Worlds of Chaos: Invasion
New Update! Abilities descriptions fixed, random encounters are back, etc.
- Abilities (previously named "Spells") have their description texts updated to be more descriptive, precise and I corrected the inaccuracies and missing parts.
- Random encounters, that I've decided to remove because they were very buggy, have been put back, corrected and improved a lot. These will make the game a bit less difficult and you will be able to grind if you ever fall behind on levels or money. Random encounters pay less than normal ones, though.
- I've put back xp adjustment for difficulty of encounters because of the previous point. When you fight very hard enemies, xp will be increased and decreased if encounters are below your party level.
- A cavern at the end of the game was covered with grass, and has been corrected.
- I realized that the game cannot be described as an "Action" tactical RPG. I thought that being real-time and that the speed of the game made it eligible to the title, and when I checked the definition, it seemed that my game fitted in. But I checked back and it doesn't, because you don't have direct control of characters. I'll change the trailer, the store page and everything that has the description "Action" RPG and correct that.
I'm beginning to work on the next game these days, while also improving Invasion. I've created the base program structure and I'm really happy with what I've come up with. It will be incredibly easier than this game, I'm dropping everything that didn't work well in "Invasion" and that is too complex, and use Unity at it's best. I've learned a ton while working on this game, and I realized that I tend to make things too complicated, and it creates huge structures that are really hard to work with and slows development down considerably, and it constrains me more that it helps if I just used Unity at it's best. Unity is really good, seriously.
Small update
- Improve the interface displaying party characters at the start of the game and in party creation. Cleaner, better looking, more complete.
- Lightning Strike now more powerful and stuns enemies.
- More intense lighting when outside.
- Changed the name from "Spells" to "Abilities" in the whole game. Makes more sense for special attacks and things like that.
- Some other minor improvements.
New update
- Dead party members gain XP for combats even if they are dead. Changed this because you could lose a lot of xp if you played at high difficulty levels, where losing party members in combat is frequent, which means lower levels at the end of the game, making it even harder.
- Solved the bug where terrain textures here scaled wrong when the player exits caves.
- Interior maps are less dark.
- You can now choose the combat rank (front, middle, rear) of your characters in party creation.
- Repaired the bug with skill "Powerful shots" where it was extremely powerful...
- The bug that a player reported in the previous update (black screen) has been checked and the problem is a rare conflict between unity, steam and the devices configuration specific to his computer.
- Some other small things.
- New website, new trailer, new screenshots...
Almost Final Update
- Much improved dungeon styles, and created much better particle effects for traps. What was there before was mostly placeholder, now it's the real thing.
- Improved the interface style.
- Spell's EP costs and reset timer for hits and shots are now adjusted by weapon attack time. Hitting with a dagger costs 3 EP less but 2 more with a battleaxe. Same adjustments for timers.
- Hit, shot and projectile spells now reset the timer for every other spells of these types. This prevent spamming the enemy with attacks, which can be overpowered... and a brainless way to win fights. Don't want of that in my game.
- Reduced the strengths of all armors, which raise all damages in the game. Makes warriors in general less powerful and balanced.
- Adjusted the lighting level for outside maps (was too dark).
- You can now decide the rank of your characters in combat (front, middle, rear) instead of the game putting them automatically according to it's stats and equiped weapon.
- The spell targeting circle will now change it's color to grey when out of sight of the caster, so it's way easier to see where you can target AOE spells like fireball. It will also show an X for spells where you need to choose a target which is out of sight.
- A sound effect will clearly indicate when you are making something that doesn't work, like using a spell without the necessary EP or targeting a character out of sight with a spell.
- Closing tutorial and dialog windows don't make each characters in the fight chose a new target anymore.
- Solved the problems that appeared when you changed the name of your savegame.
- Removed multihit and multishot spells. These were buggy at first, but when I solved the bugs, I realized they were seriously overpowered and they unbalanced the game.
- Reduced silver received after combat a little bit from previous update. The silver ratio is *really* hard to get right, it changed during the whole development and it's a real puzzle to get just right. And most changes I make to the game world or system can result in debalancing what was ok before.
- Some new hair styles for party characters.
- A lot of other minor things and bugs solved.
For those who would be curious to know, I'm looking to have the game published for the launch by a publisher. I'm not good at marketing, and I really don't like to do it too, and publishers do this part and other parts that I lack on my own. My first choice is Paradox Interactive, I really like their business philosophy and think they would be very good partners. The more I know of them, the more I like them. They also have a large following of players who play niche, complex games. Really hope they will publish it, but if they don't, I'll just look for other publishers, there are a lot of them. This game is finished and there is almost zero risk for them, so it shouldn't be too hard.
New Update!
In this update, I've corrected some problems that were there with the new spell system. I've made a lot of testing and tested most spells thoroughly.
I've remade the last part of the game to remove unnecessary/less fun parts, and concentrated the fun and special parts. I've changed the XP curve to reduce the levels of characters a bit at the end of the game.
I've remade the environments textures and now everything outside looks and feels better than before.
And a lot of random small things.
I'm very happy with these recent changes and I want to finish the game as fast as I can. The game is as good as I want it to be. I just need to be sure that everything works correctly, and maybe make some little changes/improvements.
Update with HP bars on characters and target arrows
- In combat, you can now see HP bars (which also show injuries) over the head of characters and enemies, but only when you press Alt. I've tried letting these bars all the time but it was annoying and getting in the way of mostly all other combat information. These bars also appear and stay over the head of party characters that have 3 injuries or under 60% HP, so it's easy to see when you need to heal them.
- There is also an arrow that shows you which is the target of every character/enemy. These are hidden at all time but shown in these cases : when a character/enemy chooses a new target (by player intervention or by AI), it shows his arrow for half a second. When you point your cursor on a character/enemy, it shows the arrow to his target.
- Floating texts (ex: damage numbers) are now scaled for distance (instead of always the same size).
- When pointing an enemy, a small window opens to show it's name, power, HP bar with hp / max hp, and injuries. This replaces simple text showing these same info.
- Repaired bugs that were from the previous update, one of which came from a new armor special power. Made the game freeze at the start of combats. Another one was making instant kills of enemies, with very loud death cries.
A small video demonstrating the changes in this update :
https://youtu.be/aAYlS7g__ok
New Update
I've taken some much needed vacations this summer and I'm back to working on the game. In this new update, here's what I've done :
- 15 new weapon and armor special/magical powers.
- The icon of all weapons, armors and rings now have a small number indicating its level, or shows the number of items in each stack of that item (like potions). This makes it a lot easier to browse a merchant's inventory or yours.
- A button to reorganize the inventory. This regroups items and potions in stacks at the top of inventory, and then place equipment in order of value. It also automatically organize inventory for merchants and loot, which makes them way cleaner.
- Repaired the bug where after playing the tutorial and party creation, the game restarted when you started a new game.
- Repaired the bugs with resizing the main game interface (character portraits with spells and weapons).
- After combats, the game take a bit more time to show achievements and solved quests, not to overwhelm the player with too much info at the same time.
- Improved the tutorial with some new instructions that, I found out, were lacking.
- Stats in characters stats window show a more precise value, with adjustments for many spells that weren't there before.
- Repaired the bug where special powers on ranged weapons did not work (inflict weakness or other magic effects).
- Weapons stats shown in the small window are more detailed.
These days I focus a lot on improving the gameplay and user experience, and improving simplicity of use. In my list of things to do are health bars over the head of characters (and enemies but only shown when you point them with the cursor). Also, when giving an order to character(s), it will show for a very short time a curved line (like pathfinder kingmaker) to the enemy(s) targeted by all selected characters. When you point the cursor to a character or enemy it will show this target line.
If you would like to see something improved in the game, now is a perfect moment to ask :)
Finished!
Here is what has been improved in this update :
- A lot of spell bugs were corrected, and spell and effects were balanced. Some spells were removed because they were too complicated to balance, and didn't add anything really good to the game (all spells affecting luck). I must admit, the spell update made a mess of the game and I published the update too fast with not enough testing. I generally take more time to correct almost everything before publishing but this time I didn't. Lesson learned.
- Divided spells into tiers. The more you advance in the game, the more you have access to new spells. Most of the new recent spells were not appropriate for the beginning of the game. The higher tier spells are not more powerful, they are more complex in their use and meant to complement the spells from lower tiers.
- I reduced the spell learning cost a lot, so players can try more spells.
- Reduced the effect of healing spells, and reduced the injury healing from each HP healed. This makes the game more difficult and force players to think more about defense, offense and good tactics and less just reacting by healing as the melee fighters get hurt. Injuries will stay a lot more and you don't want your characters to get hurt.
- Changed the XP needed for leveling. Higher levels rise faster.
- When you point a party character or enemy with the cursor, it shows a small window with every effect on it with power and time remaining. This was already in the previous update but I forgot to write about it.
- Improved the lighting, ambiance and look of interior environments.
- Some quest and script bugs corrected.
What I'm doing next :
- New attack and area of effect damage spells, especially for melee characters with more spectacular particle effects.
- More special, magical characteristics for weapons and armors, with some specific for some kind of equipments (ex: mage robes with effects that help mages).
- Improve environments. Place more details and make each place more unique.
- Continue debugging, obviously.
I might work on other things, but for the moment this is what I have in mind.
Bug repairs and mostly finished the base game.
The few very recent updates are solving problems that appeared with the new spells update (spells that didn't work correctly, particles that didn't show, etc.) and bugs that came from a conflict with the tutorial when creating a new party and starting a new game.
It also solve a bug that I seriously don't understand how the H*** it got there and it ruins the game if you played since the last big update. When you got in the first village after the first map traveling in the wild, instead of entering the village, you were sent into a cavern at the end of the game. I've placed a shortcut to send you back to the start of the game if it happened to you (alt-shift-r). Very sorry for that.
Also, I've completed the game, what remains is testing the last 6 hours and making the last fight better/more unique. I will not call it complete until this is done. And thoroughly testing all new spells for balance. This part of the game is playable right now, it's just not tested yet.
Also, for the moment there are two spells that don't work : Multihit and Multishot. The new spell system is incompatible with the way these spells worked before, and these two are quite tricky. I'm working on correcting this right now.
38 new Spells, with 21 new Effects in Update
Warrior :
Battlecry, Break Armor, Dispel Burst, Guard, Provoking Shout, Raidant Aura.
Fighter :
Battle Vigor, Defensive Stance, Draining Aura, Draining Hits, Ignore Pain, Offensive Stance, Rage.
Rogue :
Assassinate, Black Curse, Bleeding Strike, Charm, Confusion Powder, Deadly Aim, Luck, Run, Smoke Cloud, Sneak.
Archer :
Alertness, Bleeding Shot, Breaking Shot, Slow.
White Mage :
Dispel, Energize Group, Group Power, Mass Dispel, Resist Magic, Summon Guardian, Toughen Group.
Black Mage :
Confuse, Curse, Mass Confusion, Pain.
These new spells are quite good to adapt to specific situations. They are mostly complementary to those that already exist in the game, and offer a lot more choices to broaden the party's abilities.
A thing I changed with the way spells work is making it more... universal, unified. Spells now work all in one simpler, cleaner system. To create a new spell effect, I just need something like 3 to 6 lines of code, and create one particle effect with my new particles editor that I love.
I also made a new system for particles that let me create new particle styles for spell effects inside my editor, it works really fast, is extremely easy to use and the effects it makes look a lot better too. I also made an editor to create spells inside my editor instead of directly programming them, which is awesome for me. You won't see any difference, but with it I can improvise spells specific to enemies in very little time, so enemies will now have more spells that fit their individual styles.
What I will work on next is just finishing the game scenario/world. I think that I've unconsciously put making the end on hold because I'm such a perfectionist, I don't want the end to be just average. I've redone most of the map for the last 6 hours because I wasn't satisfied, it was not on par with the rest of the game world. Now I just need to make about 6 maps (about 4 hours of gameplay) to finish.
I need to say, I have a tendency to change plans and to try to improve everything I made previously... and it has been a bad thing for this project. It took too much time because of that. The thing is, I want to change this tendency, so I pledge to focus on finishing the game.... and debugging the current problems. That's it, I've pledged it, now I need to just finish the damn game. After it's finished, I'll continue to improve it, but it will be a good thing rather than a problem.