Madcap Mosaic
10/10/22
Added a sprite tweak while the red dragon is limiting your movement, similar to the black dragon's.
Changed Research's effect slightly in the lattice. Also, I think I made it more consistent? I noticed it wasn't always unveiling the correct amount of tiles always. Hopefully normalized.
Made Witch hit for 0 a little less often. Still possible to get consecutive weak turns, but more likely to offer up some damage now.
Made Burning Oil visible from creation. Little bit of a buff there (and helps World Tree out).
Spent a while on a save system, but I ran into some issues that look pretty tough to untangle. I'll try, but still no promises there.
10/1/22 Patch
Added hover over tooltips for the exit/home options in the pause menu.
Fixed a big Cyclops bug. Vulnerability tiles were spawning close to the player. I don't remember if I changed this to test something or if this was just a typo. He should be a little less simple...
Changed the Bard trait.
Buffed Black Dragon, partly fixed Acid. It had been making fewer than it should, I still feel like it sometimes only makes 7 but it definitely works a bit better now at least. We'll see how he plays out now.
I think I fixed the Lightning Bolt/Take Cover animation issues in Lattice.
Changed how the game resets after winning or losing a run. It shouldn't recenter the game window anymore. It will center on opening the first time and stay put thereafter. This did require changing how a number of things worked, so let me know if you see anything weird in subsequent runs! I think it should be okay, but I also would not be surprised if something snuck past here.
Fixed a few other minor things. Reworded some stuff. I didn't encounter any major issues in my testing, but if you do, please let me know!
9/24/22
Added a glow per loop for players to track longer win streaks (combined with the above it should be more clear if you're on a long streak).
Fixed at least one bug with 'move forward' effects and the Initiative trait. Ending a fight while you still had extra moves left would prevent you from moving in the next combat. Seems to be fixed, but Initiative is a pain, so if you encounter any sort of freeze/loss of control please share it on the steam discussions or in the discord!
Using Telekinesis on Displace was not working properly. Looks better now.
Someone experienced a bug where Wish appeared to get replaced by the enemy and then they got stuck with the wish aimer. I couldn't replicate it for some reason, but I think I may have prevented it from happening anyway. We'll see.
Empower's text was overflowing after the minor text width tweak, removed a word to make it fit.
Fixed streak icons saving correctly. After losing a streak it was saving an incorrect icon for the PAST section.
Added additional minor win tracking for those further into the game.
Fixed a few traits that weren't keeping track properly relating to the above.
Still want to add a new tier 2 enemy and another player sprite icon, but I did not get much done there this week. The bit of time I spent on the game this week went toward a few nasty bugs that cropped up.
1classydude
9/16
Went through and reworded most shrines to hopefully be more clear in the way the shrine tiles are replaced.
Eye of the Storm is now replaced by a Flurry rather than a Fog.
Reworded a slew of tile descriptions and fixed some typos.
Last patch's new final boss received two minor buffs to his damage output, also his special turn now has a minor visual effect to make it more obvious, as it was easy to miss before due to the amount of text in his ability box. Have feedback on this guy? Hit me up on Discord!
Previously added boss descriptions when hovering over enemies, now added a similar thing for all enemies showing what tier they are grouped in.
Fixed a handful of bugs hopefully, including one with Long Reach (trait) and gaining HP, and hopefully one where the Home tile was coming up in weird places. I have yet to wrap my head around the cause of this Home tile bug and instead have tried to patch it in another way, if you encounter this bug and gain an extra Home tile in your mosaic, I would appreciate any information you can provide over on the steam forums or the discord.
Also fixed a bug that was preventing the logging/jiggling effect by on reveal tiles triggered upon using a grimoire or puzzlebox. I had a line of code specifically to prevent it. This may have unleashed a bug back into the wild, but I couldn't figure out why it existed. Heh. It seems to work okay...
Added a very minor boss border. To make it really clear I would like to have something more intricate, but for now we have simple, hopefully it's enough to draw someone's eye. Keeping this on my list and may be improved down the road.
Changed a player icon sprite, I doubt anyone's seen it yet but it's better now...
Added a minor informational element to the pause menu. One that may clear up the most obvious source of confusion hopefully. Still considering whether or not to change 'revealed'. It's simplicity is a blessing and a curse. I'd like to add a couple more manual-esque reminders on there for players to tab through. It does sort of double up on info from the tips area, but the inclusion of sprites is kind of nice, and it could give players the information more on demand. We'll see where it goes.
Removed Desecrates from the Constructive trait's pool. It just seems bad early on and it just seems a lot less exciting than the other options.
That's it for now. Tile descriptions are still on my list, but I do feel like they've improved a little bit in their consistency. Content wise, I would like to add another tier 2 enemy, as this is the longest segment and does not have the most enemy types. I have another sprite for a 3rd final boss, and am working on a skill set for that as well. 3 will likely be the resting point for final bosses for a while. I could see another first boss option, as you get there more often, but have nothing in progress at the moment.
I will also continue working toward adding new player portrait options (change them using TAB btw). These are something I work on in my idle time and they usually crash and burn. But eventually I will get another that is not embarrassing. 64x64 art is much harder than 32x32.
Serious bugs and impediments to understanding the basic gameplay are the focus still. It's not clear to me whether larger projects (saving and seeds for example) are truly worthwhile. They are remaining on my list for consideration. I suspect both are doable (for me, and with caveats), but would require thorough and time gobbling bug testing to the degree that it may not be practical for such a small game.
If you have questions or comments, you can hit me up here, the steam forums, the discord linked on the store chat and in the forums, at madcapmosaic@gmail.com, @1classydude on twitter, or in the comment section of my youtube channel (1classydude), where you can also find videos of me playing the game (the earlier dev runs are a bit more informative than the later).
9/3/22
Full Moon was not functioning fully, fixed it. Mostly it was having issues with multiples.
Antipode starts with 10 more max hp. If you've used this trait, you understand. It's, uh, a buffer for mistakes.
Telekinesis was sending multiple messages to the log. Fixed, hopefully. I would not be surprised if the log has some other hiccups left, if you notice them let me know (I know, not many people are looking at the log except when they get surprised by moves left).
Draining an adjacent tile with a reveal trigger was sending messages to the log but not triggering the tile. It should no longer send those messages or do its little tile jiggle. I spent hours, literally hours, on this. That's the big ticket item.
There were some other tweaks included here, but I forgot to note them and thus they are not to be included here. Added previously but I think undocumented- the spider used to attack you on his web turn based on how many webs remained from the previous batch. I removed that, giving you a turn completely off to get a headstart on the webs/shuffling (as well as sidestepping the weird clarity issue during that turn).
Also in a previous patch, dragon was not using his heal turn regularly. I found an error there, it is now more likely to see that turn. While this may feel bad for some Mosaics, I think in general it may make him slightly easier, as it gives the player time to find a combo or simply to shuffle. Without the heal turns some Mosaics were probably finding it hard to get a really needed shuffle in.
Anyway, that's it for now. If I didn't break anything horribly, I'd like to look at the menu and incorporate other gameplay/mechanical information into it, as well as adding more clarification in a number of spots I've noted. But we'll see, maybe it will instead be more excitingly corrected tooltips!
1classydude
9/1/22
Tweaked a mess of tile descriptions, including straightening out some inconsistencies in the use of : and - .
Fixed some minor minor hiccups, like hovering over tiles working while choosing a Smith upgrade.
Renamed Cool Down to Douse. It was fun while it lasted but there's just no reason to leave that source of confusion.
Fixed a bug allowing you to replace malignant evils with other evils via Guardian Demon.
Slash and Burn description said it did 4 damage per tile drained, this was incorrect. It does 3, text is updated.
Fixed a bug where a tile that was transformed into a shrine was not turning into fog on use. This should be the case: If you use a Grimoire and turn a tile into a Monument, using the Monument to enshrine that location will turn whatever that underlying tile was into a fog.
Changed the menu sliding to normal speed even when fast is on, also fixed a bug where they were disappearing too quickly.
Corrected that hideous oversight of 'change 1 tiles'. Now switches to singular.
Undo is the biggest addition, the rest is some minor clarifications in descriptions (and a few bug fixes most people hopefully didn't notice).
Warning to you guys, I have not gone in and sorted out the 'Past' area's glitchiness on patching yet. It is very possible if you go in there and try to look at run from the previous version you will experience weird visual errors or a crash. Sorry about that! It will work fine to look at runs from this patch.
8/26/22 Patch
Added a little light sort of thing indicating where you're at in your turn. I had something fancier planned but it didn't look quite right. This was a last minute addition, let me know if you like it or dislike it. May have some color blind issue here, it's not very integral to the game but if it bothers you let me know. Anyone who was finding the end of turn a little unclear, does this help or is this unnecessary?
I added a tooltip for Shrines, as they are pretty unclear until you use a couple.
Reworded the end adjacent to tiles to be slightly more uniform.
Reworded Second Breath, as it was totally wrong in its desc.
Changed Reflector to say nearby rather than adjacent.
Fixed a typo or two.
You can reach me in steam discussions, or in the discord (linked on the store page and in the General Chat discussion).
Patch 8/23/22
- Removed the single use of a shader I had in the game. Hopefully this fixes some enemy queue related crashes.
- Removed the double tap 'R' to restart the program functionality. It was not detailed anywhere and caused at least one user to terminate their run prematurely. It may return in a better form.
- Fixed a narrow bug (killing the enemy with life loss as you walk onto Teleport or Smith).
- Made the pop-up box for Smith a pixel or two more symmetrical. If that is not perfect, well, deal with it guys cmon. No but really I can't tell if it's perfect.
- Made ESC exit the text search function in Lattice, rather than opening the pause menu (it still opens the pause menu after you exit the text search). Also fixed some other minor things in Lattice while paused.
- Added a 'This is a boss' hover over tooltip on the two bosses. In case a new player wonders why the game is balanced so horribly at the first boss. I want to add some sort of icon instead that is always visible, but the ones I made tonight weren't not up to my high standards of beauty. This is an off brand bandage for now.
- Reworded Touch and Wolfboy's ability descriptions slightly.
- Hopefully avoided breaking the game terribly.
If any of these seem to be untrue, let me know! Especially the last one!
Thanks for playing everyone. Do something really crazy? Share it with me in the discussion area. I love to see unusual or powerful interactions.
Steam ate my official patch notes, hopefully this event thing displays similarly...
1classydude
8/21/22
Character icon was inconsistent.
Fixed a typo in Necro and fixed Touch's inaccurate description.
Fixed some random animations going off on entering Lattice.
etc
No major gameplay updates in this patch.