Zofia News

This is mostly some minor fixes and changes, with a few additions:

Changes/Additions:
- Added 'skills' in addition to attributes (Incomplete)
[Noted, the max attribute level is now 10, down from 100. You no longer directly level attributes, only skills.]
- Moved difficulty setting 'gravestones' to in front of the abandoned shop
- The HUB now auto-saves after 10 seconds
- Enemies now have correct fall damage if kicked off of ledges (Except ghosts, who are floating)
- Added physics objects into many levels
- Added 'boss' variants of enemies near the end of each level
- Improved airship handling
- Airship can now be destroyed, resulting in an immediate level loss (But it cannot be hurt by the player)
- Airship guns can technically be used (incomplete)
- Added a challenge map, Mek's grapplehook challenge 1, to the temple within the HUB
- Added a new element, 'explosive'. Not used as a magic element.
- Made dialogue background darker
- Added a new enemy variant, 'ghost knight'
- Removed zooming from bows
- Made 'labyrinth caves versus' map significantly smaller
- Removed legacy destruction physics (Which were rarely used)
- You should now lose oxygen underwater and can drown
- Added more character backgrounds
- Added a short sword to the shop
- Added sandals to the clothing shop
- Added 'Early Access' and the game version to the main menu and load screens
- SSAO should now look more consistent across levels
- The wood splinters magic now has line trails so they're much easier to see
- Using magic on an existing magic spell will now destroy it

Fixes:
- Aves no longer lose extra stamina when clambering and attempting to fly
- Aves no longer lose extra stamina when swimming and attempting to fly
- Fixed several meshes that were not LODing correctly
- Updated Legion Rifleman to be much more accurate and better animated
- Updated Legion Bowman to be more accurate and better animated
- Updated Legion arrows to look more like normal arrows
- Fixed the grapplehook's metal end as it was untextured before
- Optimized prologue lighting
- Armor is now rounded correctly when calculating armor level
- Fixed Lev's dialogue
- Fixed the 'escape menu' in splitscreen
- Fixed an FOV issue in splitscreen (probably)
- Fixed an issue where some weapons would never drop
- Fixed an issue where a certain pair of pants could be sold infinitely
- Removed rotation/scale issues when going through a teleporter
- Fixed an issue where you may start with 0XP
- Fixed an issue where you could not grapplehook out of water
- Fixed a performance issue with water volumes
- Reduced player's overall memory usage
- Fixed an UI issue on load slots
- Fixed several small background issues for a negligible performance increase

I was originally planning to have one of the new maps out around now but I have found myself backtracking slightly. There are several smaller elements that previously were brought up but aren't meshing together as well as they should.

So, let's talk about some of them:

Your main goal throughout Zofia is to stop the blight - There was kind of a vague goal of following areas overrun with blight would eventually lead you to the source, but this doesn't seem to click very well.

(Can I get away with calling that a blightsaber?)

A solution has been to add a unique enemy who acts as a 'boss' that, once defeated, clears out the blight. The boss should be marked with these pinkish embers. This should be a better short-term goal as you're on your long-term hunt for the blight source.

Another issue you may have noticed is you have a kick button, but not a lot of objects to kick. This mostly due to online multiplayer, where physics like to do weird things. Fortunately I think I got some kinks worked out and I have been going back and various objects with physics-enabled versions.

(Take that, casual and tasteful modern lobby chair!)

Enemies have been updated so you can kick these items into them and do damage. You can also grapplehook and pull these objects along, but this mostly results in a very unreliable wrecking ball. (But a neat potential puzzle mechanic)

An issue you probably didn't notice was the dialogue. Zofia has a relatively basic dialogue system that you have probably seen before. Some of the dialogue options are gated behind stat/knowledge checks, and will show up as [Attribute/Knowledge] if you've passed them.

(I also lowered this menu so you can see the NPC's face)

Having all the possible options listed but inaccessible if you don't pass the check might be cluttered, so I'm looking at (potentially) doing this the other way: If an NPC throws a skill check at you, you can answer regardless, and the NPC's answer will show if you've failed or not.

Not for knowledge checks, however, because if your character doesn't know about something, they can't take a shot at using it as an answer.

This leads me to the next point...

I'm going to split up attributes and 'skills'.

(Maybe this should say 'Rapier skill is now level 7'?)

I originally intended to have only basic attributes, like 'Strength' and have it as something you slowly increment over time throughout the story. My problem with it ended up being progression was very minimal but also easy to abuse. Since there are only 6 attributes, power leveling any of them would greatly slant the game's balance and kind of break the game. (Except Charisma which isn't currently useful)

Doubly so in multiplayer, where you may be deprived of XP depending on your party, and where things are easier to break.

The skill system should be less game breaking, allow for some character specialization, and make some less-than-useful-attributes (Charisma) to be tied to skills that can be much more useful.

Last notable change!

There are difficulty options hidden away in the HUB, marked on gravestones. Didn't find them...? Well that's ok, it seems not a lot of people did - These are going to be moved to a much more obvious location. Then if you're running into a particularly hard section or trying to level break but keep dying, you can set the level lives to unlimited.

I know I keep saying this, but the new levels should be soon, I got caught up with all these other things above, as well as fixing some weird issues I keep getting bug reports on. You'll likely see the combination of all of those and these things above in one big ol' patch.

Discovered a few critical bugs that needed addressing, but also some additions to make way for some future changes:

Additions:
- Labyrinthian Caves Versus map
- Bunker Versus map
- Lives remaining indicator on HUD
- Added unique Rapier animations
- Added an 'airship shop' that's available in many levels
- Added elemental damage effects on player when hit
-> Cold Damage now slows max player move speed for a few seconds
-> Poison Damage now does a decreasing amount of damage every ~5 seconds
-> Magic/Blight Damage temporarily increases all damage taken for a few seconds
-> Fire damage does nothing unique but extra damage and a burn effect
- Added blood spatter on ground/character if hit for high damage
- Added slight camera shake if the player melees a solid object (like a stone wall)
- Weapons now recoil if they hit a solid enemy/player (Purely visual, this does not impact attack speed)
- Weapons now leave hit marks on objects
- Added 'leads' to dialogue options (incomplete)
- Added stairs to the HUB as some players did not realize Mercie was in the tower
- Added two NPCs to the HUB
- Added level pictures/description to the level select map

Changes/Fixes:
- NPCs no longer send you to quests directly (This proved to be confusing)
- Frozen Fort and Prologue are auto-unlocked
- The prologue is replayable
- Fixed a pathing issue in Frozen Fort where many enemies would not chase the player
- Fixed a level issue in Frozen Fort where one pathway would seemingly lead to a dead-end
- The robes are no longer free
- Clarified on Escape Menu that saved progress is lost when leaving to Hub or Main Menu
- Most two-handed swords now use wide sweeps while most one handed swords use vertical strikes
- Fixed character's leg stance when idle and armed with a weapon
- Removed Seeker Spaces for now to make level respawning consistent
- Removed the pilotable airship in Cliffside to make level respawning consistent
- Removed inactive golems in Frozen Fort
- Kick damage is no longer unblockable
- Fixed an issue where the player would be staggered from many attacks unless close to death
- Players are knocked out of the grapplehook if hit in mid-air
- Fixed several objects that had some UV/Shading issues
- Fixed some text on the gravestones in the HUB temple
- Fixed some transition issues that would take an unusually long time, such as finishing a character in the editor or selecting a level from the map
- The holograms no longer look like the tutorial dummies
- Fixed an issue with the teleporter where, in certain circumstances, you would come out very disoriented
- Reduced area for when enemy groups are spawned, as they could spawn behind the player and out of sight
- Made changes to the labyrinthian caves as two particular jumps were very difficult
- Some other minor level fixes and some level layout fixes
- The 'spectre' enemies (glowing purple ghosts) will no longer insta-kill players, but will do 9 blight damage every 0.25 seconds they are in contact with the player

Just some minor fixes

- Fixed a map issue on Cliffside where you could see through the cliff face
- Fixed a minor issue with the grapplehook where you could stay attached to a grapple point after dying
- Fixed a visual issue where your hand/arm would disappear briefly when viewed from certain angles
- Fixed a [Versus] issue where kicking another player to their death would not result in a point

I was aiming to have the new areas available here by the end of October but I've had a few life events that have delayed things more than I thought.

I'm going to try and roll the levels into the November updates instead, along with some more weapon updates.

Sorry for the inconvenience.