Rogue Fable III News

Hello everyone! Another pretty big update with some new content and lots of bug fixes and general polishing.

The main area I was focusing on with this update was The Orc Fortress and The Dark Temple, getting their bosses setup with appropriate new loot, adding a few additional enemies, vaults, special levels etc. This continues the work I've being doing in the past few updates, going down the dungeon from top to bottem and filling in any content 'holes'. At the same time I'm working hard to get the game as bug free as possible and trying to catch any little details that need polishing.

As is always the case, I'll be spending the next week or so responding to any new bugs or issues that have cropped up with this update so please let me know if you spot anything, or something doesn't seem right. With that out of the way, onto the update!

Dungeon Structure:

• A lot of this is just reintroducing some structure that existed before I did the big Level-Gen rewrite a few updates ago and had not yet being carried forward into the new system.
  
• Extended the length of The Orc Fortress and The Dark Temple from 4 levels back to 6 (like how it was in December). There are so many connections and special features in this branch of the dungeon that it was feeling very cramped with only 4 levels. Note, I refer to Orc/Temple as Tier-3 in my notes so will be doing the same throughout this update.
  
• Added some additional zone entrance vaults for the first branch: Core, Ice Caves, Sewers.
  
• Added new zone entrance vaults for the second branch: Arcane Tower, Forge, and Crypt.
  
• Reintroduced the library as a set feature on Tier-3 level 3. A lot of people were missing this feature and I think it gives a nice, known resource that the player can dive towards before heading into the first branch.
  
• Reintroduced the runes at the branch ends and Tier-3:6 and the locked gate to Yendor on Tier-3:6.
  

Bosses:

• The Orc Fortress: Minotaur King w/ Hammer of Crushing
  
• The Orc Fortress: High Shaman w/ Totem of the Beasts
  
• The Dark Temple: High Priestess w/ Amulet of Healing
  
• The Dark Temple: Drachnid Queen w/ Drachind Web Bow
  
• The Dark Temple: Demonologist w/ Crown of Intellect
  

New Monsters:

• The Dark Temple: Summoning Statues (trying to make summoning a bit of a sub-theme in this zone).
  
• The Dark Temple: Mind Flayer
  
• The Orc Fortress: Orc Berserker replacing the Axe thrower. I'm trying to have the set of enemies in Orc be more melee, tank and healer focused while Temple is more ranged, caster and summoner focused.
  

Level Generation:

• The Dark Temple: new level generator w/ connected circular rooms. Another sub-theme of sorts I'm working on to differentiate orc and temple. Orc should have more square rooms and levels with lots of hallways and choke points. Temple should have lots of wide open spaces and circular rooms and structure.
  
• As mentioned above a bunch of new zone entrance vaults for the branches coming off of Tier-3.
  
• A bunch of new vaults and special levels.
  

New Items:

• Scroll of Flash Freeze (an alternative to hell fire).
  
• Potion of Amnesia which allows you to forget a talent and recover the points.
  

Mechanics:

• Staves now work off of a separate staff damage stat that is effected by intelligence rather than dexterity. I'm sort of back and forth in my own head whether range weapons and staves should be treated the same or separate but the consensus I got from you guys was that it just 'felt' better for staves to run off of INT. In my own testing this definitely made casters easier to play (they had gotten a lot harder previously having to split their stats between INT and DEX).
  
• Reverted wands to work on charges again since its really nice to have items that can be spammed repeatedly to get you out of tough situations. Charms will continue to work as before w/ an MP requirement and will be adjusted a bit and reintroduced into the game (they were previously not dropping normally since they overlapped w/ wands). So moving forward there will be two classes of consumable items: charged w/ no requirement and cooldown w/ an MP requirement.
  
• Closing the inventory screen while encumbered will now set your current movement points to 0. Previously you could walk around encumbered (which prohibits quick move), take off a single piece of gear and have full movement points to spend. I decided to have it set to 0 when closing the screen so you don't accidentally lose all your points while fiddling gear between slots.
  
• Teleportation now clears enemy agro. Makes scrolls of teleportation a lot more useful.
  
• Magic Power now effects the power of wands and scrolls. Increasing damage or duration where appropriate.
  
• Spider webs, and vines that are created by monsters or the player will now overwrite simple objects like blood, grass, bones etc.
  
• Fearing an enemy that is constricting you will now cause them to break constriction and run away.
  
• Player will no longer waste a turn trying to use the stairs if he is immobile. Got killed due to this and quickly fixed it :P.
  

Balancing:
Still holding of 'true' balancing until the end of the project once everything is actually in a finished state, but continuing to poke and prod as we go along where it seems appropriate.

• Disengage damage multiplier nerfed from 2.0, 3.0 => 1.6, 2.4 since this ability is pretty insanely OP given its cooldown resetting mechanic which allows it to be chained many times if used cleverly.
  
• Mystic Skull Helms HP bonus from potions nerfed 3HP => 2HP. This thing was getting out of hand in the end game sometimes giving 30+ HP.
  
• Beast Master Nyx net now lasts half as long. Previously getting caught in this was a near death sentence unless you had an escape option.
  
• The random move chance from confusion was significantly reduced. Getting confused was waay to painful previously and without a potion to cure it, it was very hard to even run away.
  
• Reduced the number of monsters in some vaults that were a bit over the top.
  
• HP per strength significantly increased from 2 => 4. Looking over a lot of the formulas comparing stats on items, talents etc. and the growth curve as the player progresses made it apparent that 2HP per strength was to low compared to other stats. Just consider that +10melee Damage from STR is insanely more meaningful then +20HP. +4HP might be overshooting a bit so feedback here is appreciated.
  
• Healing potions used at max HP now also grant +4HP (should this be higher? Same question with energy potions and max MP?).
  
• Storm Shot now has a long cooldown like berserk and weapon shield since it can basically clear entire rooms of enemies with a single use.
  

User Interface:

• Added a [G]oto menu accessible with the G key that can be used to automatically path between levels. A feature that has been missing for a long time.
  
• Added a mana number to the player when using text display (you can toggle it in the options). Was annoying to me to have to glance up to see how much mana I had.
  
• Some behind the scenes work so that you no longer have to restart the game when switching between text and bars for HP/MP display.
  
• The inventory key (default C) will now close the merchant menu.
  
• Removed the drop button from the inventory (just toss an item outside of the menu to drop it now).
  
• Cold bar will no longer show up if the player has sufficient cold resistance to ignore it.
  
• The description of cold resistance now includes the immunity to ambient cold description when > 20%.
  
• If an enemy is killed in the same turn it agros you, it will no longer popup !!! blocking the damage next.
  
• Fixed targeting on chakrams and tunnels shot to be a bit easier to aim.
  
• Chakram/tunnel shot no longer shows hidden enemies.
  

Bugs and Crashes:

• Fixed charge targeting around corners (was previously getting blocked)
  
• The smoke that trails out of charging enemies should now have a big cloud and small cloud to better indicate direction.
  
• Fixed PC facing wrong direction after charging
  
• Fixed locked doors having the wrong frame when opened.
  
• Getting killed by a trampling enemy will no longer have the enemy standing on top of the player.
  
• Knocking a boss into a pit and killing it should drop the loot as near to land as possible.
  
• 'Closed' tiles near to the Upper Dungeon:1 start position so the player doesn't start immediately surrounded.
  
• Fixed flame webs not damaging the player
  
• Fixed fire mages casting fire storm without line of sight.
  
• When trying to fire a weapon at an enemy and there is a hidden enemy between, you will no longer get the 'No Clear Line' message but rather just fire the projectile and it will hit the hidden enemy, revealing him. This one took a lot more work then expected fiddling with targeting code.
  
• The above also applies to abilities that fire projectiles like fire ball i.e. a hidden enemy will not block the targeting but will then get revealed when the projectile hits them.
  
• Fixed a bug where the merchant was double stocking items. Basically level gen would fail (it often does) and re-gen a few times, but since the merchant inventory is global it was being stocked each time.
  
• Shooting gas pots with fire will no longer insta burn the gas.
  
• Quick move will no longer allow you to move away from charm.
  
• Vanish talent should provide 100% stealth (even when adjacent)
  
• Vanish will now break when attacking an enemy or using abilities.
  
• Blinking away from constriction will now cancel the constriction.
  
• Fixed bridge walls blocking projectiles.
  
• Flame Spinner Spiders will no longer take damage on their own webs.
  
• A charging enemy that is immobilized (ex bear trap) will now stop its charge.
  
• Fixed enemies summoning orbs of storm or battlespheres on top of fire shrooms and traps.
  

Thats it for this update! Please let me know of any bugs or issues, as mentioned at the top, I'll be spending the next week cleaning up any mess I've accidentally made.

The plan for the next few updates is to finish up each chunk of the dungeon with 1.36 handling core/ice/sewers, 1.37 handles crypt/arcane/forge and 1.38 handling Yendor. That should pretty much finish up all the content I'm planning to add then I'll be turning my attention to finishing up character development, classes races etc. After that, its mostly just final debugging, polishing, fine tuning and balancing.

Thanks as always for all your feedback and support!

Update 1.35.1 - July-06-2020

• Fixed crash with Icicle Strike.
  
• Fixed lockup when auto exploring w/ Ogre near traps.
  
• Fixed Chakrams not working unless you had a range weapon equipped.
  
• Seperated staves and ranged weapons in the acquirement menu now that they function differently.
  
• Strafe Attack Rank-2 now allows you to strafe attack while sprint moving
  
• Renamed movement points to Sprint Points so the abbreviation doesn't conflict w/ Mana Points.
  

Update 1.35.2 - July-07-2020

• Fixed Noxious Armor giving negative resistance (yes that was a typo lol)
  
• Fixed Icicle Strike not hitting the first tiles
  
• Fixed Icicle Strike targeting being blocked by low cover (despite the projectiles passing over it)
  
• Fixed Icicle Strike shooting through walls
  
• Fixed a bunch of glyph room vaults in The Sewers and The Crypt having their walls tunneled through. There is a more subtle version of this bug that is still breaking walls and resulting in odd missing walls that still needs to be fixed.
  
• Bosses w/ Blink Ally ability will no longer blink Orbs of Fire and similar targets.
  
• Chakram projectile was invisible (just a visual error)
  
• Merchants and other friendly NPCs will no longer spawn on bridges (added a check for adjacent pits)
  
• Dominated Evil Eyes (or other enemies w/ confusion) will no longer cast confusion on you.
  
• Tab auto attack will no longer target Battle Spheres and other damage immune targets
  

Update 1.35.3 - July-08-2020

• Fixed crash opening chests in sewers 4/4.
  
• Fixed the description of the Range Mastery talent to not include staves.
  
• Fixed the description of the Strength attribute to indicate +4HP
  
• Fixed a crash when charging enemies on bear traps that would result in the player and the enemy overlapping and crashing the game.
  
• Amnesia will now remove the ability associated with the talent from your ability bar.
  
• Bear Trap talent now has correct icon.
  
• Fixed the 'hit box' on stat lines in the character menu when mousing over and highlighting (it was off a bit).
  
• Fixed a bunch of glyph room vaults that had their walls broken by tunnels
  
• Minotaurs will no longer try to charge you through low walls (bridges).
  

Update 1.35.4 - July-11-2020

• Fixed Orbs of Fire becoming inactive after using a teleport scroll.
  
• Fixed enemy berserk crit attacks breaking through weapon shield.
  
• Fixed: If Shield Wall (or any other status effect) is used AFTER getting constricted, it was wearing off when constriction wore off.
  
• Fixed: Ogres (or anyone slowed) were not able to use Sprint Move if the destination tile was diagonal to them. The safety check to prevent them from normally diagonally moving was preventing the Sprint Move.
  
• Mousing over fountains, chests, or enemies in unexplored tiles will no longer display the green select box, allowing you to scout unexplored space with your mouse.
  
• Fixed a level-gen crash in The Core.
  
• Fixed: web was not always landing and was dealing 1 point of damage. I had accidentally overwritten the code with the code for the Drachid Web Bow.
  

Update 1.35.5 - July-13-2020

• Fixed a level-gen crash in The Dark Temple caused by open edge tiles on the map. Console log was: "Cannot read property 'isStandardDropWall' of null".
  
• Fixed another level-gen crash in The Vault of Yendor where the same level-generator could be used 3 times in a row (very rare) and run out of vaults on Yendor:3 resulting in a hard crash.
  
• Fixed: when Shield of Ice was used at low HP (ex. 1HP) the player would take at most 1 damage to the Shield of Ice HP. There was a cap to prevent negative HP that was not taking into account the HP pool of Shield of Ice. Player will now take full damage to Shield of Ice HP pool.
  
• Slow enemies will no longer move diagonally when they are unaware of your presence.
  
• Fixed: Sleep bombing and then dominating an enemy would result in an ally that never woke up. All allies will now automatically wake up when the Deep Sleep effect wears off.
  
• Wands will now scale their buy/sell price based on the number of remaining charges.
  
• Fixed/added descriptions for Hammer of Crushing and Drachnid Web Bow.
  
• Added Controls Menu button to the Main Menu.
  

Hello everyone!

Update 1.34 is here with a bunch of new content, bug fixes and some changes (reverts really) to character development. Thank you everyone who commented on the recent feedback request regarding which char-dev system we should use going forward. Much like my own thoughts on the issue, it looked like there were some mixed opinions with a reasonable bias towards the old attribute system. So that being said and since, after a bunch of playthroughs I think I prefer the old system as well myself, we'l be reverting to attributes and working with them going forward. Obviously there's a lot of kinks to work out and balancing to be done but I think the game definitely feels better overall with the attributes rather than the skills.

I'll be continuing to release updates reasonably quickly I think going forward, each one with a bit more content, bug fixes, and polish. Since we're getting near to the end of development I'll also be posting a lot more feedback requests, maybe trying to hit one key aspect per update, just really trying to hammer everything into a nice final version.

So thanks as always for everyones feedback and support, now onto the update!


Reverted back to the previous system with:

• Attributes instead of skills.
  
• Encumbrance system based on strength.
  
• Attribute requirements for talents instead of levels.
  

I believe the system is mostly the same as it was before, but I'll be continuing to balance the actual numbers here over the course of the next few updates. There were a lot of good suggestions in the feedback thread on how to improve the system so I'll be taking a lot of that into account.


Really the major part of this update besides the char-dev. I'm working my way down the dungeon starting from the top and adding bosses wherever they seem to be missing. Also adding items wherever they were missing.

• The Upper Dungeon: Bojacks the Berserker, dropping a Bloodstained Axe.
  
• The Upper Dungeon: Argyl the Swift, dropping a Goblin Swiftbow.
  
• The Sunless Desert: Synax the Snake Charmer dropping the Serpent Fang Dagger.
  
• The Swamp: Fergus the Fungal King dropping a Mushroom Cap Shield.
  
• The King of Thieves now drops boots instead of the Serpent Fang Dagger.
  
• The Vampire Bat now drops the ring of vampirism.
  
• A bunch of vaults were added for the new bosses as well as new vaults for some of the existing ones.
  

A bunch of subtle balancing, changing enemy cooldowns, damage and hit points, generally making the end game a bit harder (it was getting to the point where surviving the first 8 levels or so made victory almost assured).

• Added restrictions to really weak items like (ex. short swords, short bows etc.) so they no longer drop in the deeper dungeon where they are pretty useless.
  
• Significantly reduced mana regen (back to where it was before) as part of the changes to character development.
  
• Added a ton of new tables for crystal chests, specifically for higher level items.
  
• Also added restrictions to crystal chests so they don't generate junk items at deeper dungeon levels.
  
• Reduced item drop rate a bit (way to many items in the late game).
  
• Reduced the frequency of Reward-Vaults a bit for the same reason as above.
  

• Enemies will no longer try to buff or heal arcane arrows, fire orbs etc.
  
• Cone of Cold now works through opaque clouds.
  
• Cone of Cold and Burst of wind will no longer pass through pillars.
  
• Freezing Clouds will now be correctly created on platform walls.
  
• Chakrams can now be targeted over platform walls.
  
• Enemies that have a slight randomness to their movement will just move normally when dominated or charmed (they wouldn't follow you nicely due to their random movement).
  
• Javelins will now work with sneak attacks.
  
• Fixed crash: blinking onto pits.
  
• Fixed interactions with perfect aim and 'chest high walls / objects' like tables.
  
• Stairs will no longer be placed in view of drop walls.
  
• Killing an enemy that produces a gas cloud on death with fire will no longer immediately burn the gas.
  

Balance:

• Scaled enemy hp a bit higher, particularly in the later half of the game. Lots of people were noticing the game was a lot easier, myself included, so this should patch that up again. As is always the case, I'm just trying to keep balance 'good enough' until the game is basically complete.
  
• Dex now only grants a 1 movement point per 2 dex (as was the case previously).
  
• All staves now grant some kind of spell casting bonus (mana, magicPow, specific elemental focus etc.). This should provide some differentiation between staves and other range options, with bows and such always being superior weapons. I'm open to suggestions on how else to differentiate the two weapon classes.
  
• Level-up heal now also removes poison or any other negative status effects.
  

Bugs-and-Crashes

• Fixed all the attribute rings giving strength instead of the actual attribute.
  
• Gloves of strength and dexterity now give the attribute rather than raw damage bonus.
  
• The movement point bar was extending past the limits when placing points in dexterity.
  
• The players allies will no longer attempt to attack orbs or any indestructible 'characters'.
  
• Gold and items will not longer spawn on timed gates, making it impossible to read the time.
  
• Fixed: you could not use movement points to swap with an ally but you could swap if you just targeted past them.
  
• Spawners (ex. rat nests) now give exp for all unspawned creatures so its not beneficial to stand around farming them. This was already a thing but was commented out in the code for mysterious reasons now lost to the ravages of time.
  
• Arcane arrows were giving exp every time they 'burst'. Has this always been a thing lol?
  
• Fixed intelligence description to list magicPow as 5% rather than 10%
  
• Fixed characters not being able to raise attributes to the supposed cap based on their race/class.
  
• Group buffs (ex. shield of flames) were still being cast on invalid targets.
  
• Burst of Wind was not knocking back or damaging enemies that were stacked up.
  
• Enemies that blink their allies near the player will no longer blink those allies onto traps or over pits.
  

Just as a side note, Umbrs discovery of a Rogue Fable version of the 'peasant railgun' (posted in the discord bugs-and-crashes), gave me a legitimate LOL this morning, so well done :P

Bugs-and-Crashes

• Shooting a trap w/ a Runic Staff of Death will no longer crash the game
  
• Upgrading a talent w/ a cooldown will now reset the cooldown to 0
  
• Enchanting a wand that is recharging will now reset its cooldown to 0.
  
• Using < to goto the upstairs while levitating over a pit will no longer cause you to descend the pit.
  
• Fixed a bug where storm shot on a reflective enemy would cause all subsequent arrows to fire in the reflected direction.
  
• Fixed blink not working past closed gates.
  
• Scrolls of teleportation will now search for a destination tile by flood searching the map starting at the up stairs. This will stop the player from teleporting into inaccessible areas while still allowing teleport to get you out of otherwise trapped positions. The issue here was that previously it was flooding from the players position so if you had blinked into a treasure vault, a teleport scroll wouldn't get you out.
  
• Fixed charging enemies passing through objects directly in front of them on the first turn.
  
• Fixed random attribute gains from fountains and levelups giving already maxed attributes.
  
• The Queen Spider will no longer lay eggs once dominated since the resulting spiders would either have to be hostile (not good) or else on the players side which would allow for infinite allies (also not good). Let me know if there are any other enemy abilities that might need to be flagged with this dontUseIfCharmed tag.
  
• Fixed charms being consumed when used rather than going on cooldown.
  
• Fixed issue with boss monsters dropping multiple copies of their items if killed by multiple damage sources at the same time.
  
• Fixed storm shot projectiles being blocked by low height objects when adjacent to the player.
  
• Fixed the librarian still listing level requirements on talents rather than the new attribute reqs.
  
• Fixed some drop wall rooms in the core that were not triggering and leaving the enemies trapped and visible via telepathy.
  
• Fixed a crash when using MvP to swap with a dominated enemy caster that is currently in the middle of casting fire storm.
  
• Fixed the movement bar extending past the bounds when upgrading the athletics talent.
  
• The level up message will no longer end the turn when clicking 'OK'. Technically what was happening was the player was leveling up on an enemies turn and then subsequent enemies in the turn order were making their moves when you clicked 'OK'. So now level up just forces it to be the players turn.
  
• Fixed a generation bug where 2 x copies of lockjaw would spawn on the same level.
  
• Fixed issue where cone of cold would not knock back 2 large enemies in a line.
  
• Fixed a generation bug where the merchant would stock his inventory multiple times. Previously the merchant would stock his inventory, adding new items to the global merchant inventory, when he was created. However, level-gen has many fail states that can cause it to re-gen multiple times behind the scenes and this was causing multiple stockings. So now the merchant inventory is only stocked once level-gen has successfully completed.
  

Balance:

• As part of an overall push to remove obscure stats, resistance will now just display as a % (same underlying mechanics and values). There might be some slight discrepancies that will be balanced for over time.
  
• Slightly reduced some cooldowns on various enemies making them use their abilities faster.
  
• The Cat Lord now drops a Ring of Dexterity when killed
  
• The Slime King now deals damage when he tosses his baby slimes at you.
  
• Orc Armor, Elven Chain and Wizardry Armor now grants STR, DEX, and INT respectively rather than raw stats. I think the option to raise attributes with equipment is quite critical to broadening your build in the later half of the game.
  
• Attribute rings now grant +2 to the attribute
  
• Reduced the weight of all armor in the 'body' slot by a bit since a lot of it was a bit absurd.
  

User-Interface:

• Some cleanup on the character screen, lining up the attribute and talent panels nicely.
  
• Moved the inventory to the center of the character screen to put some distance between all the text.
  

Hello everyone!

Been reading through a lot of the comments on the latest update and many people have raised issues w/ the changes made to character development specifically with regards to the removal of attributes. Since this was already something that I was back and forth on myself I figured it'd be great to just get some specific feedback on this aspect of the game.

There's definitely a balance I'm trying to hit here between having builds feel distinct and requiring a little bit of planning and strategy on the players part vs being able to adapt to and utilize whatever loot the RNG is throwing at you. I'm trying to avoid the situation where 50% of the equipment or talents that drop are just immediately useless if they don't fit within your build.

So the main question is really just: Do you prefer the game w/ attributes, encumbrance, and talent requirements or do you prefer the new, looser system? Any other related feedback is also of course appreciated.

I'm mostly done w/ my work on Fridays update so I'm gonna try the following reverts so that we can get a clearer comparison given all the other changes.

#1 Attributes back in, instead of skills
#2 Encumberance based off of strength (I think this one was actually quite important to making builds distinct, since it made heavy armor a pretty big investment w/ a big payoff).
#3 Talents have attribute requirements

Its actually getting surprisingly easy to swap things back and forth like this and try out different combinations (all that code refactoring is paying off). I'm confident that, together, we can figure out an ideal balance, so please let me know your thoughts!

*EDIT*
For those who don't want to type out a big response or analyses a simple Yay or Nay on the new char dev system is helpful as well. As I mentioned above this was one of those changes I was pretty on the fence about so even just a broad idea of what everyone thinks of the changes will be helpful.

Hello everyone!

Update 1.33 is finally here after nearly 4 months of work! This one is pretty massive so I won't be going into full details on all the changes and additions since this post would just turn into a wall of text. We're getting pretty close to the point where I'll be calling the game complete with a tentative final release date of August 30th 2020, so I'm working hard on cleaning everything up, adding lots of little bits of content and just generally balancing and finalizing things.

So there's a massive amount of new content, tweaks and improvements but generally speaking they fall into two categories:

Level Generation and Dungeon Content:
This is really the bulk of the update and what I spent the vast majority of time on. All of January and February were spent overhauling the mess of spaghetti code that level-gen had devolved into and I now have a pretty clean system in which adding new vaults, new generators, new bosses etc. is very easy.

The original plan was to release once this was complete but I held it off since, from the perspective of you guys, the players, not much would have changed. It was all just behind the scenes technical stuff. So I've spent the last 2 months building up the generators, adding new vaults, new special levels etc. This stage is not quite complete and I'm planning on the next update being sort of the final Dungeon Content update where I finalize all this stuff. Just to get a rough idea of what we're looking at here in terms of content:

• The total number of vaults has gone from around 100 in update 1.32 to nearly 800. Many of these are now classified as "challenge-vaults" or "boss-vaults" which the many different level generators will try to control (not to few and not to many per level). The main idea here is that every level should contain at least one hard room or area.
  
• A whole bunch of mess was consolidated into "reward-vaults" which now include crystal chest rooms, enchantment table rooms, wishing wells, those little closets w/ a bunch of potions, food, scrolls or gold etc. These can now be blocked by key doors, switch activated doors, or timed doors. The number of keys and locked doors is now controlled for globally, with the key appearing either on the same level or deeper in the dungeon. Finally, there are 'hooks' in challenge-vaults so that something like the switch that unlocks a reward-vault can generate inside of a guarded challenge-vault.
  
• There is now a bunch of technical, behind the scenes tagging that goes on so that vaults can be general (placed by any generator) or special (placed by some kind of special generator) while still respecting overall mins/maxes on number of challenge-vaults, reward-vaults, boss-vaults per level.
  
• These three points, plus a bunch of general cleanup means I can pretty much write new generators, and add new content very quickly and it all just sort of integrates together as long as I tag everything correctly. This update is really just scratching the surface of whats possible since so much of the time was spent just laying this foundation. Expect a lot more 'stuff' with the next update as I can now turn my attention 100% towards new content creation.
  

Character Dev and Stat Streamlining
As we approach the end of the project I'm generally just going over everything and trying to streamline and simplify. There are a ton of little systems, stats, properties etc. that have been added over the last year and a half of development that are obscure, have little impact, are confusing or just are not fleshed out enough to justify their existence.

One of my main goals is to make stats on items and talents as clear as possible in their effect i.e. you should be able to tell EXACTLY what sort of bonus your going to get without having to deal w/ odd rounding or derived stats. Some of the major changes in this area:

• Removed attributes (strength, intelligence, dexterity) replacing them, where they appeared, with just raw HP, MP, meleeDmg etc. Rather than looking at a ring of +3STR and having to remember how much HP/meleeDmg that translates to, you'l just get a ring w/ +HP and +meleeDmg.
  
• Melee Power and Range Power always annoyed me to no end since they acted as multipliers and due to rounding you'd get odd situations where say a ring w/ +2meleePow might not actually raise your damage at all due to subtle rounding. This is now replaced w/ just raw +DMG. So a ring of +2meleeDMG just adds.... +2 meleeDMG.
  

I've also decided to revert back to the original skill point system w/ simple level requirements on talents. Given the short length of the game and the randomness of the loot, I think it makes more sense to have character development be very 'open' and unrestricted so that you can easily adapt on the fly to whatever the dungeon throws at you.

Furthermore talents now have just two 'ranks' instead of three (you learn it with one point and can then upgrade it with a second). This second rank should be a much larger, more impactful improvement over the first.

Misc:
As mentioned at the top, there's really too much to list for this update in detail but some other major points are:

• The Dark Temple is now back in the game alternating w/ The Orc Fortress
  
• A bunch of new enemies and bosses
  
• A bunch of new items
  
• New talents or changes to existing talents.
  

So yeah... lots of stuff, you'l really have to just check it out to see the changes and additions. My notes for this update are quite literally 100+ pages long :P

The next few months should basically just be a massive push of content. I'd like to get at least one new zone added, a couple of new classes and finally figure out what to do w/ races and then after that its mostly just polish and cleanup.

Thanks as always for all the support! Looking forward to hearing all your feedback, any suggestions, and of course let me know of any crashes or bugs!



Thanks for all the bug and crash reports everyone! Sorry its always so messy the week after updates, but I'll be getting these fixed pretty quickly now. Will be doing lots of little updates over the next few days trying to get rid of these hard crashes asap.

May-05-2020 - 1.33.3

• Beast Master Nyx was crashing when throwing nets.
  
• Wand of lightning was not working at all.
  
• Extra stairs on UD:4 that led to.... UD:4 are now fixed (removed)
  
• Fixed an infinite loop (wouldn't actually crash, just complete lockup) in Yendor that was occurring due to portals.
  

May-05-2020 - 1.33.4

• Fixed a crash that lots of people reported under different situations where mousing over certain items (ex. Ring of Learning) crashed the game. This was mostly reported in crystal chests but could occur anywhere the item was generated.
  
• The -HP mod on some rings was creating fractional HP like 20.2
  

May-06-2020 - 1.33.5

• Removed staves as an option in acquirement menu since they have been rolled into ranged weapons. I'm considering ways to differentiate staves a bit from bows at least stat wise (maybe they generally have +mana or +spell power or element specific focus effects), so these may get split out on the summon menu again to allow mages to specify staves.
  
• Fixed the tome summoning on the acquirement menu.
  
• Fixed a missing switch for a locked gate in one of The Sewers levels.
  
• Fixed a level generation crash in The Core (would just lock up the game when descending and have weird walls and no stairs if you tried to reload).
  

May-08-2020 - 1.33.6

• Pits on the last level of a zone (level 4) will not longer be treated as bottomless, instead dropping you to the next zone. Reported for example on Dark Temple:4.
  
• Wands are now enchantable, reducing their cooldown.
  
• Fixed descriptions on speed granting items to no longer say 'doubles movement speed' since this has been replaced by movement points.
  
• Fixed spike traps turning invisible when triggered.
  
• Projectiles from Storm Shot should now correctly travel and not just explode in front of the player. I assume this is what was being reported w/ "Storm shot is missing". From my testing it looked like it was working fine with arrows but staves were not behaving correctly. Please let me know if there is some other issue with this ability.
  

May-11-2020 - 1.33.7

• Fixed crash when shooting shrooms with a heartwood bow.
  
• Being 'lured' onto a trap will now trigger the trap (ex. fire shrooms)
  
• Focus effects will now effect the damage of elemental staves.
  
• Fixed a giant ant glyph room that was missing walls, allowing the enemies to leave before opening the door.
  
• Fixed a vault in The Ice Caves that would explode walls but there were no enemies inside.
  
• Fixed a few vaults in The Sunless Desert in which opening one glyph door would not open all of them.
  
• Reloading the game will no longer clear the cold bar
  
• Shield of Ice will no longer block damage from hunger, poison and cannibalise.
  
• Shield of Ice will no longer stack with itself, allowing mummys to build up massive shields. I've mentioned before that Race's will eventually be getting a complete overhaul, so I'll be considering other broken interactions with the mummys infinite rest.
  
• Summoned battle spheres will hide their hit points since they are not attackable.
  
• An enemy fire mage that is casting fire storm (the multi-turn spell) will now stop casting if he gets blinked, knocked back or otherwise moved from the initial position.
  
• Fixed NPC fire storm passing through glyph doors (possibly walls at some angles).
  
• Gold will no longer spawn on top of gas vents in the sewers.
  
• Fixed storm shot always missing. The issue here was the interaction with the Perfect Aim talent.
  

May-15-2020 - 1.33.8
Hello everyone! Unless something I just changed seriously breaks, this should be the last 'hot-fix' update under 1.33. The next month or two will be dedicated to finishing up all the dungeon content, adding new enemies, bosses, vaults, items, hopefully a new zone etc.

Since I don't have any major system overhauls or code rewrites planned I'll be trying to get smaller updates out once every week or two. Pure content type updates tend to be a lot easier to break into smaller chunks like this. I'll be keeping an eye out for any bug reports and pushing these fixes along with the updates, trying to keep the game as stable as possible as we approach final release.

So please let me know in the next few days if I've seriously broken something, otherwise I'll be getting back to actually pushing the project forward. Update 1.34 should be out next Friday with some new content.

So onto the bug fixes! Thanks again everyone for all the detailed reports.

Bugs and Crashes:

• Random teleportation (either trap or scroll) will now perform a 'flood search' from the players current position when finding the random destination. This should stop teleportation from dropping the player behind locked doors, glyph doors etc.
  
• Same idea w/ falling down pits except that the flood search starts at the down stairs, so you shouldn't fall into locked areas or behind glyph doors.
  
• Added switches to the insides of locked downstairs rooms in case you fall down to the next level before unlocking the door.
  
• Fixed some portals that had their destinations reversed in one of the Arcane Tower final levels.
  
• Fixed a crash w/ the mossy branch creating vines. (Can't remember now if this crashed or just didn't work).
  
• Fixed a crash when arcane arrows (or any charging enemy) hit you while levitating above a pit.
  
• Arcane arrows now save their orientation when exiting and reloading.
  
• Fixed a level-gen bug where rivers were crossing over pits.
  
• Added prices to a bunch of items that were missing them (previously just 1gp)
  
• Fixed an issue where stairs would generate in 'boss rooms' in The Under Grove and The Ice Caves. Boss rooms were already flagged to disallow stairs but there was some crazy nonsense going on with the generation in these two zones in which I literally spent 10+ hours a few days ago tearing everything apart only to find a = where there should have been a == deep down in the bowls of some level-gen code.... good times :P
  
• Fixed a crash when the 'Special Stat' panel has to many effects listed. It will now just not display the overflowed stats but I'll have to add some up/down arrows for the odd cases when you actually manage to get this many special effects. Note: how the hell is this even possible lol? I had to work pretty hard to actually add the exact mix of talents and items to even get that many effects all at once.
  
• A dominated enemy with the NPC version of charm will no longer always target the player with charm.
  
• Using a scroll of acquirement on 'Armor' will no longer give you a shield (they have their own category).
  
• The entire floor space of a timed treasure room will now trigger the 'click' that stops the door from closing and will also open the door if it is closed. I assume people were getting stuck inside w/ teleports that skipped the actual door tile.
  
• Static levels (the hand made ones, with consistent layouts) were not being flagged as 'unique' so it was possible to get the same level twice in one dungeon run.
  
• Burst of Wind now works inside sand clouds, steam, smoke, etc, things that were blocking LoS but were otherwise 'passable'.
  
• Removed one way stairs from the archery range level that used to be a special level. I'm actually planning on adding back these 'special' challenge levels with one way stairs to all zones at some point in this final content push.
  
• There was a bug where hitting an enemy that blinks with an ability or weapon that causes knockback would cause the knockback to occur after the blink. I tried a few ways to handle this that all ended up looking odd, so now any ability or attack that causes knockback will simply never trigger the blink.
  

May-19-2020 - 1.33.9
Quick fix to remove double stairs (that crash) from generating in OrcFortress:1 / DarkTemple:1.

Hello everyone!

Update 1.33 is taking quite a bit longer then expected so I figured I'd let everyone know what I've been working on and what the delay is! For those who are just interested in knowing when it will release, I'm aiming for Friday, March 27th.

As I think I mentioned in the previous update notes, my plan for 1.33 was to do a big clean up, improvement and expansion of all the dungeon content, namely: level-generation, unique vaults, special levels, terrain features, monster types and bosses. Basically make the stuff we already have better and add lots new stuff.

So this is what I was working on for the better part of January until I got fed up with a lot of the underlying code that controls level generation, vault placement, population of levels etc. Some of this code was really old and had just sort of accumulated over the years without any real structure. Generally speaking, the number of special cases and 'hacks' had grown to the point where adding anything or even changing anything was pretty damn difficult and required a lot of arcane knowledge that was never well documented.

So I figured that, in order to make the sorts of improvements and additions I was planning, it would be a good idea to spend some time and clean up all this mess. Well suffice to say, "some time" turned into "a lot of time" and all of February was spent deep in the bowls of level-generation, slowly wrangling it into a more manageable and unified system.

This has now been 'mostly' completed and the new system is a heck of a lot nicer. Its capable of producing much more interesting, and complex levels. The many different generators (there are a lot of them), now share a lot more common code so that improvements, fixes and new content are now applied everywhere at once. Finally, its waaay easier to add content which I've been taking advantage of for the last few weeks to build up a ton of new stuff.

So basically, I spent a ton of time cleaning everything up, and am only now really getting to take advantage of all the cool new systems. Everything is now progressing very quickly and smoothing and its actually very exciting how easy it is to add and modify things. As mentioned at the top, I plan to get a pretty sizable update out by the end of the month so hopefully it will be worth the wait.

Thanks everyone for all your patience and support!

Justin

*edit* I should also add that I've been using Twitter to post occasional screen shots and updates at @PixelForgeGames for anyone interested.