Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

[bigosaur]

Why does the portable foundry have no mana cost? It's way more powerful than the magic chest, which does.

I initially wanted it to have mana cost, but if it did, you would be tempted to go through a very tedious process of bringing all the items into a single room to convert them with a single mana-spend.

Magic chest is limited by mana, Fondry is limited with the number of items that drop. Maybe I should increase the magic chest coin amount or reduce the mana cost - I do find that I rarely use it because it doesn't give you much gold.

Does "special attacks" on the cushion just mean rage attacks?

Yes. Every attack that spends mana/rage, even magic buffs.

I feel like the bomb effect on the miner's shield should maybe be a removable status effect or something?

If you wear an item/amulet/etc. it makes no sense that a potion would remove it.

I dunno, it feels a big playstyle change for what appears to be a not terribly uncommon item.

This is what I wanted to accomplish. Have some runs that feel and play differently so the players never get bored.

Are we going to get a scroll of summon monsters at some point? It's a bit of a classic of roguelikes etc and it'd work quite well in this game, I think.

Not a bad idea, although I've seen various variants of that. Do you have some idea how exactly would it work?

There's now a whole bunch of dwarven or plausibly-dwarven items (spinner, ring, miners' shield, foundry) - but no dwarves. I was thinking that using dwarves as the ice mountain shopkeepers might fit thematically quite well?.

Good idea. Added to my TODO list.

[Jubal]

Decided to try and see how do-able the "In A Rush" achievement is. Took me most of the evening and a LOT of runs to complete it - it's one of those achievements where you need to actually go out achievement hunting, and even then you need to be very lucky to get all the boss fights close enough to level starts to have a decent chance. It's nice to have a few of those really difficult ones on the list, I guess.

If you tweak magic chest, I'd increase the gold amount given - I agree it's quite low at the moment compared to other things I could use that mana for.

So does the cushion give invulnerability to wizards only during their casting action, or for as long as the spell is in play? Seems super powerful if it's the latter.

Regarding summon monsters - basically I was thinking it would spawn (maybe on the other side of the room) a small number extra monsters, ideally some of the bigger/more monstrous ones (and maybe a couple of bonus ones if the art budget stretches that far). These would then fight both you and the enemies, but might give you some useful cover/distraction, especially in boss fights. It would also be a fun surprise if you tried reading it at random in forest level and suddenly accidentally summoned three yetis or whatever.

[bigosaur]

Decided to try and see how do-able the "In A Rush" achievement is. Took me most of the evening and a LOT of runs to complete it - it's one of those achievements where you need to actually go out achievement hunting and even then you need to be very lucky

With a proper starting item you could be less reliant on luck. At first I tried the regular "whatever the game gives me" approach, managed to beat it on the third try (because level 1 and 2 bosses were only two rooms away) and thought it was easy. Then some player complained on their Twitch stream, so I tried again and hit a wall. I did notice that some starting items help a lot, so I would just restart until I got one of those.

For the hero I pick Skeleton Ranger because he can one-shot from the very start. Bottomless Bag of Bombs is great to skip rooms, Magic Map is great not having to rely on luck to explore, but my favorite is the Rainbow Horn - allow monsters to hit you until you're barely alive and then 200+ damage makes the boss fights much shorter. Still, my success rate is maybe once is 10 runs. It's cool that it takes only 5 minutes to try.

I recorded a couple of runs, but it will take some time to upload to YouTube because my upload speed is abysmal.

If you tweak magic chest, I'd increase the gold amount given - I agree it's quite low at the moment compared to other things I could use that mana for.

I have increased it to 100. Will test to see how it feels.

So does the cushion give invulnerability to wizards only during their casting action, or for as long as the spell is in play? Seems super powerful if it's the latter.

Only during casting. The idea with cushion is to save you from situations where you have mana/rage but enemies keep stunning and you can you cannot perform the attack/buff.

Regarding summon monsters - basically I was thinking it would spawn (maybe on the other side of the room) a small number extra monsters, ideally some of the bigger/more monstrous ones (and maybe a couple of bonus ones if the art budget stretches that far). These would then fight both you and the enemies, but might give you some useful cover/distraction, especially in boss fights. It would also be a fun surprise if you tried reading it at random in forest level and suddenly accidentally summoned three yetis or whatever.

Would those monsters follow you into other rooms like guards and undead servants? This part of my code was somewhat messy, so I have avoided adding much features to it (for example, I had an idea that you can hire Bushido for 100gp/battle), but maybe I should just bite the bullet and rewrite it to allow any unit to follow the player.

[Jubal]

I suspect 100 for the chest will be too high - I was thinking more like 50.

Yes, I eventually completed In A Rush with skele ranger + magic map. I still think it takes a good degree of luck - though of course it's probably the worst achievement for me to attempt, since it's the most alien to how I normally play the game! I think it usually takes ten minutes for me to get past the forest level...

I was just thinking that the summoned monsters would be "wild", not allied to the player, and would be part of the battle so wouldn't follow you around. I think more ally units would be good (on which note, I feel like the mana cost for the sceptre may be too high, I never use it atm because the soldiers just always walk straight into traps and get poisoned and die), but that wasn't how I was thinking of Summon Monsters being implement.

[bigosaur]

I suspect 100 for the chest will be too high - I was thinking more like 50.

I feel like anything lower than 100 doesn't make it desirable. It's 33 per room but takes an inventory slot and you don't have any mana for other things.

Yes, I eventually completed In A Rush with skele ranger + magic map. I still think it takes a good degree of luck - though of course it's probably the worst achievement for me to attempt, since it's the most alien to how I normally play the game! I think it usually takes ten minutes for me to get past the forest level...

Here's my attempt with the Magic Bag (forgot to take the Infinite Bow and ran out of arrows near the end):

And a successful one with the Unicorn Horn:

I was just thinking that the summoned monsters would be "wild", not allied to the player, and would be part of the battle so wouldn't follow you around

Is this how the "classic" summon spell works? I haven't played D&D myself, but as far as I know, "summon" usually means "allied". For example, this page:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/summon-monster/

states "It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability."

(on which note, I feel like the mana cost for the sceptre may be too high, I never use it atm because the soldiers just always walk straight into traps and get poisoned and die), but that wasn't how I was thinking of Summon Monsters being implement.

You're right. Maybe I should lower the sceptre cost to 1 mana.

[Jubal]

Summon usually means allied in D&D spellcasting, I think, but this isn't true of standard English nor of roguelikes in general, which are mainly what I was thinking of - I think the ToME summon monster scrolls act more like what I was suggesting, and the Pixel Dungeon summon monster traps. Also, I guess it makes sense if a cast spell summons allies (you cast it after all) whereas if you're reading a scroll someone else inscribed you wouldn't necessarily know what it summoned or have an ability to control it.

Also, the cutlass keeps having its effect on spawned goons in the boss fights, so you can currently "farm" them and keep notching up your combat stat forever.

Agreed on the sceptre being 1 mana - especially as it's a pretty poor combat weapon.

I see what you mean about the chest - I dunno, I feel like some of the new & tweaked items may be getting a bit powerful/unpredictable and might want to be made a little rarer to compensate, but I'm not sure.

[bigosaur]

if you're reading a scroll someone else inscribed you wouldn't necessarily know what it summoned or have an ability to control it.

Ah, makes sense. Like cultists drawing a pentagram and summoning a demon, etc.

Also, the cutlass keeps having its effect on spawned goons in the boss fights, so you can currently "farm" them and keep notching up your combat stat forever.

This should not happen. I just checked the code. Perhaps the bug is that I forgot to flag some of the spawning enemies as such. Do you remember which fight it was?

[bigosaur]

This should not happen. I just checked the code. Perhaps the bug is that I forgot to flag some of the spawning enemies as such. Do you remember which fight it was?

Nevermind, I found it. Both the Goblin HQ (first level boss fight) and Guard HQ (2nd and 3rd) level did not set the flag. I will fix it in a new version tomorrow.

[Jubal]

Good stuff

I'm thinking of making a couple more winter/Christmas character skins, not sure what to do yet - I have the Father Christmas archer from last year, I might do a snowman knight or something, not sure

[bigosaur]

Version 2.8.7 is online:

- fixed the bug where the game could sometimes crash if a pet attacks the Snowman while he is holding up his cane to defend from the projectiles
- show proper arrow graphics when you switch arrow in a middle of attack animation
- show proper arrow graphics when you run out of one type of arrows and the archer starts to shoot a different type
- fixed the hair color for the evil princess death animation
- some bows would transfer their special effects (ex. freezing) to the backup knife - fixed
- reduced the Shepherd staff mana cost to 1
- fixed the gap between the fences (gates) in one of the battlements rooms
- fixed the problem where the hero would sometimes automatically start shooting after being dead or knocked down
- removed special effects (Cutlass, Warbreaker, etc.) from respawning minions in the boss fights in levels 1, 2 and 3
- updated some of the translations

[Jubal]

Fix suggestion: could you turn off the "teleport spots" that appear for the teleport staff when the player no longer has the staff equipped? It's kind of annoying seeing them if I only picked the staff up once several levels ago.

[bigosaur]

Fix suggestion: could you turn off the "teleport spots" that appear for the teleport staff when the player no longer has the staff equipped? It's kind of annoying seeing them if I only picked the staff up once several levels ago.

I actually put those up deliberately so players can see what they're missing out on. I have watched many players playing the game on Twitch and YouTube and they just pick the staff up, teleport once across the screen and then discard it. If those "whirls" were not visible, they would never figure out that the Teleport staff can be used to reach those "special" places.

[Jubal]

Couldn't you let people know that via the loading screen suggestions/tips though? I can see that it's useful for newer players to learn that, but as a more experienced player it's really annoying.

[bigosaur]

Couldn't you let people know that via the loading screen suggestions/tips though?

I find that people start to ignore these very quickly.

as a more experienced player it's really annoying.

I don't understand why do you find it annoying? It doesn't really change the gameplay at all. I barely notice it while playing. Is it distracting, or you just get angry because you could have taken the staff but now you cannot get there and it annoys you?

As a solution, I could add an option in the Settings to hide it, but it somehow doesn't feel like it's something that important to warrant a special setting.

[Jubal]

I think it's both - I do find it distracting, and whilst angry would be the wrong word, I guess it feels like the game is giving me irrelevant information that is frustrating and that penalises me for playing correctly. For example, if I find a tele-staff on level 1, it usually make sense to ping to the corners of the shops and get the barrel contents there, even in cases where I don't need a staff and have much better things to take to the next level. It's not always the correct move to keep the staff with you. At the moment, though, I often decide not to pick it up at all, because permanently having the flashy teleport pings for the rest of the game is just a frustrating distraction.

I do see that it's not important enough to warrant a whole setting... You could do something like add an achievement for teleporting to multiple hidden locations in a game, and then switch the teleport signs off when you're not holding the staff after the player gets that (& thus "proves" they know how to use the staff), but that might be quite complex to do I guess. It may not be worth the trouble of fixing the problem at all, but it is really annoying for me personally.