So, a year has passed since the day I released the first version of the game.
Well, why not sum up the results?
The first version was very slow (due to stupidly inefficient LOS algorithms) and basically added nothing new to its spiritual predecessor -
City of the Condemned (and even removed some elements of the gameplay). This was actually my third attempt to make a roguelike
The first two being traditional dungeon crawlers died under their own weight and scope without getting out of '@ moves on the screen' stage.
So, the first lesson for me - try to make something small and working as soon as you can that you can later use to expand and extend.
And so I did, rather quickly fixing the performance issues and trying to release a new version at least every month.
The second thing I've learned was that my interface preferences were really weird
- I preferred tiles and fonts to be as small as possible while numerous people pointed out that that was very inconvenient and put excessive strain on their eyes.
Meanwhile, brilliant performance did not last for long
as at some point I decided to add the 3rd dimension to my game. I have not seen many roguelikes toying with the honest 3rd dimension the way Dwarf Fortress does so I believed that this feature (along with mounted combat and multi-tiled monsters) would add something special to my game. I must say that I am still undecided if that was a good move as it brought visible slowdown. Most likely it's just me not knowing how to cook 3D properly but the delay of about 200 ms to 1 sec between player turns is rather painful at the moment.
Then red_kangoroo gave me a lot of cool ideas about factions and features that I was happy to implement. Additionally, I was influenced by other games I've played and seen, transplanting some bits from them into my game. That took me the remainder of the year, and here I am - the game now has 12 playable characters with (I hope) unique and interesting playstyles.
While the core idea is basically the same as in City of the Condemned (a deathmatch with several teams on the map), I think the games now differ enough to say that City of the Damned is no longer a remake
To keep up with the schedule I am releasing version 1.2.6 with a number of bugfixes and some new features that should spice up a (rather repetitive) satanist gameplay.
- With the demons invading, strange glyphs start to appear on the walls. The satanists are now able to decipher these demonic runes and use this knowledge to harness even more power.
- Demon word: Flesh lets a satanist turn a zombie into a full-fledged imp that can later progress and evolve as demons usually do.
- Demon word: Plague lets a satanist spread virulent soul sickness that will deal damage over time.
- Demon word: Power lets a satanist temporarily gain the power of an Archdemon.
- Demon word: Darkness turns off the sun for a period of time.
- Demon word: Invasion places an enchantment on the map that constantly reanimates corpses.
- Demon word: Knockback pushes all characters around the satanist away.
- Satanists now inflict vorpal damage instead of fire damage.
- Ghosts leave no footprints on snow and generate no sounds while moving.
- Blessings and divine shield now offer complete protection from ghost's possession.
- Empowered undead now have normal movement speed and can keep up with the satanists when following them.
- Fixed the bug with the game freezing after completion of the Increase acid strength mutation.
- Fixed the bug when you could target characters unseen by you with abilities.
Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.6As for the plans for the next year, I'd like to move from a coffeebreak roguelike into something more longlasting.
I actually like the idea of session games (which most MMOs nowadays turn to) - your game sessions are kept rather quick (15 - 30 minutes max) so you quickly get that feeling of satisfaction and completeness, however you can repeat these sessions any number of times you want advancing your metaprogression in the game.
This is what I'd like to see in my game and, luckily, the structure of it perfectly allows for it.
So, the first step will be mixing in new game modes and objectives (like capture the flag and capture the point) to diversify the old bland deathmatch. This by itself will be an ambitious task as while I do not doubt the players' ability to complete any custom objective I can throw at them
, teaching the AI to do the same won't be that easy.
Secondly, I intend to implement a kind of campaign mode the inspiration of which I take from the game called Pathologic. There will be a city divided into districts, missions will be generated in these districts (demons invading, angels trying to close the gates to another dimension from where the demons come, soldiers taking a captured district back) and the whole 'overland' map of the city will be changing mission after mission as districts fall under control of various factions.
So the game session will be the same as now - complete the mission on the district map, while the metaprogression will be to free (or conquer, or whatever) the whole city by taking and winning missions.
At least, that is the plan. We'll see how it goes
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Be warned, I'm going to write a very long rant below. 