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Well thanks Jim! I'm having a ton of fun with this. Don't know when it will be done but I'm putting in good hours per week. The screenshots above are lovely placeholder graphics which are slowly being redone. Here are some creatures - very much inspired by stuff like Breath of Fire, Lufia, Phantasy Star... http://zirconstudios.com/game/IREnemies.jpg The game has a job system. It's a nod to FF Tactics, FF5, or more recently Bravely Default/Second etc. You start with 1 job and a set of core abilities (a couple class passives, and 4 active skills). As you kill stuff you gain JP, which can be spent to purchase more class abilities in any order you want. There is no skill tree. The plan is then to let you switch jobs, but not anytime, maybe every 5 floors or so. If you switch jobs you keep all your previous learned skills (though not the innate passive bonuses), but you start at 0 JP in the new class. Of course if you switch back you'll still have your old JP count. So yeah. Hopefully it will be pretty cool! And of course I have to thank Jim for teaching me how to actually use Unity and correcting all my lovely code decisions before I commit to them. I really would not have been able to work on this without his help.
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Sep 29, 2016 20:23
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New build of my Square/SNES inspired dungeon crawler is up! https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57600.msg1291783#msg1291783 Windows: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build10-23-16.rar Mac: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build10-23-16.app.zip General & Dev Discord: Come say hi! https://discord.gg/4q5kjUm What Is This Roguelike / dungeon crawler with a 16-bit aesthetic, inspired by games like Lufia 2, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 5-6 etc. It's intended to be more accessible, both through polished presentation and streamlined mechanics. It uses a job system very much like games such as FF5 or FF Tactics where you can switch jobs and take some abilities with you, while gaining new innate abilities in your current job. There aren't a huge number of stats and micromanagement tweaks to worry about. I want it to be more about your tactics in the dungeon, fun tactical + kinetic combat, and not about how you ruined your character by not putting enough points into the 18th skill in your passive tree or whatever  There's no story ingame yet but the concept is that you come from a city deep underground that is mysteriously protected from harm, with only one way up to the surface. Nobody knows how the city came to be or what is on the surface. People try to travel up and nobody comes back. You're the next one in line! A big thing will be as that as you ascend you'll start getting into some awesome steampunk/Phantasy Star style ancient technology which opens the door to fighting badass machines, or maybe even playing one yourself. Progress I've been working on the game for about 6 months, although only more seriously in the last 3 months (getting custom art and putting more hours in), all thanks to @madjackmcmad for teaching me how to Unity. It is DEFINITELY still very early on missing tons of gameplay content, art/music, SFX are all ripped from FF games etc. But I'm proud of the progress and mechanics developed so far. By the end of the year I want to have a decent set of balanced classes and a solid 10 floors of balanced content, along with a town hub and and overall strong presentation. Big Important Missing Things * A good name * Most of the UI is not final at all (i.e. no weapon compare, clunky character/job screens) * Environment art is coming along but there is lots to do. There will be much more variety as well as multiple tile sets * There will be an entire town hub that is not available right now where you can buy/sell stuff, heal up etc * Dungeon layouts are procedural but with only one algorithm. There will be more algorithms for much more diverse layouts. * Special rooms / dungeon features... fountains, hidden rooms, merchants, all that good stuff. * About 10 more classes and more abilities per class Tipz * Hit "H" for help ingame, which has some useful commands * Don't turn off tooltips right away. They remind you how to do things like learn new abilities with JP (press "J") * When you change jobs, you lose all "innate" skills from the previous job. But if you spend JP to master those skills you will keep them from job to job. * As you progress in the dungeon watch for monsters that have resistance to certain damage types. Shows up in grey and it will say in the combat log too. zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Oct 23, 2016 |
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Oct 23, 2016 21:24
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Thanks for the feedback on the game!~quote:- It would be nice to have some kind of "look" command, to be able to see a monster's name from afar, and maybe get a ballpark estimate of its difficulty. Agreed on all counts. In my local build I fixed up the "rest until healed thing to work for stamina and energy also. Examine should be easy enough to do so I'll see if I can do that before the next one goes out. I agree the equipment interface is not really great, it's my first pass programmer UI ultimately I want something a little more utilitarian that combines elements of both the equipment and character sheets. For example something like this: _29.png) My lead artist right now is working on the town area but once he finishes that I'll ask him to fix up some of these UI screens including the job one. quote:If there are no plans to include a hurry-up feature to force players to move on, resting until healed should probably be replaced with just plain healing up when you're no longer in a fight. It's a little pointless to make people rest if there's no reason for them not to. Yeah there is turn-based regen of your main stats like many roguelikes - the (R) command just passes turns until you're at max or until you see an enemy.
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Oct 29, 2016 16:48
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New build of my FF-inspired dungeon crawler is now available! This is a huge step forward and IMO the game is twice as good now. (Updated again since this post yesterday) WIN http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build11-2-16.rar OSX http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build11-2-16.app.zip Major Things * New dungeon layout algorithms. You'll now find wide-open caves as well as more structured floors with no corridors (rooms are instead built edge-to-edge). * Floramancer has a full compliment of abilities now. This is a class focused on summoning, indirect attacks and positioning. In other words: Summon Plants And Blow Them Up lol * Shamlessly stealing from Brogue, each weapon type now has extra unique properties. For example, axes hit everything around you. Swords will auto-riposte when you parry. Daggers deal extra damage for consecutive attacks on one enemy, etc. * Monster spawn tables are in, which should (?) mean more even challenge scaling as you descend. Also there are new badass monsters, and some existing monsters have received new powers. * You can now hover over stuff to examine what's in a tile (this will also show monster HP%). Or hit "X" on the keyboard to enter examine mode and do the same (move examine square with arrow keys) * New monsters and improvements to existing monsters * New class sprites * Brigand improvements - no more boring innate pierce bonus. Instead, you have 20% chance to inflict bleed w/ attacks, and abilities now do extra damage to bleeding enemies (or gain new effects) * More music What's Next * More jobs! Next one will probably be a tankier melee specialist (as opposed to the sneaky brigand style) OR an archer type * More things to find in the dungeon and more motivation to explore. Items sprinkled around, fountains, hidden stuff? Who knows! A * More refinement and improvement to the tilesets and layouts. For example I have code that builds rivers in the cave, which looks awesome but monsters need a way to cross it. Maybe next build. * Town hub needs to happen at some point * First boss fight (probably level 5 or 6) with a custom layout * More art: Floramancer sprite, more combat FX etc Screenies http://zirconstudios.com/game/FireBreath.gif http://zirconstudios.com/game/AxeFX.gif http://zirconstudios.com/game/CreepingDeath.gif zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 22:32
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Hahaha yes. Getting 1shot by Level 0 enemies... truly amazing. But it did like a lot of work went into it though, I can appreciate that. At one point I thought about a party-based game with ATB/old school FF style combat but I just love classic roguelike gameplay too much. So when I say FF inspired it's more like, FF5/FFT style job system and the Square art/music aesthetic of the mid 1990s. Although honestly the music is turning out a lot closer to Lufia 2.
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Nov 1, 2016 23:38
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ToxicFrog posted:Does it, though? Games like DoomRL and ToME4 (or, in the JRPG space, Atelier Iris 3 or FFX) have extremely granular timing, but are still turn-based by, essentially, skipping forward to the next decision point on input. You could do the same thing with a Grandia-style system, I think; it'd take a bit of UI work (when you select an action, it needs to tell you which enemies will get to decide and/or act before you actually finish it), but it's by no means impossible. For my game I use a charge time system under the hood just like FFT. Some abilities will cost more or less CT for both players and monsters, and it is possible to gain more or less than 100 CT per game 'step'. The result is that you will get free turns sometimes, and there will be turns where you do something but a monster might not (if they are super slow). You can also see your CT at any time.
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Nov 2, 2016 15:27
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Clever Spambot posted:This is maybe the wrong place to ask this but anyone know of any halfway decent unity roguelike tutorials? I have a familiarity with unity and C# if that matters. Good question. This will give you a little bit of insight... https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/2d-roguelike-tutorial But it's so simple that you will probably have to redo a lot of stuff (if not everything) it teaches you later anyway. So maybe skip that. There is a gold mine of good content on Quill18's channel (quill18creates), some of which applies to roguelikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?quill18creates In particular his tutorial on creating large meshes built from a dynamically generated texture is really good. IMO it is not great to do a roguelike with gameobjects as tiles, even if you use gameobject pooling. I tried it and the performance just sucks even w/ aggressive culling too. Switching to his method (make one texture of the entire map and just draw that) is way way better. Some random general things I've learned, both on my own and with Jim's (madjackmcmad) extensive help... take with a grain of salt: Store all your data in your own custom data structures and classes, not in Unity components. Use Unity stuff for display purposes while keeping the data separate. Basically, model view controller approach. For example if you have a movable thing (like the player) don't rely on transform.position in your game code to determine where the player is in the game world. After all you might want animations or sprite effects that change the transform, even if the player is never actually moving on the game grid. In my game, a prefab representing a monster is basically a sprite renderer, an animation component, and an audio source, that's it. I actually create the monster and all relevant data in pure C# with my own classes/functions. Then once it's created, I instantiate the prefab of that monster and just connect the data object to the GameObject. This is a good way to do it because if you want to switch floors, you want to clear all game objects (visual stuff) without losing any actual data, so you can spawn a new set of gameobjects representing the new floor. DON'T rely on box colliders / physics linecasts for things like line of sight. It seems convenient but it won't work in the long run. Well maybe it can (I used those tools at first) but it turned out to be way more performance efficient to write my own algorithms rather than run lots of these physics components all the time. It also gives you a lot more flexibility to do things like slightly fudge line of sight, whereas you can't really rewrite Unity features like Linecast or Raycast. When it comes to game content, you will need some way to store game content that ideally isn't just in your C# code files, that way you (or anyone else) can make changes in a simple text editor. For example rather than hard code what a "Slime" is you probably want to have a file somewhere that effectively says "Slime: 50 hp, 10 attack, 5 defense, drops 3-5 gold", and then have the game load that up at runtime. For this Unity natively supports reading (deserializing) XML and JSON. Or you can create a totally custom data format (which Jim did). In any case, Unity supports this stuff out of the box pretty well.
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Nov 3, 2016 06:27
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heard u like girls posted:Man Dungeonmans has some great music. Did not expect that. thanks bruh
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Nov 3, 2016 19:29
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Luceid posted:are you familiar with the music of hitoshi sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, Radiant Silvergun, etc)? a lot of the boss music in Dungeonmans sounds similar and be it by inspiration or sheer chance, that's an insanely Good Thing™ and i really really like it. Yes absolutely, Sakimoto is one of my favorite composers! Jim and I were 100% on the same page with the whole OST in terms of references and inspirations. I've worked on some fairly big game soundtracks over the years but I actually put more time, effort and love into Dungeonmans than anything and wrote a ton of stuff because I enjoy that style so much. Also did you know you can listen to the soundtrack here and maybe buy it if you like it https://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/album/dungeonmans-original-soundtrack zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Nov 4, 2016 |
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Nov 4, 2016 00:56
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Hey so my roguelike has no name yet and I'm sick of not having one. What do you guys think of Tangledeep as a name? If there were a subtitle (like in album art) it would be Tangledeep: Trials of the Swallowed City. I want to evoke that sense of mystery, danger, and adventure that you got with so many classic JRPGs in the 16bit era. Does that have a sense of "ooh, that sounds like a cool and fun RPG with a nostalgic tone" or is it like "pass". Of course there isn't a lot of lore in the game yet.. well really none at all, but the name will make sense in context of the game too of course.
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Nov 4, 2016 23:48
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Just published a new build of my SNES/Square-inspired roguelike, Tangledeep! Full change log is available here if you want to check it out. WIN: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build11-12-16.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build11-12-16.app.zip Find bugs? Why not make an account on my GitLab server and report them?! I've fixed a lot of stuff, tweaked numbers, added quality of life things, etc etc but here are the MAJOR CHANGES All new job: Sword Dancer! The Sword Dancer is a graceful, mobile melee fighter inspired by wuxia and tai chi sword arts. The twist is that she also uses elemental powers, controlling the battlefield around her with fire, ice, lightning, and wind. http://zirconstudios.com/game/Strikez.gif http://zirconstudios.com/game/GetOutTheWay.gif Lots of new combat FX! Combat looks even spiffier, and getting better with every build! Enemies will now also visibly alert you when they are aggroed. http://zirconstudios.com/game/FireAttack.gif Brigand Rework! I wasn't happy with most of the Brigand abilities so I redid over half of them. You'll now be using even more dirty tricks, like smoke bombs that obscure the battlefield (and give you bonus crit), explosive traps, throwing knives etc. http://zirconstudios.com/game/SmokeCloud.gif (this art is temporary, sorry) More Monster Powers Monsters have toughened up, with a number of them getting new ways to ruin your day. http://zirconstudios.com/game/JadeCharge.gif zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Nov 12, 2016 |
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Nov 12, 2016 07:00
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Poison Mushroom posted:Holy poo poo, that has some loving style. Thank you! I hesitate to say it's even 20% done at this point but I'm working ultra hard to make it a really fun and polished game.
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Nov 13, 2016 06:24
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It's true, it's all true. Earlier this very year I couldn't even figure out how to animate a sprite in Unity. It took me weeks after that to get the player to move. Months before I even had some semblance of a map. But like Jim said, here I am not even 1 year later, I've got monsters that create ice prisons around you, 4 dungeon generation algorithms, summoned pet AI, badass skill animations and AOE shapes, and now a cool updated UI system where players can swap passive skills in and out and move through dialog trees. It's the best feeling in the world. I came at this with virtually no formal CS experience. 12 years ago I took a one-term class in computer science, in high school, and I've since dabbled a bit in basic scripting stuff. Other than that, nothing. I would have stared blankly if you asked me how to do just about anything I'm doing in my game now. What I've learned is that you don't have to read a whole textbook and understand high level academic stuff to make a game. You can learn a little at a time and make cool poo poo with what you know. Maybe you start with making a guy in a room. Then you make him move around. Then you give him an HP counter that goes down with each step. Then you add an item where if you step on it you gain life back. Cool, now you make the item appear in a random square instead of the same one. And now make it appear every X steps. And now make another room, and a hallway between them. And now a monster that sits in the other room and hits you if you get close. And then give the monster an HP value, and make it so if you move into it, you hurt the monster too. Now when the monster dies, make that healing item appear on the ground... You don't need to understand C# or Unity or GameMaker in their entirety to do stuff. You probably will do stuff "wrong", or inefficiently, at first, and that's fine. You can always rewrite code later! The important thing is to just build something with what you know and not wait until you've achieved some indeterminate level of mastery, and the surprising but awesome thing is that you can start building something much more easily than you would think (especially with tools like Unity & GameMaker). (By the way, this is my same approach/advice to music. When I started producing music it sounded terrible. I used all pre-made canned sounds in a program literally called Magic Music Maker, it took me years to earn even the basics of using plugins, virtual synths, etc., but all the while I just kept making stuff with what I knew. If I had instead limited myself to FIRST learning all of that technical poop in advance I would have given up after a month.) Here's some more practical advice. Check out the Game Dev League discord chat. There are lots of really helpful people there. If you want to make a game in Unity, check out some of the really helpful tutorials on YouTube. They show you step by step how to do stuff and there's even on building a simple roguelike. You can also get one of those books like C# 101 so you can teach yourself some of the most basic programming concepts, which honestly are about as complicated as middle school math and logic, and then save the later chapters for later.
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Nov 30, 2016 00:12
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Hey it's been awhile since I've posted about my FF-inspired, 16-bit roguelike Tangledeep and it just so happens I have a new build today. I've been working hard these last few months with the help of 3 artists making the game better each day. There are now 5 character jobs, better dungeon layouts, WAY more items and magic mods, many fewer bugs, lots more quality of life/UI improvements, less placeholder art (and more awesome art instead) etc etc etc. So why not give it a try and tell me what you think?! I'd say the game is now about 30% done - there is tons of work to be done still but it is now resembling a Real Game. At least I think so. BUILDS WINDOWS: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build1-17-17.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build1-17-17.app.zip WHAT IS THIS THOUGH Tangledeep is a traditional roguelike inspired by some of my favorite SNES RPGs (Final Fantasy 4-6, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Lufia 2) plus my favorite Western dungeon crawlers. It's designed around tactical combat and dungeon exploration, with lots of visual and audio polish, and accessible gameplay/UI. It's not ASCII like many roguelikes and by the time it's done I want it to look as good as some of the finest 16-bit games out there. You don't need to memorize tons of commands to play and I've trying to remove a lot of cruft that I don't like from the genre and put in the cool/fun/engaging stuff. For example: no hunger, no durability (anymore!), no cursed items or cheap deaths. Instead, cool abilities, unique jobs, and the champion system from Diablo 3! Of course there is still a ton to do: lots and lots more art and animation, tons more items, more jobs (at least 2x as many), more dynamic elements of the dungeon, terrain types etc etc but it's coming along and I hope you'll have fun playing it. GIFS AND STUFF  The mighty Spellshaper using multiple elements to fend off champion monsters!  The noble Paladin summons divine retribution to strike her foes!  Loot sparkles are now scattered throughout Tangledeep, dropped by less fortunate adventurers perhaps?!  New auto-pickup feature and pop-up item display (both optional)!  New and improved maps, showing new terrain types and shapes!  Beautiful animated town art (enjoy my cursor flicker) FOLLOW THE GAME AND CHAT ABOUT IT Discord: https://discord.gg/4q5kjUm Twitter: https://twitter.com/tangledeepgame
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Jan 18, 2017 05:24
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That looks fantastic, nice work dude. Do you work with a team or is that the greatest programmer art the world has ever seen? Thanks! I'm world's Worst Artist so I definitely needed outside help in the art department. There is still a good amount of placeholder stuff in the shots above but we're getting it done chunk by chunk. For example the ground tiles work but they are mixed with some placeholder stock art I butchered, and they don't have enough variation yet either (different floor types, wall types and so forth). Also a lot of placeholder stuff on the UI side. Baby steps! quote:The most surface of surface impressions, but: my goodness that town art looks almost Seiken Densetsu 3-esque, which is to say it's gorgeous. I dig it! Yes my environment artist is very proud of that There are multiple gorgeous animated water parts and the whole thing is about 512 x 512 px (you can change the zoom scaling ingame), the goal is for all the non-procedural areas like boss rooms to be similarly hand drawn.
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Jan 18, 2017 05:39
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Sorry about the enemy multi attack flurry bug and the periodic crashing, I'm trying to track them down (they're logged as MAJOR BUG in my bug tracker) but have not yet found out exactly how to reliably replicate them... It's at the top of my list tho and I'll be working on it more today to see if I can figure it out. As a point of design enemies should never be getting multi turns or attacks unless the player does something where they KNOW it's coming. For example Spellshaper can use an ability that exhausts them for one turn after, but you know that you used it and when. quote:Yeah sorry to keep harping on about the part you didn't make, but that's just beautiful. Where did you find your artists? * The environment artist is a friend of mine, a fellow musician from the OCR community (OceansAndrew / OA) * The character, battle FX + icon artist I found on TIGsource - his name is Fervir / @blankthevidya * The item artist (who only just started a couple weeks ago) was referred to me from our old goon pal Jim Shepard (madjackmcmad) of Dungeonmans fame
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Jan 18, 2017 18:10
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TANGLEDEEP UPDATE Alright chums, while the game's previous update was pretty cool I also left in a couple bad bugs. One major crash starting on floor 3, another where monsters would beat you up endlessly, and uh, I also forgot all the tile variation sprites. Oops! THIS BUILD (1/26/17) is better! WINDOWS: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build1-26-17.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build1-26-17.app.zip Besides those fixes, there are also a bunch of new ingame sprites for various effects, statuses, and icons, some new items and feats, balance adjustments, and secret areas! I've been working for awhile on making the dungeon more fun and rewarding to explore, and secret areas should add to that. Starting on floor 3 you can find them by looking for obviously standout rocks that don't connect to other walls. Bump them to break them and see what's inside the hidden room. You get JP just for walking into the areas, and you might also find: monsters, strong monsters, treasure, lava, or maybe all of those things? Who knows! Full changelog / dev log https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57600.msg1311958#msg1311958
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Jan 26, 2017 06:45
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Angry Diplomat posted:I'm not sure what causes it, but I seem to be semi-regularly encountering a bug that makes my character just entirely refuse to move anymore. I can still look in my inventory, muck with the options, save+quit, etc., but I can't walk around at all. Saving and then reloading seems to resolve the issue - for one turn, and then I am again unable to move anymore and trying to save again results in some kind of weird corrupt save where everything is black and the log shows a bunch of "blahblahblah" messages. Wow I really know how to program! This is a weird one because I haven't been able to reproduce it locally. Are you on OSX or Windows? Any chance you could send me your game log? It should be in the same folder as the game itself (or maybe the data subfolder). That would be super helpful. My email is aaversa at gmail dot com.
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Jan 26, 2017 16:45
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Yeah if it happens again, try saving too (you can just hit the semicolon key, that also saves right now) and sending the savedgame xml / dat files, although I suspect the log will reveal wassup.
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Jan 26, 2017 17:03
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I deserved that. But I fixed the bug, I think.  Basically every tile should be in a container 'area' which I use for various things like monster pathfinding, exploration JP gain etc. But around map edges there were some tiles that existed outside of an area. So I fixed that. Will post new build in a couple days when I'm back at home, with other new stuff, fixes and such.
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Jan 27, 2017 05:06
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Today marks a new build of Tangledeep! It hasn't even been 2 weeks since the last one but I really needed to fix a couple of bad, game-hanging bugs so that was the main motivation. But while doing that we also did some other cool stuff like: * Another revision to the dungeon tileset, paving the way for future tilesets * More art of all kinds - skills, icons, monsters, battle FX, statuses, items * New "side areas" of the dungeon, branching paths that have cool stuff in 'em * More monster powers - especially later in the dungeon * Quality of life stuff like mousewheel in menus, slimmer combat log that rips off Shiren the Wanderer * New music track for the town * A new boss area * etc WINDOWS: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-2-17.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-2-17.app.zip Smite that slime  Eat food off the ground  FULL CHANGE LOG https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57600.100
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Feb 3, 2017 01:21
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IronicDongz posted:
Hahaha saving that screenshot. Wow Edit: How did you even do that?
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Feb 3, 2017 07:10
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quote:more significantly I keep running into a bug where my character becomes unable to move, even if I save and reload. Well you sure found a lot of bugs. Thank you for playing and reporting them tho - it's really helpful. I also just hired some freelance QA people to play each build for an hour or two and give 'em a once over so we'll see what happens there. Over the last 5 days I've primarily been working on fixing bugs as opposed to adding content (I did a little of that too) plus (hopefully) fixing a number of other janky things. I definitely fixed the equipment-dropping bug as well as the one that spawns random powerups. Chances are one or both of those was causing your character to sometimes lock up. When errors are generated under the hood often it just breaks the game engine entirely. BUT I fixed it all probably. WIN: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-7-17.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-7-17.app.zip THIS BUILD is again mostly about polish, bug fixes, quality of life and removing jankiness. Besides obvious bugs it also has things like: a better tutorial system (you can leave Hints on and never see the same hint twice), removing extraneous messages from the log, making it so combat numbers don't overlap, improving mouse/keyboard sync in menus, improving UI indicators, clamping the map so you don't see lots of dead space, walking into the cave in town to enter the dungeon instead of pressing "D on a staircase etc etc. So now it's maybe a little less amateur hour and little more good. DEV LOG WITH BIG OL' CHANGE LIST https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57600.msg1314720#msg1314720
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Feb 7, 2017 20:29
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I seriously have no idea how that's possible. There is no code that even checks the display name against anything else. Wat. Also I botched something with the resolution scaling give me like 20 minutes EDIT: OK done. Same links. Fixed some mouse control and resolution stuff. zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 7, 2017 23:34
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Wowow this is gold feedback. Real talk email me (aaversa at gmail dot com), you are a great tester, I want to pay you for your time and help me demolish these bugs.
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Feb 8, 2017 04:45
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Konstantin posted:You should seriously start a Kickstarter if you're spending real money on this. I'd back it, a lot of other people will back it, and you're further along than the huge majority of video game Kickstarters. Hey thanks for the kind words. Yeah I've definitely spent real money I've been involved with Kickstarters before so I'm familiar with how it all works (I actually wrote a book about it) and I do want to run one for this, in a little over a month. I want to be 100% confident that there is solid bug-free gameplay with no major issues and a clear path from beginning to end. I feel like I'm about 70% to THAT point, after which it's a matter of adding even more content, more features, more polish, more art etc. To that end I hired a bunch of QA people to help test each build of the game rigorously and I'm working toward that goal.Edit: To be clear I'm finishing this no matter what and I have the resources to do it now with no outside funding, BUT... I really want to make all the character sprites 4-directional and ideally with walking animations. It sounds like a pretty specific goal but it will take a lot of extra money to do that since there will probably be about 12 character jobs... x3 directions, x2 sets of animations, x8-16 frames, you get the idea. Lots of sprite work. I think it would put the game over the edge artwise. If we can't do it though it won't be the end of the world. zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 18:54
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* I think the crashing / weirdness issues that are happening largely have to do with the game data not being properly scrubbed when you hit Restart, which SHOULD now be fixed. (Well, in the next build). * Likewise I've been poring over all the list/UI code with mouse hover/scroll wheel and I think I've fixed it all. * Unfortunately when there are screwy issues like with the game data not being scrubbed on restart, it can cause a lot of other stuff to get messed up since my code doesn't have a lot of try/catch going on... Basically once you're at the point where there has been at least 1 actual error in the code, everything else falls apart. (Right now anyway.) * If you have a run with any weirdness like this on the next build, after you quit the game shoot me the output_log file from your _Data folder (should be alongside the executable/app) so I can see where the error line is. * Mouse rotation of abilities: Seems to be working well for me at the moment, I can rotate even with the mouse just a little n/e/w/s of the character...Hopefully fixed? Putting other issues in my tracker, should have a new build tomorrow - already about 10 things knocked off the list. Thank you!
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Feb 9, 2017 06:12
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After a week of furious dev I have a new build of Tangledeep for whoever wants to play! Also if you are more interested in following the game's progress at major milestones, I just started an email list. I'm only going to use this for the biggest news, like (when/if?) I run a Kickstarter for it, alpha/beta releases, and the game launch. You can sign up for the email newsletter here. Anyway this new build focuses a lot on player feedback gathered over the last few weeks. Lots of bug fixes, some balance changes, and tons of focus on QOL / player experience. I'm continually trying to make the overall UI feel good - removing unnecessary things (combat popups, log messages) while adding other feedback where appropriate (health bar flashing at <30%, a splash when you enter water tiles). Hopefully it's feeling better and better. It does to me. There's also some deep engine improvements, map layout stuff, and a number of new items to find like dungeon maps and an Orb of Summoning. Oh and I wrote more music too. If you like SNES RPG music then boy I think you'll like this soundtrack. WIN: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-15-17b.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build2-15-17b.app.zip (Stealth Edit: New build on the 15th adding the resolution selector back in and fixing some bugs.) As always, full changelog is here if you want to read all the gory details. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57600.msg1316322#msg1316322 New tileset (later in the dungeon) in action:  2nd boss fight (bandit stronghold) with a new monster, the Rock Golem, thrown in for good measure: 
zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 08:31
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Ah man awesome feedback again. Already hard at work fixin stuff. I do think the output log gets deleted when you restart the game but it should definitely be in _Data otherwise. It's crucial for me to figure out what is causing actual crashing/hangs! Edit: Just a quick note, Salamanders fighting is not a bug. Monster infighting exists in the game Some monsters go nuts at low HP and lash out at anything around them. Others will fight over treasure.
zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 18:31
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IronicDongz posted:hm, that's weird. I played a bit more until I ran into the bug where the game locks up, but there was no output log before or after I closed the game. Are you on Mac or PC?
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Feb 16, 2017 02:24
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Hey I'm glad things are going in the right direction. I'm working hard to remove any jankiness and stuff that feels wrong/bad, confusing, etc. Next build (soon) will also have a mechanism that will catch errors in the main game loop - stuff that happens when you or an enemy acts - and should actually write a message ingame to notify you that something happened. This way you can hopefully grab the output log for debugging. Looking at enemies Hover over them with the mouse. Or if you're keyboard only, press "X" to enter examine mode. In the latest build it will show you whether they are potentially aggressive (i.e. will attack you first), as well as their HP % and champion mods. If you have the Keen Eyes perk you will see their exact level and HP. I probably need to display a 'danger' color or indicator too. Explosive being broken Yeah it's actually... broken right now! The bombs are supposed to have a 2 turn fuse. Fixing it. Weapon hotbar I need to explain this better in the game's UX. What I'm trying to do is make it really easy to switch weapons. Since each weapon type has special properties, you might use a bow at range and then swap to a sword at melee. Or a club for tough 1v1 fights (can stun enemies) and an axe (hits multiple) for crowds. etc. But it needs to be clear that this IS a hotbar, how to map stuff to it etc. Equipment ux in general Yep I need labels sorry UX in general Sorry
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Feb 16, 2017 03:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:More Tangledeep: being a spellshaper is fun, but some suggestions/questions: * Default binding for weapon cycle is [ and ]. You can change it in the Input tab when you launch the game, which is pretty sub optimal... I'm open to suggestions on a good default binding. * Enter should never go down stairs if you're in targeting mode. Fixed. * Hitting a number and getting the wrong spell = bad! Will fix. * You're talking about the steam golem right? His sentries are the ones that heal him. There are summoning things that spawn the sentries. Maybe I should make this a little easier! It's on the list. Honestly both boss encounters are more proof-of-concept and definitely need refinement. So far I've spent a lot more time on the main dungeon floors - layouts, terrain, monsters / behavior etc.
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Feb 16, 2017 05:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:Ah, [], okay. My automatic assumption about what I should push was crtl+1234, honestly, but that could be my playing Cogmind talking. Control+1-4 makes sense. I've added that as a hardcoded binding. Also Fungal Toads regenerate for a few turns when you first hit them. But after that they don't regenerate any more. I'd like to make a monster codex or something so this kind of thing can be discovered a little more easily. Of course there IS a champion mod called Regenerating which uh.. adds to that It's only active for a few turns at a time, and only does something if you physically attack. Again I need to communicate it a little better, i.e. a status icon at least.p.s. Changes/additions thus far for next build right here (definitely going to do more) p.p.s. Still trying to track down the source of any nasty crashes... If you get any real weirdness, salvage that output_log if you can! According to this troubleshooting thread it can appear here depending on system settings: C:/users/UserName/AppData/LocalLow/ImpactGameworks/Impact7DayRL (lol) zirconmusic fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 07:31
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IronicDongz posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7_MTp3VQxM I love it. I think the later floors are a wee bit too hard right now but rather than nerf them outright I'm looking to give the player more power & tools. For example: I'm adding in the first tier 'Advanced' unlock for all jobs, which you get automatically after spending 1000 JP in a job (as long as you ARE that job - it doesn't carry over.) For example Brigands get +2 turns on all bleed effects, Sword Dancers will randomly summon Flame Serpents on parry, etc. Cool stuff like that.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:37
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StrixNebulosa posted:Tangledeep: I love the new budoka class! Throwing around enemies is cool! Hey glad you're liking it! The other Budoka skills will come in the next build. Basically it's just a big ripoff of Fist of the North Star, so you can expect something like a stance or buff that makes your enemies explode at low health or something. Got new combat fx coming for it as well. * Yeah I have the flashing number glitch logged... trying to track that one down. * The damage font (and status icons) for mini slimes is scaled down because I'm using an 0.5 sprite scale for the whole object. What I actually need is separate "mini slime" art, so this will be fixed as soon as I get that * Got the flashing 'learn job' thing fixed now. Sorry!
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Feb 19, 2017 05:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:
Ah man I gotta figure this out. If you're on Windows, check the game Data folder for output_log and email it to me (aaversa@gmail.com) It may also be in <yourusername>\AppData\LocalLow\ImpactGameworks\Impact7DayRl\output_log.txt
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Feb 19, 2017 06:05
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That all sounds good!
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Hey I'm streaming some Tangledeep development later if anyone's interested. 4PM EST. Putting in new items and a casino area I think??? Come see bad code... LIVE and in color. Channel: https://twitch.tv/tangledeepgame
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Feb 21, 2017 20:34
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I think the official Unity roguelike tutorial is a little ehhh... but Roguebasin is a good resource for algorithms/designs in general, and I really like Quill18's tilemap videos which all use Unity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoAuMUE9SiY
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Feb 22, 2017 18:02
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HEY so I had an awesome time at GDC (Jason's Markov talk was fantastic as expected) and I'm more inspired than ever to make Tangledeep the very best game possible. Also in talks with a publisher, not for funds but for marketing/distribution support, which is super exciting! If you've been following the game (or not), I'm pretty proud of the improvements made in the latest build. MAJOR art polish stuff including non-chunky fog of war, tons of new dungeon decor, more effect icons and combat sprites, balance tweaks, etc. You start the game in town now, and you also have a permanent town portal to get back. Stuff like that which makes Tangledeep feel a lot better. If you haven't played for a few weeks I also added new jobs, and got rid of passive regeneration in favor of an Estus Flask style, uh, flask. WIN: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build3-7-17.rar OSX: http://zirconstudios.com/game/Build3-7-17.app.zip ************** Also I'm doing a Kickstarter next week, if you are interested in helping the game by supporting directly or spreading the word, plz sign up for this mailing list to be notified when we launch! ************** You can read the full changelog over at TIGsource as always. There's other new content, bug fixes, QOL tweaks and more. Tryna do a good game here. But who cares about that, how about some PICS  Hunter walking animation test  The entire cast thus far  The latest look of the 'cave' tile set, including new fog of war, grass decor etc
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Mar 8, 2017 06:22
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quote:That gif made me wonder, will Tangledeep have an overworld, or will it be a single dungeon affair? To keep things in scope, it is a single dungeon. But there are (and will be more) branching side areas. This is where I can tuck away various challenges, merchants, events and other things you might normally find on an overworld. quote:Also, is it Chucklefish Should it be 
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Mar 8, 2017 22:57
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