Nov 8, 2019

DemonCrawl - Therefore Games

New Features

Introduced a new keyword called "solve." An item that solves a cell will correctly flag OR unflag it.

Developer notes: previously, there were items that would "reveal a hidden cell." Some players were wondering why this effect could hit cells you've already flagged. The reason is this: if such items avoided flagged cells, it would incentivize players to flag every cell except for the few they wished to target. We believe the wording of the "solve" mechanic circumvents this problem.

Items affected by this change include: Compass, Parasol, Boomerang, Minion.

Balance Changes

Reduced the overall monster density in Quest 1 from 0.155 to 0.148
Reduced the overall monster density in Quest 2 from 0.160 to 0.158
Greedy Pig rework: "Lose a random amount of coins at the end of each stage." -> "Lose up to half your coins at the end of each stage."
Broken Rib rework: "Instead, your defense is added to damage." -> "Your defense is capped to the minimum stage power."
Pagan stage mod rework: "At the start of the stage, lose a random number of items." -> "At the start of the stage, lose up to 10 random items."
Aching, Bleeding, and Toxic stage mods can now be found in Normal difficulty
Melting and Liberated stage mods are now restricted to Hard difficulty
The first two chests opened will never contain an omen (up from 1)
After clicking on a toxic cell, the toxic aura is removed

Developer notes: we received a number of reports from players who were struggling with the first quest, so we have decided to make it (and the second quest) a bit easier. When making such changes, we want to be careful not to overshoot our goal; if Quest 1 was too easy, veteran players would not find it engaging. This is important because there are actually reasons for veterans to return to Quest 1 later in the game. For now, we will continue to monitor player feedback and make small adjustments as necessary.

We also hear you loud and clear with regard to omen design: there are some omens that offer little-to-no counterplay. Greedy Pig and Broken Rib were two such omens that would often punish you for playing correctly. We have altered their designs so that they don't completely cripple gold and defense builds. Let us know what you think.

You may have noticed that Straitjacket is unchanged. Hear us out on this: we believe it is important to have one omen in the item pool that is significantly more dangerous than the rest. It helps maintain suspense when opening chests, whereas most other (arguably better designed) omens can be subverted to a build's advantage. Straitjacket is unique in that it's pretty much always bad. It's the ultimate low roll.

It's also worth mentioning that, as we expand the item pool, Straitjacket will become increasingly rare; omen drop rates are not weighted in any way. And we would like to start adding more items to the pool relatively soon. :)

Resolved Bugs

Fixed a crash that occurred when a cell-based status effect activated on the same turn as Smog
Fixed a crash that occurred when Dreamcatcher had no space to spawn loot
Fixed certain items not activating through Gluttony
Fixed a crash related to Duster
Fixed a crash that occurred when picking up rare loot that was previously contained in a bubble
Fixed a bug where KNIGHT II wouldn't give you defense if you were wearing a helmet (don't ask)

Known Issues

We received a report that you can resume Q5 on Hard after finishing it, but we're told the issue resolves itself if you restart the client - so far we haven't been able to reproduce this
Those dang ol' Frozen cells

Enjoy!

Nov 8, 2019

Cartoon News #6 Attention! Attention!

Cartoon Strike - Gametoria

To the future employees of War and Fun! department in Gametoria corporation™, the head of the department, Emmit Gingerbread, would like to say a few words.

Hello, partners!

My name is Emmit Gingerbread and as we are approaching to the opening of the department, I am so happy to inform you about some cool things you will encounter here with us.

As you may already know, each reality (or as it is known among the public – the map) will take you to the different place with unique experience. But did you know all realities have their own behavior and change during the play? We called it Anomalies.

As you will explore realities, they will appear from time to time, changing rules and offering new opportunities. Like The Mist which will lower your vision and conceal you from the enemy eyes.

Portals on the other hand will allow you to get to the places which are difficult to get to. But beware! You never know where you end up.

Will you be able to adapt to these events and use it as an opportunity to outsmart your opponents? You will be able to find out soon.

And before you ask, our testers assuring our fun quality of all realities are reporting everything is working fine… sort of. But who don’t like to swing real hard from time to time.

It’s been a real pleasure to introduce myself to you guys and soon I will tell you more about amazing stuff we’ve prepared for you.

So stay tuned! And until next time, take care. – EG

Nov 8, 2019

The automated-trading update

Ymir - Ronchiporc

Trading upgrade

This update's main focus is the improvement of the trading mechanics and UI.
The main point is the addition of a new trading menu, available from the side panel of territories but also from the resource menu of all resources as a new tab.

With this menu comes a lot of new functionalities and informations about trading, the most significant one being the addition of automatic recurrent orders. For example, you can set the order to sell 100 hammers at 4 coins every time your stock of hammers reaches 200 in the territory, and the order will activate whenever that condition is met and wait inactive when it isn't.

On the left, the new menu also shows you the Best offers in your trading network for every resource: it shows the best available buy price and sell price, allowing you to see immediately what interesting trades are available to you.
A tickbox even allows you to filter unprofitable offers: it will then only list resources that have a buy price higher than your local price, or sell offers that are lower than your local price, which means offers you can generate profit from.

The menu also adds a trading history, showing you all the recent trades that you made, who purchased it, and at what price. It also displays your best trading partners based on the selected resource and time period you're looking.

It is now possible to also place buy orders , and not just sell orders.
When placing a buying order, you must deposit an amount of coins matching the limit price and quantity you're willing to purchase.
If your buy order is cancelled or filled at a lower price, your initial deposit will be refunded accordingly.
For example, if you set a buy order of 100 wood at a limit max price of 4 and it gets filled at 3, you will recover a quarter of your initial deposit.

The new trading system no longer allows you to choose specific offers: instead, it creates an order book with all the selling and buying offers, and make them automatically match.
When you buy or sell resources, it will always look for the best available price in your trading network. Therefore you can no longer choose to buy wood for 4 coins to a specific partner if someone else in your network is selling some for 2 coins.

The new trading UI now allows you to place automatic trade orders, see your trading history, and place buying orders instead of only selling ones.

Improved trade route UI

The UI of trade routes has also been improved.
All trade routes between similar cities will now automatically merge into a single route for easier management and visibility.
For existing trade routes, transferred amounts can now be edited, so you no longer have to close and recreate routes. If the trade route is with a third party, you may only reduce traded amounts, but if the trade route is internal between your own cities, you can also increase it when needed.
The side pannel UI has also been improved to fix the 'overflow' issues, to better display operated trade routes, trade route finances, and the creation of new trade routes.

The improved trade route UI and menu allows you to modify existing trade routes and groups all traded resources between similar cities together.

Resources base wealth rebalanced

The base wealth of resources introduced in a previous patch (contributes to the territory wealth when stored in proper storage buildings) is now displayed for each resource in its menu in the top.
It has also been lowered and re-balanced to take into account the wealth of the materials needed to craft the resource, when relevant.

Cavalry re-balanced

Mounted units have been rebalanced to be stronger as they were too weak considering their price. They are now especially stronger vs infantry of low reach such as swordpigs.

The automatic trading update
v0.2.0.x
- Reworked trade routes UI
- It is now possible to modify traded amounts of existing trade routes without having to cancel and remake them
- trade routes between similar cities will now auto-merge into one
- resource lists are now sorted by alphabetic order
- fixed missing UI for "operated trade routes" in the trade route side pannel
- removed control of price for trade routes (obsolete) as it is dynamic and automatic
- removed cargo price for now
- fixed UI overflows in the trade route side pannel
- new trading menu, available from the trade side pannel and the resource menu of each resource
- placing buy orders require an instant deposit of coins matching the quantity and limit price set in the offer.
- wooden shields cost less wood and leather
- light helmets faster to produce
- laminar armor upkeep +0.2 and armor -0.25
- heavy shield armor -0.5, defense skill -0.25, upkeep +0.1
- horses and camels reach +0.5, attack skill +1.75, damage +1, mass +100
- resources base wealth now takes base wealth of required materials into account
- added display of base wealth in the resource menu
- reduced base wealth of resources by 50%
- added persistent orders, triggered automatically by the current stocks of the territory
- added trading history
- added buy orders
- fixed empty battle reports issue
- fixed memory leak in battles
- fixed display issue with flags in some menus
- ordered resource lists by alphabetical order
- fixed feedback loop of leader salary and priviledges: only wealth from priviledges can now contribute to treasury
- fixed priviledges reducing wealth of non-capital cities
- exploration events can now happen on tiles with herds
- deserted occupied territories can now decay
- fixed custom worldmap settings not working when creating a new game

Nov 8, 2019

Roundguard October Dev Update

Roundguard - TanookiFruit

Hi friend!

Well, there went October. You all have to be tired of me starting every update like this, but seriously, what even is time? And how do I buy more of it?

Anyway, as we barrel towards our content complete deadline, we've been cramming in a ton of new content. New boards, new random encounters, new trinkets, new things to unlock... Oh! And a brand new boss fight! I don't want to spoil everything, but inspired by October, the spookiest of months, we decided we needed a heart-pounding final encounter...

As you can see, it is 100% anatomically accurate.

Of course, when you do beat that final boss, you need a reward. So now you'll get one of the Roundguard's powerful relics! Each relic changes the rules of the game in new and strange ways. Many make the game harder, but you might be able to use their effects to your advantage if you're clever. Before you start a new run, you can choose to activate one or more relics, and if you beat the game with them active, you'll master the relic and get a shiny gooooold version.

And in tomorrow's beta update, we'll be adding in another handful of stuff, including a new elite: The Goblin Poet. Because goblins are known for their eloquence.

He puts the beat in beat poetry.

In between all of the Roundguard work, Kurt and I went to the Roguelike Celebration in San Francisco. We met a ton of wonderful folks, geeked out over procedural generation, and drank roguelike-themed cocktails. It was the best. I even gave a mini design talk, if you're into those. (If you are, you should check out the rest of the talks too!)

And guess what, San Francisco? We'll be back again this weekend, showing off Roundguard at the Day of the Devs event! There are going to be sooooooo many amazing indie games and it's all free. If you're around, come say hi! For all the rest of you who don't live in San Francisco, well... you can always find us in the Discord. :)

<3
Andrea

Nov 8, 2019

Devel Update: What's next

Grey Hack - kurouzu

Hello everyone!

Finally, the public version can already be considered stable and this means that the next development cycle has already begun.

As always, you can take a look at the Roadmap to know the next features that will be included, although you have to remember that they are not done in order.

The next major update will bring the Guilds or Clans system, that will include other features on which it depends, such as new services, the beginning of the development of the economy, new commands and improvements to the scripting system and a renewed world generation system among others.

As usual, the public build will stop receiving updates until the next major update, and very soon the Nightly version will open with the last version of the game available, where you can help test the new features and report bugs before moving it to the public build.

From now on, the Nightly development cycles will be much shorter, since all necessary base features are finally implemented. Therefore, major updates of the public version will be more frequent.

As always, thanks for your support and suggestions.
More news soon!