Also, since the tavern level is done and it seems both mercenaries and character switching is ready and working, I'm going to add the tavern as part of 1.6 rather than hold it off for 1.7. 1.7 will then include some of the other enhancements like drinking sessions, gambling and the special quest levels they unlock. I'm also going to add options to talk to the shop keeper and the temple cleric for a chance to unlock special quests too.
Seems reasonable thanks for the clarification No worries, good find. I unfortunately found another bug, maybe. After a crash, entering the store, it seems all my Knight's equipment save for the weapon disappeared, permanently. Every field had some great kit unfortunately. Have you encountered anything of the sort? I'm a bit paranoid to play until the next update so not to loose the rest of the kit. Wonderful thanks. Oh great that's exciting to hear!! You should really consider charging for the add ons on this release and charging more for the next one. I know you've said that you want this release to be free of add on cost but really, what you are offering for only $2.99 stateside can and should be at least 5-$6, I'd personally pay significantly more than even that to support your efforts.
Here's a WIP of the mercenary wizard. He's got one lightning storm spell and will have at least a couple others. He's a bit different from other wizards in that he doesn't use a staff and instead just casts spells from his hands. Neat character with some nice animations. Screen Shot 2015-12-07 at 10.33.43 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
I've never come across anything like that in any of my tests. I'll keep an eye for anything like that but I've never seen it myself. Any idea what your characters were doing right before the crash? I will going forward for future games but not for this one. I just want to stick my word from the onset. Although the game isn't making much, I have hopes for more success in the next one and that will likely include a different pricing model.
It was very a large map with lots of opponents; just the beginning of the fight when my wizard fired off the top area affects spell- the frame rate stammered and it crashed. I tend to remove all other apps from memory that has helped some I think, only on the very large maps with very large number of opponents in the very beginning does it crash, but crashes every single time. This particular bug I mention is the first time I've encountered it, and I cant even tell you how many sessions Ive played now. Very fair of you.
@ticktockfolly: You can send Wavelight your Crashlogs. And maybe - as it sounds as if you can reproduce it reliably - SystemConsole can tell something as well. If you need help, I can post instructions tomorrow. Note self: Add to list, those are instructions every dev should have always have at hand.
I think that possibly some of the larger levels are just too much for most iOS devices in terms of RAM usage. However, the good thing is that the save after every turn / autosave should make any crash less painful. I'm doing a play through myself and if I run into it now in a particular play through, I'll go and edit that level to reduce the number of enemies on it. I haven't yet come across it so I'm not sure which levels but when I do, I'll go in and make some adjustments. You might want to try disabling dynamic shadows as that seems to have a heavy RAM impact as well during gameplay. I've optimized dynamic shadows in the next version so that they aren't so resource heavy so as to fix the problem.
I have a general question. Is there any benefit/downside to picking up the remaining potions/scrolls after a board is complete? There's always a few straggling around, and it's not clear if it's worth the time to go pick them up. Especially when they're in chests that take some time to move to the chest, open the chest, move to the potion, etc. Of course there could be gold in the chests, so I know for that it's still worthwhile... thanks!
Dropped in to say that I'm picking this bad boy up. Thanks Dev for putting in the effort with the community, this looks like a gem and I'm looking forward to digging in
Except for gold, there's no benefit to those items. The potions and scrolls are there only as an in-battle advantage or disadvantage. I agree that the gold chests are a little cumbersome and are usually not worth opening unless all enemies are killed. I'm looking into making crates that explode when attacked ... damaging all units nearby.
Experimeting with a game balance change and want to get your input. I've found that by maxing out dodge items and skills, you can have a largely invincible character who never gets hit. I'd like to make all attacks (regardless of relative hit chance, dodge, and cover) have a minimum 15% chance to hit and a maximum 85% chance to hit. We're talking about combat ... regardless of how skillful you are, you're still going to never hit 100% of the time. Similarly, you can be the stealthiest and most dextrous ninja warrior, but you still can get hit even by a lucky strike from a goblin. Thoughts? Other thing I'm working on is trying to have abilities / spells where damage and healing effects depend on caster level. So an ability might do 5 - 10 damage per casting level to a maximum of 100 or something rather than always doing 35 damage.
I'm not sure yet about the first question, but definitely yes to the spell damage. That brings it back to old-school D&D, where spells like Magic Missile and Fireball did x number of dice per level damage or whatever. Like you said, you would have to test out the game balance of that, but initially it sounds great! Thanks for answering my previous question about the potions and chests.
I'd really prefer if the maximum hit chance was higher, 85% still seems a bit low to me. A lot of the common enemies are already inherently dodgy, and picking up weapons with +hit% often involves a damage tradeoff. Plus, it makes starting a new game even more of a chore - 90% of my first few battles for a new game devolve into my entire team surrounding a ratman warrior and proceeding to miss for half an hour while he slowly plinks away at the team, and then the game crashes.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that the base hit chance would cap out at 85% ... that would be silly. Base hit chance would continue to range from 0 to 200 but after subtracting target dodge chance and cover bonus, the final hit chance would never be lower than 15% and never higher than 85%. It's just to prevent situations where you are always hitting or always missing. Regarding the ratmen, I realized that there is an issue there because they are quite dodgy and with starting characters having a lower hit chance, it can be frustrating trying to hit them. As such, I've changed it so that they are much easier to hit but have more hit points. Also, I increased base hit chance in melee of all units in the last patch. Have you downloaded that patch yet?
I think the only stuff worth picking up is gold, some of which is semi-hidden and yes sometimes in chests that need to be opened. The buffs from scrolls don't carry over to the next round or have any permanence, at least in my experience.
My input: I would like to see magic attacks have 100% chance to hit. The damage magic does should be governed by the amount of elemental resistance the target has. This is a good trade off for being a "squishy" magic caster. I think that a 85% chance for a physical attack is about right because either your physical attacker is usually some strength based hulk or an agility based dodge artist.
A lot of magic special attacks / abilities don't miss. For example, the Fireball just does damage to whoever in the area and can't be dodged. A couple of other spells like the High Wizard's Magic Missiles should probably be similar. Giving magic users a higher hit chance for their base attacks might be a good idea. I could possibly give them a lower damage but higher hit chance to distinguish them from archers and other missile units.
Got the 3 mercenaries created. There is a mage, archer and warrior type. Only the mage has abilities at the moment. Each mercenary will have 3 abilities and will be medium level in terms of stats and power. Very helpful for an early game party, useful for a mid-tier party and perhaps a bit expendable (but still helpful) for a late game party. Here are pics of the new "choose mercenary" screen: Screen Shot 2015-12-14 at 1.03.01 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr Screen Shot 2015-12-14 at 1.02.46 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr Screen Shot 2015-12-14 at 1.03.17 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
Hey guys ... just a quick note, I managed to get the enemy AI to now use summon spells to summon their own creatures. It was surprisingly easy and seems to work really well. As such, the necromancers and demons will soon be summoning more creatures in the next update. Work on the next update is chugging along but taking more time than I expected. The main issue is the new animation system for all characters. It looks nice but takes a long time to upgrade each character to it. Hopefully will try and submit before christmas but will mostly likely be a January release, i suspect.
