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Yeah, looks super awesome!
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:D Thanks!
I just finished the new ability icons for the *50* new abilities coming in this content push. Now at long last, I can finally get to implementation of all the goodies. :D
(http://i.imgur.com/vExYArk.png)
I'm working to get this build ready as quickly as possible: even took a fair chunk of PTO from work this coming week to free up some extra cycles. :D I'll be back to announce the build is ready ASAP. :)
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Hey there. :) Sorry for the extra long delay between posts, but it has been for a good cause: the next build of Demon is ability complete. :D All of the new abilities (50 of them), as well as tweaks to existing abilities, required for the new content have been completed. This also means that the build is nearly monster complete: only thing left for them is setting up their capture conditions.
After that, the two steps remaining will be coming up with new spawn tables that include the new monster roster (and account for changes in first appearance position for some older monsters), and some testing to make sure it's all working reasonably well. Then, finally, at long last, this monster of an update will be ready to release. :)
Hang in there, it won't be long now! :)
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And, boom! :D The new build is finally ready!
The link on the first post still works, but here's another copy of it located here for easy access: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The changes that have been packed in here in the last two months are fairly extensive. Here's a quick summary of the highlights:
* 19 new monsters, including 4 new starter monsters. These have been added entirely to the existing 17 floors to increase encounter variety and balance in ability type distribution.
* 50 new abilities, and many changes to existing abilities. Many of these abilities touch previously underutilized elements, such as Fire, Ice, Electricity, Mind, Light, and Dark.
* New mechanics, including: cantrips, staggering, capture failure penalties.
* Significantly harder encounters, especially as you get further up the tower.
* A new status condition of the Dark element, Hex, which lowers physical offense and defense significantly.
* A variety of changes to various combat/progression formulas to bring the challenge level overall up to what I'm aiming for, and to balance out the various available strategies.
Here is a collection of screenshots showing a rather brief run I had in the new build with an Ice/Dark summoner. :) I edited these into the first post too, the original ones I posted were pretty out of date, especially on art and UI.
(http://i.imgur.com/wuBXK2i.png) (http://i.imgur.com/wuBXK2i.png) (http://i.imgur.com/csl9PNT.png) (http://i.imgur.com/csl9PNT.png) (http://i.imgur.com/R83dIfs.png) (http://i.imgur.com/R83dIfs.png) (http://i.imgur.com/SrNoBJ0.png) (http://i.imgur.com/SrNoBJ0.png) (http://i.imgur.com/zrcwWRV.png) (http://i.imgur.com/zrcwWRV.png)
I hope this build proves challenging and fun, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart: Even I'm having a very, very low success rate these days. :D Still, if I can always trace the deaths to reasonable mistakes (which is the case so far), I'm okay with pretty much any death % shy of 100% :P Good luck everyone!
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Awesome, congrats on this next big release update! 8)
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Thanks. :D Of course... it wouldn't be a big release update if a crasher bug hadn't managed to slip in. :P At least it was a relatively rare one, and even better, it's already fixed!
The same links from before will now bring you to the 4/19 build, which fixes an annoying crash that would rarely happen while trying to capture demons in the presence of another demon with the Bolt Chain passive.
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This build might be a little mean. :) So far, the high score is only 2674 (https://twitter.com/yaxamie/status/590905108570865665), even among folks who had beaten the game in previous incarnations.
That said, I do acknowledge this build is probably a little *too* mean... but not by a lot. If we were to call my goal for Demon's overall challenge level a 100, I would say that recent previous builds feel like they were in the 70-80 range, and this build feels like it is in the 105-110 range. It's off in the "too evil" direction rather than the "too easy", but the distance from the intended amount of challenge is less from before, so this is still progress. :)
If anyone can manage to beat 2674, let me know. :D I have a feeling it might stand for awhile (or at least until I make the next round of tweaks to try and bring 105-110 down to 100. :) )
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4/26 build is out. :) Here's a handy link, for PC, Mac, and Linux: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
4/26 is mostly balance tweaks intended to put Demon closer to its target challenge level including tweaks to how stats work, changes to item drop tables (especially on the lower floors of the Tower), and a few adjustments to specific demons, such as the dreaded Raicho. :P
However, it also fixes a few bugs, including a nasty typo or two in the spawn tables that could cause horrors like the one shown here:
(http://i.imgur.com/QCAQ3o3.png)
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What an awesome game! Attempting pure summoner in DCSS is a bad strategy, and my computer isn't powerful enough to emulate the SMT games, which I've always wanted to play. So thanks. First score... 193, but I'll get better. I do have three small wishes:
* F11 <toggle fullscreen> key usually doesn't work. This is the linux build.
* Fonts are the game's least appealing element. Unlike the tiles (look awesome btw, esp. floor & wall) which resize well, whenever the the game's size is changed the fonts become pixelated and unattractive. I like playing 1920x1200 @ fullscreen.
* Scriptable download link to most recent version, something I can but in a bash script to get the latest version iff one is available.
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Thanks for trying Demon out, and for the compliments and feedback. :D 193's not too bad for a start (sounds like the 2nd floor somewhere); plenty of people get 0 multiple times before they start putting any points on the board at all.
#1: I haven't heard of F11 problems on other platforms, and I'm kind of in a weird place on Linux builds: I can make them, but I don't actually have a Linux box to test them on. :( (It wasn't until a few months back when koiwai volunteered to help me out that I even had a way to verify they ran at all!) That makes Linux-specific bugs a little tricky to address. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try though. :)
I did a little research on Google, and there is minor evidence (i.e.: a single bug report filed with Unity :P ) that Linux doesn't necessarily play along with Unity games' requests regarding window size and full screen status. That would possibly explain why F11 isn't working consistently. Not entirely sure how to proceed from there though. Is there any pattern to when F11 does and doesn't work for you? (Note: It is a known issue that it currently only works when it is the player's turn in the main game: it won't work in menus or during character creation, for examples. I need to get around to making it available at a system level instead of as a player command.)
#2: The font is pretty old. :) I do plan to upgrade it in the future, but it's waiting in line behind the fun stuff (more levels, being able to choose between different relics (equivalent to races in DCSS), vaults, etc.) I agree it's a bit rough though.
#3: Hmm.. what sort of link would you need for the bash scripts? Maybe I can kick Google Drive the right way and get a direct download link out of it if that's what you need? Apologies for requesting hand-holding on this more or less, but I'm pretty much a zero on Linux knowledge. :(
Thanks again, and good luck on your future runs! :D
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Thanks for the response. Just got 493 on L3 but died on that level rather quickly. Was Lightning/Mind. Anyway:
#1: I can't reproduce the F11 problem anymore. I must've been pressing F11 like crazy during the menus. Thought I remembered otherwise but since I can't reproduce it all, ...
#2: Yeah I've been playing more and agree, fun stuff is more important. The game kind-of gets tedious rather quickly. (more below)
#3: A static link (pointing to latest release) works but increases bandwidth (not sure if you care about this). Otherwise a link that includes the date or version number would work perfectly.
Gameplay:
Interface: I really miss DCSS's describe functionality: x for look (you already have this), = for select monster tile, and v for describe (as opposed to the mouseover or leftclick). IMO anything that reduces mouse<->keyboard switching.
Spawning: Keep stairs well separated and/or monster spawn-sites well away from stairs. Once both L2->L3 (or L1->L2, not sure) where within five tiles of each other and surrounded by: 2xMalingee, 2xRaichoo, 2XWill-O'Wisp (I think) and possibly some other monsters. Well there definitely where more monsters after I experimentally evoked the stone of trouble (or something like that). Suffice to say I died quickly.
Gameplay: Tedious and too much kiting/stair-hopping. Plus something fishy with monster positions.
Fishy monster locations: Monsters often travel in pairs so I like using hypnotic gaze to separate them and deal with them one-at-a-time.
1] I freeze one, lure the other away, but when I close in I find that the second is only a few tiles behind the first
2] I freeze one, and when I return it has moved further than I can account for considering # of turns that have passed.
and unrelated to hypnotic gaze:
3] Monster position after leaving/re-entering LOS is unusual.
Tedious: Bear in mind I haven't passed L3 so possible gameplay changes. My opinion is that gameplay is mostly undifferentiated and focuses solely in which monsters to summon, train, and how to support them during combat. There aren't really any higher level tactics. You probably have more experience with this than me, but I'm comparing to DCSS which is of-course a high bar. I still love this game and will continue playing it. I have some suggestions, they might not make much sense and are inspired by DCSS, but:
1] More variable maps: (a small amount) of 1-width hallways
2] AOE map effects: gas-clouds, flammable forests
3] Spells that interact with map: collapse hallway (wand of digging), explode hallway/solid-creature (deconstruction), ignite flora
4] Differentiated monster personalities / AI. They all "feel" the same during combat or during chase (running away :))
5] Better monster-hunting-for-player when player leaves LOS. I don't think this game considers noise at all, so stealth-characters are excluded. IIRC all out-of-LOS monsters drawn to some of my fights were within LOS of my summons.
6] More control of summons (ie tell to follow "me" rather than waste turns dismissing/summoning)
I'm not sure how faithful to SMT series you are trying to be (never played), so the above may not be applicable. Perhaps this happens at higher levels, but in DCSS when you summon menagerie, or forest, or hydra, or horrible things, there is a real sense of satisfaction. You know your opponents are in for one heck of an ***-kicking.
Sorry, I hope this wasn't too harsh. You probably have a lot of "fun" features already planned that will flesh-out the game, so I don't mean to steal your thunder. This is still the most ingenious roguelike I've ever encountered.
Oh yeah one more thing - a nice touch. I really like the ratholes within the walls (the blinking red eyes). First time I steered clear away from them.
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Oh, One last thing, this is important. Hunting the map for that last enemy to recruit/link can be dangerous: the map is big, there is no over-map to guide you (assuming you remember the position), and so I tend to mash the direction keys. Depending how dangerous the creature is, and because the UI lags behind the input/events just a little bit, I could accidentally blaze right past it and collect much damage, possibly even die (esp. ranged creatures). So I was thinking it would be nice if there was a version of O that keeps track of remaining previously-seen creatures and actively hunts them down (stopping when detected/in-LOS).
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Re bugs:
#1: No problem. :D
#2: See below. :D
#3: Hmm.. I can convince Google Drive to give me https://docs.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hXzJaWFN5ZXhLNkE&export=download (https://docs.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hXzJaWFN5ZXhLNkE&export=download) that, but I'm not sure if it will keep working when I update later with a new version.
Other points:
Interface: This shouldn't be too hard to add, I think most of the pieces are there. :) DCSS was a major influence on my interface design, but I haven't implemented everything I want on that score yet (much of the missing support is in the mouse category though.)
Spawning: Agreed, I've been seeing a few reports of nasty starter stair-camps since 4/19 (which was a sharp increase in the game's difficulty level.) I'll need to add some code to force spawns away from stairs (shouldn't be too hard, I already do this for the player spawn on T:1 after all)
Tedious, 1: The game's difficulty level was recently adjusted sharply upward. I think it's *close* to what I want, but it may still be running a little hot, which would account for feeling like kiting and stair-dancing are overly necessary. (I actually kind of loathe stair-dancing as a tactic myself, so I understand why it'd feel tedious if you felt the encounters were constantly nasty enough to force it.) I'm still collecting feedback from folks to see how close to "just right" I've got the encounter difficulty. If you continue playing, I would be curious to know if you feel like the need for these tactics diminishes as you get more runs under your belt.
Fishy Monster Locations: I tried reproducing the first two of these behaviors, but didn't have any luck. Do you remember what monsters were involved? Might be something involving their specific abilities. Also: Sleep is unusual in that it has a highly random duration, unlike most debuffs which last a set duration, it can wear off quite quickly (2 turns) sometimes. I could see something like what you describe being in the first two points being caused by Sleep hits that got low rolls. As for the third behavior, can you give me more information (what are the in and out of LoS monsters doing that seems strange to you?)
Tedious, 2: Managing your allies is definitely a major component of the game: as you go further up, you'll begin running into enemies with abilities that come at you from many different angles, requiring your party development strategy to adapt to match (at least that's the hope!) Choosing which demons/abilities to keep in your party as you advance is intended to be one of the main challenges. But, no, it isn't supposed to be everything. :)
I felt like the biggest "risks" for Demon were getting the truly unique things: party management, recruitment mechanics, AI that could intelligently use any combination of abilities to the extent players would feel okay with trusting their permadeath lives to it (and find it a sufficient challenge to fight), and handling group-based combat, working. Most (almost all, really) of my early effort has been focused on those things, because if those didn't work, I feel like nothing else would help much. :D
The good news is, I think I'm getting closer to the point where I have those things proven out enough that I can go back and begin to address the non-uniquely Demon elements (better terrain variance, environmental effects and interaction, such as you mentioned) that, when added to the uniquely Demon elements, should spice things up a fair bit. :) Expanding the AI further (both in terms of personalities and options for player control) is also on the schedule.
But until then, to your point about truly impressive summonables: if you want something truly impressive to summon... well, there are Unique demons (first one can appear as early as T:3), and also randomly modified versions of demons, such as a "Fiery Zombie" (these also begin to show up, if very rarely, starting on T:3) These special demons are pretty hard to recruit even when you do encounter them, but they tend to be quite powerful within their weight class so to speak. :D Well-trained, they can become star players with little difficulty.
You can also just make your own nasty demons by loading up normal ones with interesting ability combos. One of my favorite early combos is to teach Swiftness (Speeds up movement) to a Will O' Wisp. Will O' Wisps already have Ghost Pierce (an attack that also moves them through the target) and Evade Step (chance to Dodge on any turn movement occured), slapping Swiftness on them (available from multiple T:1/T:2 enemies) basically acts like perma-Haste. :D All that and you still have 5 other ability slots you can fill as it levels up. :)
Oh, and never worry about coming across as "harsh", please. :) Especially when you're not. :D But, even if you were, it's fine. Demon's still fairly young for a roguelike. DCSS, ToME, and the other great old ones set a very high bar, if I'm going to reach those heights some day, I'm going to need honest feedback to get there, even if it is a little harsh sometimes. Thank you for typing all of this up, and I'm glad you're having fun. :)
PS: The "auto-explore to known creatures" thing is an interesting idea... but critters move around all the time. Not sure how I could make this work without giving the tool knowledge the player wouldn't have. If it just went to where you last saw critters, chances are there would be no one home when you got there unless it was very recent. Hmm... maybe I could make "hunt X other monster" capture types give you map knowledge... or maybe cause it to attract enemies to you? :> I'll think on this and see if I come up with a happy solution. :D
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Boom, 975 on Lvl4(?). This is super addictive - definitely not tedious (what I said above, wrong connotation), but certainly repetitive. I probably could have sacrificed my entire arsenal against those charged pink raichoos and not survived. Honestly no idea what I should have done.
P.S. Figured out the equivalent of DCSS' view (x,=,v), just hit entere ;).
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Regarding spawning: Just had a quite difficult encounter in T:3, the open floor layout. Band of zombies, zars, headless, (lab-coat-dude) at one set of stairs and a band of raichos, fishy-things, malingees and a gandayah at the other. I had to whittle the groups down, focusing on individual creatures and dancing between stairs. It was fun because - well certainly because it was survivable - but also because I had time to summon the correct creatures. Also the party layout mattered quit a bit, sending the faerie to the rear and the echeneis to the front, etc. I think the opponent constitution mattered greatly - for example malingees + riachos|huo-shu would have been much tougher than malingees+echeneis. But the real difference is that the stairs where far apart. If in this case the stairs had been ~5 tiles apart, they would have been swarmed by ~15 creatures == not survivable.
Regarding monster location: Hmm this is complicated, perhaps I should take better note of it. I'm sure you can see the monster positions during play-testing, so perhaps the confusion is the prey-tracking behaviour and the return-to-home behaviour of creatures? I see this mostly with slimes and echeneis. Its possible to lure an individual fish away, being slow, and being dumb the other fish won't flock to follow their friend. But anyway, the fish has a real problem getting distracted, I leave LOS for a single turn and it stops hunting. Sometimes when this happens I backtrack to act as bait once again, but the fish mysteriously vanished. So I return to where I first encountered the flock of fish, lo and behold my fish has returned! I think what I'm seeing is a very binary track/rest system
* see target, track
* don't see target for X (1?) turns return home (?)
Is it really this simple? Its really weird that monsters have a "home" location and don't rove around (possible in a group, or perhaps disband once disturbed). Possibly the fish I was luring decided to return to "base", while we were both moving towards this "base" it was constantly 1-2 tiles out of my LOS? My point is these behaviours don't seem complex enough. Perhaps the fish should, once having lost sight of its prey: make a deduction towards the direction, search for a bit, loose interest, return to its friends. Or perhaps fish, being group creatures, should be unwilling to even separate. And the returning to home notion doesn't make sense for all creatures.
Regarding the first two points, I'm aware that Hypnotic Gaze has a very variable duration, however across multiple casts across multiple games I've never been able to freeze the second slime to lure away the first. Zap, lure away 10+ tiles, return 1 tile and see second slime enter LOS.
Regarding management, I can suggest two more pressing tweaks. First, its impossible to distinguish friend/foe between certain monsters of the same type (happens most often with slimes and echeneis). Same goes for the difference between unique demons and unique heroes: one is recruitable, the other not. So the only way to tell them apart is to attempt a link?
heh, really good point ==> AI that could intelligently use any combination of abilities to the extent players would feel okay with trusting their permadeath lives to it ... Right now, if I give a monster an unusual ability (or a support ability that's not meant to be used often), I just assume (well maybe some finger-crossing & praying, in passing) that the AI will handle the new skills appropriately in combat. So far have no reason to be disappointed.
Regarding combos, I also like Ghost Pierce on Echeneis. Actually I had some really interesting echeneis combos which I've now forgetten. Super-low priority, but I guess that would be a good reason to implement a high-scores viewer (similar to DCSS). Its not that I want "impressive" or "powerful" summonables, its that I feel all the different combos don't differentiate the monsters very much. Probably because I haven't played enough to notice the nuances of the combat, but for the most part the additional abilities don't add anything new. X% stronger, Y% faster, Z movement during attack, etc... these all seem like slight enhancements to existing traits or slightly modifications to the attack, etc. The monster doesn't seem to "evolve", ie once an echeneis, always an echeneis. The initial traits/resistances still seem to matter much more than the individual abilities. Well, so far... I was just completely massacred on L4. I don't think any choice of summons/party/resistances could have kept me alive. Anway, I'm pretty sure I don't know enough about the training system to make good upgrade choices.
Regarding "auto-explore to known creature" I wouldn't mind regular auto-explore-until-stumble-across-known-monster. The monsters don't seem to move much once out of LOS.
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Regarding the harder difficulty you mentioned, you should also consider play-time as well as high-score. Does the game last long enough to make use of the deep mechanics? I'm much more likely to play this than DCSS right now. For example, I won't start a DCSS game until I have an entire weekend free. This game certainly isn't a coffee-break roguelike, but I don't survive much beyond 1-3(unusual, max) hours. But I'm a bad metric - I'm new, and my play times + scores are constantly increasing.
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Modified Raicho packs are probably the deadliest encounter in the early game. Base Raicho have fairly crappy Magic power, limiting the damage they do (though with x1.3 Speed, high accuracy, and a high chance to Shock, they still pose a major threat.) But if they get modified, it tends to be a Magic-boosting modifier, which makes them a whole other color of bad even before considering what new abilities/resistances the modifier granted them. I'm probably going to have to nerf them a little (or maybe make their capture type a flee capture instead of a kill capture so you can 'dismiss' one immediately as a desperation move by feigning a link.) I wouldn't mind a late game monster being that nasty, but Raicho live on T:2+, which is a little early for something behaving as overall nasty as they are: a couple of people have told me they have nightmares about them. :P
The encounter you described w/ the zombies, zars, headless, and West is the sort of encounters I'm aiming for in general. :D Not all of them should or will be that intense, but I definitely think it's when the gameplay is at its strongest. :D I'm very happy you felt that sending in the correct creatures was important: an earlier feedback item I got that the difficulty increase was meant to address was that it largely didn't matter what you sent in. :) I felt like I had corrected this based on my own play experiences, but it means much more hearing it from others. :D
So, in response to the AI/tracking business, here is a very rough outline of how it's supposed to work:
1a) If a monster can see enemies and has offensive abilities, it wants to move towards/fight with them.
1b) If a monster can see enemies and doesn't have offensive abilities *and* can see allies who do have offensive abilities, it stays close to those allies, ready to use its (presumably) support abilities. You can see this behavior with Faeries/Gandayah: if alone, they behave like most creatures do, but in groups with actual "fighters", they tend to hang back and support, even if it means they're just passing some turns with nothing to do yet.
2) If it can't see any enemies, but an ally it can see can see enemies, it moves towards the ally.
3) If it can't see any enemies, but it saw some recently leave LoS, it moves to where it last saw them
4) If it has no idea where enemies are but has a leader, it moves towards the leader.
5) If it is a leader, it tries to rejoin with its subordinates if needed, otherwise it wanders around the level.
So, it's not as simple as you feared. :D But, it isn't a noise system either. The behavior you describe sounds like something that could happen if the priority order got mixed up somewhere (i.e.: the fish chasing you decides following its left-behind leader is more important than chasing where it last saw you) I'll take a look at the code for this once I finish my current task and see if anything is wonky. :) That still doesn't explain the slime example though... I'll keep an eye out for that, and play Mind in my test runs for a bit to see if I can repro it that way.
Re: Management: There's a blue box around you and your allies, but you're not the first person who has had trouble seeing it. Maybe I need to pick a different color? I think it might be camoflauging with the current tower terrain colors. The different symbols for unique demon vs. unique human is a good one: I'll see about that in the build after next. :D (I'd put it in the current one, but I'm trying to avoid 2 month turnarounds on builds like I had recently so I'm getting pickier about what gets done immediately.)
:D Funny thing about the ability-using AI: the best feedback to get about it is usually no feedback at all. If it works so well as to be invisible, that's usually a really good sign! I'm glad it hasn't let you down. :D
The base stats/resistances of monsters do matter significantly, and this is by design: I wanted each demon to feel like it had a personality and type. But, it isn't necessarily set in stone either. There's a pair of items you can find (very rare on T:1-T:5, a little more common on T:6+) that will let you adjust a demon's stats and resistances. :D I'll go into more details if you want, but it might be more fun to discover those and see for yourself. :D The early abilities are definitely fairly basic affairs, but there are definitely some more advanced abilities/mechanics that show up as you get higher up in the tower (or, at least I think they are. :D What sort of abilities would you consider to be bigger changes than what you're seeing currently?)
In the past, beating the current content (17 floors) usually takes about 4-6 hours in a single run, but I don't have a whole lot of data on that, particularly after the difficulty increase. Funny that you've mentioned high scores though: the very next build I'm working on is an attempt at tracking and displaying high scores via a server. :) I'm glad you're getting noticeably better as you play, I do get feedback sometimes that people sort of get mired in the T:1-T:2 range and never seem to break out, and that worries me... but then, I've known people that that happens to in other roguelikes (DCSS among them) too. There are definitely players who love and play roguelikes and never beat them (I was in that camp myself for over a year with DCSS, and half my life with Angband) or even get very good at them, so I suppose that is normal or even expected to some degree, but it still bothers me when it comes to Demon. :P
Thanks again for all the awesome feedback. :) Cheers!
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Hey, sorry for the wall of text:
High score of 2579 yesterday playing buff/debuff, and no raicho packs. Previous game (same character build) had an encounter with a deadly pack T:3 or T:4 - I'm not sure which, the levels need to be marked better - that I couldn't avoid. Five regular riacho + 1 modified raicho (absorb max hp). Thanks to haste I could avoid but not outrun them, and the modified riacho seemed able to both keep up and cast that absorb-max-hp spell. Since I couldn't find the stairs (no minimap, *hint* *hint* :) ) that riacho finally wittled my health down to near zero and I accidently ran towards another after recasting haste (j vs k), which killed me instantly. Mentioning the vi-keys by the way, thanks for implementing those. Some roguelike only provide arrows which are OK aside the lack of diagonals, and numpad layouts. I know some people swear by the numpad but I find it actively discomforting - moving the middle/ring/3 finger up/down between 8/2 is almost painful. And then they recommend remapping keys (ToME4, I'm pointing at you) - how am I supposed to remap keys if I don't know the game, which keys are important or related and should be kept, kept together, or discarded. Believe it or not, thats the main reason I never "got into" ToME4. Tangent aside, I also think riachos should be nerfed, but perhaps not in power? A single riacho isn't too deadly, and in my high-score run I did actually encounter three vile raichos (not a "pack") supporting Vikor and some other creatures. They werent too bad because they had a tendency to hang back to cast envenom (I think), there were only three, and this was a higher level, but they forced me to kill Vikor instead of recruiting him, grr. Anyway I suggest reducing the likelihood of large roving raicho gangs at lower levels, or perhaps giving them herd mentality in which the entire flock flees if they've taken too much damage, or perhaps having damage reduce their speed multiplier?
Regarding summoning the correct party in the correct order: at higher levels I'm not sure this matters as much. I didn't die, but actually quit my 2579-score run since my character was in a deadlock. I simply didn't have enough allies to handle Ludoc the Summoner and as he would recall any near-death summons I couldn't kill any. By the way, his summons seem to heal faster than mine - I recall nearly defeating that giant juggernaut creature, having it recalled, fighting some other summoned creatures incuding eventually that very same giant creature. Anyway I started trolling the next higher level for recruits but couldn't do better than break even. For every new recruit, on average I'd loose a previous ally... so eventually I just quit.
I think the AI-tracking system needs more tweaking. Too often I'm being chased by a large pack of disparate creatures (15+ on T:6), and flee then duck behind a corner. When I double back to see if they're still chasing me, they all seem to have disappeared. I was only in LOS of the nearest creature, when I ducked around the corner cutting LOS the entire pack veered off and returned to base. When I doubled-back it seemed they had vanished, though where probably perpetually 1 step ahead of my LOS. This monster party behaviour is extremely annoying:
* Monsters don't loiter around, waiting if you'll show up and perhaps carrying out a limited search in the area they've last seen you (doesn't need to be as sophisticated as a noise system). You double back and it seems they've vanished.
* Nearly all monsters return to home base (Ludoc the summoner is a notable exception, among others). So a 15+ pack chases me from the top-right corner of the map to the center and then disappears. When I go searching for them, they've all returned to the top-right corner of the map. WTF!! I actually like this "return to base" behaviour, no other roguelike I've played has it, but only in small quantities. Not every monster/pack should be predisposed to this.
* Monster's don't disperse. For example, when disturbing a mixed orc/gnoll party in the lower DCSS levels, the gnolls generally stick together as a party (they do move "camp" however) while the orcs actively search me out individually. I find it suprising that a mixed 15+ party of various groups manages (faerie+asrai, absorb-health-snake+lilith, I-forget+I-forget) manages to chase me from halfway around the map and remaing a cohesive bunch.
These problems are slightly exacerbated by Demon's lack of an evasion (stealth, invisibility, ...) system.
You were right about my improving tactics. Now that I know the game more I don't feel the need to kite or stair-dance as much, especially not on the lower levels. But against a pack of 15+ creatures that won't disband!!! The game doesn't provide enough mechanics to separate these creatures. My current tactic to cull such herds is to haste both myself and a target until we are out-of-LOS of the pack, then totally annihilate him 1-2 turns.
So I looked and really (still) don't see this supposed blue box around allies ;), not even a little bit.
Now that I've played the game more I actually have a little bit of AI feedback:
1. stairs and party positioning: Stairs totally disrupt party positioning, for example I've had a malingee/gandayah climb the stairs right in front of me, and come face to face with some monsters, while my riacho appears two tiles behind me. The gandayah is my support creature and though they can give as good as they get in combat for a little while, the riacho - my attack ally - makes to move to swap places with the gandayah (at least not until the gandayah is several damaged).
2. projectiles: do allies attempt to protect me from missles and projectiles? I'm not sure if they do, or its just random movement in front of me while advancing on some enemies. If they don't I wish they would (at least some), and if the do I wish they would do it faster.
3. I've had one case where a specially trained raicho moved to the back of the pack when severaly injured. I've decided to flee, and since we're in a two-tile wide hallway with my other two summons defending the raicho, I decide to flee rather than waste a turn dismissing the raicho. However in the course of two turns, while fleeing, this happened: A heavily damaged enemy retreated, leaving an open gap in the hallway. The injured raicho, instead of holding ground, decided to advance to that empty tile. It died the next turn. This only happened once, and I don't remember of projectile-casting monsters were involved. Did it move into the gap to protect me from a projectile? If so I wish it would've recognized that I was fleeing (it should flee too) and my health was decent enough to absorb a few hits.
Regarding gandayas and unlike fairies (the other support creature), I've never encounted any modified or higher-level gandayas to recruit. This is a serious bummer, my gandaya is completely outclassed mid-game. I mean, it levels up but not enough to support my greater SP needs.
You are right, at higher levels the monsters do get way more interesting. They are differentiated, but only in combat and not in training. This is how I see monsters:
Stats: HP/SP/Speed
Traits: strength, magic, vitality, agility, cunning
Abilities: ...
At first I was upset to lose my starting raicho on T:5 to a hero. But in the previous level I had recruited a modified raicho that was higher level (better stats) and for the most part had better traits (some traits lower, but sum of trait points > starting-raicho-trait-points-sum). True I lost *some* abilities, but the new raicho had an equal mount of different, equally useful abilities. I don't think the game provides enough incentive towards ally levelling and training - newer monsters have better stats/traits and training is too slow (has to be, because it is tied to levelling) to make a difference, or to make you care enough about your trained creatures. Because of the limit on number of allies, because you are always recruiting newer and higher-level monsters, and because of the limit on trainable skills, very often I can't construct and train the creatures I envision.
Aside from abilities, all the creatures are *exactly* the same. In fact, given enough training points, I could recruit a higher level creature X and retrain it to be exactly identical (but more powerful) than creature Y. The only notable exception are high-speed creatures (raicho and those vitality-snakes), because they are rarer. Of course there a some limitations - don't train a low-strength ally in body attacks etc, but generally higher level creatures will have all-around better stat/traits.
The characters don't feel to have "personality", ie they are icons attached to a number table (stats/trait points) with different abilities. And I don't mean personality as in AI behaviour as I suggested previously, though that would certainly help - it would be nice if an injured raicho decided to flee while an injured giant went berserk. No, I mean physical traits. Consider three DCSS summoning spells: Hydra, Snake (to stick), and Summon Butterflies. Hydras have multiple heads, so you'd want to avoid melee combat with a hydra. Because of this physical trait (ignoring the strength on-paper trait), you'd want to train you hydra in melee skills and not, say, fire magic (flame dart, flame orb). Furthermore each head can attack per turn: this unique physically linked-trait differentiates the hydra from many other monsters. Taking this suggestions - physical traits affects ally training - one step further, why not have resistance affect spell powers. DCSS has the idea of conflicting magic schools fire/ice, air/earth, but this is never actually exposed in the UI (poorly implemented). Perhaps (so many possibilities):
* weakness X reduces spell-school X
* spell-school X reduces weakness X
* spell-schools X with spell-school Y reduces X & Y
As I also suggested mentioned, there arent enough *tactical* spells. For example, a wizard's starting spells lead to a very thoughtful playstyle, rather than bash&slam (melee DCSS) or in the case of Demon, sumon&sumon&sumon. I'm specifically referring to blink, slow, conjure flame, and mephitic cloud. Foremost, DCSS's mephitic cloud (confuse) is miles better than Demon's panic, in effectiveness. Later spells include many of the *cloud spells which can be used to control the battlefied, prevent effect (ranged fire vs freezing cloud) or slowly whittle away enemies. Spellforged servitor is a another example of a summon well-adapted to Demon. I don't mean as a summon that mirror's your personal skills (though that might actuall be a good suggestions, a "shapeshifter" monster for Demon whose abilities are drawn from the creatures near it), but as a creature whose arsenal (Demon abilities) are constructed and used to great effect (orbs & clouds), more so than is possible with training in Demon.
Snakes (to Stick) provide another perfect example of a characteristic that should be linked to physical appearance and not abilities. Only creatures with tentacle-like appendages (octopodes, snakes, etc) should be able to constrict. This shouldn't be an ability, but a secondary characteristic that randomly triggers during combat, just as in DCSS.
Summon butterflies is another perfect example of a tactical summon. Unlike "packs" in Demon consisting of a multiple allied creatures (ie, Fae+Asrai), some packs should be a single creature, just as crawl's Monstrous Menagerie, Summon Horrible Things, Sumon Greater Demon (some demons are summoners), Summon Forest (not very useful but utterly cool, gives DCSS much more "character"), and even Summon Butterflies. Summon butterflies is a spell that sacrifices quality (power) for quantity. In extremely rare circumstances this can actually be useful. Theoretically only, I've never bothered with this particular multi-monster spell. However the idea is that in some situations, quantity matters more than quality. As long as a single creature remains standing, healing it will restore the "pack" to the original count.
Perhaps this ability is available at higher levels, but some demons in DCSS summon other, weaker demons. For example ynoxinul summons ufetubus. I believe this would make an interesting ability when applied to Demon. Difficult to balance, however, but I'm tired of *always* feeling outnumbered. Part of the joy of Summoning in DCSS is standing back while your army rips into your opponents.
It took me about 4.5 hours to get to T:7. And I've actually not yet beat DCSS. I mean, I keep playing a DeWz of SM focusing on summoning ;)
As it stands now (at least up to level 7) Demon has nice difficulty progression. I always feel like each fight will be my last. There are always either more or more powerful opponents, and while each fight is difficult very few (packs of only modified raichos) are impossible. That said, I think the game could use some spacing. For example, even deeper levels in crawl have a few easier opponents. Goblins breed like hamsters, apparently. So you have the satisfaction of easily defeating them, as well a meter for progress. After defeating previous monster X in Y time, you know you are Z% better. I also think there should be a low rate of dynamic spawning to a] keep things interesting b] recruit lower-level but helpful monsters that have since died from you inventory. For example, I've not met any gandayahs in the higher levels, so if I lose my last, that's it for gandayas. Also, its a pain to recruit monsters from higher levels: it would be nice to return to lower levels and recruit enough monsters to fill the remaining slots just as cannon fodder.
Regarding returning to lower levels, crawl makes even previously visited levels interested. I'm not referring only to the different regions (shoals, depths, abyss, hell, etc) but also the different features. For example, shops provide a good reason to revisit old levels. Demon's old levels are depressing. They're empty and depressing and make you think how much time you put in the game and how likely you are to die around the next corner [...upon return to higher levels].
This is totally random, but when you get to the improve-the-map stage of the game, please consider that this is a tower. You can have windows!! Not only to simulate a day/night cycle, but to provide
* light for plants
* sunrays that damange creatures with dark weakness but buff others like angels etc (complements the idea of tactical gameplay and spells such as *clouds and rapid deconstruction)
* kick - body or repel (are there any such?) attacks - monsters *out* of windows, heh ;)
I know its a lot, but I hope you get an idea of how awesome I think your game is. I'm picky even with popular games like ToME.
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Wall of text? You mean wall of feedback :D
2579 is legitmately in the "doing pretty darn good" range. :D Congrats!
Minimap: A minimap is coming. :) One day. :D
Keyboard: I'm glad someone appreciates the vi keys, I can't stand them myself. :P But, I needed a way for folks on laptops (no numpad, and diagonals are important as you say, so just arrow keys won't cut it) to be able to move, and since vi keys was already a thing, I went ahead and went with that for my solution there.
Raicho: Yeah, less of these at low levels would probably be good. I think the sneaky problem with them is the available demons/abilities just aren't what you need for dealing with them easily: Body/Mind abilities don't exist before T:3 (other than as riders on primarily non-Body/Mind attacks, such as Infectious Bite), so their weaknesses are basically None unless the player went Body and/or Mind. Could also experiment with giving them a weakness other T:1-2 demons could take better advantage of, such as Fire, Ice, or even Pierce. The pack mentality thing is a fun idea too, but a lot more expensive right now, the AI doesn't have any support for that atm. :D
Random Aside: Wait, Raicho spamming Envenom were *less* deadly to you? :D That sounds terrifying to me! (Well, unless you had a Gandayah keeping the poison from building up to ridiculous levels :D )
Ludoc: Ludoc's a jerk. His summons probably were healing faster than yours: his AI tends to slap Regen on something before he unsummons it, and Regen continues to function even on "inactive" demons: as a result, they heal up at a rapid pace. I apologize that it felt hopeless enough to bail on. I hope the next time goes better!
AI Chasing: I think the "home base" behavior you're reporting may be the "return to my leader" behavior, with the leader functioning as a mobile home base. Ludoc wouldn't exhibit it because he is always the leader of his group. Groups stay together in giant packs because, currently, if any enemy can see an enemy that sees you, it finds out about you (even if the two enemies are NOT in the same group.) So, at least I think I understand what is causing what you're seeing now. :) The two fixes I probably need to add to get things behaving a bit more consistently would be to have a step between "lost sight of the player and I checked his last known location and found nothing" and "go back to my leader", and maybe to have groups not communicate with each other so completely effectively? For the record, I appreciate all the attention you've given to writing up details on your impressions of the AI's pursuit behavior: this isn't an area much of the previous feedback I've received has touched on. :D
Stealth/Invisibility: I thought about this a fair bit early on, and I made the decision to not include these mechanics in Demon, largely because I could not think of reasonable, transparent, and most importantly, fun ways to integrate their management into the party and player party member AI systems. Just as a few examples: how would your allies handle noise considerations? i.e.: When is it okay for your Jinn to go for broke and start throwing very noisy explosive Fireballs? How does the AI calculate the "risk" of using noisy abilities to make such determinations? How does the player keep awareness of the noise level of his entire party and their various abilities? What would affect stealth levels anyway, since there's no equipment (that being another thing I decided not to include, given the idea of trying to management equipment for 9 characters seemed too much of a weight to ask of the player... though I may still go back and do a limited form of player-only equipment, or "1 slot per character" equipment...?) Anyway, I'm not saying there are no ways to answer these and other problems those systems would have presented for Demon, I'm just saying I don't think the benefits to Demon would have been worth the time/effort to explore and implement these solutions. I think I should be able to find some answers for Demon that give reasonable AI wandering/pursuit/return behaviors without them, just might not be there quite yet. :D
Blue Box: Now I wonder if maybe it isn't showing up on Linux somehow? Can you post a screenshot? :D
Stairs and Party Positioning: Stairs currently randomly place your party around you when you spawn (potentially "shoving" enemy monsters out of the way to do so). Are you asking for them to appear in the same relative positions they were before you used the stairs? That should be easy to do I think (but offer not valid if those squares are occupied or walls on the new level. :P )
Allies Blocking Projectiles: Allies have several rules about how they feel about standing in front of you, the major factors are: do you have projectile attacks you could use if I wasn't in the way, do enemies have projectile attacks they could use on you if I wasn't in the way, and how is your health looking? Health + enemy projectiles possible is a big one: if both of these are true, demons will do their best to body block for you even if it means you can't shoot either. That said, demons almost never move if they are already adjacent to an enemy.
Fleeing: Were you using "group movement" when this happened? Group movement should force your party to follow you, no matter what... and almost never ever move in the opposite direction for sure. If this was w/ a group movement command, lemme know and I'll see if I can find the bug. If it wasn't with group movement, then yeah, it probably was trying to cover you: demons pretty much fight to the death unless under very specific orders not to.
Leveled up Supports: If you were on T:7, you're about in the neighborhood where some Gandayah alternatives start showing up: Angels (assuming they don't dislike your party for having undead/demons!), and a bit later, Hobs (who are less picky about your friends, but harder to recruit.) That said, SP doesn't increase with level, you need new abilities (either for him or yourself) or to teach Refresh to other allies if you want more SP flow. :D
Training Speed: This changed a bit as part of the difficulty increase (it did get a bit slower, in fact.) I'm still trying to decide how I feel about where it is right now. Might be more a problem of allied demons leveling up slower than the level of encountered demons increases, making you feel like you need to upgrade often? (Granted, you *should* be constantly feeding in new blood.. but not necessarily cleaning house every other floor on your entire stable. It's supposed to be feasible to keep a fair number of demons around long-term, constantly feeding them new abilities and getting them to a good place and experiencing that for a bit before finally trading them in for a newer model. But, this balance may have been tiled a little with the level curve changes. I'm an area I'm keeping an eye on.
Monster Differences: I'm hoping to eventually greatly expand the characteristics system (currently only used for things like Undead, Ugly, Demonic, etc. which only determine what demons get along with each other) to include things that will act in the way you're describing: providing differences between demons that aren't just differences in their stats and resistances.
Tactical Spells: Some of the ones you mentioned exist in Demon already, but aren't available early game (Short Jaunt is Demon's answer to Blink (first encounter is T:11 or so I think?), and Slow actually exists by name (around T:13 or so usually, but can show up early on a modifier)). Cloud spells definitely don't though: won't be able to do those until I figure out a good way for the AI to use/handle them intelligently enough that players won't curse at their buddies' use of them. :D Summon spells of the DCSS variety on the "someday" list too: at least the AI for using those spells will be a bit simpler I think. :D Balancing them may be more of a concern... but no more so than in normal roguelikes. Still some thinking/designing to do on that front.
Play Time: 4.5 hours for T:7 is longer than I thought, but on the other hand, I expect play times probably vary wildly per player anyway. :) If it's a fun 4.5 hours, I'm not tooooo worried about it running longer than I expected. :D
Easy Encounters: There should be some easier encounters in the mix, theoretically: encounter tables have about a 20% chance to "fall down" to a lower table, and additionally the encounters are designed so that some encounters will be easier for some strategies than others. But, as with many things, this may be something that got a little disrupted with the difficulty increase, so I'll keep an eye on it. :)
Previous Levels: At the moment, I don't do respawning on older levels to try and keep a bit tighter rein on player progression / XP and level gain. I could experiment with limited amounts of it to add flavor, but I don't want to have "free XP" that players feel like they need to go and collect. I might be overthinking this too, not sure if people routinely try to lower level farm in DCSS either. I may pass on this until I have other reasons to go to old levels anyway: at the moment, as you point out, there isn't really any. I do have branch / side-dungeon technology (there is one that currently has a 50% chance to spawn in game, about halfway up the tower or so, mostly as a test case for said tech), just haven't gotten around to adding content with it yet.
Tower Windows: :D This is a good one. I will save it for the next dungeon upgrade pass. :D
Don't worry, I'm thoroughly convinced you think Demon is awesome. :D Nobody types up this much stuff for a game they don't like. :P I just wish there were 10 of me instead of 1 of me so I could chop through the giant to-do/"this would be nice" lists much faster. :) I always feel like I've got a long way to go, but on the other hand, Demon seems to be pretty fun even now. :D Thanks again for the awesome feedback!
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I'm a bit short on time so this is only a partial response, plus a little extra commentary:
Regarding stairs:
W
WW ZZ
ZZ? R
ZZG@
WWWWWWWWWWWW
W
W
@ = Me on Stairs
? = Attack ally (Headless, but not sure I remember correctly)
R = Raicho ally (could've been one tile to the left, perhaps?)
W = Wall
Z = Zar (were there really that many?) opponents R E
G@
WWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W
W H H
W ggH
W g
@ = Me on Stairs
R = Raicho ally
G = Gandaya ally
E = Easg Saint ally
g = Gandaya opponent
H = Haitliki (??, electric eel creature) opponent
These sub-par in-game scenaries illustrate two problems with stairs:
- Ally positioning after stairs is random
- Allies don't swap position if exiting stairs into battle (ie, opponents immediately in view of stairs)
Both the Gandaya were Easg Saint were my "support" creatures. Furthermore the Easg Saint is susceptible to lightning, or at least not resistant but taking much damage. In the first scenario the raicho should have immediately swapped with the gandaya; in the second the raicho should have swapped with the Easg Saint.
Since I have no control over ally positions, would it cheapen the game to position allies optimally upon entering a new tower level? Ie, my party "peeks" out from the stairs, we hold a pow-wow and my attack creatures decide to deploy themselves on the front lines while the support creature take up defensive positions?
Both scenarios were frustrating (lack of control) but not deadly: descend, heal, then re-ascend, keeping fingers crossed for better deployment. Actually, in the second scenario I think I re-ascended with some cannon fodder (low level high-hp creatures like zombies and slimes) to buy me time to redeploy my heavy hitters.
FF
AF
WWW AWWWW
W RW
W W
W W
W W
WU W
W W
WG W
W @W
W W
W W
@ = Me (no stairs ;), ~90% health )
G = Gandaya ally
U = Ukobachi (flame throwers) ally
R = Raicho ally
A = Asrai opponent (ice throwers)
F = Fae
Here I'm pretty sure the Gandaya was trying to shield me from frost shards (thanks, buddy) but the Ukobachi was sitting around doing zilch. If it couldn't target the nearest Asrai, it should have moved closer.
No I wasn't using group movement. Which reminds me, I've had some annoyances with that as (nothing life threatening, just dumb). The allies attempt to replicate my exact movements rather than follow my path. Which differing demon speeds, this leads to my party becoming separate directionally. Example:
W
W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW W
W W
W W
W W
WWWWWWWW WWWWWWWW W W
W W W W W
W W W W W
W @ W W W W
W R W W W W
W | W W W W
W | W W E W W
W | W W | W W
W | W W | W W
W | W W | W W
W | W W ---| W W
W | W W | W W
W | W W | W W
W --| W W | W W
W | WWWWWWWW | W W . "Uh Oh, too exposed"
W -@---G | W W .
W R | | W W .
W | | | WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW .
W | | |
W @R--G--------E-------------------------------- E R
W ---------------------------------------- G@
WWWWWWWW
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W W
W W
W W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
This was completely unexpected, but somewhat fortuitous: my opponents followed the Easg Saint instead of me. So I just dismissed Easg Saint from behind the wall and got away scot-free - since the opponents lost sight of any enemy, they returned to their previous location. If they had decided to carry out a limited exploration of the nearby region, I would have been discovered. This is one of the points I made previously: monster-loitering/hunting/tracking would enhance the game. However, regarding this group movement behaviour, much of the time I find it annoying.
I actually have one more gripe with the AI and speedier allies such as raichos: they constantly speed ahead and get surrounded. This is why I like giving raicho allies ranged abilities, so they hang back with their companions instead of racing ahead. I like backing my party into narrow two-tiles wide chokepoints, and raichos constantly screw this up. The ranged raichos, unlike ukobachi and support creatures (fae, gandaya) who hang back, do follow their attack allies into combat. In this respect, ranged raicho behave perfectly. Sometimes they decide to chuck fireballs from a distance, but if so it is usually the right decision.
Here is a slightly different injured-ally-might-get-killed-because-miserly-me-didn't-dismiss. The plan was to swap places with my near-death raicho, use myself as a body shield for two turns during which I would summon a different ally to my left after dismissing the raicho. The idea was to absorb some of the blows intended for the slime, thereby protecting the it for the duration which I have to swap summons. Instead, here is what happens:
W WW W W WW W
W WWWW W WWWW
W CCG W CCG
W RS W R@S
WWW @WWWWWW ==> WWW GWWWWWW
W GW W W W W
W W W W
WWW W WWW W
W W
W W
W W
@ = me
C = red-cap opponent
G = goblin opponent
S = slime ally
R = raicho ally, near death
G = gandaya ally
W = Wall
I'm surprised, but I think I just have to learn to avoid these situations. Like you said summoned allies will sacrifice themselves for me, this is a good default behaviour and the game can't be expected to read my mind for when the opposite is true. Well perhaps it could, or at least give me a one-turn benefit of the doubt.
* player has high HP
* player swaps places with fron-line character
Then again, this could be a bad idea. If things get bad quickly I'd be happy for a sacrificial raicho (except then I'd just unswap). So... complicated. Probably best to leave this alone?
In any case my initial strategy was probably flawed, considering that newly-summoned allies don't actively participate in the current turn (ie they absorb damage but do not attack):
Dismiss,Summon Swap,Dismiss,Summon
turns slime completely alone 1 0
turns slime attacking alone 1 3
====================================================================
total turns disadvantaged 2 3
In actuality, this strategy does seem to preserve the HP of my remaining allies during ally replacement more so than simple dismiss/summon.
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Considering the (above post) example with group movement, I think finer control over allies could enhance the tactical "feel" of the game. The ability to send a single monster a different direction as a decoy would be awesome ;)
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I don't mean to say suggest the game currently has no strategy. I defeated the first hero (the one with the arrow and aura* abilities) using a tactic learned from Ludoc: summon cannon fodder (low-level high-HP), rush, replace allies with heavy hitters. He deals less damage in melee, and can be surrounded - not a single ally lost. Previously I sacrificed nearly half my inventory (of allies) defeating him from a distance.
I eventually destroyed Ludoc (20?? score) but what happens afterwards :) killed me. Surprise!
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Stair positioning: It wouldn't cheapen the game or anything, just have to figure out a good AI algorithm for handling it. I already have some of this code written I suspect (probably in the code the AI uses to decide whether or not to blink, or perhaps the code already used for deciding how to path when advancing.)
Ukobach Example: Huh.. that's odd. In that setup, the Ukobach has a clear beat on the Asrai. Only reason he'd hesitate (assuming no bugs, that is!) is if his SP was too low for Flame Dart. Ranged stuff is a bit pricey, if this was mid-way through a fight, he may have been running low. As for the Gandayah, you aren't currently in anything's line of fire, so unless you were last turn, he shouldn't be trying block for you regardless of health. He may have been trying to keep in range of the Raicho though, to be able to provide support if needed.
Group Movement: I've noticed the speed difference issue before w/ group movement. I'll see if I can up with a better algorithm for this. Maybe only have allied monsters already close to you attempt to follow your path, monsters further away just hone in on your position? The first part is still necessary in situations where you're initially fleeing towards allies, you don't want them moving towards you (and thus towards what you're fleeing from) at short ranges probably?
Speeding Ahead: Hmm.. tricky one here. I'm hesitant to just force speedy melees to wait for slowpokes because I'm not sure everyone will want that... of course, not everyone wants the current way either. :) This may be an area where I eventually have to bend and add a bit more player influence over the AI (but dang it I like that is handles things well itself, I don't wanna give that easily! Maybe I can noodle on this more and figure out a good algorithm..)
Suicidal Allies: Yeah, this one I think I have to leave alone. "Your demons always fight to the death" is a fairly simple rule to figure out, remember, and anticipate. If I start adding various cases where they don't do that, it's probably going to lead to unhappy surprises. :( For the moment, I think "my buddies always fight to the bitter end" is the lesser of two evils.
Dismiss and Summon vs. Swap + Dismiss + Summon: This is an accurate assessment, I think. :) Immediately Dismissing and Summoning does get you back to fully active status quicker, but the cost is it exposes your back line and exposes you to more focused enemy attacks for that round. How terrible this is varies from situation to situation, I find myself doing both frequently.
Orders: This sort of player control of AI I don't mind adding: rarely used, powerful, brief changes in behavior. I prefer this greatly over the sort of "configuration screen" stuff I would probably have to add if I took the easy way out (i.e.: forcing the player to deal with it in a UI instead of coding an AI solution) on issues like discussed in Speeding Ahead. Tricky part is deciding when/if an order should be violated. If you order a guy to move to a decoy position, alright... if you get near death while he's still in range, should he stop to heal you? (Probably) Okay... what if you just get Poisoned and he has a poison cure? (maybe) Alright, what if a buff he can cast on you wears off? (probably...not? but.. maybe?) :) I've got fairly good at solving these sorts of issues though, at least I think, so I should be able to figure out something. But, even with relatively simple ones, I have a lot to solve for.
Congrats on beating Zaji and sorta-almost-not-quite beating Ludoc. :D The 1st Hero and the 1st Summoner are always tough because they're completely different styles of combat than what is usually thrown at you. :) Sorry you got eaten by the Summoner Surprise! Not sure if you noticed in the chaos (and if you didn't, let me know so I can call it out better!): once a summoner dies, his minions become captureable just like any normal demons. This can sometimes be helpful in cleaning up the leftovers. :D It's also a good opportunity to pick up some new friends someone else leveled up and spent training points on. :D (The AI is even frighteningly good at inventing coherent builds for things. It does make some iffy choices, but rarely does it make terrible ones. :D )
Thanks for the additional feedback, with an extra bonus hooray for the ASCII maps. :) I think they really helped me understand what you were describing. :D
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3053 on T:8. Was running away from a large band of Liliths, Cynocephalus, Fae, Haeitlik, Asrai, went down a level to heal my party. I was put to sleep as soon as I came back up and my three best remaining allies where killed while I remained helpless. Considering I had lost my starting ally a bit earlier (stupid mistake), I kinda just quit and walked away :/
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Actually raichoo haven't been giving me any problems of late, probably because I haven't been encountering many. I recall a large band at T:5, but by that time they posed little threat. I manged to recruit cursed + blessed raicho from earlier bands of 1-3 raicho, so my mid game became pretty easy. I just don't think raicho scale well to late game - they seem to be dishing significantly less damage than their opponents. Is this just me?
I don't play with a gandaya anymore, offense is the best defense :). Fae supporters are still my most problematic opponents, I haven't figured out a good strategy for killing them first. But yeah at that particular instance I had a gandayah to protect me from raicho spamming envenom. By the way, I'm starting to rethink my initial buff/debuff character selection - currently leaning towards buff + mind/light/healing.
There was no Ludoc on T:6 my last game; instead I encountered an alternate hero (M?????), the one with bull rush spamming guilt. Man, didn't realize how potent guilt could be; my raichos and haietlik were actually healing the hero (guilt > damage). Took me about 5+ attempts to find the right party combination to defeat this particular hero (didn't loose anyone though): hasted east saint + modified raicho (reshape + fade + souleater + flesheater) + blessed raicho.
Sorry, I threw that stealth/invisibility sentence in as an afterthought. I know you wrote quite a lengthy response. I don't think the game needs stealth, I just wanted to emphasize that AI chasing could be improved.
Wow I must be blind (hyper-focused on the actual demon icons). When I went to take the screenshot, behold, every ally has a blue box. I believe however there are some rare circumstances in which it is near invisible. I'll keep a lookout but for now here is a hypothetical:
WA
WOA
WA
W: Wall
O: Opponent
A: Ally
New question: I'm confused about how body resistance works? Most body abilities are passive, how can body resistance affect passive abilities? Or does body resistance encompass slash+pierce+impact resistances, but provide less protection?
Training speed: I might recant my initial statements regarding the level of newer recruits relative to older allies. Possibly that was an unlucky game, though possibly the inverse could be said for the latest one. When I made those comments newer recruits constantly outclassed my older allies. The opposite was true for my latest game: newer recruits tended to be a level behind my older allies. Nonetheless, this should be something you keep an eye, just in case it is too variable between games.
I still think allies train too slowly. I've also noticed that my older allies don't generate training points as often, which is disappointing. I do keep using my older allies constantly, but I don't think that affects training points: isn't XP split equally among active and unactive party members? But by the time I obtain abilities I want to train into my monsters, those monsters become obsolete, replaced by monsters with more powerful abilities.
Easy Encounters: true some groups seem easier than others, but are you considering spawn distances? If an easy groups merges into a group of 15+ monsters via LOS, then it's no longer easy :).
Previous Levels: Well, DCSS has a food clock whereas Demon has no constraint on scumming lower levels. True the food clock has been progressively loosened, but that's because DCSS has branch levels that are just more effective (and difficult) for farming.
I also want to emphasize what I've previously said regarding panic: the effectiveness of panic and sleep/stun are miles apart. Sleep is a gamechanger, I lost my latest game because of it. Out of the countless times my allies have been panicked, I've only been (if ever) been injured by them once or twice. Panicked allies never flee, or move erratically instead of attacking. Conversely, a panicked player remains able to move and use their abilities as per normal.
One more AI niggle: The diagram has only been *slightly* exaggerated. If the top raicho becomes sufficiently injured that I decide to swap it out, the East Saint immediately takes it place, so I have to summon the replacement behind the East Saint. This is bad because the Easg Saint has low health, is needed as a long-distance sniper (support character), and isn't particularly resistant to the opponents in question. By the time I summon a replacement brawler, the Easg Saint is already badly wounded, but the brawler won't take the Easg Saint's place until it is severly wounded. After which I have to dismiss the East Saint for fear of stray missiles, and so I lose my support ally.
W W
W W
W WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W ERMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
W @RMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
WWWWWWWWWWWMMMMMMMMM
WMMMMMMMM
WMMMMM
W
W = Wall
E = Easg Saint Ally
R = Raicho Ally
@ = Player
M = Opponents (lots and lots )
I've also been having some problems casting that Easg Saint long-ranged smiting ability - the game keeps saying, "invalid target". IIRC with a layout something like the following, I was unable to target any of any opponent. I did have enough SP:
F
LWWWWWW
C @W
C AWWWWW
AAMMM
@ = Me, on stairs
W = Wall
C = Cynocephalus opponent
F = Fae opponent
L = Lilith opponent
A = ally
M = random opponent
By the way, this just so happened to be the layout of my final 3053 run in which the Lilith ruined everything ;)
I also wish there were ten (or more) of you. That said, I enjoy the game enough already to keep coming back ;)
Just for reference: real-life raicho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_Ptarmigan_%28Lagopus_Muta%29.jpg). So cute, not deadly at-all ;) It's been great fun researching the more obscure references ;)
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Raicho: I haven't heard of many people using Raicho far beyond T:5 or so unless they had a modifier like Fiery or Frigid that raises their Magic stat: Raicho actually have a fairly iffy base Magic stat, so yeah, their damage isn't necessarily great. It also doesn't help that as you advance, the enemies have more ways of dealing with their advantages (high evasion is countered by Easg Saints and other smiters) and exploiting their flaws (their reliance on being in melee to do damage is countered by ranged attacks, their weaknesses to Body and Mind is countered by all sorts of things) They can still be handy for a fairly consistent chance to Shock, but no, they don't tend to remain good damage dealers: they aren't even early on in theory, they just don't face any real "counters" to their basic strategy among the earliest demons, which is what makes them nasty unless the player picked starter abilities that specifically address them.
Gandayah: I had a feeling you must have had one. :P Poison++ causes you to degenerate at 15%/turn... even from full health and with no other damage incoming, you drop in 7 turns... and it lasts 10! Backed up by Raicho's decent Cunning and high Speed... yeah, that would have been murderous without Cleanse. :D
Builds: Sounds like you're favoring heavy support builds. :) That's no problem, part of the idea of the character creation system is I want to support as many playstyle preferences as possible. :D I'm glad it sounds like you're finding some variety within that to play around with.
M-Hero: Oh, sounds like you met Madevra. :D Congrats on beating her on the first encounter too. :D As you found, she isn't necessarily deadly... she's just very, very, very hard to kill. :)
Stealth/Invisibility: No problem. :) You've probably figured out by now it doesn't take much encouragement to get me rambling on about this or that. :D
Blue Box: Yeah, with how often people claim to not see it, something must be going on. Maybe my monitors are set to funny settings somehow and make it appear different to me than everyone else? I'll experiment with tweaking the color of this and see what I get. :)
Resistance: Resistance can definitely affect passives. For example, Envenom passively adds Poison to your Slash, Impact, and Pierce attacks... but the target uses their Body resistance to resist the added Poison. This sort of thing can come up even without passives though. For example, Leech Bite is a Pierce attack that drains 50% of the damage dealt to the user as healing. However, while the damage dealt is Pierce, the drain is treated as Body... if the target is Body immune, Leech Bite just does damage and never heals the user. (Try using it on a Zombie to see this in action, or even a Red Cap.. early on when damage is low, a Red Cap's Body resistance is sometimes enough to round the healing down to 0.)
Training Speed & Training Point Accumulation: Definitely keeping an eye on it. :) It changed fairly substantially when I adjusted the leveling curve as part of the difficulty changes. :D Thanks for the continued feedback on how it's feeling to you. You're correct in that XP is split completely evenly among active and inactive party members. I will say that based on feedback so far, the rate at which training points are earned relative to leveling is probably the thing most likely to be changed. :)
Easy Encounters: True. :) *hopefully* items can bail you out in those cases, but I'm not sure I have the right balance of consumable drops yet. :)
Previous Levels: I've been thinking about this one a bit since we last posted. I think what I really want is this: If I'm going to spawn stuff on old levels and/or have respawns, I want there to be an *interesting* reason for players to go back down, because if I spawn this stuff, I have to balance assuming you go and farm all of it (otherwise the game can become easy and/or grindy.) So the challenge here will be thinking up creative reasons for the player to have to go back to previous levels. :) A food clock's been suggested before for Demon (in the context of giving how many resources you spend in combat in terms of turns and HP/SP that have to be rested up more meaning), but that was before the great difficulty increase and I'm hoping I can get away without doing one. Demon has enough for players to manage as it is I think. :)
Panic/Sleep/etc: Panic and Sleep fill different roles: Panic doesn't break on damage, but only occasionally mucks with your control: it isn't meant to be quite as extreme as Confusion usually is in roguelikes. On the other hand, Sleep breaks on damage in most cases but completely locks you out. However, when it comes to the player, Sleep is *definitely* the worst one to have on you: unless you have a demon capable of breaking it for you, it's going to be a bad time. Partly for this reason, Lilim are actually currently the only non-modified/non-unique capable of inflicting Sleep in the entire game, and have to be in melee to do it, and have no passives that help them get into melee range. But... none of that helps if you get stair-slapped by one. I may go back and nerf Sleep a bit in general anyway, it lasts 2.25 to 9 turns currently, but that wasn't adjusted when the game became more deadly. On the other hand, even dropping it to 1.5 to 6 turns isn't likely to make it all that much less deadly on players... even being out of it for 2-3 turns at the wrong time can be more than enough time for things to go horribly wrong. Maybe the answer here is to instead give all characters the ability to wake up a sleeping character adjacent to them? That would make Sleep significantly harder to use, but on the other hand, given the power of it, I'm not sure I'm super bothered by that.
AI niggle: Hmm.. what solution would work here though? If Easg Saint didn't move up, in theory, an enemy would move in before your next turn. Then you've lost formation and still have the Easg Saint in the new front line. Sounds like you want an Exchange ability (unsummon one critter and replace it with another in the same action?) That may not be a bad idea.. it would be very powerful for the player (and enemy summoners!), but it would solve a lot of these situations. It might still be balanced though, if it only works in adjacent squares like Summon does. This is definitely going on the "investigate soon" list. :D
Easg Saint Smite: Punish only works on a target that used a damaging ability on its previous turn: it can't target things that moved or did non-damaging things. Is it *never* working for you even when this is the case?
I feel a little badly that you caught me on the week I took off from development to play Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker (a new Shin Megami Tensei game that came out this week), but I go back on full time (well, full not-at-work time :P ) development starting this Monday. :) I'm obligated by previous commitments to finish the server-kept high scoreboard next, but I'm looking forward to diving in and getting to work on the things we've been discussing once that's complete. :D
Raicho, RL: Yeah, just a harmless looking birdie :) But, be careful with the Googling. :D Some of the demon names have (probably because they're demon names!) over time become associated with rather unpleasant things. Carbuncle is a rather nasty skin condition of some kind, for example: the results of Googling it are... regrettable. :( Definitely nothing like the cute little demon ferret you see in game! I've gotten lightly fussed at once or twice over that sort of thing. :P But, I'm glad you're enjoying Demon's oddball cast relative to the usual collection of kobolds, orcs, etc. everyone's seen a million times already. :D
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Hey folks. :) Sorry to have been quiet for a bit, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker (...and now Cogmind... ::happy grumbling:: ) proved rather distracting. :P
Work continues on getting server-stored high scores setup. Nearly complete, just working out some tweaks with Keylan, a friend of mine who's handling the server parts for me and helping me learn the basics of sending/receiving goodies to and from it. The screenshots in and of themselves probably aren't super exciting, but, I like showing progress so:
Here's the new name entry UI:
(http://i.imgur.com/bbpdbgd.png) (http://i.imgur.com/bbpdbgd.png)
...and here's a peek at the high score board (with some obvious placeholder data, but also some actual data sent by the game.)
(http://i.imgur.com/IyhJbOR.png) (http://i.imgur.com/IyhJbOR.png)
Also working on a few minor tweaks to the early game (a few encounters seem to be certain doom if they happen very early on, which is a no no) , but saving most gameplay work for the build after this. I have a metric ton of feedback (much of it from orbisvicis here in this thread, thank you again!) to turn into action items to help make a more polished experience. After that, I'll be back on content.
Hopefully I'll be seeing some familiar names on the high score board soon! :D Cheers!
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5/30 build is out. :) Here's a handy link, for PC, Mac, and Linux: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The biggest change in the 5/30 build? The online scoreboard!
(http://i.imgur.com/mZbGc1k.png)
Well, needless to say, it'd be pretty easy to get on it at the moment! :) You can view the top 20 scores at any time with the \ key. When a run ends, you'll be shown your score in context with some similarly ranked scores to give you an idea of how you did.
The build also includes a fair number of other significant changes:
- You can now name the main character. (Kinda needed for a scoreboard!)
- Removed all trait-based recruitments restrictions and requirements. These weren't a lot of fun, and were making balance kind of a pain too since it meant there were some abilities that were mutually exclusive (i.e: If you had Demon A that gives Ability N, you can't recruit Demon B that gives Ability T, so N and T are mutually exclusive.)
- Slightly rebalanced T:1 and T:2 to be a bit gentler an introduction to the game.
- Enemies no longer spawn particularly close to portals.
- Enemy groups communicate with each other less, making it less likely the player wll be swarmed by very large hordes.
- Infection only halves Stamina regeneration instead of completely removing it.
- The main character's healing/restorative abilities, if any, will be automatically used when resting to reduce downtime.
- Skipping VFX now also skips message log pauses caused by too many messages.
As always, feedback is welcome, but importantly, I hope you have fun trying Demon out. I'll post again soon about what I'm working on next! :)
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6/5 build is out. :) PC, Mac, and Linux builds are available: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The 6/5 build adds Demon's first non-placeholder side-dungeon. :) The entrance is (when it appears, that is!) found on Tower:2, so even relatively new players have a fairly good shot at finding it. :D Keep an eye out for a darkened stairway!
(http://i.imgur.com/laAJXOJ.png)
What awaits below? :D
This week also saw another first: Demon's first piece of fan art. :D Grace made this awesome picture of a Huo Shu:
(http://i.imgur.com/tH5UE4O.jpg)
Thanks Grace! :D
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You know you've made it when you start getting fan art!
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I don't know if I feel like I've made it yet, but it was definitely was good for a nice warm, fuzzy feeling. :D
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I'm busily chipping away at proper mouse controls for the next build, but in the meantime, I released a build on 6/14 that added some fun changes, including some based on recent feedback. :D I apparently completely blanked out on posting about it here for some reason. :P Apologies!
PC, OSX, and Linux builds can be found here as usual: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Among the bigger changes:
- Support abilities (buffs and heals) no longer require clear lines of fire: having sight of the target at all is enough.
- Several area effect projectiles (mostly Rune effects, but also one ability: Fireball) can now be aimed short of their maximum range, making them a bit easier to use.
- Sleep and Charm have been slightly reduced in duration.
- Group movement no longer lets faster allies range far ahead of the player.
- The UI will warn you when attempting to use hostile abilities when all enemy targets are immune to them.
- Demons are now much more persistent about pursuit. Beware!
- Further adjustments to how different groups of the same faction communicate with each other: enemies a bit less effectively (to further reduce swarming behaviors), allies a bit more effectively (so that player allies support friendly link targets better.
In the meantime, the scoreboard has been filling up quite nicely. :D
(http://i.imgur.com/PMKES3j.png)
(This screenshot is from an editor build, so it shows the total number of scores, rather than capping at 20 or 50 maximum that release builds use to reduce the load on the server.)
The next build will have a significant upgrade to mouse support, which feels like a major pre-req to trying to gather players from places like IndieDB or the main roguelike Reddit. I don't plan to sell Demon, and I appreciate the players I do have, but... I would like more. :D
Anyway, back to work on mouse support. :) Cheers!
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The expanded mouse controls build is up. :D Same link as usual for PC, Mac, and Linux builds: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
It is now possible to a much larger number of activities using the mouse, including:
* Selecting and scrolling most types of lists.
* Hotkey buttons can now be clicked.
* Targets for abilities can be selected using the mouse.
* Clicking on visible cells in the dungeon has varying, context-specific effects, based on what you clicked and whether or not you are currently in combat.
It isn't quite possible to play entirely with the mouse, but this greatly expanded functionality should provide more options on how to play. If you preferred the largely keyboard interface of before, worry not: none of those have been changed, nor are even any of the old mouse controls changed. If a mouse control existed before this build, it operates the same today it did yesterday. :)
Next up: In-game descriptions of demons!
Oh. Well... I guess there is one more thing... mumble. I like to post screenshots with builds... but it's kinda hard to make an interesting screenshot about mouse controls, especially when most of the related interfaces don't really look different. But, I really wanted to post a screenshot with the build, so I have taken what will likely go down in history as the most boring screenshot of a roguelike ever: a screenie of an item in a selection menu being highlighted. :P
(http://i.imgur.com/FX7pG28.png)
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Great! This can only be an improvement. I don't use many mouse controls myself but just having the ability to click on a target in the map to get info on it is a lot more intuitive and quick than using a keyboard command would be.
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I was in a similar boat developing them: I'm not a big mouse control user either. That made it a bit of a slog to work on them... even now I don't use them very much, so I sometimes internally grumble at having spent an entire build on something that didn't do much for the game from my point of view. :D But, I did have some folks ask about them, so there is that... and maybe more pointedly, I wonder how many people saw the non-clickable hotkey buttons/menus and wandered off assuming the whole thing was "too early/unfinished" to bother trying out. (I don't think it is overall. :D But, I will admit that before this it had some glaring gaps in the "this looks like it should work with a mouse and for some reason doesn't".)
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The demon descriptions are coming along pretty nicely. :) I've got them displaying in game too, so all I have to do is finish them up and I can release a build with them. :D Until that's ready, here are some screenshots of the descriptions of a few of the earlier demons. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/OKgsaoz.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/8xQo0u1.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/VVEY2TX.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/TTU5j9U.png)
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7/17 build is out. :D The link for PC, Mac, and Linux builds is the same as always: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
With this build, every character in the game now has a description you can view as part of their character sheets. :D The descriptions for the demons are heavily based on the real mythology, legends, and stories about them. :) I hope everyone finds them as entertaining to read as they were to write. :)
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7/23 build has been pushed up. Same link as always: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Nothing too special here, just some minor UI and balance polish I wanted out of the way before diving into anything big for the next major build. :)
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Just wanted to say that I really like the breadth of mythologies that you're drawing upon for the demons. We can definitely move beyond European high fantasy into Greek, Chinese, and other strands of tradition for our inspirations.
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Thanks. :D I wish I gotten around to the descriptions sooner than I ended up doing: many players have commented before that they enjoy learning about the creatures precisely because so many of them are virtually unknown to them prior to playing Demon. European fantasy, as a %, makes up a relatively small portion of the world's body of literature, myth, and legend, but it gets used over and over again because it's what most devs and players are really familiar with.
I actually bought a rather impressive book to help me along in branching out myself. I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in starting to learn more about this sort of thing:
(http://www.puddletownbookshop.co.uk/shop_image/product/73746_c0fabd0c3a9b0b1a50fa52580339251b.jpg)
Amazon sells copies for US$20 at the moment: if you ask me, that's a steal. I think I paid US$40 for mine back in the day. :P It *is* a dictionary: you don't get a ton of info on any particular topic, but even just opening up to random spots and reading entries, you'll stumble across all sorts of interesting and intriguing things. :D From there, Google can probably lead you to as much detail as you want or need. This is the primary method I use for researching new critters to include in Demon.
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Hey everyone. :) Working my way towards the next major build, which will introduce a new mechanic: Relics.
Well, technically speaking, there have always been relics: every summoner uses them to recruit, summon, and learn abilities from demons. But, starting with the next build, there will be several different types of relic that you can choose from at character creation.
(http://i.imgur.com/Eis0mkt.png)
As the help text in the screenshot stats, which relic to use is now the most important choice you make during character creation: it determines your appearance, resistances, starting stats, and what starting abilities you have to choose from. Future iterations on the mechanic will also add relic-specific gameplay changes that go outside these bounds. But, for the first pass, it is the starting ability options that are of the most interest. For example, let's take a look at the options available with the Titan's Fist, a heavy melee relic:
(http://i.imgur.com/HJgdlrW.png)
Only two primary choices, but the differences between them are significant: Slash provides a focus on pure damage, while Impact provides a disabling effect while still giving decent damage output.
(http://i.imgur.com/0vsbwyX.png)
However, there are eight secondary choices, all meaningful for a melee build even though some come from traditionally non-melee elements. Depending on what you choose here, you can augment your initial choice with area effect attacks, a charge movement to close with enemies quickly, an elemental aura that strikes attackers back with damage, turn loss, or debuffs, support spells to increase you and/or your party's damage output, or damage mitigation.
The other new relics will similarly provide a wealth of starting options for ranged, support, and other playstyles. For the first pass at relics, that's more or less the main goal, but eventually I want to branch out to relics that make significant changes to gameplay beyond just changing basic resistances/stats/etc., sort of in the flavor of races in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. :)
Plenty to do on these still, but hopefully I'll be able to announce a new build relatively soon. :D Cheers!
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Excellent idea for a mechanic to flesh out. 8)
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Thanks getter. :D I'm hoping it will both provide a wider array of viable-out-of-the-gate strategies as well as serve as a good introduction to just how diverse a set of abilities Demon has hiding in it these days. :) Closing in on something like 300 now. :O
I'm still plugging away on the relics: I've actually got the other 5 all set up now, so no reason not to preview them. :D
Since this is a lot of screenshots, not embedding them directly in the post this time. :P Click the "Primary" and "Secondary" links to see the screenshots showing the abilities offered by each relic. :D
Crown of Glory: Primary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#0) | Secondary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#1)
A relic that provides abilities suited to leading from the front: strong defenses combined with melee attacks that provide extra benefits: healing, buffs, debuffs, crowd control, you name it, there's probably a melee attack that adds it on.
Eye of the Dragon: Primary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#2) | Secondary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#3)
Not surprisingly, the Eye of the Dragon's major claim to fame is breath attacks: no matter which build options you pick, you'll have one. All do decent damage to a wide area, along with various secondary effects such as additional damage over time, stunning, or stat debuffs. The other abilities offered by this relic reinforce its focus on taking on groups of enemies with life-stealing attacks, passive abilities that harm attackers, defense increases, and area effect debuffs.
Faithful Heart: Primary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#4) | Secondary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#5)
Specializes in powerful, reliable, direct-to-target magic. Its primary elements provide you with powerful abilities limited by cooldowns and/or conditions that must be met on use, while its secondary elements give you a Plan B to use when these more restricted abilities cannot be utilized.
Orb of Power: Primary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#6) | Secondary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#7)
A relic that provides strong magic abilities. Many of its build options offer powerful ranged area effect spells: those that don't offer early access to the no less impressive Haste and Slow spells instead.
Vodun Mask: Primary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#8) | Secondary (http://imgur.com/a/hyVWa#9)
A relic that provides a very diverse selection of debuffs to hurl at enemies: damage over time, turn delay, stat reduction, crowd control, and more. These debuffs can optionally be backed up with some moderate damage dealing, or you can just dive fully into the "death by a hundred curses" strategy.
Still have some other work to do before the build is ready, but I'm moving as quickly as possible. :) I hope to announce a new build soon. :D Cheers!
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8/22 build is out! :D You can grab PC, Mac, and Linux downloadables from here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
As previously discussed, the big change in this build is the addition of relics: a new option during character creation that determines what elements and abilities you have to choose your starting package from. Also included is a total revamp of ability descriptions: it is now much easier to tell what an ability does, and to compare abilities to each other.
Also, because I do things like this sometimes, I was actually keeping a seventh relic secret: The Hand of the Dead, an "undead" themed relic. I'd preview it, but you can just go see for yourself now. :P
(http://i.imgur.com/MiCDrjV.png)
I also reset the scoreboard, since this is a fairly significant gameplay change. :) Good luck, and as always, feedback is welcome and appreciated. :D
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Congrats! 8) Onward this goes getting better and better with each meaty update.
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I had a lot of fun with this! It's very easy to get started playing too, which is important. Lots of visual clues as to when I should be doing things like recalling demons or healing. Keep it up!
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Cool. :D I'm glad you're having fun with it, and that the new player help bits are working. There were kind of a pain to get designed/coded semi-properly, but they've been worth the trouble I think. :)
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8/30 build is out! :D PC, Mac, and Linux downloadables are available from here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The main new feature this time around: nicknames for Demons!
(http://i.imgur.com/5zvhgcm.png)
Pretty self-explanatory for the most: you can rename any demon in your party while viewing its character sheet simply by pressing Shift+n and giving it a new name. If you ever decide you want to go back, just rename it again and enter an empty string.
However, the 8/30 build also adds one other significant adjustment: unique modifiers! Unique demons now offer unique modifiers when sacrificed to Silver or Gold Matrices to power up other demons. For example, here is a Gandayah previewing Vihkor's "Whirling" modifier:
(http://i.imgur.com/98hBqW2.png)
Yep, +20% Speed! Unique modifiers can do ... well, unique.... things. :P Here's another preview, this time of the "Brewmaster" modifier Ninkasi passes to demons:
(http://i.imgur.com/3l5QGHO.png)
Two resistances! Unique modifiers tend to be good, either in the direct benefits they provide, or in the ability list they draw from for the 2 bonus abilities granted by modification. Still, they are balanced: after all, if you sacrifice a unique demon to a Matrix, by definition you are forgoing sacrificing something to power up that unique demon instead. :)
Besides these two features, the 8/30 build also offers the usual small assortment of UI improvements and minor bugfixes. Enjoy, and good luck. :D
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the application crashes immediately on startup, most likely due to my software being outdated. Do you know what I should do to enable it to run?
Process: Demon [86646]
Path: ~/Downloads/Demon_8_30_2015_Mac_Build/Demon.app/Contents/MacOS/Demon
Identifier: unity.FerretDev.Org.Demon
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [104]
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 0 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Date/Time: 2015-08-30 21:12:42.505 -0700
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: AC3C80F0-C1A4-4BCE-B225-B36A80587CC8
Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0
Dyld Error Message:
unknown required load command 0x80000022
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According to Unity's documentation, you'd need to upgrade to at least 10.7 (Lion) in order for Demon to run: https://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements (https://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements)
I did some extra digging around hoping for a workaround other than upgrading your OS X version, but I didn't find anything promising. :(
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Are you shooting for more frequent release pace or a longer chain of bigger ones at roughly the same clip it has been considering the bold new dev situation you've fashioned for Demon of late?
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Releases will probably be at about the same rate, but with more or bigger things in them. :) I can't wait to dive into full time mode. :D
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First on the list for the new and awesome full time development schedule: automapping!
(http://i.imgur.com/27q8Jwm.png)
Now if I could just find room in the main UI for a mini map too...
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very nice!
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Thanks. :D I really hope I can find room for a mini map on the main UI too, but... it's pretty tight there already. I could do a toggleable one if I end up having to cover important map space, but I worry that will become a UI tax when players are forced to turn it on and off whenever they need to see whatever it's obstructing for a moment.
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9/10 build is released. :) You can grab the newest builds here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The main feature of the 9/10 build is automapping: you now get both a small automap in the lower-right corner of the main interface...
(http://i.imgur.com/jnWGf1p.png)
...and a zoomed in version you can peek at by pressing Tab or m.
(http://i.imgur.com/boedTkN.png)
Some other small balance and interface tweaks were also added, but the automapping is the main course here. :) Hopefully this will help out with recruiting demons who require you to hunt down and defeat other demons. :) Good luck!
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The ARRP 2015 build of Demon is out! Go grab it here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Highlights of the 9/20/2015 Alpha:
- Changes to several melee mechanics to make them more useful: charge moves now have their own cooldown instead of sharing Breath, "support attacks" that heal or buff allies when you hit enemies can now help the user, and "whisper" moves that slap control effects on melee opponents are now free actions.
- Extensive review of all melee-oriented demons, summoners, and heroes to make sure they had good ability sets, both in terms of being good opponents, but also in terms of providing good access to abilities for melee characters.
- Over a dozen new abilities added, many of which are available on relics as starting abilities.
- Some polish on relics in general: a few new primary and secondary choices have been added, and the stat bonuses granted by these choices have been adjusted a bit as well to better match the needs of the abilities granted.
- Tooltips for Strength, Vitality, Agility, etc. now give a bit more information about how your current value in these stats is helping you. The tooltips will also show previews of the effects of changes to these stats, such as when allocating bonus points earned when the main character levels up.
- 'p' is now an alternate key for using portals to accommodate Spanish keyboard layouts. (Portal Search has been moved to Shift + 'p'.)
Enjoy. :D And please make sure to check out the other ARRP games too: http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=2015_ARRP
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Grats on making it to the release festivities! 8)
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Hey there. :) I've been busy working on the next build, which is getting pretty close to being ready to release.
Pretty much everything in this build is based on suggestions and feedback from players, with an emphasis on increased customization of the gameplay experience and more information about what's going on.
The major elements of this build are:
* Changing how stairs/portals work in the Tower. The only portals between floors of the Tower are "up" portals: you can no longer go back down to lower floors. Portals to branches close after they are entered: you cannot return to a branch once you leave it. The appearances of some portals have changed to visually reflect this:
(http://i.imgur.com/T609snH.png)
* An options menu that allows you to customize various elements of the gameplay and UI.
(http://i.imgur.com/MqXoYxv.png)
* When using the Silver or Gold Matrix to give modifiers to a demon, you can now get basic information about the modifiers by mousing over them. You can also right-click them to see a list of the possible bonus abilities.
(http://i.imgur.com/DDp0b1x.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/anu6K4k.png)
I should be posting again soon with an announcement of the build release. :) See you then!
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10/6 builds are released. :) Go grab 'em here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The changes were pretty well outlined in the post above: an options menu that allows some gameplay and interface tweaks, changes to how stairs and side dungeons work, more information in-game about modifiers and what they do, and various other UI tweaks and upgrades. :)
Have fun, and good luck in the Tower. :D
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I was very skeptical about Demon, and first few releases comfirmed my worries. However, I decided to check it several versions ago and... Hey, it's very cool game! Idea is interesting (but this was know from the beginning) and implementation is good.
I'm not sure if I like map generation in Demon. Floors are big and design sometimes is a bit odd - is easy to get lost. But since you added minimap it bothers me less. So, it's OK ;)
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I agree that it feels like there's a lot of empty space in the dungeon levels. Do you have plans to add more tile types and/or room types? If not, then maybe shrinking down the size of each level might be something to consider.
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I was very skeptical about Demon, and first few releases comfirmed my worries. However, I decided to check it several versions ago and... Hey, it's very cool game! Idea is interesting (but this was know from the beginning) and implementation is good.
Hey. :) I'm glad you like it better now. :D But, I'm curious, what were you skeptical about before?
I'm not sure if I like map generation in Demon. Floors are big and design sometimes is a bit odd - is easy to get lost. But since you added minimap it bothers me less. So, it's OK ;)
I agree that it feels like there's a lot of empty space in the dungeon levels. Do you have plans to add more tile types and/or room types? If not, then maybe shrinking down the size of each level might be something to consider.
Yeah, the one downside of adding the mini map is that it has revealed/underlined the fact I haven't spent much time working on dungeon generation yet. :P I wasn't worried about it initially because it's a fairly solved problem in the roguelike space compared to some of the unique, trickier parts of Demon (party mechanics, AI, etc.) I wanted to focus on those unknowns, since they were core to Demon, before I spent time treading well-trodden ground, algorithm-wise.
But, the number of comments about it (both here and other places) is starting to rise noticeably, which I'm taking to mean I've knocked out enough larger problems that I probably need to get serious about it soon. :) I've already commented to doing a capture mechanics pass next, but level generation will very likely be the thing I address immediately following that.
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Hey. :) I'm glad you like it better now. :D But, I'm curious, what were you skeptical about before?
Ouh, man, I'm not sure if I remember correctly. First - I'm skeptical about EVERY Unity-based roguelike. After 7DRL 2015 I think that Unity is often used in not 'proper' way. I know, this is 7DRL, so seven days... but - such an impression. As I recall your roguelike had some aestethics problems - primarily pixeled, eye-tiring font. This + my prejudices + less content (earlier than now) -> I has no desire to check Demon thoroughly.
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Yeah, the one downside of adding the mini map is that it has revealed/underlined the fact I haven't spent much time working on dungeon generation yet. :P I wasn't worried about it initially because it's a fairly solved problem in the roguelike space compared to some of the unique, trickier parts of Demon (party mechanics, AI, etc.) I wanted to focus on those unknowns, since they were core to Demon, before I spent time treading well-trodden ground, algorithm-wise.
Don't worry about it too much, you can't do everything at once. As long as it's on your radar!
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Ouh, man, I'm not sure if I remember correctly. First - I'm skeptical about EVERY Unity-based roguelike. After 7DRL 2015 I think that Unity is often used in not 'proper' way. I know, this is 7DRL, so seven days... but - such an impression. As I recall your roguelike had some aestethics problems - primarily pixeled, eye-tiring font. This + my prejudices + less content (earlier than now) -> I has no desire to check Demon thoroughly.
I'm not familiar enough with the other Unity roguelikes as a group to be aware of any problems they had collectively, so I can't speak to that. I can't argue I had a fair bit less content back when I started though. :) Even now, while there's plenty more, but still nowhere near complete on that front.
As far as the font goes: is it any better in the current versions? It is actually the same font file I've always used, but depending on how far back you started looking, I've fixed some rendering/resolution issues that may have improved the font's appearance, particularly on some types of laptops (though I still have troubles with some of the more esoteric resolutions in full screen mode.)
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As far as the font goes: is it any better in the current versions?
A lot better. First version which I check (probably first published) has awfully pixeled font which makes reading harder. Now, letters are rather smooth.
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Pushed a new build with a fix for a rare hang condition. :) As always, builds are available here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
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You are updating Demon frequent. What's about save compatibility?
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These days, saves are generally compatible between versions, unless something in the following groups occurs:
1) The layout or mechanics of the dungeon changes significantly. (For example, 10/6 did this by changing how stairs work.)
2) A significant game system change occurs. (This is getting rarer as things get further along.)
3) A demon or ability's name is changed. (This almost never happens, and is usually the only type of content change that usually causes incompatibility.)
I'm in a funny place on save compatibility. On the one hand, I like to maintain it. On the other, I'm in alpha and I also suspect that the number of in-progress games at any given time is very, very low. So, when I can maintain compatibility cheaply, I do so. But if it starts to get in the way, I am still willing to break it, particularly for major updates. Ideally, as Demon progresses, save compatibility will continue to get more and more reliable, but even now it does at least pretty good on that score.
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Might be a good idea to tell players whether their save will be compatible so they can choose whether or not to update. I went to a major/minor version numbering system for this reason. The game will also tell the player which version of the game they need to be running to continue with their save.
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Stopping by with a small update. :)
I've begun a polish pass on capture mechanics, starting with negotiation. :D The negotiation one is probably going to be the biggest of these, including both a UI component and new negotiation content. The UI component is complete, and here's a couple of screenshots. :D
First, a screenshot showing the new mouse support adding to the negotiation window. Negotiation was left out of the original mouse support pass due to reasons best described as "FerretDev isn't a great UI programmer." :P But, it has it now: the blue highlight indicates the option the mouse is hovering over. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/ePW1pGM.png)
This screenshot shows some of the smaller improvements: an approval display to give you some idea how you're doing, and one of the messages I added to give better feedback about how a demon is responding to your choices. Don't worry, the new feedback messages are in addition to, not replacing, the actual dialogue. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/6Sp3yeO.png)
Next up for negotiation is adding in the new demand types I've been working on. I'll post more about those soon. :D
Also, one other awesome announcement: Demon passed 2500 reported games played this morning. :D I started tracking this mid May, and hit 1000 back around the start of September, so I'm pretty happy with the trajectory. :) High volume of repeat players in the mix too (or so I assume, I only track players by summoner names, and those aren't forced to be unique.. but I suspect in at least most cases that they are.) which is a good sign.
Onward to 5000. :)
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About two months ago, geminimax, one of Demon's fans, volunteered to do a character sprite set for Demon. :D They're nearly complete, and will be going out in a build soon. :) But, until then, here's some screenshots showing off the new art. :D
Also, if you want to see more of geminimax's work, you can check out his DeviantArt page here: http://geminimax.deviantart.com/
On with the screenshots. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/fP7xnGJ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/giKDvDy.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Xt9xO0C.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/8OkbXZE.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/2EiQIs0.png)
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11/3 build is released. :D You can grab them here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The two major features of 11/3 are:
* New character sprites by Geminimax (http://geminimax.deviantart.com/)
* Revamped negotiation: 150% more types of interactions, full mouse support, and better feedback on how the talks are going.
Screenshots of the new sprite art and negotiation UI improvements are in the post right above this one, but here's a few examples of some of the new negotiation interactions. :)
(http://i.imgur.com/7TMsHYD.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/4XdCiGV.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/NdDsLFM.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/DrnPVhq.png)
I plan to do a little more polish on capture mechanics (and maybe AI), then finally switch gears to level generation and content development. :) The Tower's been "stuck" at 17 floors for awhile now, but the time has been well spent: a lot of new features have been added, and those 17 floors have a lot more content variety than they did back when the were added. :)
I hope everyone enjoys the new build, and good luck in the Tower. :)
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Hey. :) Figured it's time for an update over here. :D
Released the 11/9 build last week. :) You can grab the builds from here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
This was actually a pretty important build that added a rudimentary encounter management system to Demon, the main purpose of which is to largely eliminate the dreaded (and often overwhelming) "two encounters at once" issue. It is still expected/acceptable that a second group will sometimes join a fight already in progress, but players should find they almost never run into two groups that have pre-merged anymore (and even these rare occurrences should be weeded out, with a bit more polish.)
So what is this encounter management anyway? Basically, enemy groups are forced to spawn a certain distance from all other enemy groups already spawend, and when each enemy group is deciding how to "wander" the map, it prioritizes avoidance of other enemy groups (reflecting a certain distrust between the various groups roaming each floor.) The exception is when an enemy group is in combat... in-combat groups are ignored by the system, this allows for a 2nd group to wander up to a fight already in progress if it runs too long. :)
This also allowed me to trim the size of the levels greatly since a big factor in their original size was a hacky attempt to prevent this issue simply by giving demons more room to roam. The new levels are roughly 60-75% smaller than the old ones despite containing the same amount of content.
Here's a side by side of an example new map on the left, and an older map on the right.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTau78wWEAAaFIw.png:large)
Much smaller and neaer looking over on the left. :D An unexpected but pleasant side-effect of encounter management is that the chances of running into enemies even in previously explored territory is much higher than before.
Since the 11/9 release, I've been working on the remaining capture polish I wanted to do before switching over to content. This has been aimed at two capture types in particular: "Defeat X enemies in Y turns" and "Protect the target for Y turns".
For "Defeat X enemies in Y turns", two important changes. Most of these types of demons can now follow you to other levels, eliminating the frustrating scenario of encountering them when there are no longer enough enemies present on the level to be able to meet the conditions. Also, when one of these capture attempts is in progress, the nearest enemy will be indicated on the map (both the full view and the mini map), moving the challenge away from "correctly guess where there are remaining enemies" to "properly balance the need to go fight the required enemies within the time limit with the need to rest and recover between those fgihts", which is where it belongs.
Here's a screenshot of the "nearest enemy" detection in effect on the full and mini maps both:
(http://i.imgur.com/IK4yNze.png)
For "Protect target for Y turns", I've finally finished implementing the full mechanic... which involves spawning additional enemies specifically for the purpose of attacking the target. The new enemies can, depending on what's appropriate for the enemy type in question, spawn at the edge of LoS, or simply warp in somewhere in sight. This makes this capture type much more challenging and interesting, rather than just being an odd variant of the "wait X turns" capture type. Here's a screenshot of an Asrai being harassed by a large group of peasants:
(http://i.imgur.com/kgIBxWt.png)
Once I finish the capture polish discussed here, I'll finally be moving onto what I hope will be a major, lengthy content push. The Tower's been at 17 floors for way, way longer than I ever wanted. It's true that a lot of depth and important systems have been added/improved during this period... but, it's still long past time to expand the amount of content available. :) We'll see how long I can plow away at it before the weight of bug reports/feature requests gets too heavy to ignore. :D
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Just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the states, the 11/24 build is out: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
This build completes the review of capture mechanics and makes the following changes, some of which I discussed in my last update:
* The "Kill X in Y turns" capture mechanic now allows the demon to follow you to another level in many cases.
* The "Kill X in Y turns" capture mechanic also shows you the location of the nearest enemy on your mini map and full map.
* The "Protect for X turns" capture mechanic now supports spawning waves of enemies specifically to attack the protect target. Beware, as these are much more challenging capture attempts than they used to be.
* Capture mechanics that require you to have unsummoned your party now give you 2 bonus turns when they end to give you a head start on re-summoning your allies, since being alone in the tower for even a single turn is very dangerous. That said, this effect does NOT override Stun, Sleep, etc. so you will still need to be careful in the presence of these effects.
* Added 4 new unique demons to the tower: Two appear on Tower:3, two appear on Tower:13
* Support for a new, smaller resolution setting: 980x720. As before, Demon will continue to automatically run at the biggest resolution that can fit your desktop "comfortably", so you will only see this new resolution if you are playing on 1024x768 or similar/smaller resolutions.
With the release of this build, it is my intent to finally switch to significant content development for awhile. There are players with 4-5 consecutive clears of the Tower recorded, so it's pretty clear I need to get to work on adding more to do. :) I recognize there is still plenty of system and polish style work to do, but I feel it is necessary to try and balance these needs, and I've been on the system/polish side for a fair bit now. :D I'll be taking a short break for Thanksgiving, but I'll be back to full time development early next week. :D
Good luck in the tower, and as always, I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who's playing. :)
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Hey. :) Been a bit longer than usual since I checked in, I've been busy happily buried in new content land. :D
Latest build ( https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web ) doesn't include any of that yet, but it does include what was probably a long overdue feature: character dumping! (Well, party dumping, since this is Demon.) Pressing F10 in game, or automatically at the end of any game, will create a text file of containing details about your current party and their progress. The file is, at least in some ways, remarkably through: it even includes the descriptions of each ability every party member has.
Here's a brief sample of the sort of output it gives:
Demon Party Dump File
Version 12/3/2015, Scoring Model: 8/22/2015
Dump file created at: 12/3/2015 12:15:50 PM
Summoner Tremane...
was chosen by the Eye of the Dragon,
selected Fire and Mind as their starting elements,
is currently at Tower:1,
and is quite dead!
--==== Main Character ===--
Name : Tremane
Level: 1
MaxHP: 42
MaxSP: 100
Strength: 9
Magic : 18
Vitality: 11
Agility : 7
Cunning : 10
Resist: Fire
Weak : Ice
Abilities Known:
1) Heat Wave (Type: Slash, 20 SP. 85 Power attack split between Slash and Fire. Has a 33% chance to Ignite the targets, causing damage over a short duration.)
2) Fire Breath (Type: Fire, 30 SP. 0-85 Power attack, based on the user's SP (more SP = more Power). Has a 33% chance to Ignite the targets, causing damage over a short duration. Cannot miss. Cooldown: Breath (8))
3) Terrifying Cry (Type: Mind, 35 SP. 50% chance to inflict Panic on enemies, causing their actions to sometimes be randomized. Cooldown: Presence (12))
4) ------------
5) ------------
6) ------------
7) ------------
8) ------------
Inventory:
1 Heal stone
--==== Current Party ===--
Name : Gandayah
Level: 1
MaxHP: 35
MaxSP: 125
Strength: 9
Magic : 14
Vitality: 18
Agility : 7
Cunning : 7
Resist: Electricity
Weak : Fire
Abilities Known:
1) Cleanse (Type: Healing, 15 SP. Removes Poison, Infection, and Paralysis.)
2) Refresh (Type: Healing, 5 SP. Transfers up to 20 SP from the user to the target.)
3) Tireless (Type: None, Passive. Increases MaxSP by 25.)
4) ------------
5) ------------
As for the new content, that is coming along well. :) The terrain set is pretty close to done:
(http://i.imgur.com/ZFU0zjB.gif)
The new content for the first content push will be in Demon's first multi-floor side dungeon: the Anomaly: a part of the Tower that seems ... not quite right, to say the least. :) Though hints of Demon's not strictly fantasy nature are and have been available from the beginning (one need look no further than the death/summoning/unsummoning VFX used for demons), the Anomaly will be the first completely overt demonstration of it. The Anomaly, damaged in some way, is occupied largely by 'incomplete' demons... raw elemental forces (the building blocks other demons are made from, perhaps?), various demons without shape or form, etc. It will be encountered relatively early in the Tower, around Tower:5 or so, and is currently planned to have 3 floors, taking the game's total length in floors from 19 to 22. It's only a nudge, but it's a beginning, and I hope to be in full or mostly full content mode for quite awhile. :D
Next time, I should have some sprites of the Anomaly demons themselves to show. :) Until then, good luck in the Tower. :D
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Getting closer to being finished with the new Anomaly branch and its content. :) Here's an art preview of the new characters (11 demons, 1 summoner) being added, and the 14 new abilities they will possess.
(http://i.imgur.com/uDeKrK4.png)
Characters from Top Left to Bottom Right (in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order): Gi, Ruhin, Fotia, Python, Fetch, Gremlin, Nero, Paracelsus, Aeras, Aithir, Blob, Chaos
Abilities (same ordering): Lifegiver, Twilight, Galvanize, Tackle, Void Touch, Winterkill, Flesh Rot, Light Dart, Lob Stone, Stone Stance, Bask, Blessweaver, Emit Spark, and Fan Flames.
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Demon's newest build has been released, featuring the new side-dungeon, the Anomaly. :D PC, Mac, and Linux builds are available at the usual link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The entrance to the Anomaly is fickle, sometimes appearing on Tower:5, sometimes on Tower:6, but the appearance of the warp leading to it is unmistakable:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXrJM7jUoAAitwQ.png:large)
Inside, you'll find new demons unique to the Anomaly, with new abilities. :) But.. other summoners have probably come to the Anomaly for the same reason.
This build also includes some balance changes based on feedback received over the course of the last month or so. :)
Enjoy, and good luck in the Tower... and the Anomaly. :D
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Looks great! I'll have to try it!
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Oh, hey. :D
Please do, and lemme know what you think. :) Demon's a pretty different place since the last time you stopped by the thread. :D
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First impressions:
-Graphics much improved - still with the primitive aesthetic, but now possibly on-purpose primitive
-Game is harder!
-Fighting is more complicated and I'm having to pokemon-switch constantly.
-Ow ow ow ow ow.
Very good stuff, Mr. Ferret!
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That's right, the alternate character art set Geminimax is maintaining is new to you too. :D (If by some chance you want the old back, there's an options menu accessible with the - key that is probably also new to you. )
I'm glad you're enjoying the bumped up difficulty level. :) I don't remember where exactly it was at in your era since it's bee awhile, but I do know it's only moved in one direction for awhile now, so it's definitely higher than it was when you played last. :D
Thanks for playing again. :D I'm always happy when previous players visit again and like the changes they see. :)
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Whoops. :) I went dark here a bit longer than normal. In my defense, it's been because I've been buried in content land. :D
I'm getting close to releasing the next build, which will add floors 18, 19, and 20 to the Tower. Some of the demons lurking about up there may be a bit crazy...
(http://i.imgur.com/zSaIBU7.png)
(Note: Soul is a new cooldown type. It refreshes 1 point every 10% of a level the character gains. So, once Eternal Glory triggers, it's on cooldown for 9 levels.)
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Crazy...but as it is a classical one versus the Tezuka rendition, not too crazy. 8)
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Woo hoo, the 2/3 build of Demon is out. :D The Tower expands to 20 floors (not counting the side-dungeons that appear within it)!
Download link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Of course, it's a long way up. :) Less than 1% of games reach Tower:17. A great many end in this spooky hole on Tower:2...
(https://i.imgur.com/xGmZgAF.png)
It may seem strange to work on the "end" of the game given that, but I wanted to thank the players who are playing heavily managing to beat the current content with some new stuff to find up there. :D
Good luck. :D
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Getting close to the next major release, which will include Arcadia, a new side dungeon that has a 50% chance of replacing Tower: 1 & 1/2 in a given game. :D
Second pass of the terrain art: wall improvements to make it less hedge mazey and more foresty and maybe more "lone tree" art variety are the only major things left to do here:
(http://i.imgur.com/smzznze.png)
An example of the sort of maps generated for Arcadia: The forest architect I made tends to create big semi-open areas with several offshoot areas. :D It feels fairly foresty to me, at least. :D
(http://i.imgur.com/5MtHxEr.png)
Probably a bit more than a week of work left on the build, but we're getting there. :D I hope to announce the release soon. :D
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New build is out. :D You can download the PC, Mac, and Linux builds here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
This build includes Arcadia, the new one floor side forest-themed dungeon that sometimes replaces Tower: 1 & 1/2.
(http://i.imgur.com/QoFM7C8.png)
This build also has some other good tweaks and adjustments:
- Slimes are no longer weak to Fire and Electricity.
- Freybugs are now weak to Light instead of Fire.
- Modifiers granted to demons now give stats focused more on the role the modifier encourages rather than just the abilities it can grant. (i.e.: Melee modifiers now grant more Agility and Vitality than before, for example)
- Some small adjustments to Earth Break, Avalanche, and Bloodlust to bring other melee abilities back up to speed. (Yes, this means I nerfed those three things :P Sorry, had to be done! :P )
- The new demons local to Arcadia can sometimes be found in the Tower itself, as early as Tower:4.
- Adjusted the AI calculations for stagger/turn acceleration effects.
It's good to finally begin to have enough content to be able to have some of it randomly selected each game instead of needing it to all be turned on. :D Good luck in Arcadia, and as always, I welcome any feedback. :D
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Awesome!
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Late Ferret is late, but a new build was released 3/23. :D You can grab PC, Mac, and Linux builds from the usual spot: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
This was a polish / tweak / re-balance build to take care of some outstanding issues before moving on to adding the currency system to the game. :D
Among the goodies added are:
* Cleaned up texture bleeding errors that were happening on a small number of machines.
* "Pacifist" demons now do a somewhat better job of not advancing into combat.
* Adjusted the early game slightly: 2nd and 3rd level come a bit more quickly, some demons (especially corporeal undead) have had their resistances adjusted, and a few of the more exceptionally deadly early encounters have been quietly toned down a bit.
* Four new items added: Magic Map (maps the current level fully), Calm Card (unsummons all allies as a free action), Zephyr Card (summons one ally to any space in range as a free action), and Guardian Gem (buffs Evasion and Defense for all allies)
* Auto-explore is now considerably more efficient.
* Bigger sprites on character sheets. Several players had mentioned wanting to see "big" sprites for all characters, not just ones you can negotiate with, so I changed character sheets to show them:
(http://i.imgur.com/ApnyGkR.png)
Next up will be the currency build, which will be a pretty significant change to Demon. :D See you then. :D
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Builds with the new currency system have been released. :D PC, Mac, and Linux builds are all available here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
(http://i.imgur.com/4cTlreD.png)
With the new currency system, quite a few things have changed in Demon:
* As you explore the Tower, you will find caches of crystals that your summoning relic absorbs, recording the amount absorbed as Credits.
* Credits are used to perform advanced relic functions collectively called Transmutations.
* The available transmutations are Copy Ability, Delete Ability, Fuse Demons, Restore Demon, and Delete Demon.
* Copy Ability allows you to copy an ability from a demon ally to another demon ally, or (at increased cost) to the main character. It replaces both the Training Point system and the gradual passing on of abilities from demons to summoners that used to occur.
* Delete Ability costs no credits, and simply allows you to remove an ability from the target ally, should you find a reason to do so.
* Fuse Demons allows you to sacrifice one demon to give a modifier to another demon. Fusion is expensive in terms of credits, but modifiers provide powerful benefits to the recipient. This replaces the Silver and Gold Matrix items, which are no longer found in the game.
* Restore Demon allows you to revive a fallen ally, though it is quite expensive. This replaces the Spirit Chime item, which is no longer found in the game.
* Delete Demon costs nothing, and allows you to remove a demon from your party should you find a reason to do so.
In essence, Currency is being used to remove clunkier systems (Training Points :P) or stabilize previously overly RNG-reliant mechanics (having to find Matrix items to Fuse Demons), while at the same time giving the player more interesting choices to make (namely, how to divide a very limited resource that is now shared by all of these systems.)
So far, the regulars seem to be pretty happy with the changes, and so am I. :D If you give it a try, let me know what you think. :) Until next time, good luck in the Tower. :D
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So I'd seen this game pop up in the Early Dev forums but hadn't checked it out until now. Just died for the first time on Anomaly 2.
I'm impressed. The game is really good! Don't know what they were like before, but the credit system seems to work well (though I'd maybe suggest a more thematic name than credits ;)). I really like the way you can customize your player and your demons with merging and transferring abilities. The variety of demons and powers also means that you have to switch between them a lot (although I did manage to make a super-healer fairy that I never unsummoned). I liked the variety of recruitment events too, I was expecting it to be just SMT-style negotiations (not that there'd have been anything wrong with that), but there was some neat variety in there (I really liked the Headless special recruitment!).
From a game design standpoint, the only thing that really sticks out at me right now is resting. Since there's no food clock or anything, there doesn't seem to be much reason *not* to rest after every battle (unless you're in a timed recruitment event).
I'm really enjoying it though, time to go pick a different relic and see how a second play through goes.
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Hey. :) Thanks for checking Demon out, I'm glad you're enjoying it! Anomaly: 2 is pretty amazing for a first run. :D Congrats!
Re: Resting, Demon uses a bit of a different scheme than most roguelikes. There is no reason not to rest up between fights... but on the other hand, encounters are balanced assuming you've rested between them. Of course, that makes the timed recruitment events you pointed out require some pretty efficient conduct to succeed at (though in some cases, the thing you're trying to recruit is willing to help out.
Good luck on your second run. :D
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Hey. :) Thanks for checking Demon out, I'm glad you're enjoying it! Anomaly: 2 is pretty amazing for a first run. :D Congrats!
Re: Resting, Demon uses a bit of a different scheme than most roguelikes. There is no reason not to rest up between fights... but on the other hand, encounters are balanced assuming you've rested between them. Of course, that makes the timed recruitment events you pointed out require some pretty efficient conduct to succeed at (though in some cases, the thing you're trying to recruit is willing to help out.
Good luck on your second run. :D
Apparently I had a lot of beginners luck first go round. Happened to pick a good relic/power combo, had some lucky early recruits...haven't made it past tower 3 again yet!
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Hello. :D
Finally far enough along on the next big feature in Demon to have a decent amount to show for it. :D
Introducing: Relic Upgrades!
(http://i.imgur.com/XPrlWPb.png)
Relic Upgrades are a collection of summoner-specific abilities that change how basic mechanics specific to the player work. 17 different upgrades (not counting ranks for upgrades that have multiple ranks) will be available in the build introducing them, with more to follow in future builds.
Here's a few examples of what these upgrades can do for summoners:
1) Enemy Sense
Enemy Sense provides two different benefits: primarily, it shows the locations of enemies on your map. But in addition to this, when you fully explore a level, it will perform a more through scan of the level, revealing hidden enemies that otherwise can be found, providing additional opportunities for recruitment and gaining experience.
(http://i.imgur.com/b7Sjvbz.png)
2) Consume and Recycle
Consume provides you with HP and SP when you delete one of your demon allies. Since Delete Demon is a free action, this can provide a valuable emergency measure during a fight that isn't quite going your way. Recycle similarly grants you Credits when you delete a demon, which can provide one last use for allies you've outgrown (or had to hurriedly Consume during combat, since the abilities stack!) The strength of both effects is based off of how many levels the demon has gained since joining you however: new recruits won't provide much benefit.
(http://i.imgur.com/QUhIUMJ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/6NvYcke.png)
3) Far Summon
(http://i.imgur.com/fsrvvFx.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/siQUmlN.png)
Last of the examples today is Far Summon, a three rank upgrade that increases the range of your summon ability by 2 each rank. By default, you can only summon your allies into adjacent squares, but with Far Summon, you can place your allies much more strategically: you can summon melee allies much closer to their desired targets, make sure ranged allies have clear lines of fire and are safely out of harm's reach, etc.
This build is probably still a couple of weeks or so out from release, but I'm pretty excited about it. :) I'll post again later with more information about some of the other upgrades. :D Cheers!
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Okay, so it was a bit more than a couple of weeks out from release. :D But, the Relic Upgrades build is finally done. :D You can grab the builds at the usual link here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
(http://i.imgur.com/9aXwtfm.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/vr3oWW3.png)
Relic Upgrades are new summoner-only abilities that significantly change how basic mechanics of summoning work, either by tweaking existing abilities or adding entirely new ones. I gave some examples in my last post, but those are only a few of the nearly two dozen different upgrades available starting with this build.
Each relic has two starting upgrades, and you can add more upgrades of your choice after reaching specific levels. The starting upgrades for each Relic are:
Crown of Glory: Starts with Quick Summon and Quick Dismiss, which replace the turn cost of using Summon and Dismiss with 1 turn cooldowns instead.
Eye of the Dragon: Starts with Item Sense and S.E.P.I., which help you find more items and more Credits, giving you more resources to work with.
Faithful Heart: Starts with Revelation, which lets your demon allies learn powerful abilities, and Nightingale, which speeds up recovery rates for currently inactive allies.
Hand of the Dead: Starts with Consume and Recycle, which provide various benefits when you delete demon allies.
Orb of Power: Starts with Transpose Soul, which allows you to convert demon allies into very powerful abilities for your own use, and Translator, which significantly reduces the cost of learning abilities from your allies.
Titan's Fist: Starts with Fusion Saver, which reduces the cost of fusing demons together into new ones, and Soul Armor, which lets you sacrifice allies to gain their resistance, HP, and Speed modifiers.
Vodun Mask: Starts with Enemy Sense, which shows enemy positions on the map, and Far Summon I, which lets you summon allies 3 squares away instead of only being able to summon adjacent to you.
But, beware: enemy summoners also possess, and intelligently use, these new upgrades. :) Also, in order to preserve balance against non-summoner enemies, the starting stable size has been reduced from 8 to 6. (There is, however, a series of upgrades you can take that let you raise the limit back up to 8... or even higher, if you wish.)
Good luck in the Tower. :D
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New build is out! You can grab the Windows, OSX, and Linux builds here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
This build was something of a consolidation opportunity: a chance to take some time between major features/updates to address a pile of smaller things that had been on the to-do list for awhile. Among the notable changes:
1) Unity 5 and Performance Upgrades
Starting with this build, Demon is now developed in Unity 5. Among other things, this has given me access to a profiler which I have used to make substantial performance improvements to Demon. However, it does mean the list of older systems that can run Demon has shrunk a bit. You can review the system requirements here to see if your system is able to run Unity 5 games: https://unity3d.com/unity/system-requirements
2) Light and Dark Revamp
Many abilities in the Light and Dark ability sets have been significantly changed. For the most part, these abilities fall into three categories: Smites (low to medium damage spells that don't require line of sight or check accuracy, usually no or only a very brief cooldown), Miracles (moderate cooldown, high damage spells that affect all enemies, and only enemies, in a wide area which meet a certain condition), and Miens (passives that add bonus effects to all sources of Light & Dark damage if specific conditions are met.)
The intent is that these should prove much more useful and fun than the previous model, where Smites had conditions *and* cooldowns, often making them feel not worth the effort of trying to use. Miracles did not exist prior to the revamp, and their presence now gives Light and Dark users a high effort/high reward option they can take advantage of if they choose. Miens are not new to the revamp, but the vast majority of them did not exist prior to it.
3) Credit rebalancing
Currency costs have been significantly adjusted for nearly all transmutations. The two biggest changes are:
* Most transmutations involving demons (such as Copy Ability, Fuse Demons, and Restore Demon) now have their cost based on the demon's initial level, rather than their current level.
* Copy Ability's base cost has been significantly reduced (on top of the change on how the cost is calculated relative to demon level.)
The goal here is to allow more experimentation and use of transmutations, with only Fuse Demons and Restore Demon remaining relatively high costs. This will end up making the game a bit easier... but metrics strongly, strongly suggest this will not be a problem, 98% or so of games still end on the first four dungeon floors (out of around twenty-five!)
4) Strength change
The latest and finally successful (if testing and early feedback results hold up over more time) change for attempting bringing melee characters into line with magic characters: the Strength stat now reduces all damage taken in addition to raising the damage dealt by physical attacks, giving melee-focused characters a significant benefit for their investment in Strength. This helps make up for the facts that most physical attacks are short range versus the longer range of magic, and that magic encompasses a wider array of abilities than non-magic.
5) UI Upgrades
Leveling up is now done manually via the Transmutations menu instead of being forced at the moment you have enough XP:
(http://i.imgur.com/gI4y6Mg.png)
Targeting UI has been improved as well, highlighting characters who will actually be affected by the ability, which is particularly helpful for Light and Dark's conditionally effective abilities. In the screenshot here, Humble (which only hits enemies with full health) is correctly highlighting only the full health enemy goblin, and not the wisp (who isn't an enemy) or wounded goblin:
(http://i.imgur.com/zmRQQ7B.png)
Some other smaller changes here and there too. :) You can find out more details in the change logs included with each build. :D Cheers, and good luck in the tower!
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9/18 ARRP release since Ferret might actually be asleep for awhile~
And we’re clear! The 9/18 build, for ARRP 2016, is up! Download links to your left have already been updated!
In case you’ve missed it, the big changes in this build are:
10 new demons, including 3 uniques.
22 new abilities.
9 new Sanctums, 4 of which will appear in each game, controlled by uniques old and new alike.
Some moderate adjustment of the “Strength = Defense” mechanic to make it more balanced at low and high Strength.
Some changes to how bonus MaxHP accumulation/loss operate to make this a more viable mechanic for melee casters.
Other smaller bits and pieces, detailed in the change logs included with every build.
Enjoy, and good luck in the Tower. :D I’m a tired FerretDev and am going to go be flat somewhere for awhile to prepare for Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse’s release Tuesday. :P
May his incoming theft...er..."adaptation" of SMT IV: Apoc to further feed Demon fly just and true. 8)
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Hey, I was on my way here! :D Thank you for the assist though! :D
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Shin Megami Tensei is my favorite game franchise, and I love roguelike, so from a concept stand point you already won! I haven't spent a ton of time with the game, but what I've played is excellent and actually reminds me of SMT with the conversation system. I'll be sinking a lot of hours into this and provide real feedback as I go.
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Awesome. :D I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to the feedback. :) Apologies for the slightly tardy response, this past week has been especially busy. (For that matter, I should probably write up a post about the build I released this week here. :P )
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Oh is there a new build? When did you release it?
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Same day you posted here, but there was a bug fix update the day after on the 12th. :D I should be able to do a proper write up on it here tomorrow. If you don't already have the 12/12 version, you can grab it here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
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Oof, been awhile since I posted any progress here, with apologies. Work has continued on Demon throughout, but since I'm not full time on it these days I've diverted some time away from posting so that devwork can continue at a decent pace. :D
There have actually been two builds since my last major post here: a 10/13 build that was mostly UI tweaks and improvements, and the much more exciting 12/12 build that added two major new features to the game: Relic Wraiths and searchable summoner corpses, which are the first instance of the new Interactables mechanic. You can grab the 12/12 builds for PC, Mac, and Linux here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
As the name implies, Relic Wraiths are Demon's take on player ghosts:
(http://i.imgur.com/24vCvzQ.png)
When a player dies in the Tower, Relic Wraith will be saved locally and later used to spawn Relic Wraiths in future games. Relic Wraith data is also sent with score data at the end of a game, so you can run into Relic Wraiths created by other players' deaths as well. :D Having had some... disagreements... with how other games handle ghosts in the past, I've done a few things differently with Relic Wraiths:
- For the moment at least, none are ever encountered randomly. The player must initiate specific courses of action to spawn them.
- The "rules" on Relic Wraith creation and spawning are specifically designed for fairness. The main criteria for selecting a Relic Wraith to spawn are what the last new floor the Wraith's player discovered was vs. what floor you are currently on, and the relative level of the Wraith and the active player.
- The demons who serve Relic Wraiths can be recruited once you have defeated the Wraith itself, just as with any other summoner.
- The resistance tables of Relic Wraiths vary from Wraith to Wraith, based on the Relic the player who made the Wraith was using. There are no universal weaknesses/resistances common to all Relic Wraiths: some are actually resistant to Light and Fire for example, while others can be poisoned or affected by Dark magic. (Despite the name they are not strictly undead creatures.)
Player ghosts have always been an interesting idea to me, but I've never quited agreed with most implementations of them. I'm hoping I've managed to solve the problems I usually see with them and retain the interesting and exciting bits. :D
The other major addition was the first Interactable, summoner corpses:
(http://i.imgur.com/4YH9nfh.png)
Summoner corpses are found strewn about the Tower, and may searched for various rewards... though doing so is not without risk (in fact, this is one of the methods by which a Relic Wraith spawn may be triggered.) Besides the horrifying possibility of a Relic Wraith, the results of a search may include finding an item, managing to extract an ability from the summoner's damaged relic for your own use, or accidentally releasing hostile demons from the Relic.
As an aside, the non-Wraith encounters spawned by searching corpses differ significantly from normal encounters in the floor: they are truly random combinations of demons, since they are meant to represent a dead summoner's cadre rather than a group of demons that naturally appear together. This can result in some interesting (and surprisingly challenging) groupings of demons that normally don't occur in the wild. :)
I'll be powering down for the holidays shortly to take a short break, but my hope is to start of 2017 strong for Demon with the next major build including an expansion of the Tower from 20 floors to 23. Until then, cheers, and good luck in the Tower!
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The 1/6 build is out! Updated builds can be found here, as always: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
The main addition in this build? The Codex Daemonium: an automatic record of every demon you've ever recruited. Depending on your option settings (accessed via the '-' key during gameplay), the Codex can be character-specific, global to every character you've played on the current build, or act as a spoiler and show all demons whether you've actually recruited them or not.
(http://i.imgur.com/jeHTQdD.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Hg4YeV0.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/BpJ1Z3t.png)
Also in this build, by semi-popular demand, you can now toggle online features on or off in the options menu:
(http://i.imgur.com/VfQQhAS.png)
In addition to these changes, several other additions and adjustments were added including:
- Improved corpse interaction results: fewer "nothing" results, more challenging demon encounters, and Enemy Sense now identifies corpses that will trigger encounters
- Demons now sometimes directly demand Credits during negotiations, previously this only happened as part of other demands.
- Revamped Hero rank benefits: Heroes are now more deadly than ever
Enjoy, and good luck in the Tower!
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Whoops, found and fixed a bug with level-boosted enemies that prevented them from spending bonus points. :( Fixed in the 1/7/2017 builds, available now at the usual link: : https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
Apologies, and enjoy!
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Wow, this is great work. The engine is lovely. I'm just starting out but I am very impressed so far. I didn't read the manual at all and was able to get started without any trouble (and lose my first game). You've done a fantastic job with the tool tips and controls.
Love the demon negotiation. One small thing, when the demon asks for something I don't have (like money) it seems like I should be able to say I don't have it, but that's not always an option. I'm guessing "refuse" ends up being the same result.
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:D Hey, thanks for checking Demon out, I'm glad you're enjoying it. :)
I'm happy the tooltips and controls are easy to pick up: I confess UI isn't my favorite thing to work on (says me and almost every other roguelike developer), so it is always nice when someone mentions it has helped them play. :D
Claiming you don't have any of a thing is usually only an option for item requests, rather than money requests, because while it is relatively common to be out of a specific item, it is relatively rare to be out of credits. You could argue the option should still exist for the purposes of lying... but by the same logic, while demons do sometimes believe a lie about being out of an item they want since it is a reasonable thing that can happen, they should probably almost never believe it about money, which would make it a strictly worse option than just refusing since demons who think they've been lied to tend to react worse than demons who are just told no.
Thanks again for checking Demon out, and for the feedback. :D
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The next build coming up is a content build, the primary goal of which is to expand the main dungeon from 20 floors to 23 floors.
A grand total of 21 new demons are being added, and I am happy to announce I've finished the sprite are for all of them. :D If you're a fan of Geminimax's sprite set, don't worry, he's still working on his. :D Just a little busier with college than usual. :)
Without further delay, here's the original sprite set art for the 21 new demons:
Abbey Lubber
(http://i.imgur.com/Lnmkldu.png)
Alma
(http://i.imgur.com/5FEqknI.png)
Baba Yaga
(http://i.imgur.com/HO31hyq.png)
Basilisk
(http://i.imgur.com/90qUUoH.png)
Brucha
(http://i.imgur.com/OHleDzV.png)
Buruburu
(http://i.imgur.com/80sKZT3.png)
Couril
(http://i.imgur.com/t6B6AkS.png)
Death Worm
(http://i.imgur.com/5N1ZvfZ.png)
Estas
(http://i.imgur.com/qfTv615.png)
Eye Killer
(http://i.imgur.com/sjR23CI.png)
Flying Head
(http://i.imgur.com/cbwyXqN.png)
Friar Rush
(http://i.imgur.com/tAJCNfj.png)
Jotunn
(http://i.imgur.com/pZZQKCH.png)
Leib-Olmai
(http://i.imgur.com/2npjdoX.png)
Mulassa
(http://i.imgur.com/5bOdOTS.png)
Mummy
(http://i.imgur.com/zzKNtPo.png)
Ogun
(http://i.imgur.com/bDVsomy.png)
Sankai
(http://i.imgur.com/SDBbl5U.png)
Shikome
(http://i.imgur.com/IBEZPXc.png)
Virtue
(http://i.imgur.com/KTUjSsY.png)
Zaltys
(http://i.imgur.com/MRvfeIv.png)
Still a ways to go on release, since there's this much content going in, but it should be an awesome build when it's ready. :D Cheers!
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Congrats for creating sprites on your own! They all looks nice, but Baba Yaga is truly awesome :D
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Thank you. :D I'm glad Baba Yaga in particular came out well: she's a major figure in mythology, besides also being a Unique in Demon. :D Now that I'm getting to doing content for the last third of the main dungeon, I feel I can start using some of the more major figures in mythology (which is why you see Basilisks and the Jotunn finally joining the roster).
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Hey. :) Things have slowed down a bit as I've transitioned from full-time to part-time work on Demon, but slowed down doesn't mean stopped:
In the month or so since the last post, not only have I finished the icon art for the 160+ new abilities coming in the next build...
(http://i.imgur.com/N5QwPBD.png)
...but, as of now, 140 or so of them are also implemented. :D
A reasonable question to ask would be why so many? It goes back to Demon's random modifier system: every 1/3 of the game uses a different set of random modifiers that can be applied to demons as they spawn. Each random modifier is also supposed to have level-appropriate abilities it chooses from to give to demons that receive it... thus, since the build is the first build with content from the last 1/3 of the main game, I needed to make the abilities to fill out the new set of modifiers' lists properly.
I also wanted to make SP-denial and physical/elemental hybrid builds more attractive and interesting, so some of the abilities were added to accommodate that as well.
This is one of the last big tasks left before the next release, though there are plenty of smaller ones and a fair bit of testing still to go, but I'll get through it. :D Hoping for a March release at this point. :) Cheers!
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You can do it! 8)
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The new build is finally released! Here's a link for the PC, Mac, and Linux builds: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web
As discussed in my posts above, the new build adds 3 new dungeon floors, 20 new demons, and over 160 new abilities, as well as some AI and balance tweaks that should make the game play better. :)
I'd say more about it.. but... I'm tired. :D You can read most of the important bits in my posts above, or in the change logs included with each build. Cheers, and good luck in the Tower!
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Damn, I recently got into the shin megami tensei and I must say that this game is quite similar to it (especially the demon negotiations and fusions).
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That's pretty much what I was going for. :) Thanks for trying it out :D
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Man, I've been addicted to this game the past few weeks trying out tons of builds and strategies! Got pretty deep and died to carelessness when my nearly invincible omni-veil titan got drained down to 22 hp. Didn't have enough pure gems.
Some feedback on my numerous playthroughs though:
* Some spawns are extremely brutal! In particular, early relic wraiths, that pair of level 9 charging ghouls at Tower 1 1/2 (while you're likely just level 2 or 3), teams of modified monsters with similar blaster spells (e.g. psychic groups which will mind scream you to death), etc. These encounters can be downright frustrating.
* Everything is so expensive! Prices scale nastily too (via monster level/rarity). Even if you have the related discount relic upgrade, I've found that most actions are too expensive to use (like fuse, transpose, soul armor and revive). Maybe partly because credit pickups don't scale as well on dungeon depth. To overcome the lack of credits, I've been capturing and recycling every demon I can, but still not enough leeway to test out the relic functions.
* Some uniques are extremely hard to recruit, like Ccoa with 4 turns (if it jaunts, you fail). Though thankfully there's that rare golden goblet item that can instantly recruit them.
* Who picks that stupid deer over that hot, hot lady? Lol!
Anyways, the content, customization and strategy is pretty damn solid! Hopefully the bestiary expands and adds more mythology/folklore creatures and such. Thanks for the great game, Ferret! :D
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Hey ampnaman :D Thanks for trying Demon out, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. :)
Early relic wraiths can definitely be a bit of a bother: since these are player ghosts, they can have access to some nasty abilities from starting packages early on. If you're not feeling confident, you can skip searching corpses, or pick up the Enemy Sense relic upgrade (which will tell you which corpses are going to spawn enemies or become wraiths) and get the goodies without the danger.
The pair of ghouls in Tower: 1 & 1/2 are toughies, as can be some groups of blaster enemies. One tip I can give that definitely applies to ghouls, and often other troublesome groups: look for opportunities to use recruitment mechanics to break up things a bit. For example, Ghouls are recruited by joining up with one and helping it rampage around the level. If you run into that pack of 2 ghouls, you can start a link with one and it will help you kill the other. :) Even if you ultimately fail the capture attempt, you get to fight both ghouls separately instead of together. Look for similar opportunities in other troublesome groups: they are not always present, but more often than not they are.
Yeah, the Currency/credits system needs a bit of tuning. I'm in the middle of some experiments with combat at the moment, but this is probably next on my list since it's sort of bugging me too. :) Uniques're definitely difficult to recruit, though they will be a little easier in the combat experiment build since damage across the board is up a little.
As for Actaeon vs. Artemis, that depends on who you ask. :D In some circles, Actaeon is widely regarded to be the best choice due to the abilities he provides when used with Fuse Demon, Revelation, or Transpose Soul.
:D I'm still working on it, so more content will be coming. There's already 23 floors to the main Tower and a smattering of side-dungeons to explore, so you've got plenty to keep you busy depending on how far you've gotten so far. :) Good luck in the Tower, and thanks for the feedback.