Minotaur
UPDATE 4 - bugfixes and more difficult AI
NEW CONTENT
- Made one of the temple rooms in level 2 bigger, and moved the Chimera fight there instead of the main room.
- Placed an edible heart and brain on a sarcophagus in the corner of that room, and they will respawn if you die. So you don't have to worry about rationing your food there.
BALANCE and AI CHANGES:
- New attack for the Greek spearman (on normal and higher difficulties). If he sees you running nearby he'll do his spear attack, AND this attack's aim is set to follow your position, making it even harder to avoid.
- Updated Orthros (the two headed dog lizard, or as some have called him the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥dragon"), made his attack recovery period much shorter. So you won't get as many free hits on him before he backs up and does another attack.
- Made the dagger cultists more aggressive by lowering their group cooldown from 500ms to 50ms, and making their attack un-interuptible.
- Removed the torch cultists global cooldown, so if he sees you but you're busy fighting someone else he won't care, he'll just try to burn you rather than wait his turn.
- Gave the temple Chimera immunity to Minotaur charge/trample attacks. And if he sees you trying an aerial chop on him, he will try to gore you with his horns before you land (except on Easy difficulty).
- Gave the large Greek soldier a counter attack to Minotaur's run.
- Minotaur will stop running if he takes damage from anything.
BUG FIXES:
- Fixed the level 1 camera bug in the town, where it would do a closeup side shot if you left the fighting area.
- Removed Minotaur's ability to run up steep hills and cliffs.
- Removed 12 guys from the town fight in level 1, to help improve the pacing.
- Changed Minotaur's health gained from eating. On Easy it's still half health per meal, but on Normal (and up) it's now 1/4 of his health per meal.
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS:
- Put a 1.5 second cooldown on enemy blood splatter effects, because charging through them was covering the ground in blood puddles and killing performance. Just charging two cultists in the temple was making 90 blood puddle sprites.
- Bleed won't be shown at all anymore if you set the Graphics Quality to bad.
UPDATE 3 - Swords!
Added a few cameras to level 4 to better show where the portal doorways are, and where to go next.
Nerfed the rock on the first level, it still one hit kills on a chop attack, but swinging with it is a lot less effective.
UPDATE 2 - bugfixes and re-designs
At Level 1's Town:
- Added new cameras in the first level town, to make it more clear where to go once you've defeated everyone.
- Added a new camera there by the invisible wall, to suggest you go back and kill everyone before continuing.
- Moved the enemy spawn points to be more off camera, so they don't just beam in like villains on Star Trek.
At Level 1's Temple:
- Added new cameras that aim at the level exit after after you defeat everyone.
In Level 2:
- Added more lighting, so you can see what you're fighting even after the ground is totally covered in blood.
- Made the torches by the main room exit brighter.
- To make it more obvious where to go after defeating the boss, I aim the camera to the left, and turn on a bright light right infront of the doorway.
In Level 4:
- Adjusted the ambient occlusion (shadows), and lightened up the level.
- Made the giant black armor guy un-stunnable and immune to: tramples/charges, headbutts, and kicks.
- Removed the delayed reaction the black armored guys had to being knocked down.
- Fixed a bug with most of the enemies sounds on this level.
Elsewhere:
- Fixed a bug where eating enemies that had fallen through the ground, would cause Minotaur to also fall through the ground.
- Added a progress bar to the level loading screens. Which is helpful, but still not perfect because initializing everything in the new level is what takes most of the time.
- Sped up Minotaur's blocking animation transition, unless he's in the middle of an attack.
- Sped up Minotaur's "get knocked down" animation transition.
- Got rid of some ugly image compression artifacts in the menu screens.
UPDATE 1
- Added an "Exit Game" button to the main menu and pause menu.
- Temporarily changed the camera exit duration for severing of heads and limbs, and eating. This should fix the stuck camera problem for now.
- Added sounds for Minotaur's swing, chop, headbutt, and kick moves.
- Slowed Minotaur by 30% for half a second after he charges/runs into someone, to give a feeling of resistance.
- Added a checkpoint to the Temple level.
- Made the Weak Greek Blue Swordsman more aggressive on normal and higher difficulties. By lowering their attack cooldown by a second, and lowering their global cooldown to 5ms (my global cooldown makes enemies attack you one by one, movie ninja style). Also gave him some sounds.
- Made the Greek Spearman (in black armor) more aggressive in all difficulties, by lowering his attack cooldown from 3 to 2 seconds, and reducing his attack charge time from 0.5 seconds to 0.25 seconds. Also fixed a gravity bug where he would float down from the sky.
COME AND PLAY!
After only a few hours I've gotten some great feedback in the Discussion. No one's found any game breaking bugs, but I did get good suggestions to make the weak enemies more satisfying to fight against, and combat overall more immersive. Plus lots of ideas to make the gore even better.
If you want to help shape this game, it's easy! Just play it, and make notes about the things you'd like to see get added or improved (plus any bugs you find). Then share those ideas in the game Discussion pages.
ALMOST THERE!
Earlier today I uploaded the game to Steam, and told them it's ready to be reviewed. So if all goes well, and their review backlog isn't too long, Minotaur will go on sale on the store Friday evening. If not, then... next Friday evening! (not sure of the exact time because Valve is in PST, but a lot of their dates use GMT)
I've also made a new gameplay trailer, because the old one was really out of date. It still has all of those weak soldiers whose arms and heads get severed and tossed into the air, but now there's also stronger enemies to fight like the bird men (and women), cultists, armored enemies, bugs, demons, fire breathing dragons, giant two headed lizards, and a few level bosses.
I don't know how to embed a video here, but you can see the new trailer here, or just by going to the main store page.
Full Controller Support!
Going with the God of War setup, with a few changes:
A - Jump
X - Fast attack (horizontal, for severing enemy heads)
Y - Heavy attack (vertical, for severing enemy arms)
B - Ram / Headbutt? Or pickup / throw items. I'm not sure what I want B to do yet.
Left joystick - move
Left trigger - block
Right joystick - look / face that direction
Left joystick + A - to dodge / roll / evade enemy attacks
What do you think? Good? Bad? Prefer Dark Souls style controls? Let me know in a comment or the game hub discussions.