Author Topic: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion  (Read 218257 times)

bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #435 on: February 12, 2018, 07:59:42 PM »
in fact, I didn't do much fighting the Butcher, I dodged around and let the ice wizards get on with the job...

 8)

Reminds me of one of my recent runs where I used Confusion in the Ringleader fight and one of his minions stun-locked him and just clubbed him to death (he kept trying to drink the health potion, so he didn't move away) while I was evading other enemies.

I'm starting to think that RNG isn't really that important because there are so many items and weapons that you would always get something useful to win.


Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #436 on: February 13, 2018, 11:34:33 PM »
I've been trying to practice/work on compendium, with very little success. A few thoughts:
  • A room with 15 or so ice wizards is really unpleasant/jarring to play with, the only thing you can do is run around with massive screen shake until they kill each other off, and you just have to be staring at a constantly juddering, rattling screen for ages running around waiting for that to happen... it pretty much gave me a headache doing it.
  • I've only ever got as far as the dungeon level, because the fights there, especially the Trickster and Felgin, usually rely on a certain amount of attrition, which you just can't do easily with the way the game is at the moment - there are too few "regular" rooms where you can get small health potions etc.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #437 on: February 14, 2018, 10:54:33 AM »
A room with 15 or so ice wizards is really unpleasant/jarring to play with, the only thing you can do is run around with massive screen shake until they kill each other off, and you just have to be staring at a constantly juddering, rattling screen for ages running around waiting for that to happen... it pretty much gave me a headache doing it.

I thought it was funny. Perhaps I will add a setting to reduce screen shake or something like that.

Quote
I've only ever got as far as the dungeon level, because the fights there, especially the Trickster and Felgin, usually rely on a certain amount of attrition, which you just can't do easily with the way the game is at the moment - there are too few "regular" rooms where you can get small health potions etc.

Maybe it needs rebalancing. Also, the Trolling challenge seems to be fine until you run into a room with 7-8 Bushidos in the Desert level. It think I might need to tweak that one too. Maybe adding more treasure rooms / shops in between the boss fights could give the player more weapon/scroll choices to help beating or escaping those fights. I will playtest both of these challenges a little bit more before I decide what exactly to do.

Thanks.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #438 on: February 14, 2018, 12:53:55 PM »
I dunno, it just made my eyes/head hurt personally. It would be kind of amusing for a few seconds, but keeping the running up for over half a minute just starts really grating on my eyes.

I think in Compendium, the shops seem to sell too many weapons and too few potions/scrolls, possibly.

EDIT: Overdrive completed. Got bare bones amulet in the first level, had the retort & money is power and somehow survived long enough to get back up to health. By the end of it I was running with a well upgraded mjolnir and a massive boost from money is power, plus a critical hit chance of like 85%, plus the dwarven spinner. I think I managed to hit 1314 damage in a single regular close-combat hit by the end of the game.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 06:52:34 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #439 on: February 14, 2018, 08:22:53 PM »
I think I managed to hit 1314 damage in a single regular close-combat hit by the end of the game.

 :o  :o  :o

BTW, I found a good tactics for Compendium. Start with a Knight, get a voodoo doll and ice sword (hammer is also ok until you find the sword). Just voodoo every boss, drop the doll and then keep hitting it. All the minions are coming from the right, so you can avoid their projectiles vertically until they reach the doll and then hit them and the doll at the same time.

So, it's good for bosses. There are some tough minion rooms (Orcs and Skeleton Mages are giving me some problems) so you need to use the remaining slots to help you there; and I'm still not sure about the optimal tactics for the ice level, but the Dungeon is no longer a problem.

Lack of healing potions is still noticeable. I did get the Life staff in one run, but forgot to use it before I died :( because it wasn't a boss room.

Maybe the bosses should drop small HP potions more often in this mode. I need to test more.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #440 on: February 14, 2018, 11:01:48 PM »
Head Start completed. It was a completely mad run, I was a knight and had barely better than base level stats, my pig died quickly, the only immunity I had was poison, and I hit a gold diet potion early so I couldn't even buy any good upgrades... I managed to do it with a combo of retaliator sword + stack of gold diet potions (and high bloodlust). On the last level I had one room where I blew a door open and kept one regular swordsman alive so I could go back in and get stabbed by him a few times to boost the retaliator back up. I had a horse pet, so sweep-and-stomp tactics worked on most regular rooms, then I left plenty of gold on the ground saved up for boss fight prep. Still only just worked, I got set on fire by the dragon master with very little health left (and that after nearly dying in the catacomb boss fight, too), but a win is a win...

And yeah, that's a good point, I need to get better at using dolls in several of these. It took me several runs to work out that you basically need to use the bomb in compendium to bypass the shaman room then come back when you've no longer got all the dolls pinned on you.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #441 on: February 15, 2018, 09:47:33 AM »
kept one regular swordsman alive so I could go back in and get stabbed by him a few times to boost the retaliator back up

That's a really cool idea, I never thought about something like that.

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And yeah, that's a good point, I need to get better at using dolls in several of these. It took me several runs to work out that you basically need to use the bomb in compendium to bypass the shaman room

Are you playing version 3.1.6? I reduced the number of Shamans to 4, so you can pick up all the dolls. When you pick up the first one, mark one of them and drop it back to the ground. And the other 3 can fit into your inventory. This can be hard to pull off quickly, so when I see shamans, I immediately drop everything from my inventory, so I don't have to switch the active item while picking up the dolls.

I do use the "bomb the door" tactics with orcs and skeleton mages when possible.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #442 on: February 15, 2018, 10:42:33 AM »
I just find that even with only 4 shamans, I end up running more of a risk than I need/want to, I'm not sharp enough on the controls to always rely on picking up the dolls at the perfect moment and it only takes one miss to be deadly.

EDIT: "Mushroooms" completed. Started as an archer, found some extra mushrooms and, awesomely, the Book of Life on L1, and with careful rationing and use of health potions worked my way through the first few levels quite slowly. Didn't find an improved bow but did get the bird so I was doing OK stats-wise, and I was rushing several rooms at a time with bear-in-a-barrel to refill rage attacks. In the castle level I found the mana canteen, and I had a bunch of pets including the lizard... so I gamble-scrolled the throne room, just about made it out alive, and then essentially switched tactics completely: I'd had a few apprentizer potions so I was on +5% at that point, with a big, big stack of mana. Combine that with the clockwork staff and I basically just swamped most of the dungeon rooms with soldiers (boss fight included - it was Felgin and he just got totally swamped with them). For the rest of the game I just continued boosting my magic (slowly, so I always had a decent amount of reserve mana) until I was on somewhere in the 1000% region by the end. I had a LOT of soldiers, too - the game started glitching several times because there were too many of them on screen, especially in the Yeti and Elephant boss fights where the game really slowed to a crawl. I found the staff of the dead too so I had King Salamis accompanying me until he got petrified in the desert. I find it weird that petrified ally troops still follow you door to door rather than staying where you left them. The last fight was fairly tough, but I still had 15 mushrooms with me so I just plugged away with the staff of the dead (my troops got killed pretty fast), got the dragon down (though I lost my pig about that point too), and then managed to soak up the spear attacks from the Dragon Master whilst plugging away doing about 100 damage per orb with the staff. Victory :)
« Last Edit: February 15, 2018, 06:04:03 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #443 on: February 15, 2018, 09:53:28 PM »
I was on somewhere in the 1000% region by the end

I' thinking about having some achievement for that. It's really rare and cool when you get that much.

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I had a LOT of soldiers, too - the game started glitching several times because there were too many of them on screen

Yes, depending on the hardware you have the game can slow down with too many units on the screen. I have already done some optimization in the game engine, but I will look into it again.

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King Salamis accompanying me until he got petrified in the desert. I find it weird that petrified ally troops still follow you door to door rather than staying where you left them.

This is a bug. I found where the problem is and will fix it in the next version.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #444 on: February 16, 2018, 01:17:52 PM »
I uploaded a new version. It has the bug fix for the petrified minions following you into other rooms. And I also added some improvements for situations where you have many units on the screen (still not perfect, but it works faster than before).

As for the gameplay, the only change I made is giving the players 30 inventory slots in Compendium. This changes the game a lot, because you can bring different weapons, scrolls, potions with you and use them later (this means you can also bring some silver coins and skip some though fights). On my second test run I managed to reach the 3rd boss fight of the Ice level and died there because I only had 20 health because I accidentally picked up the Bare Bones amulet during the 2nd boss fight (at one point I had only 1 HP left. Since I used Gamble there were some boss drops on the floor: a blood rune and the bare bones amulet, right next to each other. As I was sliding on ice and evading a bunch of enemies I missed the rune and picked up the amulet instead  >:(

I will probably need a couple more tries, but I feel like Compendium should be doable with this change.

bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #445 on: February 17, 2018, 01:40:43 PM »
I will probably need a couple more tries, but I feel like Compendium should be doable with this change.

After 6-7 runs I managed to reach the Dragon Master battle. Interesting enough, I didn't use ice weapons at all, just a heavily upgraded Rogue Sword and a Voodoo doll. I killed the King to get some minions to help me / draw attention away while I would smack the doll during boss fights. I was really close to knocking down the Dragon Master off his mount which would have probably meant a victory, but I was too eager to do that and got killed in a very stupid way. So, Compendium is definitely winnable, it's just a matter of staying focused.

I tried IatK a couple times. Managed to get into the desert but got petrified with no way to remove it. I did have a solid 20+ guard army at one point during the ice level, but lost them all in the ice level boss fight. I had a Gamble scroll, but wanted to save it for the Dragon Master. Still, I had to use it when I lost all the troops. So I lost both the scroll and the army which turned out the be the problem later. Lesson learned, I guess. The first few runs I played as the Druid because of poison, but this last run I played as a Knight. With some runestones and potions, the scepter can become a decent melee weapon as well. And the fact that it's always available (unlike poison and guard army for which you need mana all the time) can make a huge difference.

BTW, I found an interesting bug, which I think you discovered before but wasn't aware of it. During the boss fights, the minion "building" keeps spawning units as long as there's a boss unit on the screen. So, if you bring Salamis or the Vampire Lord with you, the ice level igloo would keep spawning mages until your undead servant is dead - even if you kill the ice boss. I will fix this, so that "boss" units under player's command don't count when spawning is checked.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2018, 01:45:44 PM by bigosaur »

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #446 on: February 17, 2018, 11:38:16 PM »
Yeah, I agree that Compendium will now be do-able, will take a while though. Same with most of the remaining ones, just need to get the right run and be focussed enough. I doubt I'll do much more on them for a bit now, though, I'm really tired at the moment and struggling to focus on anything...

I did try some 2-player runs yesterday, Caradilis (who you might have seen around the forum) came over and she has a controller and I played with keyboard as usual... we managed to win the game on run #5, which is good going given she'd never played before. There was a LOT of carefully timed use of the life staff and having to finish battles literally as the timer ran out, as I was often giving up extra health to keep her character going, and I gamble-scrolled both the last two boss fights, but it was fun. :)
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #447 on: February 18, 2018, 11:45:45 AM »
Yeah, I agree that Compendium will now be do-able, will take a while though. Same with most of the remaining ones, just need to get the right run and be focussed enough. I doubt I'll do much more on them for a bit now, though, I'm really tired at the moment and struggling to focus on anything...

I noticed this problem as well. Dumping 12 runs on the player at once makes it really hard to focus on any run in particular. I have completed 6 of 12 by now, but have the same problem of feeling exhausted.

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I did try some 2-player runs yesterday, Caradilis (who you might have seen around the forum) came over and she has a controller and I played with keyboard as usual... we managed to win the game on run #5, which is good going given she'd never played before. There was a LOT of carefully timed use of the life staff and having to finish battles literally as the timer ran out, as I was often giving up extra health to keep her character going, and I gamble-scrolled both the last two boss fights, but it was fun. :)

Cool. Did one of you play the Sorceress? It's much easier with beginner players because they can eat food to heal all the time.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #448 on: February 18, 2018, 12:27:51 PM »
The successful run was druid + knight - as she wanted to play knight, we did try a run with me as the sorceress, which was OK for a bit but my sorceress ended up low on hitting power and I was having to try and finish battles fast too often for me to use a pure support character.

I can now confirm that I Am The King is do-able though, completed it with my owlbear knight just now - which puts me likewise on 6 of 12 done (IatK,Mushrooms, Head Start, Drink All Potions, Overdrive, and One Shot are my set). :) I had a flaming sword with decent upgrades and good stomp damage, plus absolutely massive max health (300 by the desert level), so I was able to do sweep + stomps opening most battles. Ice level was really difficult as I didn't have freeze immunity, I once went down to like 20 health in that, but just about survived. I gambled the ice boss battle (twice) + gambling both desert bosses. Turned the elephant into Ogre Mama which was definitely an improvement!

Query - why are ice level characters treated as being the same "team" as castle level characters? This is apparent whenever you use gamble scrolls, but it's never really explained.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #449 on: February 18, 2018, 12:59:13 PM »
Query - why are ice level characters treated as being the same "team" as castle level characters? This is apparent whenever you use gamble scrolls, but it's never really explained.

A lot of the game's code relies on enemies only having two factions (guards and monsters). I have never bothered to develop that in more detail as it didn't seem too important. So, goblins, thieves and skeletons are "monsters" and all the others are "guards". The bosses use the same faction as the units on their floor. It didn't work like that initially, for example, the Red Dragon used to be a "monster". But I found that the dragon boss fight was too easy if the dragon was attacking the guards on purpose (instead of just burning them by accident like it does now). As I kept adding new stuff I just picked a faction almost randomly. I guess I might refactor the code at one point to have separate factions, but it will need a lot of testing as the code assuming 2-faction-only possibility is all over the place.

Or maybe I should invent some story element to explain it  ;D