Hey everyone, figured it's about time to make another one of these and show you all what I have been up to.
Honestly it has been a crazy few months, a lot of things going on in my personal life but everything seems to finally be getting figured out which means more time to develop! I am so appreciative of how much support I have gotten with Project Dagger and that alone inspires me everyday to continue working on this game and making it into something great.
One of the biggest changes I have been working on is the Perk system. Similar to other roguelikes is the ability to pick a passive bonus so things like increased stats, dropping a Molotov when you use your special ability like dashing as an adventurer, and boosted damage for certain weapons.
I really believe this is going to be a huge boost for the game in terms of making it interesting to play and really allow you as the player to hone in on your preferred playstyle. My whole goal is to progress development of the game in a direction that gives players a ton of variety with very little effort on the players side. I have almost all the big features and additions to the game implemented now it's time to utilize them to create as much content as possible.
One of the other things I have done is added in ammo text for ammo based weapons.
Currently I am working on adding in a lot of the new perks, I plan on having around 100 total unique perks for players to choose from. With the player ending a run with around 20 total. So we shall see how that goes.
In other works though I am adding in new enemies, weapons, and better variety for game levels! So stay tuned and consider joining the Discord server where I post live updates. I'm hoping to get 0.6.0 released here very soon!
Steam Pricing Update
It has come to my attention that Steam is updating their pricing guide to reflect global changes in currency values so for vast majority of countries if I were to update the pricing it would cost more for those people to buy Project Dagger. Some prices are now 450%+ what they used to be. While I am aware some users will abuse this by using a VPN to get a much lower price by changing to a different region I think with being such a small passion project it is an acceptable risk in my eyes.
I do not plan under any circumstances anytime soon to increase the pricing for any currency. Video games are an escape for people, and I priced Project Dagger at it's current price with that in mind. I made this post as over 51% of players are outside of English speaking countries and large swaths of them are based in countries that are affected the most by the price hikes.
0.5.0a
Hey everyone, it's time for a new update and some news regarding the 0.5.0 update. First let me start by saying this is a 2 part update. This is the first part of that update, and 0.5.0b will be following in the next month.
Here's everything included with this update :
Added sound effects to class abilities.
Buffed player movement speed.
Added in the Berserker class.
Added in support for all 16 achievements.
Added in an easter egg for the Mission Impossible achievement.
Fixed a bug where multi-projectile ammo based weapons did not consume ammo when fired.
Fixed an issue where remapping keybinds for menus would instantly open up the menu.
Fixed a bug where the keybind system would state there are overlapping keybinds when there are not.
Fixed ability cooldown text being off center.
Fixed a bug where the keybind remapper was still active even after setting the new keybind.
Fixed mouse sensitivity starting at 0 for first time installs/playthroughs.
So that's all for this part of 0.5.0, now for the second part expect the trinket system, more enemies with better variety, weapon quality system, and updated zone designs. Overall, I hope everyone enjoys the new changes even if it's quite a small update. I wanted to get out the bug fixes more than anything and figured that I could also go ahead and give everyone a taste of some of the changes coming soon.
Thanks for playing! - Alex
WIP #2
Hey everyone, it's time again for another WIP post. I haven't been as active with day to day development but been brainstorming, taking notes, and figuring out my next moves for the direction to take the game. I also decided to slow down on trying to push updates each month as my work schedule and school schedule are interfering a bit too much preventing me from being able to work on the game.
However, here's what I have figured out. One of the biggest issues I've come across is how to make the gameplay more enjoyable. Right now it's a fairly simple gameplay loop you start out with nothing, kill monsters, get gear, upgrade gear, and try to beat the game. There isn't anything wrong with this but there's room for improvement. I took a week long break to play World of Warcraft Classic and there were 2 systems within it that really got me thinking and that is the talent system and trinkets.
Talents are a pretty cool way to personalize your character and class to your play style. Each level you get points and those points go into 3 talent trees, you obviously won't have enough points to max everything out so that's where your choices as a player come into effect.
Talents do pretty much 2 things, one is boost stats or damage output of specific spells or types of spells. The other is give you some sort of passive ability or buff. For example, having a boosted mana regeneration after killing an enemy, or increasing melee damage by 5%. The reason why I like this system is that you can become quite overpowered if you do your build right, are the correct class, and have weapons and gear that go along with this talent.
Trinkets on the other hand have active passive bonuses and some act like spells, where you use them, they go on a timer and you get some short lived bonus, buff, or other interesting utility. So overall this can end up having synergy with your class, weapons, and talents, creating a really overpowered build.
What does all of this mean for Project Dagger though? The answer to that is I am working on removing the attribute leveling system currently in the game, and replacing it with talent trees and talent points. I am also working on extending the equipment system to allow for Trinkets to be equipped. You will only have 2 Trinket slots, and Trinkets will be found at the end of a level, currently there are stat bonuses that you find at the end of a level but these will be replaced with Trinkets. My goal is that with how balanced the game is to where everything is pretty much scaling 1:1, that talents and trinkets will come in handy to really boost that where, with the right build and trinkets you may scale 3:1 and absolutely dominate every enemy thrown at you, bosses and all.
Moving on from Trinkets and talents though I have added in 2 new classes, the Shaman and the Berserker. Shamans spawn a Totem that does a projectile based attack in a ring outwards from itself at 50% of the players currently equipped weapon damage or just 3 damage if the player has no weapon equipped.
The Berserker has a buff that decreases defense but boosts attack at equal rates. So you become a glass cannon of sorts, primarily useful if you have full health or are in a pinch.
Some of the other things I'm working on are Achievements, and new weapons, as well as introducing some enemies that haven't been seen in the game since the pre-release beta.
So yeah, pretty cool stuff, 0.5.0 may release still by the end of the month or if not by first week of October. An early version of the talent system and trinket system may be included in 0.5.0 or pushed out to 0.6.0.
But yeah, that's going to be it for this WIP, consider joining the Discord server to stay up to date on everything Project Dagger.
0.4.0 Release!
So quite a bit has happened in the background and I've reconsidered how I'm going to handle updates, as well as what each update will include. I know in the Steam release roadmap I had much bigger plans for what 0.4.0 would bring. Although majority of what it was supposed to bring is included some of the bigger things like enemies, and a new zone are not.
So here's what is included apart of 0.4.0!
XP & Level System (released beforehand but still apart of the 0.4.0 release)
Attribute Points (released beforehand but still apart of the 0.4.0 release)
Tier 1-4 Cloth Armor sets
5 new ranged weapons
Sacrificial Chests
Updated loot tables
Nerfed Wisdom
1 Shot Gamemode
Overall quite a small update but still pretty excited for what all of this will bring to the game overall. I do want to announce though that upcoming updates will be roughly around this size and also announce how the roadmap will look for those updates so everyone can have something to look forward to.
0.5.0
Steam Achievements
Shaman & Berserker Classes
5 new Enemies
3 new Weapons
0.6.0
Bosses!
5 new Weapons
3 new Shrines
1 new Class
0.7.0
New Zone
New Boss
3 new Enemies
3 new Weapons
1 new Class
and I'm going to go ahead and stop there, 0.8.0, 0.9.0, and 1.0.0 will be quite similar to 0.7.0 as they all will introduce new areas into the game, with new bosses, at least 1 new class, some new enemies and new weapons. So expect more news with the monthly WIP posts and new updates! Have fun in 0.4.0!
Grand Plains Hotfix
Not really an update with a lot in it, just fixed an issue where doors couldn't be accessed on some levels of the Grand Plains due to cliff faces.
WIP #1
So first thing thanks everyone who has bought the game! The game definitely by no means has blown up or anything or made me a millionaire but I've been so stoked with the amount of love and support I've been seeing for Project Dagger. The fact that anyone has played my game for 20+ hours is really astonishing to me. So thank you so much to everyone who has left a review, joined the discord, wishlisted the game, or purchased it, all of you have made a massive difference!
So first things first, weapons. I've been doing quite a bit of work on adding in a wider variety of weapons. So far this week I have added multiple projectile based weapons, a laser hitscan staff, and the Vortex Charge.
So multiple projectile weapons are something that have actually existed in the game's code for quite some time but never fully implemented. I had some issues with orientation of projectiles and them going in the correct direction. However, I took some time the other morning and got them fully working and boy are they a lot of fun to use. These weapons will definitely be quite rare to find as they are so overpowered but super fun to use.
The Vortex Charge is easily one of the most unique weapons in all of Project Dagger, it is shot by a staff and as the projectile slowly moves through the area particles will start flying inwards into the projectile before it finally explodes. As it travels through the air it will pull enemies into it before finally exploding, so it is a great crowd control weapon!
Finally we have the Laser Staff, this is something that has been on my list to add to the game since early March and I finally got around to creating it, was quite an interesting process utilizing Unity's Line Renderer and particle systems but in the end it turned out wonderfully! Probably my favorite weapon to use right now in the entire game, this will also be a rare item to find though as it is a ranged weapon that is hit scan. So as long as your mouse is on top of the enemy there is no missing!
One of the next things I added is quite interesting and wasn't even on my list, but I was messing around with the difficulty object that holds all the values for different game difficulties and I made a one shot gamemode, so you one shot all enemies and all enemies one shot you. Quite a fun and interesting way to play the game for sure! I do plan on making some custom achievements to work along side it because if you don't get a ranged weapon the entire run it's definitely bound to be a hectic experience.
Another thing I have been busy working on is adding in functionality for Steam achievements, as well as adding in new Steam achievements to the game to give people something different to look forward to when playing. My plan for 0.4.0 is that it will release with around 25 total achievements, although this number does tend to change quite a bit.
I have been working on adding in new classes to the game, currently got the Shaman and the Berserker as the next classes to be added. The Berserker will be a heavily melee based class but with lowered defense. It's special being Berserker's Rage (who didn't see that coming) which will reduce defense but boost attack for 15 seconds. This will be usable probably every 90 seconds.
The next class I have been working on is the Shaman, which will be a primarily ranged class as it will come with boosted wisdom and it's special ability will be putting down a totem that shoots out a ring of projectiles. So quite a useful tool to slay a room of enemies or complete a challenge room with less stress.
Moving on from classes we have the Sacrificial Chest! This is a chest that was actually supposed to go into the game at release and I thought it was included but it wasn't, so I've been taking time to update it and really make it something cool and unique when you come across it. Basically you can open the chest 10 times but each time takes 1/10th of your health, it has a 90% chance of dropping a trash item and a 10% chance of dropping an actually good armor or weapon. There will be tiers to this chest as well like the other chests in the game but it will be a lot more rare since it only spawns in special rooms (the same ones you find Shrines of Chance in).
Some of the other things I have been working on is cloth armor, so instead of just having plate armor that boosts vitality, attack, and defense, there will soon be cloth armor that boosts wisdom, dexterity, and vitality. Still trying to figure out how to balance this, if there will be new chests that spawn in levels or if armor chests will drop more than 1 piece of armor. Definitely a lot of things to consider but interested to see how it all turns out.
But yeah, that's pretty much it for Works in Progress! I have been redoing my plans for future releases and changing around the order of everything. Everything that I've shown here will be in 0.4.0 and probably the biggest additions to 0.4.0. I'm pushing off certain things like bosses and such to a future update and really focusing on fleshing out the main content of the game.
0.3.13 Hotfix
Yet another hotfix, not going to do too much explaining this time but a handful of issues should now be resolved.
Resolved Issues :
Enemies in Badlands should no longer run through walls
Map no longer get stuck on the screen
Main Menu teleport glitch is now fixed
Grand Plains Parkour Textures are fixed
Grand Plains Start room now shows proper cliff model
Attributes Menu keybind can now be changed
UI should now scale better on different aspect ratios
0.3.12 Hotfix
Hey everyone, sorry for yet another issue you may have ran into, hopefully this is the last one (for now)! Ran into some issues with Steam and some other technical issues but we're back with a fix and some new changes!
So here's the notes
Fixed the issue with mouse sensitivity being set to 0 on first time launching the game
Added XP and Level System
Added Attribute Menu accessible by pressing N
Widened the range of mouse sensitivity from 0-2 to 0-5
Reduced damage and projectile speed of Sporethrower in Forlorn Vale
Increased maximum base stat value from 25 to 30 for all stats other than Speed
Fixed issue where enemies would stop attacking you as long as you stood still
Added music to King level
Zoomed out Minimap and Big Map
Added potion of Charisma to drop tables
Fixed issue where Forlorn Vale parkour crate did not change sprite or play sounds when you opened it
Disabled shadow casting for some lights in Forlorn Vale that did not already have it turned off
So yeah that was all the changes since 0.3.10. There are some issues still standing like not being able to rebind the Attribute Menu key and it not being listed, but other than that everything should be a lot better!
Mouse Bug fix
Hey everyone, wanted to make a quick post regarding an issue with mouse sensitivity. On your first time launching the game your mouse sensitivity is set to 0, this is a bug but once you set it to whatever value you like, it'll save and it shouldn't happen beyond that. A fix is coming today. However, I have a handful of other things I must tend to with the game so it'll be likely later tonight that a fix goes live. Again this should only happen the first time you play the game and after that should not occur again.
