Also, the bow has been changed up quite a bit! Still a secondary weapon, but now with a bit more potential.
Patch Description
Talents
The General category has received 11 new talents (one of which is disabled until next patch), and the Magic and Melee categories have received 5 new talents each! Hopefully this will provide some more interesting combinations, as well as help with certain existing play styles.
The Bow
The Bow, the black sheep of the game, is now more like the grey sheep it was intended to be! Still a definite secondary weapon, but unlike before it can now actually complement various builds quite well (if upgraded).
Before, the bow was actually pretty decent right where you got it, but quickly became nearly useless despite scaling (poorly) with player level.
Now it can be upgraded up to three times. The first upgrade is unlocked straight away, but is most likely acquired after Flying Fortress for cost reasons. The second unlocks post Temple of Seasons, and the last one unlocks after Tai Ming!
The bow can also be charged up to deal more damage. With the standard bow, the uncharged damage is a little bit less now than it was before, while a charged shot deals more. At Upgrade 3, the bow can be charged even further, piercing through multiple enemies.
Patch Notes
Additions
21 new talents have been added (11 general, 5 magic, 5 melee)
The Utility skills have recieved their real sound effects
You can now upgrade the bow once per cleared temple (up to 3 times currently)
Changes
Skill: Buffs can now be cast on multiple allies while holding down the spell button
Skill: Taunt can now be canceled quicker after being cast
Skill: Taunt can now be canceled quicker after being cast
Skill: Barrier's duration has been increased
Bow: The bow can now be charged to deal a bit more damage
Bow: The default quiver size has been reduce slightly
Bow: The chance of finding arrows has been increased
Bow: Leveling up now grants full arrows (outside of Arcade Mode)
Bow: You can now turn around while charging the bow
Enemy: Boars and Scarecrows have received a slight increase in HP
Enemy: Elite Echoes of Madness must now do at least one normal attack between its special attack
Bug Fixes
Gameplay: Speed buffs no longer stack on clients if cast just before a cutscene
Gameplay: EP Regen no longer increases the rate at which EP is drained in Berserker Style
Housing: Shrinking a wall from the right no longer erases reshaped lower walls
Visual: The Spirit Potion icon is now back
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
When writing the previous "what's next" I totally forgot about the potion rework! We're going to replace it with a potion belt, where you can equip a few unique potions, and have them recharge by fighting instead of just buying a bazillion pots and have a basically infinite duration after that!
We'll turn any current pots you might own into something you can feed your pets with (and maybe make that item purchasable somewhere else).
Compared to the other changes we've made, this one should be pretty straightforward! After that, Stable will get the support spells, new talents, rebalance, bow and potion reworks all at once. Then it's really time for the last stop before the story continues: Arcade Mode updates.
A complete rebalance of all melee and magic skills in the game, along with various other balancing changes!
This is one of those real Frontline updates! All the sounds are either placeholder or missing, and some effects aren't final etc, but the functionality should be enough for testing!
Patch Description
Intro
So, as many of you know, the skills in the game have been very unbalanced. Most magic has been outright bad and normal attacks has been way too good (which in turn made Shadow Clone extremely good). Players maining, say, Chain Lightning would find a much tougher experience than someone who chose Heroic Slam or Flamethrower.
Needless to say, that's not ideal, and for a long while we've wanted to rebalance everything completely, but only recently did we reach a point where we had the two things we needed before a proper rebalance could happen: a place to test the gold charges (Tai Ming), and the support skills replaced (the Utility skill page).
So with this update, the game has changed significantly for almost every build. For the most part we've decided to juice up all the bad skills instead of nerfing the good ones, with the exception of Shadow Clone, which was just silly!
This means that for most builds the game just got noticeably easier, but lovers of difficulty probably don't need to worry: Hydras & Friends will still eat newbies like salmon sushi - it's just that all builds now have a fighting chance (if used wisely).
Anyways, let's get into the details of what's been happening this past month:
Wand Projectiles
Both 1H and 2H magic weapons now creates a projectile when swung! 1H Weapons will create a small, fast projectile that explodes on impact. 2H Weapons will create a wider projectile that goes through enemies.
This change was added to let magic users do something with their lives while waiting for EP (apart from using Focus). It also lets magic users finish off low health targets without breaking their long range play style by having to go Rocky Balboa on their enemies all of a sudden.
Attack/Cast Speed now affect skill animations
Probably the most radical change. All skills and spells now have a component that scales with ASPD or CSPD. For the melee skills, it's usually pretty straightforward by having the attack animation sped up. All sub-parts of the spell also gets sped up, like the Spirit Slash shadows coming out faster. For magic spells, the cast animations are faster, meteors have a reduced delay, fireballs travel faster, etc.
Some things, like summons, do not scale 1:1 with CSPD, but it will still affect them.
Of course, just like before ASPD and CSPD will decrease the time it takes to charge the spell as well!
One Handed Basic Attack Nerf
The one handed basic attacks have had their damage reduced by a whopping 30 % - before they used to be so strong that using skills actually decreased your DPS in some cases, which was not a great place to be. Shadow Clone builds could easily get to a point where only mashing the attack button while tanking damage could beat almost all bosses, even with moderate farm levels.
As it is now, basic attacks are still strong for when you're out of EP, but using skills are always a good idea. Shadow Clone builds are still viable, but now you need to put in the work to use it smartly!
EP Regen
Before, EP Regen didn't kick in until a full second after casting a spell. This was silly, and now it will kick in almost immediately, which makes it more straightforward to predict.
QoL Changes
A couple of often requested quality of life changes have been made.
Firstly, getting to a boss will now refill your HP and EP, so you're always ready for a fair battle. This might be extended to some of the regular enemy gauntlets as well, but right now those work like before!
Second, if you have a persistent spell (summon, shadow clone, etc) active when you die, the spell will now be recast automatically when you get revived.
Significant Reworks
While every single spell has been changed in some way, two spells have been changed in a more extravagant fashion! Oh, and Freeze.
Smash!: When charging up the smash, you will now be able to summon one or more smash balls. The smash balls persists for three hits, powering up with each one. The final hit will explode and deal AoE damage upon hitting a wall or a large enemy!
Throw: You can now call back your weapon on all charge levels, although it's only Gold Charge that deals damage on its way back. Importantly, you can still pick your weapon up, and doing so will refund a portion of the EP cost and also deal additional AoE damage!
Freeze/Chill: You can now Freeze and Chill bosses! Bosses are frozen for a shorter duration than regular enemies. Frozen enemies will break after up to three hits, and those three hits have a bonus crit chance of 50 %.
Changes Sorted by Skill
I thought about just adding these in the patch notes, but this is probably easier to read. So let's get on with it!
One Handed
Piercing Dash: Damage up on all charges, gold charge now moves slower to allow for a mortal human to cancel it into attacks or other skills.
Blade Flurry: Damage up on all charges, and the animations on the higher levels have been tightened to dish the damage out much faster. Also slightly increased range.
Spirit Slash: EP cost down for silver and gold, damage up on silver and gold, extra damage up for the gold charge non-finisher shadows
Dodging Strike: On a perfect dodge the dash will automatically extend if it can't reach its target, damage has been increased on all levels, stun duration has been increased, and the gold charge debuff is now a proper Reaper's Blade instead of a flat damage increase
Shadow Clone: Shadow Clone itself has not been nerfed, but due to the changes to basic attacks its damage output is much lower.
Two Handed
Heroic Slam: Damage slightly down on gold charge
Whirlslash: Damage up on all levels, EP cost up, level 1 slash has a slightly longer delay before it can be canceled
Throw: Can now be called back on all levels, can be picked up for an additional attack and partial EP refund, damage up on all levels, damage between throw and explosion can no longer be combined, faster charge time
Smash!: Smash balls can now be summoned to be used for ammo instead of enemies (always useful, but on bosses especially), damage up, charge time down
Berserker Style: Since skills now scale with ASPD, it plays very differently to begin with. Damage bonus increased on all levels, damage received increased on all levels, maximum attack speed gained has been lowered on all levels, EP decay is slower, EP decay is slowed down for a while after landing an attack or skill, EP decay is slowed down while charging a skill, EP recovery per hit has been lowered on higher levels
Fire Magic
Fireball: Damage up on all levels, and most importantly... new graphics!
Meteor: Damage up on all levels, EP cost down on gold charge
Flamethrower: Movement during silver charge slower, ep cost up on high levels, duration down, dps up, knockback removed, startup is faster, can withstand one weak hit without breaking (yes, looked like we buffed it, we thrive in chaos)
Ice Magic
Ice Spikes: Can now freeze! Damage up on all levels, ep cost down
Ice Nova: EP cost up, greater chance to freeze, damage up
Frosty Friend: Damage up on all levels, HP down on all levels, now has a maximum amount of targets that will be drawn towards it (1 on the tiny version, 2 on the medium and large version)
Earth Magic
Earth Spike: Reduced charge time, damage up, easier to land knockups, EP cost down for silver and gold
Summon Plant: Melee plants have increased range and damage, ranged plants have reduced range, plants will have a longer duration if not hitting stuff, but shorter if hitting stuff, the boss plant's two permanent minions are now weaker, moving the boss plant now costs a little bit of EP
Insect Swarm: Damage is dealt faster, damage slightly increased
Wind Magic
Chain Lightning: Damage increased on all levels, EP cost up, if nothing is in range no EP is lost, will now primarily damage whatever enemy the player is facing, damage is now more focused to one target, range up on higher levels
Cloud: Damage up on all levels - especially gold, damage per hit down but responsiveness and attack speed is increased
Static Touch: Damage up on all levels, no longer stuns, EP cost up, casting it now summons max cubes, cubes now disappear when zoning or entering a cutscene, you no longer lose cubes from getting hit, cubes trigger quicker on silver charge
Utility
Focus: Now scales with EP Regen - basically if you have no ep regen in your kit, it will be less effective, and if you have some EP Regen it will be more effective. The 'Focused' buff now reduces the cost of the next spell by 50 % instead of making it free.
Barrier: Barrier hits now grant a short hit immunity, if a barrier breaks the stun and knockback of the attack will now affect the player regularly, damage numbers are purple now to differentiate it from shield blocked attacks, in Arcade Mode a broken barrier means no more barrier that room, and it will also count against your score
Other Patch Notes
Hotfix 2017-09-12
Balance: The EP cost of Empower and Fortify has been lowered to 30
Balance: Most spells have had their bronze charge made stronger to better reflect the added cost and charge time
Bugfix: Getting hit while trying to retrieve a thrown weapon no longer makes the weapon unretrievable
Bugfix: The Mimic's hourglass slow no longer condemns clients to an eternity in slowland
Bugfix: Dying during a boss battle and then getting revived by a cutscene no longer gives a permanent MaxEP boost
Bugfix: Certain miss timings in Robin's arrow game should no longer give negative combo values in multiplayer
Bugfix: Freezing an enemy by perfect guarding with the Winter's Guard shield now uses the correct Freeze code
Bugfix: You can once again turn off shadow clone, berserk and the cloud as a client!
Bugfix: Freezing the Mimic before it wakes up no longer turns him into Briar Rose
Bugfix: Fortify now actually works
Bugfix: Piercing Dashing into a new zone as client no longer gives a supersonic speed boost
Bugfix: (Housing) Placing a candle on a table, moving said table, then canceling a move of only the candle no longer crashes the game
Bugfix: Dying in with a summon active no longer blocks resummoing it the next run
Bugfix: Clients no longer seem to lose HP from a broken barrier
Bugfix: Hovering over Angel's Thirst when it's equipped now shows the correct ATK within the parentheses
Bugfix: Holding up pet taming items should now display properly on clients
Additions
Command: You can now type /repet in the chat to reset the stats of your current pet
Changes
Network: A lot of skills and spells should now feel more responsive as a client with high ping
Gameplay: Giga Slime now has a minimum cooldown on the saw attack
Gameplay: Monkeys no longer become invincible and run away during long combos
Gameplay: All spells should now be able to crit (if they can't it's a bug)
Housing: You can now buy more candles from Carpenter
Misc: The Apprentice's Rod has been replaced by the 2H magic weapon Apprentice's Staff, and the Rod will become Magician's Rod, replacing Ruby Rod
Misc: The cost for refunding has been significantly reduced, and is now based on main story progress, not character level
Misc: Dying against Marino now spawns you right outside the gate
Misc: Stasis now freezes the countdown on Reaper's Blade
Misc: When a buff expires due to zoning, the player will now be notified of this
Misc: Damage done to a Barrier now has a different color, to distinguish it from shield blocking
Bug Fixes
Network: Fixed an issue where the game compensated for lag a bit too much if the connection was good
Fixed a bug where you could blink past Teddy and Freddy without fighting them
Fixed a bug where you could blink past the cutscene outside Flying Fortress
Fixed a bug causing Berserker Mode to continue stacking permanent ASPD for clients
The pet taming minigame now respects rebinds on controllers for the Attack and Shield presses
Fixed some issues with Blink going through supposedly-path-blocking NPCs
Barrier damage now counts against your Arcade Mode score, and damaging it fails 'Don't Get Hit'-challenges
Perfect blocking with Barrier no longer applies the equipped shield's special effect
A Barrier perfect block only negates the first hit - following hits can break the barrier
Gold Charge Piercing Dash no longer goes through the Inner Shrine Gate of Tai Ming
Made some changes on how server and client communicate skill charges that will hopefully fix som desync issues
Phase Shifting while charging skills no longer leave the charge effects around
The mirror puzzle in the Flying Fortress no longer needs all players to reset it, preventing locking out friends
Monkeys now break out of their ice prison if panicked while frozen
Fixed a crash that happened if a Barrier was broken twice the same frame
Fixed a bug where the server would sometimes ignore basic attacks if the client spammed the button with great fervor and intensity
Reaper's Blade no longer automatically fills up when battling against The Cursed Priestess
Fixed a bug where blink would cause the camera to 'snap' to the target location after doing the Mt Bloom Phase Shift segment
Perfect dodging poison clouds no longer crashes the game (nor does it trigger a perfect dodge)
Fixed a bug where playing with Frosty Friend for a long time would cause ever increasing performance slowdown
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
Apart from further balancing (this will be a continuous process), we're going to add 5-10 talents to each of the talent categories (so 15-30 total). When those are in the game, the utility skills, rebalancing and the new talents will be uploaded to Stable and we can get on with the next task!
This is one of those real Frontline updates! All the sounds are either placeholder or missing, and some effects aren't final etc, but the functionality should be enough for testing!
Details
The Utility Skill prototypes have arrived! There are nine of them: three defensive, three offensive and three regular ol' buffs!
The utility skills differ a bit from regular skills in two ways: first off, they have no charge levels, meaning they will cast at full power with a tap of the button. Second, they only need three skill points to reach max level. We did this to make each level a bit more worthwhile, since unlocking charge levels is no longer the main goal with leveling. Also, it makes it so it's a bit more viable to skill for full support playstyles. It makes the support skills a bit less of a "silver point dump", but we're considering other mechanics for that instead!
Our hopes with these skills are not only to allow for people to go for supporting playstyles (buffing friends, debuffing enemies, crowd control, etc) but also to add more options for tweaking play styles in single player.
Now we'd love to hear your feedback on all sorts of things! Please share both if you dislike something, or if you enjoy a skill! Is the skill satisfying to use? Is it nice visually? Is it confusing? Does it seem too weak or too powerful?
For us to be able to evaluate the feedback properly, remember to add the circumstances when you played! Such as if you played alone or with friends, where you were fighting and if you were under- or overleveled compared to the enemies!
Something to note: This patch does not include some of the Utility-related talents we've planned. These include talents that heavily reduces EP cost when casting many buffs in a row, for example, and they will primarily make it more viable to play a full support. Right now managing EP for such play styles is a bit too tough!
Patch Notes
Additions
The real Utility Spell Page has been added! (formerly known as 'Support')
Most importantly, you can now do a new emote by typing /annoyed
Changes
The Haste and Protect spells have been removed (if you've put points in them, they've been refunded)
If Marino runs through a player during the chase sequence, the player will get shoved away instead of just run through
Santa Fae now counts as a safe zone and entering it refills HP and arrows
Bug Fixes
Naniva's introduction banter with Bag is back after disappearing a few patches back
Quinton no longer keeps his quest update icon if you don't talk to him when returning with Amalet
Tai Ming's second zone's farming spot now properly counts statues as active enemies when deciding whether to add more respawns
When defeating Freddy and Teddy on the bridge, the fist one defeated no longer 'bonus twirl' when the other faints
Housing: You can no longer confuse the Carpenter to give you a couple of billion lumber and some pocket money to go with it
Housing: Entering and exiting the housing menu quickly while moving Miki's ball no longer create multiple copies of her
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
We'll see what we'll do with the Utility spells based on all of your feedback! I imagine we'll be tinkering some with effects and numbers based on what comes up during testing. Whenever the spells are ready, we'll move on to the giant balance overhaul (called "Skill Balancing" in the list below)!
The current list of non-story content:
Player Housing Done!
Support Skills (< Here we are!)
Skill Balancing
Arcade Mode Updates
Skipping quests completed in multiplayer Done!
...and other stuff!
Patch 0.710a (Housing) is out on Stable!
Patch Info
Recommended Level: anyone who's gotten past the first dungeon can build a house
Summary
This patch brings the housing stuff (and some other changes) to Stable! For Frontline players, there's nothing new to see - this is basically 0.708b.
Details
Carpenter and Kim, now bringing not-very-affordable housing for everyone!
The housing system ended up with the following features: ~150 items to decorate with, you can expand the house to be roughly four times the size of Evergrind City (if you've got a million gold or so to spare), you can save & load houses and you can adjust lighting for each room.
While the housing tools are feature locked for now, we'll of course keep adding furniture to fill up your houses with!
To get the house, talk to Carpenter and Kim in Evergrind City (they're next to the school).
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
The current list of non-story content:
Player Housing Done!
Support Skills (< here we are)
Skill Balancing
Arcade Mode Updates
Skipping quests completed in multiplayer Done!
...and other stuff!
Support skills!
Or, as we'll most likely call them... Utility Skills! We've already had a meeting at our local burger joint where we went through forum discussions and outlined what we wanted to achieve with the skills, and we also picked out 8 skills to create prototypes for.
We'll give a more thorough rundown of the skills before the next Frontline patch, but here are some key points:
* No skill should be useless in single player, meaning no ally-only spells
* The skills should be powerful enough to make an impact matching the EP investment
* The skills should not be more powerful with 4 allies than with 2 allies (or no allies)
* I'll rip this bandaid off right away: there will be no healing spells, but for the protective supports we'll experiment with a barrier spell that can block damage
* Utility skills will have 5 levels, and no charges - they are made to be cast quickly. This helps both solo players, who can incorporate utility spells easier in their gameplay, and also "full supports" who can cast the spells quickly on multiple friends
As always, nothing is set in stone and we'll see what changes and additions that are made based on feedback from you guys! Stay tuned for more detailed info on the skills!
Recommended Level: everyone who's gotten past the first dungeon
Summary
A final touch has been added to the housing system: the ability to add, delete and move doorways as you like! If things are working properly, Stable will get the housing in a couple of days.
Details
A rather vexing limitation to the house expansion system came to light when you guys started using it: the inability to add new doors (to connect more than one room to each other), and also to move a doorway to an existing room without deleting the entire room.
To address this, we've added a new tool (Doors) that allows you to add new doors, and added the functionality to select doorways and move/remove them using the hand tool!
This is the last Frontline housing update before Stable gets it, and, uh, this time we mean it!!
Patch Notes
Additions
Housing: You can now add doors to connect existing rooms
Housing: You can now delete doors and move doors around using the hand tool
Housing: Made a totally brand new wallpaper for y'all, for sale at the carpenter!
Changes
Housing: Weapon displays can now be rotated
Bug Fixes
Hopefully fixed a bug that would cause the audio to disappear randomly in Arcade Mode
The game will now properly identify if it's on the Frontline beta, even when the version is identical to Stable
Housing: The game will no longer crash when reaching the room width limit of 127
Housing: Canceling a wall decor move no longer turn the selected item invisible
Housing: It's no longer possible to 'swallow' furniture by resizing reshaped walls into them
Housing: Fixed a bug where new rooms would sometimes inherit the connected room's light settings
Housing: Fixed a bug where sometimes black boxes would appear around rooms with low light settings
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
If the new stuff doesn't break things, we'll patch Housing into Stable in a couple of days (Tuesday) and then we will really start working on the long overdue support skills (we pinky promise)!
Recommended Level: everyone who's gotten past the first dungeon
Summary
Say goodbye to your gold and hello to Quantum Lumber and the housing layout tools!
Details
HOUSING
As promised, here are the housing layout tools! Considering the relative complexity of this update, I'm expecting about one bazillion bugs, so brace yourselves!
Anyways, you can now purchase Quantum Lumber from Carpenter and use it to expand your house (by adding rooms and/or resizing your current one). You can also drag down or push up walls to make the shapes of rooms a bit more interesting.
These tools aren't 100 % polished, mostly because we don't know what people will get instantly and where we'll need to add visual feedback to make things easier to understand. We want the tools to be clear in what they do, so if you have any feedback on that front, feel free to share!
All in all, we hope this addition will enable you to create a more personal house for your characters! We won't add more house shaping tools for the foreseeable future, but we'll keep adding lots of new housing items as the game progresses, so feel free to keep suggesting those!
When the bugs have been ironed out and some polish applied to the interface, we'll send the housing update to Stable and we can finally get on with getting those support spells into the game once and for all!
Patch Notes
Additions
Housing: You can now purchase Lumber and use it to expand your house!
Housing: You can now pull down and push up walls to change the basic shape of rooms
Changes
The Housing Settings menu is no longer designed by me (hi, I'm the programmer)
Weapons that glow will now have a light effect when placed on a weapon stand
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug causing the Collector's Exam-quest to stop updating if skipping the Giga Slime cutscene
Fixed an out-of-bounds bug in the room to the left of the lobby in Temple of Seasons
Fixed a bug causing the game to crash when dragging out carpets in long rooms
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
As soon as the new housing tools have been polished up and any bugs related to them have been fixed, we'll patch the whole shebang into Stable and start working on the long overdue support skills!
Recommended Level: everyone who's gotten past the first dungeon
Summary
This update contains a bunch of minor fixes and additions to the housing system! Also, there's now a prompt allowing you to skip quests you've completed in multiplayer. This weekend (we hope) there should be a slightly bigger housing update, which is probably the last before Stable gets it all.
Details
HOUSING
We've changed the size of a few items that had very large, annoying gaps of empty space around them, and also added a few new items! Most notably the weapon displays, allowing you to place a weapon and display it in your home.
Hidden is also the ground work for a pretty extensive addition which was mentioned in yesterday's weekly recap - adding rooms and adjusting their shape! This functionality still isn't quite ready, though, so you'll have to wait for the next update to expand your house (if things go as planned and don't get too bugged out, we aim to release that patch during this weekend).
SKIPPING QUESTS
People who've played large parts of the game with friends will know that when they return to their own character, world progress such as completed quests will not carry over! Considering the game has now reached a pretty decent number of hours of content even for the main story alone, this realization might be quite annoying.
With this patch we introduce a basic version of content skipping, which specifically allows you to skip past quests that you've finished in another player's world. Whenever you receive a quest, a popup will appear asking if you want to skip it, and choosing yes will alter the world state to match. This system allows for quickly skipping through content you don't want to play again, and play through things again if you want to be more thorough in single player (like reading dialogue you skipped because of your infuriatingly impatient pals).
Since the system is tied to quests, as these are one of the few world related things that get saved with characters, an additional quest has been added for when the player reaches the Evergrind Arena for the first time. On old saves, this quest will be added automatically.
Patch Notes
Hotfix June 13
Fixed a bug that could delete or duplicate items if the game was exited immediately after placing or retrieving a weapon from a display
Additions
Added a system that lets you skip quests you have already completed as a client in multiplayer
Housing: Added a new craftable item for the house (ancient statue)
Housing: Added a few new housing items available in the carpenter shop (wallpaper, weapon displays, toy train)
Housing: Chairs can now be rotated in all four directions
Housing: The basic bookshelves can now be rotated
Housing: The large statue of a woman now has a skin where it's clean from moss
Changes
Patched an attack speed exploit involving switching weapon to cancel a charge animation ;(
The gold drop progression of enemies has been altered to give better rewards to endgame enemies compared to midgame enemies
Housing: Modified the following items to better fit the space they take up: Beer Keg, Flower Crate and Bush of Seasons
Housing: The Hand Tool now has a light attached to it so you can move stuff around more easily in a dark house
Bug Fixes
The player house will no longer get razed for the festival!
Housing: The Temple of Season floor's grass border is no longer rendered above carpets
Housing: Furniture is no longer rendered above the borders of the room
Housing: The long white table is now the same size as the other colors
Housing: Rotating a short black table no longer turns it brown
Housing: Fixed a bug that was giving people a new giga slime chair each time they started the game
Housing: The Carpenter no longer sells two of the same candelabra
Housing: Fixed a bug that crashed the game if placing a table in a corner, moving it, rotating it, and then canceling
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
This weekend (we hope), we'll release the system for expanding the house. If it's well received and works as it should, we'll patch housing into Stable and start working on the long overdue support skills!
Recommended Level: everyone who's gotten past the first dungeon
Summary
The feature everyone's been waiting for since day one has arrived (in a somewhat limited form): Player Housing! Also a potentially very significant bug fix.
Details
HOUSING
Alright, so here it is! The beta of the housing system! It's quite a big addition so I'm expecting there to be some bugs lurking around.
To get the house, talk to Carpenter and Kim in Evergrind City (they're next to the school).
What you can do right now is furnish the house with the ~150 items that are available right now, you can resize the room, you can save & load houses and you can adjust lighting.
What's there is just some polish and more content away from being what we would consider an acceptable housing system. In other words, where we go from here is kind of up to you guys! We did have plans to let players design much larger houses, with multiple rooms, or have some different layouts players can pick from, but then we felt we might be overscoping a bit too much on a feature that might already be at the point players expect.
Do you feel this version gives you sufficient freedom to goof around, or do you want to be able to furnish multi-room houses (as promised by Kim)?
POSSIBLE MAJOR BUGFIX
Alright, so this is a bug that's been eluding us for quite some while now... we've seen it before on computers our school lent us when going to a few events in Sweden, but could never replicate it ourselves. Then, a few weeks ago, Fred's computer broke down and we had to get him another one. Lo and behold, there it was!
By the look of things, there's a bug in XNA (or a bug on some computers, if you will), that makes XNA misinterpret the time. Basically, XNA believes time is running about 15 % slower than reality. Now 15 % slower is a lot and this has probably affected the feel of the game for a bunch of people. How many we can't tell.
By using some diagnostic classes that most certainly do have a firm grasp of time, I've made an alternate FPS-counter for the game, and the bug can be identified by the game itself by comparing that FPS counter with XNA's, and if they diverge, the game switches to counting time via my system (which itself is rather unproven, and so is only used on problem computers).
It will be quite interesting to see if anyone on the forums notice a difference! It will be quite huge, if so.
This bug might also explain some of the more aggressive lag complaints: if one player is running the game at 85 % speed, then it's a tough task for the other clients to sync correctly with that player.
Patch Notes
Hotfix June 1, 2017
The game is now saved when a house is saved
Shroomies once again dies when you kill them
When using a controller, carpets are now placed with A instead of X
Carpets can no longer be expanded onto other carpets, causing them to disappear into the void
The carpenter no longer upsets the space-time-continuum by existing on two places at once
Fixed a bug where you could rotate a bonsai tree in certain positions to break its hitbox and then crash the game
Although she deserves vengeance, Miki's ghost no longer crashes the game if the ball is placed right after getting your house
Additions
The carpenter has arrived in Evergrind and will now sell you a piece of land with your own house!
Player replies to NPC questions can now be translated
Bug Fixes
Added a potential fix to a bug that might've caused severe slowdown on an unknown number of machines
The protective cubes of the Winter Wizards can now damage the players multiple times
Jumpkins and Shroomies now lose their target on loss of sight, and shouldn't teleport through walls
Jumpkins and Shroomies now get pacified for a moment when hit by attacks
The Second Wind talent should now work properly for clients in multiplayer
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
Depending on what your feedback is, we'll either wrap up the housing system and ship it to Stable and continue down the list of non-story content, or we'll spend the next couple of weeks expanding the housing to allow for building your own housing layout (or choosing between presets).
The current list of non-story content:
Player Housing (< here we are)
Support Skills
Skill Balancing
Arcade Mode Updates
Skipping quests completed in multiplayer
...and other stuff!
Patch 0.700a is out on Stable and Frontline!
Patch Info
Summary
The stable is finally updated! Tai Ming is now available in all its supposed splendor, together with a bunch of quality-of-life changes for stable users, like updated world map and damage numbers.
Details
For Frontline users, the only things that have changed are an added shield built from Thorn Worm parts, as well as Kinton's arm being healed and Sizou being a bit more vague on the subject of how long Zhamla has been gone.
Frontline users might notice that their version now also says Stable, and that's because they are currently one and the same! When new Frontline content comes out, the version will be called Frontline again.
As for DRM free Humble Builds, these will come in about a week! The reason for this is that there is no automatic updates or even update notification system on Humble, meaning if there's some major bug that slipped through, or is caused by getting all the major changes all at once, the game would have to be redownload and reinstalled. Thus, we like to treat the DRM-free version as an "extra Stable" build to save everybody potential extra headaches.
Also, for those of you who have bought the OST, it has now been updated with all the new tracks found in Tai Ming! (Though at the time of writing this it's stubbornly refusing to download for me inside Steam)
Patch Notes
For Frontline users, it's just the above changes!
For Stable users, it's the combined content of several patches, and the best way to get it all listed is to go into the game, view the patch notes and press TAB to aggregate them into one giant set of patch notes. There might be some spoilery stuff in there, though!
What's next?
It's been a long time now since we've put our full focus on anything but the story. Me and Vilya had a short stint of it while waiting for Fred's boss animations, and this resulted in the updated World Map and the various new gameplay options (damage numbers, hp bars, etc).
This moment after Tai Ming is a good place for us to do more base game additions and balance changes. At this stage, players have finally unlocked the gold charges on their skills, and there is only one regular dungeon/temple left, so if we want to get proper testing done on the changes we make, we can't wait any longer!
Also, since core- and mechanics changes are usually most intensive on code, and least intensive on animations, it's a great opportunity for Fred to get a head start with the next set of enemies! He's already started working on the foes you'll meet in the next area.
A while ago we toyed with the idea of having the community vote for what features we should focus on before continuing on with the story. However, when we listed all the things we wanted to do, we realized we had such a large web of feature dependency that there wasn't as much room for change as we had hoped. The plan as of now is to implement these things before moving on with more story again:
Player Housing, Support Skills, Major Rebalancing of Combat Skills, Potion Rework, Arcade Mode Revamp, Quest Skipping After Multiplayer Completion, and Some Quests, Secrets and Treasure Maps
These things combined will likely take so long that when they are in the game, both we and you probably want us to get on with the story!
Oh, and we'll also poke a bit at the process of potentially porting the game to OSX and Linux with FNA, both for the obvious cross platform benefits, and also to combat a certain set of bugs within XNA and .NET that's causing trouble for some players.
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
Recommended Level: 21-23 for the intended experience
Summary
Praise be, the sounds have arrived! This update is mostly to find any new bugs before the Stable update hits this weekend, but also adds a couple of crafting items and some new items for the shops!
Details
Fark, our sound guy, has finally slogged through the last Tai Ming batch and thus the zone is basically complete! This Frontline update is just an extra net to catch stray bugs that might've slipped through. Also, one quite rare crash bug in particular has gotten some extra diagnostics.
Apart from the sounds, two new weapons can be crafted, and a new shield will be added as the update comes to Stable this weekend! Also, the Tai Ming shops have gotten a few new items.
If you want to replay the patch, you can reset the entire zones or parts of it by using the following commands (contains spoilers, so don't read until you've finished the patch):
/taiming3reset - Resets the entire last area and puts you back in zone2
/zhamlareset - Resets the battle against Zhamla
/mimicreset - Resets the battle against the Mimics
Patch Notes
Additions
The whole of Tai Ming now has its sound effects!
Added a couple of craftable weapons made of Tai Ming ingredients
Added some new items to shops in Tai Ming
Changes
Thrown Thorn-Worms now land with a bang instead of just meekly going into their digging action
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that could soft-lock clients in the first zone of Tai Ming if teleporting away before completing it
Fixed a bug that could make clients jump too far into the future and disappear during the mimic battle
If getting a card with the Angel's Thirst equipped, the new card's ATK bonus is now added properly
Other players now move correctly on clients when bouncing around during Phase Shifting
Not-yet-living enemies should no longer display their HP-bar even with the setting Always On
Enemy HP Bars appear and disappear with a bit more grace with the Always On setting now
More Insight
If you want to follow the progress and get a glimpse of the wonderful hell/heaven hybrid that is game development, you can check out our DevBlog! Be warned that it contains spoilers, though!
What's next?
This weekend, the Stable branch should get the entire Tai Ming arc in one big, fat blob. Until then we'll squash any new bugs that get reported, and continue the preparations for the non-story content that lies up ahead!
Examples of non-story content:
Player Housing
Arcade Mode Updates
Support Skills
Skill Balancing
...and other stuff!
We'll provide more info on what's going to come after Tai Ming when the Stable has been updated!
