When you level up, there's a chance to get extra attacks as a stat improvement. Extra attacks are less likely to happen as a level up as compared to other stats though since I know they're more useful as they're a power multiplier.
Nice, great work! As I wrote before, I really don't like randomness in level-up results. With a low chance to get some great improvement, 9 out of 10 folks get the short end of the stick, while the lucky one hits the jackpot. If you think getting extra attacks automatically with levelup is too powerful, I'd remove it completely. Alternative would be to always give an extra attack when reaching certain levels. Let's assume we have a maximum of level 10 that you can achieve, starting at level 0. Then I'd go with e.g. adding one extra attack at level 1 (for that initial boost) , level 5, level 10. In addition, slower chars like the Golem could only get extra attacks at level 1, 7, 10. While really fast ones like the Duelist, Elven Paladin, or Archer (just guessing here, going by how I see them) get extras at 1, 4, 7, 10 (yes, that is one more attack for the fast folks) . I assume that you aim for a default difficulty level that doesn't feel like casually strolling through an afternoon tea party For balance testing purposes, I recommend to take the hardcore approach and see how we are doing: No extra attacks from items OR level-ups. What you have is what you get. If things turn out too tough, tweaking upwards should be easier than adjusting downwards and trying to find the right approach from there. Luxury would be if you can implement a toggle when starting a new game, so some of us can test the "hardcore approach" and others e.g. "extra attacks only at level-up". This is still just me rambling and jotting down things how they come to mind, though. So take it with caution, please. Did not have time to really think about it yet. And as this turns out to be a big gameplay balance issue, I don't want to go "nerf!" or "boost!" without solid reasoning behind it.
By the way, in the level before the Ogres appear for the first time: Suddenly a big party of Goblins warped in behind the Ratkin, and the two groups started duking it out with each other, pretty much ignoring me for a turn or two. Really cool detail, my jaw dropped a bit when I saw this. Hope you have more surprises like this in store
Glad you liked it. In the first chapter, there are 3 major factions ... Goblins, Ratmen and the Undead. They all have their own territories in the upper levels of the ruined city that this game is set in and they are not the best of friends. I wanted to show the ruins as a believable place and not just a generic dungeon populated by enemies that do nothing but wait for you to come in and kill them. In the later chapters, I intend to develop the story to introduce further factions ... these currently include: - An evil subterranean Elf faction similar to the Drow (who have various slave races) - Orcs - Beastmen / Demonkin: these will be similar to the very first rendition of Beastmen from the warhammer universe. A mixture of human / animal hybrids that are created by Demons. So don't get overly cocky smacking around goblins and Ratkin ... your heroes are going to face some truly insane challenges as the story progresses. Regarding gameplay twists, I am trying to come up with ideas to break up the pattern of the game. I have a few more in this initial release but intend to add things like choices / branching story, survival levels (survive for X turns against an attacking horde) and some levels where you have allies (Dwarves, elves, etc.) on your side. Those will still need to be coded and I put them out of scope of the initial release.
I'm thinking of adding some more weapon types. 2-handed weapons would be their own category and be more powerful than one-handed weapons. Giants, Knights and so on would only be able to use 2-handed weapons and using one would occupy both left and right hand slots. I'm thinking of something similar for the dark elf who uses dual blades ... have a "Dual Blade" weapon type and only have it usable by her (and any other dual wielders I add later)
Also, I noticed that I had some code to disable the action camera on iOS devices. I've removed this and the game works fine so the next release will actually allow you to have Action Camera enabled. The Action Camera is an XCOM style zoom in camera that happens when the character (or enemy) is performing an attack or ability. It kicks in around 40% of the time and looks pretty cool ... except when the camera gets covered up by a wall or something but I've never found a solution to that.
I like that idea and it goes together well with the character models; especially the Minotaur and Giant. On the hero selection screen, to me the Giant looks best: huge and dangerous, very fitting. Sidenote: did anyone realise yet that the Ent seems to be the best Healer available?
Cool ... I'll make those changes. Yep ... that's by design. He's a big guy that has magic that focuses on healing and buffing friendly units. He also has a unique ability to create cover tiles. So he can move forward and create roots to appear on his position or that of a friend that gives a cover bonus.
Hey guys ... got the zoom control working. Speed of zoom, pan and rotate are now all configurable options in the options screen. Will submit next version tomorrow.
Last night I spent most of my play time reading through all the units, so far they are all really cool! After playing a few rounds in the first stage my constructive thoughts are; need rings or indicators around enemies/heroes, with an option to toggle off maybe? At first I couldn't tell where the enemies were at all. Another helpful UI button would be a "next unit" button, to press to cycle through your available units. I went a few turns without using some guys but that's my fault It is really helpful having the character portrait right there to look at the skills, I really used it a lot but when I would hold down to read a skill the map would drag by with the slightest touch, so in the background the whole game was getting pushed around while trying to read. Would you be able to make it stay still while holding down on a skill to read? Besides those so far I really like the design and feel of the game, I can see there's a cover system and the unit diversity and amount of characters has a ton of replayability. I am curious how the ability points system works though, I assume you earn action points during the battle that you don't use? Or do you buy the rest of the skills from the shop and I just didn't play that far? Game looks great so far and I'm really thankful to be able to help and apologize if these things have been brought up already, I didn't go back and read the whole thread. Maybe I will do that sometime to get a full scope of what's been suggested so far
@baldeagle: welcome to the party 1) Enemy/hero indicators: Cannot remember if we brought that up already. Definitely a good idea, seconding that. 2) Next unit button: That was on the menu already. Wavelight wrote that with the current way the game is set up, it will be quite difficult to implement. Somewhere further down the road, hopefully. 3) Looking at skills: Best you can do right now is tap the portrait and look at the skills on the hero details page. You can tap/hold the skill icons there as well. As added bonus, this also prevents accidental skill triggering. 4) Action Points: Each skill uses Action Points (AP) . Leveling up increases your AP regeneration rate. And you can get items that increase your AP pool and/or the AP regen rate. 5) New Skills: You get new skills automatically when a hero levels up. First new one should come at level 2.
Some more feedback: I really like how every piece of equipment you get feels meaningful. You don't have enough gold to deck everyone out immediately, so it's a slow buildup instead. And gold isn't abundant, I can't just go on a shopping spree and buy all the bling-bling I want. You really need to think about what you buy and when. Something to think about: 1) Currently you cannot replay levels to get more XP, gold and equipment; e.g. in preparation for a tough boss fight. Also, when you "Flee from Battle", you don't get to keep anything. What do you folks think? Is adding the option to "grind" a good idea? Or do things work better without? 2) Changing heroes in your party: I'd really like to do that. Both for trying out different heroes without starting from scratch, and for bringing in different units depending on what I face.
Circle indicators around should be an easy addition ... I'll add those. I'll put them as something that can be switched off in the options screen. Adding anything to the game screen that is rendered (even simple circles) can have a noticeable impact on performance on mobile platforms so I'll give the players the options to turn them on or off. I personally like having enemies hide in the shadows and pop out to surprise me ... but to each their own. I'll try to fix that ... I should be able to just turn the pan speed to zero while the ability details pop up is displayed and then return it to normal when the pop up window goes away. I'll look into that .. thanks for the suggestion. Yep ... NullZone covered the points. Minor correction to his explanation. The abilities each have a required AP (action point) level to cast. Characters start out with a maximum AP that usually let's them perform only the first 2 abilities. As they gain experience points, they increase their maximum AP total and thus gradually open up more abilities. The 6 abilities always increase in AP cost so you always have to build up to be able to use the later ones. You can also cheat this simple system by finding magic items that increase your maximum AP and thus get access to the abilities earlier. However, I'm okay with that ... no reason a magical "Tome of Knowledge" or "Staff of Brilliance" shouldn't allow you a wizard to cast a new spell. It's also really simple and I like simplicity in code and game design. Glad you're excited ... please repay me by giving me loads of feedback that improves the game before release.
Has anyone playing noticed how often the enemy seems to hit critical attacks despite having 10% or 0% critial chance? I'm actually getting smashed constantly because they're landing critical hit after critical hit.
Cool ... that's what I was going for. Let me know as you progress through the game whether this aspect is maintained or gold suddenly becomes too abundant or too scarce. I was planning to add some larger gold / treasure pickups during battle ... right now there is only one that is 150 gold. I'm all for grinding. However, I'd rather not have players replay old levels as I think that breaks the sense of story telling / immersion. Instead, I'm planning to add around 10 or so generic battle levels that will be populated with enemies that are appropriate to the characters' level. These will be accessed by a new button on the camp menu called "Patrol Ruins" or something. Essentially, the party goes on a patrol and has a one-off random encounter. Usually an enemy patrol they'll have to kill or something like that. Since I can re-use existing maps and just populate with new enemies, it shouldn't be too hard to add and would allow players to grind for experience and gold if they get stuck on a particular level and don't want to lower the difficulty. This would be really tricky. However, I'm going to try and add allies in later levels that the player would have control over during the game. These would allow players to use other types of heroes for that battle and get a taste of some new unit types. For example, there might be a level where a dwarf position is being overrun by undead or something and the player's party are tasked with re-inforcing it. For that level, there would be several dwarf warriors and golems and perhaps some new unit types that the player would be able to control in addition to his party. That's the plan anyway .... should be a good way to break the monotony of always using just the same 6 characters in a play through.
What type of enemies are doing that? If it's the Ratmen, check if there is a Shaman that is casting the Battle Fury spell. This spell is a buff that increases the critical chance of his allies. Therefore, if you're allowing the Shamans to live long enough to cast that a few times ... your party will be suffering a lot of criticals. If Shamans' aren't present ... then it definitely sounds like a bug. Right now the AI spell casters and abilities are very limited but they do make the game much more challenging. I'm going to add more abilities to the AI units but I need to do this gradually as it really can cause the difficulty to spike upwards.
Based on feedback ... I'm starting to realize that speed / aggression is super important in this game. Killing enemies quickly means: 1 - enemy wizards / casters don't get a chance to use their abilities 2 - few enemy patrols will appear (as these patrols end as soon as you kill all enemies in the level) 3 - enemies don't get a chance to strike back I'm going to have go back and tweak some of the super-fast killing characters like the assassin. She's actually completely insane ... high dodge chance, high critical chance, high hit chance, high basic damage AND low cost abilities that allow teleportation (more speed) and a self buff to increase dodge chance and critical chance. She's basically the most perfect speed killing machine. I don't want to smack her with the nerf stick too hard but I think I need to reduce her normal damage. She's only using daggers so her normal damage shouldn't be as high as some guy with a broadsword. Certainly, she should be more likely to inflict a critical but a glancing blow that she lands should do less damage. Furthermore, I think her shadowily is too strong at +30% critical and +30% dodge ... will probably reduce both to 15% or 20%.
