THE WARRIORLOCK News

25 chievo's are now available! I have been testing and breaking the game to much of my own amusement, to offer 25 decent achievements for hunters. Happy hunting!

Although I have tested thoroughly and now have 24/25 achievements in my profile, please report any weirdness here if your achievements are not updating.

Bug fixes:

1. Exploitable skill bug for 'Death Wish' in which the player could attack repeatedly without losing HP, and also would not fall into death state if HP reached 0 during the skill attack. Fix: I have recreated the skill as 'Reaper,' which will give the player a very nice new skill to kill with. Enjoy!

2. Icon Set for treasure hud was looking rough for some reason, and I found that when I had updated the png sheet to a reduced file size type (index), it left some gnarly artifacts around the smaller icons for the treasure pop-up window. Fix: I replaced the sheet with an original and updated the treasure hud, so now the pop-up icons look much smoother all around.

That's all for now. Have a great night, day, dream etc.

Cheers!

Dee

This little Skrill did not at all like the Ho Ho hat I put upon him this morning. He was quite upset by it actually, until I gave him my ipad and let him watch Rudolph 1964. He's watched it 3 times now, and his favorite bit is when Bumble, the abominable snowman, tries to catch and eat Rudolph alive; to which he snickers and drools with great delight. Merry Christmas you sick little bastard.

I am working on Christmas Day, trying to get a test up and running for Steam achievements in The Warriorlock. It will take some time to implement the Steam API into the game script, but so far so good. I hope to have this ready for everyone early in 2019. Achievements will all be obtainable, although some far more challenging than others.

I'd prefer to keep achievements limited to a smaller, more valuable total of 25 or so, making them more relevant and well-suited to this size of game.

If any of you have suggestions for or about achievements, please comment here, and I will take everything into consideration for the update.

Thanks, and have a merry whatever you are or are not celebrating today!

Dee

https://youtu.be/xZ9_EHdTP3c



1. Having a light in dark places is really handy, as some of you have noticed. For those of you who missed this step, and found yourselves crawling around in the bleak darkness of tunnels and caverns, I have added an in-game message to remind players that they should go directly to the Northwind Outpost once they have crossed into the Winter Mountains through the Gnar Wall gates. Also, added similar hint/message at the Danger Hole entrance scene in case the player has not yet activated their new, bright talent.



2. I have added the game controls image to the scene when first crossing over the Gnar Wall (as an option) so that the player can now look over the controls before playing the game. Yes, there is a full screen option that stretches the game window to fit most resolutions (press f5, and f6 to adjust bars). Keep in mind that the native game window is 16:9 at 1024 x 576, so it will always look more detailed/crisp if left in windowed mode instead of full screen.



3. Today I patched in a 'repel enemy' command that will now run automatically whenever the player stops to open the Hintsheet, or the new Controls guide from the item menu. This way, you can open up either one anywhere in the game (mostly), and instantly have some peace while you read over it, instead of having to find a safe space first, where no monsters are coming at you. This command should work throughout the game.



4. I have adjusted the AP gauge to now boost/fill by 50% for each successful attack command action, so that you only need 2 attack actions (misses count) to reach 100% charge, and activate any special talents. This will be especially helpful in the beginning of the game when those skills are more accessible, and also when fighting tough enemies, as your party members can use their special talents more often in battle.



5. You can skip or 'pass' your character's turn to another in battle, for a cost in AP (lowers the gauge 25-50% depending on stats), and not lose a turn. Just press 'shift' or equivalent, and you can select any party member you like instead of the default order, which is determined by SPEED stat. This is not new, but I have now added this feature to the Hintsheet, and also fixed a small bug where the selector did not always move to the next character.

That's all for now. Hope you all have a great week/weekend. Please take the time to rate or upvote any reviews of the game that you find helpful. Thanks.

Cheers!

Justin

I have created and patched in a new 'skip intro' option at the very start of the game, so that the player can now choose to either begin from the first dialogue scene, or they can skip the introductions altogether and begin the story upon arriving at the Gnar Wall the following morning.

Choosing to start from the beginning does have an advantage though, in that you get more of the story obviously, and you may also receive an additional combat reward item for participating and succeeding in the intro combat event.

Cheers!

Warriorlock Steam Build #3328629

Thank you everyone for your helpful feedback over the past couple of months!
You are ALL awesome, and I really appreciate you taking the time to write reviews, leave comments and otherwise help me improve The Warriorlock.

This update establishes many of the adjustments and bug fixes I have been hard at work on lately. The latest build has been uploaded/updated this morning.

It is important to me that you are challenged in this game, but that you are also rewarded in return as you progress through the story and along the road. With your feedback I was able to better gauge a variety of player experiences to find a middle-ground which is more fair to both sides.

Rather than simply making enemies 'easier,' I have taken the time instead to adjust a few factors which now may give the player a little more breathing room in certain situations, and also benefit from improved odds at helpful item(s) discovery. Keep in mind that you will still die hard of course, perhaps just not as often.



This rarely happened to me, until lately when I was caught in a corner of the Black Passage by a mob of three shadows that spawned simultaneously and I got hit with back to back mayhem and died so hard. As requested by some of you, I have tweaked the instances per second of each and every enemy spawn group in the game so that they now respawn with an additional 5 seconds in between groups of the same location. Basically what this means is that you will have a little more time in between spawning events, but enemy groups will still spawn together in pairs or more.

So, if you beat or bribe a few enemies, you will now have a few additional precious seconds to get out of the way or sort/check your inventory for much needed assistance before the next group spawns. My advice is to avoid corpse piles and/or corners if you are low on health, as more enemies like to haunt these areas. Sometimes you can't just get every item either if there are too many monsters. Prioritize, and when all else fails, RUN.



This one is a tricky balance because I have designed an item spawning system that completely randomizes the number and type of items that spawn in each area, and many of the enemies are almost assured to drop some form of item as well. This means that no two people will ever play The Warriorlock and find/receive the same items in the same places as they progress. It's exciting because you never know for sure what you're going to get. However, in some cases the luck of the draw is just really not in your favor and things can quickly become daunting. As suggested by you, I have slightly increased the probability % of almost all healing and recovery items in all areas, yet I have left the awesome randomization mechanic intact. So, although you will have a higher chance of finding the really good stuff when you need it most, there's always still a chance you'll draw a crappy card sometimes. But it's a fair compromise this way, and keeps the challenge level right where it belongs.



In some locations with story characters, their dialogue will recycle if you leave and return to a shop location or the inn. As per your suggestions, I have made some adjustments to the dialogue strings so that they do not recycle as often. I have not adjusted it for each and every location though, as I already implemented a skip text function when reading messages throughout the game in general. You can press the action button to speed up the text drawing, and then skip to the next section/window.



Due to some confusion with the auto save being labelled 'Slot 1' in the save menu, I have gone ahead and changed it to read Auto Save, as well as relabeling the ascending 3 slots 1-3. This will help to organize your saves better, and keep things simple.



Sometimes a spell talent would fail completely, even if your level was improved and you had equipped one or more stat-boosting accessories. You guys have suggested making these types of talents more probable in their execution, and I have done so. All curative and boost spells targeting the player and/or party members now have an inherent 95% chance of success, BUT, I have also added a random variable by a factor of 0-3 on each end of that action based on your character's SPEED and KARMA stats, so that there is still a little suspense once in a while. Nothing is a sure thing when you are fighting for your life in The Warriorlock, but now at least you can use your awesome healing and boost talents with a little more confidence!



*Fixed transport/teleport bug when returning to an area later in the game after exiting that area via the same method. The player would be 'stuck' in a room with no exit, leaving them to have to start from their last save point.

*Fixed 'image not found' bug when picking up Celestial Tears and not seeing it in the inventory. Checked all other items for similar issue. None found.

*Fixed combat animation freeze when attacking with Gordo's special talent. Process to search and swap spritesheet graphic was not updating properly, so I added a slight wait time (15 frames) to the queue to prevent overlap. It works!

There are also some other minor text box mis-alignments and tile overlap on a few maps (nothing noticeable), so I will be working to get those updated by this weekend.

I hope that you will be encouraged to share The Warrirolock with others in your Steam groups and social media. I'm one person doing all of this, so every little bit helps a lot!

Thanks you!

Dee Snuts

p.s. Feel free to nominate The Warriorlock on Steam for 'Labor of Love.'