Thanks .... just found another bug. For some of the characters, I realized that the stat modifications from the easy or hard difficulties were being applied to the player characters. Therefore, if you set it to hard ... some of the player characters would also get the stat benefits that were being applied to the enemy units. Added another patrol level so 1.6 will bump up the patrol levels from 40 in total to 50. Just various rounds of testing now and fine tuning difficulty and other game balance elements. Also, I'm going to go back to the quest levels and some of the earlier bonus levels and add some of the new totems that modify stats of units that are adjacent to them. Also, I'm going to look at the areas on the map that are in heavy shadow and increase dodge chance / reduce AP regeneration of units slightly of those units on those areas.
Also, I'm working with the original developer on getting in-battle saves working. He and I are working on it together over email and trouble shooting the code I've written thus far. Looks like I'm on the right initial path so hopefully it's something that'll get done eventually and then back ported to this and other games.
I for one really appreciate the effort you are going to in regards to trying to find a solution to mid battle saves. I know that it is one thing that I look for when purchasing a game like Demons Rise. I only bought your game because it looked so awesome and I could see how supportive of your game you were. There may be others out there who are withholding from buying the game simply because mid mission saves are not possible. Heck I would even buy the game again if you released a version of it with that feature. ;-)
Thanks ... appreciate the kind words. On a simpler note, I fixed a bug where the game input would lock up if you entered an ability target select mode and then restarted the level. If you do that now, it will behave as you would expect instead.
Hey guys, Another minor bug fix this morning. The High Wizard's curved projectiles will no longer shoot up high in the air and then slowly come down if the target is close to the wizard. It currently works great if the wizard and the target are a little far apart with the missiles arcing across the sky randomly and then homing in on their target ... however, when the distance is small, it just looks odd. The next patch will fix this minor oddity.
On a bit of a roll, I was informed by a user that if an ability is used and the action camera zooms in, when the action camera ends ... the game input gives an error unless you manually select a character again. Fixed that now as well.
Hey guys, Some big news, I was able to put together a somewhat working in-battle save system! I was able to play a level, leave it and then load back into that level and finish it and then continue the quest progression. Not perfect ... there are some still some bugs but about 90% working how I would want! So an in-battle game is looking very likely ... hopefully much sooner than I had originally expected.
Work continues on the in-battle autosave and load routine. I have it working now to the point where it saves character positions, enemy positions, character health, enemy health, character action points and enemy action points and loads that correctly. It also applies stat bonuses from character levelling and equipment. However, it doesn't currently assign the right character level bonuses to the right characters. I understand the reason and looking for ways to fix this but it's really tough just because of how I coded the XP / levelling system. I also tested for and got it working for scenarios where some of the player characters are killed. Also, exiting a game by going back to camp and moving on to the next level work correctly and overwrite the end-of-turn autosave.
In battle autosaves are looking good. Got a basically functional solution. Just adding elements to it now and checking for bugs and so forth. If all continues to go well, I think the autosave at the end of each turn will be in the next patch (1.6) after all! Question to you guys on the design, I mainly want to have this feature used for cases where the game crashes or quits while in background mode in the middle of a battle and players can then reload the game from that battle. I'm not super keen on having players reload the autosave whenever something bad happens to them in a battle. What are your thoughts? Should I have this as a "hidden" feature that just pops up as an option to load an in-game save when you start the game (in the event of a crash or something) or should I have it as an option in the pause menu that says "Load Auto Save"? How do similar games handle auto saving? I know some games incorporate perm-death so I can't imagine they allow autosaves at the same time, do they?
Autosave at the end of each turn sounds brilliant. You are my hero! Where you have Load Game/Game Saved/Play Quest you could perhaps change Play Quest to Restart Mission and also add the option to Continue Mission, which would be the autosave.
Cool ... thanks for the feedback. In-game save is looking good for inclusion in patch 1.6. Just a couple of exploits available from loading a save that I'm trying to close off. They're pretty minor though so not a big deal. Then just got to work on integrating the load from save functionality into the existing menus better. Hopefully will have it all done in another day or two and then will be doing some testing for 1.6 before release. There are so many updates as well as all the new levels that I really need to test it properly before release.
Hi guys, Just a quick request for you to please update your reviews as reviews are wiped out with every update. Therefore, there are very few reviews for the current version. Reviews are critical for premium games so if you like the game and want more games to come out, please go and update your review for the current version. Many thanks,
Hey gents, Got the auto save component working now and integrated with the rest of the game. At the end of each level, the game automatically saves the battle progress. There is now an option in the pause menu to "Load Auto Save", which loads the last auto save. In addition, when you load a save game slot, if a battle was in progress, you are given a brief explanation that a battle was in progress and you have the option of loading that in-progress battle or abandoning it and returning to camp. Seems to be working well with a couple of minor known bugs. Need to test it a whole lot more before release so will probably come across some other minor bugs. Still seems to work really nicely overall and should allow players to exit the game, put the app in the background or take a phone call and resume the battle without losing any progress. It'll be in patch 1.6 but I still need another week or so to test the patch since it has a huge amount of changes and new levels as well.
Took a break from working on the in-battle save system to work on some new content ... much more fun. Here is a new bad guy ... the fallen knight. A human warrior corrupted by worship of the dark gods and possessed by a myriad of demonic entities. He's a bit dark but that's kind of the intention. His armour is pitch black and he has a fire-enchanted sword and when he dies, he bursts into flames. Very tough and should be a challenge to a high level party even by himself. Screen Shot 2015-11-13 at 8.49.09 AM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
Made a quick but very interesting gameplay change today that will be in the next patch. Now, when a unit suffers a critical hit ... there is a 33% chance of suffering 1 of 5 other effects: 1 - Blindness - the character is blinded momentarily and suffers a 50% hit and dodge chance penalty (for 3 turns) 2 - Stunned - the character is knocked senseless and cannot do anything (move, attack, or perform an ability) for 2 turns. 3 - Crippled - the character suffers a blow to the leg that reduces movement by 2 and dodge chance by 10% for 5 turns. 4 - Fracture - the character suffers a break to its arm and is not able to attack effectively. It suffers a 15% hit chance penalty and reduces attack damage by 5 for 5 turns. 5 - Bleeding - the character is bleeding out and suffers 3 - 10 health and AP damage each turn for 5 turns. I'll tweak the damage done by criticals down slightly to balance out these additional penalties. I'm also going to revert the critical chance on missile hits back somewhat. I think I penalized missile units too heavily with the recent changes.
Why are things that should be round angled? Like when a weapon is swung instead of a smooth arc it has several angles like a side of an octagon. Aside from that, nice looking game. It's high on my wishlist.
