Hey there Maeldorian! Welcome to the #3 devlog of Maeldor, where I will be talking about the “Mystery Urns (Buff System)” of my game. I will explain what kind of a buff system it is, what buffs I have implemented so far, and also to share some of my exciting ideas about all the cool buffs I will be implementing in the future to the system. Did you get your coffee? Alright, lets begin!
WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?
So what are these “Mystery Urns” exactly? Well, they are one of the reasons why you want to explore the levels, because they contain some sort of an ancient power within them, to be consumed and use. So basically, this is a buff system where you become stronger or get a new ability for your character.
And why did I wanted to add something like this to my game? Well, there are more than one reason behind, and the first one is to strengthen the element of surprise in my game, which is something pretty important regarding the game design. Because of our endless curiosity as human beings, our brains are designed in such a unique way to get joy from surprises, and naturally, while in the design phase, we benefit from that feature of human brain as much as we can in our games.
Second reason is the “Exploration” aspect of the game and to strengthen it. As you can see, if you are willing to discover the levels and get these buffs, you become stronger or get a new ability, which in return can help you significantly while fighting enemies or overcoming obstacles in levels. So these “Mystery Urns” are also a motivation source, to help players to be a bit more curious in situations like “What happens if I go to the right from here, could there be a Mystery Urn there?”.
And the last reason is to help making the gameplay a bit more dynamic, regarding the mechanics we experience in the game. With these different kind of powers or abilities, the experience provided by the game changes regarding the gameplay, with different mechanics or by strengthening the current ones. And as a result, gameplay becomes a bit more dynamic.
I FEEL SO LIGHT!
“Movement Speed Increase”. This is the first buff that came to my mind while making plans about this system, and I got my inspiration for this buff from the Wood Elves of Maeldor.
They are the fastest and most agile race in Maeldor, and besides inheriting this agility from their racial features, they also have a quite strong relationship with the earth and nature, and because of this harmony their steps and movements are much more aliened with their environments, which results in a faster and more agile movement. This essence is something belong to them originally.
CAN YOU FEEL THE BLOOD PUMPING?
Second buff I have implemented into my game is a, “Health Boost”, and for this one, origins of it is open to a debate. In fact there is a pretty heated discussion going on between the Humans & the Dwarves of the Maeldor about the origins of this essence.
The story goes like this; In an ancient war between the Atras & the free peoples of Maeldor, they say that two soldiers; a Human Warrior and a Dwarf Berserker were trapped in a forest, surrounded by the Atras and no way to escape but to fight them. In this dark moment, when the two soldiers lost all their hopes of staying alive, a tree standing beside them begins to cry for them and when her tears fall down onto their wounds, suddenly a mad but vigilant hope begins to grow in their souls, burning in their eyes like flames of pure rage. Their heart beats grow faster, blood pumping into their muscles and their wounds healing in an instant, like they were never happened.
In this moment of anger and insanity, they charge into the ranks of the Atras, and chop them one by one with their weapons, like they were nothing but couple of butter molds for them to cut into pieces. When the Atras see their frenzy, they were so afraid to face their rage and while half of them couldn’t escape from their madness, other ones flee without even looking behind.
And this is the story of this essence. As you can imagine, the debate between the Humans & the Dwarves is; they both claim that their soldier was the only one who got the tears of the divine tree and defeated all the Atras and saved the other. But of course there are no proof to their claims, so we accept the common story for this essence. Hehe.
DID SOMEONE SAY “POWER”?
“Attack Damage Increase”. You know I had to add this one. It’s just so much fun to be stronger and hit more damage to the enemies! Feeling that power is so much worth to the effort of finding these Mystery Urns.
And what is the origin of this essence? Well we don’t know the origin of it, but what we know is that it was given to the free peoples of Maeldor by the Old Gods, children of Mael, to use it against the servants of the Dark God. No one has ever been able to solve it’s mysterious formula, since it is a gift from the Old Gods, but it is pretty useful, since it can increase the effects and damage of any weapon possessed by someone with a pure heart and a good will. But if someone with an ill intentions tries to posses this power, it can cause their life, so it is not for everyone.
SOME RULES (ACTUALLY ONLY ONE)
If you die, you lose it. That’s it, there is no other rules about this system (yet). So you might want to be extra careful after getting this buff, if you don’t want to lose it by dying in a level. But other than that, there is nothing else I haven’t explained and all you have to do is to explore the levels and find them. After that you are good to go!
ENDLESS POSSIBILITES!
And what aspect of this system makes it so exciting for me, as a developer?
Can you imagine the endless possibilities? I mean just think about it! I can literally make lots of different, cool and exciting buffs!
WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
Yesss! I have so many exciting ideas about extending this system, adding new buffs, cool features or abilities to make the gameplay much more fun, such as opening portals, shape-shifting or sending fireballs, haha! Just hang on with me and we’ll get there one by one! I just can’t wait to start working on them!
ARE YOU EXCITED TOO?
I am so happy to be able to share all this stuff with all other passionate gamers just like myself! So thank you so much for hanging out with me till now, by reading this long devlog, and hopefully, I will create something enjoyable and memorable at the end of my development journey. And if you’d like to motivate me and help me in my journey – Wishlist Maeldor now, so you can be notified when my game is released!
Again, thank you so much for sharing from your precious time to read my devlog, and until we see each other again in another, stay fun!
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A plenty of changes in game. Game pace is much faster in ten, twenty minutes You can have plenty of resources and a lot of tunnels already dig out. A lot of restrictions not present in game anymore. Easier selection/order system, easier DIG system, auto build ladder for vertical movement after tile is dig out. In summary now RoundOnes can BUILD those World wonders much easier.
NEW main features:
- new selection/issue orders system - use left mouse button to select and right to give order. Like in RTS games. Very easy and convenient way . Nothing in game is done automatically anymore. This means if villager is hungry you need to select him and move him to TABLE build to replenish food. Now building and digging is much easier. Each villager can do independent task. Access to DROPZONE is not that much necessary anymore - which is good for playability.
- new access to specifics actions. Some BUILDS have some advanced action associated with them you can access them with new menu. Usually those are to CONFIGURE build or mixer, DELIVER some additional material to that build. Menu will show only actions for selected specific item - for example MIXER actions might be different than TABLE or STOVE.
- new redesigned MACHINES - after placing machine on map like any regular build - you can move it when digging is necessary and choose dig zone for it. After that activate digging. Machines are reusable.
- new BUILDS. redesigned refactored all builds in game and added some new exciting build types. To be specific those can be configured - usually with some resources which you have in dropzone and that later needs to be delivered to that BUILD. For example BED to be functioning will need some kind of cushion to get better rest for villager. So configure BED with wool resource and deliver that to that build to fully activate it. Its very easy and will allow you to use what you have currently in dropzone.
-new tiles in game - most important ones are: water and active lava. Water as flowing fluid will go down and is going to flood empty tiles. Lava will flow in all direction and take existing tiles from map. Lava will build up and place maximum 2 volcanoes on map. Volcanos will grow few tiles up and in that process maybe will destroy some builds. Lava on other hand is blocked by BUILDS. So build a lot and then lava will be blocked. All this means that right now You actually play against lava.
- new redesigned TECH TREE (former encyclopedia) Very useful to see and decide what MIXER should mix. Now automatically configuring new Mixer from within TECH TREE.
- new DIG system for villagers and machines. They DIG and throw material behind them - as boxes with material. Then those boxes needs to be collected.
- new redesigned GUI elements - gui is simpler now, more streamlined - for example you selects some build and only specific actions allowed for that build will be shown. Game window can be just grabbed and size adjusted to fit yours screen. Looks very nice on wide screens. Mini map refactored to fit better world sizes. Now game world can be created in way you wont to play: if you need more surface for farming and animals then create very wide world, if You wont to dig more than create map which is longer vertically and you will have plenty of dig tiles.
A ton of other small fixes, changes, refactoring. A ton of game features not clear how to use or just cluttering was removed from game. I hope game will be better and fun to play. BUILD those wonders in game and show them to Yours friends. Thank You
Today's update features some lovely artwork from Emett! Go check out their work!
A special thanks to everyone who left a review this week. Be sure to join the discord if you wanna leave feedback, or see cool pictures of frogs!
This update features a rework for the BBS side contracts. The goal was to make these missions more fun and interesting, and balance them better to fit with the difficulty curve of the main story. This system is also flexible enough to generate missions for the future roguelike mode.
I'll also be writing a little development update underneath the patch notes for those of you interested.
Here are da notes.
Missions BBS Rework!
Created the new "kit" generation system for levels. Layouts are more interesting.
BBS missions now support locked doors. This wasn't possible previously because I couldn't guarantee that everywhere in the level was accessible with the old system. There may be some edge cases where this causes problems so be sure to lemme know if u see that happening!
BBS missions can now feature tons of computers from the campaign.
BBS missions can now generate with different sizes.
Added pretty new floor shaders to spice up the visual variety.
Missions can now be selected based off of size and enemy level. Contracts can still spawn with small sizes in the late game if you just want a quick little mission to do.
Enemy equipment is now featured in mission selection independent of the mission modifier. You'll be fighting a much more diverse selection of enemies.
New "Collect" Mission type. A fairly simple mode that requires you to pick up keycards scattered around the level. Perfect for speedy agents.
Added lots of new modifiers, modifiers become more common as mission level increases. Special modifiers unlock as you complete missions in the story.
Added a new layered noise system. This creates slightly more interesting visual effects as a backdrop to missions past level 3.
Added some new B-sides to the BBS soundtrack. Mission themes can now appear in BBS missions after completing the corresponding mission.
Added some checks to prevent objectives from spawning literally right next to the player's spawn.
I have more updates planned for side contracts, but this is a huge improvement over the old system imo and I think feedback is necessary before going further.
Other Changes
Added THISBOYB to the musical guest credits. Apologies for forgetting this! Go check out their soundcloud.
Many particle effects, such as blood, sparks, and landmine bits now bounce off walls. Looks cool B)
Enemy pathfinding now understands the concept of "diagonal," meaning enemies can get across the map quicker and look more natural doing so. Look out!
Black Knight Update! These babies felt kinda unfair since they were given continuous sight of the player after landing. Now knights will move to defend points of interest on the map after landing, including the player's position for one time only. However, drop pods now carry 1 extra knight, and knights come equipped with an ability, oh no!
the_dog now uses the bypass hacking attack
Massively buffed auto hacker turrets. These things used to guarantee die in one hit, now they have health levels somewhere between an humanoid and a standard turret.
Many melee based abilities automatically swap the user to melee mode if not there already.
Added like 15 new skeleton sprites.
Buffed the Deepfake ability to have 9 charges. It's still kind of a weak ability, so I'll look into updating it in the future.
Enemies using melee can now sprint to close larger gaps while in combat.
the_dog no longer appears in a certain mirror past a certain story mission.
lots of small fixes, mostly visual bugs, and things in levels not rendering in the proper order.
Fixed some typos in dialogue, and altered a line from an obscure guest at a party to eliminate absurdly stupid lore implications.
Development Update
Finally, I wanted to update everyone on the state of development. DDS had a planned Early Access period of 6 months, and has been in early access for...5 months? (;*_*)
So...the game isn't anywhere near complete. There are a couple of reasons that, some of which I can work to correct. My life has been very busy lately as I wrap up my degree and look for an actual job. This issue hopefully resolve itself in the next couple months. A lot of my dev time has been spent on bug fixes, and minor updates. While these definitely seem to be appreciated, they get in the way of completing substantial chunks of side-story content. I might take a break to just work on long term goals for a while once the next round of feedback is in. Speaking of which, the new side quest has been seriously kicking my butt! Some features are just really annoying to get working and make fun, and the story has been giving me some trouble too. At this point it's about 2/3rds complete and I'm going to be scoping it down slightly so I can complete the stupid thing in a reasonable amount of time. Another issue is that I haven't set proper deadlines for myself with everything going on. I'm gonna aim to have a strict deadline for the next sidequest by the end of this week.
All in all, DDS is gonna be in early access for a while longer than I wanted. I'm sorry that I won't be able to live up to my original promise of getting to 1.0 in 6 months. I promise to keep working and releasing updates until we reach 1.0. I don't wanna turn into one of those early access devs who never finishes their project, both so I can deliver the full thing to you and so I can get working on other games!
Thank you all for the continued feedback and support. Working on this is a pleasure and I believe DDS is a much better game now than when it initially launched thanks to all of you.
I've made some fixes and quality of life improvements. The quick version here is that AI and survivor turns should now be quicker thanks to these changes.
Roadmap Item: Faster AI Turns
[Quality of Life] Only track AI events in the immediate range of survivors. Link
Added a configurable value (one for day, one for night) that you can set in the options menu. This value determines how close an AI event must be to a survivor so that the camera will focus on it. A lower value will focus only on events close to a survivor.
[Quality of Life] Use the camera speed up and slow down buttons (shift and control on PC by default) to modify survivor, zombie and rift movement speed. Link
[Quality of Life] During the AI turn, a button will sometimes become available in the contextual corner that you can press to skip tracking an AI event. Pressing the toggle select button (space key by default) will also do this. Link
[Quality of Life] Multiple mobile hazard rifts may now move in parallel, speeding things up. Link
[Bug] Fixed permanent running sound that can occur when frozen zombies are unfrozen. Link
[Bug] Fixed a bug where crawlers would try to attack from a large distance.
[Equipment] Tuned the timings of some weapon effects.
[Equipment] Improved the synchronisation of melee sound effects.
[Bug] Fixed a bug where the world reset wave would occupy a tile when it should not have.
[Bug] Fixed a bug where the mobile putrid rifts would not play a sound on load.