Mysterious Castle, Tactics-Roguelike

[eclectocrat]

What do you get when you try and cross ZAngband with Final Fantasy Tactics?

www.mysteriouscastle.com



So much has changed since my first release almost a year ago. I'm grateful for all the support of the community. I hope to bring the game more towards it's roguelike roots in the coming months. If anyone has any questions, comments, ideas, criticisms, anything, I'd love to hear them.

[getter77]

Fantastic as always, congrats on making widening release!     Anything else to report on beyond:

GENERAL:

* Dungeons! Errr… Mysterious Castles!

* Treasure chests are now generated in caves as well as in the forest.

INTERFACE:

* Added a custom cursor.

* Transfering items further streamlined.

* Weapons and armor now display basic stats.

* All stat and skill increasing books now contain information about the stat or skill they increase. For instance, reading a book about the ‘sneak’ skill will explain how it is used in the game.

* You can now ‘read’ spellbooks to get detailed info on spell effects.

* Moved the action bar, which showed how many action points a character had, from the bottom left corner, to a status bar hovering over the character.

* Character pool size increased to 9.

RULES CHANGES:

* Medium armor gives penalties -1 dex, -1 init, and -1 arcane.

* Heavy armor gives penalties -2 dex, -2 init, -2 arcane, and -1 move.

* You can now take a five foot step before making a full round action.

* Canceled spells no longer waste your turn.

* Greatly reduced the frequency of certain powerful items.

* The ‘curse’ spell no longer stacks.

ADDITIONS:

* Added a dark guild faction, members include dark monks, warriors, trolls, and ogres.

* Enemies can now ‘power strike’ you.

* Enemies are now immune to certain types of energy, ie. fire elementals don’t take damage from fire (duh!).

TECHNICAL/BUGFIXES:

* Fixed broken “web” immunity.

* Fixed ‘bless party’ ability of obelisks.

* Fixed a bug where sneaking characters loaded from a file used their normal light source.

* Fixed light cloning when using autoequip.

* Fixed the impassable fence of doom bug.

* Several other bugfixes.

In the time since you've been getting this wrangled and bugs hunted back when it was just for OSX?

I'd reckon the plan is to take some time for things to simmer down before outlining the plan for the big 2.0 release in the times to come?

Also, whatever happened with the IndieDb situation?  It seemed like it had been functioning, but now I see a move to Amazon for the latest demo, which to their credit did download right quick.

[eclectocrat]

I'd reckon the plan is to take some time for things to simmer down before outlining the plan for the big 2.0 release in the times to come?

Also, whatever happened with the IndieDb situation?  It seemed like it had been functioning, but now I see a move to Amazon for the latest demo, which to their credit did download right quick.

More or less, I'm going to focus on releasing on Linux, and updating the iOS version. I've got a million ideas for the next version so if I'm definitely not sitting on my hands. I expect a few small patches for 1.9, while I work out the details for 2.0.

I'm going to upload the demos to Indie DB as well, just wanted a direct link on the homepage, so that people can try it without going through a ton of links.

I'll keep this thread updated!

[george]

Thanks for posting the release, I actually saw your game in your sig at TIGS the other day, wanted to try it but there was some snafu with the Windows build. DL'ing the demo now

[eclectocrat]

I'm updating the game soon with a roguelike requirement: permadeath! Yes, finally adding the things that make a roguelike a roguelike. What other things do I need to turn the game into a true roguelike?

[ido]

I'm updating the game soon with a roguelike requirement: permadeath! Yes, finally adding the things that make a roguelike a roguelike. What other things do I need to turn the game into a true roguelike?

It's more important that the game stays true to what it is and what you want it to be than to tick off as many items on a bullet-point list of roguelike elements

That said, if you want a list this is not a bad one:
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Berlin_Interpretation

But seriously, you got a good thing going here. Don't compromise it by needlessly trying to adhere to genre tropes.

[eclectocrat]

Cool link, I already adhere to most of those, although I deviate from a few.

I'm not going to do a checklist, but permadeath has always been on my mind. I just figured out a simple way to do it in a party based system with a slow save system, so that if any party member dies, they stay dead, even in the case of reloads and other hackery.

[requerent]

Do you plan on facilitating someway to acquire new party members?

[eclectocrat]

There will be a whole new dimension to the game in the next version, I think I've got a winning idea. Included in this dimension is the possibility of recruitment.