Messages

406

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 13, 2017, 09:44:05 PM »

The Crystal Wizard is a new 3rd level boss. He starts showing up randomly in the castle after you have defeated the Executioner. He's similar to regular small enemies (i.e. you can stun him, freeze him, etc.) but he has a magic staff which he can use to shoot at you, the same way the playable magic characters shoot. He has +2 orbs and a mana canteen with practically unlimited mana, which allows him to use the staff's special ability at will.

His weapon is a Teleport Staff, which can be used to teleport to the opposite side of the screen. You can pick it up and use it yourself. Teleporting to the opposite side costs 2 mana, and you can also press the regular attack button to return to the position from which you teleported. This other action is free, but can only be done once. After that you would need to spend mana to teleport again. Some levels have hard to reach locations like walled off areas or parts across the chasm. These levels have a special preset teleport location, which is revealed if one of the players picks up the teleport staff at any point of the game. You can use the teleport staff to reach those places and return. That also includes the areas behind the shops in the forest, so now you can go there and break the barrel without needing two pets (bear+dog) to get the items. The teleport return point remains active even if you leave the room, but you have to be inside the room to teleport back to it.

The teleport staff can also be found in gold chests, shops and pedestals in the locked treasure rooms or blocked challenge rooms.

Beside the new boss and the new staff, there are other changes. I added a couple different texts for the signs in the forest shops. I fixed the bug when the guards wouldn't attack you if you petrified the king and sometimes the level generator would create a shop adjacent to the king's room, allowing you to skip the boss fight in the castle.

407

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 13, 2017, 04:50:35 PM »

I had an excellent gamble recently - gambled a pair of viole(n)t knights into an ogre mama and an ice dragon, which was good fun and complete mayhem

ROFL 

408

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 13, 2017, 02:47:36 PM »

If you find you've accidentally gone into "modify" in future, use your browser's Back button to exit without making changes.

Of course. The problem was that I didn't realize that right away and thought it was some glitch that the "quote" markup wasn't there, so I added it around Jubal's text and replied Only after I submitted and have seen his profile picture alongside "my" message did I figure out what happened.

I guess the missing "quote" markup will be a red flag the next time this happens to me.

409

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 13, 2017, 10:29:52 AM »

Bug confirmed. I have no idea why it happens as I have an explicit check to trigger if he gets petrified. Need to do some debugging. The fix will be in the next version.

BTW, I also found a bug that the game would sometimes generate a maze with backdoor into the king's room, so you can skip the boss fight on 3rd level. I'll fix that one as well.

P.S. I accidentally hit "modify" instead of "quote" and at first edited your post instead of creating a new reply. Sorry about that. Is there some way to revert it to the original?

410

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 12, 2017, 08:09:53 AM »

Occasionally I can do it - for example, if there's an item like a relevant scroll it's often just possible to shoot an arrow then run down, grab the scroll and use it just before the bushido gets to you. But it's difficult!

My favorite tactics in such cases is to fill up the rage and grab a sword that has a dashing attack. Then I stand to the left of the shop keeper and do the dash attack to the right. As the shop keeper is hit, Bushido comes out to his right and gets hit by sweeping attack that knocks him down. Plenty of time to pick up and use the scroll before he gets up. This is especially easy if the scroll is on the right-most pedestal.

411

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 10, 2017, 01:00:17 PM »

I need to get more cautious on daily challenges. I think I've played so many of them that I tend to go for broke and try and build a really powerful character very fast, so either I get right through and have a very solid character by the end or I die really early doing something stupid like trying to rob a shop with almost no bonuses... :/

 

Yeah, I often die when I get too confident as well

412

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 06, 2017, 11:12:09 PM »

The VioleNt Knight is a new boss for the 3rd level (Castle):



They come in tandems and start showing up after you defeat the Executioner. The knights are small in size and have a moderate amount of HP, but are really quick. They have a regular strike attack and a dashing attack similar to the playable Knight character. One of the knights always drops his sword, which players can pick up and use. The sword has the greatest reach of all the swords in the game and does 10 base damage (+12 for strong attack). The sword's special ability is giving full rage to the player after every kill.

Beside the new boss, I made several bug-fixes and improvements:

- The Hornet Queen now tries to catch up to the player before doing the sting attack
- Telepathy potion effects now stack over multiple battles if you drink more than one
- Dashing attacks now have a damage threshold below which they cannot be interrupted
- Escape scroll no longer opens the doors blocked with the stone rubble
- Added a sound effect for the Royal Scepter summoning effect
- The Strawberry staff can be found randomly in the rocks sometimes
- Flying units and thrown goblin bombs don't get stuck on locked gold chests anymore
- Health Bar is now shown for player-summoned guards

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Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 03, 2017, 08:33:06 AM »

I think the bag of bombs costs is one or two too high

Bombs have many uses and can make any run OP since you can use a bomb to escape any room except the boss room. I initially tried a couple of runs with cost being 5, and I noticed that I would only use mana for bombs. Also, if two or more players are playing any lower cost would mean creating a lot of bombs.

the royal sceptre perhaps a little low?

Possibly. I plan to balance that once we have 4th level (Dungeon).

I'd be more inclined to switch and have a permanent poison effect coming from the hornet queen's sting and only a temporary one from the shooters, because the boss feels more appropriate as a really powerful effect that the player should prepare and use inventory slots for, whereas a really powerful effect that you need to actively prepare for coming from a regular bubble-shooter just feels embarrassing.

I never considered that point of view. I'll have to think about it and maybe change it.

The summoned guard didn't seem to have a health bar which confused me a bit?

In the first version they were all the same color, so I thought that would be a good way to separate summoned ones from regular ones. But now that we have two colors, perhaps I should add a HP bar.

will the strawberry wand/staff be available other than as that specific character? It could make for some nice combos with other characters (as it allows keeping a boar alive much longer) if it was available as a rare item in chests or rocks or something.

I guess I could add it as a low-chance drop in the rocks, just like the Snake Staff.

Thanks.

414

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: April 01, 2017, 08:44:33 PM »

The Pyromancer character is ready (not yet in the Steam version, I need to do a lot of testing first). He starts with the Fireball Staff and has permanent fire immunity. This means you can walk on campfires which makes some rooms much easier. The fire spitting traps in the castle and the Red Dragon's breath only do a small impact damage to him, but cannot set him on fire. Because of all these advantages he starts the game only with 3 health bars (60 HP).

He can be problematic for co-op, as you can easily set the other player on fire. A good strategy is to give the Fireball staff to the other player to activate, so he gets fire immunity. Or, if the other player is a magic caster, just swap the staffs at the start and play like that.

To unlock the Pyromancer, you have to find Amanda somewhere in the forest and escort her to one of the shops in the castle. This means that you have to go all the way through the Battlements level without her dying. It's a very challenging and interesting quest to complete.

415

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 30, 2017, 01:14:13 PM »

It's interesting how much some of these tweaks change my strategy - I used to regularly run and do the boss level for forest as soon as I saw it

Funny, I was doing the same. Now I always make sure I have a Voodoo Doll with me before the boss fight. It makes it so much easier because you can throw it anywhere on the screen, stand on it and make him drop meteors on it.

head-bowling, which it doesn't do that often

You can trigger it if you stand right in front of it.

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Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 29, 2017, 01:38:38 PM »

A new boss is added to the Battlements: A giant Hornet Queen. She can attack you or lay eggs from which the regular hornet enemies hatch. Both the Queen and the regular hornets have poisonous attack. The poison wears off after one battle.



This boss starts showing up after you defeat a Dragon (either a fire or the ice one).

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Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 25, 2017, 06:17:37 PM »

BTW, here's a new video

I got a Mana Canteen and no useful magic items/weapons, so I had around 30 mana when I defeated the King and took the scepter. So I summoned about a dozen guards to fight for me. That part starts here:

https://youtu.be/z86JYOAwTTo?t=26m22s

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Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 25, 2017, 06:09:30 PM »

(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.)

I was thinking a lot about this yesterday because I'm making a Hornet boss which has a poison attack. And then I figured out what might be the problem: do you know that the Healer NPC (the one that shows up in Potion Shop) has a staff you can use the remove the poison? And it always drops when you kill her.

To recap, if you get permanent poison you can:

• drink an antidote
• drink a dragon fire potion
• find a Retort and create potions until you get one of these two
• get the poison amulet
• find a potion shop and get the Healing Staff

I feel like there's enough options to remove poison, you just have to be prepared. If you see a Potion Shop, maybe it's time to risk it now and have a poison-removal option with you at all times. Just like carrying a potion or Retort it takes an inventory slot, so it's a trade-off player needs to consider.

419

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 24, 2017, 08:48:51 AM »

Could you have a hireable companion in the tavern room that changed partly depending on level? So a tavern in the forest would give you the chance to hire someone fairly useless, but one in the castle would give you the Bushido option...

Good idea. I think that could work.

420

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« 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.