Tuesday 11 October 2016

Update - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.30)

Download - 6MB

Bugs and Map improvements
- Fixed lighting in boss room
- Added lighting directly under the player
- Some player lights have been tweaked
- Dark wizard area has been improved with some walls
- Water now has perspective, and cannot be walked on
- A river has been added to the first map
- A lake has been added to the first dungeon
- Lava now has perspective
- Shortcuts added to first part of the level (mages only)
- Teleporters now lead to a town level with minimal content
- Dark ground now always turns to snow

Known bugs
- Shortcut text gets too big with change of room
- Ground tiles don't update to the conditions after switching rooms
- Mobs can walk over water/lava


Sunday 25 September 2016

Dev Blog - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.30)

25/09
I have been working on the new systems that I will be using to provide interesting ways to navigate the game world.
The first of these systems is shortcuts. I have an object that teleports the player when activated by the correct ability class, if the player has the required level.
Soon I will be  making some more content now that most of the effects are looking good.

29/09
Made some more floor tiles. some of them are for the first dungeons and some will be for future rooms.

02/10
Made teleporting easier/better, and opened the new area as a hub/teleporting zone.

04/10
Fixed some bugs and improved part of the map where the dark wizards are.

10/10
It took longer than it should have, but to got auto perspective tiling working for water and lava. This is quite good for the feel of the game as well as saving me wasting my time with spaghetti code.

11/10
 Fixed the bugs with auto tiling and added more to the dungeon. Tidied up a lot of the map, still more to work on. Currently the second level looks like a total mess.

This is probably the end of the 1.30 dev blog, it will be released shortly.

Tuesday 20 September 2016

Update - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.28)

Download (6.4MB exe)

Dungeons and Misc
- Improved xp bar and level display text
- Reduced size of enemy health text
- Hunter sprites finished
- Class rotating previews smoother, added scientist and hunter
- Abilities are once again destroyed if they kill an enemy
- Improved dungeon tiles, and walls are now solid
- Cleaned up dungeon mapping
- Improved enemy shadow wizard


Lighting
- Player lights added for more vision at night and in dungeons
- Day/night cycle and in-game time is now persistent between rooms
- Day/night cycle lengthened
- Torch lights upgraded
- Added ability lighting effects
- Added lighting for loot drops

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Update - Roaming the land of Death (alpha V1.25)

Download - (6.1MB)

New class - Brute (for testing)
- Ability 1 is a a short range "melee" attack
- Ability 3 (aura) blocks enemy attacks
- Ability 4 (aura) regenerates health if below 70%
- Ability 5 (aura) bombards nearby enemies with damage
(auras have a bug where activating a different one will stop all)

Hunter Changes
- New sprites (not finished)
- Ability 5 (aura) marks enemies for bonus damage (possible bug)
- Ability 3 now locks-on to targets in a limited way
- Hunter abilities now have impact particles
- Abilities 3 and 7 now have particles

Weapon changes
- Weapons modified
- Weapon origins changed

Ability changes
- Auras will now drain mana when used
- Auras are persistent between rooms
- Shadow aura no longer returns mana
- Auras now have varied spawn limits
- Aura healing and damage modified
- Enemy attacks now have impact particles
- (spaghetti part 4) GUI now properly shows skillshots depending on abilities


Thursday 25 August 2016

Update - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.2)

Download (6.1MB)

Ability damage (spaghetti code rewrite part 3)

- Every ability now has its own damage value
(you don't want to know what it was before)
- Ability damage coded to be easy to change
- Light ability 4 now fires its secondary projectiles
- Damage values changed for most abilities (mostly buffed)
- Aura abilities no longer get stuck in trees
- Ability impact particles updated
- Ability type parents created

New class - Hunter (beta)

- Ability 1 fires an arrow
- Ability 2 fires 3 arrows
- Ability 3 fires a healing arrow
- Ability 7 fires an explosive arrow

Weapon update

- Weapons now have aiming sprite
- Depth fixed

Pet update

- Health now drawn in GUI
- GUI now includes text indicating the pet and it's level
- Pets can now level up
- Armour stats added
- Health buffed
- Upgraded pets now fire elemental abilities

Misc

- Shadow ghosts are now partially transparent
- New tentacle beast variant
- Player now has an armour value

Known bugs

- Enemies sometimes path towards the edge of the map then come back due to a pathing fail-safe

v1.2

Friday 19 August 2016

Update Notes - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.15)

Download (6.1MB)

NPC update
- Merchant now works, sells full health and mana recharges
- Trainers have more information
- NPC names are now drawn in GUI layer
- Merchant added to checkpoint area

Boss update
- New health bar style
- Random name generator v1
- Enemy HP text moved
- Parent made for bosses and boss abilities
- Test bosses added to the map
- Bosses now drop an improved mana pickup

Armour update
- Armour is now % damage reduction
- Updated most mobs armour values

Spaghetti code rewrite part 2
- All abilities now transitioned to the rewritten system
- Removed  all of the old system and associated objects
- Fonts are consistent again
- Filled in ability gaps with random abilities from other classes
- Mana costs are now shown on GUI, and coded to be easy to change

Scientist
- Can be tested but not fully ready
- Health pack now works
- Ability 4 added, no effect but it looks cool

Misc
- Crypt entrance sprite updated
- Map updated slightly

Saturday 13 August 2016

Update Notes - Roaming the land of Death (alpha v1.1)

Download (7MB)

Particle overhaul

- New particle systems made for snow and rain effects
- Updated particles for falling leaves in autumn
- Updated aura particles and colours
- Updated ability particles and colours
- Updated loot beam particles
- Updated spawner particles (unfinished)
- Depth fixed for most particles

Old code rewrite

- Health regeneration works again
- Mana regeneration changed
- Shadow mage aura no longer heals past full hp
- Healing spells no longer heal above full hp
- Regeneration now scales with level
- Health and mana scaling changed
- Enemy health bars are now drawn in GUI layer
- Tentacle beast pathing changed
- Cooldown system rewritten
- XP bars now consistent between classes

Misc

- Ledge sprites added to lava pits
- Decreased the size of loot bags
- Modified loot system to not roll over after 99. Instead, loot currency will be used for different things depending on its value

Known bugs

- Invisibility sometimes gets stuck on
- Possible error related to enemy pathing


Wednesday 27 July 2016

Dev Blog/Update - Roaming Death Alpha V1.0 (#3)

It has been too long since the last Roaming Death update so here is what I've been doing.
As always, fixing bugs is my number one priority.

Download! - 6.7MB

Bug fixes

Spawners have been a mess ever since I made them, so they are being fixed.

-They no longer spam particles creating unnecessary lag
-They have a limit on the total number of skeletons they spawn
-The mob spawn time scales with difficulty

Pets have a pathing update, not great yet but works OK.

-Path like regular creeps when path is available
-Attack sprite updated

Gameplay

Shadow mage has a new passive: a chance to summon a ghost on hit.
-Invisibility works as intended, except for an unknown bug
Light mage ability #4 added, needs some modification
Light mage ability #5 (aura) added: restores HP when falling below 50%

Balance changes

Skeletons nerfed xp drops - can't be farmed for xp.

Abilities scale with overall level. (needs work)

Ability scaling adjusted and armour stats added

Visual updates

The season system is being worked on and nearly ready to go. This allows me to improve the dynamism of the environment and is also important for my other game.

-Particles have been tweaked
-Ability sprites + icons were upgraded where necessary
-Ground textures are improved (change with seasons)
-All player and enemy units have el cheapo yscale animations
-Mage select screen characters rotate slower and fire abilities
-Tutorial quest improved

Thursday 4 February 2016

Roaming Death Progress Update: The Revival

I haven't done an update in a long time. I took a big break from working on this game, but I'm ready to continue tentatively. I have some fresh ideas and want to get a better demo out asap.

I have been tidying up some things like footprints and damage scaling/balancing. I added an armour stat to most of the mobs and roughly balanced it.

I have an idea for a stat screen when you finish an area that could show some kind of score based on your stats in combat like healing done, damage taken, times died, damage dealt. This is good because it gives a penalty for dying too many times.

I am having to tidy up a lot of old spaghetti code to make progress so it is very slow.

You can read about all the changes in the update coming soon.