Genre: Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Indie
Minotaur
UPDATE 13 - Tutorial
What's New?
- Added a Tutorial level, because after watching enough Youtubers play I noticed none of them ever discovered the full move set. And worse, most people stick with the first few moves they discover, even against enemies where they moves are unfun and weak. So the tutorial shows everything you can do.
- Nerfed big Greek so he doesn't one hit kill you anymore. He was never supposed to be THAT strong.
- Removed the fixed camera, because it seemed to be universally hated, and the manual camera with target locking is just better.
- Improved the loading times of the first three levels, by making the enemies at the end load while you're fighting the enemies at the beginning.
- Temporarily allowing you to play any level, without beating the previous one.
What's Next?
- Trading cards. They're great! For games I enjoy I always get a badge or two. For games I don't like, the cards get sold on the marketplace and I earn $0.15 or more.
- Lady Minotaur, I've made her model, just need to polish her up.
- Story, probably Dark Souls style; where an NPC reads you a few lines. Blizzard Diablo style would be better, but I don't have the money to pay for a team of animators and modellers. :)
UPDATE 12 - Hard bosses and level 4
Too Long Don't Want to Read?
- Final boss is a real challenge now. He is so good at killing you, that I took out the dragons from that fight. Because leaving them in would just be unfair and mean spirited.
- Everyone in level 4 has new move sets, making them much more interesting (and challenging) to fight. But only if you change the difficulty to Hard.
- Finally fixed autoaim, and his weird animation jitter while running.
What's New?
- Final boss (in level 4) has Inverse Kinematics (IK) now. Most AAA games use IK for precise hand or foot placement when picking up objects, or climbing things. I use IK to help the game boss crush you with his foot every single time he tries. :) So if you're chopping away at his legs and you see his foot come off the ground? RUN!!
- Made level 2 (The Temple) 50% bigger, so fighting in there isn't so cramped.
- New enemy, the Giant Black Armor Warrior with a blue sword, his specialty is hard hitting swing attacks.
- New enemy, the Knight in Black Armor. He's got a combo attack, and two gap closers. I've placed him in level 4 as patrollers (who sneak up on you while you're already fighting), and as ambushers (who hide in dark corners and pounce on you when you explore his little corner of the dungeon).
- New AI ability for patroling, so enemies can sneak up on you when you think you're safe. Or join an already difficult battle.
- On Hard, if you eat you'll make some noise that travels 50 meters (164 feet). Any computers that hear will look in your direction, and come fight you if there are no walls in the way and you're within their vision bounds.
What's Different?
- Gave all the black armored enemies better vision, so now they'll see you from three times farther away as before.
- Giant Black Armor Warriors now have an opening combo move (on hard difficulty), on a 30 second cooldown.
- Added patrolling ability to enemy AI, so not EVERYONE will stand around waiting for you to come by and kill them.
- In hard mode gave the Blue Sword Black Armor enemy the ability to WalkFollow you during attacks, and from 2-10 meters away he will run at you. (1 meter = 3.28 feet)
- New moveset for Black Armored Axeman, on Hard difficulty. Instead of a single swing like on Easy or Normal, he gets a jumping gap closer from 2-4 meters away, and a swing-chop combo from 0-2 meters away.
- Made the Giant Scorpion much harder. If you don't figure out his vulnerability window, then he's going to kill you.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where Minotaur would look/jitter while running.
--- This also fixes Minotaur's auto-aim problems.
- Minotaur's attacks get cancelled now, if he rolls away mid-attack.
- Fixed Minotaur's knockdown animation logic. There was a problem with him automatically getting up, before he was finished being knocked down. Instead of staying knocked down for the full duration of his stun, he was getting up the very next frame and then standing in place stunned.
- Fixed some missing skyboxes.
What's Next?
- Lady Minotaur, I've made her model, just need to polish her up.
- Tutorial level.
- Story, probably Dark Souls style; where an NPC reads you a few lines. Blizzard Diablo style would be better, but I don't have the money to pay for a team of animators and modellers. :)
- Trading cards. They're great! For games I enjoy I always get a badge or two. For games I don't like, the cards get sold on the marketplace and I earn $0.15 or more.
UPDATE 11 - Hard Mode!
What's New?
- Added Hard difficulty to the settings menu. And adjusted the first three levels to take advantage of it.
- Made a few changes to menu styling, and sounds.
- Changed Orthros (the two headed dog). Instead of each hit to his neck having a random chance at severing, now each head/neck has a couple hundred hitpoints instead. I made the change because I think a lot of people didn't recognize it was random, and instead thought it was just bad hit detection.
- Buffed the computer's AimFollow ability, now instead of re-aiming at you during an attack every second, they will re-aim at you every 120ms (or 0.12 seconds). This only affects the computers who use this ability, most of the weaker ones don't have it.
- Added WalkFollow to the AI abilities, so now every enemy has the option to follow Minotaur during an attack. It's like a gap closer, but less effective.
- Disabled Minotaur's ability to run while locked onto a target, because it's too easy to evade attacks while running and target locked. This also prevents Minotaur from locking on, and spamming his charge attack. You can still do the charge attack if you want, just not while target locked (because that's too easy).
- Added a new enemy to level 1 (The Road), a fat guy with a small hammer.
- Made the dagger cultists more aggressive on Hard difficulty. By giving them aim and walk follow, and reducing their attack range to where they're unlikely to miss.
- Gave the torch cultist aim and walk follow for all difficulties. Because I wouldn't want people playing on Easy to think the game is TOO easy. :)
- Adjusted Greek spearman's AI for Hard difficulty. Lowered his cooldown by a second, got rid of his 250ms charge time, and gave him aim and walk follow (of course!). Also allowed him to spam his spear attack with no cooldown if Minotaur runs/charges too close.
- Added a new enemy to level 2 (The Temple), a Cultist with a ranged magic attack, that drains your stamina to zero.
- In level 3 (The Sky Level), increased the Harpy's damage for all of her attacks. On Hard difficulty the Harpy and Volcrate enemies have their wait AI disabled, so they won't stop at all once they see you.
- Changed computer's maximum vision from 30 meters to 90 meters (295 feet). So they'll chase you longer now before giving up.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the free camera would go through the floor. Now it zooms to stay above the floor (or ground).
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the free camera would zoom in forever, then never come back. (most noticable in The Temple level)
- Fixed the skyboxes, that disappeared in manual camera mode.
- Fixed a bug in the pause menu (during game) that wouldn't let you choose a different level.
- Fixed the Giant Greek's spin attack, so it won't spin away from you anymore.
What's Next?
More hard mode! Level 4 and it's enemies need to be adjusted to use the new difficulty, especially the boss.
UPDATE 10 - Target Locking!
What's New?
- Added a target lock on ability, when close enough to an enemy just press the right joystick button (or Q on a keyboard), and the free camera will lock onto the enemy. To unlock, either kill the enemy or press the lock button again.
- Fixed a new bug in Minotaur's auto aim. Which made his chop and aerial attacks really hard to land. But now that that's fixed he will automatically atack the closest enemy infront of him.
- Increased the manual camera's rotation speed.
- Made Minotaur hold his halberd weapons properly, before now he was holding them with the axe side facing himself. Thankfully I fixed this one before the Youtubers spotted it.
What's Next?
With this new target locking ability, all the enemies feel too easy to fight. So in my next update I want to have a new Hard difficulty, where enemies are smarter (or better at tracking you each attack), and more aggressive (less cooldown and vulnerability time).
UPDATE 9 - 4K Support, New Controls, Playstation Controller Support!
- 4k (4096 x 2160) resolution added to settings options.
- New controls! To make operating the camera manually less work (for your thumb), I've moved the chop and swing attacks up to the LT and RB buttons. Also Eat got moved to the X button.
- Added support for Sony Playstation 2, 3, and 4 controller. Plus a hundred or so others. No drivers needed, just plug them into your computer through USB.
- Fixed a bug with multi monitor setups where the mouse would leave the monitor you were playing on. Now it's locked to the game window.
- Changed Minotaur's turning, instead of rotating up to 20 degrees to frame, now he will rotate 20 degrees in the first frame, and do the rest of his turn 100ms later.
- Moved the camera closer, and higher in manual camera mode.
UPDATE 8 - Free Camera
(Minotaur battles the giant with the red sword in level 4, now much stronger and aggressive)
(I'm spinning the free camera, to show you how much fun it is to look in other directions!)
WHAT'S NEW?
- Added a manual third person camera, similar to what's in Dark Souls and Grand Theft Auto.
- To switch between manual/auto camera press C on your keyboard, or press in on your right joystick on your gamepad.
- Fixed Minotaur's throw animation, so it transitions to idle when done. Instead of forever staying where he is with a stupid look on his face.
- Updated computer enemies so they will no longer stack on top of eachother. Now when a group comes for you, they'll evenly spread out and surround you.
- Added lots of props to level 1.
- Also in level 1, moved enemy spawn points to more realistic locations. So now they'll come at you from a house, or a dark alley, rather than beaming in to the center of a courtyard.
- Made Spearmen less spammy, by raising their attack cooldown. And less annoying by reducing their stun duration from 3000ms to 2000ms.
- Lowered all enemy Cultist hp, to make them less tedious to fight.
- Blocking attacks now costs stamina, if the block drains you to zero stamina yuo will then be stunned for half a second.
- Level 4 adjustments to the giant soldiers with red swords, they're slower but will kill you in two hits.
- Level 4 adjustment to the faster soldiers with blue swords, now they do a flurry of fast attacks.
- Added HP bars to bosses, and every enemy with a lot of HP.
UPDATE 7 - Animations
This update was all about fixing or adding animations for: turning, eating, getting up, and getting damaged. Plus adjusting some colliders in levels 1 and 3 to stop players from running through houses, or skipping parts.
DETAILS
- Made an adjustment to Minotaur's rotating. Now instead of instantly rotating to where your mouse or joystick say, he will rotate gradually 10 degrees per frame, and his legs will play a rotate/pivot animation.
- Fixed Minotaur's eating animation, so it will automatically transition to his idle after he's done. Before he would stay on the ground until you moved.
- Made Minotaur automatically get back up after getting knocked down. Instead of staying there until you did something.
- Fixed a bug with Minotaur's animation for taking damage, which was preventing it from playing.
- Added or fixed colliders on all of level 1's houses and statues.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the default brightness to be REALLY BRIGHT. Which was lighting up all of my nice shadows and ambient occlusion!!
- Made computers who are un-stunnable, also un-pushable.
- Added a few invisible walls in the sky level, so you can't skip certain parts by jumping over railings.
- Moved an invisible wall that was blocking the exit in level 1.
- Moved an invisible wall in level 1 that was blocking access to a maiden.
UPDATE 6 - New Achievements and Level 4 Redone
NEW ACHIEVEMENTS
Road Kill
- Kill someone by running them over.
More Road Kill
- Kill 20 enemies by running them over.
It's Hammer Time!
- Get 50 kills with hammers.
BALANCE CHANGES
- Adjusted Minotaur's aerial chop animation, so he ends it on the ground instead of 2 feet above the ground.
- Adjusted bleeding so it won't fill up your screen with bloodpools and kill your frame rate.
- Took away computer's free 1 second stuns they were getting on the player after every hit.
- Gave demons immunity to run / charge damage.
- Gave the giant scorpion and Orthros (the two headed dog lizard) immunity to run / charge damage, and made all of their attacks uninterruptible.
- Thrown spears now to 20 damage, so just three will kill a Harpy (flying bird woman).
- Volcrate (bird man) hp increased from 90 to 110.
- Dragon hp increased from 30 to 70.
- Level 3 boss Chimera's charge time for headbutts increased to 500ms
LEVEL IMPROVEMENTS
- Level 4 battle zones added invisible walls so you don't wander off, and cameras by them to suggest you go back and finish fighting.
- Level 4 battle zones now have their own mini bosses to defeat before you can move on.
- Level 4 now remembers if you've unlocked the door to the boss. So once you unlock it, it will remain unlocked in the future playthroughs.
- Redid level 4 boss fight. He now has a new kneel-crush attack, and his stomps do an extra attack that will knock you down and stun you if you're too close. Also added two dragons to shoot fireballs at you every 5 seconds.
Official Guide
I just made a short guide for anyone having trouble staying alive, or taking too long to kill the enemies.
If it missed anything, or you're stuck somewhere, let me know.
UPDATE 5 - Level 3 fixes to gravity and rotations
BALANCE and AI CHANGES:
- Volcrate (the bird man) has a new block breaker move (on Normal and higher difficulty). To warn you that it's coming, it uses the same grunting sound as his unblockable gap closer move.
BUG FIXES:
- The poke attack works now. It does 0 damage with axes, but spears and swords do good damage. With keyboard+mouse hold Left-Shift and press Left Mouse button. On Xbox controllers hold Left-Trigger and press X.
- Volcrate (the bird man) respects gravity now. If he follows you down some stairs, he will walk down them instead of float down like an astronaught.
- Computers no longer twitch and spin impossibly first. The problem was their auto-aim code running 60 times per second while they're moving close or through you. The solution was just to limit them to one auto-aim per second.
- Fixed Minotaur's weird rotations he does when fighting enemies on stairs, and when doing an aerial chop attack against a dragon.
