Development Report #5

So, I usually post these dev reports on indie DB, but I’ve had some quite nasty connection issues toward their website the last few days and I gave up now, let’s hope that whatever’s going on has been sorted out until the next report! Anyways, I’ll try to give a quick summary of what’s happened since the last report (#5 on IndieDB).

Alot’s been going on with LBKR the last two weeks, mainly balancing and bug fixing but also some new content’s been added.

Buffs received when destroying a Marker will now pop-up as an UI Hint at the bottom-left of your screen that will describe the power-up. I’ve also added a new power-up called “Piercer” that temporarily improves your Armor Penetration rating.

Minibosses are now assigned a new material to be easier to identify in-game, they will shine in different colors depending on their hierarchical ranking, also Champion-ranked minibosses will now be deployed as a pack of 2 – 5 monsters. This is purely for balancing purposes as the Champions are alot weaker.

While the Champion packs are all of the same monster type their attacks and buffs they receive will be generated per individual, ie. each monster in the pack will have different attacks.

Map information and Game Statistics ( the same as which can be seen when near a map Access Point ) are now present when opening the Game Menu (Esc)

The Achievments have been sorted into 4 categories, “Story”, “Combat”, “World” and “Exploration”, for easier readability (and tracking). Also as you can see in the screenshot there’s a fifth category called “Character”. The Character category doesn’t have any Achievments yet but will be filled soon.
Furthermore each category now display the progress of completion at the top of the Achievment Window.

The content of the “Common Stats Display” (Seen below your avatar in the Inventory Window.) have been changed, attack speed has been removed to give space for your “Critical Hit Damage” and “Armor Penetration” skill ratings. Also, all icons of said stats have been updated

Monsters that are killed with toxic damage will now disintegrate.
Just to mention some more changes, there are 4 new missions, a new monster of the Forsaken faction, a new arena/world event, 3 new weapons and one new “wandering” NPC.

 

A large amount of bugs and glitches have been fixed along with many more gameplay and difficulty balancing aswell! Before the release of v2.25 I plan on tweaking a few sound effects, most of them only require normalization and/or minor equalizing

I’ve also begun planning for v2.26 and to mention some of the upcoming changes/features:

Improved AI behaviour: Currently the monsters of LBKR combat decisions are primarily based on attack power, it’s set up to be determined purely by balancing. Each attack has an attack penalty that is added to by a specified amount each time the attack is cast, the penalty varies depending on the attack power, so that more powerful attacks are cast less common while weaker attacks are cast more often.

I’ve felt that this has, many times, repeative and from time to time non-logical behaviour. This also prevents ranged monsters to hold melee attacks as they would usually be too far away from the player.

I’m going to implement more dynamic penalties that are continuously updated depending on current range to the player, health value, amount of allies nearby, etc. etc. Theoretically this should result in a more logical choice/behaviour for the AI, although I would still require to keep the power-penalty and make sure that it plays a key part in the decisions.

Doing some rough sketching on two new hidden maps (Forsaken Challenge maps, accessible through the Obscure Organ consumable.), also more World Tiles/Chunks for the Armory and Bridge maps will be added for better variation. Some new arenas should also be implemented.

Alot of achievments will be added, including achievments to fill the “Character” category, that will basicly be class-target achievments (primarily atleast…)

I’ve also thought about some new consumables, I suppose they could be compared to the Spell-scrolls that can be found in Diablo 1, for those of you who’ve played it. These items will be a compliment to your character’s special abilities and can be cast by the cost of some energy points. I have not yet decided if this should be crafted items only or be possible to find as monster/loot drops aswell– but I’m quite certain that I will have them added as I feel it is an interesting idea.

Need to plan this carefully though, currently I want the spell-scrolls-thingies to be more procedurally generated and/or randomized than the PC’s special abilities- nothing final is decided though so we’ll just have to wait and see how it turn out. Also I’m uncertain if I’ll have this done until the 2.26 release but I believe it could be possible!