Author Topic: Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion  (Read 218222 times)

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #450 on: February 18, 2018, 01:08:26 PM »
Ah, OK. I might add that to the notes for the gamble scroll next time I update the guides. It's especially important if you gamble on the ice level, because the ice wizards will often finish off any monster-aligned boss pretty swiftly but will of course keep acting as backup for any guard-aligned one.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #451 on: February 18, 2018, 01:20:47 PM »
Ah, OK. I might add that to the notes for the gamble scroll next time I update the guides.

If you do, maybe using "guards" and "monsters" for faction names is not the best idea. Perhaps "good" (for guards) vs "evil" (for monsters) or "red" vs "blue" or something else could be a better choice.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #452 on: February 18, 2018, 02:10:34 PM »
Well, I don't need to name them at all - I can just say that desert, castle, and ice monsters & characters form one team and forest, dungeon and catacombs ones form the other.

EDIT: Compendium complete, knight with mjolnir, got plenty of runestones on it + dwarven spinner. I also had a deadwood bow which I used often - the whole elephant boss fight I just completed with a massive stack of ice arrows I'd built up. The big inventory definitely makes it a vastly more do-able challenge.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2018, 03:38:29 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #453 on: February 18, 2018, 06:30:20 PM »
EDIT: Compendium complete, knight with mjolnir, got plenty of runestones on it + dwarven spinner. I also had a deadwood bow which I used often - the whole elephant boss fight I just completed with a massive stack of ice arrows I'd built up. The big inventory definitely makes it a vastly more do-able challenge.

Awesome. I noticed that it almost eliminates the backtracking (except when you go back to blast some rocks), which was pretty boring because the rooms were linear.

I think the challenges are all good now, no more tweaking needed. I'm going back to working on the Barbarian animations now.

BTW, did you try the "Magic Casters" one? I managed to get to the desert level. My last run I had Gold Diet + Avarice + Appetite + Magnet and some 200 HP which made me felt indestructible. However I made a mistake of picking up the "dying enemies drop bombs" item and some of them just dropped bombs on the voodoo dolls I was marked with :( (and I couldn't pick up the dolls because of Avarice).
« Last Edit: February 19, 2018, 01:05:03 PM by bigosaur »

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #454 on: February 19, 2018, 06:57:54 PM »
My best run on magic casters I likewise got to the desert level with a super good swordsman (OK, swords-owlbear, but same difference). Then I managed to hit a voodoo doll I was marked with for about 150 damage and killed myself :( I do often die on first level of magic casters, though - some runs just have too many rooms with 4 or occasionally even 6 shamans on the first level.

On the plus side, slowly checking them off the list: trolling is now completed. I had an archer, got a golden bow and some runestones in the forest, and also managed to get decent speedboosts so I was at maybe speed 10 or 11 by the end and used a couple of sunset scrolls so I was one-shotting the bushidos - I think high speed on a caster or archer is the way to win trolling in general, the most important thing is to be able to outpace your enemies (by desert level you need high damage too of course, and some skill not to get piled by the bushidos!) That leaves four to go: No Backtracking, Master Blaster, Survival, and Magic Casters. I think that's about the difficulty order, too - survival is one of the toughest, I've tried it a few times but I think it needs gold diet potions to make it do-able (or maybe finding a strawberry staff). Magic Casters I think will also be very hard, I've got to desert level on it before but that's a rare exception.

EDIT: Also, I think I found a bug with voodoo dolls. I had a room (we'll call it room A) where I got doll-tagged, left it via a bomb, did a couple of other rooms so I should have been untagged, opened the locked room and got tagged with a doll in there by a shaman I couldn't reach, so I left. Then I returned to Room A (my only option)... and got killed with a voodoo doll in there. :(
« Last Edit: February 19, 2018, 08:50:06 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #455 on: February 19, 2018, 09:28:27 PM »
EDIT: Also, I think I found a bug with voodoo dolls. I had a room (we'll call it room A) where I got doll-tagged, left it via a bomb, did a couple of other rooms so I should have been untagged, opened the locked room and got tagged with a doll in there by a shaman I couldn't reach, so I left. Then I returned to Room A (my only option)... and got killed with a voodoo doll in there. :(

The way voodoo dolls work internally is a very complicated mess. I tried to fix it a couple times, but it turned out to be difficult to pull off, esp. in networked games. So, yes, I'm aware that it is weird.

Anyway, under the current rules, once a voodoo doll targets you, you will remain targeted forever and the link can only be removed if you use the same doll to re-target it to someone else. However, you won't receive any damage if the voodoo effect has expired for your character. So, if someone gives you the voodoo effect again, all the dolls that are still targeting you from before can now hurt you.

Beside this, there are other unexpected behaviors. For example, if you get marked by a doll, bring it into the next battle and get marked again there, you can use the doll from your inventory to remove the voodoo effect from your character because the doll still links to you and your voodoo effect says "1 active doll" at that moment.

I think I would have to delete all the code for this and rewrite it from scratch to make it work properly. But before that, I would need to clearly define what are the rules. Perhaps when voodoo effect expires all the related dolls should unlink from the target. I believe I even tried this and it worked fine in local games, but there were problems in networked games, esp. if one player leaves the room, while the battle is still going on in the other rooms where the dolls are.

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #456 on: February 19, 2018, 11:21:06 PM »
I reached the desert again in magic casters with an archer who could one-shot any of them, then in the second room there I dealt with a goblin shaman then got frozen by a skeleton wizard and shot to death by three crystal wizards before I could move :( I really can't see how to defend successfully against everything in the desert level of that quest, unless you happen to have a really good set of immunities so you can mostly ignore the skeleton wizard curses - you can't take them out particularly quickly, because as a close combat character you'll probably hit a doll targeted on you and as a ranged character you need to be dodging the necromancers etc. I guess it may just take me making enough runs until I get lucky and get fire, poison and ice immune on the same run.
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #457 on: February 20, 2018, 07:38:55 AM »
I reached the desert again in magic casters with an archer who could one-shot any of them, then in the second room there I dealt with a goblin shaman then got frozen by a skeleton wizard and shot to death by three crystal wizards before I could move :( I really can't see how to defend successfully against everything in the desert level of that quest, unless you happen to have a really good set of immunities so you can mostly ignore the skeleton wizard curses - you can't take them out particularly quickly, because as a close combat character you'll probably hit a doll targeted on you and as a ranged character you need to be dodging the necromancers etc. I guess it may just take me making enough runs until I get lucky and get fire, poison and ice immune on the same run.

I see a couple possible solutions to this:

1. have random mages, but one mage type per room
2. limit the number of mages you can get in one room
3. ensure that ice immunity is available some way. The biggest problem I see is when the skeleton mages freeze you so you cannot move

I will playtest some more to see what would be the best approach.

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #458 on: February 20, 2018, 11:03:06 AM »
I'm wondering if there is a tactical solution, but what you actually need is a really high damage mage with many exploding or bouncing orbs. I've not managed to get a wizard past the forest level yet - the 4+ shaman rooms always kill me - but I feel like a mage of that type could be the answer to damage all the wizards in a room fast enough. There are no shielded enemies after all.  The trouble is that my wizards  die on level one so often that it's hard to test this out!

EDIT: Done it. Can confirm, this is the correct approach, I beat the magic casters challenge as a high damage pyromancer. So many small mana potions get dropped that you can leverage that to have fire on every room, and so few enemies are immune to it that it's the best strategy. On the first level I didn't even do the usual thing of waiting and picking up dolls, just ran round and burned all the shamans so fast they couldn't react. I completed about 5 rooms on the last level, then skipped a lot of it using a silver shilling once I found a shop - peace-scrolled the room before the bosses, beat the medusas (I had an elven shield so that was fairly simple) and gambled the dragon master (into an ogre mama, helpfully!) So it's do-able even in its current form with an effective wizard character and smart tactics - if anything the key problem is getting past the first level :)

That leaves me survival (which I think may mainly be a case of reloading until I get gold diet potions), no backtracking (which I don't think should be too bad, but that's partly why I'm saving it to do last), and Master Blaster (which I guess must be do-able with the right set of support gear, I just really hate that bomb stick by this point).
« Last Edit: February 20, 2018, 02:16:13 PM by Jubal »
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #459 on: February 20, 2018, 04:08:51 PM »
I'm wondering if there is a tactical solution, but what you actually need is a really high damage mage with many exploding or bouncing orbs. I've not managed to get a wizard past the forest level yet - the 4+ shaman rooms always kill me - but I feel like a mage of that type could be the answer to damage all the wizards in a room fast enough. There are no shielded enemies after all.  The trouble is that my wizards  die on level one so often that it's hard to test this out!

I was just about to say that getting past the forest was no problem for me. Use the first doll they drop to mark one of them, and then pick up the rest. Once they drop the Meteor staff, pick it up and use it against them. With the Meteor staff it's easy to beat the shamans because they stop to cast spells.

But I didn't even consider playing with the Pyromancer because of low starting health. Great approach.

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I had an elven shield so that was fairly simple

That one is starting to be the most important item in my runs  :)

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That leaves me survival (which I think may mainly be a case of reloading until I get gold diet potions)

I managed to get to the desert several times without it. Hunger is really slow effect, it takes really long to lose much HP. Since you're drinking potions for thirst anyway, you will often drink small HP potions which would heal you back to full. The main problem is having some potion ready to drink after every battle. BTW, beer removes both hunger and thirst. I used it before the boss fights.

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Master Blaster (which I guess must be do-able with the right set of support gear, I just really hate that bomb stick by this point

It's doable. Best runs I had with Druid (super high poison damage) and also Knight because the Blacksmith runestones drop more often (I disabled runes that cannot be used, because you cannot switch the main weapon). In one of the runs I had 120 or so melee damage per hit with the stick.

If you get the Bomberman potion, then it's super fun. Just run around and drop bombs all over the place. Also "enemies drop bombs", "drop bombs when hit" and "freezing bombs" are really, really useful because you are immune to explosions.


Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #460 on: February 21, 2018, 12:50:23 AM »
Yeah, I can see how to do all the others, I think it's just getting pretty grinding working through the different frustrations of each challenge. Like, they're a good "ultimate test of skill", but I don't think I'll be re-playing many (probably any) of them once I've done them.

I have just completed Survival - chanter, using the turret staff, got the retort early so that was a really important part of it, and I had a mana canteen so I had turrets available in all the last 3 boss fights. I think the closest I came to dying was fighting the butcher on the dungeon level - I was really running low on health and options then. I think I was only one bomb away from being killed by crazy santa, too, and I didn't have secure footing or ice immunity. I don't think I had healing available in any of the boss fights. I had a large number of pets, though, so that definitely helped, they did a lot to help tie up the minions on the boss battles.

Two left, and I feel like I've probably done the hardest ones now. I hope the barbarian is worth it after all this :P
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #461 on: February 21, 2018, 08:54:13 AM »
Yeah, I can see how to do all the others, I think it's just getting pretty grinding working through the different frustrations of each challenge. Like, they're a good "ultimate test of skill", but I don't think I'll be re-playing many (probably any) of them once I've done them.

Yes, they were meant to be completed once and that's it. Maybe "one-shot" is fun to replay, or taking on all the trolls in the "Trolling" one. Others, not so much.

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Two left, and I feel like I've probably done the hardest ones now. I hope the barbarian is worth it after all this :P

I think Barbarian should be ready by the end of this week.

I tested his weapon yesterday and after a couple of iterations I think I nailed it. His axe has combo buildup: as long as you can string hits together without pausing or missing, the damage goes up. Similar to the Blood Axe it doesn't make the enemies lose ground with subsequent hits, so you can keep the combo alive until you kill an enemy. While your combo is active, you are immune to projectiles (just like having an Elven shield). The strong attack is uppercut, so you can take down shielded enemies. I tried it out with a Knight (because Barbarian isn't finished yet) and it really gives you that "berserking" feeling of just going out with melee strikes and killing everything in your way without thinking much about "defense".

Special attack for the axe is the "mega throw", similar to Mjolnir and Goblin Axe.

As for the hero, I want to make him rarely use magic. He starts with 100 melee, 90 archery, 10 magic and his specials include "double rage buildup", i.e. his rage fills up twice faster than other heroes and "+3 mana cost" similar to distraction but cannot be removed with potions.

I feel like he has great melee potential because of double rage, so he will probably start with 80 health. At first I wanted to have something like "suffer more damage from enemy attacks", but I find that lowering the starting health has the same effect without having to explain too much to the players.

UPDATE: Barbarian is IN. Version 3.2.3. If you want to try him out without having to complete all the challenges, there's a cheat code for that. Just let me know and I'll post it here.

« Last Edit: February 22, 2018, 01:41:51 PM by bigosaur »

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #462 on: February 22, 2018, 09:18:57 PM »
I've only got two challenges left, I'll do it the hard way.

Though that said, I'm thinking I'm going to take a week or so's break at this point - I can't seem to complete the bomb challenge, no matter what I do. I'm very rarely managing to get ice immunity, and even when I do I'm just finding the ice level boss fights impossible to complete. I basically need to reload until I get a run with good scrolls, I suspect, but it's taking absolutely ages and it's just getting demoralising. (Also, you didn't tell me that "immune to explosions" doesn't actually make you immune to the exploding presents...)
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bigosaur

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #463 on: February 23, 2018, 06:00:32 PM »
you didn't tell me that "immune to explosions" doesn't actually make you immune to the exploding presents

Oh, I completely forgot about that. Only bomb explosions.

BTW, I decided to bite the bullet and fix the voodoo problem. It turned out that it wasn't so hard because of some infrastructure (that I added recently with a completely different purpose) that I was able to reuse. I changed it so that all the links to the dolls get removed when the voodoo effect expires. This means that re-targeting a doll to an enemy works properly now and dropping a doll you were marked with earlier is safe. Basically, it works in the most intuitive way. I tested it a lot and it looks like there are no bugs, so it's official now (version 3.2.5).

Jubal

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Re: Son of a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac
« Reply #464 on: February 23, 2018, 07:33:55 PM »
I've had a couple of crash to desktop issues since the most recent version came out - it seems to be triggered when I hit/press a movement key during the game's initial loading screen, though I'm not 100% sure yet.

Master Blaster is now done - I finally got bomberman potions, which I'd not had in any of the previous attempts, and those make a *massive* difference. Using a confusion scroll against the snowman worked really well, incidentally - the ice wizards pinned him in place with his blocking effect so I could chuck bombs in from behind. I didn't have ice immunity or sure footing of any sort, but given I was chucking out over 10 bombs in all directions, accuracy didn't matter so much any more! I did have petrify immunity, but I skipped most of the final level with a silver coin all the same just to be careful! Medusas were easy as I had ice bomb, the dragon master took a while but wasn't really any kind of a threat as I could just dodge and still hit him with bombs, and especially once the dragon was gone I could just keep knocking him down.

One to go. Barbarian should be unlocked soon :)

EDIT: And we're done! Though I got a "this dinosaur ate your game" crash immediately after finishing the final challenge. Logs attached.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 10:18:20 PM by Jubal »
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...