HammerHelm News

Today's build includes the ability to rotate the camera around your character and some balance changes for combat.





To rotate the camera, simply hold down left-alt and move the mouse. Letting go of alt will snap the camera back to it's original position.

This mode is mostly meant for taking screenshots rather than something you'd use in combat, but it's certainly been a long time coming to get this in!

This update also includes some balancing for monsters based on the previous combat update. Mostly increasing their hit points by a small amount.

Edit - this build has been reverted back to 1.7.13 while I look into a bug that caused pickaxes to break.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Today's build is a much requested addition to the townspeople manager UI - Sort By Job!

You can use the toggle in the top section of the Townspeople Manager to switch between sorting in the order NPCs joined your town (default) or by their job. This sort can also be updated after pressing the Rename NPC button or the Swap Jobs buttons.



I'm keeping this update to only this change as it actually required a pretty big change to the Townspeople Manager and I wanted to test it before releasing it without anything else taking away focus.

I'll likely also add Sort By Name in addition to some more features for the Townspeople Manager in the near future as well!

Today's build includes some changes and fixes to some of the resources in the town.

• Fixed a bug that caused Dwarves to not use your existing stock of beer if you didn't have a Brewery.
  
• Increased the amount of starting beer for a new town.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the "I ate raw vegetables" mood debuff to fail to be removed after a Dwarf ate a meal.
  
• Changed the timing for cooks making meals and Dwarves eating meals to be offset by a small amount. This allows you to see the meals increment before the Dwarves eat. Prior to this the meals would get cooked but then a split second later the Dwarves would eat which looked like your cook wasn't doing anything.
  
• The starting potions you get from the prologue will now correctly stack with newly crafted potions.
  
• Fixed placing rugs so they don't appear under the floor in your home.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Today's build includes the new weapon imbuing system!

Weapon effects occur once per fight and have an increased chance to occur with each successful, uninterrupted hit. This means if you use your regular attack three times in a row, there is a very good chance it will happen early in a fight. Dodging, blocking or performing any other action that stops your attack will reset this chance.

Weapon effects can only happen once per fight. A fight is defined as battling the monsters associated with a spawner. If you run far enough a way to cause a spawner to reset its monsters, your weapon effect can occur again if you fight those monsters again.



Weapon Effects

• Flame weapons deal a damage over time effect for about 5 seconds. Fire elementals are immune to this.
  
• Frost weapons slow down the monster, both movement and attack speeds for a short period of time. Ice elementals are immune to this.
  
• Acid makes the monster vulnerable and makes its attacks do less damage. This effect remains for the entire fight. Earth, Stone, Obsidian, and Meteorite elementals are immune to this.
  
• Drain weapons steal a percentage of a monsters hit points to heal you. This effect only occurs if you are below 75% health, that way it is never wasted. Skeletons and Zombies are immune to this.
  
• Monster spellcasters are also immune to weapon effects.

I decided not to add monster healing to the system as it felt confusing during a fight. I also simplified things a bit by not adding the concept of stacking gems. I might revisit that in the future though.

Finding Gems
In addition, the chance to get a imbue gem has been greatly increased. About twice as likely at lower levels and 4 times as likely at higher levels. Note this means at higher levels you might get more gems than you need so I'm going to be designing other uses for these gems in the future.

This build also includes a couple of other updates. The Metalworker Shop's floor has been lowered so the Metalworker's feet no longer disappear into it. I also made some improvements to the delete building and the swap jobs systems to ensure NPCs and their houses and job buildings don't get out of sorts. This is actually a pretty big chance to the system but you shouldn't notice anything different.

Would love to hear what you all think of the new imbuing and weapons effects once you had a chance to check it out!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

I'm working on an update to the weapon gem imbuing system and the effects that each gem has. I'd love to get your thoughts on the design before I get too far with it!

Some rules for the new system.

• The better the weapon the more times it can be imbued. Copper, Iron, and Jade only once and increasing after that with Blood Stone up to four times.
  
• Each additional gem adds to the weapon's effectiveness (see below).
  
• The imbue effect has a chance to occur while you are doing your normal attacks. This chance increases with each successful regular attack hit. Other than the drain effect (see below) the effect will be more likely to happen early in a fight if you hit with all three regular attacks in a row.
  
• A weapon will only release it's imbue effect once per fight. A fight being defined as the monsters related to a specific monster spawner.
  
• Once imbued all additional imbues must be of the same type.
  
• The tinker will be able to remove a weapon's imbue should you decide to change it.
  
• A masterwork weapon will have a slightly higher benefit from the imbue.
  
• The loot system for Imbue Gems will be updated to make finding them more predictable and less reliant solely on random chance.

Imbued Weapons will have the following effects:

• Flame - Adds a fireball to the monster that explodes after a few seconds and damages nearby monsters. Fire elementals will be immune to this effect and may even be healed by it! Additional imbues add more damage.
  
• Frost - Slows down the monster for a period of time. Ice elementals will be immune to this effect and may even be healed by it! Additional imbues make the slow effect last longer.
  
• Acid - Adds a damage over time to the monster. This is similar to the current effect. Stone and Earth elementals will be immune to this effect. Additional imbues make the damage higher and the effect last longer.
  
• Draining - Gives back a portion of the damage dealt to a monster. Undead creatures will be immune to this effect. Additional imbues give you a higher percentage of the damage back as health. Since an effect only occurs once per fight, this effect will only occur if you need it so it isn't wasted if you are at or near 100% health.

Optional Idea
Each imbued weapon has a set number of charges each time they are imbued with the same type of gem. Higher tier weapons can hold more charges. So a Jade weapon might hold 15 total charges while a Blood Stone weapon can hold 30. Each gem adds 5 charges. In this scenario, gems would become more common than they currently are and you'd need to recharge your weapon with the gems. Masterwork weapons would also be able to hold more charges.

Other Stuff
I'm also working on a bunch of other smaller things for near-term updates, including but not limited to:

• Give some XP for monsters spawners in dungeons and caves.
  
• Update Town Manager UI to allow you to set a marker for a specific NPC.
  
• Better Town Manager UI sorting.
  
• Ability to add a Quest marker to find a building.
  
• Auto-stack potions into your quick bar if that potion is already in a quick slot.
  
• An update to storehouses to allow you to upgrade them and potentially need to place fewer. Still working out the design for this.
  
• Pop-up text for other buildings other than houses.
  
• Add red and orange birch trees as options for the town.
  
• Bug fixes and optimizations,

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco