Author Topic: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion  (Read 216974 times)

bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #570 on: September 24, 2018, 07:16:23 AM »
Managed the rare combo of bare bones + mana canteen + necro staff recently :) Having a full size undead army of 50 or so units is really fun - and impressive too, getting a volley of arrows and then the warriors rushing forward, with King Salamis plodding along behind to deliver bigger punches.

Epic!  :o

As I see, it managed to drop your framerate below 60fps as well.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #571 on: September 24, 2018, 10:46:11 AM »
That's actually happening not too infrequently lately :/ I'm not sure if there's an optimisation problem somewhere or if my computer's just slowed down a bit.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #572 on: September 24, 2018, 11:51:51 AM »
That's actually happening not too infrequently lately :/ I'm not sure if there's an optimisation problem somewhere or if my computer's just slowed down a bit.

Well, there are many things layered on top of the game compared to a year before for example. A couple of checks for this and that, all the new features. It slowly piles up. It isn't noticeable for a handful of sprites, but once you've got dozens of them... I did some optimizations, especially for guards which are much easier to spawn, but overall the game wasn't designed for so many units on the screen from the start.

Also, before the official release (when leaving Early Access) I did a major revamp of every room to add in more details (rocks, debris, blood stains, etc.). These all go into the sprite array when calculating the draw order and when you have dozens of units moving around it hurts performance. But the game looks much better with all the added stuff, so I don't plan to remove it.

If it becomes an issue, you can change some of the graphics settings to improve performance: reduce the ground particle count to 2-3 and disable item hover particles completely.

The only thing that isn't really the game's fault are those random lockups. It never happens to me on Intel GPU computer, so it must be something with the graphics card (I did see it on nVIDIA). BTW, I tried to add a possible workaround for that and it's in the version 3.7.3. Did you see the lockup problem in the latest version?

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #573 on: September 25, 2018, 03:11:02 PM »
I've not noticed it yet, so it may be fixed, I'll let you know :)

I still think the vampire hunter quest is too hard - I've still not completed it, even when I carefully remove all the bats the Vampiress seems to be able to just happily take down Jolanda :/ I feel like at the moment it would be the right difficulty for eg a character unlock level quest, but to me it still feels too hard for a regular sidequest, especially as you can't resurrect Jolanda with the life staff if she dies.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #574 on: September 25, 2018, 04:11:12 PM »
I've not noticed it yet, so it may be fixed, I'll let you know :)

I still think the vampire hunter quest is too hard - I've still not completed it, even when I carefully remove all the bats the Vampiress seems to be able to just happily take down Jolanda :/ I feel like at the moment it would be the right difficulty for eg a character unlock level quest, but to me it still feels too hard for a regular sidequest, especially as you can't resurrect Jolanda with the life staff if she dies.

I just did a test run yesterday and was able to do it easily. The trick was to hit the vampiress once so that she starts to chase me and then keep running from her until Jolanda kills her. Running back and forth close to Jolanda does the job. This puts is at 2 successes from the last 3 runs I tried (66%), and I kind of feel that it should be doable almost every time, esp. if you use some help (peace scroll, freeze staff/hammer, earthquake staff to knock vamp down, etc.). I need to play more before I decide. The reward is 3 blood runestones, so I feel like it has to be a tricky challenge.


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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #575 on: September 25, 2018, 09:47:47 PM »
I think part of my trouble is that if I've played OK, by that point in the game it's really quite hard for me not to end up accidentally killing the vampire myself! I'll get there eventually I guess. But I'd stil be tempted to a) let you resurrect Jolanda and and/or b) go the whole hog and make the drop a Book of Life.

I've finally got the VIP customer achievement - just reloaded the game a ton of times until I got the chest as my starting item, that seems to be the key to it.

I should probably update the guides with the new stuff...
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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #576 on: September 26, 2018, 08:19:23 AM »
I've finally got the VIP customer achievement - just reloaded the game a ton of times until I got the chest as my starting item, that seems to be the key to it.

Getting Avarice early works too. That's how I did it. But I think it's also doable if you get the Pig pet and the Gilded Predator hammer in the first level.

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I should probably update the guides with the new stuff...

I don't plan to add any significant changes soon (most likely not before December or so), so you can rely on things being stable.


Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #577 on: September 27, 2018, 05:34:45 PM »
Major bug report, I finally got Jolanda to kill a vampiress... and didn't get the achievement. :( It was in the lower catacombs so that may be why? Also I think confusion was in play, so that may also explain it.

I'm just really annoyed now, it's taken me *ages* - I'm finding this on par with some of the harder special achievements. I still think it's considerably too difficult overall, in the shops the bats are more than a match for Jolanda, plus the Vampiress will usually kill Jolanda herself if she gets tagged onto her, and kite-ing the Vampiress without killing her is usually far too tricky to reliably do in one attempt for me, since the chance of me accidentally killing the vampiress myself is just too high. Could you maybe give Jolanda some level of immunity to the Vampiress' knockdown attack such that she shields herself and can block it? That would improve her odds a lot as long as you can get her one-on-one with the Vampiress. I still think you should be able to rez her with the life staff, too.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #578 on: September 28, 2018, 09:46:46 AM »
Major bug report, I finally got Jolanda to kill a vampiress... and didn't get the achievement. :( It was in the lower catacombs so that may be why? Also I think confusion was in play, so that may also explain it.

I don't get it. There's no special check for location or magic. The achievement unlocks when Jolanda hits the vampiress and her HP goes below 1. That's the only check.

Did Jolanda actually deal the final blow with her sword? Is it possible that something else killed the vamp? You mention confusion. Is it possible that some other unit (skeleton archer or mage) killed her with a projectile or maybe a bat dashed into her?

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kite-ing the Vampiress without killing her is usually far too tricky to reliably do in one attempt for me

Remebering the way you play the game, yes I can imagine it being really hard as a lot of dodging and running is required.

I do it mostly by just running around and hitting the bats on the opposite side. And then just switching back and forth until only the vampiress is left. When I get Jolanda with me, I don't attack at all. I think I will record a short video of it today to show, it's hard to explain with words.

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Could you maybe give Jolanda some level of immunity to the Vampiress' knockdown attack such that she shields herself and can block it? That would improve her odds a lot as long as you can get her one-on-one with the Vampiress. I still think you should be able to rez her with the life staff, too.

I just looked at the Steam achievement stats, and the number of people who have killed the vamp. is twice the number of players who got the VIP Customer achievement (which isn't *that* hard really). So I feel like the challenge level is fair.

You can heal her with the life staff when she gets low on health. She's got 300 HP, there's plenty of time.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #579 on: September 28, 2018, 10:25:47 AM »
No, in this case it was definitely Jolanda who made the kill, everything else was dead and I was on the other side of the room. The Vampire was poisoned I think, but that can't reduce health to below one I don't think. It was pretty odd. I'm sorry I didn't think to get a replay, I was just annoyed at that point and went to do something else for a bit.

What I don't understand is how you get the Vampiress to chase you when you go back in with Jolanda if you're not attacking her? I've often just had the Vampiress go for her, at which point my options are to attack (and likely fail the quest by killing the Vampiress) or not attack (and fail anyway as the Vampiress just kills Jolanda).

But anyway, fair enough if other players are managing it. I just suspect it's a quest I'll often skip once I've completed it for the achievement; the cost of a bomb needed to get a  route out of the shop and clear the bats without Jolanda isn't honestly worth it for a quest I've got quite a low chance of completing, unless I have lots of spare bombs and usually I don't or am trying to save them for use on the ice level.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #580 on: September 28, 2018, 12:45:34 PM »
I just gave it a try in today's daily challenge and managed to do it in the second shop (without even killing the bats beforehand):


What I don't understand is how you get the Vampiress to chase you when you go back in with Jolanda if you're not attacking her?

When you attack her to trigger the bats, she should be already following you. You only need for her to switch to you again if she re-targets to Jolanda. Using some weak weapon is a good idea - in the video above I forgot about that and killed the vampiress in the first shop on accident because my damage was too high.

You can see how easily I cleared the bats in the first shop. In hindsight, I was lucky that the second shop was close by. I should have first cleared the path from one shop into another and also cleared the bats in the second shop before leading Jolanda, but I guess I was overconfident that I would be able to do it in the first shop.

If the achievement fails to trigger for you again, it would be really useful to see the replay. There must be some edge case that I'm not aware of.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2018, 12:54:06 PM by bigosaur »

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #581 on: September 29, 2018, 05:19:12 PM »
I feel like there must be something I'm forgetting about that run... maybe I had a pet and I'm forgetting it? That would explain it. I'm sure I didn't have the blowfish or bat, but I guess I might have had the ram and forgotten about it or something.

I decided to try and find a seed for a run with Jolanda on so, and so of course she hasn't appeared in the last 10 or so runs I've done.  :(
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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #582 on: September 30, 2018, 04:04:37 PM »
Finally got the achievement sorted - cleared out the bats, and I had a flaming sword so the vampire was on about 1hp by the time I left. Walked in the door and Jolanda one-hitted her almost immediately.

I feel like she should have some post-battle dialogue if that's possible, like e.g. the princesses do? Just like a "Thank you" or a "Here's a reward for your help, good luck on your quest!" or something.
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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #583 on: September 30, 2018, 06:37:03 PM »
I feel like she should have some post-battle dialogue if that's possible, like e.g. the princesses do? Just like a "Thank you" or a "Here's a reward for your help, good luck on your quest!" or something.

Good idea. I had it working and then it caused problems in network games, so I disabled until fixed and then forgot about that. I will work on it for the next version.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion
« Reply #584 on: September 30, 2018, 07:34:57 PM »
Fair :)

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