We made some solid progress this month working towards the core loop. The enemy spawning and objective systems discussed last month are around 80% done and playable in a new internal build completed last week! Currently the player is assigned 3 random objectives on level start, and as they go to complete those objectives, enemies will spawn in a variety of ways to try to stop them. We also have a range of new interface work implemented, including damage numbers, enemy health bars, player hit indicators and low player health warnings, making for a far more juicier player experience. Plus a massive quantity of brand new level assets created, including everything from new cliffs and bridges through to piping, reactors and all manner of buildings and support structures. The Nuke Zone is stacking up!
Objectives
We currently have 5 objective types set up, assigned to multiple zones within the test level. Zones can have any number of, or variation of objectives. On level load, the system will randomly pick the required number of zones and task you with a random objective within them. Each individual task within the zones are randomly picked also (i.e. 3 x switch placements are picked from an available 6 positions). This ensures each level variation you play will be unique and provides some flexibility with how you beat a level! Objectives that require you to destroy objects, or activate switch types enable linked supporting tech and secondary tech objectives, so visually they fit into the environment, and so switches can activate secondary tech such as generators, doors or bridges to access new areas.
Objective Types;
Activation Sensors - Shoot each individual sensor within the required time limit. When a sensor is triggered, a timer is activated, counting down until the sensor resets. Activating all the sensors within the time limit will complete the objective and activate linked secondary tech; open a door, activate a bridge or turn on a generator for example.
Proximity Zones - Maneuver the tank within the proximity zone, or on top of the platform, and stay there for a certain amount of time to ‘charge up’ and complete the activation of that individual sensor. Activate all the required proximity sensors to complete the objective and/or trigger secondary linked tech. This objective will require you to defend yourself from waves of enemies while waiting for the charging to complete per proximity zone.
Destroyable Objects - Blow up the target objectives, such as fuel barrels, silos, storage tanks and electronic components to complete the objective. Destroying objects like generators can grant access to new areas or loot by disabling shields or unlocking doors.
Kill Enemies - Destroy a group of enemy targets to complete the objective.
Kill MiniBoss - Destroy a larger miniboss enemy to complete the objective.
Enemies
The enemy spawning system now ties into the objective events, so we can spawn enemies in a variety of ways based on what the player is doing. We can create and spawn all types of enemies with different weaponry, grouping and wave-type setups, with enemies having the ability to spawn enemies themselves, which is used for the miniboss objective.
Trigger Types;
Timer - A group of enemies spawn near the player on a randomized delay timer.
On Enter Area - Triggered when the player enters a specific zone.
On Second Enter - Triggered the next time the player enters the zone.
Objective Progress - Triggered when the player starts and is working towards an objective in that zone.
Objective Complete - Triggered when the objective in that zone is completed.
The focus this month will be on finishing the core loop; unlocking the boss arena upon completing the minimum objectives, and setting up an initial boss fight. Eventually when the loot system is implemented the player will receive specific rewards per objective completed, and additional objectives will be generated to earn bonus loot. But - every objective completed above the minimum will increase the strength of the boss. So the decision to go for more loot will matter vs making the boss fight harder, each level buffing and unlocking a new boss attack style to deal with. Max out your greed, but maybe die trying! Upon defeating the boss, the exit portal will activate and allow you to loop through to the next level variant. In future work we will set up an initial player power curve, which will affect the difficulty and number of enemies and objectives to contend with every time you loop through the test level. This is to emulate the future player progression system which will scale up the player power level based on permanent tank upgrades.
So dear nuker, as the irradiated sun sets on our third Development Blog, on behalf of the dev team - thank you for taking the time to read and follow along. Stay tuned for next month as we reveal more in-depth details on the boss system and showcase further progress!
Heads up! We're streaming dev progress weekly on Twitch - follow us to be notified when we go live!
It’s been a week since the launch of the Dragon’s Vow update, and the patch has been given a healthy amount of time to settle. Despite a brief hiccup that required a hotfix, this release has been our smoothest yet, and while a number of bugs have reared their ugly heads since, most of them are fairly minor. As we get closer to final release, a lot of niggling issues are coming out of the woodwork. We haven’t addressed them all with this patch, so we already have another one planned. Thanks again for everyone’s help and support. Every bug we squash now is one that won’t show up for the official release!
- The Cellar Door Games Team
P. S. We forgot to mention a number of bug fixes in the last hotpatch, so we’re just going to include everything from v0.6.0a in these notes.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES/ADDITIONS
New Sun Lantern Insight Quest to better direct players.
New Training Dialogue from Lady Quinn about the Ronin and Bard class.
Player Card updated for clearer explanation of Dexterity, Focus, and Crit. Chance.
Clarification added to the Soul Shop to explain that some skills are hard-capped when overloading.
Scholar and Warden Set Crit Chance bonus raised from 15% to 20%.
Soul Shop now unlocks 2 levels of Bonus Crit. chance (instead of 1).
Crit Chance in the Skill Tree cost lowered.
Crit Damage in the Skill Tree raised from 1% to 2% per level (but hard cap lowered from 50 to 30).
Players now start with 110% Crit Damage. This better explains the benefits of critical striking, while also gives early game players a nice little bump in damage.
Katana has a more lenient Skill Crit window.
NG leveling bump lowered.
Changed Super Fluid to use the mouse cursor to aim, which can be toggled to keyboard input via game settings.
Added two missing relics, Cornucopia and Dreamcatcher.
Institute of Gastronomy (Health Efficacy) bonus gain raised from 1% per level to 1.5% (20% to 30% max).
War drums reduced from 7.5% to 7% (negligible).
Spin kicks now deal damage even if you have the Perfectionist trait. This fixes a bug where resonant enemies (Slugs, Wisps, etc.) could not be damaged with Perfectionist.
Added Telescope to the Study.
Bard: Graphical changes to Lute projectiles, to make critical state more visible.
Crescendo now creates roses instead of notes. They function the same way except they no longer deal constant on-hit damage. This addresses exploit where Crescendoing the moment a boss fired a barrage of bullets would turn their attack against them and completely atomize them.
Ronin: Katana base damage reduced from 250% to 225%. The fix to the Skill Crit made their raw DPS way too high.
Immortal Kotetsu cooldown timer increased from 3s to 5s. Way less severe than it sounds and only punishes players who dash into a bad spot. We may change this skill again into something which encourages aggressive plays (and pushes INT Ronin's as a more viable build), but we'll see how this pans out first.
Spoon INT scaling down from 175% to 75% (Sporeburst Buff + new cook passive made Spoon OP and we forgot to tweak this weapon to accommodate these changes).
Barbarian: Ground attack damage scaling raised from 250% to 260%. Because the attack always Skill Crits, this change is larger than it looks.
BUG FIXES
99% of the bugs listed were brought up by the community, so we won’t bother tagging them as such.
Fixed bug where Super Fluid trait was constantly being disabled.
Fixed bug where the first stack of the Dance status effect was always yellow.
Fixed bug where Lamech's boss room was sometimes being considered an easy room, forcing him to be in his non-prime state even if the burden was enabled.
Fixed bug where the Threads of Fate were closing on folks due to a previous bug fix, resulting in them not being able to remove the burdens they already had.
Fixed bug where enemies could still spawn as Commanders in the first few initial rooms if they were previously a Commander in a different room.
Fixed another (entirely different) bug where Easy rooms could still spawn Commanders.
Attempted fix of bug where Ronin's Skill Crit logic would not trigger until the game was restarted entirely.
Fixed line hazard length bleeding into the door in a specific room in the Axis Mundi.
Fixed bug where ground friction was not triggering for enemies if they were hit on a slope.
Fixed bug where exiting a room while a Rocket Box was in the middle of a close range explosion animation would glitch out the animations for all its other attacks if you re-entered the room.
Fixed bug where Slug slime would not be positioned correctly when going up and down slopes.
Attempted fix of bug where Knuts would sometimes spawn in the incorrect positions.
Fixed bug where the Fade out logic for the Player HUD was not taking the Vertigo trait into account.
Fixed bug where solid magic platforms were not blocking enemy projectiles.
Changed the sparkle sprite on Journal Indoor props to Always Simulate to fix issue where the sparkles would sometimes not play in Study journal room.
Disarmed abilities no longer hide the cooldown information.
Fixed bug where Retiring a player would screw up the scale of the buttons in the Confirm Menu.
Fixed bug where Trinkets were not displaying the correct title for the Unity set they were associated with.
Updated the Unity Cinemachine package in an attempt to fix the random camera jitter when playing with VSync on.
Fixed bug where exiting the Drift House while Geras is awake and re-entering would not display his sleeping speech bubble.
Fixed bug where exiting to the Main Menu from the Lineage scene would break the stored seed of a locked castle.
Zombies now hide their colour trails and reactivate them when digging into and out of the ground.
Fixed bug where getting hit and retiring would keep your character red.
Changed the pulsing of icons so that only the player and special indicators animate. Also no longer animates during the death recap.
Fixed bug where some enemies were not taking damage to water in Axis Mundi.
Fixed bug where Rocket Boxes were not taking damage to hazards.
Fixed bug where the Sun would revert to its pre-restored state if you exited the room.
Hypercoagulation and Hero Complex are now considered incompatible traits.
Fixed bug where standing on an enemy like a Rocket Box would count as safe terrain and the player could teleport back to it when hitting hazards.
Fixed bug where gaining (or losing) max Kin level Unity was not updating the Relic HUD at the Docks.
Fixed bug where the game would not calculate the correct Unity bonus gains when equipping both Sanguine and Kin sets.
Added RoomCount burden level to Seed debug display.
Fixed bug where enemies were not taking max health percent damage from certain hazards.
Fixed bug where beating all bosses before picking up the Sun Lantern would result in the lantern no longer being obtainable in that thread.
Fixed bug where the explosion of barrels in the cave were occurring lower than their warning indicator was.
Entering a new room now clamps the player's Y velocity, to address scenario where the player can hit something like a Void Dash bounce orb, and fly into the room above them and hit enemies or spikes.
Fixed bug where player with Perfectionist was still dealing retaliation damage to enemies.
Fixed bug where exiting a room when a Cave barrel was prepped to explode would mark the barrel as destroyed when re-entering the room.
Fixed bug where some projectiles were unintentionally being destroyed when hitting Cave mushroom platforms.
Fixed bug where hitting a Flying Hunter with the Lance charge would sometimes make the enemy teleport without taking damage.
Fixed bug where the Prop Manager would sometimes not re-enable the animators for culled props, resulting in props that do not animate.
Fixed bug where Flying Axes Minibosses were shooting fireballs that were facing in the wrong direction.
Fixed bug where enemies would sometimes ignore the repeat hit check logic and take rapid ticks of damage.
Fixed bug where the icons for status effects that were applied to enemies via burdens were not showing up.
Fixed bug where taking Future Successor's Bargain would softlock the game.
Fixed bug where some biomes could be generated with various doors sealed off, making it impossible to enter or exit them.
Fixed bug where Ronin could clip out of bounds by teleporting diagonally in doorways.
Fixed bug where the Cook’s Burn and Mage’s Mana Leech status effects were being applied from spin kicks.
Fixed bug where leaving an active Fairy room and then re-entering would make the Fairy chest invisible, not melted.
Fixed bug where a particular room did not have collideable ceilings, allowing you to jump out of bounds.
Fixed bug where you could change the weapon of your selected heir while browsing portraits in the Lineage scene.
Fixed bug where Lifesteal would cause "+X HP" pop-up text to appear when killing enemies, even if you had the Hero Complex trait that prevents you from healing.
Fixed bug where Arrow Hazard traps in the Forest were not causing the HUD to fade out unless you were actively moving.
Fixed bug where Clownanthropy wasn't letting you bounce off floors if you also had the Aerodynamic trait.
Fixed bug where Skill Tree slot "xx/xx" text could overflow its width and cause part of the text to move to a new line.
Fixed bug where the bottom-left skill in the Skill Tree was difficult to select with the mouse because the Labour Costs and Level text were blocking the cursor.
Fixed bug where reloading the Pistol weapon would be slow if you had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Fixed bug where entering a new biome while the Panic Attack effect is active would sometimes cause the effect to remain active until you got hit again.
Fixed bug where the camera would sometimes glitch out and snap to an out-of-bounds position if you moved certain ways, in certain rooms, at certain aspect ratios.
Fixed bug where Healing rooms only updated the fruits' descriptions when entering the room, which did not account for scenarios where your Max HP or defense were modified by traits or relics while you were in the Healing room.
Fixed bug where the aim indicator and the mouse cursor would not quite match up if you had the Vertigo trait.
Fixed bug where if an attack projectile hit both a prop and an enemy, but it hit the prop first, the attack would not count toward a Talent cooldown.
Fixed bug where entering a Boss door with the Meditation Studies skill would always cause a "Max Mana" popup to appear, even though the skill only refills a percentage of your mana. It now displays the actual amount of mana gained instead.
Fixed bug where on ultrawide aspect ratios the letterboxes displayed during a boss intro cutscene did not stretch the full length of the screen.
Fixed bug where the Institute of Gastronomy skill was scaling off of Max HP, not INT.
Fixed bug where the Risen enemy's ground dust hint effect would not follow them if they moved while underground.
Fixed bug where killing multiple enemies on the same frame with Lachesis' Measure would display a text popup that only showed the health gain from one of the enemies. Now it shows the health gained from all killed enemies.
Fixed bug where Lamech would do a half-turn when exiting his dagger attack if the player had switched sides during his attack.
Spelling mistake fixes and minor rewrite to early Blacksmith and Enchantress dialogue to better match personalities.
Blacksmith now displays Crit Damage instead of % for Focus and Dex.
Journal Entry # ordering fixed (#5 in Tower lore instead of #6).
Fixed some room issues where chests were appearing when they shouldn’t.
Fixed some incorrect hull visuals in Arena rooms.
Fixed Mystery Knight’s spawn position in the Memory Heirloom.
Fixed bug where Vanguard was applying twice as much with only one relic.
Fixed bug where the floating notes from the Bard’s attack had a much higher knockback strength than intended (will no longer push back shields).
Updated the text describing what skills have Overload hard caps in the Soul Shop and in relevant skills.
Fixed bug where you could enter a room and get stuck in an infinite loop of falling onto a cloud, being teleported above the cloud, and then falling back onto it. Now if you fall into a room and immediately hit a cloud you will be teleported to a non-dangerous area where you can fall to safety.
In the meantime, we decided to introduce you to our heroes. And so, let me introduce - Honey. Yes, the name is a bit strange. And no, that's not his real name. Before the war, he worked in an apiary, and when he joined the troops, the nickname quickly stuck to him. It stuck. It's like being smeared with honey. Got the joke, right?) Medok, like many of his comrades, went to the front as a volunteer. He was very young–only sixteen years old when he had to face all the horrors of war… By the way, Honey (Medka's) real name is not mentioned anywhere. What do you think his name might be? Throw up options!
- Added Toggle option for run and crouch. - Added a Special icon for interactable items to differentiate them from furniture moving elements. - Fixed a bug when a wrong subtitle would show up by using a wrong item on a door. - Added smooth motion when crouching
Hey everyone! Thank you for testing and reporting issues for the buggy beta build. It means a lot. I've just uploaded a new version with some fixes for various things.
I'm still figuring out an issue with pathfinding which makes it so entities always think they're in combat with underground enemies. I've temporarily disabled the underground tomb discovery to avoid this while I fix the real problem.
Before I list the patch notes, let me explain the next steps for beta. My main priority is fixing serious game breaking issues. There are a few but we'll get there. Plus, I want to fix a lag issue that's coming from the UI. The FPS drop some of you are seeing is from this. I'll need to optimize a few windows to improve frames. Once those bigger issues are somewhat out of the way, I'll focus on tuning/balancing, adding in disabled scenarios, and changing/fixing things that are annoying based on feedback. I know there's a progression issue with how Ancients unlock summoning. That stuff will come in slowly as we go. I'll try to put out another patch this Friday.
Anyway, here are the notes:
Fixed an issue where the mod files in StreamingAssets weren't being loaded correctly. Changed Sacaton Grass to grow in Desert winter instead of summer. Reduced the load times for generating a map. Fixed an issue where the settler permission screen only showed a list of Darby's. Fixed a memory leak that occurs when starting new game sessions repeatedly. Fixed an issue where placing rooms over other rooms could cause the UI to break. Fixed swapped labels on the slow and speed up buttons. Reduced the spawn chances for tomes when entities level up. Fixed an issue where snow was destroying props. Fixed a bug where you could give yourself Ren in the custom loadout. Fixed a bug where entities weren't sleeping. Fixed a bug where the game wouldn't load if entities were in a combat state. Fixed a bug where rain ambient audio was playing while it snowed. Fixed a bug where the ren icon was missing. Fixed an issue where auto jobs weren't being set if entites were carrying the required materials. Tuned Void Woken and Ancients to lose energy at a slower rate. Fixed a bug where the toolbar would not select items when using the search function. Fixed a bug where temperature wasn't being regulated. Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't leave work or mating states when needing food, water, oxygen, or warmth. Tuned all entities to have higher starting health. This is to keep entities from dying so fast when they are hungry, thirsty, freezing, etc. Fixed an issue where settlers could get stuck on a corner block. Fixed a bug where platforms weren't saving properly and players would be sent to the main menu. Added credits screen from main menu.
Welcome to CreepWars TD's second devlog. For the last four weeks I have been working intensively on the revision of the UI.
I got active support from Maxim Dobroshtan. Together we developed several designs for the in-game HUD.
Here the "old" status:
At the last Devlog I showed you the first sketch for the new HUD:
Maxim then created the graphics in more detail and the result looked like this:
I really liked the buttons on this design. The background on the other hand had a relatively wide border that unnecessarily covered much of the field of view.
So I replaced the background graphic with a scaled button graphic:
At the same time, I came up with the idea of making the task panel translucent to not unnecessarily restrict the view as the panels already take up a large part of the screen.
After a short review we sketched this design:
We liked that so much that Maxim drew the graphics with a higher level of detail. The current ingame status now looks like this:
I am really satisfied with the result and I hope you like it too. I have now decided to shedule a small update which includes the new design. I will probably upload it on October 9th, 2021.
I hope this insight into the iterative development is not too theoretical for you (I therefore omitted many intermediate steps - we had experimented with other colors for example). But I've mainly been working on it for the past four weeks and I really wanted to show you the progress. Otherwise, I continued to work on the new levels and refined some post-processing effects. There will be more information about this in the next devlog.
Please feel free to post any feedback and bugs I really appreciate it. Devlog Discussion
