Hey everyone,The last couple of releases have been more about bug fixes, but 0.5.2 has more of a focus on balance and creating a better structural integrity for future releases. I've spent quite a bit of time poring through the bug reports for new information on some of the old bugs. I think I may have remedied some during some circumstances, but it's hard to say since I don't actually get the errors myself. Turns out it's really hard to rectify issues you cannot recreate.There are a ridiculous number of edge cases for the limb system, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around a decent way to deal with them all. Consider the following: You have normal arms until your genetics destabilize, corrupting your flesh. These make wielding a weapon or off hand impossible. So you go and do what any normal person would do in this circumstance: Get a doctor to chop them off, and replace the arms with mechanical ones. Had these arms been organic, it would make sense for your genes to take over and corrupt these arms as well, but machines don't care about what your body WANTS to be. Because of the way Axu is coded, you still cannot wield items in your new arms. This is one of many stories I have heard, and it certainly is a big enough issue to warrant some restructuring. One large change I'm planning on making is the introduction of hands as a slot. Instead of the usual "Weapon" and "Off Hand" slots, each arm will have a "Hand" slot that you can put any item into. Your dominant non-severed arm hand will serve as the main weapon, while all others can perform actions as well, based on your Dexterity stat. Not only does this mean Dexterity will be more viable for close-ranged combatants, but it makes multi-wielding with a large number of arms possible and user friendly. I think this will help with edge cases regarding weapons vs arms too. Let me know what you think!CHANGES/ADDITIONS: WORLD: The world seed is now different than your character's name. Ensis Interior walls should no longer be overwritten by snow. New custom maps. Added the Xul faction and their portable base in the Red Desert. Added the Xul Nomad and Blacksmith NPCs. The Blacksmith has a small quest line that allows you to get a powerful modifier for your weapon. Snow no longer inhibits travel. It was tedious and silly. Changed the layouts of the static vaults. BALANCE: You can now only have three hired followers at one time. (Quest NPCs don't count.) Reduced the frequency of NPCs using skills. Added a stat that resists electrical and other energy-based attacks. More NPC skills use their stamina, so they can't spam them as often. Only the hit body part's armor proficiency increases upon taking damage, and only from physical damage. You deal 2.5x damage to an enemy that has not seen you yet, making stealth more viable. Nerfed throwing item damage. Some heavier and slower weapons can knock back creatures. You get less speed through level ups. Starving only damages you every 3 turns instead of every 1. Crystallization and Leprosy effect your limbs slightly more often. Crystalization can only spread to organic limbs. Limbs from humans correctly give you the "Cannibal" trait if eaten in front of other humans. Enemies in the arena no longer have loot. Reduced the amount of radiation given by many items. Increased the power of Frostborne faction members. LIMBS: Severed mechanical limbs now turn into scrap upon being severed. Severed limbs are now displayed as "Severed [Limb Name]" If you have one unmutated arm, you can equip a weapon. If you have two, you can equip an offhand item. QOL: You automatically pick up stackable items that you walk over (that you are already carrying) Items that match your Ranged weapon that are stackable get put into that stack instead. More non-unique artifacts. Throwing items can now be put into the Firearm slot (now renamed "Ranged") and thrown by pressing "F" Added an overflow scrollbar for the equipment menu for if the player gets too many limbs to fit on screen. SYSTEM: Swapped texture maps to the new map creator format. Added various console commands to set stats for debugging purposes. Console: Changed "grant" and "multigrant" to "give" and "multigive". The old "give" command wasn't really used, as it took an index. Typing the name is way easier. Cleaned up space in the Professions.json file. 0 level proficiencies no longer require a field of their own. Worked on map editor to make it available for public release. ART/UI: Added another swing animation for knife-like weapons. Ported level up screen to new UI. Loot panel now shows your inventory capacity. The ability panel has gotten an upgrade. It now has a scrollbar for out-of view abilities, and has a tooltip displaying the information of the current highlighted ability. This includes its level and experience needed to level it up. Moved the main menu options button to the top of the screen. Traits in the character panel have colored names. Fetch quest steps now have a quest icon on the world map that shows up. The quest arrow now points at fetch quest targets.FIXES: Vaults are checked to see if they have been visited in data before spawning more enemies, placing more objects, etc. Removed the backpack infinite storage exploit. The skill "Teleport" now can only take you to a random viewed tile. You will no longer find unique items on enemies that don't own them. Did some more work on assuring NPC objects will be destroyed after they die. Frostborne are now hostile again, as intended. You can have multiples of a stackable mutation. Handled some exceptions where thrown items would show up in a separate item pile from dropped items. Might not have caught them all. Surgeon's Kit no longer takes money to use. Teleport and Blink can no longer put you in doors. Items given by NPCs (Akk-Lune, Isazna) no longer show up as their IDs in the log. Attempting to buy items while you cannot hold any more no longer steals your money. Fixed the offset of the Bandit Adept's sprite. You can no longer path to stairs when there is a locked door in the way, even when you know the stairs position. After you complete a quest where the NPC follows you, their faction is reset to their original. Randomly generated "named" items now have their costs increased by 500%. They also can only be generated as a weapon, armor, firearm or offhand item. They can also have properties associated with them as well, granting them abilities. Gaining stats via level up now displays the proper message. Diseases and Wounds have proper color codes while being displayed. Edible items no longer give you their stats upon consuming them. You can no longer force an attack while stunned or frozen.
Changes: Added the framework for tiers of mutations. Several mutations now have more advanced versions of themselves. Most data now relies on IDs instead of strict names. This will make modding and translating much easier. Moved the name generator syllable list over to data for modders to edit. Ported the Pause menu to the new UI, which fixed many issues, including the character panel not showing up from that menu. Capped frame rate to 60 fps. You can now disable permadeath (saves being deleted upon death) in the options menu. Added an option from the pause menu to Save without quitting the game. Settings save when clicking "Apply" or when you close it, and not just when you exit the game. Removed the oxygen levels. Didn't add enough to the game to justify keeping around. Removed the penalty to ranged weapons' accuracy when your last turn was a movement action. The quest item Curious Artifact now has a price of 0. Slimmed down save file size. Many NPCs now equip weapons from a larger pool. Better mouse handling of off-screen travel (local only). Clicking on an adjacent non-hostile NPC or object interacts with them. The Loot panel now scrolls with the currently selected item. Digging tools now have a limited amount of uses. New camp fire art. New art for direction select. Doubled max hunger, but greatly increased the food consumption for world map travel. (To accurately represent how many tiles it would take to cross one screen on the local map) Compensated this by increasing the effectiveness of food items. Proper close button for Options menu. Added a scroll bar to the Body Parts panel in the Character window if it exceeds a certain size. Body part armor is now displayed in the Character panel. This includes equipped gear and natural defense. Made the Characer panel a little prettier with its layout, specifically in the Trait/Body Part segments. Firearms can be unloaded of their ammunition. Caves under ruins can now house buildings. Above caves contain very difficult enemies further down. Chests now show a different sprite if they have been opened by the player. Implemented a flood fill algorithm to find connected floor tiles to place enemies and items. New random premade maps. Added decorative permanent bloodstains.Fixes: 1920x1080 resolution doesn't make the camera jitter about. The damn stairs bug upon reloading a game has been fixed finally! Mutated parts now affect stats properly. Fixed Genetic Reassemblers. Fixed some errors with item tooltips. Becoming "Starving" while on the world map kicks you to the local map rather than requiring a restart. Dying from hunger should no longer crash the game. Dead enemy objects keep their original tag. Hopefully this gets rid of the "ghost" NPCs staying on every screen until a reload. Items thrown underground now properly show up at the correct elevation. Various traits were showing the wrong colour-to-affect. Fixed. You shouldn't get "stuck" in UI windows after alerts anymore. Broken fences now just turn into grass. You can no longer equip off-hand items with a two-handed weapon unless you have the special trait allowing it. Broken walls with a grass background won't show up in ruins. Quests asking for multiples of the same item now properly take multiples from your inventory. Using directional skills on your own position no longer crashes the game. Ruins now use the sand water autotile. Sweep attacks now have the proper sprite and rotation on their swings. Rain won't show in the Cathedral or Ensis interior. Genetic Reassemblers now can remove mutations' body parts. Mutation overwriting and equipment handling is working much better. Arm mutations now replace the weapon/offhand slots properly. Fixed some missing ID vs name changes in quests. Gear gets equipped/unequipped properly after removing mutations. Reworked dungeon generation code to (hopefully) place stairs more effectively. Gore, Trip, Double Strike, and Shield Bash abilities are now working again. Ruins should no longer show up in the ocean. Resolution options persist through save/load. Weapon modifiers no longer show up on offhand items. You can no longer dig through the walls in the prison/lab. Increased the effectiveness of digging tools.
Hey everyone,0.5.3 started as a hotfix for some issues with 0.5.2, but got pushed back. This is because I wanted to add some much-needed content to Axu's story, lore and various other aspects. There are now some new story quests with the Ensis, Kin of the Deep, and Xul for you all to do. I've also added several new mutations, traits, and Vampirism! Vampirism is a pretty fun disease to catch. One large change in 0.5.3 is with enemies. They used to randomly use skills available to them, regardless of any cooldowns. This seemed unfair, as the player has to wait to use abilities. Take a look at the changelog to see all the new stuff!Cheers,Matt (Cynapse) ADDITIONS/CHANGES: Manually picking up a similar item to the one in your Ranged slot stacks the items together in that slot. The Throwing menu now shows Throwing items first, and follows the scroll bar. Explosives and flasks of poison are now designated as throwing weapons. Having a throwing item in your Ranged slot displays the item's amount rather than ammo on the side panel. NPCs now use Stamina in all abilities they have, and have to wait for cooldowns, same as the player. A new disease: Vampirism. New main quests for Ensis, Kindred, and Xul. A new stat: Attack Delay. The lower the value, the faster you attack. New mutations. New level-up traits. Summon Spirits has been buffed. Mysterious Liquids now give more radiation than Irradiated Corpses. Slightly increased regen rate while resting. Reduced the frequency of radiation being given to the player through enemy attacks. Reduced Ranger of Xzol's ranged damage and accuracy slightly. Added the option to simplify damage numbers as a range rather than dice. A new, improved options menu. A consistent options menu between the title screen and the game. Altered the character creation screen a little to be more clear. Added a tooltip for the character screen. It shows definitions for each stat. The Character Creation screen remembers your last selected name, and places it in the NAME box by default. Reworked the name generator to give some actually pronounceable names. Slimmed down save file even further, and culled unwanted screens/npcs/objects past a certain threshold of turns. Hunger costs while on the world map halved while flying. Experiments with no legs still get an inhibitor attached to a limb. The Experiment felony now starts with random stats. The world map camera is now pixel-perfect. Test Subjects no longer have a ridiculous amount of intrinsic armor. FIXES: Enemies cannot use their skills while stunned, toppled or frozen. Fixed some exceptions with quests being duplicated and causing errors. Fixed tileset oddness and a crash due to it. Fixed an issue where NPCs are killed mid turn, causing the player to stand there unable to move or act. Fixed level up traits being different than displayed after closing an alert to get to the traits menu. Fixed severed limb naming. Enemies now have energy resistances. Having a voltaic weapon no longer crashes the game upon hit. Firearms no longer have a sprite to display, since it was overriding weapon sprite. NPCs that have a ranged weapon to start no longer get "None" equipped when swapping to the firearm. Mute option now mutes weather sounds. The equipment panel doesn't scroll when you scroll on the inventory panel. Inventory and Loot panels scroll properly with many items.
Hey everyone,I'm very excited to say that translation of Axu is now supported! If I have missed any text, please let me know. I worked very hard the last two weeks fixing bugs, adding new content, and overall making the experience much smoother! 0.5.4 is a "something of everything" kind of release. I've fixed numerous bugs that you guys have brought to my attention, made random artifacts much more interesting, tweaked the UI, added NPC sprites, updated world generation to be less same-y, and rebalanced quite a few enemies. Check out the changelog below to see all the good stuff!So what's next for Axu? Right now I'm working on restructuring the game's balance. The initial plan was to have a low power curve, but I feel that this is not the best direction to go, since there are so many systems in place. I've seen players have ridiculous stats, and nothing to challenge them. So I need to beef up the mid-game, and start working on end-game content. This is a very difficult task, given the diversity of characters. I want all playstyles to be somewhat viable throughout the entire game, given enough skill. I'm also working my way towards a slimmed-down UI as a toggle-able option. Roguelikes are an information-heavy game, given their usual lack of animations and other tells. I feel that the combat log is still necessary for understanding exactly what's going on, so I am going to leave that in, though taking up less space. Other necessary interface elements include HP, ST, status effects, and the minimap. I've been drawing mock-ups for the past few weeks, but have yet to stumble upon anything clear and functional, yet visually appealing. Aside from those two major focuses, as always, I am slowly working through the main story quests. It makes me sad that Axu is not fully playable from start to finish, but I want to make sure the base game is fun before plowing through the story. Rest assured, I am doing all I can!On another note, I will be attending the Roguelike Celebration in San Fransisco on November 11-12. I hope to do a talk related to Axu, and would love to meet you guys!Cheers,Matt (Cynapse) CHANGES/ADDITIONS: Misc Additions: New item modifiers, including firearm-specific ones. Daily Hunt and Arena quests once you pass a certain thresholds. Villagers and Farmers have new tiles to be more diverse. If you have any followers, while in 'L'ook mode, press the Enter key to pick a target for them to attack. You can even harass villagers by having your party follow them. Added a sound effect for missing. An animation for fang-like weapons. New objects: Anvil and Web. The latter causes you to struggle to break free for a random amount of turns while caught. You can still attack, but normal movement is not possible while stuck. New traits, including one that increases storage capacity. Random Artifacts (Named Items) are now even more versatile. They can have increases or decreases in damage/armor, inherent abilities, and even extra properties the base item does not. World: Reworked world map generation to produce more interesting results. World generation time improved by a significant amount by removing cellars (will put them back in once I work around an issue) New random Tundra maps. Sanctarix now has a static bottom floor. UI: Default damage numbers are dice. Reworked status effects in general. All of them now have a set duration rather than a random chance based on Endurance to go away. Ported Limb Replacement, Amputation, and Called Shot screens to the new UI system. Ported the Look tooltip over to the new UI. It conforms to screen edges, making sure it won't clip. New Status Effect UI with icons instead of text.Hover-over tooltips for status effects. New combat log and map name UI. New poetry panel + art. UI panels are slightly more opaque. Map quest pointer now displays while not traveling. Better handling of the feature list while on the world map. Map editor tiles now scale better with different resolutions. The screen properly centers if the local map is smaller than the camera's view port. QoL: Reduced a starting save file to a ridiculously small size by comparison. During one of the Ensis' quests, statues can be toppled by walking into them with a digging tool equipped. Arrow keys can be used for movement and menu actions. Balance: Ambushes only occur on the world map. While being ambushed, you get a chance to hand over money or a specific item to go free before the bandits attack you. Bandit attack severity increased. Added a "Hit and Run" AI type. Doctors and Book Merchants shuffle their inventories. Summoned slime creatures are now considerably weaker, and have new art. Felonies can now have HP and ST bonuses. Reduced the chance of acquiring Vampirism via a bite. Seed Spitters have unlimited ammo. Enemies with ranged weapons will attack with that item instead of fists. Shovel and Pickaxe are no longer Two-Handed. Removed negative item modifiers, but decreased the chance for them to appear. Modding: Moved all text in the game to the Text.json file, which is editable by modders. This allows FULL translation of the game! FIXES: Quests shouldn't take all items of a specific category upon completion anymore. Bandits no longer spawn in Friendly areas when returning to a map. Virash Saints now have their proper tile. Capped ability levels at 5. Tomes can no longer increase that level beyond that cap. Fixed a crash dealing with Leprosy taking off all the player's available limbs. Severed limbs can no longer spam the message log saying they were severed again multiple times. Player should more effectively be warned of starving while on the world map. No more crash upon getting the alert that you're starving while on the world map. Fixed an inventory duplication bug and memory leak. You can no longer equip an Off hand item with only one arm. Stat tooltips go away when you close the character panel. Enemies respawn underground. Fixed some pronoun issues with poetry generation. Fixed a rare crash when generating poems. Tall grass will more rarely show up in water. Hopefully fixed an issue with certain glyphs not displaying correctly on some platforms. Weapon/Armor proficiencies should no longer display as leveling up +1 from your actual skill. The Experiment felony no longer always starts with 9 HP and 3 ST. Fixed an issue where multiple quest events weren't happening all at once. Fixed a crash with summoning NPCs before SpawnController is initialized. Abilities given by mutations will be removed when that mutation is cured. Throwing items won't be overwritten by a firearm, if the latter is equipped after the former. Money is no longer taken from the player by just entering the limb replacement service screen. Fixed an issue where, when saving underground, reloading, then going back up stairs, all items would be moved to the top left corner of the map. Item mods are saved in NPC inventories. Firearms will no longer stack in your Ranged slot. Camera jitter with varied resolutions resolved after temporary fix from before. Group spawning for quests works properly now. Un-equipping items with an ability you already innately have no longer gets rid of the ability for good.
Hey everyone,It's been a long time coming, longer than I would have liked, but 0.5.5 is here! I took my time, releasing experimentals along the way to help search for bugs or awful balance. I'm pretty confident there should be no crippling bugs for the majority of players, and that the content I've added here will be a stepping stone towards the finished product. The limb system has gotten a large overhaul to make way for some new features: grappling, off-hand weapons, and training limbs. I've had to re-adjust my opinion of Axu's power curve recently due to players wanting some more rewards. I had intended to keep it quite shallow, but I realize that this didn't suit the atmosphere of the game too well. Limbs will gain stats via use (up to a point), but only organic ones. Prosthetics have also gotten a huge price drop in shops, and severed limbs from enemies will have randomized stats. I'm hoping this will create a better power scaling presence in the game. I have a feeling the content of the mid-game will be too easy, but I will address that as we come to it. There is a late-game quest with some very difficult enemies, so tough players can test their mettle against them. That particular area is only available through the Ensis quest line (for now), so keep that in mind.If you'd like to see, in detail, the list of fixes and changes, see the changelog below!Cheers,Matt (Cynapse)CHANGELOG: Segmented body code from inventory. Added the ability to wrestle enemies via the "Grappling" skill. It is a tome you can find. You can grab onto limbs, push enemies, strangle them, and drag them to the ground. The availability of each skill depends on your strength and proficiency with the ability. Enemies can hold and take you down via grappling. You can strangle opponents if you grab onto their head. Two new status effect icons dealing with grappling states. Implemented a vague form of "handed-ness". Weapons and off-hand items (now all in the same category) can be equipped to your main or off hand. "Off hand"-wielded items have a chance to do an extra attack based on your Dexterity and off hand skill. Holding a shield in your main hand now increases your chance to block. Holding a disarming item in your main hand gives you the chance to disarm. Added damage values to some shields so they can be wielded as weapons. Extra attacks give offhand exp. Limbs gain stats through use. Creature limbs have semi-randomized stats. Adjusted the stats of various replacement limbs. Attacking or using arm-based skills trains your arms. Moving trains your legs/tails/wings. Using mental skills trains head. Reduced the price of all prosthetic limbs. A new static 3x3 zone with new tough enemy types. If the system cannot find an underground area on the map, it will make a new one. Re-implemented Cellars. You can move items up and down in the inventory list with the "Go Up Stairs" and "Go Down Stairs" keys. The same applies to abilities. Shield Bash stuns and knocks enemies back. Map generation tweaks. New alternate power plant levels. New song (rough). Added a new encounter type for ocean tiles to prevent players from traveling mostly over water. Limbs on the character screen have their attributes available to be localized. Localization of map screen names. Added translation support for body parts and structures. Local tile values are more moddable. They have parameters for dig-ability, whether or not they are see-through, and if they are considered a "wall" by the autotiling system. Reduced Parasect's armor. New traits. Adjusted the stats of many polearm items, giving them knockback and more damage to compensate for being two-handed. Hostile enemies attack villagers and other passive entities on occasion. New explosion graphic for 3x3 explosions. Reworked tile-based damage system to be more data-driven. Various combat tweaks. FIXES: Replacement Limbs no longer have their stats show up as opposite (+/-) values. Unequipping an item with the same skill as another equipped item no longer removes the skill completely. Tentacles (Tendrils II) now gives you the proper equipped item. Reduced the chance screens will be different between sessions. Experiment body parts use IDs instead of names to find. Fixed Ensis/Kin hostility past a certain point in each quest line. Fixed Isazna's quest trying to give you a nonexistent item upon completion. Missing item ID fixed. Fixed various spawn bugs. Fixed the color code display for shock damaging weapons. Fixed the log display when thrown items shatter. Hopefully fixed an issue with shoving enemies into others.
Hey everyone,So 0.6.0 is finally here and stable! I've been working hard to get this ready ASAP. Not much has changed from the experimental, except for some minor bug fixes and a start at porting ability code to accessible Lua for modders. For those of you who skip the experimental branches, there should be plenty to like here coming from 0.5.5c. Check out the changelog below for more information.I've written up a small portion of feature arcs I would like to start working on. These are goals that will help make the game a whole new and unique beast.NPCs that are hostile and within 1 tile distance to you can follow you between maps/up and down stairs.NPCs keep their health values when transitioning between areas.Daily autosaves.A slimmed down UI.Light sources for map objects that illuminate areas.A new component system for items, taking the place of the "ExtraParam" malleable property and a few others.You can wield weapons with mutated hands, but not gloves. The mutated limb item becomes your new "fist-like" weapon for unarmed attacks.New equipment sprites.New tiles for stairs and caves.Return Pads show the biome and local position they're set to.Corpses can be butchered to have all parts as individuals. With higher levels of skill, you can more easily keep each limb intact. If you fail the check, the limb gets converted to "Raw Flesh".Added the "removetrait" command to the console.Added the "startquest" command to the console.Console commands can now be used in quest events."give" and "grant" commands can now work with item IDs.Resting heals 1.5x as fast.Removed "Give Items" from NPC blueprints in favor of letting quests use console events to do that functionality.Simple Lua script support. Functions can be called from quests, with a reference to the player's body. Some abilities have been ported over to Lua as well.The powerplant spawns within 4 world tiles of the initial starting location.Added the ability to create new locations on the world map.Static NPCs can be given unique dialogue.Added a new kind of teleporter that is automatically set to a specified unique location.New Ravensong Games logo.Objects that have been viewed are now visible, but darker, when out of sight.Enemies, similar to the player, no longer die from poison or bleeding directly.Reworked poison and bleed resistances. There is a small chance to resist damage completely, rather than just halve it.Items that give Endurance now increase HP and ST by a small amount.Enemies can have resistances to status effects.You can pick up entire stacks of items by holding Ctrl while in the loot panel.You can buy and sell stacks of items using the same Ctrl method.There is a new command to drop an entire stack of items.Ability levels and XP persist between saves.Enemies will no longer throw items through walls.Fixed a bug where saving and leaving a screen would flip all objects on that screen upon returning.Fixed an issue with stat modifiers and charge components on items causing them to default to generic values, or get copied or added to by the most recent instance.Fixed a bug where NPC body parts were pointing to the original blueprint's parts rather than a new instance.Fixed a bug where you were able to go outside the world map, causing errors and destroying saves.Many more bug fixes, tweaks, etc that I have forgotten to write down.
Feature ArcsButchery:After defeating foes, they may drop a "corpse" item. This can be cut into pieces, serving as food, or even allowing you to gain new body parts to replace severed limbs. Some unique foes may have their body parts fashioned into weapons or other useful items.Mindwalking:After meeting a certain person and gaining their trust, the player can learn the ancient technique of Mindwalking. Using this ability allows the user to enter the minds of sentient creatures. Here, they can perform a large number of actions: Destroy the host's mind, convince them to join you, gain new abilities, and even learn some back story. This ability is limited, and cannot be overused, lest the user becomes insane.Progression:This is a large arc that will undergo many changes throughout development. In the short-term, I will be changing the way the player acquires abilities and traits. Leveling up will simply increase your maximum health and stamina. All other stats will be affected by the choices you make in-game. Abilities will be learned from NPCs as quest rewards, or through other means. Traits, much like stats, will be granted through training and player choices. Enemies will scale by time elapsed and current player level, rather than simply the latter.Player Base:The player can stumble upon an intact building that would service well as a home base. Here, they can send followers, construct various mechanisms that will aid them, train skills, and rest for a while. Diseases:While venturing through the wastes of Axu, the player may contract many illnesses and diseases. From limb-severing Leprosy to the Crystallization of body parts. (Un?)lucky characters may become a vampire who thirsts for the blood of the living. This arc encompasses mental maladies as well. Becoming disassociated from reality may have some interesting effects.Mutations:Apart from diseases, other bodily horrors can alter your character. Mutations can change your body structure, giving you extra limbs, or fusing several together. Some can restrict the gear you wear, or simply affect your stats. Body structure is a very important part of Axu, so I will continue to add various mutations as I progress through development.Story:This is an ongoing arc that encompasses the entire story of Axu, including the four unique endings available. The player can choose to side with the Ensis or the Kin of the Deep, ally with a mysterious faction of outcasts and mutants, or forge their own path and lay waste to all that oppose them.Infinite Scaling:[Post 1.0] Upon choosing a specific ending, the player stays on Axu with unrestricted potential. There will be no caps on stats, attributes, levels, or enemy difficulty. Hypothetically, you could keep playing forever and always face a challenge.
Hey everyone,This update is a pretty large one, containing some very exciting additions and changes.The first one is the implementation of "Hands" in the place of a "weapon" and "offhand" slots. The first usable arm contains the main weapon you wield. All the other ones can be attacked with as well, given your Dexterity stat passes a check upon attacking. Having four arms now gives you three extra chances to deal damage when you attack an enemy, which is very exciting! The remaining issue is two-handed weapons only take up one spot for now. I'll get around to that implementation with the next update.Second is the addition of various difficulty options in the place of a permadeath toggle. Two difficulties (Adventurer and Scavenger) do not end the game upon your character's death. Instead, you are teleported either to your home base (more on that later) or the starting screen. Higher difficulties will have more punishing results of death, such as the loss of items, money, XP, or even stats. I hope these make everyone happy with their own playstyles. I know permadeath isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I want to cater to the RPG fans too. The game will be primarily designed around Rogue mode though.Third has multiple segments to it. The base is a discover-able area which acts as your "home". You will find a "Return" tome here, enabling you to return whenver you wish. Followers can be sent here to make room for new ones, or if you get tired of their crap. Speaking of followers, you can now trade with them, and specify what gear they wear (if they can speak). This makes Mercenaries very powerful tools!Lastly, mod support continues. I think I'm almost ready to start loading from a "mods" folder instead of forcing the player to edit the game's files directly. I have moved more functionality to Lua, and expanded what items can do from the Json file. The player's sprite is no longer multiple SpriteRenderer components layered on top of each other. Instead, it will merge together all the current textures into a single sprite, which allows me to more easily set a render order for the player. Before, you would always be behind any NPC, even if you are "lower" on the screen. Now, there should be much better sorting. This relates to modding, since I have moved the character's base and equipped item sprites to the data files. You can change the path or layer of any of these objects if you wish. This pipeline will also eventually come to NPCs and Objects.Thanks for reading the walls of text. Check out the changelog for the full picture of what I've accomplished over the last month. I'm very proud of it!Cheers,Matt (Cynapse)Additions: Added the body part type "Hand", which holds weapons and shields. This replaces Main/Off Hands. The first non-severed arm holds the "main" hand. (Right to start) This will be your primary weapon. All other hands will have a chance to attack when you do, based on your Dexterity. Additional arms grant additional hands. I still have yet to differentiate between one and two handed weapons using this system. Difficulty Options: Various difficulties that impact what happens upon character death. There are 4 currently. Abilities ported over to Lua file, which is accessible to modders. Disease effects ported over to Lua. New enemy types. New diseases, including a precursor Vampirism disease. New status effects. Added shield-specific modifiers. XP bar below HP/ST. Added a Home Base area. You can send followers to this base, and pick them up at any time. Inside, you will find a tome allowing you to teleport back to that location. You can now trade with followers if they are able to speak. Many come with a few items that you can "borrow". You can manage followers' equipment if they are able to speak. Slightly varied underground maps by adding rivers and pillars. New tiles for crashed ship walls. Exposed character pieces sprites to modders. Changes: Drain Blood as a vampire no longer requires your opponent to have certain status effects to succeed. Removed obsolete abilities. Tweaked many abilities in various ways to balance them. Increased ability level cap by 2 points. Removed "Offhand", "Light Armor", "Medium Armor" and "Heavy Armor" proficiencies. Added "Shield" and "Armor" proficiencies. Increased Proficiency level cap by 2 points. Proficiency and Ability XP is now displayed as a percentage. Ability panel now shows the hotkey for each one (1-9 and 0) Abilities no longer gain XP or cause you to lose stamina if you do not have a target. (For adjacency abilities) Toppled entities can no longer attack flying enemies unless either entity has a hold on the other. Toppled entities are no longer considered "flying" for the duration of the effect. Changed Ka-Nil's first quest to a more reasonable objective. The terminal quest in the Power Plant now only requires 5 to be used. One on each floor. Dialogues can no longer be opened while enemies are nearby. Items can have multiple components acting on the same trigger. Even ones of the same type. Items can now influence proficiencies like Butchery and Firearms. Your own organic limbs don't suffer deterioration from being severed and re-attached. May revert this in the future if exploits are found. Body parts with multiples differentiate themselves by being right or left oriented. "(R)" and "(L)" Buffed Doctors. Butchery is no longer available by default. It, along with most abilities, will be given to the player by side-quests. Influence is now displayed on the character screen. This will be useful in a future feature arc. Ore is now dug from a new object, rather than from wall tiles. You can place doors in the map editor. If none is placed, it will default to the normal wood one which does not require permissions to open. Adjacent NPCs with certain status effects no longer follow you up/down stairs and between screens. Removed the Save and Permadeath options in the game menu. The player's sprite is now a single one with multiple layers. This was needed to get render order correct with larger objects/characters, and to reduce complexity in adding new art. Fixes: Combat log now displays modifier names and unique named item names instead of generic bases. Killing quest givers should now fail the quest after reloads more consistently. Status effects once again persist through save/load cycles. Negative resistances no longer make a creature immune to that element of damage. Inverted negative. Procced unarmed attacks with the offhand give you Unarmed XP instead of Misc. Body parts are now flagged as organic if the synthetic limb is severed, and re-evaluated upon replacing it with a new item. Body parts preserve armor after being severed. Fixed an issue with the Blacksmith's third quest not starting.
Hey everyone, Really sorry for my hiatus. Going through mental health issues is always a battle, and it wears me out. Between that and working ridiculous hours at my day job, there wasn't much energy left for development. I decided to take a break for my own sanity, though I am feeling much better now!I had attempted the 7DRL challenge last month, but ultimately failed due to the same factors that were holding back Axu. I do hope to come back to the concept at some point though. I might write something up on my website if there's enough interest. It was a bit of a cross between Pokemon and Princess Maker, which I thought was a neat mix.Anyways, back to Axu! 0.6.2 is mostly about pushing out all the stuff I got done meandering over the last few months. It lacks any clear focus, but I feel like I need a fresh slate to be able to take in reliable bug reports. I most likely broke something over the last while, and more than likely fixed many of the issues plaguing 0.6.1a. The changelog seems small, but many of these additions are pretty major, and will help develop the game further. I'm going to make finishing the main story a big priority from now on. The bases are all there, and all that's holding me back is the extra stuff that doesn't need to be done right away. I feel like I need to push towards that finish line to give myself a sense of relief. After the story is able to be completed from start to finish, I can continue to expand on various aspects of the game. I'll more than likely be taking the pruning shears to my TODO list in an attempt to cut down on scope. Thanks again to everyone for their patience!Cheers,Matt (Cynapse)CHANGELOG:Added a trait to clarify that Experiments get random body parts upon their start.Added a new map icon showing where kill targets are located during quests.Fixed an issue with the Ember Wall ability on NPCs.AI units with polearm-type weapons should no longer attack friendlies between them and an enemy.Actual in-fighting between NPC factions.Enemies will target your followers much more often.Reduced the number of GetComponent<T>() calls.Code cleanup.Map creator tool now sets values for underground areas when loading a map with negative elevation.Items below the player's feet now display the correct name in the log.Added addictions to the "Hunted" and "Rogue" difficulty levels.Added wounds to the "Hunted" and "Rogue" difficulty levels.Added bows, crossbows, arrows and bolts.Added a back slot quiver item that reduces reload times with bow/crossbow ranged weapons.Fixed an out of bounds error with shops when you or they have over 25 items.Bloodstains should no longer appear over other objects.Object and NPC sprites are now exposed for modders, and loaded from data.Unseen tall objects are now completely invisible instead of being just pitch black.Corpse items no longer have the "Cannibalism" tag by default.Added a new item mod: Vampiric.Item modifiers can have components, and call Lua scripts.OnHit action added to weapons.Added a few new abilities.Added new mutations.Added new quests.Quest steps can now run events OnStepStart and OnStepComplete.Random Name/Back buttons on the character select screen can now be clicked properly.Rivers should no longer run through volcanos.Shinpel Fish no longer throw an error when attempting to attack, and move to engage nearby opponents to the water again.Accuracy no longer resets via save/load cycles.
The hunger system was removed due to it not adding much to the core gameplay. Axu isn't a survival game, so filling up your inventory with food items and requiring extra trips back to civilized areas was tedious. The game progressively gets harder over time. A second clock was not needed.The quest system has gotten a complete overhaul. I've had numerous reports over the years of bugs regarding quests. My patchwork implementation was flawed, so I decided to rewrite it completely. Now, quests should track much better, and not point to random locations on the map. If something does break, be sure to let me know. It should be much easier to debug going forward.Multiple save slots are now available, and show whether or not your file is out of date with the current version of Axu. This is based on character name, so be sure to not overwrite your old saves by using the same name. I'll put a in warning message in the future.Switches, wires and doors act together to create simple puzzles. This isn't used in many areas, especially ones that are required for the story.Areas refresh when staying away from them. Old dungeons will refill with monsters if you give them time. If you see important NPCs getting culled, please do let me know. I've attempted to implement a system like this before, but it ended up being too strong.CHANGES/ADDITIONS: You can now have multiple save files (one per character). Removed hunger and most food-related items from the game. It was not adding anything particularly interesting. Levers can be used to open doors or interact with objects. Sends a pulse through wires. Functionality for entering/exiting cells for objects. For example: pressure plates for spike or poison dart traps. Removed smaller islands when generating the world map. Checking for webs is now done in Lua. Does not destroy the web yet. Underground rivers have slightly more interesting shapes. Added item icons to the mixing screen. Increased proficiency XP gain slightly. New areas, tiles, maps, and item icons. Characters throwing items now shows up in the log. Higher quality damage text using TextMeshPro. NPC turn order is now decided by Speed. Status effect markers display duration for relevant effects. Merchant and Doctor buildings have different walls. New culling system for screens, objects and NPCs. After 6000 turns of being away from a screen, non-important data is not saved. Quest Overhaul: Rewrote the quest system. Quest objectives are clearer in the Journal menu, and display their completeness. Changed some quests around to better facilitate the new system. Removed daily hunts and arena challenges for now. Map Editor: Added functionality to place NPCs. The Undo key (Z) can now be used to remove objects and NPCs as well as tiles. Box seelct works with objects and NPCs.FIXES: Severing and re-attaching a limb multiple times no longer duplicates existing stat modifiers. NPCs and objects should no longer duplicate upon entering an area, saving, loading, leaving, and saving then loading again. Fixed a Lua bug with Leprosy causing major slowdown until the disease was cured. Leprosy can no longer remove your heads. Using the mouse while replacing a body part at a doctor should no longer use the wrong limb/item. Severing prosthetic body parts now makes the stump tagged as "organic" properly. Being overburdened now gives a speed penalty instead of stopping you dead in your tracks and dropping any extra items. Should fix an item duplication glitch. Fixed Living weapons having their progress reset upon saving/loading. Explosions should no longer deal hundreds of damage. Items carried by NPCs are saved in full. Increases save file size, but solves a few issues between save/load cycles. The shooting effect is similar to the throwing effect due to sprite sorting issues. Followers don't forget about you after saving/loading. Sending followers home no longer sends them into oblivion, never to return.
WORLD CHANGES: Separated biomes from locations. Villages can now show up in Tundra, Desert, Shore, etc. Locations are now rendered on top of the world map, instead of overwriting that tile. Rivers can run through any walkable terrain without another zone interrupting it. Almost all areas are read from a text file, making adding new locations even easier. Underground areas work in a similar way, but are able to have specific generators. Alpha mask autotiling. Village houses now use up to 2 shapes for their walls. Updated Tundra tiles to look more pleasing. Various other biome tiles can show up in small quantities in specific areas. Sand can appear in plains, plains grass in forest, etc.NEW STUFF: New Liquids and Mixtures, including various forms of mutagen that allow you to mutate along specific paths. New status effects. New enemies. New quests added on to main story (Ensis quest line). New tiles for an upcoming area. Many new object types.TWEAKS: Heat damage can possibly inflict the "Aflame" status effect. Cold damage can possibly inflict the "Slow" status effect. Energy damage can possibly inflict the "Stun" status effect. Increased the number of random limbs the Experiment can have from the start. Reworked spawn/encounter system due to map overhaul. Applied increasing world danger level to other aspects of the game. Resting recovers a fraction of max HP/ST each turn instead of just 1.UI: Map creation tool updated: Added a hover tooltip when loading maps displaying their properties. Elevation and LocationID are always present. Vault areas are created by making elevation negative. The map name displays at the top. New pause menu. New icons for items on the ground. These are also displayed in the inventory, loot, and shop screens. Adding and deleting custom notes on world map locations is now possible. Minimap auto-hides when you enter an underground area.CONTROLS: Pressing the "Enter" key on stairs uses them. You can hold a direction key in menus to scroll faster. Decreased the time needed to hold down a key to continuously move in a direction. Contextual actions based on your surroundings. (Unset by default). If there is only one possible action, it will do that one. If there are more, a list will pop up for you to choose from. This includes talking to friendly NPCs, interacting with objects, and looting chests/corpses. Normal interact key now interacts with closest object/character by default if there is only one action available. Pressing Tab (default) while looking will allow you to cycle between hostile targets. Useful for ranged/throwing weapon users. Instead of forcing an attack on a target, Ctrl+Direction now allows you to target specific limbs of a character.UI Tweaks: New HP/ST bar graphics. Replaced XP bar with radial indicator. New minimap border. Changed the color scheme slightlyAdded the "Technophile" felony.Separated ST and HP regeneration stats.New mutations that take advantage of the regen stats.Map editor no longer takes over a minute to load.Changed how the arena works. You are sent to a lower elevation to fight, then return to the surface to send in the quest.CHANGES/ADDITIONS Replaced many liquid items with a more malleable and powerful system of "Liquids" which can be mixed, poured, and consumed. Liquids can be used to coat items, which applies their effects upon hitting an enemy with the coated item. Added liquid container items. Swapped item rewards/quest targets due to the liquids overhaul. Added 3 new status effects: Drunk, Sick and Aflame. Added a new type of item: Mod Kits. These allow you to choose an item to modify. The blacksmith gives you a Xul Mod Kit instead of directly affecting your equipped weapon. Item modifier kits that apply a mod to a specific item. New tiles for walls/caves/lava/etc for autotiling purposes. This will cause any structures with tiles not supported by autotiling to show up as brick walls. This is to be expected until I get it all done. New very rare miniboss. New side quests. New daily hunts and arena challenges. New algorithm for generating cave-like areas. Changed how a few quests worked to make them less buggy. Tweaked follower AI to slightly prioritize following you more often. Important NPCs cannot be traded with or have their equipment managed when they are followers during a quest. Separated firearms and weapons in data. Look tooltip displays the target's firearm. Character panel now takes up the whole screen, to give me more room to expand on all the information I want to put in there. Bandits or otherwise hostile humans won't spread rumors of cannibalism. Pushing entities around is no longer guaranteed. It depends on the difference in strength compared to your opponent. It also does not stun by itself. Many abilities stun enemies upon pushing them anyways. It caps at 4 tiles pushed. The Power Plant spawn pools have been expanded to add more non-stationary enemies. Reduced the satiation values of all severed limbs. Some enemies have their HP and ST refreshed when you leave the area (mostly for boss creatures). The Miner's Helmet no longer has limited charges. Added back the items on ground sprites, and moved them to external data to be loaded in at runtime. Shields have a more versatile block chance, rather than the set Block1, Block2, and Block3 enums. For each point of "Block", there is a 5% chance of negating a non-elemental attack. Barrels can have a wider array of items inside of them when spawned. Loot objects now only update their sprites when the turn counter changes, instead of every frame. Saira's Rifle is now considered unique. Added the command "get randart" to the console in order to test random artifacts. Removed the "Deserter" felony. Removed the "Bloody Butcher" trait. It was only causing confusion. Custom world tiles/maps can have specified underground levels. Restrictions can be placed on custom world tiles, being able to be placed only on specified areas. Stackable items cannot have modifiers or become random artifacts.
Hey everyone,I've been quieter the past week, taking in feedback and doing the best I can to implement it. 0.7.2 isn't the biggest release feature-wise, but 4 new quests in the Ensis quest line is a large feat nonetheless. Just a word of warning, changes made to world generation will break old save files, as locations will be spawned at different positions than before. There was a huge bug dealing with loading corpses from the previous hotfix. I'm happy to say that this release should fix the issue. Take a look at the changelog to see the full story.Cheers,Matt (Cynapse)ADDITIONS/CHANGES: 4 new quests in the Ensis quest line. Added the liquid "Preservative" that prevents an organic item from spoiling. Useful for limbs you want to keep. Corpses drop more frequently as you level up Butchery. For quests, the OnStart event runs before step initialization. Added new quest events, such as removing specific NPCs and adding NPCs to your followers list. Entering a pre-made screen only moves static NPCs there if they have not been spawned. Added a keybind to show/hide the minimap. An arrow is displayed in mouse mode that enables when over the edge of the screen. Oromir is stationary while passive. Uro-Ren is no longer hostile by default. Some locations, like the starting area, are placed on the largest "island" generated. (Breaks previously created worlds.) With the console, you can type the "go" command with any location ID and go there instantly. (Surface levels only.) Lomis no longer gives you a pickaxe as a quest reward. The game autosaves every in-game day. Experience towards the first level (Level 2) of an ability is doubled.FIXES: With a polearm weapon equipped, objects laying on the ground no longer prevent you from attacking two tiles away. Black Fang no longer gives the "Called Shot" ability, as it is tied to a hotkey. Leprosy no longer brutally mangles your limbs every turn. It takes 4000 turns to "activate", and has a slim chance to remove limbs. Once a limb has been removed, it will not reactivate until another 4000 turns pass. Intrine limbs no longer cause an error when attached. Kill quest steps have their icon show up on the world map. Locations with neighbors (like the Ensis Stronghold) no longer can show up on mountain tiles. Vampiric Blood can no longer give you Fledgling Vampirism more than once. Organic body parts, while wielded, still degrade over time. The Blind status effect now displays unlit cells as intended. Creatures spawned via Cryopods properly appear. Removed some unused abilities from random artifacts.
Hey everyone,This update brings quite a few neat additions, as well as some fixes for reported issues. Two of these were already pushed out with the last hotfix, but I've included them here since there was no changelog last time. So what's new? Quite a bit. The Ensis quest line has been fleshed out even more, bringing the total for that line to 27! Axu now has 56 quests alltogether, which is awesome. When doing a fetch quest, you can now choose which items to hand over, instead of being forced to give items you may not have wanted to part with. This is done in a separate dialogue option when talking to a quest NPC.As always, check out the changelog for more info on my progress!CheersMatt (Cynapse)CHANGES/ADDITIONS: New quests in the Ensis quest line. New enemy types. New firearms and ammunition. A new area: The Bazaar, with 4 guaranteed merchants. New quest which, on completion, gives you a merchant that stays at your base. Added a faction that hunts you in the "Hunted" difficulty. Appears more often as the world's danger level increases in place of bandit ambushes. For quests that require you to hand over items, you can now choose which ones to hand over. You also don't need to turn them all in at once. Reduced base Stealth to 6, making it more important to raise. The Experiment felony starts with default limbs, three mutations, and randomized stats. The Technophile starts with one hardened fist on their left hand. Mutations and body parts have more cohesive stat modifiers. Grip strength is based on how many empty hands you have, and each arm's strength. The starting cave no longer can use the hallways algorithm for creating maps. It, on rare occasions, creates dead ends that disable forward progression. Other caves may use this, as a digging tool is more likely in a character's inventory by that point. Slimmed down save file length by reducing serialized fields in liquids. (May break previous save files.) As it is no longer required for a quest, breaking statues cannot be done by walking into the object. Back and Chest slots, since they cannot be severed, do not have additional stat modifiers. The Cathedral underground is barred by a kindred door. Better in-fighting between factions. With an AI Core in your inventory, you can interact with a Robotic Frame to have the robot follow you. Slightly reduced the power of mercenaries. New Quest events that allow dialogue switching, removing all NPCs in an area, and more.FIXES: Followers keep their equipment between save/load cycles. Fixed an issue causing specific things to be not interact-able, other than quest NPCs, (and some objects) while on a quest requiring you to talk to someone. Tooltip no longer shows up with strange values when you have an empty inventory. Passive NPCs no longer assault you if one calls for help. Floor 7 of the Prison/Lab now does not throw an error when entering. Vampires bleed Vampiric Blood.
