Guilds of Delenar
Bug fixes a few quests
I was not really planning to patch today, but there was a pretty major bug found and fixed. So I figured why not.
This patch comes with a few bug fixes, a few extra quests, and a new battle scene. The are also a some balance changes (still working on this), and we are preping a new kind of quest.
It is not a big patch, but we are working on some larger ones in the future.
Combat log, new quest, balance, and lots of bug fixes
So I added a basic combat log (it will expand as we go) in order to aid us in balancing the game better. As such we have identified that spell damage was consistently to high, and thus we have taken steps to bring it back in line with what we expected.
As mentioned before we are going to add more quests that take you into the dungeon, there is now one to help npc's retrieve their diary. More will be coming in this vein, but this is a start.
As for bug fixes there are a lot of them in here. Some so minor that they may have not been noticed (like frames sometimes having a 1 pixel gap in them), and some larger ones like when you open the item shop it was crashing (not sure when that started but it is fixed now). There are also some UI updates mixed in.
Content is rapidly becoming the focus for us, but if you find any bugs please let us know and we will get them taken care of.
Dungeon Lighting, Upgraded Marauding parties, and Dungeon Guild nodes
This update is a kinda a grab bag. We got new features, bug fixes, and some new design changes to boot.
Dungeons:
We are working to make the game more Dungeon centric, this does not mean removing features from the towns, but rather increasing features of the dungeon. There will be some new node types, as well as many more features like floors, and mini-bosses etc that are coming in the near-ish future. In today's patch we have nodes that are controlled by the opposing guilds, and just as in the town these fights will give you substantial fame, but no items. We have also added lighting to the dungeon which in turn works like a fog of war. We feel this addition adds to the mystery and depth of the dungeons, as well as adds to what we can create moving forward (possibly even some random elements).
Marauding parties:
Will now give you substantial gold, and a decent amount of fame, up from literally nothing. Originally I wanted these fights to be hard avoided, but after discussion with the guys it became clear that it wasnt fun to just hard avoid these parties all the time. Now instead they are a very good source of gold, therefore giving you a reason to fight them at times. Also marauding parties now properly scale (more balancing will be done, but they are scrolling as other mobs do now), this will make them a bit more difficult so be careful.
Gold:
Gold is an area we are starting to put more and more thought and time into balancing, over time we hope that gold will become a very valuable resource in the game, steps taken to add gold to marauding parties is a first step towards that future.
Home Town Heroes:
Home town heroes are gonna get more lore and usefulness moving forward. For now what we have done is give them soulbound items (cant be unequipped or sold). The goal of this change is multifaceted: 1) we want you to not feel like you need to gear characters you cant take with you. 2) We want you to use them early on when you reach a new town in order to both bridge any gaps, as well as try out new classes, so we buffed up their gear. 3) we dont want you to just strip the gear off the home town heroes and then proceed to leave the out, so we made them soulbound. Later we are planning to give each Home Town hero their own quest(s), that they have to be a part of.
Patch Notes:
- Added lights to the dungeons
- Added guild battles nodes to the dungeon. These nodes give no items, but give large amounts of fame.
- Fixed some highlight issues caused by the new highlight systems.
- Fixed a graphical error with shields.
- Marauding parties now give substantial gold for beating them.
- Marauding parties now give decent fame for beating them.
- Fixed an issue where marauding parties would not be leveled correctly...
- Fixed come click through issues that had to do with the new guild house features.
- The mouse wheel scrolling now works when the mouse is over your character card area in the guild house.
- Fixed a bug dealing with the fame bar when loading a save file where a party is in a dungeon.
- Soulbound items have been added to the game. For now this is only to allow us to give Hometown heroes good gear, that you then cant strip them of :)
- Added better (but soulbound) gear to all home town heroes
- Tutorial text is now black (and thus easier to read).
- While choosing a target for a skill, if you press Escape it will not toggle that skill off.
- Fixed a bug where dragging an item onto a Gem could duplicate the item.
- Fixed a bug with zoom scaling when entering a dungeon.
Please let me know if you have any issues:
https://discord.gg/t4YDByx
We will continue trucking along :)
UI update - Unit cards, buttons, new windows, etc
Today's update is mostly UI updates and bug fixes. This is the first of 3 or more UI updates to come what will be spread out over the next while (not all in a row). It comes with new buttons, new fonts, new some new frames, etc...
The effects of this can be seen most obviously in the new unit cards, and the new party window. I think its likely to be unanimous that they are much better than they were previously. These items are going to be the base of our new "UI design language", so if you have any thoughts or requests in regards to the new design please speak now so that we can consider them prior to redoing the entire thing :)
- A new font is now used in the game. This is a much more standard and "clean" font. It should help readability.
- New Button art has been added to the game.
- Healthbars have been completely redesigned.
- Main Menu art has been improved.
- Added new frames to the buildings.
- New unit cards made.
- Scrollbar added to the Guild house menu in order to scroll your characters.
- When creating a party the head now snaps to the slot
- Fixed a bug where rewards would extend outside the quest menu.
- Fixed some alert messages that were a bit hard to read.
- Node circles now highlight when the node building does.
- while in battle and attempting to move, the frames of your skills with gray out when a move to the current location would make them unavailable to use due to lack of action points.
- added 4 extra item slots to the party screen.
- Eye Brows are now race/gender specific. They also take in your character's hair color.
- Animations now pause in the guild house when the game pauses.
- tooltips should stay on the screen now.
- NewGameMenu now uses the GuildsScene Background.
Dual Wielding, Zombie, and weapon art
We have been hard at work hammering out portions of the game that need some love. One big thing was making dual wielding actually swing twice, which in turn opens up design space for the 3 main styles to be distinct. 2-handers, dual wielding, and board/sword. Dual wielding will get expanded on over time, but the general idea is that some effects/skills will allow for both weapons to swing, and thus have the chance to apply their effects twice. Other skills will be only used by main hand or 2-handers. Board sword already has its place, but we will likely expand on it as well.
We added the Zombie. This mob is slow (only 2 base action points per turn), however he hits quite hard if he can get to you. Zombies are the first in a line of mobs that are "different" than standard 3 base action point mobs.
We also added a ton of weapon art, 3-5 pieces in every weapon category. This also comes with icons to match, and the matching icons are now linked to the weapons themselves.
Patch Notes:
- Dual wielding now swings twice. The damage is split up, and the on hit/crit talents have 2 chances to apply. This change will see specific talents targeting it eventually.
- Added an animation for offhand swinging.
- Added Zombies, Zombies are Undead race mob. Zombies are very slow (2 action points), but they have increased heath and physical damage. Using CC on zombies will likely be a good idea, because if they get close they will put the hurt on you.
- Added Zombie Brute. Zombie Brutes are warrior type zombie.
- Melee attack power scaling slightly increased.
- Added shadows to some assets where they were missing...
- Mobs can now be better designated as Elite or Boss.
- skill tool tips now designate between damage and healing amounts.
- skill tool tips now display the length of cooldown.
- Fixed a bug where some quest icons would appear green, even when they were not story quests.
- Building images in the building menu will no longer appear stretched or squished.
- The screen now waits until after retaliations to shift to the new turn.
- added 5 pieces of sword art.
- added 4 pieces of shield art.
- added 3 pieces of staff art.
- added 4 pieces of mace art.
- added 4 pieces of dagger art.
- added 4 pieces of axe art.
- New Weapon Icons.
- Weapon Icons now match their respective larger weapon art.
- Reduced lighting system resources needed.
Please let us know what you think. Also if you are wondering about our decision making when it comes to dual wielding please see this video:
https://youtu.be/1iQal74o2LM
This patch is pretty large in terms of changes, so if you find any bug please let me know and I will get them fixed up for you!
Talent System update, sound system overhaul, lighting fix, and other fixes
Today's update is mostly structural in nature. The talent update doesnt change how the game plays, but it does change how we are able to describe the talents, and display the information. This update will also make it so there are less human error in transcribing the talents into the game (it removes double entry).
The Sound system update is actually something I had worked on for a business tool I made, and I have ported it over. It seem to have solved the "missing sounds" bug. Essentially there were rare times when a sound "just didnt play", and now that bug seems to be fixed.
Beyond that we have added/edited a few UI elements and continued on the bug hunt.
Path Notes:
- Did a pretty major overhaul of the talent tooltip system. This new system will allow much more detailed and clear talent tooltips.
- Did a pretty major overhaul of the sound system... This appears to have finally squashed the bug where (rarely) a sound would just "decide" not to play...
- The item shade that shows you which items are unequipable for a specific character is now both darker and now has a red tint.
- Fixed a bug where the "Welling Up" talent provided a character with Fireblast.
- New skills are now highlighted with a gold frame so they are easier to identify.
- Talents that you have at least 1 point in, now always continue to appear active. Previously they grayed out when you has no points to spend.
- Fixed the lighting circles lining up with their nodes.
- Added lighting circles to parties at night.
- increased max point lights to 32
- Fixed a crash that was caused by the new gem system.
We are continuing to get more and more done on the game, and we will try to include at least 1 piece of content in each patch moving forward (could be much more at times). And it is our goal to produce no less than 2 patches per month until the game is finished.
Please let us know if you have any feedback, also its often time faster to get ahold of us through Discord as we are using that every day (pretty much all day):
https://discord.gg/t4YDByx
Gems, Socketed Items, Stackable Items, etc...
We are happy to release our first patch in awhile. As mentioned about a month ago we are 100% committed to finishing this project :)
This patch has lots of little thing in it, most of which are bug fixes that were reported (not all of the bugs are fixed, but some are now). Along with those smaller things we have put alot of time into the item system in order to allow for stackable items, socketable items, and gems.
As of now there are 6 different gems, 1 for each of the main stats (str, stam, int, spi, agi, and dex).
For the time being you can put Gems into items, and you can collect Gems. However coming in the next larget patch (though there will probably be 1 or 2 smaller ones between this one and that one), well be the Jeweler. The Jeweler will allow you to unsocket gems, and combine gems in order to make more powerful gems. The Jeweler will be a building in the 2nd town, and will be a room in your guild house there after.
More Patch notes:
- Gems (1 for each major stat)
- Socketed Items
- Stackable items (so far just Gems stack).
- Elites have slightly more health.
- Dwarven Juggernaut has slightly more health.
- Fallen Lieutenant has slightly more health.
- Bleeding Wounds should no longer hit for 0 under certain circumstances.
- Prismatic bolt should be a bit more powerful.
- Your character is now highlighted green on his/her turn.
- Enemies are now hovered Red anytime they are hovered.
- Two handers are slightly tuned up.
- Offhands are tuned to be the difference between a mainhand and a two hand weapon. Thus the max stats are the same between dual wielding and two hand weapons.
- Prismatic Bolt has new art.
- New game screen now gives you difficulty text to help decide which mode to play.
- Various bug fixes.
Next Up:
I will be working on the Jeweler. However until that is done its likely you will see 1-2 new mobs, new gear art, a greatly enhanced talent system (which makes it much easier for me to relay information about the talent to you), new battle fields, and continual tweaks to the UI. All of this is possible because its not just me working on the project now...
Please let us know what you all think, and we will continue working on it.
Lastly:
We are making discussion videos about the game and they are being posted (weekly-ish) so that you guys can keep track of our thoughts and where we are going. Its also a great way for you all to comment on our ideas, we are more than open to other opinions. You can find these on:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTQ2wsonxqW0W8cMKE0--Q (I upload the twitch video typically early the following week).
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/batholithentertainment (Friday mornings)
Dev Meetings on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbsk3uM6jU
In this one you can meet the new team members as well see a massive list of things we want to change/fix/improve about the game.
We told you we are back at it, and we meant it :)
Update about the things :)
Im gonna do my best to answer questions, and also to let you know where we are and what we are doing.
First off, where have I been?
Around the mid summer of 2019 I started experiencing some pretty major abdominal pains. After having dozens of tests run and seeing all kinds of doctors, the best anyone can tell me is that my intestines are swollen (this swelling goes up and down even within a single day), but no one can tell us/me why... The good news is the pain has gone down quite alot, and I have been able to work more as a result. I tell you this, not to complain but to be as transparent and honest as possible.
Next financial issues took hold, both due to medical bills and the fact that I was unable to keep pushing this game which lead to a pretty big hole. From there I had to dig myself out of that pretty massive financial hole. Again there is good news here, that hole is filled and things are moving forward well.
Is this game dead?
NO!
I promise that I will not release anything ever again on steam until this game fulfills what I have promised. This game is one I have very high hopes for, even if it never makes another penny. I have not run any sales on the game due to not wanting to push a game while I couldnt work as much on it as I wanted to.
What does the future hold?
The total hours on this project are increasing over time. Why? Well since the last update I re partnered up with my old business partner, and we are forging forward together. Both of us will now be working on this game moving forward. Next we have hired back my artist/graphics designer but rather than being part time, he will now be back with me/us full time. All 3 of us will now be able to get hours put into the game. It will take time for us to ramp up, but we are 100% committed to finishing this game.
When it comes to the game itself we are looking to expand on it in every way. More mobs, more skills, more levels, more features, more upgrade systems, etc... Right now I am building a socket/gem system that scales "infinitely" (nothing is ever truly infinite in programming, but for the purposes of the game it should be impossible to max out) through combining gems. This system will first appear in the 2nd town, and will be available for the rest of the game.
The current plan is to have the first few towns to each add a new system to the game. I think this will result in a good flow for the game, and allow gradual advancement. However it does require reworking pretty large parts of the game, which in turn is why this update has taken so long (that along with not getting many hours each month to work on the game).
After this next update gets out, you should see MUCH MUCH MUCH more regular updates there after. Please bare with us while we finish consolidating our position and get this project flowing :)
If you have feedback, feel free to let us know what you think!
Also, I am pretty much always on discord as well:
https://discord.gg/t4YDByx
Patch .31: Stash upgrades
Today's patch is fully based on feedback given since EA started, and also helps me set the stage for the next systems. The biggest of the features today is the guild stash upgrades. There are 2 of them, costing 500g and 750g, which each up your guild stash size by 1 row (7 slots).
Next we have placement in your party mattering. Initially I wanted this to be random as it produced more situations. But it has been made very clear to me (by quite a few of you) that it reduces the strategy elements, and I agree. So I have made it so that the characters places in the front of the part will spawn closest to the other team, and the ones in the back will spawn farthest.
Patch notes:
- Guild Stash Upgrades: each will expand your guild stash by 1 row.
- Unit order in a party now matters and the party creation menu now states where the front is (to the left), and where the back is(to the right). Innitially I wanted to have random spawn locations in order to make each fight a bit different. But there has be alot of feedback on this so right I have changed so that the placement in the party matters :)
- Tabs on the character menu no longer click through to whatever was behind them.
- Stash now high lights when there are new items in it.
- A blueish gray icon now appears over the tavern when it gets a new hero.
- You can no longer open your party window when turning in a dungeon quest (the is a temp fix for party inventory disappearing when both the reward window and the party window are open, I will work on a more comprehensive fix in the future).