Messages

466

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

« on: September 16, 2016, 09:55:59 AM »

Upvoted Are those pet chickens and pigs on the greenlight video?

Let's see... in order of appearance ... bunny, pig, blowfish, deer, lizard, chicken.

There are already 20 pets in the game, each with a different effect. Here are some:



Snail slows down enemies, Ram knocks them down, etc.

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

« on: September 13, 2016, 10:09:51 PM »

Here comes the red dragon:

My Mom is a Witch is on Steam Greenlight now, please vote:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=761177454

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

« on: September 04, 2016, 11:19:42 PM »

One more thing that I've been trying to test but not managed - what happens if you have a run of "speed up, max health down" potions enough to make your max health hit zero? Do you die?

Your max HP never drops below 10. If it's 10 and you drink one more potion, max HP remains the same, and the current HP drops to one.

The medusa arrows...on the boss is actually a bad idea unless having real problems

That's true for now (Ogre Mom will be one of the easiest bosses in the game). Currently, the best use is to petrify the shop guard.

BTW, I forgot to post this, I have a new unit type ready for the second level:



He's shown in the forest in this video because I was testing, but you will find him at the battlements in the actual game. The guards are quick and deadly. They can throw spears from the distance, or stab you when too close:



Their spears have great range, longer than all standard swords, so melee combat against them is very challenging.

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

« on: September 04, 2016, 10:40:45 PM »

One thing on MMAW that I just noticed; when I'm the knight and can't identify scrolls, I can ID them when I have a temporary magic boost (the +50% in next battle one). However, I "forget" what they are when I lose that again. It would perhaps make more sense if once the scroll had been identified it stayed identified, even if you were able to do so only with a temporary stat boost.

Great catch. It also happened to me a few days ago when I found a lot of Barbarian (melee+, magic-) potions and basically changed my class from mage to knight mid-game. Suddenly all knowledge of scrolls was gone.

I'll make it work the way you described.

Here are some updates on the game:

I'm adding some screens without enemies, but with traps instead. It creates an interesting variety. Instead of just plowing through the piles of enemies, sometimes you have to stop and carefully thread across the screen. Of course, some screens will combine enemies with hazards, which you can use to your benefit.



These spitters shoot fireballs. Fire is one of the most dangerous types of damage. Here's a breakdown of the types of damage in the game have so far:



Petrify
Turns into stone within 10 seconds. Counter with Life Staff or Dragon Fire Potion.

Fire
Burning drains health really fast. Regular fireballs, walking onto a campfire or getting hit by a spitter drains 50-60 health in a couple of seconds.

Ice
doesn't do any damage, but prevents movement/attacking for a couple of seconds.

Poison
Slowly drains health. Can only be stopped with Dragon Fire Potion or Antidote.

Hunger
Very slowly drains health. Can be stopped by eating any type of food, including gold coins if you have the Gold Diet buff.

470

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

« on: August 31, 2016, 05:44:23 PM »

Are you going to be at EGX for all the four days?

Yes. In fact, I'm coming in on 19th, and will spend 20th buying the monitors and 21st setting up the stand. If you don't want to mess with the EGX, perhaps we could meet before the madness starts have some beers in the evening or whatever. My sister is coming with me, so we'll definitely want to see the city as well.

I'm flying in late on 19th, and my plan is to pre-order the monitors from box.co.uk and have them ready for pickup on 20th. On 20th, I would go there personally, pick them up and bring those back to hotel. It's about 9 miles away. Any idea how much a cab (taxi?) would cost me for that distance?

After the monitor business is over, we'll probably go sightseeing around the city? Any recommendations?

I could certainly at least look after some monitors for you and keep them in a cupboard/borrow them for events occasionally (or indeed allow you to remotely handle re-selling them to someone else if you wanted to do that).

That would be awesome.

Also, if you've got any plans to come to ExiliCon, please drop me an email (megadux@exilian.co.uk) - it's quite a small event to come so far for from your point of view

I would love to come. It's only an airplane ticket away and there are low-cost companies, so it shouldn't be too expensive. Since it's a small event, I would come alone, esp. since the monitor problem is now handled and I only need to bring my laptop. E-mail coming your way.

471

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

« on: August 30, 2016, 02:41:35 PM »

Could you have an extra keypress option (z maybe) that brings up a popup extra box with stats/info on the thing currently in your active inventory slot? That would seem like the best option to me. I'd like to be able to check my character's Mag/Rng/Combat percentages too, so that could follow a similar system.

I have already implemented the last one. When you pause the game, detailed character stats are shown beneath the player/inventory area: mag/rng/melee, speed, magic/archery range, current/max HP, etc. I might add current weapon/item info alongside.

- Have a training dummy, and make the rest of the characters non-attackable or even penalise the player for attacking them (you can have the dummy able to be knocked over, or have a second knocked over one as well). It's possibly just me, but in general I admit I find "joyfully whack your fellow peaceful villagers in the face with a sword" slightly odd simply from a storyline perspective.

Initially, I had then getting angry at you. However, some test players would accidentally hit them, and then they weren't able to get their tips anymore. So I made a change and now they ignore your hits until they die or teleport away.

The veteran soldier and the pirate are meant to be the dummies for hitting.

Looking forward to being able to play through some more - I used this as my test stream for our twitch channel, I'll let you know if I stream another playthrough at some point

Great! Thanks.

BTW, I'm going to show the game at the EGX in Birmingham in September. Did you (or anyone else on this forum) plan on going there?

I also have an interesting issue that I'm not quite sure how to solve. Since renting equipment from Eurogamer is too expensive and I only need the monitors, I'm thinking about buying two new monitors for the show (I'm coming via airplane, so shipping monitors all over from Serbia isn't a good idea). Anyway, when EGX is over, I'm going to have two extra monitors that I've payed for, but it doesn't really look like a good idea to fly them back with me (I don't really need those back home, and the airplane cost + customs tax when I re-enter my country are rather high).

I see a couple of options here:

1. find someone else to rent/borrow monitors from for a fee? I don't know anyone in UK, so this sounds complicated.

2. buy monitors and sell them to someone in UK when the show is over. Those would be completely new monitors, used only for 4 days at the show, but I would sell them with some good discount. The main problem is that the show ends on Sunday at 19pm, and I have to leave for airplane Monday at 7am, so basically the transaction would have to happen Sunday evening after 19pm, and I really don't know how to find people interested.

3. buy new monitors, leave them with someone in the UK and re-use them for the next show (I might come to Exilian event in October). Of course, I would need someone to keep monitors for me. I wouldn't mind if that person used them in the meantime if they find some need for it.

The monitor size would be somewhere in 24" - 30" range.

Any ideas how to solve this are welcome?

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

« on: August 21, 2016, 06:14:07 PM »

Have now completed the forest level as both characters, both times by using the barrel transformation on the boss. I guess my current feeling is that it's a bit too random - if you get the perfect item or sheer luck you've got an OK shot

You're probably not used to playing so fast paced games. The first boss is made so that you can defeat it easily with default weapons. Especially with Knight: just lure her to initiate the club strike by standing in front of her. As she raises the club, quickly step aside (down or up) and then you have plenty of time to spam the light-attack button and build up the rage. After 2-3 rage attacks, she's gone. Make sure you do this positioned to the right of her as light-attack stun-locks the approaching goblins. You don't want to go left and risk goblins sneaking behind your back. It just takes some practice.

Beside the "Barellize" scroll, you can get the Peace scroll or Meduza arrows (if you're lucky to find a bow as well) for a quick and easy battle. Also, ice weapons (sword/hammer) make the fight very easy. The main problem is obtaining those (with some luck - in a locked treasure room). Or you can get the Escape scroll and skip the battle completely. Also, if you get a Potion of Infinite Rage, the fight is a breeze. But all these were meant for quick and easy skip of the boss to not have to go through the fight every time. Still, you should be able to beat her every time once you get more experience with the game.

Useful items are often found in the shop, but are too expensive. If you have 1 bomb, you can rob the shop by attacking the shop keeper. Once ready, place the bomb near a door to blast it, grab the item you want to, and run through the blasted door. The bodyguard doesn't follow you. It's risky, and I only succeed 50% of the time, but for some items it's worth it. Also, you can use Barellize or Gamble (change enemies) scrolls on the bodyguard and then loot all the items from the shop for free.

Maybe script in some limit to ensure you can't get two shamans in one room, especially if there's much in the way of obstacles to stop you getting to them then having two is just a frustrating death sentence.

I don't know if you figured it out already, but you can grab the voodoo doll once the Shaman drops it. So, the strategy for two shamans is to wait for a doll drop, grab the doll and then "activate" it, i.e. bind it to some of the enemies and drop it back to the ground. Then wait for the other shaman to drop the doll and grab that one. This way the shamans won't have any way to hurt you via dolls, and you only have to dodge the meteors, which isn't that hard. BTW, as you hit shaman, he becomes more and more aggressive, so make sure you sort out the doll collecting business before you start going hard on them.

The knight's sword has enough reach to cross low walls, but goblins don't attack back across them, which makes for perhaps overly easy kills any time you have a "trapped" goblin in the centre of a room.

Yup, the Knight sword deliberately has more damage than any goblin weapon. The goblins would actually attack you through walls/rocks if they could reach, but their reach is rather low. Only Goblin Sword has somewhat useful reach, but it's still shorter than the Knight's Long Sword. I don't mind giving players an easy option for some fights. As you noted, the game is already hard enough

Your rage builds up when you attack the guys in the village - as such I always end up tagging back there between fights to build up my rage counter

You're right. I didn't think about that. Not sure how would I fix it though, because the NPCs' purpose is to teach the mechanics, and rage belongs there, so making them immune wouldn't work. Perhaps I should just lower their HP, so you cannot do it often. Although, when you get more experienced with the game, you would rarely feel a need to refill the rage on the first level.

There doesn't seem to be any way to check what stored potions and scrolls are without dropping them and picking them up again

This is actually a real problem and I too feel like it needs to be addressed. Especially if you get the "Avarice" curse and you cannot drop items. However, I have no good idea how? Perhaps I could use the icons that show up when you activate the scroll/drink the potion and show a smaller icons like that in the inventory...?

Regarding conversations, I think at the end of every conversation box except the last one you need [w for more] or something in small writing, then it'd be reasonably clear.

Thanks. I'll do it like that an see how it turns out with new players who haven't seen the game before.

BTW, I'm currently drawing and preparing graphics for the second level. The story continues at the castle battlements:



As the goblin invasion is in progress, the battlements are filled with dangerous war machinery. The castle guards are defending a siege and have prepared various weapons and traps for the invaders. You are intruding here, so prepare to deal with the guards and the hazards at the same time.

The second level is meant to be more dangerous, but possibly shorter than the forest area playwise. You're walking around the battlements looking for a way to enter the castle insides.

473

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

« on: August 06, 2016, 04:14:29 PM »

On the initial trailer line, have the speech bubbles pop up one by one rather than appearing statically - keep people having something to look at. Though I guess you may want to actually move the characters around during that sequence in later versions anyway.

Yeah, those images are just a placeholder for now. I plan to have a complete "video" type of trailer. I still haven't figured out the whole script for it, but it should work in "show don't tell" fashion, i.e. stuff should happen on the screen and player will be able to figure out who's who and what's happening without narration overlay.

Menus - when I hit w to input a name I ended up also typing a w at the start of the name. A silly thing but I bet players will end up with unwanted characters called things like "wAragorn" and so on

Yup, I was annoyed by that one too. Caused by a strange bug in SDL. Fixed in the meantime.

In the village: during dialogue, it was pretty unclear when a conversation was supposed to have ended, and I missed several bits of advice on my first character as a result. I think you do need a [w for more]

I watched a couple people play and have seen this problem. One of players even stated that NPCs were useless because he didn't figure out that you can press W multiple times. Definitely a problem.

I still haven't fixed it as I'm not sure what is the correct way to do it. Do you think changing "w to talk" into "w for more" would be noticeable enough?

I think more explanation of when you can do powered-up attacks etc would have been good too, and possibly some kind of very gentle test-run fight beyond attacking the villagers. I'm still working some of the mana/etc levels out. The goblins are pretty tough opponents to hit right at the start of the game. About six dead characters so far can testify! (Or could testify if they weren't corpses)

These two kind of blend together. Since the game is rogue-like it's meant to be hard. This also means you will restart and play the game over many times. Not discovering all the mechanics immediately is a good thing. I really want the players to just go in with basic attacks (that's why the Knight is the default choice) and slowly learn the ropes and discover more and more effective ways to deal with enemies.

BTW, the mana system is shortly explained by the Cleric NPC if you have a magic item (ex. a staff) and talk to him.

I do like the general systems, though, it seems to work well, plays smoothly, looks good and I've found it good fun so far. Will report back soon with more thoughts and when I've explored the possibilities a bit more

Thanks! This kind of feedback means a lot.

Here's some eye candy. The forest level ends with this:

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

« on: August 02, 2016, 02:46:55 AM »

I made a free demo. You can download it from here:

http://bigosaur.com/witch-demo035-setup.exe

It lacks sound effects and of course a lot of content, but you can play with those 2 characters, 7 different enemies and about 30 different weapons/items.

Let me know how you like it.

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

« on: July 27, 2016, 10:48:47 AM »

Does this have the same bodyguard system as the merchants?

Yes. But this NPC is a healer, so she can even heal the bodyguard while you fight.

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

« on: July 23, 2016, 04:25:12 PM »

Only one thing which struck me - the brothers if anything look older than their mother.

I never looked at it that way. Perhaps I should make the "grown up" sprites a little bit taller... Or maybe just plug in the "youth magic" idea somewhere in the story. Thanks.

Potion shop

Sometimes a special kind of room will be created in the maze: a potion shop, pet shop or a quest room. More on quest rooms later, but here's the potion room:

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

« on: July 15, 2016, 08:08:42 AM »

I  have some cut-scenes planned for the final game, but currently a couple of placeholder images will do the job of showing the game plot:

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

« on: July 12, 2016, 10:02:47 PM »

Nice! Are you going to have any cutscenes/voice acting etc as the plot advances, btw?

Cut-scenes are planned. I currently only have a couple of still screens with characters and dialog boxes (will share those soon).

I don't think there will be voice acting, as that's hard to do right and better no voice acting than bad voice acting. I might add a narrator to the story in the end.

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

« on: June 30, 2016, 10:16:53 AM »

What's the magical life-giving fairy triggered by?

It comes when at least one player is dead and at least one player is alive and there are no monsters.

Here's a trailer video, this time with proper cuts, so it's much more interesting and dynamic:

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

« on: June 12, 2016, 11:41:42 PM »

Here's a video of some co-op gameplay. You can see how we robbed the shop