Darkest Depths
Wall Run Rework, Big Head's Room Pass, Door Changes
I'd rather just give players more of what they want than explain my intentions. So now you stick to the wall and run along it instead of a slide like movement.
Anyway, holding space on a wall will keep you on that wall for upwards for five seconds now. This will probably be adjusted now but I'll see how feedback goes.
Improved Big Head's boss room. Returned his meteors to their original state covering the entire room and added fire traps as well.
More rooms.
Doors now lock while nests are alive.
Fixed the door clipping issue.
Performance optimizations.
Improved hitching when going between rooms and enemies spawning.
Fixed Bombardier boss room bug locking players in the room.
I know that with the game growing ever more complex people would like to see a minimap. I am working on that at the moment unfortunately the one that I made recently was way too performance intensive. We're talking 40 frames lost in the editor so it could be much better but I'd rather not chance it. So I will keep working on it until I can figure out a way that doesn't require mapping out every level or sucking up all of your frames. I'm sure ultimately I'll have to map every level out and do it the hard way. If that's the case then it will be a while until I finish it.
Also, I put off the resolution scaling system in favor of more important performance optimizations. It's looking like the right call for sure. I will still get that implemented soon but now AI is no longer bogging down the CPU.
If you have ideas for what you would like to see in the game please let me know over in the discussion page or in the development discord channel. https://discord.gg/vWbUZef
Bombardier Rework, Pickup Radius Increase, More Rooms
Temporarily disabled Spawners not being destroyed while inactive. They can be cheesed again but only after they've been activated the first time.
New rooms.
Improved Fire Field effects.
Reduced Fire Field duration by 50%.
Adjusted Seeker model to prevent clipping.
Fixed more wall clipping.
Reworked Bombardier fight and room. Previously the Bombardier had the same issue as the Seer did. It was basically a DPS check in a small room where you could just hide behind a pillar and take pot shots. The rework opens up the room giving players the ability to use their mobility. Fire Bombs are different now as well. Instead of creating a fire field on hit they now have a random timer where they will sit before exploding. This gives players the ability to avoid the explosion. Fire bombs now have two different payloads that can occur. The fire field is still there but there's a 50% chance that instead it will release a slow growing explosion. The fight feels great now in my opinion it is much more about skill and mobility instead of RNG or hide and shoot. As always let me know what you think. If you hate it I can always go back and make adjustments.
I know that people had wanted those two bosses reworked sooner but you have to keep in mind that I'm one person and this stuff takes time. I really wanted to do it sooner as well but I also knew that more content was definitely a bigger priority. Now that we have 30 rooms in rotation I feel more comfortable moving on to other things as well as working on new levels. I still want to hit 100 rooms in the rotation and I'm getting close to that half way mark which is great. I've got some cool upgrade/shop changes coming up that I'm really excited to show off in the near future as well. If you have ideas for what you would like to see in the game please let me know over in the discussion page or in the development discord channel. https://discord.gg/vWbUZef
Level Layout Rework, Enemy Spawn Changes, AI Performance Optimization
Improved lighting appearance.
Improved enemy spawn balance. I also reworked spawning completely so that the game is much more fair to starting runs. Before the game started with half of the enemies spawning and the other half after a certain threshold. Now the game starts with one enemy type and slowly scales to add one type at a time as you progress.
Improved health and energy bar appearance.
Nests can no longer be killed without being active.
Started AI optimization. The changes with this patch were huge for reducing CPU load in the editor. I will have to test more in the game to see the value. AI is a lot less reactive right now as well as other issues I'll have to sort out over time but the optimization needs to be done. Right now I've got the game running really well outside of building the dungeon and AI. Considering this game is based on fighting large groups of enemies I need to get the AI working in a much more optimized state. Currently the AI is what is eatting up the most performance.
After killing a boss you no longer return to the HUB. This means that the dungeon is one long run with no breaks in gameplay. I had intended for the HUB to be a break in combat while also giving players the ability to tweak the run. Currently I don't have enough content to tweak and most people tend to just leave visual styles on the one that they enjoy. Every video that I've seen showed confused players when they were returned to the HUB. Later I will give you the option to return at will but for now you get one chance.
HUD Changes, Air Dash Change, New Seer Fight
Improved health orb visuals.
Added a projectile trail to the Flintlock's alt fire.
Improved visibility of enemy spawns.
Air Dash now has a two second cool down and no longer takes energy.
The Seer's boss fight room has been completely reworked. It has two levels both with cover and piston pillars. This fight will definitely add value to jump upgrades but they aren't required. The top floor has more cover but is harder to get on without taking damage without proper timing.
I've taken the feedback about this fight and from my personal experience it wasn't a fun fight. Previously the Seer was more of a DPS/HP check and less mechanical. It went against the core hook of DD which is mobility. I hope you enjoy it. If you have feedback please drop it in the community section. I will be reworking the Bombardier next.
Nest spawners now spawn enemies much faster. Before it was too easy to clear a room with nothing to prevent players from destroying the nests. I tried to design them to give players the choice between quick runs and farming. (You still have that choice.) The biggest reason for this change is from what I've seen everyone just destroys them leading to a boss fight with no where near the levels needed to take a boss on.
More Optimization, Four More Rooms, Spawner Changes
I removed some of the stat upgrades from the shop. I kept the big stats with negatives, jump upgrades and difficulty +. I want to start making more impactful upgrades for the shops next week as well as removing guns that you already own. The goal in the end is to only give players weaponized upgrades like my favorite Explosive Guile that spawns seeker missiles from enemy corpses and only have stats drop from killing enemies. Unfortunately if I did that now you would always get a gun or something over powered.
Spawner nest's egg projectiles now move faster and spawn enemies faster. I made the nests as a way to prevent people from walking in a room and having enemies spawn on top of them. The nests were making the game far too easy so I definitely need to find the right balance. Let me know if this is too easy or hard.
I added four more rooms to the room rotation.
Much more optimization. Monday I want to try and get adaptive resolution scaling added to the game to balance the frame rates for people having issues with that. I had it in the game when I was prototyping but it was causing issues with the water shaders that I no longer use. I think it should work fine now except I need to re-write it all because I lost all of the old code.
I'm going to be busy this weekend but the plan for Monday is changing the boss room for the Seer. Giving the player more room to move around as well as some cover. I'm also going to add more mechanical elements to the room like moving platforms and possibly hazards.
Fixes, optimizations
I found the issue and it is fixed.
I changed the way levels are streamed to reduce to CPU and memory load on your system. HOPEFULLY this doesn't cause any problems but I tested it for a good bit and it didn't affect any of those runs. Let me know if this is better or worse and I'll adjust accordingly.
More levels, Gun Clipping
Two more large levels. One is from the level 2 tileset that I removed. I will try to convert all of those levels over in the next few days.
Some stuff in these levels - like the pistons are using programmer art. I feel like I'd rather add more content than less and polish it up as I go.
If you bought the game thanks so much but you're on a wild ride of rapid prototyping with me. :P As I develop I love to just throw ideas into the game and add, tweak and remove based on player feedback. The game entered Early Access after the majority of the prototyping was finished but I really want to push what we can do with the platforming. If you hate a rotating floor let me know! I take every single player's input into consideration. I had planned to do Early Access with the intention of starting small and growing a community around people who enjoy the game and building it up around them, you.
Magnetism - New Enemy Drop Upgrade, More Polish
I changed the XP orb model to make it much more appealing and no longer the prototype model/texture.
I put more polish on the base floor tile texture. I'm not an artist but I'm working to improve so as I learn I will continue to improve the look of the game. The changes aren't the most noticeable but are definitely more refined.
As always there's more but I don't really remember all of the small tweaks. I'm definitely one of the least professional developers out there.
More Rooms, Optimization, Jumping Juice and Polish
Pickups fly to you which doesn't do anything new yet but it looks cool. I will be adding upgrades that increase magnetism range and later when I add selectable perks you will be able to buy and unlock large magnetism.
I added more levels including the biggest room design I've ever done for DD. It's inspired by the Mario 64 level Tick Tock Clock. It's got a lot of jumps and absolutely requires the game's movement mechanics. It isn't finished as it still needs traps/hazards but it's in the room rotation. Upgrades like Jump height and Jump+ have extreme value here.
I removed the second floor's unique tile set. I'm starting to work on much bigger more mechanical levels and as a solo developer I'm feeling like working on many unique tile sets is actually slowing development. If you guys want these floors to be unique then we can go back and do that over the course of development. Right now I want to create so many levels that you could run the first tile set through all five levels and always have a unique run. I will of course convert those levels that were removed into the base tile set so that there is more variety.
There is a bug when entering the portal a level doesn't build. It won't let you teleport so just walk back to spawn and try again. I'll figure this out.
More Rooms, New Enemy, General Polish, Bombardier Buffed
I made changes to enemy spawns.
I added the mini Seer enemies back to the game. People who were testing the pre-release know and hate these enemies. They're back with a twist. They now spawn with the low tier enemy types, are much larger to block damage aimed at the nests and gain higher HP scaling based off of difficulty.
Finished the telegraphed AoE burst from the Seething Heart. I also fixed it's room so it shouldn't leave a gaping hole for you to fall out of the world.
The Bombardier now has a massive AoE that does damage to players that stand too close to it from time to time. I plan on telegraphing this attack later so that players can stand under it like before but not without situational awareness.
I keep talking about an upcoming boss. Here's a preview.
