Demo Update 2/11/2022 - Bugfixes, quality of life and more
Change log 2/11/2022 | Version 0.19(E)
Bugfixes:
Fixed crash caused by stealing shrimp eggs
Quality of life additions:
Characters automatically get on the elevator if an ally stands on it already. This should make for less fiddling with the elevator. It's well playtested, but let me know if you encounter any softlock bugs with this one.
Minifixes:
Fixed resting near bonfire with an item on the floor causes inventory to open incorrectly
Fixed saving player nickname for feedback now sends it properly too
More centered camera zoom during bonfires
Some oddity options display currency
Improved how UI looks during enemy turns
Can hover over proficiency / knowledge to learn about them in character hiring & inspection in the overworld (community suggestion by Cloud Winchester)
Demo Update 23/10/2022 - Tiny fixes
Change log 23/10/2022 | Version 0.19(D)
Minifixes:
"Oddities" with currency-based options now can display currency panel (for example "logs" oddity)
Text fixes
Fixed "Adjacent" text bugging out and appearing out of in-dungeon inventory
Fixed "the pirate" in drunk bandit oddity
Early Access Release Delay (November -> February)
Important news, Guild Leaders!
Netherguild's early access will be delayed to around February 2023.
After much deliberation, I decided to delay release since I felt like I wouldn't have enough time to add all the fun & rare stuff that the new areas need to really shine - and that if I release in November, the new areas wouldn't be up to the same level of polish as the existing ones.
It feels wrong to release the new areas as relatively barren of cool surprises and variety, only to add that and fix everything after release. Therefore, as much as delaying sucks and I really wanted to release it this year, releasing Netherguild properly instead feels like the right move.
What does it mean for development? I'm going to continue at the same pace - though now, I'll have time to properly playtest everything thoroughly & implement all the extra content the new areas need to be as fun as possible. I could also address some other aspects of the game which bug me and players - like quality of life stuff and other improvements that make the game more fun to play.
Cheers and thank you for your patience, -David
Demo Update 11/10/2022
Change log 11/10/2022 | Version 0.19(C)
Bugfixes:
Fixed camera position reset crash
Fixed hovering over some attacks too quickly (ranger?) causes crash
Fixed characters complaining about friendly fire from status damage
Minifixes:
Made buttons of skill tree make more sense (only shown as available when skill points are available)
Fixed "burning" text appears for fire spreading even when the fire just burnt out
In tutorial, says "press q / e ... to continue" now (to make it clearer its needed for progression).
Fixed loaded bonfire ashes play sound on start
Additions:
Added red "lack of proficiency warning" to the overworld too
September 2022 Progress Update
Hey Guild Leaders! This month I worked a lot on the new areas.
Without further ado, here's some of what I've been working on during September.
New Areas
This month, I worked a lot on the new areas for early access - these two areas are:
1. The Bandit Stronghold
2. The City of Mist
With both of these areas, I've tried making them appear like they're places people live in (or used to live in, in the case of the city of mist).
Automatons will patrol the forgotten rooftop markets... (work-in-progress)
Vines of lichen will creep up the walls, while gears litter the ground.
And oddities might appear in the bandit's living quarters...
(And yes, you can shoot the targets)
Walking alongside the edge will make tiny bits of the towers fall below, reminding you of the danger of falling - or making for a dramatic effect when one is pushed off the edge.
Bridges also animate (alongside with whomever is standing on top of them).
Mist System
A vicious natural phenomena will affect your expeditions into the forgotten city of mist area - that is, the mist itself!
When descending a floor, you'll be greeted by a "weather prediction" -
Forecasting the mist in that area.
Every certain amount of combat rounds, the mist will rise up! It will stay there for a couple of turns and obscure your vision.
It will pretty much "turn off" the vision of your non-current units.
On top of that, every time you start your turn in the mist, it'll rotate your character randomly and move them to an adjacent tile you can step on.
When you do discover a unit, ally or enemy through the mist, they'll stay there for the reminder of your turn (not round).
WAIT! THAT SUCKS, THOUGH? It totally does! The mist is an environmental hazard, and it turns combat into an information-gathering game. But... there's ways to counter it, and upsides!!
For example... - It only stays for a few rounds, so you can always wait it out. Maybe an ok option for defensive builds is stalling this way. - High movement builds let you scout around better and discover enemies / allies and set up attacks. - It can be countered to a limited degree with the "track" ability - The "burn" status effect counters it to an extent too by appearing through the mist
The mist might be keeping something worse at bay, too...
Enemies
I've started working on the enemies for the new area this month too! Among them, two interesting ones are;
The "hungry grubs" - part of the mist moth hives. These little creatures swarm to your position. Even if they deal small damage and have low health, they're can become a real danger by cornering and overwhelming your characters with their numbers.
The "spitter grub" is going to spit weak but long poison at your characters from afar! Poison activates when attacking, so if this spitter grub has support, getting rid of them (especially using "free action" abilities) becomes tougher. On top of that, it'll slow your characters down, making reaching this enemy and stopping them tougher. Its main weaknesses are its limited range and limited movement.
I've been working on other enemies too, which I'll post about at the next update in about a month from now (:
Composer
After a long process of interviewing multiple composers and asking them for demo tracks for Netherguild, I teamed up with the extremely talented Daniele "Elrehon" Coppola!
This is his demo submission for the bandit stronghold's soundtrack.
Notable Mentions...
There's more things I worked on this month! Since I can't fit everything from the weekly Netherguild Discord, I figured I'd drop a few honorable mentions.
Shooting from (or towards) a high-up tile will work differently to how shooting is normally done - it's tougher to shoot higher tiles from below (so you can only really shoot the ledge).
This means heightened tiles give much needed tactical freedom to ranged characters.
"Air canisters" are an idea I've been toying with for the city of mist - They'd work a bit like explosive barrels, but instead of dealing damage, they just push units away when exploding. This opens up the way to new strategies like attacking gas canisters with melee characters or pushing the canisters themselves, for a deadly combo that eventually pushes an enemy off the ledge, down to the next floor.
Netherguild will also take part in the Dreamhack steam event in the middle of October! An updated demo might arrive before or around that time too (if I find time between all the work on the new areas!).
Also, welcome to all the new guild leaders who found about about Netherguild from the Tacticon event last month! Glad to have you here :D
The end
And that's all for this update! What a productive month. Thank you for checking it out, I hope it made for a fun read :D Cheers and have a great October!
A "goal" with no rewards to let players know that descending below the third floor is possible (appears if haven't reached below the third floor but finished one of the two starter goals)
Added a new dagger: "Throwing Sharp Dagger" to the Bandit & Wesnor equipment sets
Rebalanced quick dagger: Now has two attacks: "Knife stab" and "quick stab". Quick stab also deals 1x1->1x2 bleed
Text Fixes:
Fixed "fleeing on"-"fleeing to the underworld" for flee
"underground"->"the underground" in dungeon intro
"Geological" -> Earthquakes for "Caved in miner" oddity
Made it clearer that not all nobles are at fault with drunk bandit
August 2022 Progress Update
Hey Guild Leaders! This month I worked a lot on the new areas.
Without further ado, here's some of what I've been working on during August.
Procedural Tile Heights
The first step to making tile-height matter in gameplay: Having significant tile height difference! Here's another example:
But... that caused some issues with the mouse-aiming.
So I had to re-do the system for it (it uses proper colliders now!):
Should be much better now!
Procedural Stairs
Continuing the trend of procedural additions, I added stairs that get generated in the new floor this week!
These should serve as natural chokepoints and should help make navigating the new floors more interesting.
Pushing with tiles of different Heights
While messing around in the new areas, I noticed something uncanny...
I don't have to be an expert to tell you that this is NOT how pushing should look!
So I fixed it - walls are now proper obstacles for pushed units:
I also thought a bit about pushing enemies from higher platform to lower ones -
I figured it'd be pretty fun if they receive damage when dropping from a certain height - the rule here is similar to damage when pushing off a unit, the damage they receive is equal to a quarter of their max health.
But... what if they drop onto an obstacle? or another unit? I obviously can't have two units in the same tile...
So how about they just bounce?
Visuals & Fog
In addition to all the procedural generation stuff, I also worked on the visuals of the new areas this month (you can see other versions of the visuals in the #wip channel in the Netherguild Discord).
Here's a mockup of how it'll look with enemies:
You may have noticed the fog (the red squares around the tiles!) a gray, impenetrable fog will have an effect on gameplay in the Mist City where the fog is denser, but for the Bandit Stronghold the red fog is purely visual.
Planning Out The Entire Game
Every Sunday I reflect on my work that week and plan out the future of Netherguild - This month I finished planning out the outline of the ENTIRE GAME. This is an outline of more or less all the floors (actual levels or 'camp' floors) that I plan for Netherguild 1.0 to have on full release.
(Of course, subject to changes, removals and additions, but this is the general outline)
Release Date?
Originally, I wanted to release Netherguild earlier - but with the amount of content I still want to add (like finishing the two new floors, adding a bossfight) before Early Access release, I ended up changing my plans to release it sometime during November this year.
- Until Next Time -
And that's all for this update! Thank you for checking it out, hope it made for a fun read :D Cheers and see you next time!!
Hey Guild Leaders! here's some of what I've added to Netherguild during July. This is a big update, so let's get into it!
Status Effect Improvements
Something that irked me a bit in the past was status effects being all too similar to one another (for example Burn, Bleed and Poison just dealing damage over time).
So I decided to add some extra flavor to Burn and Poison...
Fire Increases Visibility
And functions as a double edged sword - giving you more information about the battlefield, but perhaps attracting the unwanted attention of far-away enemies!
Fire Spreads
When a unit is afflicted by "burn"- if it's alive after receiving status damage, the "burn" status spreads to adjacent units in its vicinity.
Why is this great?
Makes fire-based builds feel a lot more interesting and unique
Turns burning units into hazards; perhaps incapcitating a burning enemy keeps it safely far away from you, or having to step away from a burning enemy keeps the battlefield more dynamic.
Fighting a burning unit in melee for too long is bad, seeing how you'll end up recieving the status yourself and getting damage until combat ends or the status expires!
Unexpected creativity - things like adding "burn" to an enemy adjacent to an explosive barrel to ignite it!
Poison Triggers After Attacking Too
This makes poison a very powerful status effect - dealing damage twice per turn for most attacking characters.
However... This should also make things more interesting as a counter to builds or enemies that use "free action" abilities - using too many free actions in a row with a long poison will have its toll on them, health-wise, unless protected from poison by equipment for example.
It also gives the player an "escape" - not attacking when poisoned would help conserve character health at times.
Falling System Complete
You may remember the falling system from a previous updates... https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1464220/view/3187993730659010317 This month it's 100% done!
When enemies or allies die while falling to the next floor, their loot or items can be recovered there. For example: Assassin dies while pushed to the next floor
All of his items & equipment can be recovered from his corpse at the next floor.
Of course, allies that survive being pushed to the next floor can be rescued (as mentioned before). This system will be important in the new areas being added for early access - the Bandit Stronghold and Mist City.
Quality of Life Additions
A few small improvements make managing your expeditions far easier! such as:
Automatic resting which makes characters adjacent to the bonfire rest next to it automatically.
Can "quick send" items between containers & characters using shift-click (also appears in the tutorial now).
Procedural Generation Fixes
When playing, some players would get blocked by the procedural generation of levels - objects would appear where they shouldn't and prevent you from progressing.
This was an even more prominent issue on the new floors - where maps would generate with some rooms completely cut off.
Technically there was a system set up to prevent that, but it was a 3-4 year old system at this point - and worse, it was completely broken.
So I added a new one! Or click the thumbnails for bigger image size:
It makes a "path" using some simple vector math and prevents any tile blocking objects (like crates or barricades) from spawning there.
The issue, however, is that updating the game with it will mess up in-dungeons saves, so I I'll likely delay it for a bigger update in a week or few from now.
Speaking of which...
Updates & Up Next
Working on Tile Heights Originally I didn't plan for tile height to affect gameplay, but, inspired by the 3D concept art I made (picture above) I decided to add it to Netherguild. It'll be difficult and take a decent amount of time to add, but at the same time I'm really excited for it (and for pushing enemies off high platforms!).
Big update coming up It will include the level-generation fix mentioned here as well as new and improved daggers, and other changes.
Tacticon This is a big event on Steam which I'm excited to take part of, later in September! Netherguild has already been accepted to the event and will participate alongside other great strategy games.
And that's all... for now!
Thank you for checking out the update! Hope it made for a fun read. See you next time! (:
