That's good news. I'm looking forward to this. I think you made the right decision on the controls. When playing with your thumbs at the edge of the screen (on an iPad), having to let go with one hand to make some gesture in the middle of the screen can be annoying.
When we tried using only touch-based controls we found that the game slowed down quite a bit, as tapping around the screen isn't quite as fast as just hitting a virtual button, and, as Steven mentioned, combining the two just did not feel right at all, and people ended up avoiding those skills that used touch controls altogether. I would also add that I have done quite a bit to assist with the more inaccurate aspects of virtual controls, and so far the response has been very positive (even from people who usually hate virtual controls), so hopefully there will only be a very small adjustment period with the controls themselves.
The game looks fantastic!! Cannot wait til its released. Is it universal? Will it play on itouch 4th gen &/or 5th gen?
1st Desert Enemy Feature Hey guys! We're going to start going through the enemies from the last piece of concept art we showed you! The first one is the "magic" archetype. This guy can be a real pain. For its attack, it casts a constant, channeled beam of electricity at the character (within a certain range of distance). It also has a healing spell, which it will cast both on itself and on its allies.
Absolutely. You can also run behind objects in the environment, and the beam will hit those instead. It will not, however, hit other enemies.
Footage Hey guys, we decided to try adding in a quick video of each enemy when we do its "feature." Here is the magic archetype from the desert environment. In the video you will see its channeled electricity ability. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
Gear, Affixes, and Gems! Soon after we started this thread, we made a post called, Pylon Overview, and in it we talked about our goals for the game and about future things we wanted to discuss with you guys. One of the major things we wanted to talk about was our gemming system! While in the midst of brainstorming how our affixes and gear would work, Andrew, our programmer, suggested that we try a gemming system. Long story short, we decided to implement that system. How it works: Rarity of gear only affects the armor or damage value of armor and weapons, respectively. Shields are an exception, which also have a block value that is affected by rarity, as are rings and necklaces, which well explain below. Every piece of gear (excluding rings and necklaces) has 3 gem slots; a Stat Gem slot, an Offensive Gem slot, and a Defensive Gem slot. All of the affixes that would typically be randomly rolled for on one piece of gear have been divided into these three categories. So, for example, Strength drops on Stat Gems, Critical Strike Chance drops on Offensive Gems, and Dodge Chance drops on Defensive Gems. Originally, we were just going to have generic gem slots, but we later specified what each slot was so that players would not be able to just purely stack their main stat (i.e. Strength), in all 3 slots. (That would be boring D: ) Rings and necklaces follow the more traditional ARPG pattern, however, and drop with 1-4 affixes, chosen from the entire pool of affixes. Initially, we had given them gem slots, but decided that having at least a couple of items that can drop with random affixes was more fun. Gems drop from enemies, just like gear, and also have rarity levels. Common gems (white) have 1 affix, magic gems (blue) have 2 affixes, rare gems (yellow) have 3 affixes, and epic gems (purple) have 4 affixes. So, if you were to put three epic gems on one piece of gear, you would have the value of 12 affixes on one piece of equipment! If the same affix is rolled more than once on any gem, the values are simply added together, rather than displayed separately. This system allows gear to be almost completely an aesthetic choice, with only armor and damage being inherent to equipment drops. But, we wanted to further increase player ability to make aesthetic decisions, so we implemented a vendor in town called the Warmaster. The Warmaster can take any piece of gear that you have in your inventory, and reforge it so that it has a different look. This costs gold, and the higher the level and rarity of the piece of gear you are reforging, the more expensive it is. There is no advantage to using the Warmaster, however, as he does not add any affixes or bonuses to your gear. It is purely an aesthetic decision for the player.
Can gems be removed from equipment at will? Or is there a cost? Or does one or the other get destroyed? I like this gem system idea. It changes the whole loot hunting aspect of ARPGs enough to be fresh.
Gems are equipped and unequipped the same as weapons/armor. You can't unequip them at will (we didn't really see a reason to), but if you put a new gem in, the old gem (if you had one) will go back into your inventory. Also, if you switch the piece of equipment that some gems are socketed into, they will automatically be placed into the new piece of equipment.
Hello! Today we reveal how our Desert Pack monster turned out - a vicious, dangerous little creature. When you encounter these guys, there will be three of them together that spawn with an Alpha monster. However, they function a bit differently from their Jungle brethren. The Desert Pack monster has a very fast, short-range fireball attack that it spews from its cavernous, fiery maw! They can easily overwhelm our heroine with these attacks AND if you kill their Alpha leader first, they will spew a steady stream of lava for a short amount of time until they explode in a radius around them. During that short (channeled) time which holds the Pack monster in place, a player can either run away to avoid the subsequent explosion, or attempt to kill the Pack monster before it explodes. Regardless of how a Desert Pack monster dies, they will always leave behind a boiling pool of lava at their feet that does damage over time to the player that stands in the pool. Enjoy!
Pack Monster Footage Hey guys! Here is a quick video of the pack monster in action! Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
The Alpha monster to oversee our little pack friends. His abilities include two different melee attacks, and the aforementioned reactive ability that triggers if you kill him before his pack-pals. If you have any ideas, feedback, comments, please let us know. It is always appreciated!
WEAPON / SHIELD BONUSES Subject to change, but here are our weapon and shield passive bonuses on equip. Note that weapon attack/cast speed is based on what class of weapon it is, and weapon damage is based on the rarity level of the item. Shield-block value AND armor value are based on rarity level only, as there is only one class of shield. Dual Wield 1hand Swords: +15% attack speed to applicable Strength and Dexterity abilities. Dual Wield 1hand Wands: +15% cast speed to applicable Intelligence abilities. Dual Wield 1hand Sword / 1hand Wand: +10% Damage Reflection (for now) 2hand Swords: +10% Physical Damage 2hand Maces: +50% Crit Hit Damage 2hand Staffs: +10% Magical Damage 1hand Sword / Shield: +10% Physical Damage Reduction 1hand Wand / Shield: +10# Magical Damage Reduction
As a side note: Since weapon damage factors into all abilities (how much damage they do, how much they heal for, etc...), having a fast weapon means less weapon damage, which means abilities are less effective. To combat this, I adjust ability cooldown length based on your attack speed; the faster your attack speed, the shorter the cooldown. So in other words, if you have a slow weapon your abilities are going to hit like a truck, but you won't be able to use them as often, whereas if you have a fast weapon, your abilities won't hit as hard, but you'll be able to use them more often.
The Desert Melee Monster The mechanics behind desert melee enemies are pretty straight-forward. It has a basic melee attack that does moderate damage and is always available for the monster to use. It also has an auto-dodge ability that will effectively dodge all applicable player abilities, including both ranged and melee damage abilities as well as some of the utility based moves. Additionally, a short cooldown has been attached to the auto-dodge ability so you can actually kill the enemy. The third ability is a damage spike, where the enemy attacks twice in quick succession. The idea behind this enemy is for it to survive long enough to hit you with its damage spike, but more annoyingly it tends to dodge high energy cost / high cooldown player abilities. What we've found is that when you see once of these guys you probably don't want to try and insta-gib it with a big ability because it will most likely end up as a waste. Attacking it with your basic attacks to try and bait out its dodge, then hit it with an ability is the best bet.
Heyo TA Our next enemy is the Ranged Desert Monster. Currently he only has a basic ranged attack where he spits a gob of green goo at you. We want to add more abilities however, but we aren't sure exactly what they should be. If you have any ideas or thoughts on how this enemy's abilities could be designed, we would love to hear from you!
