Universal Demon's Rise (by Wave Light Games)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by WaveLightGames, Aug 20, 2015.

  1. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Nov 21, 2014
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    Will work on it ... I think the culprit is the code for the pinch to zoom. Need to look at that again.

    A duck / avoid animation to play when an attack is dodge is a great idea. I have those animations for most of the humanoid characters but not for some of the big monsters. If it was added for some but others, would that be weird?

    I actually did put in voices for when units get selected ... but it was kind of annoying hearing the same 3 or 4 phrases again and again. So I scrapped it and just had a generic click sound. I could put it in but have a sound play maybe 15% of the time?

    Sounds to play when they perform a miss or a critical isn't a bad idea at all. Shouldn't be too hard to add actually. I'll explore that and see how it works. Thanks!

    For foot steps, I again found it kind of annoying when I had it in an earlier build. I can probably put them in and put a toggle for them in the sounds section of the audio options. The code for playing a looped footstep sound is already there in the code so not hard to enable.

    Dynamic shadows are really tricky. Not because they're hard to implement ... adding them is literally 3 lines of code across the whole game. The problem is that they have a HUGE performance impact on mobile devices. Literally take up double the CPU cycles / draw calls to draw little shadows under the characters. I'm afraid that if I put them in as an option, players will enable them and then wonder why their devices get so hot or battery drains so quickly. I don't think many would think that shadows under a few characters would really have such a heavy impact. I suppose I could add it in the options menu but with a big warning text saying something "WARNING - WILL LOWER PERFORMANCE ON MOST DEVICES" or some such?
     
  2. Nullzone

    Nullzone 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Jul 12, 2013
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    I think that's perfectly fine. I just don't see one of those huge Trolls, Demons, Dragons, etc. dodging out of the way of an arrow or swordstrike. Too much mass to move so nimbly. And enough toughness and/or natural armor to just shrug it off.

    Shadows & battery drain / device heatup:
    I've seen that at least once, that when you pulled out all the stops, a huge warning popped up with "YOUR BATTERY WILL DIE IN SECONDS, YOUR DEVICE WILL EXPLODE FROM OVERHEATING. STILL WANT TO DO IT? HAVE FUN." (only slightly exaggerated for emphasis).
    Make it a lot less subtle than "will lower performance", and I think you're good.
    Many people won't read it anyways, even if it jumps right into their face with giant flashing red letters. But you did your best to warn them off, so there. Ignore the warning? Proceed at your own peril, and don't complain ;)
     
  3. kyoukusanagi

    kyoukusanagi Well-Known Member

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    its finally out! and very polished too! good job! glad you listened to all our commments + suggestions!

    also, i know this might sound like we're asking you to copy X-com. but the first thing that drawn me to the alpha of this game is that its "x-com like" so... anything that comes out of Xcom like dodge, action cam, footsteps and all that is a plus to me
     
  4. ramzarules

    ramzarules Well-Known Member

    Sep 13, 2014
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    Agree with everything :) 15-20% of the time for selected voices are fine, because otherwise it would get too annoying. And as Nullzone said, really big monsters aren't so nimble for dodging :) But maybe some other small animation that you already have for them, like roaring, taunting, slightly moving somehow, i'm sure you get the idea, just as a reaction.

    Toggles or sliders for shadows / quality are becoming more and more common in the games released this year. So i think you should add them too, with the game starting at medium settings preset, and then we can set high-low in options.
     
  5. Carabak

    Carabak Well-Known Member

    Jul 29, 2015
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    That would be much better IMO!!
     
  6. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Okay, I'll prototype something like that this afternoon and see how it goes. Thanks for the feedback again.
     
  7. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    #87 WaveLightGames, Aug 21, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 21, 2015
    Hey guys ... added a write up on the Dragon Hunter class on the site's news page. Here's a direct link:

    http://www.wavelightgames.com/dragonhunter.html

    Anyone planning to use this guy in their next play through? Will have more previews of the next update later today as well.
     
  8. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Yep ... we intentionally allowed duplicate character choices to further open up new strategies and allow for cooler themed parties. For example, you could have:

    - Shadow Elf Party featuring a Shadow Elf Witch, an Elf Assassin and 4 Skeleton Champions.

    - Forest / Nature Party with an elf Ranger supported by Earth Golems and Tree Giants.

    - Gnome / Dwarf Squad with Dwarf Stone Priest, Iron Guard, Gnome and multiple Steel Golems or Walking Cannons.
     
  9. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Thanks ... I seriously doubt I could do much worse than the Maple Leafs. Perhaps only if I went and pushed an update that replaced the game with a flappy bird clone or something. :D
     
  10. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    I'll look into that. I think you're right in that it might have to do with mind controlling an enemy unit. I had made some changes to the mind control code earlier and it did cause those kinds of issues. I thought I had reversed everything and checked that it didn't cause that issue but perhaps I missed something. I'll check on my end and try to debug. For now, I'd suggest avoid using mind control on the last enemy on the map and just kill them normally.

    The core 6 will stick with you during the campaign. However, many of the levels (mainly in the patrols) give you control of allies that are different character classes. Some of those classes are not in the 24 playable classes so they will be completely new experiences to all players. There are about 8 playable human warriors, some new controllable monsters and some new dwarves that you'll be able to use. I'll be adding more of these in new levels as it works nicely to break up the tedium of using the same 6 characters for every battle. Also, it allows you to come up with new tactics for those levels with the new characters.
     
  11. taran

    taran Member

    Aug 20, 2015
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    Awesome!!!!

    I was looking for some new rpg's and find this game in apple store featured game list...loved this one....really nice graphics...better than lot of big name apps....good job by the developers...
     
  12. forchy1

    forchy1 Member

    Aug 20, 2015
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    It's awesome how open the developers are about making changes and listening to gamers. I'm just really impressed by this Dev and a really suprisingly good game I'd hadn't heard much about.

    I wish I had some suggestions but everything I wanted to say someone else already suggested! Come on I want to contribute something. Quick no one say anything smart until I do..... This could b a looooong wait.
     
  13. lilgac

    lilgac Well-Known Member

    Nov 17, 2013
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    Simply excellent. I couldn't beta on testflight as I was on iOS7 at that time. To be honest, I didn't give a lot of play time on this now, as got too much backlog. But I simply must write to praise the developer and his sincere efforts in making this game AND listening to feedback. Even though I am not really a big fantasy genre person, the game mechanics is really well thought out and gameplay is good. So no matter what, must support this game.
    And I also like the pricing model. Increasing after each update, like wayward souls?. For this price point now relative to the value, it is a BiG steal compared to other big name games.

    Now, wonder if dev going to use this game mechanics and make a sci fi setting game in future? :D
     
  14. Grifman

    Grifman Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2014
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    Ok, I obviously need help. I get killed every battle and my guys are getting one shotted and yet my guys seem to miss a lot while on offense. Any tips here, I'm getting killed.
     
  15. Jim Shorts

    Jim Shorts Well-Known Member

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    Love... freaking brilliant! One thing I would add (if this hasn't been requested / or I'm missing something) is a next button, or a way to cycle though your unplayed characters.
     
  16. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    The game is tough on the normal difficulty ... you should blame the play testers as all I kept hearing during the beta was "Game is too easy, I'm invincible, I killed the Hydra with just one guy, etc. etc." ;)

    I'd say that here are some tips:

    1 - Enable the Unit Info button on the top right of the screen. This shows life and ap bars and (most importantly) the cover status of all units from your selected character's attack direction. This will help you clearly identify which enemies are in cover and which are not. Now try and use this info to make intelligent attack choices. For example, if you have an enemy almost dead and out in the open ... finish him off rather than attacking some guy at full health standing behind cover.

    2 - Make sure to use cover as much as possible. Especially for your archers and wizards as they can be one-shot killed really easily. Prioritize giving them cover over your fighters, who should be able to stand out in the open.

    3 - Always use your action points for abilities as much as you can. Unless there's a really powerful ability that you think will be perfect next turn, try and just use them up as the AP regeneration rates are pretty good. You get XP for almost every action so trying an ability (even if you fail) gives you XP and obviously whatever bonus you get from the ability.

    Now if that fails, I would just lower the difficulty in the options menu. There isn't a huge penalty of playing on EASY ... you only get a little less gold. So adjust to your liking.

    I plan to add more granular levels of difficulty so rather than just 3 (easy / medium / hard), I'll add a scale of 5 from very easy to very hard. It'll be in the next update so players can tailor the game to their liking.
     
  17. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Yep ... going to try and add that. Shouldn't be too hard but I have to figure out where to put it in the UI without cluttering things up. I might have clicking the Unit Portrait cycle through the player's units. However, that's not entirely intuitive, though.
     
  18. ScotDamn

    ScotDamn Well-Known Member
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    #98 ScotDamn, Aug 21, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2015
    Implementing sliders is a really good idea. One for rotating and another for zoom. I like having the depth but that can either be left out or leave it as a gesture and the others be sliders maybe?Sliders would be a large improvement!
     
  19. WaveLightGames

    WaveLightGames Well-Known Member
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    Nov 21, 2014
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    Thanks again for the continuous feedback guys ... I will respond to each point later today.

    Just wanted to jump in between meetings and show off a cool shot of the first quest level in the Dead Marches expansion update:

    [​IMG]Screen Shot 2015-08-21 at 1.30.48 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

    You see a whole slew of the new undead here ..... elder necromancers, mummies and ZOMBIES! After all, we really can't have Demon's Rise be the one game in the app store that doesn't feature zombies, now can we? :D

    Zombies will be similar to mummies in the sense that they will be lightly armoured and very slow but feature loads of hit points and impressive strength. They will also attack in numbers and will have some sort of short range zombie bite ability where they will make a melee attack that causes an infection and does damage and drains stats over time. They may also have a strength boosting self-buff ... though their current strength is pretty high already.
     
  20. Wisely

    Wisely Well-Known Member

    Jan 24, 2013
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    Inventory screen too small!

    Hi Developer

    Bought the game as I am a fantasy RPG lover and there were many good recommendations in this thread.

    The only issue I have so far is that the equipment screen is so small. I have to strain my eye to look at every bit of information on this screen. My eyes are already hurting and tired from working and playing iPad.

    There is currently a lot of unused space in the equipment screen too. Please could you consider making all the important details bigger in the equipment screen?
     

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