Author Topic: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion  (Read 218192 times)

bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #180 on: March 08, 2017, 10:55:25 AM »
Agreed with Glaurung :)

Thanks to both of you. I had to rush her into the game last night because of an important bugfix. The quest to unlock the mage will come in later.

I got killed by the troll in the daily challenge again... I should really get over my pride and actually pay the fee sometimes, I just keep fighting the thing and dying because I don't want to pay :P

 :o  ;D  >:(

I often pay to pass and come back later when I have better weapons to get my gold back ;)

Also - I'm not sure there are enough things to counter poison at the moment. The two potions that do it aren't that common, and the number of poison shooters in the third level is quite large potentially...

There's also an amulet which you can get at the start or find it somewhere along the way. I feel like adding more means to stop poison would make the amulet worthless.

Also, playing while poisoned adds excitement  >:D

Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #181 on: March 08, 2017, 12:44:20 PM »
I think it's the fact that poison from the shooters seems to be permanent and doesn't go away even when you reach zero health - it's worse than fire, because you never really get a chance to recover, and it's both harder to cure and bites harder than hunger. So if you didn't get the amulet, antidote, or dragonfire on that run, poison is just a death sentence which annoying and frustrating. The poison from eg the mushrooms is fine and far more fun as that only lasts for a certain number of battles, so you have a big incentive to rush some battles and take some risks. But it seems a big penalty if you didn't happen to find the right items and got hit by a poison shooter for it to be "this will keep draining all your health permanently".
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #182 on: March 08, 2017, 10:37:59 PM »
if you didn't get the amulet, antidote, or dragonfire

Retort also helps. Carry it with you and create potions until you get one of those.

But the best way is to simply avoid going close to poison spitters. I often take a hit from enemies instead of going into the middle of the screen.

Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #183 on: March 08, 2017, 11:41:42 PM »
Yeah, I guess - I suppose my feeling is that it's odd that the poison is so much nastier than the fire or ice shooters, as mentally the player probably expects them to be roughly equal. But fair enough :)

I'm liking the sorceress for playstyle btw - super powerful when combined with the retaliator and the standing-in-front-of-an-ice-shooter trick!
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #184 on: March 14, 2017, 12:37:50 PM »
I'm liking the sorceress for playstyle btw - super powerful when combined with the retaliator and the standing-in-front-of-an-ice-shooter trick!

Yup. Especially if you get a Mana Canteen early and save up all the mana for later ;)


Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #185 on: March 15, 2017, 12:32:09 AM »
Indeed :) Though I'm mostly running with an archer as my main challenge character at the moment, the ability to deal really big hits on third level is definitely a plus.
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #186 on: March 15, 2017, 08:04:50 PM »


A new boss is added to the forest area. He starts showing up after you defeat the Ogre Mama, or you play 20+ games. As you would expect from a golem, he is immune to poison. This one being an Earth Golem makes him also immune to meteors and petrifying. Now, this might seem tough, but he's still a first level boss, so once you learn his attacks it shouldn't be much harder to beat him.

bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #187 on: March 17, 2017, 06:28:11 PM »
I'm making a bunch a of new magic staffs. So far, I have the Turret staff, that creates a standalone copy of the staff that hovers mid-air and shoots at the enemies on its own.

The second one I'm making is an Earthquake Staff. Not being a native speaker, I'm unsure what to put as the description. Maybe "evokes earthquakes". Alternatives I considered as "produces", "triggers", "initiates", "induces", "incites". Which word would you use?

Glaurung

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #188 on: March 17, 2017, 06:35:26 PM »
I think "triggers" is probably best. All the others also mean "cause something to start", but (in a typical English-language way) each one has a subtle shade of meaning that's not quite right for earthquakes.

Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #189 on: March 18, 2017, 01:01:05 AM »
Agreed with Glaurung, triggers is the best option.

I like the golem boss! I think he's mid-range between the ogre mama and the dragon so far, I'm not sure it's so easy to take him on with basic weapons, especially as the knight, but he mostly feels about right in terms of difficulty :)
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #190 on: March 18, 2017, 08:26:52 AM »
I think "triggers" is probably best. All the others also mean "cause something to start", but (in a typical English-language way) each one has a subtle shade of meaning that's not quite right for earthquakes.

Thanks.

I just realized I need more text to explain that "the stronger your magic, the more rocks the earthquake destroys", so I'll probably put something like "stronger magic destroys more rocks" (<- if you can come up with a shorter phrase, please let me know) and avoid the whole "triggering" business. Players will deduce that it's earthquake from the weapon's name and the effect they see on the screen.

Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #191 on: March 18, 2017, 01:36:30 PM »
Yeah, that sounds fine :) I'll have a think, though I'm not sure if the wording can get much more condensed than that...
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #192 on: March 21, 2017, 11:59:02 PM »


After you beat the Executioner, you proceed to the throne. The king greets you and explains that your witch mother wasn't really kidnapped. The king called for her because he has a major problem in the catacombs: Someone or something is raising the dead, and she's the only one who can stop it.

You can choose to peacefully enter the dungeon and find your way to the catacombs. Or you can attack the king. If you defeat him and his guards, you can take the Royal Scepter, which enables you do summon castle guards to aid you.

Beside the scepter, a bunch of new weapons are added to the game: the Shepherd Staff turns enemies into sheep, the Turret Staff creates standalone copy of the staff that autonomously shoots at the enemies and the Earthquake Staff knocks down all the enemies and destroys some rocks. The stronger your Magic skill, the more rocks will be broken. For combat, Earthquake Staff is a melee weapon - you can strike or knock down enemies, similar to Warbreaker Hammer. The Earthquake Staff is currently the only weapon that scales both with magic and melee skill. This means that you can upgrade it with both Warlock and Blacksmith runestones.

Beside all this, two new room types have been added. First one is the Scroll shop, which sometimes shows up as an alternative to the Potion Shop. The shop offers all four types of scrolls for that run at a low price, and you can buy an identify scroll for only 10 gold coins. The second one is a special room in the castle where the Ogre Mama is fighting the castle guards. It can only show up if the Ogre Mama boss is absent from the forest.

Additionally, the Fireball Staff now adds 1-battle fire immunity to the caster who activates the fireball buff.

I also fixed the hitbox for the sword strike of the Guard Captain. It was wrong on the first strike, so she could sometimes hit targets that are far away from her (sometimes even on the opposite side of the room). This is fixed in version 1.8.6.

Jubal

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #193 on: March 22, 2017, 12:48:32 PM »
Ahh, I think that hitbox error may be what was exploding boxes randomly sometimes! New stuff all looks great, look forward to playing it... (I do question whether the King could have just told you about this *before* you slaughtered most of his guards, that said!)

I still think you should add a "tavern" shop that has a different look/set of items but always sells at least 2-3 beer, with other options maybe including the goat, the dog, a basic bow, and a key (and consequently remove beer from the potion shop's options, it feels odd to me buying booze from a potion seller for some reason and it could be done quite nicely to a theme). :)

(I also still think that poison shooters in the castle level are OP and should be more like poison 5b rather than permanent poison, just got caught by them on another run - I really do think there needs to be a 4b/5b limit which would actually make the player feel incentivised to fight on with low health rather than just feeling like they may as well give up, which is how I usually feel in those circumstances.)
« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 01:27:52 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #194 on: March 23, 2017, 02:23:05 PM »
I still think you should add a "tavern" shop that has a different look/set of items but always sells at least 2-3 beer, with other options maybe including the goat, the dog, a basic bow, and a key (and consequently remove beer from the potion shop's options, it feels odd to me buying booze from a potion seller for some reason and it could be done quite nicely to a theme). :)

Nice idea. I was thinking about something similar, perhaps with an option to hire a Bushido (the shop guard guy). However, I feel like he's OP, so he would have to be expensive (say 500 gold), but then it wouldn't make sense to have that in the forest. So, I just set it aside until I figure out something better.