Quick note, I added sounds for button clicks and end turn button clicks during battle. Going to add a sound for clicking on a tile now as well.
Balance change that I'm going to make the Dwarf Dragon Hunter. I'm playing him now in a play through and his second ability seems too strong. Will tone it down a bit.
Agreed ... I think he's overall too strong. I need to sit down and put all 25 characters into a spreadsheet with stats and do some comparisons and adjust starting stats accordingly. Then need to look at all abilities and adjust impact in relation cost and so forth. For now though, I'll adjust based on player feedback and my own experiences playing through it.
Thanks ... appreciate the support. Okay gents, just packaging update v1.3 to iTunes Connect now. It's got the new dynamic camera option, bug fixes, balance changes for magic items and lots of other stuff you guys have asked for. Hopefully Apple will approve it some time in the next week or two. Have a happy weekend.
Submitted patch 1.3. Here's the change log: Enhancement: Added option for a dynamic camera that follows the active unit during both player and enemy turns. This can be enabled in the options menu. Enhancement: Improved touch controls for camera zoom and rotate. Enhancement: Added parry / dodge animations that play when a unit dodges a melee attack. Enhancement: Pressing the active units portrait in the bottom left of the HUD now switches to the next player unit that has not moved or attacked. Enhancement: Added sounds for button clicks in the battle levels. Enhancement: Added a flashing warning message when over-writing an existing save game. Enhancement: Allow players to view inventory during battle. However, players can only equip or unequip items once all enemies have been defeated. Enhancement: Inventory screen is now 15% bigger on iPad screens. Bug Fix: Using the Illusionist mind control or Mage Hunter's Madness skills will no longer stop the Leave Area button from appearing when all enemies have been defeated. Bug Fix: The Tree Giant's Tree Fist skill will no longer cause the game to crash. Bug Fix: Fixed the issue where player units would sometimes not respond to touch input at the start of a level. Bug Fix: Players can no longer steal from the shop by holding a vendor item and leaving and re-entering the shop. Balance: Reduced the number of magic items that grant extra attacks so that characters do not get an excessive number of attacks.
Some general points that might be quick wins/fixed for your consideration: - two tap to move to a square. I'm always hitting move when I try to scroll and having to restart a level. Might just be iphone issue. - have to click the character to activate an ability. I keep firing things off (Abilities that don't require targets) when in just trying to read the description - the animation for shooting a bow takes ages. Feels a bit slow and out of pace with the rest of the game play. - add a timer for cool downs. Maybe on the X square where it was. Or at least say in description of the ability of it has one - subject of cool downs - feels like some of the lower level ones are painfully strict. Like my chronomancer's cool down on his second ability means he gets to cast one spell per dungeon (low levels). - help people choosing characters. Maybe add a category to each class (warriors, damage dealers, utility / support, healers). Or group them together on the selection screen. Most people would Be familiar with this, enough to think 'oh I'll need a couple of warriors, some damage and healers/support'. - the damage on abilities doesn't seem to scale very well. As the party levels up, they're soon doing embarrassingly more damage than a damaged-based ability. (Percentage abilities obvious scale with progress). Maybe a 'does 10-12 damage per level'. Anyone else come across similar thinking?
Hey guys ... a first draft of a new team selection screen that would be called right before the player select screen when creating a new game. It would allow players to either form their own party from all characters or choose a pre-built team. For the 4 pre-built team, I put a little background history / story for each. Screen Shot 2015-09-05 at 8.41.34 AM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr Would this work as a way to give new players a less over-whelming entry point to the game?
Technically ... that's how it works at the moment. When you select a character, all of his available movement positions are shown in green. Then if you click on one of those positions, it will show you the cover from that position but it won't move the character. You then have to click again on the same position to have them move there. Perhaps it's a bit sensitive to double taps? Perhaps I can look into putting a little delay to prevent accidental double taps? This is one I've struggled with. I'm not sure how else I can have a tool tip in the game on a touch screen device. On a keyboard / mouse setup, when you hover over the ability button ... the tool tip shows up explaining the ability. However, on a touch screen, you can't detect hovers or right clicks. Do you or anyone else know how XCOM handles tooltip info on their touch screen / iOS version? They must have abilities that need explanations. Perhaps I can just shamelessly copy from their way of doing it? I'm not sure clicking an ability and then clicking the character is very intuitive for something that doesn't actually target that character. I'm open to ideas though. On which character? The Elf Ranger, Centaur or Elf Archer? I think the Elf Ranger has a long shoot animation. I think I have a shorter animation so could use that if you like. I don't think I have any shorter animations for the other archers though. This is a great idea. I'll look into it. Adding just a number wouldn't be hard ... nor would adjusting the "Ability is on Cool Down" message to actually display when it will be available. Adding little numbers next to the icon might look a little cluttered though. I could also do a thing where the X icon is gradually reduced to reveal the ability icon underneath as the cool down ticks down. That would reduce clutter and give an indication of when the ability is available. I generally went with cool downs preventing some abilities from being cast repeatedly by the same caster. For example, I didn't want an ability that increased dodge by 15% for 3 turns to be case 4 times by a high level caster as certain abilities like dodge get too effective once they reach too high a number. So an ability that lasts 3 turns would usually have a cool down of 4 turns. Let me know which you think could be relaxed though ... I may have gone overboard on some of them. There is a category already (fighter, wizard, archer) but it's not visible to the user. It's used for determining what type of stat boosts are given when they level up. I could make that visible in the selection screen. I'll see if I can do that without cluttering it up too much. Excellent idea ... it shouldn't be too hard to code. I would just need to go through the abilities again and adjust them once I've made a few code tweaks. I think having a "do X damage per level" and also "do X damage plus 1 for each level of the caster" would be good options. Thanks for the great ideas ... I'll look into them and see what can be done for the next update.
Does it just have that text background? That wouldn't mean much to me as a new player. Or would I be able to see what classes are in the party? Maybe a description about the make-up / dynamic of the pre-set party. I dunno.. At your front line: A fierce, hulking golem, capable of fighting toe-to-toe with any creature. Partnered with the demonic rage and pure animal power of a minataur. Supported by the crafty gnome, with his bag of many tricks capable of ... Okay it's pretty long. If you wanted a short, non-role play version: Well balanced party. Healing from Mage and paladin. Party 2: Mage-orientated party for those who like their battles explosive and at a distance. That sort of thing. Would let the new player know what he can expect and the sort of party experience they're selecting
Re: using abilities. I agree it's not initially intuitive to select yourself. But once you done it/ been shown it, it comes easily. It would stop the accidental use of abilities and you wouldn't have to change the hold-over ability description mechanic. On the subject of learning things for the first time - and please shoot me down if I'm just slow at picking things up - when I first created my party I wasn't sure what to do first. Think I did a patrol and didn't have a clue what was going on. There was loads of people. Loads of monsters. Everything was unfamiliar (yes if looked at the tutorial text). I think maybe I'm the sort of person that learns from doing. I do like the slow introduction approach of having a small set of tutorials that just focus on one aspect. So you could have: movement and cover, just an empty board and one character moving around then moving between cover; fighting and casting missiles; use of personal abilities; use of group /AoE abilities; explanation of character sheet and what stats do. If you want a hand I could draft something. A script that you could use as a frame work Up to you. I think I read you wanted this to be more like a old-style game that just throws you in there. I grew up on those. But felt like there was a lot to learn straight out
I'll give it some thought. Do you know how XCOM or Warhammer Quest handle non-targetable skills / spells? I have Warhammer Quest ... can take a look. Agreed ... I do need to make a better tutorial. I also need to add an explanation of what patrol levels are and a sort of warning that you probably shouldn't jump into those until you've played the tutorial. I'm going to try and build a better tutorial that talks you through each of the main elements of the game.
Deleted warhammer quest. Not warhammer deathwatch, you select your ability, it then highlights your own character footprint, then you press yourself to activate
Usually from what I remember abilities would be click the ability then click the target to use it on those or an AoE attack you click the ability then have an AoE template to drag and place to fire. Possibly no target abilities like a cone of cold that goes in a direction relevant to the casters position would be press the ability then click on the charachter to fire. Just saves an accidental use from pressing the ability.
I like this. Makes a quick party choice easier and less overwhelming. Like the various party names too.
I should point out that clicking one of the pre-built parties takes you to a similar character selection screen but with the 6 characters pre-selected and no option to change the selection. However, you can use that screen to look at the characters and their stat lines. I'll put it in the next patch and you guys can tell me if it's an improvement or not. Just a quick note that I'm off to Germany now for a business trip. Might be a bit slow to respond until I get myself set up with internet in the hotel rooms.
