Son of a Witch: Devlog and general discussion

[Jubal]

Hmm, I feel like losing bow damage just makes bows less different to staffs and thus a less unique/interesting weapon to play with. I think a better fix might be to just make the base archery stat upgrades a bit less large?

EDIT: Added the additional details to the achievement hunting section

EDIT #2: I finally got round to writing up my "random ideas for the game" list: https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5636

[bigosaur]

EDIT #2: I finally got round to writing up my "random ideas for the game" list: https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5636

Great ideas! I already had something similar (Paladin, Bushido you can hire at a fixed cost per battle, something very similar to King Cobra Staff, etc.) I also love the idea of buffing your allied troops.

I will make many of these for sure.

The current focus is getting the Nintendo Switch port going, but after that I plan to start adding new stuff.

[bigosaur]

Hmm, I feel like losing bow damage just makes bows less different to staffs and thus a less unique/interesting weapon to play with. I think a better fix might be to just make the base archery stat upgrades a bit less large?

I just had a run where I blasted through all the the rocks in levels 2 and beyond (early bare bones + mana canteen + earthquake staff), got all the runestones (incl. the baseball room) and only did about 140 damage per shot to the final boss. I didn't feel any more powerful than a mage/knight would with those upgrades. I didn't get any of the archery upgrades, so it does feel like simply lowering those would work.

[bigosaur]

I had an interesting run a couple of days back. Managed to do 100k in the daily challenge and 50k gold without having the old catacombs. I had bare bones amulet + retort + foundry and one of the potions was avarice. The Lizard pet enabled me to create 2 potions per room and I also took the Earthquake staff and blasted rocks for arrows (at x10 avarice it's 500 gold per arrow stack).

[Jubal]

What's the best way to turn a replay file into a video? Do I just have to re-run it with a screen capture program, or is there a better way?

And yes, the more I think about it, the more I agree on the archery upgrades. At present because they give such a huge upgrade kick, if a player found a crossbow early on (especially with 1-2 replicators) then it could very easily become the case that switching to an archery playstyle made sense regardless of character class.

[bigosaur]

What's the best way to turn a replay file into a video? Do I just have to re-run it with a screen capture program, or is there a better way?

Yes, that's the only way.

I recommend OBS, it's very easy to use and video quality is great on high settings. If you have an nVidia graphics card, and performance is a problem, set the encoder to NVENC and it will have almost no impact on your system.

And yes, the more I think about it, the more I agree on the archery upgrades. At present because they give such a huge upgrade kick, if a player found a crossbow early on (especially with 1-2 replicators) then it could very easily become the case that switching to an archery playstyle made sense regardless of character class.

Alright, I will adjust those. New version with some changes and fixes is coming today or tomorrow. One notable change is fixing the Medusa sword damage  and her sword attack animation. She now does 24 damage with the sword. As she does a combo hit similar to the Vampiress, she can do 48 damage during a single attack if you aren't careful.

[Jubal]

Yeah, the quality isn't so much the issue as the time - I was going to get a video of my 100000+pt challenge run from yesterday, but it took over two hours and I don't have a two-hour slot when I can give up my computer in the next few days!

[bigosaur]

Yeah, the quality isn't so much the issue as the time - I was going to get a video of my 100000+pt challenge run from yesterday, but it took over two hours and I don't have a two-hour slot when I can give up my computer in the next few days!

Better check if the recording is complete. I had a 2 hour run and it didn't fit into the default 2GB replay file size, so the end of the run was cut off. I have increased the setting to 4GB on my computer since, but if you left it at default value, it's possible you don't have the whole run recorded.

The quickest way to check is just to check the replay file size. Or you can watch in-game and keep pressing right during replay to rewind.

[bigosaur]

Some of the players asked me why is there no wiki or online manual, and then I realized that not everyone is looking in Steam discussion forums.

So, I added the link to Exilian directly on the Son of a Witch store page on Steam. Because of this, I made the Monster Manual and Guides sticky topics as well, so the players can see those on top easily.

BTW, the Nintendo Switch port is almost done. I'm extensively testing it and waiting for Nintendo to look over some paperwork before I can publish it. If all goes as planned, the release will be mid-August.

[Jubal]

Thanks Hopefully more people will find/use the guides now... I think they're mostly complete though there's always more I could add.

[bigosaur]

Version 3.6.7 is online:

Translation improvements:
- The game has been fully translated to Polish (thanks Telmah)
- Many other translations have been updated with Achievement descriptions and other improvements
- Improved support for Japanese translation

Difficulty balancing:
- Due to very high DPS, the Archer starting HP is reduced to 80.
- Increased base damage of Snake Staff to 7.
- Increased base damage of Fireball Staff to 7.
- Increased base damage of Healer Staff to 7.

New features:
- Added an option to skip the intro story (and go straight into the main menu)
- Faster loading times
- Prevent players running out of bombs during tutorial (if you accidentally spend all, more bombs get spawned)

Bugfixes:
- Fixed bug when pets appear to just stand at the door to remote players
- Fixed bug when remote players seem to be firing arrows constantly when they are actually not shooting at all
- Prevent erasing achievements on first Steam login
- Selection of tips to show on loading screen depends on the screen resolution (if there's a lot of text and the screen is only 720p, some of the tips are skipped)
- Fixed crash when entering empty /seed command
- NPC dialogue prompt (press button to continue) now only shows up when the player is close enough for it to actually work

This version is still mostly balancing, bug fixes and translation update. I plan to work on more interesting gameplay features (new items, weapons, quests, mechanics) as soon as the Nintendo Switch port is released, which should be within the next two months.

[Jubal]

I just played a game for the first time in a while. I can still pretty smoothly cruise through a regular game despite being out of practice, which is nice Had a knight and did a standard sweep + stop setup. Ice level/snowman boss was a bit tricky as I had no immunity or footing, but I was pumping out so much damage that it didn't matter too much.

[bigosaur]

I just played a game for the first time in a while. I can still pretty smoothly cruise through a regular game despite being out of practice, which is nice Had a knight and did a standard sweep + stop setup. Ice level/snowman boss was a bit tricky as I had no immunity or footing, but I was pumping out so much damage that it didn't matter too much.

I feel like the game has become too easy with all the recent changes. Perhaps I should remove some annoying things from hard mode (mainly the cursed keys) and have that be the default for us hardcore players and maybe have another mode, called "dread mode" or something like that which will be really tough.

[Jubal]

Hm. I'm not sure that would solve the issue per se - yes, if I want things to be arbitrarily more difficult I could play on hard mode, but I don't tend to find that much more fun per se. I tend to find that what I want out of the game is more different tactical problems to face rather than just faster/stronger enemies per se. Though I guess that's a playstyle thing, I'd prefer to see the roguelike element be where difficulty is added if anywhere rather than the beat 'em up element/ramping up speeds and stats.

I really liked the thing Pixel Dungeon did where they had "special enemies" on each level which were very rare upgrades on the regular ones which could provide a real surprise and force you to switch how you were playing because they had some immunity or special attack etc that the regular versions of the enemies didn't use. So for SoaW there could be say a Goblin General enemy who'd occasionally appear with maybe 150 health and the ability to move with a shield, or an Assassin enemy which did the same thing as the thief but had poisoned throwing knives. That sort of thing I think would be a better addition: it wouldn't hugely affect the difficulty for most players, especially as it might just persuade them to stay away from certain rooms, but it would also provide more interesting variations to deal with for advanced players. I think things like that which will sometimes provide surprises and extra challenges could be incorporated into the main game fine and would provide more of an extra challenge than. You could also make their spawning dependent on certain achievements I guess so only good players got to face them, which might be less complex than a whole extra game mode (I think there's enough of those already: an extra would be too many.

[Jubal]

I noticed a bit of glitching in the latest version, when playing the daily challenge - not a consistent slowdown, just the game freezing for a quarter-second or so, once or twice a minute, long enough to be noticeable.

I also tried some MP with some random folks on Steam - we got as far as the final level, which given we did it without mics and indeed without communication in general was pretty good - by the final level we just hadn't stocked up enough potions or planned ahead enough for it to be workable, I think the later levels do need some planning as a MP team.