Universal Demon's Rise (by Wave Light Games)

With a fair bit of play testing. It probably will cause some grief and spikes in difficulty but the good thing with the game's design is that as soon as you hit a difficulty wall in the main quest, you can play patrols to gain gold and XP. Also, in the next patch, you'll be able to hire a mercenary to help you out or buy divine favour from the temple.

 

I'm trying not to rush it out. There are so many new features and other changes in this update that I really don't want to allow any big bugs through. Therefore, I think I need another 2 weeks to really test it out and finish up the various changes.

 

Hey guys .... quick update. The work on the animation upgrade for all characters is done! So now back to testing, debugging and finishing up the new features for the next DLC / update.

I also redid the lighting to get rid of some of the garish, bright green colour spots in the dungeon. Lighting is a lot more natural now and there should no longer be cases where certain characters become illuminated in bright green light any more at random spots in the dungeon.

Here's a shot of some new content. This is the Void Mage, a dark wizard that summons portals on the battlefield through which he can summon demons and other nasties to help him. He'll be one of the player characters in Demon Rise - Path to Damnation:

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 9.59.36 AM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

 

No probs. I didn't fix it earlier because doing it manually takes ages for every level. However, I figured out how to write an automated script to do it that I can leaving running overnight. So now I can tweak the settings for all levels with minimal effort.

On another note, I think I've figured out why levels with loads of enemies will crash occasionally. I think it's just a memory issue with too many enemies on the battlefield at one time. As such, I'm going to go through the levels and make sure that the number of enemies is kept at a reasonable number. I'm increasing the toughness and difficulty by adding more hit points and targeting spells / abilities to enemies so this should still come out around the same in terms of difficulty. Another benefit of having fewer, tougher enemies is that the enemy turn takes less time.

 

I've finished up the second mercenary. This is the freeblade, who is a mercenary swordsman (well woman in this case). A strong fighter with a general emphasis on offence. Good for propping up a party that is light on the melee side.

She has 3 abilities ... a kick attack that prevents a target from performing skills / abilities for some time, a melee buff (shown below) and a defensive parry buff. She also showcases a whole slew of new 2-handed weapon animations and is, in my opinion, one of the better looking fighters in the game.

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 12.57.17 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

 

Here's the updated BIO of the Freeblade in the mercenary hiring screen:

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 1.22.09 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

 

Here's a high level shot of a dungeon. This shows the new colour tones and how they work. Notice that that there is also more depth to the shadows and crevices of the dungeon. This is due to some better / higher quality settings in the lighting. It does use up slightly more video memory but not a whole lot.

Screen Shot 2015-12-23 at 1.04.05 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

You'll notice that the lighting is more uniform without random green or green / blue spots.

 

Player characters do level up and gain stat bonuses. You can also equip them with magic items that make them stronger.

There isn't a visual representation of the stat boost on the character model though. That is something I plan to do for the next game so that once characters reach level 5, they might get slightly fancier armour and so on. In this game, there are 28 different character classes so that extra level of detail was taken out of scope originally. I may add it as a feature down the road.

 

It will take me another 2 weeks or so to iron out all the bugs and make sure everything is good. Most of the work is done but the changes I made (new animation system and in-battle save system) means I have to retest every level and make sure every character works properly. The new mercenaries and a few other new features still need a bit of work. Luckily I'm off from work for over a week so should have lots of time to work on it.

 

It's nothing personal ... I just have to prioritize requests from all players. I'm not sure I really agree with you on the green solid area under the active character. i feel that it makes sense to highlight the hex occupied by the currently active player. That way, you have a visual cue on which of your characters is currently selected. I suppose it could be done a different way but I don't really want to invest more time into cosmetic tweaks.

Right now, I need to focus on testing the heck out of the in-battle save system, mercenary addition, divine blessings additions, new animation system and such. There is a lot of new stuff and lots of potential new bugs that I need to squash before this is released.

On a side note, I have gotten the mercenaries working now. So you can now hire 1 of 3 mercenaries from the new tavern at either a 5 battle contract term or 10 battle contract term. Seems to work nicely.

 

I think I'd prefer to have mercenaries be temporary things that players can switch around during their campaign. If I make them permanent additions, then the player can either never switch them out or I would have to allow multiple mercenaries and just make the standard party size up from 6 to 9, which seems a bit much.

I certainly hope so ... I'm dreading writing the change log for it because there so much to write. I'll have to go back through this thread to remind myself what was actually added since the last update. If you would like to get a preview of it, feel free to send me your test flight email. I can send you a beta version.

Overall, though I think I will be submitting it in about a week's time. I've made good progress the past couple days. I've added all the new abilities to many new enemies. For example, Ratkin gunners and Goblin bandits can now throw grenades and the giant spiders can launch web projectiles that hinder movement and dodge chance.

I also went through the files and optimized some things and reduced the texture sizes by about 200 megs and audio size by 10 megs. This should mean that the update won't increase app size despite having tonnes of new content.

Main things left to do are:

- Fine tuning animations with the new system.
- Updating the game manual section.
- Some bug fixing on the in-battle save system.
- Adding sounds and portraits for a few of the new units.

However, as I test stuff, I find new things to fix so the above list may get bigger. Still, I think getting the above done and the update heavily tested should be possible in about a week or so.