Author Topic: City of the Damned  (Read 75321 times)

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #30 on: August 18, 2017, 07:46:10 PM »
Released version 1.2.0

- Added high scores.
- Added Wisps to the map. These are flying angelic beings that are able to navigate using their hearing.
- Sound sources can now be seen on the map.
- All menu options now have letter shortcuts.
- Lit and shadowed tiles are now displayed on the screen.
- The player is now able to set his or her name.
- Fixed a bug with severed body parts animation showing when the player should not be able to see it.
- Fixed a bug with num lock interfering with arrow keys.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.0

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #31 on: August 30, 2017, 04:29:57 PM »
This is beautiful!

I love the empowered zombies as a Satanist. Avatars and Archdemons are just cool. :D Also I'm starting to play the thief a bit more like a robber. :P I'm rather curious about the new playable priests. :)

By the way, shouldn't angels be able to conCeal their divinity, rather than conseal it? And a minor convenience request - many roguelikes use [g] or [,] for pick up command, could we have those as alternate keys? Similarly, maybe [.] as alt key for waiting a turn?

May I also have one more suggestion, this time for a new playable creature - a ghost? (Sorry in advance for the wall of text.)

You once were a normal citizen of the City, that is until you were abducted by the cabal of Satanists that used you as a human sacrifice to open the gates of Hell, which in turn prompted the Heaven to respond with an angelic interference and started all this. Not that it matters for you now, because you are dead. However, you are a restless dead, not at peace with your murderers.

Your goal is to kill all Satanists, no other creatures matter. There is a catch, though - you are a weak apparition of fragile ectoplasm and will be killed easily in a fair fight. Alternately, you have to kill all Satanists and then reunite with your dead body on a Satanistic altar in their hideout.

You only have 1 HP, thus dying from any damage taken. You can detect living (like detect evil/good), their life is a beacon to you. Coincidentally, Satanists are living humans. :D You also have good advantage in mobility - you are intangible, thus phasing through walls, doors etc. You also make no noise. You cannot move through solid ground or into water, because the natural world rejects you undead nature.

You could have some active abilities: Levitate, that allows you to temporarily phase through ceilings and roofs, or moving through open air; and Invisibility, making you imperceptible for a short time. Plus one more active ability described below.

Being intangible, you have good dodge chance and good armor against flesh and fire, but no armor against iron, which hits true against all undead. I'm not sure what vorpal damage is exactly, but I suppose it's magical, so you probably don't have armor against vorpal, but your attack (ghost touch) could deal vorpal damage (no other damage type really feels appropriate for ghosts, and unless there will be some new shadow/dark/drain/cold damage one day, vorpal fits ghostly touches the best, IMO).

Most creatures are hostile to you - angels see you as an abomination, demons as prey, humans and beasts fear you and will try to destroy you, Satanists know you are coming for them. Only undead ignore you - you are one of them. Which is very nice for you, because the zombie hordes of Satanists will ignore you even as you try to kill their masters.

Now, you would still not be able to do anything with only 1 HP without your main ability - Possess. You can possess humans and corpses, a bit like demons can. Unlike demons, though, your host works as full armor for you, taking damage instead of you for as long as you are possessing them. (This could be something like riding the host with 100% chance of enemies hitting the host and not you.) While possessing a host, you use their attacks instead of your ghost touch. Your possession is also a ranged ability, thus it's advisable to possess the first thing you see, unless you wish to be one-shotted.

You cannot use Levitate and Invisibility while possessing (nor can you phase through walls, of course), but you can use Possess and you gain an ability to Release Control. You can body-hop by possessing one target, then waiting out the cooldown and possessing a new target directly from the old host, without loosing your meatshield. You cannot possess angels, demons, zombies made by Satanists (their demonic magic prevents your intrusion), or lesser creatures (even though possessing a horse or a gargantaur sounds cool :P).

When possessing a human, they have the normal chance to rebel against your influence, making you stumble. Your possession ability also has a chance to fail against the willpower of your target, forcing you to wait for its cooldown. However, angels and humans will not be hostile to you, as they only see the human host (your human soul possessing a human body fools the true sight of angels, unlike demonic soul in human body). Zombies will become hostile to you as long as you possess a living body.

When possessing a corpse, you will raise it as a special zombie. Your zombie body will not rebel against you, as you are the only thing holding it standing, plus your possession will never fail on a corpse. Demons and even Satanists will not be hostile towards you, fooled into thinking you are one of their ranks. If you release control, the body will immediately collapse into a corpse, as you didn't truly animate it. However, angelic attacks are devastating against undead - if your zombie body is slain by an angel, it turns to dust - and you with it. Thus either have your zombie body killed by something else, or use human hosts around angels.

All in all, the idea is of playing a body switcher, changing bodies into those more advantageous at the moment, trying not to be caught without a body. With phasing, invisibility and levitation, there will be still some temptation to use your very fragile ghostly form, though. ;)

Thank you once again for this game. :D

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #32 on: August 30, 2017, 07:15:32 PM »
By the way, shouldn't angels be able to conCeal their divinity, rather than conseal it?

Yeah, time for a facepalm.jpg picture  :-[. This has been in front of my eyes for half a year and I have not noticed it. Thanks, will fix the spelling.

And a minor convenience request - many roguelikes use [g] or [,] for pick up command, could we have those as alternate keys? Similarly, maybe [.] as alt key for waiting a turn?

Sure, will be in the next release.

May I also have one more suggestion, this time for a new playable creature - a ghost?

Ok, I like the gameplay idea of a possessor, will try to incorporate it into a release after this one.

The only problem I see with this is that all satanists will likely die without any effort on the player's part, just because the RNG dropped you on the other side of the map while putting them near a couple of angels. Maybe it is better just to find their lair while being in possession of some body and kind of perform a ritual of rebirth or something, or vice versa - a ritual that will put the ghost to rest.

For now, in the upcoming release, I plan to add two more factions beside priests - the shadow demons and the trinity isolationists. Stay tuned  ;)
« Last Edit: August 30, 2017, 07:18:01 PM by gwathlobal »

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #33 on: August 30, 2017, 08:23:08 PM »
conseal

BTW, smoke bombs are also consealing you. ;)

The only problem I see with this is that all satanists will likely die without any effort on the player's part, just because the RNG dropped you on the other side of the map while putting them near a couple of angels. Maybe it is better just to find their lair while being in possession of some body and kind of perform a ritual of rebirth or something, or vice versa - a ritual that will put the ghost to rest.

I like the mental picture of a ghost performing an exorcism over his own dead body to lay himself to rest. :D What if you needed to find the church, evade the priest and get a holy book, then find the lair of the Satanists and read the book over your body? Your need for a body would come mostly from being unable to carry the book as an intangible ghost (plus, it's a meatshield).

Maybe the "kill all Satanists" objective could only be one of the prerequisites for a ghost win? If angels help you, good for you. :P The game is about relying on your allies anyway. Only after you sever your ties of hate on this world can you successfully exorcise yourself. :D

For now, in the upcoming release, I plan to add two more factions beside priests - the shadow demons and the trinity isolationists. Stay tuned  ;)

I saw the shadow imps. Teleporting sounds nice. :)

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #34 on: September 02, 2017, 11:48:53 AM »
Could we please have the actual rank/form of the player at the end of the game shown in the high scores, instead of the starting form?



Here, Xorel died as an imp, after being chased by angels all over the map and not killing anything for the whole game. Lyceodamus, though, survived as an archdemon, singlehandedly killing three angels and a gargauntaur, actually winning the game for demons. It would be great to be able to distinguish this in the high scores. :)

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #35 on: September 02, 2017, 03:52:55 PM »
Yep, sure thing.

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #36 on: September 08, 2017, 06:42:10 AM »
As I'm playing more, I have some more thoughts: ;)

Could we have some way to easily distinguish the player from other creatures with the same glyph? It happens mostly with angels, but generally when you get into a fray of creatures with the same glyph, you can easily loose track where exactly you are, especially when dodging messes up with you position. And you don't want to loose turns to missteps in combat because you thought you were the other "a". Maybe the player could eb underscored (if that's an option with the tileset)? Or have some light background color?

As a scout, you best option is to always shoot your rifle - it does so much damage that even in melee, it's better to reload and shoot than get two melee attacks. As scout seems to be intended as a ranged fighter, maybe he could be encouraged more into never getting into melee? It hard to use a rifle in melee, so the scout could be unable to shoot at adjacent targets. You could either bash melee opponents, or run and shoot them when you get away.

I love the new mind-linked angels with fire abilities and their avatar, but I'm still loosing pretty often with them. That's not to say that angels are weak - they are pretty tough to kill, with their healing and powerful attacks. The avatar's flying is cool, but unfortunately very limited by the short duration of your transformation. Would it be too much if all angels could fly in their revealed forms? They can only attack in melee, so it would be more of a movement/escape option, plus because they would be revealed, they would need to be careful about enemy snipers (both archdemons and human army). It would still give them something to counteract being swarmed by demon summons and zombies. :)

Maybe the angels could also get a Resurrection ability (cost cca 5 power) that would bring corpses of angels (and all other things) back to life? That's a tradeoff of getting one ally back in exchange for some power you will need to defeat archdemons. You could of course bring back humans who died innocent, but why? There's no advantage to do so. :P

Falling into water could grant temporary "wet" status that would increase you fire resistance to 25% (or so). That would stack with natural resistance, so angels could get pretty much invulnerable to fire by jumping into a river. :) If there ever is a rain, it could wet everyone not inside a house.

I'm really looking forward to the next release. Those mimic angels sound wierdly interesting. :D

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #37 on: September 08, 2017, 06:47:21 PM »
As I'm playing more, I have some more thoughts: ;)

Could we have some way to easily distinguish the player from other creatures with the same glyph? It happens mostly with angels, but generally when you get into a fray of creatures with the same glyph, you can easily loose track where exactly you are, especially when dodging messes up with you position. And you don't want to loose turns to missteps in combat because you thought you were the other "a". Maybe the player could eb underscored (if that's an option with the tileset)? Or have some light background color?

Glad you pointed that out, that will give me the necessary push to implement this feature ;D I have the same problems myself, but always postponed the solution.

As a scout, you best option is to always shoot your rifle - it does so much damage that even in melee, it's better to reload and shoot than get two melee attacks. As scout seems to be intended as a ranged fighter, maybe he could be encouraged more into never getting into melee? It hard to use a rifle in melee, so the scout could be unable to shoot at adjacent targets. You could either bash melee opponents, or run and shoot them when you get away.

Well, I think that right now the scout is discouraged from getting into melee by the fact that he can be possessed and this is instant game over (on top of that he is rather frail and if he loses the horse he is toast). I do not actually want to add what I believe rather arbitrary rules like you can not shoot into adjacent tiles while riding a horse.

I love the new mind-linked angels with fire abilities and their avatar, but I'm still loosing pretty often with them. That's not to say that angels are weak - they are pretty tough to kill, with their healing and powerful attacks. The avatar's flying is cool, but unfortunately very limited by the short duration of your transformation. Would it be too much if all angels could fly in their revealed forms? They can only attack in melee, so it would be more of a movement/escape option, plus because they would be revealed, they would need to be careful about enemy snipers (both archdemons and human army). It would still give them something to counteract being swarmed by demon summons and zombies. :)

Well, giving angels permanent flying is not that easy, I am afraid.
Firstly, right now mobs can not attack you if you are standing/flying on top of them, while you can :) It is hard to abuse it at the moment, as you can fly for 5 turns max but with permanent flying, this strategy will be a guaranteed win. So I need to teach mobs to be aware of the creatures above them.
 
Secondly, permanent flying may or may not cause degradation of performance (which I can't say is stellar already :D) due to pathfinding.

What is the problem, as I understand it, is the lack of any escape options when you are swarmed. I'll think what I can do here without touching pathfinding. If I do not come up with anything good, that permanent flying will be the last resort  :)

Maybe the angels could also get a Resurrection ability (cost cca 5 power) that would bring corpses of angels (and all other things) back to life? That's a tradeoff of getting one ally back in exchange for some power you will need to defeat archdemons. You could of course bring back humans who died innocent, but why? There's no advantage to do so. :P

Yeah, that's a cool ability, thank you, will certainly add it, may be even in the next release.

Falling into water could grant temporary "wet" status that would increase you fire resistance to 25% (or so). That would stack with natural resistance, so angels could get pretty much invulnerable to fire by jumping into a river. :) If there ever is a rain, it could wet everyone not inside a house.

Great, wrote that down into my to-do list.

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #38 on: September 15, 2017, 09:12:03 PM »
Released version 1.2.1

- Added Trinity mimics as a playable faction. Trinity mimics are three mind-linked angels - the Star singer, Star gazer, and Star mender. Each has a separate set of abilities and all of them can merge with each other. The player controls each mimic individually.
- Added Righteous fury ability to the Star singer. Righteous fury is a berserk-like ability that lets you attack harder and faster but at a cost of slowing you afterwards.
- Added Pain link ability to the Star signer. Pain link makes the target deal increased damage to the caster but decreased damage to everyone else.
- Added Heal other ability to the Star mender. This ability allows healing not only yourself but your allies as well.
- Added Soul reinforcement ability to the Star mender. Soul reinforcement prevents a fatal blow that would otherwise kill the target.
- Added Silence ability to the Star gazer. Silence prevents the target from casting.
- Added Confuse ability to the Star gazer. Confused targets sometimes move in a random direction instead of an intended action.
- Added Pandemonium Shades as a playable faction. Shadow creatures are unable to possess humans but get a number of shadow-related abilities. You start as a shadow imp.
- Added Umbral aura to shadow devils. This makes shadow devils be not light, but darkness sources.
- Added Extinguish light to shadow demons and shadow devils. This ranged ability will switch off a stationary light or cause an enemy to stop emitting light for short period.
- Added Shadow step to all shadow creatures. Shadow step is a short-range teleport that works only if the source and destination tiles are not lit.
- Added the Church as a playable faction. You start as a priest in a church and your aim is to destroy all demons.
- Added Smite to priests. Smite is a single target damage ability that gets better the more humans are around the caster.
- Added Slow to priests. Slow is a single target ability that causes the enemy to take more time when attempting any action.
- Added Prayer of wrath to the priests. This ability grants a fire-based melee attack to those who follow you.
- You can now wait a turn using [.], and pick items using [g] and [,].
- The game now logs your current title instead of your initial title into a high score entry.
- The player is now highlighted on the map.
- Dropping in water gives you a 'wet' effect, which means 25% of increased fire resistance.
- Added rainy weather. Being caught in the rain will make characters wet, extinguish fires and clear blood.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.1

getter77

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #39 on: September 15, 2017, 09:37:34 PM »
That ARRP goodness~   8)
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gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #40 on: September 16, 2017, 12:51:10 PM »
That ARRP goodness~   8)
Pure coincidence  ::)

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #41 on: September 20, 2017, 09:23:30 AM »
Wow, that's a quick and big update! :D Be warned, I'm going to write a very long rant below. :)



Trinity mimics are very interesting and very weird. :D I will have to play with them more to get the hang of that turn-jumping between your bodies. It's really strange to constantly jump between your bodies (and I love that you are now highlighted, that would be very hard to play otherwise), but I like the synergy of your bodies and how they can fight together in an organised assault!



I like the shadow teleportation, but I feel it's a bit underpowered right now - it is great for quick movement, but it would work very much better as a way to suddenly appear next to your enemies, or run away in a pinch. That's currently very hard, though, because of the light nearly all creatures emit. You can still jump towards your enemies by extingushing them first, but that costs power. Teleporting away is out of question - it would cost you two turns (first extinguish, then teleport) and you can't loose two turns by the time you will have the need of an emergency teleport.

Maybe your extingushing ability could cost no power (balanced by either longer cooldown, or shorter duration)? That would make at least ambushing from afar much more interesting option, plus would give more incentive to use extinguishing on even lamps and such, like a good shadow demon should. :)

And/or, and this would be IMHO very cool, but probably hard to implement and compute, all creatures could have dynamic shadows - depending on the position of nearby light sources, all creatures could have an adjacent shadowed tile. This would allow all shadow demons to jump next to or run away from any fight by standing in this shwadowed tile, making positioning matter more and making their teleport machanic more prominent.



I haven't played as a priest much, but I like how powerful can theri abilities get in the right situation - I had one smite me for 10 damage when I was playing as a demon. :D



I'm going to be incredibly nitpicky and say that you have inconsistent capitalization. :) Chrome angels and trinity mimics have their first word capitalized on title screen, but both on highscore screen, while both types of imps have a reversed problem. ;)



I may have missed something, but when I started to get randomly wet, I was quite sure I'm standing in rain - but it would be nice to have some notification. Maybe there could be a "Rain" status next to the wind direction?

Speaking of wind, what if flying creatures had a small chance to be blown by the wind, moving in its direction? No reason for this change except that it would make the wind tiny bit more relevant.



One thing I always long for as a thief is a way to cross from one roof to another faster than by climbing all the way down to the street and back up again. The City is dangerous enough for one fragile theif even without having to run through blood-smeared streets. :P The thief is already quite acrobatic character with his or her climbing and Death from Above, what if they could also sprint and jump? (Ninja thieves!)

Sprinting could be an active ability that would speed you up for several turns, with cooldown long enough for you to catch your breath. ;) Sprinting should be mutually exclusive with climbing - you wouldn't be able to activate sprinting in climbing mode, so no sprint-climbing walls for you, but you can still use sprinting in a pinch when caught next to dangerous enemies in the streets. The no-climbing rule for sprinting would also give the thief an incentive to not be in climbing mode all the time and ignore that you can switch it off. ;)

Jumping could also be active ability with a cooldown, this one compatible with climbing, so the thief could jump from the side of one building to another wall nearby. Alternately, you could sprint before jumping, increasing the range of your jumps (but with no climbing). Maybe you could also jump over some obstacles (furniture, the hedge fences), or by jumping into a window, you would shatter it and jump through (and maybe take damage). All jumping would generate quite some noise, though. Maybe horses could also jump, increasing their jump range by their momentum.



Could we maybe get the end-game screen with achievements and score saved as a .txt log? It would make hunting for the most achievements much more exciting and easier to share. :D



And I have one more proposal for a playable faction: You could join the Criminals as the Cambion.

You hate your heritage. You were born of an unholy union - and it left its marks on your poor parent forever. No matter what you did, you always ended on the slippery slope. But you are still human at the heart, a bad human, but human non the less. And when the infernal and celestial forces clash and threaten you world, you cannot stand idle. You didn't ask for your powers, you don't want them - but you can make the best of them now. You just want your world back to normal - maybe it's dark, unjust and unforgiving world, but at least it's normal. And if you have to walk over rivers of blood to bring the world back to normal - so be it.

Normally, you are a human criminal. You are as weak as any other human, with no special weapon, and all factions are hostile to you (demons because you are human, angels and humans because you are criminal). However, your half-blooded demonic nature gives you several gruesome powers that should allow you to achieve your goal - slay all supernatural creatures.

You are Unholy and cannot be possessed. You can sense good and see even disguised demons, just as other demons can. You also have two active abilities that give you advantages necessary to survive - Cannibalize and Demon Rage.

Cannibalize lets you heal and gain power. You can use it to devour any corpse, healing 1 HP and gaining 1 power from it. With the amount of corpses left in the City, this gives you much healing and power, but with low HP and no armor, you will need it.

Demon Rage gives you a fighting chance against angels and demons, because your fists won't do. It costs 2 power and for a short time, boosts your speed, dodge chance and armor, plus growing you a pair of demonic claws. Thus, you gain a weapon on par with claws of demons (or slightly more powerful, because you are on your own), but maybe you claws could deal high flesh damage instead of vorpal. Maybe your claws could also cause several turns of bleeding.

Thus, you have to balance your playstyle around being very fragile most of the time, with short bursts of fighting rage and healing from corpses in between. If your claws also caused bleeding, it might be interesting to try to deal as much damage during your rage as possible, then retreat and let the bleeding do the rest of the work.

Cambions should start inside the police station, in one of the cells with other criminals.



Finally, it might be only mine love for descriptions, but maybe there could be inventory descriptions for even other items than the ones with active use? Right now, you can pick up coins and corpses which will have no description - what if they had a short quote for a description?

Eg. for coins:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?" – Ayn Rand

And for corpses:

"Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

or

"Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter." - Albert Camus, The Stranger



And one more question: Do you have any plans about making the attacks, defense and maybe light radius of creatures into actual inventory items (eg. a rifle, an army uniform, a torch or a lamp), or will they stay as abstractions as is?

Thank you for reading through so long posts as mine. ;)

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #42 on: September 21, 2017, 06:15:31 PM »
Wow, that's a quick and big update! :D Be warned, I'm going to write a very long rant below. :)

Whoa, another bunch of cool ideas and I only started to implement the previous ones! I'm afraid I am losing this race  ;D


Trinity mimics are very interesting and very weird. :D I will have to play with them more to get the hang of that turn-jumping between your bodies. It's really strange to constantly jump between your bodies (and I love that you are now highlighted, that would be very hard to play otherwise), but I like the synergy of your bodies and how they can fight together in an organised assault!

I was actually drawing ideas from MMOs. You basically have a DD-tank with a taunt, a support with debuffs and a healer with buffs. Merging bodies was added to be able to travel quickly because otherwise, it took thrice the time.

I like the shadow teleportation, but I feel it's a bit underpowered right now - it is great for quick movement, but it would work very much better as a way to suddenly appear next to your enemies, or run away in a pinch. That's currently very hard, though, because of the light nearly all creatures emit. You can still jump towards your enemies by extingushing them first, but that costs power. Teleporting away is out of question - it would cost you two turns (first extinguish, then teleport) and you can't loose two turns by the time you will have the need of an emergency teleport.

Maybe your extingushing ability could cost no power (balanced by either longer cooldown, or shorter duration)? That would make at least ambushing from afar much more interesting option, plus would give more incentive to use extinguishing on even lamps and such, like a good shadow demon should. :)

And/or, and this would be IMHO very cool, but probably hard to implement and compute, all creatures could have dynamic shadows - depending on the position of nearby light sources, all creatures could have an adjacent shadowed tile. This would allow all shadow demons to jump next to or run away from any fight by standing in this shwadowed tile, making positioning matter more and making their teleport machanic more prominent.

Ok, I see the problem and will start with the last suggestion. Quite surprisingly dynamic shadows would not at all strain performance, I think (only if those are creatures not terrain that could cast them). But I right now I have no idea how to present this shadow to the player.

I am rather reluctant to ease the restrictions on the shadow step like making it require only one shadowed tile to work - the destination or the origin. For lore reasons and because this could easily lead to instakills when you are playing against shadow demons. You get ambushed from the shadows and the remaining half of the enemy's turn is used to summon help, then an archdemon jumps in next to you and it is still not your turn so he attacks and you are dead. I've seen a lot of this with crimson demons already.

Extinguish costing no power is also something I do not want to introduce because you already have a free shadow step, and I want demonic and angelic abilities to cost power.

Maybe I just add another free ability like "Cast shadow" that will actually create a shadowed tile with zero brightness next to creature for some turns (basically what you are suggesting with dynamic shadows but as an active ability).

I'm going to be incredibly nitpicky and say that you have inconsistent capitalization. :) Chrome angels and trinity mimics have their first word capitalized on title screen, but both on highscore screen, while both types of imps have a reversed problem. ;)

Ha, ok, I'll look into it.

I may have missed something, but when I started to get randomly wet, I was quite sure I'm standing in rain - but it would be nice to have some notification. Maybe there could be a "Rain" status next to the wind direction?

Speaking of wind, what if flying creatures had a small chance to be blown by the wind, moving in its direction? No reason for this change except that it would make the wind tiny bit more relevant.

The first one is easy, will do in the next release. But I am afraid the second one is unlikely to make it for technical reasons mainly. 

One thing I always long for as a thief is a way to cross from one roof to another faster than by climbing all the way down to the street and back up again. The City is dangerous enough for one fragile theif even without having to run through blood-smeared streets. :P The thief is already quite acrobatic character with his or her climbing and Death from Above, what if they could also sprint and jump? (Ninja thieves!)

Sprinting could be an active ability that would speed you up for several turns, with cooldown long enough for you to catch your breath. ;) Sprinting should be mutually exclusive with climbing - you wouldn't be able to activate sprinting in climbing mode, so no sprint-climbing walls for you, but you can still use sprinting in a pinch when caught next to dangerous enemies in the streets. The no-climbing rule for sprinting would also give the thief an incentive to not be in climbing mode all the time and ignore that you can switch it off. ;)

Jumping could also be active ability with a cooldown, this one compatible with climbing, so the thief could jump from the side of one building to another wall nearby. Alternately, you could sprint before jumping, increasing the range of your jumps (but with no climbing). Maybe you could also jump over some obstacles (furniture, the hedge fences), or by jumping into a window, you would shatter it and jump through (and maybe take damage). All jumping would generate quite some noise, though. Maybe horses could also jump, increasing their jump range by their momentum.

Yeah, I thought myself about jumps (though not about sprinting). Not sure I'll be able to implement all the interactions with windows and such, but jumping will certainly be done at some point. Sprinting also seems fun though I wonder if it will make the thief nigh invincible. Right now no melee can get him, with these changes he will have even less incentive to get down to the ground and if he does his superior speed will save him in the pinch. But we shall see :)

Could we maybe get the end-game screen with achievements and score saved as a .txt log? It would make hunting for the most achievements much more exciting and easier to share. :D

Sure, quality of life changes always come first  :)

And I have one more proposal for a playable faction: You could join the Criminals as the Cambion.

Your writing is awesome! I am not sure I want half-breeds in the lore, but from the gameplay perspective, this sounds pretty solid. There are too many corpses in the city so we need more characters that can make use of them.


Finally, it might be only mine love for descriptions, but maybe there could be inventory descriptions for even other items than the ones with active use? Right now, you can pick up coins and corpses which will have no description - what if they had a short quote for a description?

Yeah, that has to be implemented at some point :) Though I do not have a lot of items now so I thought of postponing it to a later date.

And one more question: Do you have any plans about making the attacks, defense and maybe light radius of creatures into actual inventory items (eg. a rifle, an army uniform, a torch or a lamp), or will they stay as abstractions as is?

Someday for sure, when the game is more fleshed out and there is a kind of campaign mode, where the city is subdivided into districts, and the battle we have now is only a battle for a single district so you can carry over experience and items from one level to another. Oh, the glorious distant future...  ::)

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #43 on: September 22, 2017, 05:33:38 PM »
Whoa, another bunch of cool ideas and I only started to implement the previous ones! I'm afraid I am losing this race  ;D

Ideas are easy, it's the developers who are hard-working heroes. ;)

Yeah, I thought myself about jumps (though not about sprinting). Not sure I'll be able to implement all the interactions with windows and such, but jumping will certainly be done at some point. Sprinting also seems fun though I wonder if it will make the thief nigh invincible. Right now no melee can get him, with these changes he will have even less incentive to get down to the ground and if he does his superior speed will save him in the pinch. But we shall see :)

I actually die to demons and such only rarely with my thieves, mostly when they corner me in a house with no nearby escape route. Climbing really is powerful. :) However, as it takes me some time to carefully creep around collecting the gold, the arriving army is generally the thing that kills me - one mistake has you spotted and shot, even if you try to disappear in smoke. Even if I could sprint, I think I would be dying to soldiers. :D

Your writing is awesome! I am not sure I want half-breeds in the lore, but from the gameplay perspective, this sounds pretty solid. There are too many corpses in the city so we need more characters that can make use of them.

That was my original line of thoughts - some creature lured there by the scent of so many corpses, something like a ghoul. And devouring corpses would work pretty well as a grisly way of gaining power, IMHO. :)

Someday for sure, when the game is more fleshed out and there is a kind of campaign mode, where the city is subdivided into districts, and the battle we have now is only a battle for a single district so you can carry over experience and items from one level to another. Oh, the glorious distant future...  ::)

That sounds cool. I guess I'll wait and see in a few years. :P

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #44 on: September 29, 2017, 09:44:19 PM »
Released version 1.2.2

- Added a new playable creature - the Eater of the dead. It has two unique abilities - Cannibalize, that lets you devour a corpse to gain HP and power and increase your maximum HP, and Primordial power, that increases your damage, armor, and evasion.
- Added the Cast shadows ability to all shadow demons. This ability causes a character to cast unnatural shadows that you can use to shadow step to and from.
- Added the Bend space ability to all crimson demons. This ability lets you teleport to a random location a short distance away.
- Added the Jump ability to the thief. This ability allows you to move 2 tiles away from you and cling to a wall next to the destination tile.
- Added the Sprint ability to the thief. This ability allows you to temporarily increase your movement speed.
- Added the Ressurection ability to all angels. This ability allows you to resurrect other fallen angels and humans.
- Added the Split soul ability to the chrome angels. This ability lets the user create an image of themselves that the user can later teleport to.
- Added morgue files to characters.
- Added graveyards to the building list.
- Added a new church layout.
- Added flavor signs to some buildings.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.2