Lots of changes continue to work their way into Rogue Wizards.
At the end of 2014, the prototype idea for town was that we would build lots of structures, farms, landscaping, all of which would benefit your wizard in the dungeons. As the game has evolved throughout 2015 it became apparent building farms, landscaping, and material collectors was kinda boring and that the most fun part of town building was when you unlocked a new major structure such as the blacksmith, armory, jeweler. Therefore we concentrated on the most fun structures and as a result in the alpha there isn't really anything else to build except these cool structures that are unlocked as you progress though the storyline.
As we enter 2016, we decided to streamline the unlocking of new structures and build them in town for you as they are acquired. At the same time, town now has all new high resolution artwork and a hand crafted scene that expands over time as the player progresses throught the game.
We've also continued to push the spell content further in the month of January. The brand new nature spell "Swarm", summons a swarm of 5-8 pixies that flock around the player. At the start of each turn, one pixie automatically breaks off and attacks a nearby target, effectively giving you a second attack for that turn.
The new "Icicle" spell creates a stream of 2-5 ice shards that fire in rapid succession dealing cold damage to their target. If the target is frozen, these ice shards do double damage making the icicle spell the first spell that interacts with the results of another spell, in this case the freeze spell.
Finally, we're starting to see a little buzz about the game from the YouTube community. Zueljin Gaming has created 17 episode of Rogue Wizards gameplay.
Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios January 2016 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.
Major Changes
Completely new town presentation. Structures are now auto-built as they are unlocked when returning to town.
Town is no longer on a tiled grid.
Town has a completely new set high resolution artwork for the structures, islands, and other decrotative elements of the scene.
New Spell: "Swarm", summons 5-8 pixies that surround your character, each turn a pixie will break off and attack a target if one is found
New Spell: "Icicle", launch a stream of ice shards at a target, frozen targets receive double damage
Youtube let's play previews
Minor Changes
Vault is now always present in town
Ivan (Yvano) now inhabits the vault
The Spellbook now auto open and moves a run into your shortcut bar (if there is space) when you learn a new spell at the spell tree in town.
Town now has visual feedback when you mouse over a structure
The town ring menu no longer comes up if there is only one possible action in the menu
Removed the "Move" functionality from all town ring menus since it's no longer appropriate for the new fixed town (as was never implemented anyway)
Followers are now given a ranged and a melee weapon
Followers will no longer attack Blobs with the bow or chakram, doing so usually resulted in large amounts blobs everywhere and made the follower generally look stupid and make the battle very hard for the player. Note that secondary chakram bounces off blobs can still occur.
Followers will now always do melee weapon attacks if the option is available instead of firing any ranged weapon they might have at the enemy standing next to them which is way not as effective as a melee attack
The runtime now fully supports armor that visually changes the skin of your player between light, medium, and heavy looks when that armor is equipped or removed ... as the medium and light chest armor pieces are created we will trigger new character looks when equipped
Art
All new town artowrk is now online
Human Male and Female Avatar medium and heavy armor skins created/animated
Female Avatar walk adjust to have a little more flow and pep!
Guild Wizard left foot shadow fixed (affected Magic01 and the Magic01 Start, Loop, and End animations)
Hosperak z-sorting claw issue fixed
Gryphon die animation adjusted to have more pop!
Fixed human female hand right closed image to be grayscale and named properly (without a trailing space)
New town travel gate art without the stone base
Fixes
Fixed loot not being able to be spawned when in tight quarters ... especially from a boss chest when the boss dies in a 1 square hallway block by a portal on one side and the player on the other.
Loot will not always try to fall into the receiver cell if there is one, or gradually widen the loop drop search radius from 1 to 5
Fixed spells being selected as secondary tooltip comparisons
Fix check for "at inventory limit" that was off by one ... that caused the potion 4/5 to stack OK, but potion 5/5 did did not
Fixed inventory full message not appearing when it should have when dropping a vendor potion on a stack of 5 potions in your inventory
Fixed wrong position of damage icon on spell upgrade UI after upgrading a spell (sprite text was set as clipped with previous value)
Fixed spell damage and effect values changing in the UI after acquiring the first level of a spell, the issue is that the spell rune used in for the UI had a different variance than the rune that was created and put into the players inventory
Spell weapons (runes) no longer are allowed to have any variance, that was intended only for magic items.
Fixed Z sorting on the spell rune that animates from the new spell book ui into a free slot on the shortcut bar
Fixed Z sorting on the TravelUI and QuestUI so that they can both be displayed at the same time from the Travel Gate in town again
Fixed the Forgestone crashes when using it in town due to the ropes not understanding Map vs MapBase
Fixed all structure portrait size and positioning for new town art
At the beginning of December we started the Rogue Wizards closed alpha program and received a ton of great feedback from everybody. Your feedback for what to improve next in the game is invaluable to us, thank you for all the countless hours of exploration, loot hunting, and monster slaying.
Though December we’ve continued to press forward and got all the engine NPC coloring working. Now when you find companions they’ll have some variation in their visual look.
One thing we got a lot of feedback in the alpha was to improve the item tooltips and make it easier to compare new loot with existing gear, so now every property has a comparison up/down arrow as well as an overall better or worse attack/defense arrow. Also, because many weapons can be readied at the same time a lot of thought has gone into deciding which single weapon to compare.
Finally, during the alpha we managed to get the entire main quest storyline in the game in rudimentary form including all 6 elemental rifts and placeholder Guild Wizard bosses. We’ll be improving all these areas and adding unique AI and powers to each boss over the next few months.
Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios December 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.
Major Changes
All 6 rifts are now accessible at some point during the quest line, each of them contain a Guild Wizard boss (their AI and dungeons needs lots of work still), journal scrolls, and rewards
Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
Massive overhaul to item tooltips using up/down arrows and smart selection logic on what currently equipped item to compare against
Lots of preliminary code and artwork on a new town visual presentation, will be live in a couple of weeks
Minor Changes
NPCs are now colorized by the game engine so they all look different
Increased block chance for shields and the blocking bonus affix for shields
Thieflings now always have 2 actions per turn
Dagger, Chakram, and Bow damage decreased
Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
Thieflings are now limited to stealing 2 items max
Thieflings now become scared for 3 turns and run away if you hurt them
Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
Materials will no longer spawn if you are already at the inventory limit for that material
Items that cannot be picked up are now always flippied to an adjacent cell
No inventory full message is displayed when you can’t pickup materials when at the limit now
Health regeneration now regenerates health on turn multiples, has been rebalanced for regneration values, and fixed the regen 0 health bug
Click and hold movement no longer also requires a pointer drag too in order to start the movement
Wandering merchant now always have 2-3 potions available
Replicated blobs no longer replicate champion qualities to their offspring, that was brutal!
Health potion recipe has been changed to just 10 fire materials for now
Most follower backstory delivery in the dungeon will now only be done after a kill count condition is met
and* there are now hostiles on the screen (and the follower is visible and not dead etc)
Evi can now be found in the Earth Rift dungeon
Audrey is now found earlier in the Blacksmith dungeon cause finding her in a tinly last level was not fun
Traps now occur on 100% of the levels at rank 2 or higher (dungeon only for now)
Removed follower quips when you take loot because it’s making people thing you can share with the followers or do more complicated stuff with them.
Item tooltips have received a big update to make comparisons easier
All 6 elemental rift quests are now playable (boss and level generation still needs work)
Click and hold mouse movement now easier to start
Theiflings now always have 2 turns per move, run away when hurt, and can only steal 2 items max
Spell materials no longer drop if you're at the max
Items that can't fit in your inventory now always flip to adjacent tiles
Rebalanced health regeneration affix
Increased blocking chance on all shields as well as from the magic affix
Radically changed XP curves. Note your player current xp level progress has been set to zero, however this will not happen in future updates when XP curves are rebalanced
Radically changed vendor upgrade prices
Chests now show a floaty key to indicate a key was used to open the chest
All ranged weapons have had their damage reduced slightly
Experience and Defense shrine duration decreased
Enchanting shrine number set to 1
Fixes
Fixed invalid items that were generated at max levels
Alpha + November 2015 Development Update
Greetings Wizards,
We’re happy to announce that Rogue Wizards closed alpha program has begun. If you backed us on Kickstarter at the Shaman level or higher, you’ll be receiving a Steam key to join and play the alpha over the next couple of weeks to try out the game and provide us feedback and report issues. We’ll be adding users into the alpha in groups every week; so if you don’t receive your key right away don’t worry, it will arrive soon.
Missed the Kickstarter but still want to play the open beta when its ready? Subscribe to our Spellbind Studios Newsletter and we’ll be recruiting players from that list to join the open beta in 2016.
Whats in the Alpha
Play through the main storyline until defeating Gaderian, the Guild Wizard of Fire
Build the Wizard Tower, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Jeweler
Run through 4 basic story quests plus random dungeons are available after building the Armory
Find several item types with dozens of randomized magic properties
Fight against 9 different monsters (and a few more that are incomplete with just melee attacks)
Learn low to mid level spells across 6 schools of magic
Play through the randomized Dungeon, Cavern, and Cosmic environments
What’s coming next?
Storyline quests, NPCs, and structures beyond the Rift of Fire
Creating special and magical attack for monsters and bosses that don’t have them yet
Colorable character variations
Town presentation experimentations
Now on to our regular development update for November 2015.
Over the past month we’ve been working very hard to get ready for the alpha. The biggest change in the gameplay comes in how the player acquires spells. Spells now rarely drop in the dungeons and instead the player acquires spell points when they level up. Spell points can be spent at the Wizard Tower in town to upgrade existing or learn new spells.
We’ve also got functional UI screens for video settings as well as user configurable keyboard control mappings.
Finally, we added new UI for comparing weapons and armor with the equipped armor or any of the readied weapons on the shortcut bar. Now a simple red or green arrow will appear on the item being inspected if it is more effective at attack or defense, and for weapons on the shortcut bar if the new item would do more damage than each of them they’re hi lighted with a glowing green box.
Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Visit the Spellbind Studios November 2015 development blog post to see the full on details or talk about the changes in our Online Forums.
Features
Alpha build now available on Steam for some users
The “Blink” spell is now called “Regroup”, and does a teleport and heal
Regroup spell now can only teleport the player to a tile that they have previously occupied, this keeps the spell from randomly teleporting you further into a dungeon and typically into a group of monsters or other danger when in fact you’re supposed to be falling back to get out of a bad situation
Added new Spell Tree UI available off the Wizard Tower in town where the player can select which spells to acquire and upgrade
Spells are now acquired via level unlocks and spell points acquired on level up
Feedback UI now has edit boxes where people can enter the name and email
There is now a UI element in the turn mode UI where you can pass your turn (activated by space bar too)
Added keyboard control UI with user configurable key mappings
Resolution switching now functional from a new menu in the settings
Item comparison UI has been reworked to show an up/down arrow at the item being tooltipped, and pulsing green boxes when that item is better at
all* possible locations it can be equipped at to be more effective
Changes
Stalagmites spell now deals damage
Stalagmites damage and radius now increase with ranks
Reduced upgrade costs at vendors
Sundries now re-populates the goods inventory every time the player comes back to town
Removed all spellbook drops except the first one that grants the player fireball (magic shrines can still drop books tho)
Your Wizard Tower now has a floating spellbook icon over it if there are spells that you can upgrade at the tower (you meet the requirements and have spell points to spend)
Completely removed spellbook drop from default loot table tree (still present on magic shrines tho
Added some tutorial logic to guide the player through the interaction at the Tower and upgrade of their first spell
The game will now remind player via a message box at the start of every 4th dungeon to leave feedback to us via the Home menu option
Level themes (Dungeon, Cavern, Cosmic) are now slowly opened up to the player as they progress. Dungeons can occur from the start, Caverns can occur at level 4+, Cosmic can occur at level 10+
If a level them becomes available and has never been seen so far, the next quest generated is guaranteed to use that level theme
2nd tier spells now become available when 1st tier spells reach level 10 instead of 15
Gaderian now summons fire minions during the battle
Gaderian now has a lot more health
Gaderian now gets scared at certain health ranges like Champions do to provide a break in battle
Increased champion and boss health
Drastically reduced the turns required for mastery of all equipped items.
Decreasing XP bonus from all level clearing awards
Critical hits now do 125% damage instead of 300%, it was just too much
Removed magic rank +3 affixes from the game. Set magic rank +1 and +2 to appear at 90% and 10% frequency
Dungeon loot is now always generated using the player base rank instead of the level base rank, this assures that the player is always finding level appropriate gear even if they have leveled up within a dungeon
Fixed enemies not selecting their ranged attacks as much as they should have been, especially if they were the only enemy on screen with the player and the player was moving around
Message box buttons now have text describing their action and are no longer and just x and checkmark images
Increasing the effectiveness of burn to 25% health
Increased frequency at which fireball causes burn
Added visual feedback for a locked door
Added a chest in the first room of the Wayside Inn so that player don’t get frustrating looking for something valuable in the first room like the player indicates should be there via thought bubble
Removed blueprints from all loot drops
You can now turn off the more help style tooltips on HUD buttons via an option in the settings menu
Removed material crafting, you can now only create health potions at the cauldrons
In preparation for the Rogue Wizards alpha we’ve spent most of October getting some of those core services in the game that are needed for a public test like crash reporting, in game feedback, and the uploading of save games and screenshots to our bug tracking server. Later this month we’ll start letting the first group of players try out the early alpha version and will continue to let more and more people play in batches during the months ahead.
We also wanted to give you a sneak peak of the Cavern environment we’ve been building, we’re not quite done with it yet but are liking how different it feels from the other environments already.
Much time was spent in October getting the first Rift of Fire looking special with the boss “Gaderian” fully animated walking around his arena. Gaderian can only do basic melee attack for now but we’ll really be pushing on his boss battle and powers in a few months.
Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Want to talk about these changes or other aspects of the game, then visit us in the Online Forums.
Major Features and Changes
Crash reporting now working with screenshots, save game files and logs on all platforms
Hooked up Unity analytics and some simple events in preparation for alpha
Council member boss “elemental rift” levels now have a swirling background effect present at all times
Blink now has a much larger range, but will only take the player to previously known locations
Cosmic rift background now scales tiles and alphas the actors during the reveal/hide effect
Gaderian Boss is now colored and functional in his boss arena. He only has melee attacks still tho.
Guild wizard bosses now have a death ceremony with dialog and effects
Counter damage is now visualized with in world text and only occurs with close range melee damage
The lance now gives up to three free forward attacks when you move
During the month of September a lot of artwork has come and is starting to really fill out the content for the main storyline of the game.
Alex has completed the final artwork for the Owl pet and now he’s ready to be animated. We’re still not quite sure what kind of help or abilities the pets are going to have, but we’re looking forward to your ideas and feedback as the alpha and beta programs start in a month or two.
We’ve also spent a huge chunk of time getting some new environment visuals online, but they’re not quite ready to show yet; So we decided to give you a little behind the scenes look at the tech used to create the environment and game world. Below is a screenshot of how all the 2D images are laid out in the 3D game engine Unity.
Normally the camera is looking straight on the images making the set of 2D images appear to be 3D due to the forced perspective in the art. However, here we’ve altered the camera perspective and position so you can see what the world looks like when viewed from the side which just a bunch of 2D perfectly flat images.
Although most of the environment is built by the random generator, we also have a set of tools that allows us to create small pockets of a level using a hand placed layout. This screenshot shows a small arena we’re building for a boss battle in the Rift of Fire using hand created placement for floors, walls, and all deco objects that can then be inserted into a larger level by the random map generator.
When a town dwelling inhabitant has something new to say, clicking on that structure now bypasses the entire context menu open/selection and immediately executes the play dialog logic on click
Cavern environment art nearly complete
Added foreground parallax silhouette to Cavern environment
Added unique environment elements for the Rift of Fire
Music enabled is now saved via application settings file
Added placeholder images to town intro cinematic
Added non-placeholder text for town intro cinematic
The town travel gate now has swirl and glow effects only when there is a valid destination to travel to
Item summary UI which shows the attack/defense defense delta for the item in the slot is now colored green/red with +/- in the context of
that* item (not the item being compared against)
Cosmic Rift now has floating small floor diamonds as walls
Hooked up remaining NPC dialog logic for Dungeon Blacksmith Quest (Adira)
Hooked up all in dungeon npc dialog for armory quest
Caysin is now found just inside the Rift of Fire
Balance Changes
Drastically reduced drop rate of items
Drastically increased power of spells
Drastically increased the material cost of spells
Removed the champions extra health affix
Drastically reduced the damage and defense bonus for champions
Improved the effectiveness of a lot of spells like Freeze, Banish, etc
Increase field count for electric field at lowest levels
Art
All Kickstarter NPC backers are fully animated
Hosperak big bad boss artwork complete
All 6 guild wizard mid-bosses artwork is complete
Male and Female medium armor artwork complete
Male and Female heavy armor artwork complete (includes rework of existing male heavy armor)
Cleaned up Gryphon layer names and edges
Exported all Gryphon art layers to be animation ready
Tweaked Dryad hit animation to be faster and not tilt back so far
User Interface
There is now a pulsing level up on the AttributeSummaryUI on the character pane when there are attribute points to spend to make it more obvious
When NPCs in town have multiple new unread dialog, the dialog is now auto-batched up into one since seamless display in the dialog UI one after another.
Armor now has item summary UI’s appear on them
Hovering the mouse over an inventory slot now causes a visual selection box to occur on slots that contain items
We've made it to the end of August and have made a couple of really huge strides this month.
First of all we're proud to announce that the Rogue Wizards Steam Store Page is now online. Players can now follow and add the game to their Steam wishlists as well as talk with each other in the community hub. Getting the Steam page to this state is actually a huge step towards starting the Alpha program later this year because we'll be running the alpha and beta through Steam, and now we're completely ready with all the necessary distribution tech to get the game into your hands for testing and feedback.
We've also now got the story and quest structure going into the game in stages. The storyline will take the player though an as of yet undetermined number of randomized dungeons, but we have mapped out 5 dungeons in which you'll find NPCs to take back to town as well as 6 elemental dungeons the player will encounter each with NPCs and a boss battle.
Alex has completed the artwork for all 18 NPC heads that are based on the Kickstarter backers that wanted to be in the game. These NPC heads are being animated as we speak so that they can perform all the same actions as the player character. You'll find many of them in the dungeons where they'll fight along side of you for a while until you lead them back to the safety of the town, where you'll be able to build a permanent dwelling for them.
Finally, here's a look at the Harpy enemy who is now fully animated in the game.
Rogue Wizards Steam store and community page is now online
All Kickstarter backer based NPC art is ready to be animated
New ice monster: Snow Crab fully animated with working melee attack (special attack still needed)
Storyline Spreadsheet now complete with auto importing from Google Docs online
Dragon Whelp animated with basic melee functionality
Entrance/exit portals now have transition visual and sound effects, you're also notified via message if an exit portal becomes activated that is off screen
First couple of quests with real story dialog now hooked up and working
Art:
Updates to missing Kickstarter backer parts
All simple housing art for town complete
Snow Gryphon now ready to be animated
Polished the animated player shadow in all animations to move with all the motions
