Darkest Depths
Complete Spawn System Revamp
The nests give players the ability to speed run by destroying them quickly before having to fight a lot of enemies. If you prefer an XP/upgrade grind you could farm them instead. This also means that if you have a relic sitting in the room taunting you with a price you could always get it.
Performance
The new system also brings a performance increase and a lot less hitching than the previous enemy spawn system. I also removed the fog which was causing a lot of frame issues for people with less powerful rigs and laptops.
A basic tutorial level has also been added to the start menu. I will flesh it out further later on but I haven't decided what all needs to be explained and what should be learned. So for now it just teaches the basics. There are a lot of systems tied together in this game that create the depth of the combat. I believe that some of the nuance should be learned from experience rather than just having a lot of confusing stuff pushed into your face.
Enemy Spawn Killers, New Rooms
I added a new air launcher to the longer corridors on the second floor as well to speed up navigating those huge paths.
I nerfed the rusher and exploder enemy classes so they cannot attack for a full second after you are able to see them. I'm probably going to increase it to two or three seconds later. Getting spawned on and insta-gibbed in early rooms is the worst.
I replaced one of the oldest models in the game today as well. The coin model was from the game's prototype. I cannot express how many times I've heard my daughter say, "I really don't like those coins." Doing this gave me the bright idea to replace the $ sign with an icon of the coin on both the player HUD and the random shops.
I had the cost values on the shops set to facing the player earlier. Something broke, I think it's something with the engine. I'll try to have that sorted out in the next day or so.
I also got a lot of work in on the new boss that I keep mentioning. I think it'll be in rotation within the next few days. I would have it finished but I really need to prioritize finishing the game's levels. If I can knock out a bunch of rooms for floor 2 tomorrow like today then I should be able to start concepting the third floor very soon. After that I might start looking into the difficulty scaling and enemy spawns because it gets insane around floor 2.
Oh and I think I did way too much with the volumetric fog. It's insane with health orbs and upgrades right now. It wasn't like that in the editor I swear but when I was testing the build before upload I realized that it was crazy. I'll sort it out tomorrow.
Gravemind Rushers Nerfed Again
I realized that the Bounce Gun was way worse than I had intended it to be. I buffed it's base bullets by 300%. With just one bounce it will hit harder than the Magi-Pistol (the starting gun). It just doesn't make sense to unlock a gun that's worse than the default weapon.
Thanks for the feedback!
I added a new two tier room to the second floor. It requires jump pads and wall running to get around.
I think for the next week or two I'm just going to try and focus on creating levels for the first two floors. As long as feedback doesn't require me to fix issues. Feedback and bugs will always take priority. I feel like the first floor is solid as far as basic rooms go but it definitely needs more mobility type rooms like the one I added yesterday. At the very least I want to add one room a day unless life gets in the way.
The floor 2 mini boss I mentioned before is close to finished but I think it's actually going to be a full fledged boss fight. I really like it's unique mechanics and more bosses couldn't possibly hurt. It will be a lot less random in how it deals damage and is 100% avoidable.
New rooms, QoL and Fixing The Seething Heart...Again
I fixed Air Dash taking your energy while on the ground when it does nothing. I know people want a directional dash on the ground but I really like the momentum being used in the air. I'm currently going back and forth between just making shift a sprint on the ground and air dash in air vs a ground based directional dash.
I increased base run speed.
I fixed falling through the world before I new level could spawn after level 1 sometimes. Hopefully.
Thanks for the feedback on those issues!
I found an error that was 100% caused by me that prevented The Seething Heart boss from being in the boss rotation on all floors except 2. I fixed that, people can finally take it on with it's new telegraph attack. As long as you keep moving it's pretty easy.
I added two new rooms to the first floor. One is a very large wide open three story room with jump pads and the other is a wall run based corridor. I'll try to knock out a handful of levels like this for floor 1 and then move on to floor 2. The second floor is seriously lacking in variety but it looks like most play time is spent on floor 1 so I want to keep it interesting before I move on.
I also finished the Arcane Launcher's texturing. I should hopefully have it's unlock icon updated to something less ugly on your Unlock menus soon.
Texture Work, More Rooms and Enemy Balance
I fixed a bug that was causing some rooms to not spawn in the first floor. This should make your first floor runs not feel so samey. The amount of rooms are still limited because I'm only one person and when I polish the appearance of them I don't want to do it to fifty different rooms. Once that is finished I'll add a lot more rooms.
I re-made all of the textures for the first floor wall and floor tiles. I prototyped out a ton of different styles before landing on the more stylized look that we have now. Those should match the rest of the game much better. I also added another room to the floor 2 tile set.
I nerfed Big Head so that his death rain doesn't leave fire fields. I feel like it made the fight much too difficult. If he's too easy now I'll look at other things we can do later.
I also decreased the base HP for Gravemind Rushers by about 30% which should make starting a run much easier. You'll also be one shotting them much sooner.
Cathedral of Worms Release and Optimizations
The Sunless Sanctum is tight quarters while the Cathedral of Worms is very large and open. It has tons verticality, the walls are huge and open for wall running. Columns are set up so that you can wall jump to take cover high above everything.
I have plans for the third floor which will be more mechanical but that won't be for a few weeks. The goal is to ultimately have five unique floors and the fifth floor having it's own boss or two for the end of the game. Each floor will be completely different.
I made a switch in engine versions recently that gave me huge options for optimization. It also included some unwanted issues that I will have to work through such as changes to lighting and level loading speeds. There will be bugs for sure just please let me know in the community section or Discord: https://discord.gg/9RzDtAq
Two Bosses Return and Balance
I adjusted player damage scaling on level. Your damage won't scale as high as it used to based off of levels. The amount of damage that you got per level made every run feel the same regardless of upgrades. Now upgrades mean much more.
I also set a limit on how many summons that the Grave-heart Wizard could have. They can only create five enemies now. Previously this was unlimited.
I made changes to how a level is spawned to prevent falling through the world and sending you back to the HUB.
I added two new corridor types one requires wall running. I will add more variations and randomization in the next day or so. Considering the new dungeon floor doesn't encourage a lot of it.
I'm working on a new dungeon type for the second floor now. I need to put together some new textures for the environment and concept some ideas so expect that to be ready hopefully in the next week.
Completely New Dungeon, Keybinds, and optimizations
I added a new boss.
You can now rebind keys in the Settings menu. Doing this caused me to temporarily remove controller support. I'll re-add that later.
I finished some of the gun models - some still need texture work.
I changed the balance of the player vs enemies. They're much larger now and some can take a bit more damage.
There are a lot of other things I don't really keep track of it. ːsteamboredː
Tooltips, Tutorials and New Rooms
Increased brightness in default visual style.
Primary gun's alt grenade moves faster, goes further. Also a damage and explosion radius nerf that last buff was way too much.
Spawners SHOULD activate instantly. Spawning all of the enemies at once could introduce hitching so let me know if you have fps issues when spawning enemies.
Flying enemies move faster.
Bosses always drop loot. Except the Seer. I forgot to give that guy loot.
The Seething Heart has death effects now. I still need to animate a death for it.
Altars now restore energy. They also have a visual indicator showing that they are special. I'll make the indicator disappear when they cannot be activated in the next patch.
Placed energy/health restoring altars in starting rooms of each dungeon and at the start and end of the long acid room.
Added fire traps.
Added a small tutorial on the first level of the HUB. You will be able to disable it later. With this being a Roguelite I really want people to learn as they go but it seems like throwing people in with zero information is not the way to go.
Gun Tool Tips have been added for every gun. I'll add the ability to disable those once all of the tooltips are finished.
Disabled some rooms that were problematic. I'll bring those back later.
Added a few new rooms.
Unlocks, Movement Changes and Controller Support
The current guns are locked by lifetime gold so essentially the more you play the more guns you unlock. Guns that come later will have different means to unlock.
I plan on making changes later such as finishing/adding the guns you unlock to the unlocks portion of the main menu.
Styles aren't locked yet because I want to tie them in with Steam achievements. Expect this to change very soon as we move closer to early access release.
I made changes to player movement so that you're much faster while in the air and wall-running.
I ultimately want to make the player fall much faster. Currently this breaks wall running so once I can rework wall running so that it works with the faster falling I will implement that as well.
Basic controller support has been added. You can't use it in the menus yet but that is coming.