Aug 16, 2024

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers Update now live for public beta testing

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers - MattYogs

Hello Tavern Dwellers!

It's been just over a week since the Tavern opened, and it's been amazing to see you all enjoying your time with the game so far!

There has been lots of feedback coming through about every aspect of Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, and this update addresses a big chunk of them. A big area of feedback has been to do with the balance, which has been significantly overhauled in this update.

This updates aims to address:

foe decks being too consistently strong compared to the player at the same stage in a run
foes having the ability to scale out of control too easily, particularly when it comes to shields
some events being too punishing / not rewarding enough
it taking too long to start building synergies in your deck
winning being too reliant on finding healing cards
each run taking too much time
bug fixes

If you wish to join our public Beta to test the upcoming changes and provide feedback, you can do so by right clicking on the game in your Steam library, going to Properties, then Betas, then selecting "public_beta" from the dropdown menu.

If you have feedback or encounter any issues on the public beta, please do visit us on DISCORD, as we would love to hear your feedback to help improve the game.

We hope you enjoy the changes!

Here are the changes that are currently being tested:
Unique Chips
- increases number of Unique Chips to choose between to 3 (was 2)
- adds the choice to pay 100 chips to reroll Unique Chip choices
- changes starting chips to 250 (was 25)
- Double Down Chipotle Pepper damage reduced to 5 (was 6)
- Double Down Chip Damage damage threshold reduced to 3 (was 5)
- Double Down Chip Off the Old Block starting Advantage increased to -2 Advantage (was -3)

Foil cards
- adds a 1.21% chance that cards rewarded after an encounter will be Foil
- the Foil cards rewarded after defeating Bouncer, Alucard, CEO, or Dracon are now guaranteed to be special cards, so no more disappointing Foil numbered cards

Foe balancing
- foes now hit before player
- this increases the strength of a number of cards that would often have no valid targets when drawn first
- this also means the player is less often disrupted by cards like Business Card after they have already stood, especially early in a run when still reliant on standard playing cards
- adds the condition "you hit first" to ALL IN!
- note that foe foil cards will still be played before the player hits
- increase most bosses to give 100 chips

Tavern
Squire
- max HP to 21 (was 30)
Manager:
- removes 1x Business Card from Manager's deck

Lounge
Luck Pusher
- swaps 0 The Fool and Terminate the Tower for 2x 8 of Nothings
- removes Social Security Card
Teacher
- changes lots of standard cards to Diamonds instead of Spades
- removes Credit Card and Social Security Card
- max HP to 40 (was 55)
Wizard
- max HP to 35 (was 40)

VIP Area
Mr President
- removes Social Security Card

Head Office
Psychologist
- adds a 2x Zero of each suit to Psychologist's deck
- changes 4x of Psychologist's 10s to 8s, and add a Blank Card
HR Department
- removes Negative 3s
- adds a set of 7s
- removes 1x Queen of the Stone Age
Developer
- adds 2x 5 of Nothing and 2x 9 of Nothing
Legal
- adds a 6, 7, 8 of Nothings
CEO
- removes Expulsion
- removes Calamari Game Cards
- adds Diamond in the Rough

Basement
Giant Rat
- removes 4x Cue Card
- adds 2x 9 of Nothings
Decromancer
- max HP to 52 (was 66)
Witch
- max HP to 45 (was 52)

Casino
- Dog is now the first encounter in the Casino (was Floorperson)
Floorperson
- removes Jack and the Beanstalk from Floorperson's deck
Pit Boss
- removes The Emperor IV, Carduus Acanthoides, and 5 of Wands from Pit Boss deck

Dungeon
Speedrunner
- removes 1x Glitched Card
- swaps all Clubs for Diamonds
Cultist
- max HP to 52 (was 66)

Despair
Deity of Despair
- adds a Foil Rules Card
- adds Business Card
- swaps Ace of Spades for Ace of Nothings
- swaps Ace of Clubs for Eleven of Clubs
- these changes should allow for more counterplay chances against Deity of Despair's deck

Gamblers
- adds more Scratchcards to Gambler decks in later floors

Endless encounters
- adds a method to eventually end endless encounters
- after 21 rounds have elapsed the Dealer will appear and add a Scratch to both player's discard piles every other round

Note
- some of the above changes to foe's decks only apply at Triple Down and below, so those looking for a challenge will still find it at Quadruple Down or ALL IN!

Event balancing
- adds healing to Fortune Teller events, 10 HP per card flipped
- reduces Runaway Cart damage to 10
- reduces Surrounded damage to 8
- reduces Card Printer damage to 11
- changes VIP Area Trade Offer to offer any non-foil non-Tarot card, instead of 3 most recently added cards
- increases base healing of VIP Area Trade Offer to 8 (was 3)
- increase number of cards in Lost & Found shop to 8 (was 6)
- decreases Slot Machine shop buy (now 99) and spin costs (now 35)

Other balance changes
- Negative cards will not show up as encounter rewards in the Tavern to allow for a higher proportion of special cards to be offered
- swaps King of Gold in Signature Diamonds deck for a King of Diamonds
- changes XV The Devil to no longer damage self on a tied blackjack
- removes Queen of Music
- Queen of Music will be back at some stage with a reworked effect, but right now this card is just causing the game to turn into tedious attrition battles whenever it shows up

Changes to unlocking starting decks
- changes Signature decks to be unlocked by a win with that suit
- changes to show all 18 starting decks after first win with any deck

Other improvements
- reduces the volume and intensity of the damage blocked by shield sfx
- when Glitched Card intensity is 0 the colours of the card will now still be glitched but with no movement so that you can still tell it is a Glitched Card
- changes Hope/Despair bosses to not show card reward when not on ALL IN
- changes X Wheel of Fortune to show the possible gifts as keyword tooltips
- changes Terminate the Tower to show the cards it can create
- slightly widen card hover tooltip sizes
- shorten names of 4 and 8 card shops so they fit on card better
- changes Fingerprint to the more clear "On play and on stand" instead of "On play and stand"
- Dungeon Counterfeiter now more clearly states that it gives a random Minor Arcana 5
- move difficulty chips into place faster
- move cards onto/offscreen faster at start/end of encounter
- Slot Machine Shop animations scale to animation speed setting
- updates roles of some people in credits

Bug fixes
- fixes softlocks caused by Kingmaker and Radiation Detector changing the card that drew them halfway through its effect (i.e. Booster Pack or +2 Card)
- fixes a bug where the starting deck confirm button was still visible and clickable after backing out of selecting the current starting deck
- fixes a bug where the buttons on slot machine would be hidden instead of disabled after buying cards, and then never reshown
- fixes a bug where the price of a Chipcoin in Crypto Bro event wasn't being shown
- fixes a bug where the back button in Collection was not being disabled after being pressed
- fixes a bug where the game could crash when changing Collection pages using the hotkey while hovering a card
- fixes a bug where CEO card rewards weren't Foil cards
- fixes a bug where ID Cards on the Credits screen could be clicked multiple times in a row without having to unhover first
- fixes a bug where it was hard to get to the leftmost or rightmost played cards with KB/controller nav
- fixes Report Card having one random purple pixel on it
- fixes a bug where Rain Man would still discard even if it was locked
- fixes a bug where burning opponent's cards with some cards would not trigger Hot Chip:
- Red Card
- The Lovers VI
- The Hermit IX
- Insurance Card
- King of Kings
- King of the Hill
- fixes a bug where Insurance Card would only burn itself if it was the most recently drawn card (now can also burn the card under it)
- fixes a bug where exploiting a foe's Loyalty Card would set it's value to the value that would give you instant blackjack, not your foe's
- fixes Master of One and RJudgment not triggering Microchip
- fixes a bug where opponent playing a Business Card via an SD Card wouldn't update scores properly after the swap
- fixes a bug where a card added to draw pile could not be placed at the very bottom of the deck
- fixes a bug where Chip Off the Old Block was triggering relics that gained Advantage at the start of the encounter multiple times, meaning you started with more Advantage than expected
- fixes a bug where you could check what your face down cards were while Moon effect active by checking your deck in ID Card
- fixes bug where candles on Birthday Card would glitch when value beyond 21
- fix a crash in Stay a Night when trying to remove a random card when deck size is 0
- fix a crash in Have a Drink when trying to remove a card when deck size is 0
- fixes a bug where a Trump Card that was quick discarded would cause a bust not an instant blackjack due to not resetting its score first
- fixes a bug where Memory Card could crash the game if there were no cards left to remember
- fixes a place where the "Handy card visually moves to play area" bug could potentially occur
- fixes foil cards not fanning in hand correctly

Aug 16, 2024

Progress update

Stellar Tactics - Stellar Tactics

Hi all! A quick update today. First, thank you all very much for the kind notes in my previous post. It means a lot to us. My wife is doing well. The first series of chemo is complete and surgery was successful. She will still be going through post operative radiation and chemotherapy over the coming months. She responded very well to the treatment up to this point.

Work is getting done on chapter 3 and a number of other things that I need to do to get ready for a full BETA. Here is a quick summary:

Chapter 3 – of course.

Crew missions – These missions will let you send idle crew members on various tasks that reward general and skill experience for that crew member and rewards like credits, weapons, armor, ship equipment etc. The rewards depend on the type of mission the crew member is sent on. I’ll explain how this works in detail once the system is finished.

Updated crew portraits.

Player generated portraits – I’ve finished work on loading player generated portraits. That means, you will be able to add any images you want (512x512 JPG’s) and they will load into the game for selection using the inventory or character information screen portrait/voice selection screen.

New icons for general inventory items. The new icons are simplified and made so you can easily distinguish between various items like weapons, armor, mods and grenade types. I’m also looking at ways to generate icons for the rest of the content like component parts, trade items, ore, refined ore etc. There are lot of icons in the game so I may not be able to create unique icons for everything – though most icons in the game will get a treatment of some sort.

New enemies.

New enemy ships.

Updates to the economy.

Assigned stats will affect space skills.

New devices for your ship – equipped to your hardware mount points. These will let you apply various de-buffs to enemy ships via the security bonuses and security perks in the electronics skill line.

Various bug fixes – as always.

Patrolling enemies are out – To be clear – patrolling enemies are terrible. I wasted almost a month trying to get this to work and really, when it comes down to it, it’s just an annoyance. There is already a chance that wandering into the line of sight of another enemy group could trigger “adds” to the current combat session. Add to this with patrolling enemies and it's just not sustainable. So, this is scrapped. I wish I could get my time back…but that’s the way game development works – you try something and it just doesn’t work.

I don’t have a release date for BETA at the moment as my schedule is still variable. However, I wanted to let you know that progress is being made.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and thank you for supporting Stellar Tactics!

Aug 16, 2024

DD# 185 The Mini-Game Room and A New Cutscene

[Neolithic]To the End - orochi2k

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.

It's been a very productive week. There are many interesting things going on. Please find them below.

1, Even More Fridges!
Continue with last week's refrigerator updates. We now have even more fridges all over the world that you can use to create ice and ice-related dishes or alchemy potions. Different fridges in different locations have unique sets of default items that match the context of their nearby environment. For example, the fridge in "This is a Bar" has a lot of meat while you can find some potions in the fridges of different hospitals.
Of course, that leads to some funny new dialog too.

Dr. Light once again put a human organ for her study and her lunch in the same refrigerator in Fjordr Hospital.
But, there is more to it. You can now use those fridges as permanent item storage. Everything you store in those fridges will not get lost unless the whole building gets blown up, causing the fridges themselves to get destroyed. That opens up more possibilities in this secret world in the future. Maybe, in some future updates, you may see them as deaddrops just like the ones used by real-life espionage operators.

2, Mini-Game Room
As we all know we have tons of mini-games in this game, the problem is, sometimes we just want to sit back and play some card games inside the game, yet, somehow we may need to find the right NPC to start with this who may be unfortunately on the other side of the world at the moment. So, how about this? We put all mini-games together in an entirely new game mode that concentrates on all mini-games of the game. Thus, we get this mini-game room!

So far, you can already play "The Ghost of Kyiv," "Special Tractor Operation." "Black Jack," "Minesweeper," "Tomb Stone," and "Gomoku" in this room. More will be added later. Meanwhile, you can also find a boombox and a piano inside this establishment allowing you to change background music or play your own music at will.
Storywise, it also has a lore related to two major factions of the game, the Caretakers, and the GPA. Basically, you are playing as one of your pets that you have stored in a facility built by the Caretakers in this game mode. So, you no longer need to worry about your pets suddenly getting teleported into the void when you store them. They are actually having a lot of fun.
In addition to that, it will not be a good game design if this stand-alone game mode has no connection to the main game. Thus, another feature has been added. You can still earn GPA coins in this game mode. You can store those GPA coins in a global account that can be shared among all your saves. In the main game, you can retrieve all those GPA coins you earned in this game mode and exchange them for more useful items during your supernatural journey.
Sounds fun?
Why stop here?
Let's go one more step further!
The Mini-Game Room itself shall also be a mini-game! Thus, in this mini-game room, you can talk to a GPA agent to start a time-limited challenge to gain as many GPA coins as you can so that you can have a chance to be listed in the Hall of Fame!

You can find many of the game's characters occupy some of the default ranked slots. (Murin is definitely cheating as she can stop time while Eve is just good at playing games because she is our Illuminaughty Internet-Addicted Girl.)
But even if you can't beat them, don't let it discourage you. The rank list can have a total of 20 entries. There are 5 slots empty by default. Thus, even if you got 0 coins during this challenge, you can still be listed there as long as you play. Just like the Olympic Games, The important thing is not to win, it is to take part. :D

3, More Story Content Underneath the Fjordr Hospital

But, let's not spolier it here. :D
All I can tell you is those machine skeletons are now enemies in this location.

4, A New Cutscene
You may have noticed I am not in a hurry to open up the east side of Fjordr. Here is why.
I think Genzou's Story from that long-dead Stone Age Online across more than 20 years of real-life deserves something more than things you can see in any other RPG Maker games. It needs a new cut scene to kick off the future stories!

The girl he has been waiting on his bridge for decades is not that hard to find in Jiru. Actually, she got quite a lot of attention on this front line.

But, something is not right. Is she an enemy?

And of course, we shall have our iconic Machine T-Rexs. (Just not the same ones in the Stone Age Online because of obvious copyright issues.)
The cutscene is currently in the game. But as the story is not linked to it yet. It cannot be unlocked by normal meanings. But players who have the Gallery Unlock DLC can unlock it in the Gallery of Memories directly. Because of the engine limitation of RPG Maker XP, the cut scene is downscaled to 640x480 resolution. I may release a higher-resolution video sometime later. This is the longest cutscene in the game so far.

That's for this week. history exists for the memorable, those tales in the Stone Age Online may be long lost elsewhere. But they still exist here. Even though the game started as a fan game more than 20 years ago. When everything else has been forgotten, the stories I write are the canon.

Full Update Log of This Week:
20240810
English
############Content###############
[Fjordr Hospital Underground]A large part of the containment areas is now accessible.
[Enemy]New Enemy: Machine Skeleton
[Fjordr Hospital Underground]Machine Skeletons now appear in the containment areas.
简体中文
##########Content#################
【福尔德医院地下】一个很大的收容区域现在可以进入。
【敌人】新敌人：机械骷髅
【福尔德医院地下】收容区域会有机械骷髅敌人。

20240811
English
############Content###############
[Safehouse]The refrigerator in the safe house's kitchen is now a permanent item storage. That means you can store whatever you want inside it without the need to worry about your items getting lost. It shall allow you to keep your items safe before acquiring your personal pocket dimension.
[Safehouse]The refrigerator now also can freeze items inside it so that you can make ice from water easily.
[This is a Bar]Added a refrigerator in its kitchen. (Permanent item storage)
[Ardham Hotel]Added a refrigerator in Kristin's room. (Permanent item storage) But you cannot store an item in the current timeline and take it out in 1978 or vice versa.
[Oasis Teahouse]Added a refrigerator in Oasis Teahouse in Egypt. (Permanent item storage)
[Dr. Kyoryu's Research Station]Added a refrigerator. (Permanent item storage)
[Samujier Hospital]Added a refrigerator. (Permanent item storage)
[Fjordr Hospital]Added a refrigerator. (Permanent item storage)
[Refrigerator]All the refrigerators mentioned above will have some default items in their inventory that somewhat reflect the nearby context. (For example, the one in "This is a bar" will have a lot of meat while the one in Kristin's room will have some blood.)
[Fjordr Hospital]After checking the refrigerator in Fjordr Hospital, you get an additional dialog option with Dr. Light.
############System################
[Refrigerator]Made the code structure versatile enough that all re-placed refrigerators can be used as permanent item storage and freeze items.
#######Debug##################
[Bazaar]Fixed some tile-related passage issues.
简体中文
##########Content#################
【安全屋】安全屋厨房的冰箱现在是一个永久的容器。这意味着你可以在里面放任何东西而不用担心会丢失。这样的话，在你获得你自己的口袋空间之前就已经有了一个可以安全存放物品的地点了。
【安全屋】安全屋厨房的冰箱现在也有了普通冰箱的冷冻物品的功能。你可以用来制作冰块。
【这是间酒吧】在厨房加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）
【阿德汉姆旅店】在克莉斯汀的房间里加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）但是，你无法在当前的时间线上存放东西然后回到1978年取出，反过来也一样。
【绿洲茶馆】在埃及的绿洲茶馆加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）
【恐龙博士的研究站】加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）
【萨姆吉尔医院】加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）
【福尔德医院】加入了一台冰箱。（永久容器。）
【冰箱】上述所有的冰箱会有一些符合其周边环境的默认物品。（比如，【这是间酒吧】的冰箱包含很多肉。克莉斯汀的房间的冰箱中有一些血。）
【福尔德医院】在检查福尔德医院的冰箱后，你和莱特医生会有一个新的对话选项。
############System################
【冰箱】让所有的在地图上部署的冰箱的代码结构灵活到它们都可以作为永久的物品容器。并且均可以用来冷冻物品。
#######Debug##################
【巴扎】修复了一些图块通行相关的Bug。

20240812
English
############Content###############
[Loot]Added an item drop list for the Machine Skeletons.
[Fjordr Hospital Underground]You can now enter a research room by picking or blowing up the lock. You can find some additional story content inside.
[Fjordr Hospital Underground]Added a hack tool and some other loot in this research room.
############System################
[Item]The item-generating code for all hacktools is now unified and can be reused.
简体中文
##########Content#################
【掉落物】为机械骷髅加入了物品掉落列表。
【福尔德医院地下】你现在可以通过开锁或炸掉门锁的方式进入一个研究室。里面有额外的剧情。
【福尔德医院地下】在这间研究室中加入了一个黑客工具和一些物品。
############System################
【物品】所有的黑客工具的生成代码现在统一管理并且可以重用。

20240813
English
############Content###############
[Game Mode]New Game Mode: The Mini-Game Room. (You can access it from the title menu or even before entering the title menu.)
[The Mini-Game Room]Added a bit of lore-friendly background to this location.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added The Ghost of Kyiv.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added The Special Tractor Operation.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added The Pianos.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added The Boombox.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added Black Jack.
[The Mini-Game Room]Added Minesweeper
[The Mini-Game Room]Added The Tomb Stone
[The Mini-Game Room]Added Gomoku
##########Debug##################
[Menu]Fixed a bug that causes the wrong options get disabled when save is disabled.
简体中文
##########Content#################
【游戏模式】新游戏模式：小游戏房间。（你可以在标题界面或在进入标题界面之前进入这个模式。）
【小游戏房间】加入了一些和游戏世界观相符的关于这个地点的剧情。
【小游戏房间】加入了基辅的幽灵
【小游戏房间】加入了特别拖拉机行动
【小游戏房间】加入了钢琴
【小游戏房间】加入了音乐播放器
【小游戏房间】加入了21点
【小游戏房间】加入了扫雷
【小游戏房间】加入了墓石牌
【小游戏房间】加入了五子棋
##########Debug##################
【菜单】修复了在存档禁止的场合，一个错误的选项被禁止的Bug。

20240814
English
############Content###############
[The Mini-Game Room]You can now talk to the Caretaker to change your move speed.
[Northern Start Tavern]Added a GPA agent in this location.
[GPA]Added a GPA agent in the Mini-Game Room. You can store the GPA coins you earn in this game mode and retrieve them in the main game.
[GPA]The global GPA account info shall be automatically saved onto the Steam Cloud.
简体中文
##########Content#################
【小游戏房间】现在你可以和看护者对话来改变你的移动速度。
【北极星旅店】在这个地点加入了一个GPA工作人员。
【GPA】在小游戏房间内加入了一个GPA工作人员。你可以在这里保存你在小游戏房间内获得的GPA金币，然后在主游戏中提取出来使用。
【GPA】全局GPA账户详细会自动通过STEAM云存档保存。

20240815
English
############Content###############
[The Mini-Game Room]Added the Ranked Mode. (You will need to get as many GPA coins as you can within 15 minutes.)
[The Mini-Game Room]Added a default rank list with scores from certain NPCs in the game.
[The Mini-Game Room]All mini-games in this room now support the system timer.
##########Debug##################
[Black Jack]Fixed a crash. (It happens when you select hit while you already have 5 cards.)
简体中文
##########Content#################
【小游戏房间】加入了排行榜模式。（你需要在15分钟内收集尽可能多的GPA金币。）
【小游戏房间】加入了一张游戏中一些角色组成的默认排行榜名单。
【小游戏房间】所有的这里的游戏现在均支持系统计时器。
##########Debug##################
【21点】修复了一个游戏崩溃的情况。（在你已经有5张手牌还继续要牌时发生。）

20240816
English
############Content###############
[Memory Gallery]New Category: Moonlight & Genzou
[Memory Gallery]New 3D Cutscene: The White-Haired Witch. (It has not been linked to our current stories yet. Thus, there is no way to unlock it. But, players with the Gallery Unlock DLC shall automatically unlock it anyway.)
简体中文
##########Content#################
【记忆的影集】新的分类：月光与愿藏
【记忆的影集】新的3D过场动画：白发的魔女。（目前还未和游戏剧情连接起来，所以没有游戏内的解锁途径。但是，拥有影集解锁DLC的同学可以直接解锁。）

Latest news from Ukraine/乌克兰小剧场
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