Sep 12, 2023

Bleak Faith: Forsaken - Roia

Changes:

- User Interface setting now renamed to "General & UI".
- Due to popular request new Setting under General & UI : Seamless Transitions; default: Off.
- Due to popular request new Setting under General & UI : Corpse Disposal; default: 5 minutes.
- New Setting under General & UI : Combo Timing Visuals; default: Off.
- New Setting under General & UI : Parry Timing Visuals; default: Bosses Only.
- New Setting under General & UI : Soft Lock-On; Default: OFF.
- Soft Lock-On grants the player some control over the camera while having a Lock-On target.
- New Setting under General & UI : Dynamic Lock-On; Default: ON.
- Dynamic Lock-On switches to the closest target in range after the current target dies, is in line of sight or is out of range.
- New Setting under General & UI : Maximum Lock-On Distance; Default : 3600 Units.
- New Setting under General & UI : Lock-On Sensitivity; Default : 1.
- New Setting under General & UI : Strafing; Default : Lock-On.
- Control when the character will strafe, move while always facing the direction of the camera.
- New Setting under Gamepad : Auto Camera Sensitivity; Default: 1.
- Controls the speed of Auto Camera. Set to 0 to disable.
- Added auto camera for controller. Camera will now try to correct itself to be looking in the character's movement direction.
- Limbs of Giants can now be locked onto.
- Added new tutorial: Fast Travel.
- Added new tutorial: Essence Extraction.
- Added new tutorial: Manufacturing.
- Added new tutorial: Boss Scaling.
- Added new tutorial: Armor Rating.
- Added a new icon in the Handlers menu for easy tutorial access.
- Exclamation mark added in inventory when perk or ability point can be used.
- Character Stats details are now a tooltip pop up (temporary UI Design) instead of a new overlay.
- Details button that previously popped up stat details now hides/unhides new details window.
- All Character Stats now display exact values instead of "Slightly, Moderately, Greatly".
- Renamed Spellcasting Speed to Techno Casting Speed.
- Now displaying total weight in Kg in the Character Stats panel.
- Lore Pages are now sorted in lore order instead of last looted.
- Tweaked default values for Audio settings.
- Stabilising Unstable Perk Essence now displays the same UI as picking up an echo.
- Unstable Perk Essence returning to its place of origin displays the same UI as picking up an echo.
- Removed proximity check on enemy health bars, arrow damage now properly displays changing to their health.
- Majority of bosses and enemies can now properly dodge arrows/projectiles from the player.
- All enemies that could previously dodge arrows can now dodge projectiles as well.
- Enemies will no longer attempt to dodge arrows/projectiles at point blank range.
- Parry now costs stamina, Perfect Parry now returns initial stamina cost.
- Due to encounter difficulty increasing, following bosses are now be parriable: Konrad the Traitor, Nurgei the Blademaster, Plagued Nemesis, Vermillion Mirage.
- Added a faint glow effect on players weapons to indicate combo timings. : Can be turned on in the settings, off by default.
- Added a faint glow effect on enemies weapons to indicate parry timings. : Can be changed in the settings, bosses only by default.
- Several updates to maps: Enemy placements and props.
- Increased drop rate of Ionization Fluids.
- Several VFXs had their brightness toned down.
- Increased speed of character turn rotation for better control.
- Crablike enemy in Desert received a new model.
- Crablike enemy in Desert received longer windup to attacks.
- Moved loading screen trigger for HUB<->Rain District transition to be closer.
- Enemies' weapons now dissolve upon death.
- Arrows that missed the target can now be picked up by walking over them.

Balancing:

- Slightly increased detection radius of Nurgei the Blademasters grab ability.
- Nurgei the Blademaster is now parriable.
- Increased Wormlords overall damage on following abilities: Laser, Bombardment and Tornado.
- Wormlords Laser now applies burning debuff.
- Wormlords Bombardment now applies frost debuff.
- Wormlords Tornado now applies bleeding debuff.
- Increased duration of Wormlord Tornado to 32.5 seconds.
- Increased speed of Wormlords Tornado by additional 15%.
- Increased hitbox of Wormlords Tornado by additional 45%.
- Increased the hitbox of Wormlords Laser by an additional 10%.
- Archinquisitor Belisarius AOE Sentinel shrinks the arena by an additional 0.2m/s.
- Konrad the Traitor received 2 distance closer attacks.
- Konrad the Traitor now also throws a fire grenade that applies heat debuff. Randomly picking between the two grenades.
- Konrad the Traitor will now have reduced cooldowns on his abilities the lower his health gets.
- Increased the damage of Konrad the Traitors Spear Ability.
- Increased the damage of Konrad the Traitors Shockwave Ability.
- Increased the damage of Konrad the Traitors Bubble Ability.
- Increased the tick rate of Konrad the Traitors grenades.
- Reduced Konrad the Traitors Technomancy Armor Rating from 65% to 51%.
- Konrad the Traitor now receives an additional 15% speed increase on low health.
- Konrad the Traitor is now parriable.
- Royal Division Captain Yulia extended weapons are now always enabled.
- Removed some easy to dodge melee attacks from the Royal Division Captain Yulia attack pattern.
- Greatly increased hitbox precision of Royal Division Captain Yulia melee attacks.
- Royal Division Captain Yulias ground slam ability has been moved to the final phase.
- Royal Division Captain Yulias ground slam ability hitbox has been halved.
- Royal Division Captain Yulia and Vermillion Mirage no longer attack both at same time, but take turns attacking.
- Royal Division Captain Yulia received 2 new abilities during her downtime phase.
- Vermillion Mirage received a new ability during his downtime phase.
- Attacking Vermillion Mirage during his downtime phase causes him to exit the downtime phase and attack the player together with Royal Division Captain Yulia.
- Added more wind-up to Vermillion Mirage melee attacks.
- Greatly increased precision of Plagued Nemesis hitboxes.
- Plagued Nemesis is now parriable.
- Rusty Claymore default Mk reduced to Mk.0 from previous Mk.1.
- Tweaked damage of several enemies that could potentially one shot players early on.
- Increased damage of Restless Knights in Monastery.
- Increased impact of Agility on stamina regeneration delay.
- Greatly increased hitbox precision of all weapons.
- Greatly increased timing precision of all parriable attacks.
- Archery Mastery now increases Quiver Size.
- Greatly reduced time required before a chain attack is possible after blocking.
- Greatly improved viability of great weapons.

Fixes:

- Nurgei the Blademasters pillars now properly reset on players death.
- Nurgei the Blademasters animations no longer jitters during phase ability.+
- Wormlord no longer locks players in combat upon entering Desert Mirage.
- Fixed incorrect FX of Wormlords Tornado.
- Fixed Wormlords Laser hitbox sometimes missing players if playing under 25 FPS.
- Plagued Nemesis no longer teleports players on combat start.
- Archinquisitor Belisarius projectiles now properly pass through his Doppleganger.
- Archinquisitor Belisarius teleporting player no longer causes fall damage if teleport happens mid jump.
- Konrad the Traitor now properly looks at the player.
- Fixed Konrad the Traitor moving in slow motion during one of his dodge animations.
- Fixed missing FX on player receiving damage from Konrad the Traitors Shockwave Ability.
- Fixed missing grunt sound effects from Vermillion Mirage.
- Fixed Vermillion Mirage's heavy grunts not being heard from a distance.
- Fixed missing grunt sound effects from Royal Division Captain Yulia.
- Fixed Royal Division Captain Yulia sometimes having wrong walking animations.
- Fixed arrows not working in certain areas of the final boss arena.
- Fixed autosave names not properly being displayed while using the controller in the main menu.
- Fixed flickering FX in Desert Mirage zone.
- Fixed sound of footsteps of giants being heard from far away.
- Fixed FPS issues in Uranopolis caused by Uranopolis Taxi.
- Fixed several Out of Bound zones.
- Fixed incorrect FX on Nodachis tornado ability.
- Fixed navigation in Handler tutorial for Upgrading Gear.
- Fixed navigation in the Character Stats panel.
- Fixed buttons being grayed out in the Character Stats panel if tabbing in from the Crafting panel.
- Fixed Health Regen Concoction healing 5 health instead of 5% health.
- Ring of Gravitas and Ring of Degravitas have their effects fixed.
- Fixed Impenetrable Fortress not detecting if wearing a full set of heavy armor after death.
- Fixed Technocasting Speed not affecting all abilities.
- Fixed incorrect values used in calculating Movement Speed due to Encumbrance.
- Fixed certain enemies in Rain District not dropping aggro at distance.
- Fixed HUD not showing/hiding until weapons are drawn after setting has been changed.
- Fixed light issues in Monastery caused by killing the mini boss.
- Fixed some keybinds being unassigned to new players until settings are checked.
- Overwriting the character no longer resets NG+.
- Solaris, Greathammer, Armor Buster, Eviscerator and Archangelos are being properly held in hands now.
- Fixed Lock-On sometimes switching to the wrong target.
- Fixed dodge left/right sometimes being reversed while not using strafe movement.
- Fixed camera distance not properly being set while not using strafe movement.
- Fixed bosses sometimes dying on player respawn.
- Fixed description of certain concoctions to better represent what they do.
- No longer possible to access inventory during recalibration sequence.

Sep 12, 2023

APICO - August Devlog 2023

APICO - ellraiser

Hey friends!

This month I took the plunge into going full-time in gamedev - up until this point I've been doing freelance work for about 50% of each month.

This meant I could sit down and properly get stuck into the 3.0 update, and I really did this month as (spoilers) I finished it!

This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content.

Engine Tune-Up

So one of the things I ended up finally doing was upgrading the version of GameMaker APICO uses. I haven't updated for a while as the version I used (2022.6) was the last version an older type of Xbox port accepts, any newer versions I'd need to upgrade the multiplayer code to use Playfab (which I didn't fancy doing).

rip XDK it was nice while it lasted

However there were a few things starting to cause issues:

GameMaker support wouldn't fix any issues I had, as the version I was using was too old
The Steamworks integration for 2022.6 sometimes just crashes on certain Windows machines, and doesn't support older MacOS versions
Some issues with tiles that were getting annoying to work around, plus the sprite editor having a bug with copy/paste from aseprite (making importing assets a pain)

Also at the time the new long-term support (LTS) version didn't even exist (yes this engine has been around 24 years and only now bothered to add a LTS version don't get me started), so wasn't any point upgrading when everything changed every month with each update.

Luckily moving to LTS wasn't that painful, had to make a few tweaks but overall everything worked the same just with better performance! Always a risk having to update mid-development though :')

Restore The Reefs

With the engine upgraded I could get back to the actual core 3.0 stuff, namely coral reefs and the underwater areas. Last month I'd added the coral "tiles" and the related machines, but they weren't actually in the world yet!

the red coral reef area in the tile editor

To spawn in the coral reefs, I actually "drew" the areas out in the room editor with tiles - this would make it easier to dump the new regions into the game and I could edit the reefs to make sure all the "dying" coral was in range of the natural beehives.

Each tile is then read and turned into what it needs to be, tiles, objects, scenery - multiple per tile if needed. This is the same method used to spawn in the town + various NPC areas.

first pass on the ref reef in-game!

As I mentioned last month to restore the coral we had a couple of things added:

A coral tool to allow the player to gather fragments from existing living coral
Coral tanks that take a fragment and let you adjust salinity + pH to match, when met the fragment then grows into multiple "restored" coral tiles
Scaffold that can be placed on dying (dark blue) coral, which you then place the "restored" coral in. Nearby beehive action then restores the tile completely

restoring some of the yellow coral reef ft. bumblemore

Once you restore a coral reef, Director Bumblemore sells you a special item, 1 restored you get the Diving Helmet (which unlocks underwater areas), 2 you get the Degrumpifier (which allows you to turn grumpy bees normal), and 3 you get the Rubber Ring (which lets you "walk" across deep water when in your inventory).

As well as each restoration giving you a nice item, the coral "flowers" and flora will start growing, which means you can then access the solitary bees and butterflies for the reefs if thats something you like doing!

some new lil weirdos

I felt like this was a good reward for restoring it, and something a little different gameplay-wise (using your bees to restore the areas), but as it is a little different I definitely worry what people will make of it! Won't be long before I find out I guess haha...

What Lies Beeneath

Finally, months later after starting the concept drawings for 3.0, it was time to see what lies beeneath, and add in the actual main event!

At first I was trying to spawn the new areas in by using the same method that I generate islands with, however the main issue was I just couldn't get the sort of interesting shapes that I wanted for the caves, as I wanted 3 distinct ones and a bit more winding corridor areas.

underwater caves using the world generation "blobs"

What I ended up doing was the same as I'd done for coral + NPC areas and just made up a special room to draw out the 3 underwater caves.

one of the underwater caves

This let me have much more interesting designs for the areas. I've long since stepped away from having proc. gen for the worlds, as although the island generation is randomised per world (which might be news to you!), everything else is roughly the same place, and the different island shapes bring very little to the game as a whole.

I'd much rather a more hand-crafted experience, especially when it comes to these new areas underwater where I wanted a very specific look and feel!

another underwater area in the room editor

With these done I could make sure that we had 3 underwater areas spawned into the space below the map, and got to work adding all the new objects and tiles (the "sludge") that I needed.

Then I played around with a few ideas on lighting and shaders to try and give the background a bit more of an underwater feel without getting in the way with the player + menu object interactions.

To do this I actually reused the same wobbly effect that the devland uses, but only applied it to the background + tile layers - leaving the player, flowers, bees etc all unaffected. Alongside the new underwater sounds it's definitely made it feel very different from the normal biomes!

along with some special scenery items!

I then needed to add the new machines that would allow the player to start cleaning up the sludge, with the process as follows:

Using "Filter Hives", the player can use underwater bees and special "Filter" frames like they would a normal hive but near sludge
When filling these frames, the bees also clear out some of the sludge, which can then be removed from the filter in a Seperator (which acts like your Extractor but produces sludge not honey)
The sludge can be further refined at a Percolator, a special machine Bumblemore has that let's you dredge the sludge for any special items you might have missed
Clearing the sludge from one of the 3 underwater caves uncovers a divepoint to an even deeper cave...

sludge cleaning in action

I thought this would be a nice mechanic to introduce to act as a parallel to the coral reefs, using bees to restore coral and then using bees to clean up the sludge (what CANT they do). The deeper dive spots uncovered each lead to a special geode cave - I won't spoil them too much but each one has it's own special thing to discover!

emissary bees you say...

Salted Butter

While I was adding in plenty of new butterflies this update (including some strange underwater butts), I also got around to added a couple new machines!

The first of which was a butterfly "box", allowing you to store as many butterflies as you like in one place! When I added butterflies in 2.0 I didn't realise just how much people like to hoard them, so now you can really go crazy!

Another thing that came out of 2.0 feedback was a way to mass release butterflies, so I added a small machine that acts like a rehabilitator - only difference is it won't affect restoration as thats still only when you create new butterflies in a nursery. It's just there to make it easier to release all those speckleds you kept picking up!

While I was there I also tweaked some of the butterfly spawning, fixed some of the butterfly effects not working, and made sure butterflies could mutate flowers even when there was no room (a common gripe!)

Quality Of Life

By now the end was in sight, however I still had a few last things I wanted to add in this update that were just general quality of life stuff and not specific to the new ocean updates.

First up was adding a Hive Tool, a craftable tool that lets you bonk beehives or hives to collect any honeycomb or frames without having to open the menu!

honestly why have we not always had this im so dumb

Next was probably the most asked feature, a quick store button. Pressing this (or hotkey Q) will move any items from your main inventory (not hotbar) into nearby crates if that crate has the same item.

thanks terraria!

While I was added inventory upgrades you can see I also added two new slots to the inventory, a trash slot for quick deletions, as well as a backpack slot to free up a slot. On gamepad the backpack slot also lets you open the backpack without having to "equip" it, which was always a bit cumbersome.

Finally I increased the stack size of items from 99 to 999 (cos why not), and added some multiplyers to NPC shops so you could bulk buy.

only 34655 rubbees, what a steal!

It might not always seem like it as I'm not exactly the most active dev online but I do read every single one of peoples comments and posts and reviews, and keep a big ol' sheet with all the complaints and suggestions and issues - these were all things very commonly asked for that I had on the list to get round to!

Outside of the community feedback I also upgraded the accessibility menu so that it had actual descriptions for each one, and just generally made it all a bit clearer! This also includes 2 new options that let you modify the overall productivity and lifespan values for all bees, so if you've always felt the game is too slow or too fast for your tastes, you can change it to go at your own pace <3

also cute little icons for each one

So errr, yeah, guess when I have no job and can work on the game full-time I get a lot done huh?

At the time of writing this localisation is nearly done, QA is well underway with the final build, and we have settled on a release date! By the time this devlog releases to the public we'll be very close to announcing the date, so you won't have to wait very long now to get your hands on all the new stuff!

Time for me to sleep now I think...

~ Ell

[This post was released early for KoFi Supporters]