MidBoss beta release (v1.0.12 Closed Beta) semi $

[Eniko]

With the completion of the new item and loot systems, MidBoss has gone into beta! Download the free beta or get an early adopter's discount and support development by buying the game early.

Greenlight

MidBoss is now on Steam Greenlight, and it needs votes to get through! You can vote via the website or open the Greenlight page in your Steam client and prevent any hassles with having to log in.

New Trailer

There's a new beta trailer you can check out.

Important Updates

See the changelog for all changes in v0.6.0.

• Added item system, mobs now drop randomized loot belonging to one of 5 rarities
• Some legendary equipment will give the player access to abilities while equipped
• Added potions, these have one of 16 effects, some negative, some positive
• Potions are randomized every game and won't say what they do until tried once (optional)
• Switching equipped forms now inflicts stacks of Soul Fatigue debuff, which inflicts a 5% penalty to all core attributes for every stack after the first
• Meta attributes can now be decreased as well as increased while the player stays inside the game's menus
• The first ability of a new form is now free
• Tutorials overhauled completely
• Added onscreen healthbars (can be disabled in options)
• Added brightness option and color blind modes
• Music is now streamed instead of preloaded, significantly reducing memory requirements

[getter77]

Congrats on making the Beta release---modified the OP...slightly...to reflect strong optimism on this going forward now having reached this important junction.   

[Zireael]

Beta 0.6.0 hangs up on titlescreen no matter the resolution.

[Eniko]

Zireael: crash, or freeze? If it's a crash, could you send the crash.log to eniko at projectdrake.net? If it's an actual freeze/hangup once the window is visible, some more information about when exactly it happens to pinpoint the problem would be much appreciated.

[Zireael]

No crash, just freeze. The last entry in run.log is "Unloading titlescreen content".

[Eniko]

Could you e-mail me the full run.log, please? I'll try to see if I can fix this.

EDIT: Is this on a fresh install, trying to create a new game?

[Zireael]

Just sent the mail. Yes and yes to the questions.

[getter77]

Beta v0.7.0   

(NOT savegame compatible with older versions)

    Abilities
        Fireball minimum damage decreased.

    Audio
        Added all new music by @yuzukimasu. Includes three new stage themes, a new version of Imp's Lament (title screen), and new game over music.
        Reimplemented dynamic music system which dynamically switches between two tracks depending on whether monsters are around.
        Upgraded to the latest version of FNA, this should hopefully fix an intermittent audio cut-out bug that happened on some systems.

    Bug Fixes
        Fixed crashing bug when switching main/off-hand slots under certain circumstances. (credit to GreyFalcon, @perfumednight, Michael Bolton)
        Fixed crashing bug on some systems when switching from windowed to full resolution fullscreen. (credit to @ZenithTheOne)
        Form points are no longer shown as earned in the log when a form is mastered.
        Minimap no longer wraps around in the X direction when collapsed.
        Fixed a freezing bug that could occur when the player died without other mobs around.
        Fixed bug where double clicking a selected item in the equipment window would deselect and reselect instead of use the item.

    Command Line
        Added -nomusic command line argument to disable music entirely.
        Added command line arguments section to readme.txt.

    Controls & Interface
        Mouse movement going up and down stairs improved. (no more rapid switching between levels)
        Ability combo boxes in the forms window now show tooltips for the currently selected ability.

    Environment
        Levels now spawn clusters of crates. These crates can be smashed and sometimes contain loot.
        Levels now spawn chests. Chests always contain some equipment, and come in three varieties: plain (copper), ornate (silver) and royal (gold).
        Every level spawns a single royal chest, find the chest to get some of the best loot in the game!
        Some rooms are spawned as libraries. These rooms have bookshelves in them, one of which contains an ability tome. Attack bookshelves to search them.
        Levels now spawn doors between rooms. Move into a door tile to open it. Doors cannot (currently) be closed.

    Graphics
        Added pixel perfect rotation option, enabled by default. Disable this to gain FPS, but get blurry rotated sprites.
        Walls will no longer show edges for rooms which have not yet been explored by the player.
        Revamped title screen.

    Items
        Added ability tomes. These books drop from library rooms and rarely as loot and have a number of charges. Double click tomes to use the ability.
        Item rarity rebalanced completely. Uncommon and common items are now much more common, rare items are actually rare, and epic and legendary items are very rare. The royal chest is now the best chance of finding epic or legendary equipment.
        Equippable item tooltips now show rarity along with item slot.
        Added item rarity tutorial message.

    Mobs
        All mobs rebalanced for greater availability of loot, stats increased. (significantly in some cases)
        Warlock attribute multipliers rebalanced; Force, Power and Spirit multipliers reduced.

An excellent assortment of gains constituting a nice leap forward at long last!   

[getter77]

quick v0.7.1

(savegame compatible with v0.7.0)

    Input:
        Mouse input bug where input would not register under certain circumstances fixed.

[getter77]

Beta v0.7.2 as 2016's grand upswing continues apace and afar across the spectrum!   

Evocative new screens here amidst the rest: http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3e3c061f541661313ba409de2&id=4ccd53311f

MidBoss has been updated to version 0.7.2! You can download the latest version at midboss.net, or check the instructions on how to update your current copy. Because this is not version 0.8 this update will still be available for free, however starting April 4th the price of the game will be going up to $10 USD, so to save some money you can buy the game now.

Read on for the major changes in this version
Item comparison tooltips
A highly requested feature ever since the item system was added to the game, items will now finally compare to whatever items you have equipped! It'll be so much easier to decide on your stabbing implement of choice now.

 Item comparison tooltips
Improved tutorials
The old tutorial system has been completely replaced with a new and more engaging version which features Mid, the imp's tail flame, snarkily guiding you through the dungeon. The system used for conversations with Mid will also be used in future updates for conversations with other dungeon denizens as we begin fleshing out the game's setting and story.

Control style picking
One problem players using the WASD control scheme had was that about half wanted their controls aligned to the screen, while the other half wanted their controls aligned alongside the cardinal directions in the game. In order to fix this the game now prompts the player once to pick which control style they favor. This prompt can be re-enabled once through the Gameplay section of the Options menu.

 New control orientation style picking dialog
Odd potions
Rare, odd potions have been added to the game. I wonder what these would do if you drank them?
 Odd looking potion...?

New music
We've gotten a lot of feedback about the old music and have addressed this by redoing all the dungeon background music. The new music should be better suited for long play sessions, with ambient tracks (when monsters are not on screen) which are much more laid back.

We hope you enjoy the new changes
To get the new version please visit midboss.net or review the instructions on how to update your current copy.

Changes in v0.7.2:

(savegame compatible with v0.7.1)
Abilities
Ability icons added for: Fear, Fireball, Heart Strike, Life Leech, Magic Missile, Scurry, Dive Attack.

Audio
Added all new music by @yuzukimasu (again). Includes three new stage themes, and remastered versions of Imp's Lament (title screen) and new game over music.
Ambient music (when no mobs are around) is now much more low-key.

Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where game debug logging could theoretically crash the game on startup.
Poison related soft locks fixed, hopefully?
"You have failed to envenom " log message now displays in detrimental color, was beneficial.
" resisted fear from " no longer displays in the wrong log color.
Mobs no longer rapidly cycle through turns when game should be paused during some circumstances when the player dies and is between forms.
Mobs standing on closed doors on load no longer trigger both the door close and open sounds when loading a game.
Command line option -nomusic no longer causes a crash on load.
Fixed a bug that could cause progressive framerate loss over time in certain circumstances.
Fixed an audio bug that could cause intermittent crashes when exiting the game.

Controls & Interface
Now shows a control style picker dialog on startup, for those who can't be bothered looking at the options menu to rebind their movement keys. This can be shown again by checking "Show control orientation picker" in the Gameplay tab of the Options menu and restarting the game.
Game notifications should no longer overlap menus.
Zoning should no longer occasionally discard your next mouse click.

Graphics
The imp's tail flame is now animated.
When in non-imp form, the imp's tail flame floats overhead, marking the player entity.

Items
Item comparisons in tooltips added.
Added a rare chance of finding odd looking potions. I wonder what those do?
Ability tome colors improved to be less samey.

Tutorials
All tutorials have been replaced with conversations with Mid (the imp's tail flame).
Tutorial system greatly enhanced.

[getter77]

Beta v0.8.0!   

Care of a Special Sale~  for $7 until Oct 18

https://itch.io/s/4926/midboss-08-special

Get the all new version at the familiar old price during the version 0.8 release special! Changes in 0.8.0 include:

A new Quick Play game mode
6 brand new monsters with 15 new abilities
New ability types, piercing damage, (point blank) AoE attacks, counter attacks, procs, persistent ground targeted effects, auras and more
New room decorations and 2 new room types
Overhauled combat graphics
New music by @yuzukimasu
Brand new opening cutscene
Streamlined early game experience for old and returning players

(NOT savegame compatible with older versions)
[2016-10-07]
Abilities
Fireball:
Is now an AoE attack ability.
Minimum damage lowered significantly.
Mana cost is reduced to 15.
Now has a 10% accuracy penalty and a 30% chance to inflict the Burn debuff for 6 turns. Burn deals 5% of maximum HP damage per stack per turn.
Rot now halves poison damage (up from 25%).
Wicked critical bonus increased to +10.
Magic missile now does piercing damage.
Gore now gives +25% physical damage (+40% for Large and +50% for Huge creatures) for each hand not equipped with a weapon.
Weapon Mastery changed to the item mastery system, see 'Item Mastery' section for more information.
Paralytic turn delay increased to 10% (was 5%).
Ethereal damage converted to mana increased to 50% (was 30%).

Audio
Two brand new floor themes (4 new tracks) by @yuzukimasu were added.
The third floor theme has now been pushed back to floors 10-12 and one of the new themes has taken its place.
Various sounds now vary slightly in pitch when played.
Various new sounds were added, see 'Combat Graphics Overhaul' section for more information.

Bug Fixes
You can no longer possess things if they die outside of your line of sight.
Fixed a bug where enemies could be scared to death using Fear. Enemies 'killed' in this way never registered as dead, gave no exp or loot, could not be possessed, and remained visible as ghosts the player could walk through until the level or game was reloaded.
Fixed a bug causing Retaliation to not apply to magical attacks.
Fixed a bug which caused the wrong damage values to be displayed in the combat log if damage reduction from buffs was applied to an attack.
Fixed a several year old bug where the value indicating whether or not a tile obscures other tiles was not being cached, causing this value to be recalculated for every tile rendered, every frame, always. Oops.
Fixed a bug that could theoretically block off a corridor when merging doors, potentially blocking a level.
Fixed a bug where if pixel perfect rotations were disabled and the player had a non-default form color, rotations would produce color artifacts along the sprite's edges.
Fixed a bug with charge where charges would fail when they shouldn't.

Combat Graphics Overhaul
This patch is the first in a range of patches that features many graphical changes to enhance the look and feel of combat in MidBoss. Many animations, sounds and graphical effects have been added.
Added screen shake to some abilities. Screen shake amount can be customized or disabled in the options menu.
Added poison particle effect.
Added life leech animation.
Added dive attack animation and sounds.
Added body slam animation and sounds.
Added gravelord buff effect.
Added reanimate animation.
Added fear animation, sound, and debuff effect.
Added ethereal buff effect animation.
Added charge animation.
Added magic missile animation.
Added fireball animation and sounds.

Early Game Enhancements
Several changes were made in order to facilitate a pleasant early game experience for new as well as returning players.
The first floor is now a tutorial floor with a semi-fixed layout.
The second floor (formerly the first floor) has been reduced in size.
Rat and bat form experience required to level reduced in order to speed up the early game. Rat now requires 3 experience per form level (was 5), and bat requires 8 (was 10).

Entities
AI logic range increased.
Destructible objects now have a 100% penalty to evasion.
Monsters now belong to one or more of various types: Magical, Undead, Beast and Humanoid.
Creatures now receive a damage bonus or penalty depending on size. Large creatures get +10% damage, Huge creatures +20%, and Small and Tiny creatures get -10% damage.

Environment
Libraries now come with cozy ratty carpets.
Added storage rooms and treasure rooms. Treasure rooms contain gold piles which function like crates with slightly better loot.
The royal chest is now placed in a dead end room where possible in order to encourage exploration.
The room the royal chest is found in now has a decent chance of being a treasure room.
Stairs now have small signs indicating their direction.
Rooms have an increased chance of spawning higher level enemies, and will spawn slightly fewer lower level enemies.

Game Modes
Added Quick Play mode. In this mode levels are much smaller, better loot drops more frequently, and an experience boost is applied for a more compressed gameplay experience.
In order to add Quick Play mode, structural changes to the game were made which in the future will be used to create a fully customizable gameplay experience with various mutators the player can change to their liking.

General
Added an intro scene with dialogue. This can be skipped with the escape key, you terrible person you.
Six new monsters have been added; hell rat, aether bat, ghoul, reaper and rot worm (which spawns rot maggots, the 6th new mob).
These six new monsters come with 15 new abilities; 5 targeted abilities and 10 passive abilities.
These abilities use brand new systems for piercing damage, (point blank) AoE attacks, counter attacks, procs, persistent ground targeted effects, auras and more.
Added piercing attacks, these ignore half of the target's defense (toughness or resistance).
The way actions are processed has changed to a more robust queue based system. This should hopefully resolve various miscellaneous bugs and finally fix the poison game freezing bug. This was required to make many of the new abilities function properly.
All attributes now have sane minimums. Most attributes cannot be reduced below 1. Only Accuracy, Evasion and Stealth attributes can be negative now.

GUI
Attribute breakdowns now show percentage bonuses before flat rate bonuses.
The status window now shows a tooltip with breakdown for the 'Damage' entry, including any multipliers from status effects.
Status effects are now sorted between beneficial and detrimental.
Debuffs now display with a bright red background.
Added floating damage (and healing) numbers. These can be disabled in the options menu.

Items
Tomes no longer have an activation cost and don't drain any stamina or mana when used.

Item Mastery
A new item mastery system has been implemented, in order to make the Mastery series of abilities more interesting than a simple attribute bonus to all your gear.
Different types of equipment gain different mastery procs when using the relevant Mastery ability.
These procs make the choice whether or not to use a Mastery ability, and if so which gear to use much more interesting to the player and encourage creativity in combining procs with other abilities.
Currently, only the Weapon Mastery ability is affected and gives the following procs:
One-handed swords have a 10% chance to counter attack when hit.
One-handed axes have a 10% on hit chance to deal piercing damage.
Two-handed swords have a 50% on hit to cleave and deal damage to entities in adjacent tiles.
Two-handed axes have a 20% on hit chance to stun the enemy for one round.
Daggers have a 10% chance on hit to double attack.
Shields have a 15% chance when hit to guard, nullifying incoming damage entirely.
Additionally monsters with visible gear who have mastery abilities now benefit from those masteries, this means skeletons and ghosts gain the one-handed sword counter attack proc.
The Armor Mastery, Staff Mastery and Accessory Mastery abilities will be changed to use this system in future updates.

Options
Camera tracking during attacks can now be disabled in the options menu, in which case the camera does not move while attacking.
Added an option to disable the new floating damage values.
Removed the ability to disable animations.
Added customization option for the new screen shake effect.

Save System
Save files are now in zip format containing several xml files (one header and one per floor) instead of one massive file.
Game should no longer slow down due to saving when advancing in number of floors.
Improved save performance by parallelizing xml serialization. This feature can be disabled with the '-nothreadsave' command line argument.
Save files are now more compressed (smaller filesize).

Mighty update for a mighty fine game in the making!   

[Eniko]

Bug fixes for the bug fix god in 0.8.1! There is also a new v0.8 update trailer showing all the changes in the new version.

(savegame compatible with v0.8.0)
[2016-10-11]

    Bug Fixes
        Fixed an attack animation bug that could cause some animations (notable Envenom) to off-center the entity at low framerates.
        Fixed a bug where acid pool tile sprites were 1 pixel off causing a visible grid between tiles.
        Fixed a bug which could rarely result in blocking deco on the tutorial floor.
        Fixed a bug which caused crate and treasure clusters to spread through walls.
        Fixed a bug where the Carrion ability would fill the combat log with debug messages.
        Enemies can no longer aggro themselves. This fix also prevents entities from blinking out and back into existence when melee attacking themselves.

[Eniko]

More bug fixes and tweaks in 0.8.2

Changes in v0.8.2:
(savegame compatible with v0.8.1)
[2016-10-16]

    Bug Fixes
        Heart Strike now deals piercing damage and no longer increases the chance of critical hits. It now also does slightly increased maximum damage.


    Bug Fixes
        Made the save system more robust, hopefully resolving occasional crashes on some systems.
        Hopefully fixed one-pixel offset on dialogue window triangle from main dialogue box.
        Cleave should no longer hit targets that are outside of reach, such as targets that are two tiles away.
        Item masteries were showing up multiple times on item tooltips if the ability was equipped on multiple forms simultaneously. This was purely a cosmetic issue and has now been fixed.
        A bug was causing status effect damage such as damage done by Poison, Acid Pools or Burn to not apply damage reduction from passive effects such as Rot. This has now been fixed.
        Fixed a bug which caused the Burn status effect to display in the log even when enemies were affected.


    Environment
        Mob spawns have been changed in order to guarantee a certain number of mobs that are supposed to be new to a floor. This should help keep game balance more consistent, particularly in Quick Play mode.

[getter77]

v0.9.0!   

(NOT savegame compatible with previous versions)

    Abilities
        Accessory master revamped: accessories now add extra rolls to proc for other item masteries. For example, when weapon mastery and accessory mastery are active and the player is equipped with a dagger and a ring, there are two double attack proc rolls, once at the base 10% and once at 5%. With two daggers and two rings, there would be two rolls at 10% and four rolls at 5%.
        Added screen shake to possess animation.
        Armor mastery revamped. Cloth armor gains a 15% proc chance to absorb damage and convert it to mana. Leather armor gains a 15% proc chance to absorb damage and convert it to stamina. Plate armor gains a 15% proc chance to reflect damage back onto the attacker. Heavy boots gain a 10% proc chance to do an extra kick attack when attacking. Light boots gain a 10% proc chance to haste on move.
        Fireball attacks now also count as fire damage (main damage type is magic).
        Staff mastery revamped. Wands gain a 20% proc chance to lower mana cost by half on cast. Staves gain a 20% proc chance to increase magical damage by 50%.


    Bug Fixes
        Fixed a bug causing uncommon and common item drop rates to be reversed in quick play.
        Fixed a bug where disabling potion discovery caused potions to never show their info, rather than always show it.
        Fixed a bug where the forms and status windows weren't repositioned properly after changing resolutions.
        Fixed a bug which was causing rats to always drop loot.


    Environment
        Added shrine rooms, in these rooms is an altar which can be used to make a one-time offer to one of the four gods, who may give you blessings (or curses, should they not favor you).
        Added smithy room type. Comes with forge, anvil, armor stands and weapon racks.
        Basic rooms, storage rooms and treasure rooms have a chance to spawn armor stands and weapon racks.
        Plain rooms, storage rooms, and treasure rooms now have a chance to spawn weapon racks and armor stands.
        Reduced frequency of corridor type rooms.
        Tall candlesticks now spawn throughout the dungeon.
        The rat in the starting room should now no longer be spawned next to the player, which disrupts the flow of tutorials.
        The room before the first tutorial floor's stairs down is now a smithy.


    General
        Added cratefish crate. It's like a normal crate, but with extra cratefish.
        Added cratefish currency which increases with every cratefish particle spawned.
        Added cratefish king room, the cratefish king will give you rewards for liberating his subjects!
        Added trapped armor stands and weapon racks which spawn animated armor and animated arsenals respectively.
        Balls of yarn, the cat merchant's currency, now randomly drop from containers and monsters. Occasionally you will get a lucky drop which will generate more balls of yarn than normal.
        Custom game modes are now possible. You can customize various settings such as cursed/unidentified item behavior, floor and room sizes, and item drop rates.
        Implemented the cat merchant, who talks to you on the first floor then shows up on the 2nd floor and every other floor after that with his shop. You can buy or sell items at the shop, as well as identify items and remove curses from items.
        RNG state is now preserved when quitting and reloading the game.
        The first floor now has a cutscene introducing the merchant.


    GUI
        Large item comparison tooltip stacks now should no longer go off the top of the screen.
        Mid now sticks around the bottom right of the screen and will repeat helpful hints to inattentive players, or those players who don't read the tutorials at all (a special level of hell is reserved for you lot). Disabling hints in the options will also disable these hints.
        The forms window now shows what creature types a form belongs to.


    Items
        Accessories are now divided into rings, amulets and earrings.
        Armor is now divided into plate armor, leather armor and robes.
        Boots are now divided into heavy boots and light boots.
        Chests, treasure piles (and rarely mobs) will now drop holy water. Holy water will turn cursed equipment penalties into normal equipment bonuses.
        Cursed and unidentified items now exist.
        Epic equipment will now sometimes come with an innate item mastery proc.
        Implemented 23 unique items: Alchemist's Manual, Blood Axe and Blood Hatchet, Bone Armor, Cold Iron Cleaver, Eye of Eternity, Eye of the Allfather, Flame Aegis, Gore Boots, Gore Fist, Grandmaster Medallion, Multipurpose Jewelry, Poisoner's Satchel, Pork Poker, Rod of Decay, Skin Boots, Smash Fist, Sorceror's Codex, Spiked Shield, Swamp Boots, Templar Longsword, Temporal Ring, and Winged Cape.
        Legendary items and the new unique items now display a particle effect clearly marking the location of valuable items on the map.
        Scrolls of identification are dropped from various places, but bookshelves in particular. These scrolls stack and can be used to identify unidentified pieces of equipment.
        Two-handed legendary weapons no longer get two abilities, instead they merely get one. This is done to bring legendary two-handed weapons more in line with the power of two-handed unique weapons.

[getter77]

Quality new trailer and a Steam page for (~March~) wishlistin'   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl9jdj5GKRQ&t=0s
http://store.steampowered.com/app/561740