We integrated Steamworks about a week ago and it broke the game. But you guys let us know really fast. So we fixed it. And then it broke some other stuff. So we fixed that too. And now it's running great (honestly, Steamworks is awesome).
So today we added our first batch of Achievements, 36 in total! They cover all the fundamental aspects of the game. The things you're likely to achieve in the course of completing the game on all the difficulty levels.
MOAR Achievements!
With the basics out of the way, we're ready to add some wild and crazy achievements...
Pretty much any statistic you can imagine, we can collect and store on Steam's servers. So let us know if you've got a whacky / funny / cool idea for an achievement. We'll add it! Just leave a comment below.
A New Hazard Coming Tomorrow
We've got a brand new nasty, scary hazard/enemy coming in tomorrow. An amorphous, toxic, horrific thing! It's super secret...and it's awesome... coming tomorrow...
FORAGER eat 20 items
MASTER_FORAGER eat 100 items
STARVING eat while starving (first achievement)
FEARLESS die 5 times
HORRIFIED die 10 times
DEDICATED play 5 hours
COMPELLED play 10 hours
OBSESSED play 50 hours
DEEPROOT_SAVIOR beat the Prime Torment
GNOME_LEGEND beat the Prime Torment 3 times
VITALORS_SAVIOR beat the Prime Torment in nightmare
HARDCORE beat the Prime Torment in hardcore
WIZARD unlock ALL raw spells
MASTER_WIZARD upgrade ALL raw spells
DRUID_ACOLYTE gain the Vital Twig wand
DRUID unlock ALL earth spells
MASTER_DRUID upgrade ALL earth spells
PYROMANCER_ACOLYTE gain the charred switch
PYROMANCER unlock ALL fire spells
MASTER_PYROMANCER upgrade all fire spells
WARLOCK unlock ALL spells
MASTER_WARLOCK uprade ALL spells
QUEEN_KILLER kill the silken queen
KING_KILLER kill horik
BLOAT_KILLER kill bloat
SAGE use teleporation scroll
GURU meditate on vita's tree
DIAMOND_CUTTER craft imbued diamond
EMERALD_CUTTER craft imbued emerald
RUBY_CUTTER craft imbued ruby
SAILOR craft a ship fuel
SOUL_COLLECTOR have over 100 spirit dust
SOUL_HOARDER have over 200 spirit dust
EARTH_CHANNELER have 500 adamant
FLAME_CHANNELER have 500 flamestone
MANA_CHANNELER have 500 mana
v.56 Cave Spikes and TONs of Changes
Hazardous Islands
Our big push right now is to make the islands much more hazardous. With the eventual goal being that just moving across the islands carries with it a high risk of dying.
The first step towards that was the addition of thistles; an early introduction to the idea of a hostile environment. Now today we're adding Cave Spikes which spawn in overhangs. If you walk under them, they smash into the ground and blow apart doing massive damage. You can of course knock them off with a well placed shot. So keep your eyes open.
Lots more hazards are coming down the pipe. But please let us know in the comments if you have any ideas for cool hazards you'd like to see in the game!
Balancing Finally Decent!
Balancing is of course always on-going, but in our recent in-house playthroughs we are finding that the balance is really feeling pretty good now.
Finally, you can progress through the game in the manner that we intended! This is all due to the excellent feedback that our players have provided us. So a big shout out to everyone who told us how their playthroughs were progressing. I know it was frustrating for some of you to make it so far into the game only to find a critical balancing issue. So thank you for reporting it to us.
Rogue Islands is like a machine with literally 1000+ knobs and you need to tune them all in relation to each other. It would have been impossible for us to get it this well balanced without everyone's input. I truly believe Early Access is making this game 10x better than we could have done on our own.
New! Cave Spikes hazard
Fixed bug: Single attached or floating blocks filtered out from terrain
Balance: Gem crafting upped from 15 shards to 20
Balance: Bumped up mana deposit sizes (more per deposit)
Fixed bug: inventory showed item edible when stomach full
Change: Florid Vale has a lot more trees now
Change: Gurgleweeds now glow with a faint green light underwater (higher visibility)
Change: thistles are much more visible now, with black stems and glowing bulbs.
Change: can view most inventory descriptions and recipes without possessing ingredients
Change: crafting tells you name of ingredients, not just icons
Fixed bug: Bats stop making flapping sounds after they die
Change: If you eat a gurgleweed while underwater it resets your breathing meter.
Change: Waspet scream volume reduced
Change: Nightmare recipe uses Gurgleweed in Explorer mode
Change: More gurgleweeds in Explorer mode
Change: Briny Moss grows on all rock types now
Change: Bolt Spell lights up much larger region. Useful for caves.
Fixed bug: Bolt Spell light fades off after being destroyed
Warden has resistance to energy attacks now
Fixed bug: Silken mother sometimes disappearing during boss fight
Fixed bug: Some main menu items cut-off on non 16:9 resolutions
v.55 New Spell Upgrades & Destructable Food!
3rd Level Spells!
All 9 spells can be upgraded to 3rd level now for a total of 27 spell upgrades! Hold on to those Diamonds!
This has 3 major consequences:
1. All gem-types remain useful much longer into the game.
2. It makes you think harder about which spells to invest in.
3. It keeps Spirit Dust in short supply.
And now that we have really useful defensive items to craft, like Nightmare's and Scrolls of Teleportation, you will have to decide what to invest in: play it safe, or upgrade your fire power. The choice is yours.
Please let us know what you think of it and how it feels.
Destructable Food
Everything destroys the food now. Player attacks, enemy attacks, spreading fire, acid etc. So think twice before you launch an attack at an enemy standing next to a delicious Ripe Cob. Just one more thing to worry about...
Coming Soon...
Starting tmrw we'll be adding a new hazard type (finally!) as well as making the thistles destructable. New rule: EVERYTHING must be destructible.
New! All 9 spells have an additional upgrade path (total 3 each)
New! Wild Bulbs instantly fill all mana bars when eaten
New! You can craft Scrolls of Teleportation from Briny Moss + Spirit Dust
New! Golden Forest has more dynamic terrain generation
Confirmation to use item defaults to "Yes"
Teleporting to ship, waking from a nightmare or hiding will de-spawn nearby enemies
Hold breath time bumped from 6sec to 10sec due to slower swimming
Bone Knights first encountered in Florid Peaks now
Bushes can now grow on sides of cliffs
Bumped up Gurgleweed spawn rate slightly
Inferno Spell has many more hit points, won't be destroyed instantly
Inferno flamestone cost bumped up slightly
Flame Burst Spell destroys larger chunk of terrain
Flame burst heats more terrain around impact crater
Scorch Spell VFX improved
Fixed bug, Scorch burns blocks in front of player
Fixed bug: "chilling presence" message no longer shows when hiding
Fixed bug, UI sound effects cut-short when closing menu
Code: Optimized Scorch spell significantly
Code: Optimized voxel heat system significantly
Code: Centralized damage system for consistent damaging enemies vs player
v.54 Scroll of Teleportation and TONs of Balancing
Scroll of Teleportation
Brand new rare item you can find in chests. If you find yourself on the losing end of a battle, pop open your inventory and use the scroll to safely teleport back to your ship. Especially useful for staying out late at night and avoiding an encounter with Ghasts...
New! Scroll of Teleportation. One use item. "Nope" out and return to ship.
Inventory reworked to allow items to be crafted AND/OR eaten
Bumped up cost to imbue slightly. 40/50/60 per gem
Seekers upped adamant cost 2x
Swarm upped adamant cost 2x
Inferno upped flamestone cost 1.25x
Flameburst upped Flamestone cost 2x
Swarm loop volume halved
Danger music fades in quickly, fades out slowly
Reduced mineral deposits 25%
Ghasts no longer visible during morning
Reduced Gurgleweed seeds 25%
Boosted drop rate for amulets 5%
Reduced swim speed 25%
Walk speed reduced 25% while wading in shallow water
v.53 Steamworks Integration Plus Bug Fixes
Rogue Islands now has the Steamworks API integrated.
It will display your username at the start menu and we're hard at work adding achievements to the game. But in the meantime we thought we'd push out an update with a bunch of balancing, bug fixes and optimization...
Steamworks integrated, game communicates with Steam servers
Optimized treasure spawning routine (was 1-2ms during level start, now 0ms)
Fixed bug, walking enemies no longer spawn up in trees
Today's update broke the character controller causing you to get stuck trying to walk up steps. A last second regression that slipped past us.
We are moving very rapidly, and when you do that, sometimes stuff breaks.
Anyway, it's fixed. Thanks to Steam user Sef for reporting it straight away!
Fixed bug character controller "sticky" instead of moving smoothly
v.51 Bug, Balance and Optimization
View Distance & Low-End Machines
We've gone to great lengths to make Rogue Islands perform well. But sometimes you just want to play it on a low or mid-range PC and don't care too much if you all the bells and whistles are on. So now you can drop the view distance down with has a major impact on both the GPU and the CPU. So should help a lot on low-end machines.
Conversely, you can now crank the view distance up on high-end machines and see clear across the entire island...if you can afford it. Choice is yours.
Thistles optimized significantly
View distance slider in graphics settings
Vsync moved from "settings" to "graphics" menu
Diamonds / Emeralds / Rubies cost progressively more to imbue
Halved adamant/flamestone amount per block, longer progression
Fixed bug, Gurgleweed now cures trauma as stated in description
Drowning no longer causes trauma
Groundwork for new hazard type...
v.5 Quests, Bosses, Story & New Mode!
Bosses
The bosses are now all in the game! Of course we'll continue to tune and balance them, but this is a pretty major milestone.
A Story about Our Story
We discussed the story for Rogue Islands at length. Not just about the plot and the themes we wanted to explore, but also the delivery mechanism.
At one point, we were going to reveal the story in smaller fragments in the form of 'story scrolls' that you would collect throughout the game. But it became apparent that they would probably interrupt the gameplay too much and get lost in the shuffle.
So instead we opted to convey the story in small passages that accompany the level generation / loading screen. And after today's update, we also have a larger 'final' story at the end of game.
The complete narrative is only revealed once you've seen all the story points for the 5 biomes (of which there are over 20) AND the final story revealed at the end of the game. We think it works quite nicely this way.
Explorer Mode
We've received quite a bit of feedback from players who would prefer if there were an option to casually enjoy the game. They are really enjoying it, but find that the strict adherence to Permadeath is getting in the way of their enjoyment.
So we've added "Explorer" mode. Death will still erase your save game. But in this mode, we've made it much easier to get the ingredients to craft a nightmare. And you take 25% less damage. Smart players will always make sure that they have two Nightmares on them at all times. And when they're sufficiently familiar with the game's challenges, they can step up to Permadeath mode.
Additionally, we removed the option to craft Nightmares at all from the "Permadeath" mode.
New! Explorer mode, take less damage, craftable nightmares
Removed starting amount of Adamant and Flamestone
Waspet death explosion poison radius reduced
Sinking Woods has brand new terrain generation algorithm
Silken Castle better hidden on Florid Peaks
Fixed bug Silken Mother sometimes disappears
New! Ending story and credits
New! Prime Torment drops eggs that hatch Poppers
New! Arena and mission for Bloat boss fight
New! Pazuzu's Treehouse Quest in Sinking Cliffs
Fixed bug Horik crashed at start of fight
Fixed bug crash while generating Sinking Cliffs on rare seeds
Horik now summons doom wall attack
Reduced camera clipping plane. Should resolve shadow flicker bug.
v.41 The Prime Torment gets some love...
Lots of progress today on the final boss fight, as well as a bunch of balancing and bug fixing.
The Prime Torment boss fight is about 60% finished in this build. Definitely pretty fun to play already. Tomorrow he'll gain a few more attacks and spawn some help when he's on his last hit points.
Fixed bug, spamming "I cannot be traumatized" when resistant to trauma
Demon portal damage reduced from instant kill to 50 HP
Fixed bug, Scorch Spell now uses fire mana correctly
Boosted Flame Burst Spell damage radius and amount
Fixed issues, Ghasts will not attack during boss fight
Level generation sped up slightly
Gurgleweed now very rare instead of extremely rare.
Gurgleweed and Bloodcap both cure poisoning now
Gurgleweed reduces damage 25% instead of 50%
Both items in player stomach apply effects at the same time
Fixed bug diamond shards rest half in-ground
Traumatized effect on mana recharge is 2x greater now
Poisoned effect slows health regen 2x more
Prime Torment eyes are shielded, must be damaged in sequence
New Prime Torment "doom wall" attack
New Prime Torment has tentacle attack
Prime Torment has "correct" hit points now
Early Access FTW!
Check out this blog post where I've compiled all our changes since beginning Early Access 13 days ago. It's insane!
