Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure
Mortal Sin
Major Skill And Item Update
Hello Sinners! In this update, I’ve done a complete overhaul of the skill system to encourage impactful decision making and greater build variety. Other highlights include the addition of sprinting, damage numbers, and more!
Overall, I am pretty happy with the core combat of Mortal Sin, but I felt like it was lacking a little bit as an action-rpg and roguelike in terms of the character building component. I did some reflection and came to the conclusion that the skills did not feel impactful enough, and were too easy to acquire. Additionally, I wanted there to be more of a risk-reward component in balancing greedy play versus safer decision making. Sort of like gradually removing pieces from a jenga tower, seeing just how close you can get to the edge before it collapses.
I realized that the risk-reward factor was mostly already built in the game, but just wasn’t being utilized effectively enough: I’m talking about durability, of course. Item skills and passive skills have now been unified, leading to direct synergy between your equipment choices and skill orb choices. However, nearly every skill is tied to durability usage, either from the equipment you got the skill from, or from an equipment slot tied to the passive skill you selected.
Passive skills are now tied to a particular equipment slot, i.e Melee Weapon, Staff, Helmet etc. This means you need something in that slot for the skill to be active, and it will also consume the durability of whatever is in that slot. You must strategically consider your skill selections, as stacking too many skills in the same slot may be powerful, but unsustainable for your durability unless you invest in other durability damage mitigating skills. Generally it's best to stack a smaller set of skills, since the durability cost stays the same, and they get super powerful bonuses you can truly feel. For example, increasing your Waveblade stacks increases not only damage, but the number of projectiles as well. Increasing Inner Fire stacks will make your fireballs pierce enemies, etc.
But how do you measure how well your build is doing? Well other than clear speed, you can now see exactly how hard each combo and skill is hitting with these handy damage numbers! You can toggle them in the settings, but you probably won’t want to because they are pretty addicting.
Oh yeah, there’s also sprinting now! To perform a sprint, simply hold the bash button. This opens up a lot of new tactical options that weren’t available before, such as running away to make space to drink your potions. Beware though, enemies will run after you too!
A note about saves: Because I removed the old passive skills, and made a new skill system, your skills on items will be removed along with your passives if you load up an old session. Your character will still be intact otherwise though, and the progression will normalize by the time you hit the next round. Here are the rest of the patch notes, excluding individual specific skill changes that are too numerous to list.
Content
Added a brand new skill system! Passive skills and item skills have been combined into the same pool of skills, so you can now synergize and stack skills either with items or skill orbs. Every single skill in the game is stackable now up to a maximum of 5 stacks, with compelling rewards for investing heavily into one skill.
Added 50 new skills! Although some share the same name and icon as before, they’ve all been reworked in some way, with different behaviors and scaling properties. Choose them wisely!
Passive skills now are tied to a particular equipment slot, i.e Melee Weapon, Staff, Helmet etc. This means you need something in that slot for the skill to be active, and it will also consume the durability of whatever is in that slot. Reworked and updated the UI in many places to better communicate these changes.
Reworked the starting area to be more compact and convenient. All of the points of interest are closer to the player, there’s less empty space, and it’s more decorated than before.
You can now hold bash to immediately go into a sprint once the animation is complete. No more shift spamming!
Reworked durability. Every item now has 100% durability across the board, but consumes different amounts depending on its weight. Fast, light weapons consume less durability per hit, but take more durability damage on block and parry. Slow, heavy weapons consume more durability per hit, but take less durability damage on block and parry. Skills will now consume fixed amounts of durability for the appropriate slots, rather than a random range of durability like before. Generally, you will take way less durability damage when you get hit now, but you will spend more for powerful skills.
Added damage numbers! I wanted to communicate damage intuitively for all the numerous attacks that had no UI otherwise, such as kicks, punches, fireballs, explosions, etc. Critical hits will show as large yellow numbers. You can toggle damage numbers in the gameplay settings.
Enigma now has random combos!
Balance
Struggler has been slightly reworked and buffed greatly. His combos now flow more smoothly, and he is incentivized to switch between melee weapons and staves with the newly added Spellblade combo for a true hybrid playstyle. He also starts with +5 to all starting stats, which makes sin level stat boosts much more meaningful.
Reduced level size scaling overall from 1x, 1.5x, 2x for A, B and C areas respectively, to 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x.
Base crit percentage starts at 0%, down from 5%.
Attack stat no longer adds to your base damage, but instead increases your global damage by up to 200%. Attack was basically the number one source of damage before, which hurt build diversity and meaningful decision making. Now it’s still good, but it doesn’t have to be your main source of damage increase.
Punches and kicks now scale with your current level, rather than not scaling at all. I felt this was necessary to compensate for the fact that weapons scale with item level and unarmed attacks didn’t have anything similar so they fell behind a lot later in the game.
Fist weapons now have varying attack speed, in addition to the different damage and hitboxes they already had before, to make them feel more different.
Elite enemies no longer drop skill crates, but rather sinful essence. This improves the pacing of the game, and ensures that skill choices remain meaningful, rather than being flooded with skills like before. Added a new in-game sin level UI to better show the sinful essence gains since they happen more frequently now.
Some of the skills ported to the new system will only trigger with direct melee hits now, such as Shared Misery, Chains of Ice, Volatility and Headhunter. I want these effects to reward skillful aim, rather than being triggered automatically by all the different projectiles and explosion effects.
Portal rooms are always the smallest size now, instead of increasing in size over the course of the run. Empty portal exits are guaranteed to have a sinful essence now so they aren’t just rewardless dead ends. I don’t want portal rooms to ever feel like a drag, particularly when multiple portals spawn in the same room.
All trials reward a Skill Orb selection now, which is a lot more valuable because skills are not as plentiful as before.
Rerolling Skill Orbs doubles the price each time.
Reduced all enemy health by 20%
Curse item bonuses now scale multiplicatively with each round, so they are way more impactful in later rounds.
Reworked quest weapon / armor upgrade formula to be more linear rather than exponential scaling
Tweaked item rarity drop rates so the best items are less common
Rare (purple) items now have +2 skill level, which makes them unique since every other item can only give +1. Upgrading a rare item with the helena quest reward will give you a godlike (pink) item, with +2 instead of +1, making it the best type of equipment in the game.
Removed drop chests for now. I don’t think there’s really a good place for these in the game at the moment, as they slow down the tempo and make the rewards less meaningful, but I may bring them back if I find another use for them.
Polish
The delay after a hit cancel which then allows you to perform your next action now behaves consistently regardless of your frame rate. Increased the delay from roughly .1 seconds (5 frames), to .2 seconds, so attacks have to follow through a little bit rather than having their animation cancelled before the hit is even visible. This does make the game a little less spam friendly, so sometimes it’s best to wait just a beat before inputting your next action to decide if you should block or continue attacking.
Helena has her own crafting sockets now so crafting at the anvil doesn’t stomp on her rewards.
It’s now a little more difficult to get out of bounds in the starting area, but if you do, there is an endless void to look at in the horizon. Whatever you do though, don’t touch it!
Removed the cooldown from buying Sinful Offerings, and added an option to buy Sinful Offerings in batches of 10 for convenience.
Increased head bob amount, and doubled it while sprinting.
Hitstop won’t trigger again until the last hitstop is finished
Hunter’s Mark curse no longer makes the player’s light go dark
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where jumping straight out of a dash in portal rooms would sometimes kill your upwards momentum
Fixed a bug where it was possible to endlessly dash jump in portal rooms
Fixed UI bug where sell button prompt sometimes was in the wrong position
Other minor bug fixes
This is my last planned systemic rework for Mortal Sin. From here on out, I want to focus on fleshing the game out with additional content and polish for the 1.0 release. I spent a lot of time on the tool sets for levels and enemies, did numerous code rewrites, and I want to fully utilize all the work I did to make the game really shine. Thank you for supporting my game for 2 years now. I will do my best to make the full release the fullest execution of my vision, which you have all given me the opportunity to do!
Random Colors, Random Class, Special Class Loot, and More!
Hello Sinners! Back with an update that includes a lot of polish and also some commonly requested features that will help increase replayability. I really appreciate the feedback on the last combo update, and now I'm more in the mindset of using that as a base to expand the game rather than rework it.
Starting off with one of the most commonly requested features, a random color cycler! It will automatically pick a new color at the start of each run, which adds a lot of variety. It was kind of cumbersome before to have to go to the settings every time to swap colors, so now you can set this once, sit back, relax, and play!
I also went ahead and added a random class option. Not sure what to play on a given day? Give this option a spin and learn a new class you haven't tried yet!
Instead of having a small chance to get any off-class weapon (which was usually something boring like a sword or axe), each class has a small chance to get a rare weapon that is useful for their kit. Finding one of these weapons can even open up a new playstyle altogether. In the case of the Monk, he has a small chance to find a Guan Dao. If you are lucky enough to find one, you will have access to two incredibly powerful weapon-only combos!
Manage your invincibility timer like a pro with this new handy UI! This is a small, but very nice addition that allows you to really unleash your offense potential without ever taking your eyes off the action.
Here are more detailed patch notes below:
Content
Added a Random Colors option to the visual settings! Turn this on to get a random color right away. It will also automatically cycle through colors every time you start a new session for more variety!
Added a Random Class option to the class selection screen! It won't pick a class you haven't unlocked yet.
Reworked the code for loot so that every class has a more customizable loot table.
Instead of having a small chance to get any off-class weapon (which was usually something boring like a sword or axe), each class has a small chance to get a rare weapon that is powerful and can open up a new playstyle.
Berserker has a small chance to get a Sinblade or Devil's Arm, opening up options for faster play.
Gladiator has a small chance to get Sinblade or dual-wield Cleavers for more variety.
Monk has an increased chance to get fist weapons like Claws and Caestus.
Monk get's no weapons normally, but has a 1% chance to find the Guan Dao.
Added two monk weapon-only combos intended for the Guan Dao, Phantom Wind and Dragon's Fang. Dragon's Fang is a powerful ability reset combo that opens up a new style of play!
Added a new combo action called "Slash" specifically for attacking with melee weapons (similar to "Staff Attack" or "Punch"). It's only used by the Dragon's Fang combo currently.
Paladin has a small chance to get the thematically appropriate Divine Radiance, in case you want to go two-hand style.
Reaper has a small chance to get Mortal Coil or Spirit Drill, in case you want to go spell caster style.
Stalker has a small chance to get Soul Lance, in case you want to go spell caster style.
Vampire has a small chance to get Blizzard or Spectral Mace, to add some variety.
Warlock has a small chance to get the Scythe, in case you want to go melee-hybrid style
Replaced the old invincibility UI indicator with a simple radial graphic in the center of the screen. Managing invulnerability is a very important part of the game, so I want to make this as smooth as possible so you don't need to take your eyes off the action.
Added scare spawn attribute to elite enemies (similar to the final boss)
Added homing skull attribute to elite enemies (similar to the final boss)
Added sound and visual effects for various stages of charging when you hold attack. Now you can see one ring for a One Whirlwind, two rings for a Half Whirlwind, and three rings for a Full Whirlwind. Sometimes a combo may offer One Whirlwind for example, and if you hold just a little longer you can get it to Half Whirlwind, and Full Whirlwind. This is always faster than charging from nothing, and now it's more clear what the timing actually is.
Balance
Hits that cause an explosion from combos or parrying now scale based on your weapon's damage versus a flat value. This means heavier weapons will appropriately do more explosion damage than faster ones.
Explosions from parries deal slightly less damage (80% of weapon damage), compared to explosions from combos (100% of weapon damage). This shouldn't really be that noticeable, but its just a slight extra incentive to perform combos rather than farm parries.
Made all invincibility effects that weren't already on a timer timer-based so they can show up clearly for the new radial UI.
Reduced invincibility timer for Quick Step, Perfectionist, Bone Saw and Blood Boil.
[Hotfix 1/6/25] Increased range of katanas to match the default sword
Potion shops found in dungeons have a maximum of one purchase per statue. This makes it so you can't max out so easily, and also gives more meaning to having two of the same kind of potion statue next to each other.
Reduced elite enemy slow aura duration and increased the cooldown so it can't chain nonstop.
Reduced the amount of unique combos you need to perform to avoid the stale moves penalty. Since there's less combos now per class, the old threshold didn't really make sense.
Polish
Hits that cause an explosion now explode at the point of impact, rather than the player's position, so it enforces that that the explosion is coming from the hit itself.
[Hotfix 1/6/25] Decoupled auto combo and combo UI code so you can have auto combo work even when combo shuffle or combo UI is turned on. Leave your ultimate combo that takes practice to memorize up on the screen while still being able to do those juicy auto combos!
[Hotfix 1/8/25] Renamed "Cast" combo action to "Staff Attack" to hopefully make it more clear
Disabled crafting anvils for Hoarder since he has no weapons
Banned weapon quest rewards for Hoarder since he has no weapons
Bosses drop yellow essence for Hoarder instead of loot crates
Added a nicer in-game Discord button and removed the other social media links. Since there's no comprehensive wiki or guide for Mortal Sin yet, I really want to make sure players have a resource to learn more about the game and ask questions. And as of now, the Discord is the best place for that!
Elite enemy split attribute will now spawn smaller versions of itself with the same color as the original elite.
Color coded the tooltips for auto versus manual combos on the combo screen to make it more clear.
Bug Fixes
[Hotfix 1/8/25] Fixed bug where you couldn't navigate to combo list with controller or keyboard.
Hitting enemies through walls no longer shows the hit marker UI (since they don't take damage).
Fixed an issue where you could often end up crowd surfing enemies.
Thank you for the support! I notice some people did indeed gift a copy to their friends and spread the word after my last post. This has a snowballing effect because not only is it an additional sale, but it also helps boost the steam algorithm to recommend the game. If you are able to gift a copy or leave a review, i'd really appreciate it as it will help carry momentum to release.
I also wanted to share that the steam experimental beta branch is very much active now. I update on there nearly every day, so I'd highly recommend to leave it on because you'll never know what fun new content you'll see every time you play! Beta feedback is prioritized, so make your voice heard on the Discord.
Major Class Overhaul, New Combos, Auto Combo!
Hello Sinners! First of all, I want to thank you for the support in 2024, and I intend to carry this momentum into a strong 2025 release year. This started out as a minor update, but then I realized in order to do it right, it needed a lot more work. I’ve done a complete overhaul on all the classes in the game, giving them unique movesets and a stronger overall identity. Here is a breakdown of some of the major changes, starting with class combos:
I found that people tended to stick to one or two reliable combos, such as Whirling Dervish, and ignore the others. I initially added combo shuffle and combo rewards to help encourage people to mix it up, but then I realized it’s probably best to go with how people play instead of fighting against it.
Less is more! Each class now has a smaller set of unique combos that more impactful than before. For example, the monk is all about battering your foes with quick blows, setting them up with an uppercut, then doing an exploding whirlwind finisher. The hunter is all about thrusting attacks, and weaving the vanish ability between each attack for some peekaboo style gameplay. Classes tend to lean more heavily into one type of attack such as basic attacks, heavy attacks, thrusts, whirlwinds, etc.
Some ability combos are difficult to execute, but can lead to an ability cooldown reset. This allows you to chain the combo repeatedly as long as you can execute it consistently. If you drop it though, you’ll be stuck waiting for the cooldown and have to resort to your basic combos. Take this reaper combo for example, which allows you to chain bonesaws when performed correctly.
Speaking of basic combos, you don’t really have to worry about memorizing them at all, because the game takes care of that for you. With the auto combo setting on by default, you will automatically perform some short bread and butter combos simply by clicking. The system is smart enough to detect your distance, angle, and movement direction. This means you will bash, kick, or attack depending on these factors as well as the random combo selected. You can tell if a combo is an auto combo, by looking for the small gear icon on the right.
The goal is to minimize the overhead of learning each class, make gameplay flow smoother, and also allow newer players to immediately understand the benefits of combos and how fast paced the game actually is. Now you memorize 1-3 class defining combos, and leave the rest to the left mouse button. It may sound simple on paper, but each class has their own ins and outs that must be mastered to succeed.
Manual combos are still prioritized even when auto combo is toggled on, so it should never interfere with you trying to pull off that six button, mega death explosion combo. If you are still not convinced though, you can always toggle it off in the settings.
Here are more detailed patch notes below:
Content
Added 78 new combos to try out! Each class has around 6 unique combos on average.
Each class was entirely overhauled to have a stronger identity so enjoy the variety and satisfaction of mastering each one!
Added an auto combo system that can be toggled at any time in the settings. Auto combos are there to help make general offensive gameplay smoother, and help reduce the overhead of trying to memorize many combos. Only basic combos can be auto combos, and the more advanced combos with high payoff must be performed manually.
Added 12 unique combo attributes for different finishers. These include explosions, four different kinds of whirlwinds, invincibility, shock blasts and more!
Since many combos are now a core part of their respective class kits, I replaced some of the unlockables from the level progression system.
Added a +1 health potion at start unlockable.
Added a +1 wizard oil at start unlockable.
Added three +1 sin levels at start unlockables.
Added three +1 quest reward retained between runs unlockables.
Balance
Thrusting weapons and whirlwind weapons now alternate regular attacks with their thrust / whirlwind attack respectively. This is done to make them feel better to use so they don’t just spam the same animation over and over. Whirlwind weapons perform a fast whirlwind by default.
The stages of attack charging are now slow power strike, one slow whirlwind power strike, half duration slow whirlwind power strike, full duration slow whirlwind power strike. Shortened the time it takes to get to the next stage a lot to compensate and better fit the fast paced nature of the game. Try holding some combo power strikes to take it to the next stage. Utilizing combos can also help you perform the fast variants of these finishers.
Performing any power strike attack will slow your character down during its active frames. This is done to make heavier attacks feel stronger, and also to help balance ranged characters firing projectiles so enemies have a chance to close the gap.
You move slower during a whirlwind startup. The active whirlwind part is normal speed, down from 1.5x speed.
Numerous adjustments to class stats, ability cooldowns, weapon tables to help fine tune gameplay.
Paladin Holy Spirit ability also fires magic shields on bash, in addition to block.
Nerfed Blood Ritual cast speed a lot.
Hold thrust is now a default mechanic and no longer needs to be unlocked. I think it’s a little underutilized in this current version of the game, so I’ll probably find another use for it in the future.
Changes in player speed happen with a little bit of acceleration / deceleration to make movement feel smoother. Dashing starts at max acceleration still, but will gradually decelerate to normal speed at the end.
Berserker rage skill now only applies to power strike whirlwinds, and only grants 1 second of invulnerability at the beginning of a whirlwind’s active frames (instead of the whole animation)
Reduced drop rate of off brand weapons for classes with weapon restrictions by a factor of 10. I may remove or rework this in the future, because it seems cool on paper, but in practice it’s rarely exciting when it happens and takes away from the class identity.
The no damage quest objective now only fails if you take a direct hit that stuns you. This means poison damage and bloody palm damage is ignored.
Polish
Battle music will fade out sooner after all nearby enemies are dead.
Redid the kick collider to contour more to the thigh as well as the leg. Gave it a longer hitbox.
Redid the bash collider to be a sphere around the player instead of using the fist hitboxes. It should hit enemies more consistently than before. Increased the radius also.
Redid the player fist colliders to contour to upper arm as well as forearm. Gave them a longer hitbox.
Redid the Caestus and Claw hitboxes. Claws are long and narrow, and Caestus is short and wide.
Dashing near enemies will cause you to stop dashing and decelerate so you don’t shoot past them at mach speed as often.
Polished the player combo UI to look nicer and have more helpful text descriptions.
Added some simple tutorial texts for auto combo.
Heavy attacks and whirlwinds will clear the input buffer when they first activate so it’s not so easy to accidentally interrupt them.
Reduced freeze effect size a little so it’s easier to see enemies close up
Bug Fixes
Fixed Scythe not glowing during power strikes.
Disabled enemy hitboxes when they are stunned so they don’t hit you while going from an attack animation to a stun animation.
Fixed a bug where enemy mortal coil projectiles didn’t stun the player.
I wanted to share that Mortal Sin has hit a bit of a slump in terms of growth, so I’d really appreciate any support that will give me time to get the game over the finish line. I’ve tried to pick up the marketing lately, reaching out to influencers, revamping the steam page, making a new trailer, and running ads, but none of them have seemed to have a major impact so far. If you could help by letting your friends know about the game or perhaps gifting them a copy, I’d greatly appreciate it. There’s still a lot of content I want to do, such as a gunslinger class, new enemies, new traps, new area, and more polish that I believe will make the game truly shine. Stay tuned for more updates, and happy new year!
Class / Balance Update, New Color Palette!
Hello Sinners! I've been working on polishing up the current gameplay before moving on to bigger content updates. Enjoy this batch of class changes, new color palette, bug fixes, and various other balance tweaks for a more enjoyable experience.
Content
Added a new color Palette, Helloween! This orange / black palette is a lot of fun to play with, and is inspired by the Halloween update artwork.
All color palettes start unlocked now from the beginning. Although it wasn’t intentional, for some the palettes are useful for accessibility reasons, and in that case, I feel it’s unnecessary to gate them behind play time if they make for a more comfortable experience
Timed enemy survival and elite enemy floor plate quests can now spawn in arena rooms as well. This also fixes an issue where the plate could sometimes not spawn at all if that floor was only an arena room
Class Changes
Juiced up the Monk’s Dragon Punch ability. The uppercut deals 4x normal fist damage (up from 1x), has more force, and triggers a more powerful explosion
Juiced up the Gladiator’s Battle Cry ability. It triggers an additional shockwave, deals 3x damage, has more force, and has half the cooldown
Reworked the Duelist’s Blade Dance ability to have half the cooldown, but triggers a fast, short whirlwind
Berserker now has the Brand of Sacrifice curse to start, totally unlike Guts from Berserk
Increased the starting health of nearly all classes, minus the tankiest ones
Balance
Combo levels now reward 1 second base invincibility, up from .5 seconds, and scales with the reward multiplier for 2 seconds and up to 3 seconds respectively at higher combo levels. I want to push the combat a little more in the direction of combo rewards so people don’t feel as inclined to only parry
Removed the fast power strike after a regular block
Parries have a slightly smaller window to execute
Added back in shield weapons having a slightly bigger parry window
Parry whirlwinds only do one rotation now, rather than a full cycle. This new type of whirlwind is referred to in-game as a fast, short whirlwind
Parries mitigate .5x guard damage, down from .75x
Poison can no longer be parried
Made the forest swinging branch trap smaller and easier to crouch under
If you stun an enemy while it’s already stunned, it will preserve the stun duration of the longer stun rather than reset the timer
Enemy kicks now do increased guard damage rather than bypassing guard entirely
Did a pass on projectile stun and knockback values so they appropriately match the force of the attack (was all the same before)
Enemies are guaranteed to have at least half of the player’s movement speed after round 1. This is to prevent cases where the player has stacked so much speed the enemies can’t keep up early on
Reduced the random range of equipment durability damage when taking hits from 1x-4x to 1x-2x
During arena events, each enemy spawned will add 1 second to the timed completion quest objective timer, rather than pausing it completely
Made split enemies a little bigger so they’re easier to hit
Reduced the damage of boss overhead double slam attacks by 20%
Summoned minions have .75x health
Polish
Enemy line of sight checks work more reliably now so enemies will attack their friends’ backs less now
Enemies can no longer get hit behind walls
Enemies that just spawned will delay appearing until the player is a sufficient distance away. Helps with cases where the player could end up riding on the head of an enemy that just spawned underneath them
Blood / audio hit effects now play at the point of impact more accurately
The enemy attack warning now shows from further away and appears more reliably
The enemy attack warning now plays a sound effect
Far away enemies will move slowly towards the player until they are in a certain range. Reduces the amount of hunting for enemies in large arenas.
Headless enemies will approach the player if they are too far away, preventing cases where they had to be hunted down or moved so far away they were no longer a threat
Frozen enemies have their hitboxes disabled, but continue to show their attack warning, and will immediately activate their hitboxes again after unfreezing
Smoothed enemy pathing around various static forest objects like graves and crosses
Optimization
Freeze effects will only trigger once per enemy, rather than once for every single body part
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug with shared misery that would cause an error which could make a domino effect and cause other weird issues (11/1 hotfix)
Fixed a bug where you could trigger Quake and Judgement even on non power strike weapon attacks (11/3 hotfix)
Warlock’s Dual Cast ability now properly resets it’s cool down every time you parry
Fixed a bug where invulnerable frozen enemies could still get hit sometimes
Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck in the Immortal Construct’s grab indefinitely
Fixed a bug where Immortal Construct (i.e. Pursuer) could die and despawn awkwardly
Fixed a bug where Blood Ritual wouldn’t activate sometimes and you’d have to swap your weapon to reset it
Fixed a bug where parry explosion / whirlwind could trigger multiple times
Fixed a bug where selecting a quest reward could make Divino unintentionally go into an aggressive state
Fixed missing audio on bone saw
With the last major rework style update, I feel confident that I can push out updates more frequently now due to the stronger code base. Stay tuned for some exciting stuff to come like new enemies, new classes, new quests, new items and more!
Enemy Update Hotfix #2
I've been reading all of your feedback carefully, and decided to make some adjustments I believe will help make for a smoother experience. I was a little worried about how the stun changes would be received initially, and I hear you loud and clear. Reliable stuns are not only a core part of controlling large crowds and encouraging offense, but also critical to satisfying hit feedback as well. Additionally, the early game in particular was rough to get going, so I want to ease people in better.
Balance
Normal enemies will now get stunned reliably as before. Unholy Rage enemies, Bosses, and Elites still have poise, meaning they are more likely to be stunned as they take more damage. Projectiles can now stun again, but it's very short and only affects the upper body, while the legs can continue moving towards you. The upper body stun also applies to enemies who are running (instead of them having poise like it was before).
The attack warning indicator UI now overlaps all other indicators so it doesn't get covered up by slowing ground and similar status effects
Enemy health reduced by 20% for Area A, round 1 (i.e. the first five levels). I feel this will help in getting the run going, because it allows a little bit of time for you get some skills and equipment to boost your damage.
When you have your guard broken, you will now take less durability damage proportionally to how much was blocked, similar to how health damage works after guard break. Before it would take full damage no matter what, even if you blocked most of the attack.
Wraiths can headbutt like they used to when they have no arms, so they don't run away as much
Reduced Summoner (cave goat caster) base health from 425 to 375
Reduce Zealot (forest pumpkin head caster) base health from 375 to 350
Reduced Baron of Sin (dungeon demon boss) explosion force from 10 to 5, reducing its durability damage
Bug Fixes
Fixed a missing enemy spawn in Maw of Sin
Fixed bug where enemy invulnerability shields ignored their legs
Thank you for your honest feedback, and let me know what you think of these changes. I am committed to keep refining Mortal Sin, and make it the best action roguelike possible
Enemy Update Hotfix
Here are a batch of balance hotfixes that should help smooth out the whole experience. I really appreciate all the feedback! Releasing a massive patch like this can be a little tough at the start, but I'm reading all of the comments I can and considering each one carefully. Please bear with me as I continue to iterate and get closer to that perfect balance of challenging, engaging gameplay.
Balance
Did a pass on all of the enemy kick animations, slowing them down in most cases and playing the attack warning earlier so it's easier to parry
Parrying now has a minimum window of 0.2 seconds, up from 0.1 seconds by default. Starting a block after an enemy's attack warning shows will give you extra lenience and increase the window to up to 0.4 seconds (for that attack only). This extra buffer makes parrying feel a lot smoother, and makes it so the visual warning is a more reliable indicator for when to parry. This extra time buffer only applies to melee attacks, whereas projectiles always have the minimum window of 0.2 seconds.
Ramped up the spawn chance of spellcasters gradually over the course of the dungeon. This was done so you don't get a room full of summoners in first or second room of an area.
Increased the Baron of Sin (big demon boss) hellfire explosion attack warning radius by 12%
Reduced the Baron of Sin's hellfire explosion damage from 50 to 45. The maximum health percentage damage it can deal has been reduced from 100% to 90%
Reduced the Embodiment of Sin's homing skull damage from 50 to 45. The maximum health percentage damage it can deal has been reduced from 100% to 90%
With the entirely new framework I created, it's now easier than ever to make balance adjustments as needed. So please keep the feedback coming (as specific as possible), and I will do my best to address it!
Major Enemy Update
Hello Sinners! After over three months of hard work and long hours, I'm happy to present to you an entire overhaul of the enemies and their AI! This was the last major system that was left over from the game's original conception, and it felt like I had hit a wall in terms of making the game the way I wanted it to be. So I had to roll up my sleeves and redo years of code bloat to make this happen. The effects of these changes are huge and impact nearly every system in the game. It also affects the gameplay flow and challenge dramatically, enhancing the overall intensity and adding a new stragegic element to the mix. Here are some of the big picture highlights:
New Enemy Movement Enemies are much more mobile than before, bringing their capabilities more in line with the player. They can move while attacking, strafe around you, back pedal or run away when they are weakened. Spell caster enemies will actively zone and kite you, running away after taking their shot. Headless enemies add to the chaos, moving and rotating erratically while dishing out a volley of attacks. Rather than relying on the same strategy repeatedly as you could before, you really have to use your entire toolkit to prevail, keeping the gameplay engaging and exciting.
New Enemy Attacks Over 90% of animations have been replaced with new ones. Now attacks are a bit slower and easier to read. And the attack warning UI is a reliable way to time your parries or get out of harm's way. Enemies will time and space their attacks at the optimal range to cause the most damage. For instance, if you are moving towards them they will start their attacks a bit early to catch you coming in, but if you are running away they will try to over shoot you with their attack to catch you going back.
Hit Detection and Feedback Rework Landing your hits has never felt so satisfying! I completely reworked all of the hit detection systems in the game for more accuracy, flexibility and improved visual effects. Each attack has it's own force and knockback values, which apply to both the player and enemies. For example, enemies can now knock you back with their kicks. Depending on the force value of the attack (heavy weapons have more force), it will accordingly have more hitstop, guard break and knockback. Some heavy enemy attacks can decimate your guard meter if you are not careful, so blocking is not always a safe bet!
See below for more detailed patch notes. This is nowhere near comprehensive, because there's simply too numerous to list, but I did my best. The state of the game is still fluid, so please let me know in the discord or forums if you experience any issues with the update, and I will do my best to address feedback and bugs. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Content
All new enemy attacks! There's way too many to list. Some examples are the forest boss firing multiple homing skulls at you, big overhead boss attacks that crush your guard and armor, and many more you'll have to play to see.
Added four core enemy behaviours, Flail, Retreat, Pursue and Wander
Wander works similar to as before, an idle state before the enemy sees the player
Pursue is the most sophisticated behaviour, taking different routes to the player, alternating between run and walk, and judging the best attack range for each attack. It will also react to your movements, walking backwards or strafing depending on your position.
Retreat happens either when the enemy has no available attacks, or after a ranged enemy attacks. It will try to find the best route away from the player. This dynamic adds a lot of strategic consideration where you must either bash to close the distance, risking moving into a bad spot with other enemies, or take your time to reposition and find a better angle.
Flail is the new headless behaviour. Enemies will move about and rotate in random directions while swinging wildy. Healdess enemies feel no pain, so they can't be stunned and will attack until killed. Sometimes, headless makes the enemy more dangerous than it was before so it's more important now to consider which limbs to remove based on your current position and situation.
Reworked the player and enemy guard systems. Both have a guard meter, which is affected more by the force of attacks. Using a heavy weapon will more quickly overwhelm an enemy's guard, leaving them vulnerable. Enemies have a chance to block instead of getting hit as long as they have some guard meter. Attacking an enemy in the legs or back will bypass guard, or kicking them as before.
If an enemy breaks your guard, it will do the remaining damage as a percentage of meter lost rather than damaging you 100%
Enemy force multiplies durability damage to your equipment, so really big attacks will damage your equipment more
Enemies can now kick the player to bypass their guard, unless you parry it.
You can now parry traps
Enemy poise system that can be broken based on how much damage you deal to them. Bosses have poise always, and regular enemies gain poise while running, giving them room to escape or time to land a running attack on you.
Enemies now have individual stun timers, modified by the force of the player's attacks. Weaker enemies are stunned more, while bigger ones are stunned less. If the stun time exceeds the time of the hit animation, it will transition to a stun loop animation, as opposed to before where it would do super slow mo of the hit animation with inconsistent timing.
Did a pass on every trap in the game to work with the new hit detection system. Enemies will no longer get displaced by spike traps, and will now get stuck on the spike if they manage to survive it.
Balance
All enemy attacks now have much clearer warning indicators, timed appropriate with a UI indicator and a flash. The animations are also slower and easier to read in general.
The player now has a brief stun animation when hit, but is immune to stun during the active frames of attacks to help balance it out.
Attacks now do a fixed amount of damage rather than a random range as before. It's way easier to balance this way
Player damage now must fall within a percentage health range, regardless of your defensive modifiers. This can help prevent one shotting, while also ensuring super tanky characters still take an appreciable amount of damage in order to avoid trivializing the game. These thresholds increase with each round.
Player projectiles no longer stun enemies, since playing ranged is already enough of an advantage as is. You may need to kick or hit enemies every now and then if you find yourself backed into a corner.
Removed enemy charge attacks. I felt these were a cheesy way at the time to compensate for the fact that enemies couldn't attack while moving. It's no longer necessary now that enemies can attack while running.
Enemy move speed will increase gradually after completing each area. On torment, enemy attack speed will increase after each area as well
Summoner enemies will keep summoning up to a maximum of two, as long as two are not alive at the time. Before it would just summon two and stop no matter what
Player speed is capped at 50% now, and the scaling is squished so you need more speed to reach that number than before. Speed is really hard to balance with the enemies, so I want to ensure the range of how fast you are cannot be so much greater than the enemies that it trivializes them. Plus it's an insanely powerful stat in general
Headhunter now has 50% chance to kill instead of 100%
Remove hoarder short height
Hunter class no longer has to decapitate to kill
Reduce torment enemy health multiplier from 2x to 1.5x since enemies have a bit more health by default anyway
Polish
Enemy movement now uses a custom system that is very precise and will be accurate even at high speeds
Hit flash colors and feedback has been improved
Tweaked the damage, hitstop, knockback and guard damage of every weapon and attack
Flesh creatures on the wall such as the hand or face now receive all the same hit effects a normal enemy would for the most part (since they now share the same enemy hit code). As such you can now freeze these enemies, use blood ritual on them, etc.
Severed limb physics look much more satisfying now, and will play a blood effect right at the location the sever took place which looks really cool in slow motion
Enemy animations will smoothly blend between each other most of the time, instead of being jerky like before.
Enemies now spread out more to prevent them from stacking on top of each other
Optimization
Blood decals on the environment now work much more reliably and are better optimized
New enemy logic is much more efficient than the old for the most part
Optimized enemy line of sight checks which were very expensive before
Redid how enemy minion spawns of all kinds work, and it's much more efficient now
Enemies in arena battles will now respect the global enemy limit of 20 active enemies at once, which greatly improves the performance of hectic cave fights for example.
Bug Fixes
Fixed many bugs with player damage calculations, hit detection and more
I apologize with how long this update took, and I hope the effort will be worth the wait. The enemy code was deeply entangled with many other systems such as traps and hit detection for example, which all needed to be redone to make this happen. With this rework, the game is much closer to my original vision, where dismemberment is meaningful, and the combat consistently engaging and challenging. It also paves the way for more easily adding new enemies and behaviors in the future. I feel I've been able to grow greatly as a game developer since release. Thank you for all the support to allow this to happen!
Wall Clipping Fix Update
Pushing this update mostly to fix the wall clipping issue people have been reporting. This was due to a bug in the new movement system I've been using, and it should happen way less often now. Thank you for your patience, and please let me know if you have any issues!
Changes in this Update
Fixed most bugs having to due with clipping through walls by getting pushed by enemies / traps. It's not 100% full proof, but it's a lot more consistent than before.
Fixed a bug where crouching in some spots could clip through the floor
Fixed a bug where skill statues would sometimes not prioritize a skill you chose earlier
Set Hoarder's minimum size slightly taller so the camera doesn't clip through the floor
Fixed a bug where breakable objects like barrels and boxes were sliding around too much
The Blood Ritual staff blood burst effect now plays audio correctly, counts as a hit for combos correctly, and has a redder color so it's easier to see
Fixed a bug where returning from a secret portal would show the floor plate UI and cause it to not go away
Hotfix Compilation 7/7 - 7/10
Fixed a bug where elite bosses in later rounds could have 5x health instead of 2x
Reduced non boss elite enemy health slightly from 5x to 4x health
Fixed an issue where exiting through a portal with the scare indicator warning would cause it to stay forever
Deleted a cave module that was out of bounds, causing some floor plate and enemy spawns to be inaccessible
Mortal Polish Update: New Combo System, Sin Tokens, Cave Rework, and more!
Hello Sinners! I’d like to call this the ultimate polish and refinement update. After all the new content, I wanted to take a step back and evaluate the core game loop. I found there were quite a few tuning adjustments and reworks that would be necessary to make the game really sharp and replayable. Although there is no major new content on paper, I am extremely excited about this update because it makes the game so much more fun and smooth overall! Here is an overview of some major problems I wanted solve:
Combo Rewards My number one issue was that Combo Shuffle was the only way for people to get rewards from comboing. It felt like playing with it off (as many do prefer), was playing at a disadvantage, and also locked people into predetermined combos that may not be appropriate for the situation. Combo Shuffle is still in the game and can help you vary your combos, but you can now play it off completely using the new free form Combo Meter! Performing any combo will give points relative to the length of the combo and attack speed of your weapon. Performing the same combo over and over will still reward points, but less so each time. You can also perform weapon swaps, trap kills and parries to fill your meter! My goal is to encourage people to play the game skillfully in the most straightforward way possible. Although you can no longer get direct stat boosts from combos, you can get a significant amount of essence which can be spent in the starting area as before for Sin Levels, described in the next section.
Stat Bloat Getting an absurd number of stat boosts through combo shuffle was too hard to balance, so I removed those completely. Additionally, the stat boost was a flat amount that was the same for every class, both invalidating items at high amounts and making the classes feel the same. Now it’s all been consolidated into a new stat, sin levels, which increase with each sinful essence you acquire. This new stat has a more modest scaling formula, and also factors in each class’ starting stats so a paladin at round 10 is still a lot more tanky than, say, a reaper at round 10.
Loot Bloat It’s raining loot! When you’ve just finished wiping a room of 50 enemies, it can be kind of tedious to open and check every single box. Excess loot also makes each one you come across less exciting and meaningful. As such, I’ve removed almost all equipment drop chest drops (except for bosses in the main zones), and enemies will reliably drop essence now instead. Skill chests will still drop as normal, as they are less frequent and require way less thought.
Treasure rooms now have a lot more meaning as they are the primary source of finding new gear (especially since the main rooms also no longer have equipment). I’ve also upped the spawn rate of portal rooms to compensate, so you are greatly rewarded for going off the beaten path.
Cave Bloat The cave was just too dang big, and it became a drag especially in the B and C variations. As such, I painstakingly redid every single room and arena to be more compact and closer to the other areas. Explore some new, never before seen layouts, and enjoy more consistent, fast paced cave spelunking.
Endless Runs Later rounds had very uneven scaling and were very difficult to balance. The biggest changes to fix this are the stat boost rework mentioned above, removing curses and passive skills at the beginning of each round, and adjusting the scaling formula to be more linear keeping it in line with the experience going between areas in the first round. Additionally, I added a new currency item called the Sin Token! These function as extra lives essentially and can only be dropped by the Embodiment of Sin. Going for the final trial has never been more rewarding, offering two tokens upon its completion that you can keep into the next round. Endless is a lot more consistently fun, challenging and balancing than ever before. So it’s never been a better time to go for those achievements!
I did have to wipe the old session saves though, sorry! The scaling is so different now that those old saves would break the game completely.
Movement Jank The old movement code was ugly and inconsistent. It had various physics bugs, such as how it clipped through walls more often than I’d like, wouldn’t stick to the ground properly, and could not get over small rocks and stone debris for example. This new movement system solves all of those problems and works much more reliably than before.
See the full patch notes below!
Content
Redid nearly every single cave room layout to be much smaller, closer to the size of the other levels. Cave should feel a lot more fun and fast now!
Added a special new currency item: Sin Tokens! Sin Tokens are essentially extra lives, which bring you back to your last save if you die at the cost of one token. The only way to obtain them is to kill the Embodiment of Sin, who drops one. Completing the final trial will net you two, making it a more appealing risk vs reward proposition before going into the next round.
Added a new combo meter reward system!
You can freely combo and get rewards without having to use combo shuffle. Perform combos, trap kills, weapon swaps, parries and more to score combo points. Fill your meter to full to gain essence and short invincibility! Using the same combos over and over will have diminishing returns, rewarding less points than if you were to mix it up.
The new combo meter factors in your weapon attack speed and awards more points appropriately. For example, a slow two hander will proportionally reward way more points for a combo than a faster weapon would for the same combo.
Higher combo levels give a reward multiplier, up to 3x max (i.e. rewards 3 essence back to back). Higher levels have a shorter timer, making it more difficult to maintain.
While combos have diminishing returns, kill bonuses are the opposite and increase the more enemies you can kill in a single action. Your kill bonus will reset if you perform any combo or technique after a kill. This is done to reward letting your full attack go, rather than forcing you to always cancel your action as soon as possible to do another technique.
Redid the player movement code completely. The new system tracks the groundly more smoothly, whereas the old one would pop into the air going over inclines, and had various other issues. The new system should result in much less clipping through walls, smoother movement, and automatically steps over small debris such as rocks and stone plates in the cave. Also fixes weird physics issues when enemies would hit the player and teleport them.
Added / reworked stat boost as a new stat, Sin Level. Sin Level can only be increased by consuming sinful essence. Combo Shuffle no longer rewards stat boosts because it was too hard to balance, so now you must acquire sinful essence from the sinful offering cross (by spending money), or various other rare places in the game.
Sin level increases all of your stats by some flat amount, but also factors in a percentage of your class’ starting stats. This way, a paladin will consistently have more health and defense than a reaper for example, keeping the classes distinct in later rounds rather than making them the same generic blob of stats.
Reworked the endless mode / later rounds. You will now lose all your curses and passive skills at the end of a round, but still keep your sin level and items. You still get tagged with one new curse at the start of each round (except Martyr starts with 6 as usual)
Smoothed out the scaling of endless rounds so the difficulty is more even. Whereas rounds 1-10 were a victory lap before, and rounds after that were nearly impossible, the challenge is much more steady and consistent with the rounds now, making endless a lot more fun to play.
Deleted old session saves. Sorry! I really didn’t want to do this, but the scaling is so different now that the old saves would break the game otherwise. Please give the new flow a shot, I am confident it’s a lot more fun and engaging now! And also, now the achievements are much more reasonable to get than before.
Balance
In the spirit of keeping the pace of the game up, loot box drops have been reduced greatly, putting the emphasis on going off the beaten path to collect loot rather than being showered in boxes. This also makes maintaining your durability more important.
Only bosses will drop loot boxes now, and only do so in normal areas (not the trial or maw)
The dungeon, cave and forest main paths will only spawn breakables such as urns, crates and barrels now. These breakables can no longer drop boxes, and you must go into the side rooms to find weapons and armor.
Dungeon, Cave and Forest treasure rooms will now start closed at first, and must be opened by pressing all the floor plates.
Reworked the luck item rarity calculation to apply the critical strike percentage bonus to your initial item roll, rather than adding a flat amount that would eventually guarantee all items to be top quality in later rounds. This change should keep loot exciting and varied even way into later rounds.
Enemies in the same room will always show up now regardless of distance (sometimes were hidden in large rooms). This means that enemies will always move slowly towards you and you don’t have to hunt and peck in a corner for a group you missed.
All rare treasure rooms will guarantee at least one portal room now
It should not happen as much anymore due to the movement rework, but if you fall off one of the main levels somehow, you will be automatically teleported to the last door rather than dying
The max damage reduction from the defense stat is now 75%, down from 80%
All enemies will do a little bit of health percent damage to the player based on their attack’s base damage. This bonus damage will not be added if the total exceeds 25% of the player’s health. The point of this change is to still appreciably damage super tanky characters even if they are loaded on health / defense, so they don’t trivialize the game, while minimally affecting the squishier builds.
Nerf indomitable spirit invincibility time to .5 seconds, down from 1 second.
Polish
Since essence is a lot more important now, I took time to polish picking them up. There’s now a fancy animation where the essence will lock to the screen and move towards the appropriate UI location. This makes picking up essence feel great
Put a trigger zone around all breakable objects, which makes it much more forgiving to hit them with low range attacks (especially the smaller ones like the crates)
Essence will always be picked up now, even if you are full on that resource type. Fixes an issue where a lingering essence could block using other interactables
Added a new fancy main menu background that shows off the new dungeon levels
Enemies can now knock over crates, barrels and urns rather than clipping through them
Added a new portal effect sound
Using the yellow Super Saiyan player color for invincibility now instead of the damage multiplier of old.
All area effect indicators (slow, poison, toxic), now use the same radial indicator as the enemies.
Added a new warning indicator for when you are standing in a scare circle.
Added smoother animations for the 1 hand shield weapons such as morning star and scepter
Update various tutorials and tooltips to reflect all the new changes
Optimization
Optimized forest performance a bit by reducing poly count of various background models
Lights and enemies in other rooms are disabled during an arena battle
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug with the Hunter’s Mark curse where it spawned the pursuer way too soon, ignoring the size of the level.
Fixed a bug where starting a new floor plate arena even while one was already in progress would cancel the old one and open the doors in the room
Fixed a bug where one of the cave end rooms would spawn treasure on top of each other
Fixed a bug where reloading save with final trial would also have maw portal opened
Fixed a bug where completing the final trial did not reward a burning star
Fixed a bug where in portal rooms sometimes walls would overlap each other
Fixed enemies in the forest sometimes spawning inside trees
Fixed a bug where a regular, non toxic poison cloud would also damage equipment (now it only damages health)
Fixed a bug where using an instant trigger ability during potion drinking animation would cause left hand to bug out
Fixed a bug where kicking enemies into a guillotine trap did not kill them reliably
I spent a ton of time with this update playtesting, tweaking and reworking various aspects of the game. I believe it has made a big difference in my own experience, but please let me know what you think in the forum or discord. Thank you for the continued feedback and support, you all make it worth the effort!
Major Level Update
Hello Sinners! Without further ado, here is the single biggest update I’ve done since release. I was originally planning this for a sequel due to the amount of work involved, but I decided to do what felt right and replace the level generator system I had started over 3 years ago.
I felt limited by the original levels due to their boxy repetitive nature, and the tools were inadequate to do more interesting designs. I felt stuck basically, so I completely reworked this system to include a robust level editing tool that would allow me much more flexibility and consistency in building levels. Now it feels like I can do pretty much anything with this toolset!
Levels are stitched together from various pre-made rooms, and the spawns of traps, enemies and rewards within them are randomized to keep the procedural feel and replayability up between runs. There are 230+ unique rooms in this first batch, with more to be added in future updates thanks to the handy level editing tool which allows levels to be created in as little as just a few minutes depending on its complexity. Here are the full patch notes below:
Content
Replaced all of the main areas of the game, Dungeon, Cave and Forest with entirely new layouts! The levels are now more distinct, more varied and have more complex designs.
Added 237 unique handcrafted rooms for the new levels! Gone are the boxy rooms of old, and in their place are multi-tiered layouts and richly decorated environments that invite new and exciting combat scenarios. This includes all new arenas as well.
Added special treasure rooms off the beaten path with higher quality loot and chance to spawn rare things like portals or statues. The most common treasure rooms are very small but you can also occasionally find some bigger rare rooms with lots of loot.
Levels will load in all at once now, and can be run from start to finish seamlessly. You can even backtrack between floors now if you’d like.
Balance
Floor plates now spawn per room rather than per level. The number of floor plates starts at 1, and increases per area up to a max of 3 depending on the room size.
Floor plate arena battles will now automatically include the enemies in the room in addition to the ones it spawns. There is now a strategic consideration if you want to clear the room first before starting an arena battle or fight all the enemies at once and risk being overwhelmed.
Increased the overall challenge of the game’s main areas to better match the arena battles. It wasn’t my main objective necessarily, but it is a side effect of increased enemy density. I wanted to keep the overall pace somewhat consistent, whereas before it felt like the levels could just be passing through until the next action heavy arena section.
Some of the smaller mid level arena battles can spawn two waves of enemies now
Enemies who shoot projectiles can now aim up and down slopes to better fit the verticality of the new levels
Far away enemies will now patrol towards the player until they get in their general vicinity (but not necessarily in aggro range). This makes it so the player doesn’t have to hunt down enemies as much in large areas.
The Immortal Construct pursuer enemy can now chase you through an entire level potentially. Reduced the darkness of this encounter, and made it so he will despawn if you get into an area that is inaccessible to him.
Polish
Spikes will no longer be visible through the floor underneath in portal rooms
Reworded some tutorial texts to be more clear
Level entrances are now portals with a color matching their respective areas to stand out more and be more consistent with the other areas which have portals like Trial of Resolve or Maw of Sin
Traps in arena rooms start inactive until the arena battle actually begins
Player interaction checks are more forgiving for items that are partially obstructed by a wall
Reworked the red floor guide completely to work better with the new levels. Instead of the grid-like path, it will contour to the more complex geometry of the new levels and provide a more accurate shortest path to the next objective.
The red floor guide will now also point to enemies that are far away from you in arena battles
There can only be one trap, reward or floor plate spawn per cell so they don’t overlap with each other
Enemies can no longer spawn on top of traps
Reworked the dropping of items or anything that tracks to the floor to be more accurate and also sit properly on top of uneven surfaces like rocks.
Reworked wall and floor blood splatter effect to work much more reliably than before (was missing like 70% of the time). It will also show up and conform to most surfaces, including uneven ones like rocks, pillars and trees.
Optimization
Greatly optimized audio effects
Reworked enemy culling so there is a global limit of 20 on screen enemies at any given time. Enemies that are far away or culled will play a spawn effect when they are activated again
Found unity related optimization that massively improved performance for levels and enemies
Using static batching for static level geometry to improve performance
New level room culling system that is way more efficient than the old one. It will show the room you are in and the adjacent rooms, while culling the rooms further away.
Greatly improved level generation times
Breakable pots, barrels and crates now have their physics disabled completely when they haven’t been touched to greatly improve performance
Greatly optimized the combo UI which was doing some expensive checks every frame
Removed some unnecessary physics raycast that were eating up performance
Expensive enemy checks like pathfinding or wall checks are now performed on a timer rather than every frame for big performance benefits
Bug Fixes
Updated unity version to fix a long standing crash bug related to enemy pathing.
In the rare cases that enemies get stuck somewhere behind a door or elsewhere and can’t reach the player during an arena battle, they will be automatically killed so the event can progress. Removed the auto end arena timer since it’s main purpose was to be a fail safe.
Fixed an issue with not being able to exit the main menu after rebinding movement keys
This definitely took longer than I expected, but I hope that it is worth the wait. I essentially redid all the levels again halfway through this patch’s development period because I wasn’t happy with the result, and now this third iteration or so is much closer to my original intention. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this update I poured my heart and soul into. I understand some might be very used to the old style, and it might be a bit tricky of a transition. If you have any comments or feedback, do not hesitate to let me know through the discord or forums. I am committed to making Mortal Sin the most polished, refined and hard hitting roguelike that I can make leading up to the full release. Thank you all for making this possible!
