Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie
Ash & Rust
0.8811 - 07/13/2023 Bug Fixes
Bug Fixes:
Fixed Region 2 Quest Bug with the Huntress caused by last patch’s Jump changes.
Targeted + Charge no longer accidentally fires while still charging it up.
Changes:
Relocation Augment is no longer Globally Unique (meaning you can now have multiple abilities that use Relocation Augment as opposed to just one ability)
Targeted’s Transmission Augment is now a bit smaller, a 2x4 shape instead of an X4
Targeted’s Arc Augment is now a bit smaller, a Box3 instead of an X4
QoL Patch! Input Queuing! 0.8810 07/11/2023
0.8810 - 07/10/2023
New:
Input Queuing finally Implemented! This means that if you press a button while your character is performing a different action (or stunned), instead of ignoring the button press it will queue it up to occur after your current action is complete. This should make combat feel much better for those times when accidentally pressing the next ability or move slightly too early and thus your character not doing anything.
Added a Character Appearance Vendor in the hub so you can change your character’s look at any time (for a small donation of items of course!)
Freelance Mode and Exploration Mode now display region information in the top left corner, (difficulty tier, enemy level, etc)
Improvements:
Summons can now trigger Targeted’s Smite proc from any damage/healing dealt that is NOT from the summon’s attack, but rather from any effects like Burst Forth, Combustive Demise, etc.
Summon’s Explosion radius like from Burst Forth and Demise now scale with SizeFactor, and Amalgamation augment.
Changed all the Basement Jumps to not use Physics to avoid failed jumps on certain PCs and random scenarios.
Freelance Mode regions now scale their Exp Given with the Difficulty Tier.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed Spell Weaving and Spell Mastery not canceling/stacking properly in various scenarios.
Fixed Blackhole scaling with ability’s SizeFactor. And also made it more performant (sometimes the blackhole effect would go off multiple times in the same frame potentially causing lag with big groups of enemies)
Fixed bug where enemies and Player could get their movement disabled after being Blackhole’d or Dashing.
Fixed a few new Augments that weren’t showing their Value Ranges.
Added robustness to the character Migration process to avoid overwriting new characters that have identical names to old migrating characters.
Fixed Seeker Allies in Region 3 Freelance Mode not moving or helping player.
Fixed Bolt’s Gathering Power Augment not working with Major Trait Double Delay
Fixed strafe animation while using Aegis ability
Fixed Freelance Region 5 Enemies from bugging out and doing nothing.
Added robustness to Waves Mode when the Arena changes to a new one. There were spots where the Player could get stuck after it changed.
Huge Content Patch! Get Creative! 0.8800 - 07/01/2023
UPDATE SUMMARY: Experience the pure joy of creating a unique build and playstyle!
Over 50 new Augments and Traits! So many new builds and playstyles unlocked, involving Strike, Projectiles, Elements, Cooldowns, Summons, and much more!
Elements and Property Tags interact with each other in fun and interesting ways to incentivize all kinds of crazy builds. For example the new trait Elemental Conjunction makes it so that after hitting a target with 3 different Ability Elements, a 4th hit will have massively increased Effectiveness. Find ways to proc it repeatedly and line up your biggest moves to destroy the Endgame!
Augments now have more Property tags so they're affected by Traits. For example, Nova's Firmament augment (the meteor that crashes down after a short while) is now tagged with the "Delayed" property. There's a bunch of new Traits that affect Delayed abilities.
Experiment with all kinds of combinations and test your build in the Endgame Modes and climb the Leaderboard! (I've just reset them).
Big overhaul of animations and Vfx to make combat crisper and faster.
New Game Mode: Exploration! You can now completely skip the story/campaign by electing “Exploration Mode” at any time. This will unlock all Regions and allow you to fight the enemies and bosses there, as well as choose rewards as you progress through each region. To unlock the Endgame, kill the Boss in the final Region.
Lots of Balance changes.
Many Major Traits were buffed
Some Minor traits nerfed a tad
Some shape changes
Changed weapon damage calculation with Strike such that now Strike’s Base Damage will be recalculated based on weapon type, rather than adding a multiplier to it. This should have the effect of making slow weapons (2h Maces, Crossbows, etc) scale much better since Strike Augments will be calculated from a higher base value.
Other News:
I'm still working on Multiplayer. I've got all the main features, combat, partying, etc stable. Now I'm ironing out all the quirks, like quest state desyncs, input queuing, and iterating on trade and other systems.
The next content update will be a big overhaul of the Gear system, including tons of new Outfits, items, and gear-related augments/traits.
What's Next?!
For anyone interested in behind-the-scenes stuff, I had created this personal timeline of the last few years for Dev forums and figured it wouldn't hurt to share it here!
While I'm pretty data oriented with a lot of things in my life, I was specifically keeping track of dev hours because I offered revenue-share to my family and friends who wanted to contribute their time and skills to various aspects. Collectively they've added about 1,000 hours of contributions, bringing the total dev hours for the game to Over 9,000!
So what's next for AnR?
My focus for the next few months is threefold:
1) Implement new Augments and Gear, including party-based ones due to upcoming Multiplayer: - Augments/Gear that help solidify roles: - Tanking tools like a "Taunt" and other aggro management - Mitigation/Healing tools like shields and barriers that reflect projectiles - Crowd Control and Burst Damage tools and effects - Augments/Gear that help synergize more builds 2) Test and Polish MULTIPLAYER (Offline version first, aka Steam/LAN)! - I'm working through a list of bugs and improvements (e.g. some ability effects not syncing on server/client, better client-side prediction, input queuing) - Once it's mostly stable I'll do a closed alpha and then implement all the feedback from that - Then we'll open it up wider and implement further fixes. 3) Continuing to improve and iterate the Crafting/Endgame modes and Polish up everything. - Boss fight improvements - Updates and changes to some crafting items - More Crafting Items and even some Cosmetic specialty items (e.g. Dyes to change Gear color) - Continued general improvements (performance, VOs, bug fixes, etc) Hard to give an exact timeline due to the nature of Multiplayer, but suffice to say I certainly expect to release all this within the year.
Regarding the final core gameplay experience when everything is said and done, let me ask some questions:
1) Do you have fond memories of kicking back with your crew, spamming dungeons in your favorite MMO, power-farming together in your favorite RPG, or queuing up a MOBA?
The aim for late-game Ash & Rust is to encapsulate that feeling, where you and your party roll around tackling tough content, using your creativity and comradery to climb the Leaderboards, get the rare Achievements, or just put your new Build ideas to the test. And it's designed so that you can quickly get to this loop without tons of hurdles. E.g. the campaign is short (and I plan to make it skippable after the first playthrough), there are very few stipulations to enter the Endgame modes (no level requirements, etc). That way you can dream up some party/build ideas, and then quickly be jamming content with your friends and putting everything to the test! I'm also currently building a "Looking-for-Group" lobby system to help facilitate players finding their communities. You can specify your goals, your desired role, your effort, skill, etc to help you match up with potential life-long friends.
2) How does AnR plan to differentiate itself, aka why should you buy my game to get this experience?
There aren't too many ARPGs that focus on role-based multiplayer. In most of them that I've played, being in a party just means exploding the entire screen a bit faster (although often times there's a cc support to help manage mob density). I'm aiming for a much more role-based fantasy, where a balanced and thoughtful party (or solo build) is optimum to progress through End-game.
In the games that do support that role-based style, generally players are choosing from pre-made classes and have to follow the playstyle of said class. In AnR, you can completely customize the way your role works to fit the exact niche of your group or playstyle. I'll be providing as many augments as I can dream up to create interesting ways of being a tank/support/enchanter/burstmage/battlemage/fighter/summoner/you name it!
If you're more of a solo-player, then this all still applies to you except with the additional unique aspect of creating builds that can stand on their own. Finding and creating tools to be your own tank/healer/dps/etc has a very satisfying progress curve and I will be providing Leaderboards and Achievements for Solo play as well.
If any of this rings true for you and sounds exciting, please consider funding development by purchasing the game, leaving positive reviews on Steam, spreading the word, providing any feedback/bugs in the Discord, it all helps immensely! Thank you!!!
0.8702 - 04/13/2023
Changed levels that unlock new Ability Slots to 3, 5, 10, 18. (from 3, 10, 18, 32)
Minor Augment Combiners: The first selected augment must now be smaller or equivalent size to the second augment.
Fixed bug with Celestial/Terrestrial Resistance on Cast Augment
Fixed some regression bugs in Prologue with Huntress.
Fixed Stat scaling bug that would allow certain stats like Mitigation to scale too high on enemies
Fixed a bug where left-clicking (“Action input”) while using Strike could cancel the ability before it fired.
Endgame Modes and Crafting Released!
0.87 - Endgame and Crafting
End-Game Mode: Freelancer added!
After finishing the campaign, new Quests unlock at all regions which you can complete to receive a special Ingredient reward.
Mix and match ingredients and items at the new Science Station to rebuild the Titan in the Basement.
Defeat the Titan to receive the rewards, including the new Crafting Items!
End-Game Mode: The Waves added.
From the Hub, jump into the Waves portal on the Left path!
Earn exp, loot, and Rewards that scale up with your Wave #
Leaderboard and Achievements!
End-Game Mode: The Gates added!
Acquire a Gates Key and proceed through the Gates in the Hub. (Left path then Up path)
Leaderboard and Achievements!
Crafting System Implementation:
New Crafting Items added that can improve all your Augments and Gear.
Choose your desired Crafting Items from the Science Station and receive them when you defeat the Titan.
The Trader in the hub can exchange various Crafting Items
And you have a chance to get Crafting Items from the Reward panels of all Endgame modes
Other Various Improvements
Damage Number Popups - Despite having these internally for testing purposes, I thought that if I could render them unnecessary via other feedback systems that it would be a better experience overall. Surprisingly up to this point not a single player had mentioned missing them to me despite every other ARPG having them. Even so I decided to add them as a feature for more informative feedback to players.
The majority of the UI has received a complete overhaul and facelift with custom textures, panels, buttons, and bars! I'm sure it will go through further iterations, but for now I hope you dig it!
Tooltips added when mousing over items on the ground.
Fixed pathing issue where if enemies or summons couldn’t reach a destination it would cause the player to not be able to move for a second or two.
Fixed focuspanel HUD from not showing up or not showing the proper buffs/debuffs.
Smoothed out player jittering while jumping/freefalling
Adjusted loot beams to be smaller and less obtrusive
Bug Fixes:
Fixed Augment Maximizers and Removers that were acquired from the trader.
Fixed Augments not saving their new values after using a Reroller/Maximizer.
Fixed finicky Interactable in Region 7.
Balance:
Changed lots of Gear stats: how many stats the various colors can roll, what type of stats, their value ranges, etc. If you see stats on an old piece of Gear that don’t make sense or aren’t in the right value range, it's likely an error when the item tried to load with the new stats. I tried to account for all the different scenarios but it's probable I missed some stuff.
Changed a few augments to different shapes to try and tune down their power a bit. If the Augment no longer fits in your inventory it will throw it to the ground when you first load into the hub.
Performance: Added two new systems to help increase performance:
A shadow manager that caps the maximum amount of lights/shadows visible in frame.
A more aggressive object Culling system that prevents objects that aren’t in frame from rendering.
Went through each region and optimized various environment assets/effects.
Improved Summon AI to keep within player range better
Improved enemy healing and kiting AI
Changed Summon’s AI to now target the closest Enemies, instead of the Lowest Health Enemies. In the future I’m going to try to add an option for the player to be able to choose the AI style on the fly (closest, lowest health, farthest, strongest, weakest, etc). And perhaps more importantly, I’d like to add a way to command the AI to change targets.
Visuals:
Replaced Spell Indicator visuals with new system that should be more accurate and track uneven ground better.
Improved player spell indicator intuitiveness and mechanics. E.g. queuing up an ability and then changing it to a new ability now cancels the old spell indicator and brings up the new one or fires off the new ability instantly if it doesn’t use spell indicators.
A dozen new hair styles for male and female!
Several Regions have had their environments improved with better pathing, foliage, etc
Known Issues:
Gear ability hotbar icons can get out of order
Some players have reported jumping random directions off plateaus in the Basement. I’ve added more code to try to fix the issue but I was never able to replicate the problem in the first place so I can’t be sure my solution will help. Please let me know if this is still happening in the new patch!
Added some more placeholder and test Voice Overs, and iterated on dialogue. Work on the story and lore has always taken a back seat to my focus on progression systems and combat, but with more time and (mostly) money I'll polish up those aspects to a respectable state.
EndGame Beta Test is Live!
Alrighty! EndGame Beta Test is live! It'll be up for a couple weeks.
I'd be honored to include everyone who sends me any feedback into the Game's credits (accessed from the game's main menu)! (You can opt out of course) Short Feedback form after you're done playing: Short Feedback Form
To access the Beta, right click on Ash & Rust in your Steam Library and click Properties. In the new window that pops up, click "Betas" on the left side, then enter the password: "endgamebetatest". After it downloads the new update press play like normal!
I will be continually improving, balancing, iterating, and patching all modes, especially as feedback rolls in.
A huge thank you to all players! Don't forget to leave a Steam Review if you like the direction we're heading! They help out immensely!
EndGame Beta patch notes: 0.8611 beta test - 03/09/2023
End-Game Mode: Freelancer added!
After finishing the campaign, new Quests unlock at all regions which you can complete to receive a special Ingredient reward.
Mix and match ingredients and items at the new Science Station to rebuild the Titan in the Basement.
Defeat the Titan to receive the rewards, including the new Crafting Items!
End-Game Mode: The Waves added.
From the Hub, jump into the Waves portal on the Left path!
End-Game Mode: The Gates added!
Acquire a Gates Key and proceed through the Gates in the Hub. (Left path then Up path)
Crafting System Implementation:
New Crafting Items added that can improve all your Augments and Gear.
Choose your desired Crafting Items from the Science Station and receive them when you defeat the Titan.
The Trader in the hub can exchange various Crafting Items
Other Various Improvements
Tooltips added when mousing over items on the ground.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed Augment Maximizers and Removers that were acquired from the trader.
Fixed Augments not saving their new values after using a Reroller/Maximizer.
Fixed finicky Interactable in Region 7.
Balance:
Changed a few augments to different shapes to try and tune down their power a bit. If the Augment no longer fits in your inventory it will throw it to the ground when you first load into the hub.
Performance:
added two new systems to help increase performance:
1) A shadow manager that caps the maximum amount of lights/shadows visible in frame.
2) A more aggressive object Culling system that prevents objects that aren’t in frame from rendering.
went through each region and optimized various environment assets/effects.
Still much more to improve upon each upcoming patch.
AI:
Improved Summon AI to keep within player range better
Improved enemy healing and kiting AI
Changed Summon’s AI to now target the closest Enemies, instead of the Lowest Health Enemies. In the future I’m going to try to add an option for the player to be able to choose the AI style on the fly (closest, lowest health, farthest, strongest, weakest, etc). And perhaps more importantly, I’d like to add a way to command the AI to change targets.
Visuals:
Replaced Spell Indicator visuals with new system that should be more accurate and track uneven ground better.
Improved player spell indicator intuitiveness and mechanics. E.g. queuing up an ability and then changing it to a new ability now cancels the old spell indicator and brings up the new one or fires off the new ability instantly if it doesn’t use spell indicators.
A dozen new hair styles for male and female!
Several Regions have had their environments improved with better pathing, foliage, etc
Known Issues:
Gear ability hotbar icons can get out of order
Certain New Hair Styles won’t change their hair color.
Some players have reported jumping random directions off plateaus in the Basement. I’ve added more code to try to fix the issue but I was never able to replicate the problem in the first place so I can’t be sure my solution will help. Please let me know if this is still happening in the new patch!
The Combat Meter displayed at the end of some modes is wildly inaccurate! It doesn’t properly account for a bunch of complex interactions, such as Smite/Chastise with Targeted. I’ll continue to improve it over time. (Or remove it)
End-Game/Crafting public beta coming soon!
Hey everyone! The big End-Game/Crafting patch is nearly complete, I'm just putting in the final touches and testing things out. I'm aiming to have a public beta version uploaded by this weekend. Then after I implement the feedback from the beta we'll launch! (by early April). When the beta is live I'll make another post. TY!
2023 Roadmap and Update
2023 Roadmap and Update:
TLDR: The next major patch, aiming for the end of March, will have three End-Game modes and the full Crafting System. This will complete the full end-to-end single player experience and so then we’ll begin testing and improving Multiplayer. Also included is a list of other planned improvements.
Summary. Now that the single-player Campaign has been launched and I’ve tackled many of the bugs and nuisances, I’ve been working on the End-Game and Crafting Systems, which are intimately related. If you’ve been following development you may have seen mention of Professions. Originally I planned to wrap all Crafting systems within different Professions which the player could choose from and improve, and would have implications for multiplayer community interactions. However since the End-Game modes and Crafting are so connected, it became apparent that I need to scrap Professions (perhaps just temporarily) and just release the entire Crafting system to all Players along with the End-game mode. Which means I’ve shuffled up the Tentative Release Schedule (again :D) and bumped up the entire single-player experience, from the Campaign to the End-Game to Crafting to all be complete before beginning to test multiplayer. While I’m extremely eager to exterminate creatures with my friends and push the limits of wombo-combo builds, multiplayer is a whole different beast (and MUCH more expensive), so I’d at least like to have a fully flushed out end-to-end single player experience that can provide lots of replayability and long-term progression, while I start the arduous process of testing and improving my multiplayer systems.
So what’s coming up? The next major release will be three End-Game Modes and the Crafting System. (Possible campaign story spoilers ahead but I tried not to)
End-Game Mode 1: The Waves. The good old tried and true endless Waves of enemies, but I’ll try to keep it spicy by iterating through some additional mechanics. Each successful wave increases your total loot and experience given at the end (and your position on the Ladder). There’s no keys or stipulations required to enter, so if you’re short on loot, exp, or resources it’s a good way to get the ball rolling quickly. I previously had a bare-bones version of this implemented before the full Campaign was launched, but this will be a much more flushed out and complete version.
End-Game Mode 2: Freelancer. After completing the campaign, all regions will open up to you. Each region will have revamped enemies and short thematic challenges, called “Contracts”. Completing the region’s Contract grants certain loot, along with an Ingredient. In the Hub, there’ll be a new Science Station where you can mix and match Ingredients and other Items in order to recreate the Final Boss of the game with a special loot table. Defeating the Boss grants the most powerful Crafting items in the game along with the other specified Items. There are several tiers of difficulty for each region which grant scaling rewards and achievements.
End-Game Mode 3: The Gates. At the Science Station you can create a special Key which unlocks the doors to a place that not even your Handler has found a way to enter. This open-world zone will host all manner of extremely powerful creatures, none of which will take kindly to your presence. There will be a Leaderboard to track your performance, and the higher you climb the more rewards you’ll receive, including some Gates-only loot. And I’m iterating through additional mechanics to keep it spicy. For now, this mode could be considered the “Final End Game” and is intended to be the highest challenge and accomplishment.
And finally, the Crafting System. If you’ve played the game already you have a taste of how it will work with the Rerollers and Maximizers. Basically it’s all about making perfect versions of the loot you find. The new system will take this to a whole new level with Augment Combiners, Gear Modifiers, Stat Juicers, you name it! The goals with this system are two-fold: 1) Firstly it’s to make power progression more linear. What does that mean? It means that you will always have a way to incrementally improve the gear/augments you currently have. If you feel like your build is starting to fall behind as you progress, rather than hoping you get some insanely rare item that spikes your dps back up, you can instead spend some crafting resources to incrementally improve some or all of your gear/augments until you’re back in business. 2) Secondly, it's to provide a very long tail non-passive power scaling limit. In other words, since every single augment/gear you equip can be improved with crafting, that means you’ll have hundreds of slots worth of items that you can continually upgrade in order to push your build higher and higher. And it’s “non-passive” because you have to keep making decisions about how you want to craft things, e.g. what stats to combine, what augment shapes are best, etc.
Other Improvements. There are many aspects to the game I’d like to improve and polish. Some need code rewrites, some just need a lot of time and care invested, and others simply require some money thrown at them. Choosing which to work on and for how long is one of the toughest parts of game development. Here’s a list of the highest priority items that I’m aiming to accomplish within the year: (subject to change of course!)
Performance improvements. There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit that requires a mixture of code changes and tedious art updates. It will require a lot of man-hours to achieve but it’s an important update for a lot of players.
Tons more Augments and Gear. I have an absolutely massive spread-sheet of designed augments and items that I’m dying to implement. I’ll likely work on these in batches and release them in chunks over the coming months and years.
Localization. I’d like to support all the major languages. This will require all three investments: code updates, money, and my time to find/hire/manage the contractors.
Voice Acting. I’d like to have all dialogue Voice Acted in at least English. This will require a mixture of money and perhaps more costly, my time, since I’ll have to act as manager: finding and managing personnel, iterating and editing the clips, and finally implementing everything.
Environment Art Improvement. All the regions of the game can be dramatically improved aesthetically. I stopped working on the environments once they became good enough to at least provide a setting to kill monsters, but eventually I’ll go back through every region and try to really make them shine.
Character Creator. Even though it’s a top-down game, I’m still very keen on having a decent character creator. At some point I’ll do a major re-visit to the current creator to bring it up a few notches. I’ve got lots of ideas, I just need to invest the money and time.
And finally I have a nice long list of player feedback on miscellaneous things I need to improve. E.g. it can often be difficult to track the player/enemies in high contrast/dark areas; more minion and enemy AI improvements, etc.
And Beyond? After the full single-player experience (campaign, end-game, and crafting) are in good shape, I’ll begin preparing and testing Multiplayer. As a reminder, the game has been built with multiplayer from the beginning. When you play in Offline Mode you’re just hosting your own local server. Many of the abilities, augments, and AI were created with multiplayer in mind so I’m as eager as anyone to get into it with my friends. We’ll start by implementing Steam/LAN multiplayer, where one person in the party acts as the Host, and then, if finances allow it, we’ll migrate to Secure Online servers.
I’m aiming to have the End-Game/Crafting patch ready for beta testing by the beginning of March, with the public launch following shortly when the bugs are exterminated. A huge Thank You to everyone who has supported the project! I hope that what it lacks in AAA polish is made up for with Heart and Soul and deep uncompromising systems. I promise to continue improving and polishing every facet of the game for years to come.
