The webpage version is outdated and pending of a nearby big release, the ones i posted are the most recent builds which work quite well.
I´m raising frost range a bit since i think its too short at the moment, and speedy enemies cancel your tactic, but I´ll raise the mana cost to balance. The current enemies are easy as well, expect archers and mages next act that you can´t kite and pelt around. The frost tactics won´t be viable anymore.
As for wands/staffs/all items, they will all be replaced by randomly generated ones so it will be up to luck what stats and magics they come with.
I want the mod to be fun and challenging, not punishing; so while i like facing monster hordes other players do not. Finding that balance is hard; less enemies to kill equal less loot as well.
The engine can´t handle the difficulties as you propose, the only thing I can do is to create an npc to trigger a hard mode, that would consist of a trigger to activate extra layers of enemies. It´s the only possible workaround and adds a lot more work for me, so I´m not too convinced on it.
You can keep posting here, i check both threads almost daily.
I´ll move that switch to a safe spot, that was totally unexpected to me...
They show up as green dots, see pic below. New quest maker included as well, maybe they are too big?
I need to find a way to flesh the fetishes a bit more but from a different angle, the icon is so small that fine details are lost. Maybe a monster encyclopedia or bigger descriptions?
I´m playing as mage now, initial mana spending is too big and regeneration too low, I made a starter item with free lv1 magic bolt, but jumping to a real weapon makes you mana dry too fast.
I think rising the base mana regeneration should help, also adding one more skill point per lv-up and coding the first pasives which are ways to specialize the character into a path.
As for spells i think increasing the range of freeze lv1 and lv2 which is too short; i love freeze lv5 by the way, but i dont know if i should make all the hail frontal or leave as circular.
Edit: my god, magician is a never ending money sink, unlike with warrior or archer I was always hurting for money for mana potions. It got better once I got some equipment with mana recovery and the mana steal effect from Mana bolt lv3, but even so equipment is lacking compared to the others. After grinding some levels i was steamrolling, but that broke the initial pace very badly, at first i could barely kill anything without running out of mana FAST.
I think I´ll add mana steal at Magic bolt lv2; Adding some kind of magician low strengh shield and releasing the book for lower levels would help as well.
Let´s see, the chuch stairs lead to the final boss of the act, they will open later, most likely you teleported over and nothing happened since none of the triggers are yet activated; at this game point teleport is impossible skill or item wise unless you cheat/talk to Modder.
There is a message and sound when you kill the unique monster and it vanishes from the mission log, I might add actual items for them someday but at the moment it´s not worth it, there are far more pressing things to add than tail or eyes items. As for the quest giver location, there´s only a handful of quest givers in town, I´m working on a quest sign for them, have you clicked on the mini-map to zoom/un-zoom? that should help traveling the city.
The iron mines are a newbie sidequest after the cellar (your version is way harder than the next planned) and the 2 unique monsters in there have their quest rewards, plus Greywold thanks. The boss loot (shamans) is tricky and dependant on luck; they have from 6 to 12 rolls for loot when killed, with increased chance for the "Blood priest" set (new armor model pending), sometimes i got 3 items for the set + money and items, others I got nothing... The RNG gods are random.
Fixed the tribe names, thanks for the catch. Dialogues are already corrected as well.
I don´t want to put pre-requisites on the fetishes, so a magician can have a boar tank and a warrior a stun-capable ranged slime to compliment their styles. As for the fetishes icons, since I´ll give the treatment of pets to most game monsters i decided to loosely order them into these categories (I´ll die if i have to make one for each):
Bear fetish -> Frontline Attackers, high damage, good health (wolf)
Cat fetish -> Agile attackers, high evasion and good damage, low health (rat,bat)
Owl fetish -> Ranged/magical attackers (slime)
Turtle fetish-> Tanks, high health, average damage (boar)
I´ll need to explain that somewhere, they are not be sold in this act yet, I was reserving that for a pokemon mock next act, Pouchmon! the pouch monsters!. You are supposed to only find them as drops in this act.
Thanks for all your feedback and words; what level and character build did you end the act with?
Sadly, there is no way to decide difficulty, the engine has many limitations, like every enemy is handcrafted, levels and stats, instead of being created from a table. Same for items...
I have lessened the difficulty of Chuch Cellar and many others maps, it should be more manageable now. I´ll also add a lv0 trash weapon for ranger and magicians, so they can switch faster to it.
As for spells, they improve greatly with each point invested; the magic bolt will get longer reach, damage, armor penetration and lastly multiple enemies piercing. Same for the others spells/skills.
Axe rune may seem overpowered to you, but it´s just a fixed damage, those are good starters but get old pretty fast when you lv-up. You discovered a nice combo with bolt and frost, I´m wondering if putting a few books explaining skills/spells future specs.
Yeah, only the first 3 skills/spells work, the others are hidden unless you decide to take a peek at the future with the Modder. Home portal is a spell to teleport to a future homebase, its the "World map" spell you should be using for fast travel in the world.
Thanks for the support :) next update will be big.
Well, I´m kind of doing that already with classes and professions, pick one and you get shut down of all the others skills, magician weapons and runes being the exception. I dont think it´s a good idea to be so restrictive, I´m even planning to allow learning all except for last profesion skills inside the same class, like players can get all skills up to tier 3 but not all the utimate tier 4 inside the warrior class. But for that you need to have a base, upgrade it and find a trainer that will suck you dry of money. This is hard to explain like this... see the magician skills? they are nicely bundled per each profession.
Thanks for pointing those errors, they totally slip by me, i´ll fix them.
What class did you use? i have the ranger and mage very under-tested.
Let me answer, if by artifacts you mean necklaces, so far there is only 4; you get to choose from 3 at the end of the goblin missions and the last one is awarded if you manage to kill the "Forgotten hero" zombie, spawned by touching the tombstone near the pond in Green forest. I´m taking a drop by drop approach with skills and items, it builds ups nicely, but I hope people dont get turned off by it.
Death penalty of 30% may be too harsh given the slow level ups, I have to decide if leaving the xp tables as if, or switch to easier lv-ups, which are more fun, but make the zones way too level dependent and less "free roaming" friendly. So far lv 7-8 is the most common at act end.
I´ll add a re-spec as a temporary measure, I wanted to do it later as a base upgrade, but its been very requested.
As for powers, so far only the first row is working with a few exceptions (earthquake, fireball, warcry); players are not supposed to see them this early ingame ;) Its very hard to balance them, and most are not coded yet, they are in a WIP state along with the pasives. It´s more of a declaration of intentions. The thing is you unlocked them all with the Modder, normally you only see the 3 from the class you choose.
As for items, I finally got an item generator, so now I can finally add them by the hundreds instead of creating each one by hand, variety will explode. More rings slots just means weaker rings to keep the balance... right now they are also pretty unbalanced. More gold drops is easy, but there is the problem that vendors can´t sell randomized items, I´ll look into creating some kind of item-slot machine as a money sink. Simpler? I dont undertand that; normal qualities have no bonus, magic got 2 bonus, rare 3 bonus and unique 5 bonus.
Text, I´m using a web corrector now for all dialogues and getting to remember the rules of this barbarian language ;)
So far the next iteration has lowered lvs exp, de-populated and rebalanced enemies, created safe buffer zones in maps, erased "welcome parties" when entering new maps, corrected ortography and replaced naming convention to avoid linux bugs. As for planned, re-specing potion or similar, quest indicators, adding generator created items, rebalance all items, useful pasives skills.
I don´t want to start a second act until I iron all bugs and manage to get the Diablo feel.
SKYZ0R testing your new models in Flare is easier than you expect, just replace an existing one with your own!; but you need to have something in account, the male and female versions have different animations which mean you need an unique render for both.
The easiest way to go its to download one of the existing weapon/armor models, replace with your own and parent to existing bones. Also check before if the script is to date.
I tried your sword, but its not working well, the sword hilt is touching the elbow instead of being hand paralel making the swing down weird, the upper and right directions are badly aligned, the sword go backwards.
Im uploading a male/female sample of one of the new weapons i added, another simpler way to do it would be to join both weapon models (control+J), align the new one perfectly with old, and erase old. Its the one i use the most, its easier, less error prone and bone free.
Anyways, pretty decent first try, mine was a real disaster :) and your collection is pretty awesome.
The webpage version is outdated and pending of a nearby big release, the ones i posted are the most recent builds which work quite well.
I´m raising frost range a bit since i think its too short at the moment, and speedy enemies cancel your tactic, but I´ll raise the mana cost to balance. The current enemies are easy as well, expect archers and mages next act that you can´t kite and pelt around. The frost tactics won´t be viable anymore.
As for wands/staffs/all items, they will all be replaced by randomly generated ones so it will be up to luck what stats and magics they come with.
I want the mod to be fun and challenging, not punishing; so while i like facing monster hordes other players do not. Finding that balance is hard; less enemies to kill equal less loot as well.
The engine can´t handle the difficulties as you propose, the only thing I can do is to create an npc to trigger a hard mode, that would consist of a trigger to activate extra layers of enemies. It´s the only possible workaround and adds a lot more work for me, so I´m not too convinced on it.
You can keep posting here, i check both threads almost daily.
Can you give a sample of what you want? I can´t help since pixel art is not my field but others will find it useful.
I´ll move that switch to a safe spot, that was totally unexpected to me...
They show up as green dots, see pic below. New quest maker included as well, maybe they are too big?
I need to find a way to flesh the fetishes a bit more but from a different angle, the icon is so small that fine details are lost. Maybe a monster encyclopedia or bigger descriptions?
I´m playing as mage now, initial mana spending is too big and regeneration too low, I made a starter item with free lv1 magic bolt, but jumping to a real weapon makes you mana dry too fast.
I think rising the base mana regeneration should help, also adding one more skill point per lv-up and coding the first pasives which are ways to specialize the character into a path.
As for spells i think increasing the range of freeze lv1 and lv2 which is too short; i love freeze lv5 by the way, but i dont know if i should make all the hail frontal or leave as circular.
Edit: my god, magician is a never ending money sink, unlike with warrior or archer I was always hurting for money for mana potions. It got better once I got some equipment with mana recovery and the mana steal effect from Mana bolt lv3, but even so equipment is lacking compared to the others. After grinding some levels i was steamrolling, but that broke the initial pace very badly, at first i could barely kill anything without running out of mana FAST.
I think I´ll add mana steal at Magic bolt lv2; Adding some kind of magician low strengh shield and releasing the book for lower levels would help as well.
Let´s see, the chuch stairs lead to the final boss of the act, they will open later, most likely you teleported over and nothing happened since none of the triggers are yet activated; at this game point teleport is impossible skill or item wise unless you cheat/talk to Modder.
There is a message and sound when you kill the unique monster and it vanishes from the mission log, I might add actual items for them someday but at the moment it´s not worth it, there are far more pressing things to add than tail or eyes items. As for the quest giver location, there´s only a handful of quest givers in town, I´m working on a quest sign for them, have you clicked on the mini-map to zoom/un-zoom? that should help traveling the city.
The iron mines are a newbie sidequest after the cellar (your version is way harder than the next planned) and the 2 unique monsters in there have their quest rewards, plus Greywold thanks. The boss loot (shamans) is tricky and dependant on luck; they have from 6 to 12 rolls for loot when killed, with increased chance for the "Blood priest" set (new armor model pending), sometimes i got 3 items for the set + money and items, others I got nothing... The RNG gods are random.
Fixed the tribe names, thanks for the catch. Dialogues are already corrected as well.
I don´t want to put pre-requisites on the fetishes, so a magician can have a boar tank and a warrior a stun-capable ranged slime to compliment their styles. As for the fetishes icons, since I´ll give the treatment of pets to most game monsters i decided to loosely order them into these categories (I´ll die if i have to make one for each):
Bear fetish -> Frontline Attackers, high damage, good health (wolf)
Cat fetish -> Agile attackers, high evasion and good damage, low health (rat,bat)
Owl fetish -> Ranged/magical attackers (slime)
Turtle fetish-> Tanks, high health, average damage (boar)
I´ll need to explain that somewhere, they are not be sold in this act yet, I was reserving that for a pokemon mock next act, Pouchmon! the pouch monsters!. You are supposed to only find them as drops in this act.
Thanks for all your feedback and words; what level and character build did you end the act with?
Sadly, there is no way to decide difficulty, the engine has many limitations, like every enemy is handcrafted, levels and stats, instead of being created from a table. Same for items...
I have lessened the difficulty of Chuch Cellar and many others maps, it should be more manageable now. I´ll also add a lv0 trash weapon for ranger and magicians, so they can switch faster to it.
As for spells, they improve greatly with each point invested; the magic bolt will get longer reach, damage, armor penetration and lastly multiple enemies piercing. Same for the others spells/skills.
Axe rune may seem overpowered to you, but it´s just a fixed damage, those are good starters but get old pretty fast when you lv-up. You discovered a nice combo with bolt and frost, I´m wondering if putting a few books explaining skills/spells future specs.
Yeah, only the first 3 skills/spells work, the others are hidden unless you decide to take a peek at the future with the Modder. Home portal is a spell to teleport to a future homebase, its the "World map" spell you should be using for fast travel in the world.
Thanks for the support :) next update will be big.
Well, I´m kind of doing that already with classes and professions, pick one and you get shut down of all the others skills, magician weapons and runes being the exception. I dont think it´s a good idea to be so restrictive, I´m even planning to allow learning all except for last profesion skills inside the same class, like players can get all skills up to tier 3 but not all the utimate tier 4 inside the warrior class. But for that you need to have a base, upgrade it and find a trainer that will suck you dry of money. This is hard to explain like this... see the magician skills? they are nicely bundled per each profession.
Thanks for pointing those errors, they totally slip by me, i´ll fix them.
What class did you use? i have the ranger and mage very under-tested.
Hi TheDog, thanks for your opinions.
Let me answer, if by artifacts you mean necklaces, so far there is only 4; you get to choose from 3 at the end of the goblin missions and the last one is awarded if you manage to kill the "Forgotten hero" zombie, spawned by touching the tombstone near the pond in Green forest. I´m taking a drop by drop approach with skills and items, it builds ups nicely, but I hope people dont get turned off by it.
Death penalty of 30% may be too harsh given the slow level ups, I have to decide if leaving the xp tables as if, or switch to easier lv-ups, which are more fun, but make the zones way too level dependent and less "free roaming" friendly. So far lv 7-8 is the most common at act end.
I´ll add a re-spec as a temporary measure, I wanted to do it later as a base upgrade, but its been very requested.
As for powers, so far only the first row is working with a few exceptions (earthquake, fireball, warcry); players are not supposed to see them this early ingame ;) Its very hard to balance them, and most are not coded yet, they are in a WIP state along with the pasives. It´s more of a declaration of intentions. The thing is you unlocked them all with the Modder, normally you only see the 3 from the class you choose.
As for items, I finally got an item generator, so now I can finally add them by the hundreds instead of creating each one by hand, variety will explode. More rings slots just means weaker rings to keep the balance... right now they are also pretty unbalanced. More gold drops is easy, but there is the problem that vendors can´t sell randomized items, I´ll look into creating some kind of item-slot machine as a money sink. Simpler? I dont undertand that; normal qualities have no bonus, magic got 2 bonus, rare 3 bonus and unique 5 bonus.
Text, I´m using a web corrector now for all dialogues and getting to remember the rules of this barbarian language ;)
So far the next iteration has lowered lvs exp, de-populated and rebalanced enemies, created safe buffer zones in maps, erased "welcome parties" when entering new maps, corrected ortography and replaced naming convention to avoid linux bugs. As for planned, re-specing potion or similar, quest indicators, adding generator created items, rebalance all items, useful pasives skills.
I don´t want to start a second act until I iron all bugs and manage to get the Diablo feel.
m7600 if my memory is correct, werent you making a swamp tileset?
Looks nice, Rubberduck did quite a few before moving to high quality:
https://opengameart.org/users/rubberduck
SKYZ0R testing your new models in Flare is easier than you expect, just replace an existing one with your own!; but you need to have something in account, the male and female versions have different animations which mean you need an unique render for both.
The easiest way to go its to download one of the existing weapon/armor models, replace with your own and parent to existing bones. Also check before if the script is to date.
https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/tree/master/art_src/characters/hero
https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/tree/master/art_src/characters/h...
I tried your sword, but its not working well, the sword hilt is touching the elbow instead of being hand paralel making the swing down weird, the upper and right directions are badly aligned, the sword go backwards.
Im uploading a male/female sample of one of the new weapons i added, another simpler way to do it would be to join both weapon models (control+J), align the new one perfectly with old, and erase old. Its the one i use the most, its easier, less error prone and bone free.
Anyways, pretty decent first try, mine was a real disaster :) and your collection is pretty awesome.
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