Keeper's Toll News

Hi everyone,

Just pushed another patch live. Here's what's new:

- Re-worked save data async calls to ensure proper data loading order. This will help with potential variations in deserialization time. Further improvements will be added in future patches as well, including a check for corrupted save data, in which case the user will be presented with various options in the event their data is corrupted. Stay posted for more on this.

- Fixed WASD bindings. S now navigates down and A navigates Left

- Doubled spawn chance of flesh piles during Autlaic Boss Fight

- Increased soul drop rate during Autlaic Boss Fight

- Added a secondary submit point for the Max Talent Achievements

- Bilee's hit boxes are now properly disabled after attacks and on death

- Modified code and verified corrupted souls curse is working properly

- Improved Meatbomb targeting and fixed a bug not being able to target certain enemies


Will be working on the Ranger all day tomorrow, and taking Sunday off, for the most part. Next week we'll be grinding hard on the Ranger class, and we'll probably push 1-2 more builds live as well, including lots of fixes and improvements many of you have requested. Stay posted for more details, and thanks for your support.

Stingbot

Hi Everyone,

The past few days I've been incredibly busy working in improvements and feedback requests. Let's start with the big ticket item: performance.

- I spent dozens of hours profiling, testing, writing custom scripts, analyzing everything you could think of to address performance issues, primarily due to the new collision system I put together in the previous patch. Lots of work was done to further improve the new collision detection system yet again, and lots of code was refactored, layers modified and the collision matrix has been further optimized. Also revamped every character in the game and they have an entirely new setup for collisions, which boosted performance greatly! I have yet to drop below 200FPS under the heaviest of loads on an i9 9900K. i5 9500 is running 180FPS and i3 165 FPS (I can't get the exact model right now). All have mid-high range GPUs but GPU is not the issue with performance in this game. It's all CPU, as you might expect. Anyhow, huge boost so I hope it runs well for everyone! The numbers I posted above are the lowest I've seen while testing.

New Feature:
Added Boss Souls to the game. Collecting a Boss Soul when a boss is defeated will reward you with an instant level up. We have a lot more planned in the future regarding boss perks, but no time for that yet. It's going to be a much bigger update down the line. But eventually each boss will reward you with 1 of 3 special perks that remains active with you for the remainder of the run. These perks are going to be presented to the player the same way a normal level up would be presented. For now, enjoy the free levels up :)

What else has been updated? Lots, here's a partial list (probably a lot more I'm not thinking of):

- Modified the Necromancer's talent: Invoke Fear. Players no longer have to chase down the souls. When an enemy is marked for death by fear, their soul will be consumed automatically by the Necromaner, eliminating the need to chase down the souls to collect them.

- replaced camera fade logic with new screen overlay logic to avoid issues with alt tabbing

- Fixed a bug with Grave Grip not affecting some enemies

- Grave Grip hands should now layer properly

- Skelewheels should now properly stop movement if they collide with the environment

- Rats and Flies will no longer collide with other enemies or the environment. Instead, they will only have collision with the player

- Level up selection will now properly de-select when the re-roll button is selected

- Corrupted Souls Curse: player's soul range will no longer affect collecting the corrupted (red) souls. range only benefits collecting the good (blue) souls

- Increased the distance between blades in Tempest to improve clarity and effectiveness

- Improved performance issues when collecting gold

- Gold notification should now properly display next to Talents on the main menu if upgrades are available

- Increased default soul pickup range

- Elite souls are now properly affected by soul pickup range

- Edited the Bombie's explosion hit box to match the graphic better

- Reduced the wiggle requirement needed to break free from Vine Traps

- Fixed the hitbox for Bilee's blood pool attacks

- Modified Flesh Pile drop rates

- Achievement to max all Necromancer's Talents is now working

- Changed the achievement to earn 1,000 gold in a run to be 500 gold.

- Add input "Spacebar", F or E as alternatives for the Enter

- You can now inflict damage to bloodsap via his hands, but this is still not the core way to defeat him

- A few flesh piles now spawn in the arena at the start of Bloodsap's fight

- Improved enemy pooling logic

- Adjusted and optimized all enemy hitboxes

- Improved enemy spawn flow logic in Usvit Depths

- Skeleton Pets will now prioritize targeting Chancellor Autlaic during the boss fight


There's lots more to come. We will continue to push fixes, balance the game more, and re-work skills and features. We read all requests and do our best to respond to everyone in a timely manner. If your request has not yet been added, please be patient and understand there is lots more updates to come. The art team continues to push stuff out, but I want to get back to working on the Ranger and hopefully get her in the game in the coming weeks. We know you all have a lot of requests and we're doing our best to meet your expectations.

We are looking at prioritizing an alternative Flail mechanic for the Necromancer. Something more automated, so expect to hear back from us about that soon with our ideas, and then we'll work on integrating it as soon as possible.

Feel free to reach out to us whenever, and Discord will always be the fastest way to get a response, but we do try to respond to all forum posts and emails. Thank you for your support.

-Stingbot

Yesterday's patch resulted in a drop of performance for most players. The new collision system was a lot of work, and I learned my lesson not to push a build live after working for 20 hours straight, despite the fact I thought it was ready (I was more than half asleep). I apologize. I just wanted to get the build out for everyone as fast as I could as I know the collision detection was a popular request. This patch has been much more heavily tested, and I fixed a lot of the performance issues. There's still some issues on more low end devices and/or the Steam Deck that I will continue to look into. Thanks for your patience, but as a benchmark: I am testing on an i9 9900K 3080 TI Rig and the lowest FPS I encountered in this build (0.4.9), under the heaviest of loads w/ massive amounts of mobs on screen was 128 FPS. I realize this can still be better. Ideally, on an rig like mine I don't ever wanna go below 200 FPS. Bear with me as I made a lot of changes to the game recently, but I will continue to work hard to improve performance. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Lots more to come. Thanks for your support.

Hi everyone. It's been a very busy few days and we did a major overhaul to the collision detection/hitbox system, among many other things. Here's what's new:

1. We placed the majority of hitboxes near the feet of the character sprites to match perspective better and we re-sized them appropriately. It may not be perfect, but it's much more accurate for the perspective now.
2. We improved collision detection code and separated hit boxes from damage boxes. There is now 2 different collision boxes on each enemy sprite in the game. The damage receiving boxes are separate triggers attached to the object that receives the damage on the enemy. These are larger than life to increase hit detection from player attacks. This benefits the player and makes it more accurate. These boxes are not used to inflict damage on the player. The other hitboxes are located at the base of the enemy sprite and are much smaller and will inflict damage to the player if/when the player collides. the player's own hitbox/collision area is also at the base of his feet. The player has a trigger box covering the majority of his body now to take incoming projectile damage.

We improved physics detection and wrote a new avoidance system so the player will no longer get "stuck" on enemies. In fact, you can now push your way through enemies. While there is still some friction, it's much less than before and you have more than a fighting chance of escaping hordes.

When enemies collide with the player they now also have a 1 second delay before resuming to seek the player, allowing a little extra time for the player to get away.


Besides the collision system improvements we did tons of other things, so let's start with the Bogatyr:
We updated Bogatyr's passive ability: Recklessness. We scrapped the old ability and made a brand new one, which we think is more exciting. The payoff for taking this ability is much greater than before. It's a trade off of lowering defense but getting a boost to your ability cooldowns. The way it scales is greater for each rank, and if you go for a cooldown build you can now get a max CDR of 45% as opposed to 25% max CDR before this passive. IT's quite fun if you go that route too, especially when you get a haste powerup.

This is the first of many updates we will be working on to strenghten the classes. Stay posted for more.

Other things we did:
- Reduced HP of the Mushroom Elite in the Forest
- Revised the treasure snail so he's a little less sporadic in movement
- Bug Fix: game will no longer get stuck when alt tabbing out of the items menu before the UI animation is complete
- Greatly reduced the upgrade costs of the final 2 talents in the talents tree
- Fixed the mimic sorting layer so it layers properly in the game world
- Increased drop rate of flesh piles during velya boss fight
- Spawn a small amount of flesh piles in Velya's lair when you first enter
- Loads of Code refactoring


If you brought something up or requested something and we haven't gotten to it yet, please understand we have a very long list of feedback we're working through. The collision system alone took over 20 hours of re-work and testing. We only just entered Early Access, so bear with us. Doing all we can :)

We are excited to be working with everyone on these updates and we look forward to more. We'll continue to push out updates, but as of next week we're going to try and spend a mix of our time focusing on the Ranger class.

Let us know what you think of the new systems. We think it's definitely a step in the right direction. Thanks for your support.