Universal Demon Hunters - Upcoming Turn-based Dungeon Crawler from Wave Light Games

Thanks. I do have to work on a proper tutorial and also a way to ease players into the game. Currently the early levels are harder than the later levels. Let me know what you think would be a good way to help players learn the game.

 

I think you're right that the stone priest might be a bit lame in the early game. His spells could probably use some rejigging.

The way normal attacks on wizards become too weak in the later game is a known issue. The problem that the level up system doesn't increase attack damage very often. Fighters don't really care because there are loads of magic weapons that boost attack damage. However the few wizard staffs only increase action points or AP regeneration.

As such, I'm going to adjust the level up rewards to increase attack damage more frequently and also add more wizard staffs and bows that increase attack damage.

 

I'm just not that happy with how the stone priest came out. He has no real focus and is a bit like a tougher melee Pyromancer. However I just came up with a very cool idea for him so expect big changes to him in the next update.

 

My idea for the Stone Priest is to switch out some of his more generic damage spells for spells that summon stone pillars on the battlefield. These pillars will be stationary and have the ability to cast their own spells that affect nearby units. There will be two types of pillars:

- Life Stone: Has some buff spells such as heals and shields that buff nearby units.
- Death Stone: Has 3 levels of damage spells that destroy the stone but also harm all units within a certain radius. So the level 1 would be a small explosion that only hurts adjacent units, level 2 would be a bigger explosion that affects all units within 2 tile radius and level 3 would be a huge explosion that hurts all units within 3 tile radius.

The interesting thing about this mechanic is that the stones are units and can be destroyed by the enemy. They'll be fairly tough but could be destroyed before they cast their higher level spells. I'm going to have to tweak the code slightly to have these units summoned with less than maximum AP but that should be an easy change.

This will make the Stone Priest unique and also reinforce his role as a defensive oriented character.

 

What type of ipad are you using for testing?

Regarding artwork for characters, it's not possible as I don't have a 2d artist available to me.

 

Regarding low poly models, I'm actually going to add an option in the graphics screen to allow for higher poly models on newer devices. The higher poly models are in the game but just disabled at the moment.

 

Ah okay ... makes sense. Part of the problem for me is that I don't actually have a new iPad as a test device. I only have an original iPad Mini and an iPad 2. So I can't really check easily if the textures or graphics look good on a new iPad model. On my iPads, I have the game perform extra compression to allow it to run so I can't really judge the graphics quality. My normal test services are iPhones (5 and 6) and there the compressed textures aren't really noticeable because of the smaller screen.

If you can let me know specifically which character you feel have too low texture detail, I can adjust those. The high resolution are available, I just try to compress them as much as possible for performance reasons. However, I may have gone too far on some characters.

 

It's a tricky one because I can't reproduce it.

So let me understand how it happened for you. It seems to be a trinket item (if I recall, the last time it was some flowers or something ... also a Trinket). Happens on the 3rd character slot? Perhaps there's something there so I'll check that combination in the code.

I was under the impression that it happened to items that were generated from the shopkeeper. However, you're saying that one of your items became like this during battle? So that means that it happens when an item is recreated from a save. Was this item working normally for several levels and then became like this on a particular level? If so, which level was it? Perhaps the item database for that level is messed up.

Alternatively, did you just receive that item as a reward and then next level it became messed up? That would suggest that it will always be corrupted by the load / save process.

I'm going to have these items increase both courage and intimidation. So higher quality items will make people more confident and look more scary to enemies. That way, there will be some benefit to having a better quality or level item even if the other stats are the same.

 

Quick update ... added 3 more patrol levels. The first is a massive one where the players come across a pitched battle between goblins and Ratmen. Think two factions lined up into groups and engaging in melee. It's a large level and very chaotic. The cool thing is that the player can jump in right away if they think they're tough enough or play more cautiously to pick off wounded enemies.

The second is a smaller one where the player character comes across a goblin band raiding a previously undiscovered dwarf tomb. So lots of gold around and good loot without too much trouble. A quick and fairly easy one but you do have to fight some higher level goblins.

The last one is another smaller level where players come across the lair of two trolls who are in the midst of eating a mysterious human warrior. Bones and blood splatter all over the level and it looks pretty cool. The human is also a hint on future story events as he is not part of the Dwarf mercenary force but from a nearby human kingdom. Perhaps he was an advance scout of a larger human force.

 

On a bit of a roll today. Got another patrol level done. This one is interesting as it involves the player disrupting a demonic summoning ritual performed by a Goblin Shaman. The Demons arrive in the level through the summoning portal but as they were not bound to the Goblins, they attack both the Goblins and the player characters. The particle effects in this level might be a bit too crazy for iOS devices but I'll see once I put it on a real device. If it is ... I'll just tone them down.

 

Since it seems to happen on tickets on the 3rd character slot ... I suspect it's something in the code with loading / saving. The base item is different in each case so probably not an issue with the base item database. Thanks for the info ... I'll look into it.