Author Topic: City of the Damned  (Read 76450 times)

red_kangaroo

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #45 on: October 12, 2017, 06:29:06 AM »
I managed to fall through solid ground:




I was trying to get into the underground vault of the Bank, but one of the policemen spotted me and gave a chase. I tried to jump over a table, but crashing into it, I fell down through the ground to z-level -2 (or which is the lowest) and got stuck there, able to look around and use abilities, but unable to actually move or escape.

That's what you get for being a greedy theif, I guess. Being buried alive under the Bank. :P

Tzan

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #46 on: October 12, 2017, 04:37:03 PM »
Haha, how does that even happen in an ASCII game.
I've fallen thru small holes in 3D ground meshes.

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #47 on: October 12, 2017, 05:54:15 PM »
I managed to fall through solid ground:

I was trying to get into the underground vault of the Bank, but one of the policemen spotted me and gave a chase. I tried to jump over a table, but crashing into it, I fell down through the ground to z-level -2 (or which is the lowest) and got stuck there, able to look around and use abilities, but unable to actually move or escape.

That's what you get for being a greedy theif, I guess. Being buried alive under the Bank. :P

Yeah, there is a bug in the jump function. Whenever you hit a solid obstacle (tables are solid obstacles, by the way, and you can not jump over them, though it is an interesting possibility), you will fall to Z level 0. Jump is safe when its range is not enough for you to hit anything.

Will fix that in the next version, thanks for the report :)

PS. Oh, and try not to jump into other characters , this will trigger the same problem ;)
« Last Edit: October 12, 2017, 06:05:56 PM by gwathlobal »

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #48 on: October 21, 2017, 12:35:53 AM »
Released version 1.2.3

- Added Malseraph's puppets as a playable faction. Malseraph's puppets are demons who worship Malseraph, the Demon God of Acting, Gambling and Violent Changes. They lack the possession ability but make up for it with the powers of their god.
- By themselves, Malseraph's puppets have the Irradiate and Fission abilities. Irradiate applies a special status to the target, while Fission is used to cause damage to those with this status and clear it from them.
- Malseraph is the master of cards and likes to be entertained. Malseraph likes disguises, polymorphs, and dangerous situations.
- When Malseraph is in the good mood, it will draw cards with beneficial effects from its decks and can even grant some of the decks to you. When it is in the bad mood, it will use its more malicious cards against you to spice things up.
- There are two types of decks that Malseraph can give - decks of war and decks of escape. Each deck consists of a number cards that a character can draw. You can not see what card you draw and what cards remain in the deck. Drawing a card immediately invokes its effect.
- Added Constriction ability to the Eater of the dead. This ability lets you grab targets and continue to deal damage to them automatically while all participants remain in place.
- Citizens of the City may now drop civilian costumes, which can be used to make disguises by the thief. The disguise (usable by humans and Malseraph's puppets only) makes you look as an ordinary man or woman to everybody else.
- Fixed the bug with jumping when you would fall through the ground if you hit an obstacle during the jump.
- You can now jump over small obstacles like beds, tables, barricades, and bushes.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.3

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #49 on: November 24, 2017, 10:32:44 PM »
Released version 1.2.4

- Added signal flares to Scouts. Signal flares prompt the artillery that the military has deployed outside the City to strike at the location of the flare. This strike deals significant iron and fire damage around the location where the strike lands.
- The Eater of the dead can now mutate and grow various organs that can help it in its quest to destroy the outsiders.
- For offensive mutations, the Eater of the dead can choose from clawed tentacles (an increased melee attack), acid spite (an additional ranged attack) or corrosive bile (a cooldown ability similar to an artillery strike).
- For defensive mutations, the Eater of the dead can choose from chitinous plating (a passive direct resistance increase), metabolic boost (an active ability that grants increased speed and dodging) or retracting spines (an active ability that gives increased percentage resistances and inflicts damage to melee attackers).
- For spawning mutation, the Eater of the dead has either spawning sacs or an ovipositor. The spawning sacs can spawn locusts which are rather weak creatures that can attack in melee but die off naturally after a number of turns. The ovipositor spawns scarabs which are living bombs that roll to the target and explode dealing acid damage to everybody around. You can further enhance your spawns by giving locusts an acid bite and making them tougher or making scarabs roll faster and spawning more of them.
- From the very start, to boost its combat prowess the Eater of the dead now has an adrenal gland. When the Eater attacks someone, the gland secrets adrenaline which makes all melee and range attacks faster.
- The Eater of the dead can create parasites that can be thrown onto enemies. A parasited character will always reveal its location to the Eater.
- The Eater of the dead can cure mutations that you do not find helpful.
- When the Eater of the dead devours corpses, it has a chance to get abilities depending on the type of the corpse.
- The Eater of the dead can no longer use primordial power.
- The Eater of the dead starts with 2 power that you can immediately use on mutations.
- If an ability requires the player to select a target, the game will initially focus the applicable target (instead of always focusing hostile characters).
- Irradiation has a small chance to mutate you giving you a minor negative effect.
- Malseraph can sometimes cure malmutations of its followers.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.4

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #50 on: December 24, 2017, 06:55:16 PM »
Released version 1.2.5

- Introduced a new playable character - the Lost soul. It is a very fragile (1 HP) non-corporeal being that can possess humans and dead bodies. Unlike demons, its possession ability is improved - it gains all the abilities of the victims and uses their HP instead of its own. When the victim dies, it just leaves the body ready to jump into another target in range.
- When in ghost form the Lost soul can turn completely invisible and escape any dangerous situation, as well as pass through walls and floors.
- The aim of the Lost soul is to find the Book of Rituals stored in the library and use it on the sacrificial circle on the lowest floor of the satanists' lair.
- Added a second tier of defensive mutations for the Eater of the dead. These are thick carapace (even more passive damage resistance), acidic tips (extended spines start to deal acid damage) and jump (gain an ability to jump similar to the thief).
- Added a second tier of offensive mutations for the Eater of the dead. These are piercing needles (constricted target have reduced dodge), increased acid strength (acid spit also reduces flesh and acid resistances) and increased cerebellum (corrosive bile always lands to the destination target).
- Added survival mutations to the Eater of the dead like hooks & sucker cups (lets you climb walls) and facade readjustment (lets you disguise yourself as a human).
- Spawning mutations are rearranged for the Eater of the dead. The ovipositor is now the prerequisite for all spawning mutations. Then you can branch into locusts or scarabs. Parasites are now dependent on the ovipositor as well. All spawning is no longer immediate - first, you need to lay eggs and wait before they grow.
- The Eater of the dead can gain an ability to spawn seeker larvae. These small creatures are harmless but eat corpses and transfer their power to you.
- The Eater of the dead can gain an ability to spawn spore colonies. These are immobile creatures that spit acid at their enemies in sight.
- Fixed the bug when you could throw the parasite through solid objects.
- Added a card that could polymorph enemies into trees. Trees are immobile and do negligible damage but have superior defenses.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.5

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #51 on: January 12, 2018, 09:25:28 PM »
So, a year has passed since the day I released the first version of the game.

Well, why not sum up the results?

The first version was very slow (due to stupidly inefficient LOS algorithms) and basically added nothing new to its spiritual predecessor - City of the Condemned (and even removed some elements of the gameplay). This was actually my third attempt to make a roguelike :) The first two being traditional dungeon crawlers died under their own weight and scope without getting out of '@ moves on the screen' stage.

So, the first lesson for me - try to make something small and working as soon as you can that you can later use to expand and extend.

And so I did, rather quickly fixing the performance issues and trying to release a new version at least every month.

The second thing I've learned was that my interface preferences were really weird :) - I preferred tiles and fonts to be as small as possible while numerous people pointed out that that was very inconvenient and put excessive strain on their eyes.

Meanwhile, brilliant performance did not last for long ;D as at some point I decided to add the 3rd dimension to my game. I have not seen many roguelikes toying with the honest 3rd dimension the way Dwarf Fortress does so I believed that this feature (along with mounted combat and multi-tiled monsters) would add something special to my game. I must say that I am still undecided if that was a good move as it brought visible slowdown. Most likely it's just me not knowing how to cook 3D properly but the delay of about 200 ms to 1 sec between player turns is rather painful at the moment.

Then red_kangoroo gave me a lot of cool ideas about factions and features that I was happy to implement. Additionally, I was influenced by other games I've played and seen, transplanting some bits from them into my game. That took me the remainder of the year, and here I am - the game now has 12 playable characters with (I hope) unique and interesting playstyles.

While the core idea is basically the same as in City of the Condemned (a deathmatch with several teams on the map), I think the games now differ enough to say that City of the Damned is no longer a remake  ;D

To keep up with the schedule I am releasing version 1.2.6 with a number of bugfixes and some new features that should spice up a (rather repetitive) satanist gameplay.

- With the demons invading, strange glyphs start to appear on the walls. The satanists are now able to decipher these demonic runes and use this knowledge to harness even more power.
- Demon word: Flesh lets a satanist turn a zombie into a full-fledged imp that can later progress and evolve as demons usually do.
- Demon word: Plague lets a satanist spread virulent soul sickness that will deal damage over time.
- Demon word: Power lets a satanist temporarily gain the power of an Archdemon.
- Demon word: Darkness turns off the sun for a period of time.
- Demon word: Invasion places an enchantment on the map that constantly reanimates corpses.
- Demon word: Knockback pushes all characters around the satanist away.
- Satanists now inflict vorpal damage instead of fire damage.
- Ghosts leave no footprints on snow and generate no sounds while moving.
- Blessings and divine shield now offer complete protection from ghost's possession.
- Empowered undead now have normal movement speed and can keep up with the satanists when following them.
- Fixed the bug with the game freezing after completion of the Increase acid strength mutation.
- Fixed the bug when you could target characters unseen by you with abilities.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.2.6

As for the plans for the next year, I'd like to move from a coffeebreak roguelike into something more longlasting.

I actually like the idea of session games (which most MMOs nowadays turn to) - your game sessions are kept rather quick (15 - 30 minutes max) so you quickly get that feeling of satisfaction and completeness, however you can repeat these sessions any number of times you want advancing your metaprogression in the game.
This is what I'd like to see in my game and, luckily, the structure of it perfectly allows for it.

So, the first step will be mixing in new game modes and objectives (like capture the flag and capture the point) to diversify the old bland deathmatch. This by itself will be an ambitious task as while I do not doubt the players' ability to complete any custom objective I can throw at them ;D, teaching the AI to do the same won't be that easy.

Secondly, I intend to implement a kind of campaign mode the inspiration of which I take from the game called Pathologic. There will be a city divided into districts, missions will be generated in these districts (demons invading, angels trying to close the gates to another dimension from where the demons come, soldiers taking a captured district back) and the whole 'overland' map of the city will be changing mission after mission as districts fall under control of various factions.

So the game session will be the same as now - complete the mission on the district map, while the metaprogression will be to free (or conquer, or whatever) the whole city by taking and winning missions.

At least, that is the plan. We'll see how it goes ;)

akeley

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #52 on: January 13, 2018, 11:22:38 AM »
Your game is already one of my favourite new roguelikes - innovative, fresh and exciting. To hear you plan a meta-layer, like a campaign/strategy to tie the missions together is basically mind-reading - just what I always wished was possible while playing this sweet-but-short game.

It would push it into the big leagues, no doubt :)

Avagart

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #53 on: January 14, 2018, 04:49:09 PM »
Quote
(...) your game sessions are kept rather quick (15 - 30 minutes max) so you quickly get that feeling of satisfaction and completeness, however you can repeat these sessions any number of times you want(...)

Huh, it's what I'm looking for in roguelikes for a long time. The major ones takes too much time for my actual job situation, and lots of coffebreaks are great for a short time, but often even the good ones are too bland / shallow for playing them over and over. Although... About what kind of metaprogression are you thinking?

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #54 on: January 14, 2018, 05:47:52 PM »
Well, I think the idea is to take the structure of the games like XCOM and Mordheim where you basically have two games - the local one when you take missions and the global one which serves basically to structure the chain of local missions where you try to achieve some overarching goal.

I think the same mechanics will be useful here as well. Of course, the campaign will likely take as long as major roguelikes do, but I do not think that can be helped.

Avagart

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #55 on: January 14, 2018, 07:27:53 PM »
Sounds cool, especially if finishing missions would mean something more substantial than just gathering resources :) But any way you want to go, I'll keep fingers cross for you ;)

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #56 on: March 29, 2018, 07:59:04 PM »
Ok, after several months of reworking the internals I am ready to present the first step towards the campaign mode.

Released version 1.3.0

- The concept of missions was introduced. The previous scenario where the demons wanted to kill all angels in the city became the 'Demonic attack' mission.
- A new mission was added - Demonic raid. The demons opened the portals in order to gather flesh from the city. Their goal for this mission is to kill citizens, pick up their corpses and throw them into portals, while the military and the angels want to stop and destroy demons. (screen)
- If you die, this is no longer the end of the world. The battle will go on until one of the sides wins. You might even get resurrected by your allies and continue fighting as if nothing happened. (screen)
- You can no longer win the game by ascending beyond Angel or Archdemon/Shadow Devil.
- As a Scout, you can no longer lose the game by getting possessed. Though you will lose the control over your character until you get purged (or the end of the mission).
- You will now be able to customize the factions you want to see in a scenario.
- AI will bump into friendly mobs much less often and will try to navigate around them to get to its target.
- Added a journal where you can see objectives for the current mission and your relations with other factions. The journal is displayed using the 'j' button. (screen)
- Defending military will be stationed inside the city.
- Possessable creatures will try to get away from you if you are the one that can possess them.
- Characters with ranged weapons will try to step out of melee combat.
- Ghosts can now sense the direction to the sacrificial circle and the Book of Rituals.
- Abilities on cooldown will be displayed in the status string. (screen)
- The game over screen now also shows the comparative statistics between the character who earned the title and the player. (screen)

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.3.0
« Last Edit: March 30, 2018, 09:46:55 PM by gwathlobal »

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #57 on: April 20, 2018, 09:09:37 PM »
Released version 1.3.1

- A new mission was added - Demonic thievery. The demons opened portals in order to steal a holy relic from the church and return it to their dimension. The military and the angels want to stop and destroy them.
- A new mission was added - Demonic conquest. The demons opened portals in order to conquer the district by placing and charging sigils in it. The military and the angels want to stop and destroy them.
- Fixed the bug with player's choosing the resurrect ability that could freeze the game.
- Fixed warehouses being mixed with barricades when military defenders are present in a seaport.
- Strings in the message log are of different colors now depending on the type of the message (instead of white used everywhere previously).

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.3.1

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #58 on: July 11, 2018, 06:11:48 PM »
Released version 1.3.2

- Added a set of abandoned districts (which were left by the civilians).
- Added a set of corrupted districts (which were captured by the demons).
- Added a new mission - Military conquest. The mission takes place in the abandoned and corrupted districts. The military and the angels try to destroy demonic sigils, while the demons try to protect them.
- Added a new mission - Military raid. The mission takes place in the abandoned districts. The military and the angels try to wipe out all demons from the district.
- Added a new mission - Celestial purge. The mission takes place in the corrupted districts. The angels try to destroy demonic sigils, while the demons try to protect them.
- Added a new mission - Celestial retrieval. The mission takes place in the corrupted districts. The angels try to recapture the stolen relic, while the demons want to stop and destroy them.
- Demon conquest mission now also takes place in the abandoned and corrupted districts.
- Demon raid mission now also takes place in the abandoned districts.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.3.2

gwathlobal

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Re: City of the Damned
« Reply #59 on: August 05, 2018, 07:10:12 PM »
Released version 1.3.3

- Added a new terrain tile to the corrupted districts - dreadtubes. If you step on them, there is a 20% chance for them to fear you and all mobs around you.
- Added a new terrain tile to the corrupted districts - sludgeshrooms. If you step on them, there is a 20% chance for them to release spores that will deal anyone inside them 1-2 acid damage.
- Added a new terrain tile to the corrupted districts - razorthorns. If you step on them, they will deal 1 acid damage to you.
- Fixed a typo in the "Does not breathe" ability.
- You will see mob names when 'l'ooking at them.
- The Military raid and Military conquest missions will no longer have angels from the very start, angels can only start delayed in these missions now.
- Imps and Shadow imps will start with 2 power points during the Military raid and Military conquest missions.
- Angels will no longer try to conceal divinity when there is an enemy next to them.
- Humans will try to swim up if they feel a lack of oxygen.
- Added an option to replay the previous mission type with the same player faction.

Download
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD/releases/tag/v1.3.3