Rogue: Genesia cover
Rogue: Genesia screenshot
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Indie, Arcade

Rogue: Genesia

0.9.1 Open Beta

Hey.


Following the bad experience the first beta was, I prefered to avoid remaking open beta for updates,
Previous one lead to a lot of negative review of users testing out the beta, then reverting back to the main branch and losing their save.
Following that, I've made semi-closed beta (the code "BackUpYourDamnSaves" was public on the discord) for update 0.8, 0.8.1, 0.9 and for the most part of 0.9.1.

However, this method, while having prevented most users to lose their save (I still got a few players losing their save this way (but following the pinned post in the steam forum allow to recover it)), it also greatly reduce the amount of players that play out the beta and test it out, and severly limit the amount of feedback and bug found.


If you've been reading the lattest blog-post, you know that the limiting factor to finish this update is the animations that are taking more time than expected (and this period being thank-giving + upcoming christmas is certainly not helping).
This mean that most bug has been ironed out, and to my knowledge, there is only 1 important bug that I'm still investigating, but I'm still searching for a way to reproduce it.
(the bug being that after restarting a run, in certain situation, a few enemies spawn with an insanely high corruption value, this only happen is very specific situations that shouldn't affect most players)

I hope this open beta will help me found the reproduction step to this bug, as well as discover new bugs that I missed out.


To join the Open beta, Go to your game properties, in the beta tab, and select rg_0.9 - Beta for 0.9.1 - Back-up yours save


I obviously greatly advice you to backup your profile if you plan to return to version 0.9.0






I don't plan to post changelog on Steam for all beta update, they are available on the discord,

but here is the current changelog for all the change made between Version 0.9.0.3f to Version 0.9.1 beta 9







Updated from 2022.3.0f1 to Unity 2022.3.9f1



Major Change



Migrating from 3D to 2D collision


Collision detection is now handled in 2D instead of 3D
From benchmark, it's around X2 to X4 collision performances gain
Will likely cause a ton of bugs

Physics calculation now happen once per frame


instead of being on a fixed update step, which could snowball lag-spike in the past, leading to multiple physic step in a single frame.

New Difficulty on profile creation - Casual mode


New difficulty that allow for a casual experience without the challenge
You cannot die (Not in red timer in Survivors mode)
Damage Increase by 5% for each level-up
Damage multiplied by 1.01 per minutes

Terrain generation


Terrain is no longer a very large flat plane with border
This mean the terrain no longer have border
For now it should be very similar to the previous terrain (flat with not special features) but allow for addition of more interesting terrain generation in the future
Some module have some surprise for the players, so you are more encouraged to explore
Additional alternative module will be added over time to add variety
Not easily modable

Weapon Modifiers refactorization


Shouldn't change the current behavior (yet). so for now, modifiers are directly applied to the avatar data and apply to all weapons.
It is only a refactorization on how the game handle weapon modifiers in preparation on 0.10 weapon modifiers mechanics
This may lead to a few bug
Soul-Cards affected so far:
Fractal, Ice Spirit, Fire Spirit, Thunder Spirit, Divine Smite

Input system refactorization


Input system got reworked to be more modular and finally modable
This will reset all previous bindings

Gun-Slinger rework


No longer limited to a single weapon but can only use one
You can cycle through your weapons with scroll
3 weapons path are no longer mutually exclusives
Increased Enemy Count from 35% to 65%
Increase stage objective from 50% to 65%

Quick-mode


Before starting a run you can now select Quick-Mode
Reduce the number of stage per zone from 16 to 10
Create a off-path to directly go to the boss stage at stage 5 when you are not at the last zone
Increase monster spawn-rate by 20%
Increase Experience gain by 20%
There is only 1 altar to activate in boss stage

Refactorization


Major refactorization to how weapon stats are handled to allow dynamic modification of stats for specifics weapons (will be very useful for weapon modifiers)

Major QoL



  • Stacked Damage number
    In option you can now enable stacked damage number, so it display the recently cumulated damages per enemies
  • Stage Information when hovering/selecting a stage
  • Option to enable health-bar over all non-elites enemies (without performance hit)
    This also allow health-bar over summons
  • Weapon tab added in the pause menu.
    You can see each weapon damages stats
    You can also see weapon modifiers
  • Added damage graph over time (and kill count)
    You can click the damage on the left to check damage stats for each damage source
    You can change in option the time precision of the graph (default is 30 sec) from 5sec to 120s


QoL



  • New fight music for Crystal depths (cave zone)
  • Improved Visibility in Crystal depths
  • Added a Default camera zoom option, where you can slightly unzoom the camera when there is nothing overriding the camera zoom
  • Added support for DX 12 and Vulkan (can be changed by using "-force-vulkan" or "-force-d3d12" launch command in Steam)
  • New Sound-track for Boreal Pinewood combat stages (snow forest zone)
  • Added a title text when you enter a new zone in Rog's mode (this also mean all zone now have proper names)
  • Improved stage selection of Boreal Pinewood
  • Added error message when trying to create a profile with unvalid name
  • Slightly changed light model used for enemy and foliage sprites
    They should slightly be affected by back-lighting, most noticeable in Crystal depths
  • Damage number color is now slightly affected by environement to not be too distracting (especially in cave zone)
  • Reworked a few sounds in the game
  • Improved sound mixing during anachronistic
  • Reworked the pause menu
  • Blur the background when the game is paused
  • Slightly reworked the visual option menu
    Give better visibility to what you can see
  • Added Wide Rog skin
  • Damage number now support Q and Qt OoM
  • Removed collision between player and summon
  • Updated Soul-shop UI to fit the rest of the updated UI
  • Soul-Shop tier text color is changed when a tier is maxed
  • Sound Setting now has a Master slider
  • Sounds Option UI improvement
    Added an input field on the value, so it can precisely be edited
    Also slightly updated the UI to the new style
  • Next stage button text in event will be replaced with "Fight" in the right situation
  • Added an FX feedback for volt-strike to easily track active charges or if the effect is active
  • Future damage from poison debuff is also displayed on the healthbar
  • Fire spirit damage is also displayed on the enemies Healthbar
  • Improved Scorched plateau stage selection visuals


New Artifact



  • Ranked Dice
    Give one free rarity reroll on card selection, refreshed every 2 card selection
    Unlocked by "Getting Scammed"
  • Light Arrow
    Each Purification points increase base critical damage by 3%
    Unlocked by having Light spirit level 4
  • Golden Goblin Hand
    Only obtainable in Notice board (forest - Goblin quest)
    Picking gold inflict 5% (+0.5% per player level) damage to enemies in a 15m area (scale with area size)
    Damage scale with Damage multiplier
    Can crit
    Ignore enemy defense (and defence shredding)
  • Mushroom Gel
    Only obtainable in Notice board (forest - Mushroom quest)
    75% of damages taken are slowly applied over 10 seconds
    This is post-defence damage
    Damage inflicted by mushroom gel ignore your defence
  • Silkskin Wings
    Only obtainable in Notice board (forest - Flying eyes quest)
    Increase final dash duration by 1.5s
    Increase final dash cooldown by 1.5s
    Increase final dash delay by 0.5s
    Reduce dash speed by 80%
    Increase Dash Charge by 1



New Weapon



  • Ice Nova - Heroic
    Launch a slow-moving nova of ice spawning icicles around itself
    related talent is just a placeholder for now
  • Arcane Beam - Epic
    Charge and shoot a powerful beam in the aimed direction
    Cannot charge another beam while one is already being shoot
    Deal continuous damage overtime
    Width of the beam scale with area size



New Weapon Evolution


Weapon don't have its own sprite for now

  • Ballista
    Evolution of Throwing knife and Crossbow
    Automatically Attack healthier enemy
    Also attack in the aimed direction upon dashing
  • Singularity Gland - Evolution of Worm gland and Void Spirit
    Create massive blackhole that slowly attract nearby enemies
    Deal less damage as the enemy is farther to the center
    Deal damage more often as the enemy is closer (up to 10 tick per seconds)
    Size/attraction speed depend on the "Mass" stat
    Slowly grow in size to it's maximum size
    Gain 50% chance to shot a second black-hole at level 5 (100% at level 7)
    Blackhole that get close enough will merge
    Blackhole that just spawned cannot be merged immediatly
    Throw multiple parallel bolt
    Simultaneous bolt only work when in Siege-mode or during dashes
    When not moving, Enable "SiegeMode", the weapon gain double it's damage, halve it's attack delay, and greatly increase it's bolt penetration, but reduce the player's movespeed by 30% for 3 sec after quiting siegemode
  • Explosive Bow
    Evolution of Bow and Explosive Vials
    Arrow that target the closest enemies and explode when the projectile hit an enemy
    Maximum piercing capped at 5
  • Arcanic Pike
    Evolution of Pike, Light spirit and Arcane Beam
    Slowly charge a powerful arcanic laser that decimate non-elite ennemies on it's path


3 New Gun-Slinger's weapon


Weapons don't have they own sprites for now

  • Dual Gatling
    Require Perfection
    Upgrade of HMG
    Start shooting slowly and scale up to 50 time per seconds
    Shot 2 time[
  • Rail Gun
    Require Thunder Spirit
    Shot a infinitely piercing rail
    Each enemy touched cause 3 sub-trace to be shot randomly
    Very high damage
    Very slow attack speed
  • Flame Thrower
    Require Fire Spirit
    Quickly shot wide weak projectile that can quickly cumulate damage on enemy
    May need balancing


New Soulcards



  • Health potion - Rare
    Increase Health regen by 35%
  • Vengeful shield - Synergy
    Synergy between Stalwart shield and Health Potion
    Every damage receive (post-defence) increase your damage (60-80-100)% of this amount for (3-4-5) seconds
    Increase Wild tagged card drop chance by 10%


New Event



  • Notice Board (Forest variant)
    Choose between 4 missions to complete and get the reward
    Can only appear once



Changes



  • Wrath now require area tag
  • Temporarely removed Spirit's water from artifact pool until it get a rework
  • Old Coin buff
    Increased Experience bonus from +100% to +300%
  • Player's health regen and weapon attack speed depend on players timescale (as of now, nothing in the vanilla game affect player's timescale)
  • Pike reworked
    New Visual FX (so it's doesn't look horribly ugly like before)
    No longer has delay between multiple pike projectiles
    Hitting an enemy with the tip of the pike will deal guarantee critical hit with a 100% damage boost
    Slightly follow the aimed direction after it's spawned
  • SwordRang Tweak
    If a projectile get too far away from the players, it'll get removed
    if the projectile is alive for too long ( > 10 sec) it'll also get removed to avoid lags
    In Addition, if there is more than 1000 Sword-rang alive, returning sword-rang life-time get depleted 5 time faster (again to avoid huge lag-spike from getting out of control)
  • Similarly to Swordrang, Wisp projectile will see their lifetime greatly reduced when their number is greater than 1000 to save performances
  • Soul-Coin gained from gold is now soft-capped over 1 Million gold
  • BonFire event change
    Merged rest and meditation, so you always improve one of your card when you rest
    Card limit break option no longer has requirements (ouside of having a maxed out card)
  • Fairy in a bottle tweak
    Increase health regen multiplier from +20% to +50%
  • Throwing Knife nerf
    Increased base attack delay from 0.33s to 1.5s
  • Kunai buff
    new effect: Remove all positive defenses from enemies hits by the kunai
  • Arcane beam, Void Wisp and Magic wisp buff
    Ignore positive enemy defenses
    Still benefit from damage shredding bonus damage (similarly to critical hit)
  • Magic wand buff
    Increase damage of all Magic tagged weapon by 20%
  • Arcanist staff buff
    Increase damage of all Magic tagged weapon by 50%
  • Removed some artifact form the boss poll list
    Glass Sword
    Jaald's potion
    Sacred Sword
    Troll blood
    Pork Statuette
    Void Statuette
  • new artifacts added to the boss poll
    Holy cross
    Shop-Keeper's Plate
    Adventurer's License
  • Thunder staff now deal a little bit of knockback
  • Damage in statistic now directly track the damage dealt without being clamped by the monster health
  • Evolutions unlocked via achievements are now added to the pool of the current run
    Need to be tested
  • Fuuma Shuriken, Storm Staff, Void wisp and Arcanist staff no longer requires any achievements to be unlocked (they are unlocked by default)
    These two change should help new players to access evolutions without spending too much time into the game, especially since I've noticed a lot of player think that the game don't have evolutions
  • Save Villager Event
    Fighting the monster is now a real fighting stage instead of being an auto-damage for reward one
  • FireSpirit tweak
    Fire damage duration no longer increase when applied but is reset instead
    Increased damage percentage from 10% + 5% per level to 20% + 10% per level
    Reduced duration from 5sec to 3sec


Achievements



  • Added a new secret and stupid achievement. that unlock a new skin
    Good luck
  • Getting Scammed - Rarity reroll an Heroic or higher rarity card into a lower rarity
  • Pour directly on your wounds
    Reach 10 health regen
    Unlock Health potion
  • Time for Payback
    Receive 1M damage in total
    Unlock Vengeful shield



Fixes



  • Weapon's custom Critical multiplied not being applied in case of Hyper crit
    it was keeping the player's default critical damage in those case
  • Sniper's Effect not working
  • Worm boss having invincibility when dealing too much damage
  • Bug when synergizing Cold touch and spike boots making anachronistic not consume dash charges
  • Some summon not getting close enough to boss to touch them
  • Throwing Knifes talent not giving dashes charges
  • Throwing knife talent description displaying 2 more dashes than it should
  • Training dummy charge being reset when loading a run
  • Card Details - Requirements level now display the right required values
  • Necro Decay debuff not being removed properly
  • Throwing knife Addition dash is now part of the activation buff
  • Shop - Scroll bar not handling the entire shop properly
  • Saint's Shinbone being removed from a run when saving and loading a run
  • Stats calculation issues with "Health Every 5 Level" Soul-shop upgrade and negative health modifier upon loading a save leading to major health mismatch until you open the stats screen or level-up
  • Chicken statue being noted as Pork statue in the stats screen breakdown
  • Artifact sometime not displaying the right value in certain places
  • Fight&Flight no longer give +1 defence when inactive
  • Corrupted avatar corruption not being displayed in the stats breakdown
  • Corrupted rog able to obtain negative Damage
  • Some damage number displayed a slightly off value
  • Boiling blood not stating it's Max health increase
  • Some stats displaying " X > Y base stat" but was displaying the actual value instead of the base stats value
  • Crystal sword not properly applying it's critical effect (crit damage were applied, but not the crit information)
  • Magic and physical tag not being displayed
  • Damage number spacing being wrong when the camera was unzoomed
  • Challenge list in survivors mode not displaying rank button when having selected hardmode in rogs mode
  • C-rank survivors mode making the challenge button clickable even though there is no challenges available for it
  • Gunslinger weapon starting at 0 ammo
  • Purification lower than 1 doing... weird things
  • Tree, rock, shrine or any procedurally placed object will spawn and block altars (same for the shop-keeper)
  • In stats pannel, negative stats get multiplier by the multiplier instead of being divided
  • Fire Spirit not being able to kill an enemy by itself



Modding



  • New Event - OnCardsReroll(List, List)
    Called when rerolling cards
    Provide the previous and the new set of cards
  • New Event - OnCardRarityRerolled(SoulCardScriptableObject, SoulCardScriptableObject)
    Called when rarity rerolling a card
    Provide the previous and new card
  • Modified Event - OnCardBanished(SoulCardScriptableObject) > OnCardBanished(SoulCardScriptableObject, SoulCardScriptableObject)
    The new event now also provide the new card replacing the old one
  • All game events are automatically cleaned up when reloading mods
  • Projectiles modifier variable no longer exist
    Since this is now a legacy system that is completely replaced by the new weapon system
  • Player's Modifier are also removed
    this is also legacy system that got replaced by custom card linked to events

Rogue: Genesia, November monthly Dev-Blog

Hello everyone, it's time for the monthly Dev-Blog



Update 0.9.1



Let's start with the main focus of today's Devblog, Update 0.9.1! This update is turning out to be much larger than I expected, not necessarily in terms of content, but in terms of how much work was done for a "medium" sized update.

The biggest change made during this month for this update was the complete rework of how collision works.

Collision Rework



While thinking about how to improve performance with the Pike (known to be a very performance-heavy weapon), I ended up reworking the entire collision detection system I'm using.

As you may or may not know, Rogue: Genesia is a 3D game, with 95% of the logic handled in a 2D manner (you don't care about a projectile going over or under enemies) with only a few exceptions using the up axis (like worm gland projectiles, for example).

However, due to many factors, I was using the 3D physics of Unity, mainly because the game is in 3D, and it's much easier to handle it.

But having the game use 2D physics would definitely unlock much more performance. However, the first issue is that there's no easy way to use 2D physics when the whole game is happening in 3D.

The first issue is that the game's logic mainly happens on the X/Z axis (Y is used for up), but 2D physics only works on the X/Y axis.


(each circle is a proxy used for collisions)

The only way I found to achieve this was by creating invisible "proxies" for every object in the game that requires collision (projectiles, player, enemies, trees, interactable elements...) and updating their positions in real-time on this 2D physics plane.

However, it was far from perfect. First, moving an object in 3D, then replicating the movement in 2D, then having collisions displace the 2D object, and finally replicating it in 3D would have been a messy adventure. I also considered using 2D physics for projectiles, enemies, and players, but it quickly became apparent that this would lead to a very messy implementation.

In the end, I had to modify many parts of the game to have the displacement logic handled directly by the 2D proxies and only move the 3D objects based on the 2D proxy's position. This was a very time-consuming process, with potentially hundreds of places in the game code that had to be adjusted to move 3D objects this way.

Another major issue I encountered was that the performance was somehow much worse than when using 3D physics. After hours of debugging and investigation, I discovered that, unlike 3D physics, Unity's 2D physics didn't handle direct transformations of objects' transforms very well. So, once again, I had to modify many parts of the logic to set or add velocity to the 2D rigid body of the proxies instead of directly displacing them. This, of course, came with its own set of bugs to fix.

In the end, after debugging all these situations and enabling multi-threading (which wasn't possible with 3D physics) and setting the physics update to be on the Update loop (instead of FixedUpdate)
After some benchmarking in extreme scenarios, I achieved a significant performance gain in collision processing, from 2x to 4x better. Using the same scenario as in https://steamcommunity.com/games/2067920/announcements/detail/3669925177420091529,
I went from an average of 60ms of processing for physics to 17ms of processing.


(old 3D physic)

(new 2D physic)

(In those examples, even the average frame time saw a massive improvement, going from 5 FPS to 10/12 FPS.)

I don't believe there's much more I can do in terms of optimization now.
Laggy situations primarily arise from there being too much happening, and there is no "magic solution" to further improve performance without making direct changes to the behavior of things (such as adding a soft cap on projectile count or introducing global cooldowns with larger effects) or basically remaking the game from scratch going for an ECS approach.

Weapon Stats Rework



Another aspect that consumed a significant amount of my time was the modification of how weapon stats were handled.
Until now, weapon stats were represented as numerical values that were modified as the weapon leveled up. However, this approach was impractical, especially when I wanted to introduce temporary changes (for instance, a weapon modifier altering a weapon's attack speed).
The best solution was to make weapon stats function in the same way as the player's stats: set default values upon weapon initialization, modify the base stats upon leveling up, and easily permit the addition or removal of modifiers.

Nonetheless, making this replacement resulted in over 1000 errors that needed to be fixed.
These were relatively simple errors to correct, such as changing
"Damage = 10" to "Damage.SetBaseValue(10)" or "Damage += 3" to "Damage.AddBaseValue(3." $
Still, I had to manually update each of these 1000+ lines of code one by one, which was a time-consuming process (it took me approximately 2 days of repetitive line replacement to fix).

However, this change opens up the possibility for much more flexibility in weapon behaviors.
This newfound flexibility was almost immediately harnessed in one of the new weapon evolution introduced in the next update, where a "siege" mode is activated when the player is immobile, granting the weapon (and only this weapon) improved stats.

Weapons


Speaking of weapons, adding a new weapon is always a difficult decision.
When adding a new weapon, I have to consider many factors, and this becomes increasingly complex as the game gains more content and weapons.

First, I want to avoid weapon to overlap each other too much, which is a bit of an issues with Spear/Bow/Crossbow, they still serve different purpose, so it's fine, but they are very similar in their behaviour and how to use them.

Secondly, I need to think ahead about how the weapon will look, ensuring it doesn't turn out ugly, as happened with the Pike when it was initially added to the game.

Thirdly, performance is a concern. I must be careful about how the weapon scales, as some super cool ideas might quickly overload any computer when there are more than 30 of them (again Pike was a major Lag source for bit of time due how it worked).

Finally, adding a new weapon that isn't an evolution means I have to think of proper talents linked to it. These talents should align with the weapon's theme and can sometime prove difficult to be made.

These factors are the reasons I don't add many weapons to the game. I take time to refine a weapon idea for several days before implementing it in the game, and then test if the idea actually works within the game.
Implementing a new weapon typically takes 4 to 12 hours of work, depending on how many new things I have to program into the game.

Update 0.9.1 will introduce one brand new weapon, as well as four weapon evolutions. I've teased some of them on Twitter and they are already available in the beta branch of 0.9.1 (same code as usual).
Here are some screenshots:






Balance and gathering feedback


This part is a bit off-topic about update 0.9.1, but I think this is an important point that I wanted to approach during one Dev-blog

Another difficult factor about weapons is their balance.
I'm not an advocate of perfect balance, especially in a single-player (or coop) game; this often comes at the price of fun.
But I still understand the importance of having a certain balance and playing with compromises. Crossbows and throwing knives may be the most powerful weapons in the game, but they have important negative points so they don't become the go-to weapon for all situations.
There are also some weapons that are often underrated, like the Worm Gland.
In the end, it's still hard to balance weapons; most of my intel on what weapons are strong or not mostly comes from the Discord. However, I also know they are mainly veterans of the game and may not represent the average players.
In addition, I often see players on the Steam forum complaining about X or Y weapon. While it's interesting information, it often comes without a deeper analysis of their strengths or weaknesses. So it's a bit hard to know if it's a proper issue, especially when in the same post, three other people say the absolute opposite.

I am always open to balancing suggestions (not just limited to weapons), but I want to have more than one or two people speaking about how they feel about X or Y.
Either a deeper analysis of the issues (which some veteran players often do on the Discord, and this is very precious information and feedback to properly balance the appointed feedback) or a large mass of players agreeing with the feedback (which I then know it's time to put serious time into analyzing the issues players may encounter in deeper detail and understand the origin of the complaint).
As a player, you also don't have to worry about reposting some balance issues that you still encounter many versions later. I often do a lot of minor balancing all around, and sometimes a balancing change I made in one version gets reverted by something else in the game.
An example of something that could happen:

  • Players complaining about Health Transmutation not being strong enough at Version X,
  • I buff it in version Y, so it's fine
  • Now many months later at version Z, I nerf the Max Health gain all around the game, and players who wanted to complain about Health Transmutation not being strong enough see the post that is many months old and simply think there is no point in reporting it again or that the issue has persisted for many months when, in fact, it just got accidentally reintroduced.
    It takes a lot of time before I notice this important change.


The same goes for suggestions. I receive a lot of suggestions, and sometimes I like to revisit suggestions when I want to focus on adding new content. I also try to gauge how important some suggestions may be based on how many players agree with a suggestion, and it helps me prioritize some things.

What is missing for 0.9.1 ?


The main limiting factor for the release of the update remains the same: the animations for the new snow-themed enemies. This was further delayed due to some misunderstandings between the animator and me, which effectively postponed the entire process by one month.

I still believe that this delay provided me with a valuable opportunity to focus on many things I wouldn't have had time for or would have been scheduled for update 0.10.

Once 0.9.1 is ready and published, I'll shift my focus to Update 0.10, which should ironically be quicker for me to develop than 0.9.1, even though there's a substantial amount of work due to the new region added with 0.10.

A few other things


I've noticed some players expressing concerns in the comments of the previous dev-blog that I might abandon Rogue: Genesia.
I want to reassure you that I won't abandon Rogue: Genesia and will continue to develop it until 1.0.

My loss of motivation is simply preventing me from maintaining my previous pace of working 10-15 hours a day continuously, which has led to a slowdown in the game's overall progress.
However, this just means that it will take an additional 1-2 months for the game to reach 1.0 compared to my original estimate.


Bundling with Fatal Zone

Hello everyone



I'm bundling together with Fatal Zone, a newly released bullet heaven game, you can check out their game as it possess a demo!



https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35912/Knights_and_Zombies/

Additionally, Rogue: Genesia will participate with a 20% discount in the Bullet Heaven Fest starting on 6 november lasting two weeks.

Rogue: Genesia, October monthly Dev-Blog

Hello everyone, it's time for the monthly Dev-Blog



This Dev-blog will have fewer things than usual as I've decided to make September a "break" month
(which was more of a "work less" than a total break as I'm completely incapable of stopping work completely)

I would like to thank everyone who was supportive of me. I usually don't reply to you, but I've read all of your comments, and it was the reason I was able to take the whole month as a "break"!

Unity


Let's start with what has been a serious source of stress for an entire week.

It ended up in an acceptable situation (only affecting games with Unity 2023+, with a set cap on cost, and only counting unique users based on sales data). The approach was unacceptable, and it's a clear indication that Unity Technology, as a business partner, is not something I can trust again in the future.

Rogue: Genesia will stay on Unity. I don't have the means to switch engines. At best, it would take months of work, and at worst, it could literally kill the game.

However, it is clear to me that my next game won't be made in Unity.

While, in the end, the new fee doesn't affect Rogue: Genesia, it still hurt my motivation and overall productivity. I can tell I'm working much slower than before, even after my month break has ended.

The direct effect of that is that I'll push back the equipment system. It won't be part of the 1.0 release. I was already very hesitant, and this whole debacle made it clear I want to focus on other aspects of the game rather than adding yet another system to it that I wasn't sure would work 100%. Depending on how well the 1.0 release of the game does, I'll probably try to implement it in a 1.1 version of the game or make it a separate mod.

Result of Equipment and Weapon Modifier Polls



As usual, the results are publicly available:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1guX1ZkHKDn0_7b3UofE2Fbcoeo6yuXKjbAoIvlYe1w4/edit?usp=sharing

Equipment System



What Type of Equipment System Would You Prefer?




So far, most people prefer either presets (19.7%) or a hybrid system (46%), with only 13% of players preferring fully procedural items.

16.7% of players would prefer no equipment system. It's far from a majority, but also significant enough to warrant consideration. This is why I'm still thinking of possibly making it a mod later on. From the data I gathered, some players fear it might require too much grinding (which is not the goal of the feature, and I may tweak it if I do implement it to avoid grinding).
Another feared issue with it would be that it slows down the game too much, which is also why I don't want it to be managed in a run. Also, having too many items dropped could end up being a hindrance.

Finally, there is the issue of it being too powerful, which would require some balancing. One way I'm thinking of addressing this is by having the stats given by the equipment scale with the player's level, to make it less trivial in the early game while still providing a good performance boost in the late game.

How Many Equipment Would You Like to See Dropped per Run?




Most players would prefer a reasonable amount of equipment to be dropped. A few would like to see a lot of equipment, similar to the amount you could get in a Hack & Slash game, but that's not the goal of the equipment system.
I think having a chance to drop per boss with one guaranteed (or two on higher difficulties/challenges) per run would still bring enough items to quickly fill out your equipment slots without it feeling like a slog to manage between each game.
Additionally, it could be sped up with a good comparison system and a large enough inventory so you don't have to clean up after each game.

How Many Equipment Slots Would You Like to See?




There is no clear majority, but the tendency would be to have a high number of slots with varying slots depending on the avatar selected.

Should the Equipment Be Upgradeable Using Soul-Coin?




A clear majority wants a way to upgrade their equipment with Soul-Coin.
This could also be a very good Soul-Coin sink for players who have maxed out their Soul-shop (especially considering how much a Soul-Coin sink has been requested on the Discord).

Would You Like the Equipment to Be Craftable?




There's no clear majority, but there's a tendency toward non-craftable equipment with the possibility to reforge/customize their stats using a form of crafting. This crafting could involve other equipment, a new resource type, or simply soul-coins.
Another possibility would be to make some preset equipment craftable, requiring other procedural equipment with specific stats. This means the majority of equipment wouldn't require crafting, but it's a cool way to aim for late-game gear.

Should Equipment Have Rarity Tiers?




There's a clear majority there.
I believe having rarity tiers would work best to make equipment easier to spot, especially if the stats are craftable/reforgeable. It would encourage players to improve a piece of equipment rather than endlessly grinding for a 1% better attack equipment.
There's also the possibility of upgrading an item's rarity to improve its stats or stat slots.

Equipment System Conclusion


From the poll results, it looks like players are quite positive about this addition to the game, with a non-negligible portion of players who don't want to spend time on this sort of system or fear it might add grinding that would make the game boring.

Making equipment pieces less common but much more customizable would make them more interesting and create a better bond between players and their equipment.
This would also prevent situations where a legendary item found becomes obsolete due to common items shortly after. It has given me a much clearer idea of what could be an engaging and interesting equipment system, which is somewhat different from the initial vision I had, but I'm more confident in it.

However, the new vision I have for it would require much more development time than I can afford to allocate for now, especially combined with the major motivation loss due to the Unity debacle. I believe it's best to postpone its development until after the 1.0 release.
There's a possibility it may never be developed (if income from sales after 1.0 is too low to hire developers to continue working on it), but it's too soon to decide on that yet.


Weapon Modifiers



Would You Like Weapon Modifiers to Be Added to the Game?




I'm also quite confident it's a good addition to the game. So unless there's a clear majority against it, I think I would have made it. Having a clear majority in favor of this system is a clear indication that the idea is at least worth implementing and checking if players like it.

In What Other Ways Would You Like Weapon Modifiers?




This section was only replied to by 16.7% of voters as it only applied to people who thought of modifiers in a different way. I wanted to gather some data on other ways players would prefer it to be implemented or get some ideas I hadn't thought of.

63% of them would prefer it to be applied outside of runs, but I don't think it would be suitable for the system in the way that you would have to pre-define which weapon would have which modifier. This removes a lot of adaptability and variability in runs, especially as a modifier on a weapon would be better on another weapon depending on your exact build.

45% would prefer them to be applicable to multiple weapons. I can see why some players may want it, but I believe it removes a part of the decision-making process. However, it may be interesting to think of a way to apply some modifiers to multiple weapons later on.

Some of the other custom responses describe exactly how the modifiers system works and are likely from people who have misunderstood how the modifiers system would work: Weapons can have multiple modifiers, but a modifier can only be applied to a single weapon.

Update 0.9.1



While September wasn't the most productive month, there is still quite a lot of stuff that I've worked on! The main thing delaying the update is the making of the Snow-themed enemy.
I think they will be the only enemy to be made for an alternative biome (at least until 1.0) as they take a lot of time, and would easily delay updates later on, as it's a very time-consuming task for the artist I've hired.
However, this taking a long time is not a waste for me, and it allowed me to work on some major refactoring that I planned to do for 0.10, so a lot of groundwork was done during this month.

Terrain



A major refactoring of this update is how the terrain will now be handled.

Until now, the terrain was simply a very, very big plane, with a particle effect spawning a lot of grass/smaller foliages, and a script spawning large foliages/gameplay elements (like crate/shrines or trees).

This update completely removes that. Now, the terrain is generated around the players as they move around. This first means better grass performance (and denser grass) as the GPU doesn't have to generate and cull 1 million foliages when the game starts (Yeah, it was a pretty quick and dirty approach).

Secondly, this means I can make more interesting terrain features, using a Wave function collapse approach. It still takes a lot of time to add some variety to terrain, so it's not a high priority right now. For example, deserts will have some rare oasis, or forests having paths (and rare cemeteries that spawn skeletons).

Finally, this was a required prerequisite for the new biome to appear in 0.10's B-rank.



New Difficulty on profile creation



A new profile difficulty is now added, "Casual mode," when you are creating a new profile.
This new mode is aimed at players looking for a very casual experience, without the fear of death/difficulty.
What does it change?
Players cannot be killed (except once the timer becomes red in Survival mode).
Players gain +5% damage for each level-up and x1.01 damage for each minute.

I know many players like the current difficulty of the game, and some think it's too easy, but a number of players don't aim for any challenge in the game and simply want a chill experience where they can destroy thousands of monsters without any worry. (Leaderboards are disabled on this difficulty)

In addition, the main menu now has a small text under your profile so you know which difficulty you are playing in. I may want to look into adding a proper colored icon for each profile difficulty later on.

Weapon Modifiers groundwork



In preparation for Weapon modifiers, a lot of internal code got changed to convert a few cards into weapon modifiers. This shouldn't change the current behavior, modifiers are directly applied to all weapons for now.

Soul-Cards affected so far:
Fractal, Ice Spirit, Fire Spirit, Thunder Spirit, Divine Smite

Input System Refactorization



While it's still using Unity's Input system (as it's very good), the game now has a wrapper put on top of that to properly handle and register modded inputs, making it more modular. The rebind menu is also now automatically generated based on the inputs, so there shouldn't be any missing binds.

Gunslinger Rework



Gunslinger received another slight rework.

One issue that I noticed with Gunslinger is how specialized each of his weapons are. Revolver's path is very good for bosses but lacks against groups of enemies. Shotguns are good for packed enemy groups and bosses but weak against heavily armored enemies.
Finally, the SMG path was good for weak enemy groups but inefficient against elites/bosses.
This pushed me to make most weapons more "averagely" useful and not design them too much based on their uniqueness, striving to make them useful in most situations.

I felt very limited in design by the avatars overall, and I spent some time thinking about how to improve the avatars. I made this change: he no longer has weapon caps.

Avatars can still only use one weapon at once, but he can now swap between his weapons. I removed the exclusion of different weapon paths (so you can own both SMGs, shotguns, and revolvers).
Weapon reloading/shot delay continues even when the weapon is not selected, encouraging players to play in a more aggressively swapping style.
Finally, this would allow the addition of cards that add bonuses/modifiers when the players swap weapons.

In addition, I added a new tier of weapons (Heroic). Heavy Machinegun can be upgraded into Dual Gatling, Sniper into a railgun, and Scattergun into a flamethrower.

I'm also thinking of increasing the monster count (at least up to 66%) for the gunslinger as it's more adapted to dealing with slightly larger enemy groups.

Rogue: Genesia 1.0



While I think the 1.0 release of Rogue: Genesia is still multiple months away, we are slowly getting closer to it.
There is still Update 0.10 to be made, and then Update 0.11 which would be quickly followed up by 1.0 as it'll bring the final polishing and clean-up of the game.

Originally, I didn't plan for anything much after the 1.0 release of R:G outside of bug fixes and minor content/QoL improvements, and I'm still not sure if there is much I want or will be able to add later on.

Sure, I could still pump out more worlds and higher difficulty levels, but I'm pretty sure I would be over-extending my ideas and would make much less interesting stuff.
This is also why I don't plan to make extra content as paid DLC, at least, not content I would make myself. There is the equipment system that I may work on after 1.0, but I prefer to not continue being full-time on it afterward as I would like to start working on my next game then.

There is the serious possibility of hiring someone to continue working on R:G after the 1.0 release, where I would only be there to validate the ideas/direction the game will continue to take while giving me much more free time.
They could also bring fresh ideas to the game. But that will greatly depend on the revenue R:G will generate post 1.0, as I'll need funding for my next game. There is no sure way to know how much I'll have available by then.

My Next Game



It's been in pre-production for quite a bit of time (9 months now), mainly polishing the idea, how the core concept would work together and the features to be added.
At this stage, no concrete work has been done yet outside of a few concept arts during my free time, as I would find it weird to start working on a new game when R:G isn't even out of EA.

It won't be Rogue: Genesia 2. I don't have any plans for such as of now. I'm not excluding the idea in the far future. Nor will it be a bullet heaven game (nor a visual novel to appease someone's worries).

The next game concept started as "what happens if you take a Rogue-lite, but you don't lose your run progression". It's very different now from the idea it was back then, and it wouldn't even qualify as a Rogue-lite anymore.

This is also a game I won't be working on alone, contrary to R:G. I'll be working in a duo with someone I've known for years and greatly trust his technical ability.

I prefer to not share too many details about the game here, as there is a lot to be defined, and I would prefer to have a tested solid prototype before seriously committing to the concept.


Unity's new plan pricing

This is a hot take, and the announcement is recent, so I really hope things will change in the near future.

Hello,

I believe this is an important post as it may greatly affect the future of Rogue: Genesia.

So, what's the deal with Unity's new pricing plan?
Earlier today, Unity made this announcement:
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates

This blog post announces Unity's new pricing model, set to take effect next year.
The new pricing model of Unity, in addition to maintaining the subscription, will now include a fee per installation of the game on the user's device.

At first, I thought it was simply a $0.20 fee per sale of the game, which, while a bit annoying, I could easily understand the pricing and I'm fine with it.

However, after some research, I found that this $0.20 fee is per installation of the game.

YES, PER INSTALLATION.


This means that anytime you uninstall the game and then reinstall it, that's a $0.20 fee sent to the developer. As you can imagine, this can lead to dangerous situations for many game developers using Unity.

First off, installation counts for demos also add to the game installation count. So, any player installing the demo is basically costing the developer $0.20.


Pirated versions of the game would be "prevented by their fraud detection practices," which, to be honest, is basically "trust me, bro," or spending a ton of time trying to recoup fees from pirated versions of the game. I would be very surprised if they suddenly resolved the issues of piracy when so much effort has already been made by multiple other big companies.


Similarly, they replied that benevolent copies of the game (Humble Bundles, etc.) wouldn't be counted, but I don't see how they can ensure this without invasive data collection. Of course, what is considered an install is entirely up to Unity's decision and they could make up the numbers themselves if they wanted.

There is also concern about Unity collecting data that I wasn't aware of from my players.

This change applies to every Unity game, even those already released. Installation fees only apply to new installations starting on January 1, 2024.


This also means they could change the fee charged out of nowhere. What's preventing them from increasing it to $150 per installation out of nowhere?

This could also lead to a lot of abuse from the players as a way to harass developers. Nothing prevents a player from buying a game, installing and uninstalling it as much as possible, and then asking for a refund.

And that's without going further with installations of the game in Virtual Machines or directly grabbing the packets sent to Unity and replicating them.

I sincerely hope this change will be reverted. There is a possibility this could be dangerous for the development of Rogue: Genesia.
I could even end up having to remove the game from Steam if it ends up costing more money than it can earn.

I'll continue to work on Rogue: Genesia in the meantime, waiting for changes on Unity's behalf, and exploring possible legal action along with other developers if nothing changes.

I just wanted players to know, what are at stake, and I wouldn't be surprised if other developer of Unity game to act similarly.


As I expect this question:
No, porting Rogue: Genesia to another engine is not a realistic approach due to the amount of work required,
especially at the moment, as there are a lot of uncertainties.


(source of official unity replies can be found here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/

Updated demo

This is a short notice to inform you that the demo has been updated to be based on version 0.9 of the game.



This means that all the quality of life additions made during this whole year of development are now included in the demo.

Content-wise, there are likely a few additional cards/artifact in the demo, but I don't recall the exact content of the previous version.

Additionally, future updates should be much easier to incorporate into the demo version.

Hotfix 0.9.0.3f

Changes



  • Increased Swift Elixir duration from 10sec to 20sec
  • Increased Crit-strike Infusion duration from 15sec to 25sec
  • Increased Artificer's Potion duration from 15sec to 30sec
  • Increased haste-strike Serum duration from 20sec to 30sec
  • Increased Fire wine duration from 10sec to 30sec


Fixes



  • Potion pick-up having no texture after a certain time
  • Tracked still pointing to chest already picked up
  • Sometime temporarily losing D-rank Soul-shop upgrade +Max health every 5 level

hotfix 0.9.0.3e

Fixes



  • Elite split's spawning at the center of the stage
  • Gold counter in shop starting from the original value anytime something is bought (visual bug)

Hotfix 0.9.0.3d

Fixes



  • Boss staying at 1 HP in certain conditions

Hotfix 0.9.0.3c

Fixes



  • Major bug that prevented damage processing from continuing after a death is detected