Universal Demon Hunters - Upcoming Turn-based Dungeon Crawler from Wave Light Games

hi guys,

Quick update. Managed to finalize some more characters:

- Dwarf Stone Priest
- Sylvan Elf Ranger
- Centaur Charger

Also tweaked some more levels. I noticed in my testing that certain abilities were causing unstable code. Couldn't figure out why exactly but I found that abilities that make tiles inflict damage each turn on those that occupy them would randomly cause issues. As such, I removed those abilities ... they weren't really adding that much to the game anyway.

I think I'm now at 9 or 10 finalized characters so I'll probably do a few more characters that are almost finalized and will then move to adding proper sound effects to enemies, a few buff / debuff spells to enemy casters and then just do clean up for release.

 

Thanks.

Some bad news to report .... while making adjustments I appear to have done something that is causing the game to crash on the start of a new game. I have absolutely no idea what it is because I haven't touched code in a while. I suspect that fine tuning one of the abilities for the characters has involved using some special effect or texture file or audio file that wasn't compressed and is causing a memory crash. This is on my android test device so it may just be something weird and wonderful about Android and not apply to iOS. I'm doing some deep digging to see what the heck it is ... very frustrating.

 

Confirmed that it's a memory crash through some testing. Will try to roll back recent changes / files / effects and sounds to figure out the culprit.

 

Hey guys,

Finally figured out the issue. My test devices had updated to Android Kit Kat automatically and I hadn't noticed. For some reason, Kit Kat manages RAM in a totally different way and as such was causing the crash. Good news is that this shouldn't affect iOS devices. Bad news is that I wasted the last 4 days trying to figure it out.

So with that behind me ... all I can say is F*** you, Android. I never realized I could bring myself to hate a piece of software as much as I hate you right now.

Not sure if there's an easy fix for it for the Android folks ... I may just have to push down the same low RAM experience to Androids as I do on iPhone 4S and first gen iPAD mini's. That seems to work so that may be the only option. Alternative is to recommend downgrading to an earlier version of Android.

Anyway, after much time wasted ... I'll get back to wrapping this game up. Hopefully this was the last major hurdle.

 

Quick update for the Android folks. I found a solution. Moving to the newest version of my development software (Unity 5) fixes the issue with the memory issue on Kit Kat.

 

Hi guys,

Sorry for lack of updates. I've been traveling for my day job. Still have made lots of progress. I had a major bug come up where the AI creatures would enter the same tiles as player characters killing them. I figured out it happened when the enemy unit became pinned and some code changes in that area fixed the bug. It took me several days to fix it though but at least the game is looking really stable now. Not run into any other bugs.

I've decided to finish all 20 characters in the initial release and have only 3 left to finalize. Submission to apple is still aimed for end of march.

 

Some updates on the character design. The Samurai, gnome, vampire, knight and golem have been finalized.

Samurai: Now has an ice theme. He can shoot ice bolts from his weapon. He has both melee skill attacks and buffs that tend to focus on increasing critical damage chance. So he may not strike a lot but will tend to do a lot of damage due to a high critical chance. Other abilities are ice spells that tend to trap opponents making them unable to move while slowly doing damage. He can freeze enemies to prevent them from moving and reduce their dodge chance before killing them in combat. A lot like sub zero from mortal kombu.

Gnome: The gnome has switched out his crossbow for a handgun and is now a technology focused. He is still weak physically but his gun packs a strong punch. He can also load special ammo such as grapeshot to kill over a wide area (like a shotgun blast) and explosive ammo. He also has a supply of grenades he can throw and can lay down explosive traps on tiles. Lastly, he can summon a walking cannon and a massive steel golem with blades for arms.

Vampire: He has changed completely and is no longer a vampire. Instead, he has become a mage hunter. He is a special warrior trained to hunt down and kill wizards. As such, many of his abilities drain action points so enemy wizards will be unable to cast spells. He also has some nasty melee abilities. Since opposing wizards can now use magic on the player character, the mage hunters spell breaking abilities can be really useful.

Knight: Renamed to imperial guard. He is a fighter that attacks at range with his halters and has abilities that help adjacent friends fight better. Essential for players who want their characters to fight in close formations. A very tactical character.

Golem: The golem is a massive fighter that regenerates health and has various earth abilities. He can plant himself into the ground and sacrifice movement for various buffs. He can also cause rocks to fall from the sky or fire to erupt from the ground. Slow but with long reach and able to take more punishment than anyone else.

Okay, will post more progress soon.

 

Kind of by gut feel and by comparing cost of abilities, their % failure chance and their effects (range, potency, whether they can cause splash damage to friends, etc.). Ideally, a fireball that does 10 damage at all targets within 7 radius should cost more than a poison spell that does 5 damage over the same range. There are so many variables for each type of ability though that it will be hard to balance perfectly across the board. So as I do more playtesting (and after release as I hopefully get feedback from players), I will tweak the stats and costs of abilities.

Regarding the core stats of each character class, I am trying to keep things reasonably balanced by ensuring each character has strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. Some will be effective at range but weak in melee, some will be able to do lots of melee damage but won't be able to take much in return, some will have loads of hit points but might be slow in movement, etc.

Also, some combinations of characters will be far greater than the sum of their parts. If the player chooses a party whose members compliment each other well and compensate for weaknesses, then he will have a much stronger team than one who doesn't. For example, the Chronomancer's main strength will be speeding up and replenishing the action points of others. If he's in a team with the slow but powerful golem .... the two will be very effective. The golem will move into combat faster due to the Chronomancer's time shifting abilities and the Golem will smash apart any enemies that might otherwise threaten the Chronomancer in melee.

Ultimately, I'll keep adjusting the balance based on feedback and further playtesting ... even after release.

 

Quick update. I finished up the Shadow Elf Witch. She's a dark sorceress that can raise the dead, open up portals to the underworld and also perform a ritual where she trades hit health for power. Pretty cool character overall.

That leaves only the chronomancer, minotaur and duelist to finalize. I also figured out a way to have all 20 characters available on low memory devices so I've started work on that.

 

Things are looking pretty good for a mid April release. I had a monster coding session this week where I was able to get all characters finished as well as all sound effects done. I'm spending the next week playing through the game on various test devices and making all minor fixes that I identify. After that I'll need another week to put together the app preview and screen shots, game description and so forth for the store. Will be posting lots of new screen shots and video clips next week.

 

That's a good point. I think I can squeeze in a very quick public beta while I put together the launch material (video previews, screenshots, etc.). So give me this week to finish up the internal quality control and then I'll set up a public beta starting next Monday 13th for 5 days or so. I would like to get feedback on gameplay difficulty and balance between character classes.

As a quick note, there are now 24 playable character classes in the game. I realized that several of the summoned creatures like the Mechanical Golem really deserved to be standalone characters and since I was loading them into memory as bound spells anyway, it was no extra memory usage to have them as playable characters. So the new characters not mentioned earlier are:


- Steel Golem
- Tree Giant
- Walking Cannon
- Skeleton Champion


They all have finished abilities and are all pretty neat. The Undead Champion is probably my current favourite. I'll post videos and screenshots of these and other characters over the next few days.