Messages

46

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: January 04, 2021, 12:58:22 PM »

Rhadamanthus simply because it's such a cool name.

Yes, this one is perfect. The other two are too much "demonic" and this one isn't a demon but more of a ghost/wraith type of enemy. For example, all demons are immune to fire, but can be frozen and poisoned in the game, but you cannot freeze or poison this boss. I think I'm going to call him "Ghost of Rhadamantus" to avoid potential confusion with people translating the game in other languages.

Well, I'm off to make him move around and attack now

47

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: January 04, 2021, 08:49:20 AM »

Alright, after a lot of testing, the new hero will be named: Lich. An undead mage who uses HP for mana. You gain 1 mana/hp every new room and all the effects like Lizard pet (2) or Giraffe (10) apply. Of course, this would open the system for abuse via healing staff (spend 4 mana to get 20), life staff and necro staff so any healing via staves is disabled. I wrapped it up in a nice story and in-game explanation from the Lich NPC during his unlock quest.

I have added a bunch new potions, magic scrolls, item so far and done some bugfixing and improvements to the old game mechanics. For example, the Whale pet now gives you a Kindling when the campfire stops burning. I also made all the Hell bosses except for this one:



Still not sure how to name this one. It flies around, shoots magic orbs and buffs the demon minions with various positive spells (speed up, crit chance, etc.).

Current ideas include:

• The Evil Spirit
• Infernal Apparition
• Ghost of the Archmage
• Nightmare

Which one do you think fits the best? Or do you have some other ideas?

48

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witcher: The Geralt Skinpack

« on: December 26, 2020, 03:20:34 PM »

I love it!

49

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 15, 2020, 08:08:13 PM »

I just finished Efreet. It flies around and shoots fireballs from its eye So, Familiar, Fiend, Imp, Succubus are in the game now. I gave up on the Hell Hound. It's too small and the action on the screen is often too frenetic to notice/avoid it. Also, there are already 5 hell units and there will be 6 with the Demons, so it's already too much.

I might make a quest where you need to save the Hell Hound or something like that. Ideas?

BTW, Succubus has ranged attacks and a magic mug of beer she can use to make you drunk. She carries it around and does the "cheering". I feel like it's thematically very good match, esp. how reversed controls can mess with players.

Familiars currently have a staff with "mana block" magic. If they activate it, you cannot use mana for 2 battles. You can also get this staff in regular game (drops from chest, etc.) and block some enemies: Crystal Wizard teleportation, Dark Mages casting negative spells, Castle Wizards casting speed-up on guards, King summoning the guards, Trickster creating barrels, the Dragon Master summoning the spears, etc.

The block effect is interesting to use for players, but it doesn't really seem to have some strong effect when Familiars use it. After some testing I figured that I mostly use mana between battles (and rarely during) and it's mostly pure damage output and speed that determines the combat outcome anyway. So, not sure if this will be the final version of the Familiar.

50

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 07, 2020, 09:01:53 PM »

Also, how much do the names matter, given they never get seen on-screen?

Two reasons: First, I'm starting to animate and code them tomorrow, so I need to name files and objects/classes in code. It doesn't really matter that much, but it becomes hard to maintain the thing when you don't touch it for a while. I took a long break from SoaW development this year (months). A few days ago I was looking for a code-id of that Paladin Sword effect and it took me so much time to find that the Paladin is actually called "Elf" in the code. I guess I could go in a rename all the occurrences, but it's much easier to just do it right from the start.

Second, I'm contemplating adding a special menu section called "Vault" where you will get to browse through all the enemies, weapons and items in the game. It would only show information for the enemies/items/weapons you have encountered in the game thus far. I'm thinking to also add descriptions from your Monster and Equipment manuals alongside the picture and stats (if you don't mind).

51

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 07, 2020, 06:12:51 PM »

Here are the hell units:



I'm having problems with naming. I marked those I'm not sure about with a question mark (?). Here's the current plan with some spoilers, of course:

1. Demon is a mid-sized enemy like Orc or Yeti. Cannot be stunned with regular attacks (only rage attacks) and it will behave similar to Orc, possibly not attacking that often but being able to jump some distance forward (similar to Gorilla) while attacking you with his sword. This should give him more range than Orc.

2. Demon (elite) is meant to be a boss. It's a harder version (more HP, more damage) of the demon above. There will be a boss called The Demon Legion, which will cosist of 4 (or more) Elite Demons.

3. Efreeti are some demonic spirits in mythology, but I'm not sure if people would imagine them as small, fat creatures? Maybe a "beholder" would be a better name? The current idea for the attack is to fire a laser from its eye. Or maybe 3-4 orbs with homing ability (slightly changing the direction toward target). I plan to have a Homing Staff weapon in the game as well. This still needs testing. I guess I could also create a giant version that shoots fireballs from the eye, not sure. I already have 3 bosses + special final boss ready (more about that in a separate post), so maybe it isn't needed.

4. Hell Hound. I know what you might be thinking, but you won't be able to ride those. The idea is that they are an enemy who can walk up to you and bite your leg. You cannot move until you kill it. You can still attack, cast spells, etc, you just cannot move. I have to test this to see how good will the bite animation look. If it's bad, then I'll change it to run at you from the distance and knock you down. If it misses you, it would continue running straight until it hits the wall. I'm not sure if hell hound is the best name for it?

5. Succubus is a classic ranged character shooting arrows from the distance using her crossbow. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether the name Succubus it good. I know it has some sexual connotations, but I don't know if those are strong enough to be avoided in this type of game?

6. Imp is your standard melee troop. I feel like the name fits well for a "lesser" demon.

7. Imp Assassin will have a poisoned weapon and ability to occasionally teleport behind player's back. I wish I could think of a better name?

8. Imp Mage will behave similar to the undead mages: shooting orbs at you or casting spells. I currently have a couple possible ideas for spells. One of those is taking mana from players (so you have to kill him quickly or you lose ability to cast spells) or maybe just blocking any mana use (you still get to use your mana once you kill him). The third idea I had was giving random positive effects to other demons, but it doesn't feel like a demonic thing to do. It should cripple the players in some way. This name I have the most problems with, Imp Mage feels too simple and generic.

Any ideas are welcome...

52

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 06, 2020, 02:37:09 PM »

I have an idea about some kind of doctor NPC in the castle, where you can donate blood to some kind of machine. Once you donate 200 (or maybe 300?) you get one blood runestone. It would only accept blood from player who hasn't died nor used the Life Staff. The lore behind it would be that such blood is tainted by Angellic Magic and refuses to harden into stone which is a kind of Demonic Magic originating from hell (with all the lava geysers I'm placing there).

Or maybe that could be one of the special rooms in the dungeon (some weird doctor, put in prison for his nefarious practices) or maybe some type of vampiric doctor in the catacombs? Will need to think about this.

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Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 06, 2020, 02:31:57 PM »

Ooft, that is a lot of resources. Will you need to have found a blood runestone, or will donating a health bar also do it?

BTW, the reason regular HP doesn't work for such things is that in co-op one player can die as much as they want and always gets 40 HP when reviving. So, it would be too easy to cheat on it. Not to mention HP fills with gold diet or strawberry staff which is also very easy to do in co-op.

54

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 06, 2020, 02:21:16 PM »

That would seem to significantly drop the utility of the teleport staff. Could you create a third sort of chest for the isolated/teleport needed chests in treasure rooms maybe?

Maybe I didn't explain it well. When I wrote "filter out", I meant regarding the criteria where to place the blood runestone, not removing such rooms altogether. Those rooms and walled off chests will still exist as they do now, it's just that any blood runestones in them won't count as "being present" when the game checks that at least one blood runestone is available.

It would work like this:

1. the game generates levels as usual
2. the game checks for bosses and gold chests on levels 1-5 to see if there's a blood runestone somewhere. Chests which are hard to reach (require bombs, teleportation, etc.) are ignored.
3. if there is no blood runestone, the game adds 1 blood runestone to a random boss

55

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 06, 2020, 11:45:38 AM »

Hard mode <The King doesn't drop the sceptre>

Ohhh, I forgot about that! 

I'm preparing some changes to the way it works. Sometimes the Evil Princess will rule the kingdom (this starts showing up once you kill the king for the first time and bring her the scepter) and she will have much heavier army around her. So maybe in hard mode I will make her show up every time instead of the king and she will drop the scepter always.

blood runestone,Maybe change to reduce the upper limit of health by 66??

Doesn't really work for the Pyromancer. Other heroes that start with 80 wouldn't be affected as much. I tried lowering it to 40 (this was my first idea, to have some kind of "Demon Mark") but, after some testing, I found that having to bring an item from earlier levels is much more interesting.

For example, if you get a bloodstone in the forest - do you use it to free up inventory space, or wait to see if you'll find another one. Similar tradeoffs are with mana and coins. Spend to have more chance in hell, or collect to have enough to activate the pentagram. I tried 5 runs so far, and I had to play the Heads or Tails thing twice to have enough gold, so it's challenging.

I got this idea from Spelunky where you need to collect multiple things to unlock the special ending and so far these requirements give me the same feelling I had while trying to do that in Spelunky. Needs more testing, of course.

What I want to avoid is players just sitting down and beating Hell on their first try. It would make months of development useless.

56

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 06, 2020, 11:31:06 AM »

Ooft, that is a lot of resources. Will you need to have found a blood runestone, or will donating a health bar also do it?

A blood runestone will be guaranteed to be dropped by one of the bosses on levels 1-5 or found in the gold chest. I will have to filter out some treasure room configurations where it's hard to get to the gold chest (like where you need to teleport, etc.) so that it's doable every time.

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Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 05, 2020, 11:03:26 PM »

I just finished the pentagram that takes you to hell:

Fixed some old bugs as well, mostly related to online multiplayer.

Starting to work on demon enemies Monday.

58

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: December 01, 2020, 04:08:48 PM »

Another thing which I think I mentioned ages ago is whether "rare enemies" would be a way to give some fun variation/random tactical complication without too much work. So you have a small chance of spawning a rare enemy somewhere on a level which is basically a reskin of something else with a single difference ability.

• Goblin Captain - like the goblin shielder but can move.
• Knight - like a really down-powered version of the Violet Knight
• Fire bandit - like the regular poison sword bandit but with a fire knife OR Shadow Thief - has a fade-out skin so hard to see/aim at, and deals 20dmg when it jumps on your back.
• Less sure about skeleton variants one could do as just reskins...
• Berserker - ice level spearman but has unusually low health and high damage.
• Maybe a poison sword version of the duellist on the last level?

I could happily make relevant variant skins (and would have done already if I had ). I know you have tons to do so it might be too much of a stretch though

I guess I could do that. I have promised everyone that the update will be in January, but it isn't really set in stone. Don't bother drawing anything yet, I will try to do it with simple color swaps and giving them different weapons than standard.

Also I found another bug - at least sort of - recently while playing with friends. We went to the special gold shop from the second level, bought all the stuff in it to get the coin to get back, then killed the Bushido which got us another coin. However, we'd only taken two players and the other had all the keys. So we zipped back with one coin, brought the player with the keys back... then we were out of coins and trapped and had to give up the game. So maybe the teleport to the special shop needs to only be accessible once to stop players trapping themselves there?

It's a tricky one because you can also get another silver coin in the forest as well. You can also make a mistake and use the coin in the treasure room and get teleported into the "remote" shop and stuck there. The whole point of having both the shop keeper and his guard drop a coin was to allow players to make one mistake.

Maybe I should add some kind of statue that teleports players to the start of the level, so you can always leave the area.

I was already thinking of having a similar teleport statue: there would be 2 (or more) per level, one in the post-boss room as well. When you discover them, you can teleport between those rooms. Maybe they could be in shops and at the post-boss room. Or maybe in treasure rooms.

59

Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: November 27, 2020, 09:43:11 PM »

especially the dungeon which only & always has the wolf wheel thing, and the desert which doesn't really have any unique special rooms.

The idea behind the dungeon one was that prices in shops are high and you might need to gamble if you see an item you absolutely need but cannot afford. Although, with Monkey pet and Steel boots not slowing you down, it became much easier to rob dungeon shops than before, so maybe a couple more special rooms would be a good idea.

The desert has the altar room, but yes, that's about it. I guess I never "finished" that level properly. I will have to add something there.

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Bigosaur / Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

« on: November 27, 2020, 08:58:02 PM »

Oh wow! Let me know when things need testing

Don't expect it to be soon. I plan to add a lot of stuff, so it will be a month or two before it gets anywhere to "beta" stage.

Will you have any additional rooms for current levels? I think one or two of them could maybe do with extra possibilities for special rooms, which would help freshen up the replayability.

I didn't really think about it, but I have added it to my list now. The list of possible features/fixes/changes has about 230 items currently, so something will probably have to be discarded or I will have to work on it for the next 6 months

We shall see. I love working full time on SoaW again. It just feels good when you know there are so many players waiting for this update. So, maybe I will add more stuff than usual.