Hello everyone!

You must have missed our devlogs, aren't you? Well, that was not in vain – and in this diary we'll tell you more about Stoneshard combat system.

What's the combat like in traditional roguelikes? The player's character has the set of various attributes, and his enemies have their own sets of exactly same attributes. They get close on neighboring tiles and attack each other – the one with higher attributes usually wins the fight. Sometimes RNG may take place: someone may land a critical hit, block incoming attack or just evade the hit – but that rarely affects the general outcome.

In Stoneshard there are even more possible strike outcomes: for instance, you can accidentally fumble, thus hitting with severely lowered damage. You can critically fumble as well – and in melee that means you will hurt your own limb. All of this is connected to several dozens of different attributes, which you, the player, will improve during the game's course – with special Attribute Points, equipment, traits and some passive abilities.

Though this concept is a classic one – and quite viable on itself – we always thought it lacks some flexibility, and player lacks the possibility to directly influence the fight. Yes, correct positioning and the usage of skills may have a huge impact, but in the beginning of the game, when your character doesn't have huge arsenal of abilities, the fighting system gets a little bit boring and random. And then we came with the solution: Attitudes. So what are Attitudes?



By this name we mean a certain mix of character's battle stance, preferred tactics and the overall "fighting" mood. Each Attitude has its own advantages and disadvantages, differently modifying character's attributes. All Attitudes are designed for very specific cases. Thus tactically thinking player will be able to quickly adapt to dynamically changing situation by taking right Attitude in time. As you may have guessed, it will take a turn.

We added nine different Attitudes:

• Aggressive
  This attitude develops the offensive potential, but makes defensive techniques harder to perform. Aggressive Attitude is great to use in one–on–one fights if your life isn't under great threat.
  
  
• Defensive
  
  This attitude focuses on using of defensive maneuvers but worsens your attacking skills. It's intended for those cases when you must survive at any cost – for example, in battles with overwhelming and dangerous enemies.
  
  
• Balanced
  This attitude is a great choice for those who don't like to risk and rely more on skill than luck. This fighting style strengthens your usual attacks and improves your blocking technique at the cost of making critical strikes much less likely and effective.
  
  
• Precise
  This attitude allows to fully focus on ranged combat at the cost of mobility and overall attentiveness. It's effective in situations where the enemies are quite far away to snipe them from a distance.
  
  
• Cautious
  This attitude makes combat incredibly risky and hard but helps to retreat and hide. It's fit for those cases when your successful retreat is a matter of life and death.
  
  
• Stealthy
  This attitude increases your chances to stay hidden before the right moment but it makes you less nimble and lowers your field of view. It's intended for the situations when successful surprise attack will bring a great advantage.
  
  
• Meditative
  This attitude helps to abstract oneself from the world, improving body's restorative forces. It's great to use after hard fights.
  
  
• Concentrated
  This attitude helps to fully control one's own consciousness. It increases spell power but leaves the caster almost defenseless in melee combat.
  
  
• Full Potential
  This attitude allows mystical energies to flow directly through one's body. It fully uncovers hidden magical powers at the cost of decreased vital forces and worsened physical control.

Mind that each character won't be able to take every attitude from the beginning – for example, Dwarven Berserkers aren't familiar with Meditative, Stealthy or Cautious Attitudes – while Elven Shadows specialize on those, but aren't taught how to get fully Aggressive. However you can unlock missing Attitudes as you advance through the game – but this is a topic of another devlog.

Stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

You must have missed our devlogs, aren't you? Well, that was not in vain – and in this diary we'll tell you more about Stoneshard combat system.

What's the combat like in traditional roguelikes? The player's character has the set of various attributes, and his enemies have their own sets of exactly same attributes. They get close on neighboring tiles and attack each other – the one with higher attributes usually wins the fight. Sometimes RNG may take place: someone may land a critical hit, block incoming attack or just evade the hit – but that rarely affects the general outcome.

In Stoneshard there are even more possible strike outcomes: for instance, you can accidentally fumble, thus hitting with severely lowered damage. You can critically fumble as well – and in melee that means you will hurt your own limb. All of this is connected to several dozens of different attributes, which you, the player, will improve during the game's course – with special Attribute Points, equipment, traits and some passive abilities.

Though this concept is a classic one – and quite viable on itself – we always thought it lacks some flexibility, and player lacks the possibility to directly influence the fight. Yes, correct positioning and the usage of skills may have a huge impact, but in the beginning of the game, when your character doesn't have huge arsenal of abilities, the fighting system gets a little bit boring and random. And then we came with the solution: Attitudes. So what are Attitudes?



By this name we mean a certain mix of character's battle stance, preferred tactics and the overall "fighting" mood. Each Attitude has its own advantages and disadvantages, differently modifying character's attributes. All Attitudes are designed for very specific cases. Thus tactically thinking player will be able to quickly adapt to dynamically changing situation by taking right Attitude in time. As you may have guessed, it will take a turn.

We added nine different Attitudes:

• Aggressive
  This attitude develops the offensive potential, but makes defensive techniques harder to perform. Aggressive Attitude is great to use in one–on–one fights if your life isn't under great threat.
  
  
• Defensive
  
  This attitude focuses on using of defensive maneuvers but worsens your attacking skills. It's intended for those cases when you must survive at any cost – for example, in battles with overwhelming and dangerous enemies.
  
  
• Balanced
  This attitude is a great choice for those who don't like to risk and rely more on skill than luck. This fighting style strengthens your usual attacks and improves your blocking technique at the cost of making critical strikes much less likely and effective.
  
  
• Precise
  This attitude allows to fully focus on ranged combat at the cost of mobility and overall attentiveness. It's effective in situations where the enemies are quite far away to snipe them from a distance.
  
  
• Cautious
  This attitude makes combat incredibly risky and hard but helps to retreat and hide. It's fit for those cases when your successful retreat is a matter of life and death.
  
  
• Stealthy
  This attitude increases your chances to stay hidden before the right moment but it makes you less nimble and lowers your field of view. It's intended for the situations when successful surprise attack will bring a great advantage.
  
  
• Meditative
  This attitude helps to abstract oneself from the world, improving body's restorative forces. It's great to use after hard fights.
  
  
• Concentrated
  This attitude helps to fully control one's own consciousness. It increases spell power but leaves the caster almost defenseless in melee combat.
  
  
• Full Potential
  This attitude allows mystical energies to flow directly through one's body. It fully uncovers hidden magical powers at the cost of decreased vital forces and worsened physical control.

Mind that each character won't be able to take every attitude from the beginning – for example, Dwarven Berserkers aren't familiar with Meditative, Stealthy or Cautious Attitudes – while Elven Shadows specialize on those, but aren't taught how to get fully Aggressive. However you can unlock missing Attitudes as you advance through the game – but this is a topic of another devlog.

Stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our new development diary! Today we are going to tell you about two new changes - visual customization and intoxication mechanics.



Hundred to one that you’ve already played other graphical roguelikes. Even if their interface looks much more friendly than the one of ASCII oldschool roguelikes, many elements are still rather symbolic and schematic. It’s quite understandable, taking into account traditionally abundant amount of possibilities in the games of this kind. Sometimes it’s a totally back-breaking task to reflect all elements graphically in details.

Nonetheless since the beginning we clearly understand, that it’s essential for a player to see the progress of the character, and along with that an ability to see all the changes of character’s equipage is quite important. So the last week was dedicated to implementing of visual customization. From now on any equipage you put on your character is shown on the character’s sprite.

Weapons, shields, armour, helmets, boots are available for admiration not only in inventory but directly on the character. We don’t have enough pixels to show full-featured rings and amulets, so they became an only exception. As for the rest with this new system you have an ability to make your character both efficient and aesthetic. Who knows, you may be the one who will leave the mark in a history as the most stylish dungeon conqueror.



Now let’s get down to the gameplay moments to tell you more details about intoxication mechanics we have implemented a bit earlier. Along with hunger, thirst and pain, intoxication is one of the health indexes of your character. Potions, alcohol and drugs are happened to play one of the key roles in our game.

Imagine yourself lying in the dark dungeon with broken legs, on the verge of a swoon because of the pain shock. Well, the only relief you may get from in this situation is a bottle or a pinch of Elven dust. So there is a logical question, how do we show that drugs are bad and you should not overuse it? Intoxication is right here to help: it is getting higher when your character is under affection of diverse toxic factors.

Increase of intoxication varies depending on the intensiveness of impact. Heavy drugs and potent alcohol give the strongest thrust to the one-time rise. Long-term effects such as protracted drug trips or inebriation may also contribute to the rise of intoxication. Potion overuse doesn't come without price as well, intoxication will raise differently according to the strength and type of the effect.

It will be much harder to control the character if his organism has accumulated too much toxins. He may stop obeying player’s commands, faint, suffer from nausea and even slip into a coma for a while. Thus just in case keep a few bottles of antidotes in the inventory, they may save your life once. There is also a passive way to lower an intoxication: toxins are excreted from the organism by themselves on conditions of good health and enough amount of water.

That's all, stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our new development diary! Today we are going to tell you about two new changes - visual customization and intoxication mechanics.



Hundred to one that you’ve already played other graphical roguelikes. Even if their interface looks much more friendly than the one of ASCII oldschool roguelikes, many elements are still rather symbolic and schematic. It’s quite understandable, taking into account traditionally abundant amount of possibilities in the games of this kind. Sometimes it’s a totally back-breaking task to reflect all elements graphically in details.

Nonetheless since the beginning we clearly understand, that it’s essential for a player to see the progress of the character, and along with that an ability to see all the changes of character’s equipage is quite important. So the last week was dedicated to implementing of visual customization. From now on any equipage you put on your character is shown on the character’s sprite.

Weapons, shields, armour, helmets, boots are available for admiration not only in inventory but directly on the character. We don’t have enough pixels to show full-featured rings and amulets, so they became an only exception. As for the rest with this new system you have an ability to make your character both efficient and aesthetic. Who knows, you may be the one who will leave the mark in a history as the most stylish dungeon conqueror.



Now let’s get down to the gameplay moments to tell you more details about intoxication mechanics we have implemented a bit earlier. Along with hunger, thirst and pain, intoxication is one of the health indexes of your character. Potions, alcohol and drugs are happened to play one of the key roles in our game.

Imagine yourself lying in the dark dungeon with broken legs, on the verge of a swoon because of the pain shock. Well, the only relief you may get from in this situation is a bottle or a pinch of Elven dust. So there is a logical question, how do we show that drugs are bad and you should not overuse it? Intoxication is right here to help: it is getting higher when your character is under affection of diverse toxic factors.

Increase of intoxication varies depending on the intensiveness of impact. Heavy drugs and potent alcohol give the strongest thrust to the one-time rise. Long-term effects such as protracted drug trips or inebriation may also contribute to the rise of intoxication. Potion overuse doesn't come without price as well, intoxication will raise differently according to the strength and type of the effect.

It will be much harder to control the character if his organism has accumulated too much toxins. He may stop obeying player’s commands, faint, suffer from nausea and even slip into a coma for a while. Thus just in case keep a few bottles of antidotes in the inventory, they may save your life once. There is also a passive way to lower an intoxication: toxins are excreted from the organism by themselves on conditions of good health and enough amount of water.

That's all, stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

In this devlog we are going to tell you a bit about our stealth system, which we have been heavily working on for the last week.

Most roguelikes don't pay enough attention to the ability of passing through the entire game stealthily. One of the implicit targets of our game design is to make the game play different for different archetypes: Warrior, Ranger, Rogue and Mage. Thus we've decided that stealth, which Rogues often rely on, should be a viable strategy on its own.

A new major feature is the noise system – now almost any character's action is accompanied by noise. Everything creates a background noise: a hit, a step, an attempt to break a door down, the sound of a vase shattering, screams of pain from an injury. The radius of sound propagation depends on the intensiveness of the source: louder sounds are being heard further.



Doors and walls block it out mostly, but something may still reach nearby rooms. Since every opponent may detect audible sounds, they will go to check whether everything is alright if the noise reaches a certain threshold – so even a mere vase broken in an inappropriate moment may attract unwanted attention to you.

Nonetheless, it is possible to reduce the noise made by a character by properly equipping him. Noise volume also depends on the weapon: the stab of a dagger is almost silent ; and a heavy two-handed hammer's hit is quite the opposite. The same applies to armor: a risk to be noticed is much lower if character's armor is made of cloth or leather.

Additions to the attribute system are quite worth mentioning as well: a specific attribute helps the character to stay out of the spotlight – Stealth. It can be increased by upgrading Agility and Perception. The higher your Stealth and the lower enemy's Alertness, the more likely you would slip by without getting in a fight.

Stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

In this devlog we are going to tell you a bit about our stealth system, which we have been heavily working on for the last week.

Most roguelikes don't pay enough attention to the ability of passing through the entire game stealthily. One of the implicit targets of our game design is to make the game play different for different archetypes: Warrior, Ranger, Rogue and Mage. Thus we've decided that stealth, which Rogues often rely on, should be a viable strategy on its own.

A new major feature is the noise system – now almost any character's action is accompanied by noise. Everything creates a background noise: a hit, a step, an attempt to break a door down, the sound of a vase shattering, screams of pain from an injury. The radius of sound propagation depends on the intensiveness of the source: louder sounds are being heard further.



Doors and walls block it out mostly, but something may still reach nearby rooms. Since every opponent may detect audible sounds, they will go to check whether everything is alright if the noise reaches a certain threshold – so even a mere vase broken in an inappropriate moment may attract unwanted attention to you.

Nonetheless, it is possible to reduce the noise made by a character by properly equipping him. Noise volume also depends on the weapon: the stab of a dagger is almost silent ; and a heavy two-handed hammer's hit is quite the opposite. The same applies to armor: a risk to be noticed is much lower if character's armor is made of cloth or leather.

Additions to the attribute system are quite worth mentioning as well: a specific attribute helps the character to stay out of the spotlight – Stealth. It can be increased by upgrading Agility and Perception. The higher your Stealth and the lower enemy's Alertness, the more likely you would slip by without getting in a fight.

Stay tuned!