Patch Notes for 1.2 (December 2013)

[hipshot]

Patch 1.2 is now released, focus has been on balancing the game and make the overall campaign experince more fun, by adding random character upgrade drops, minibosses etc. Also, one thing we are testing is by having the Ranger walk and attack at the same time. Below is a more specific change list =)

Note to people with old save games: They will work and some features will be avalible, to get all new featuers in the levels, like minibosses and some of the new achievements, please restart the game.

Ranger:

• Ranger can now walk while attacking.
  
• Health upgrades now give 20 health instead of 30
  
• Ranger now starts with 0 armor instead of 2
  
• Spread shot upgrades nerfed slightly
  
• Arrow penetration now removes 15% damage instead of 25%

Warlock:

• Enemies that die with the dagger poison applied to them now explode
  
• Dagger poison now lowers enemy damage by 25%
  
• Lowered dagger damage

Paladin:

• Charge now always goes through enemies even though the enemy did not die
  
• Charge damage lowered
  
• Lowered end-game armor upgrades
  
• Healing now heals around half as fast and costs more mana

Levels:

• Act 1: Removed random flower positions.
  
• Act 1: Added 3 more 1ups.
  
• Floor 1: Added a passage from Floor 1 to Floor 3 for people that which to skip Floor 2 (hidden of course).
  
• Floor 2: Easy, disabled the very difficult spike floor in the middle of the level!
  
• Floor 2/3: Easy, removed some elite maggots.
  
• Floor 3: Level 1 weapon store added (in case you missed it on Floor 2).
  
• Floor 3: Easy, removed some arrows shooting from a trap.
  
• Boss 1: Easy, disabled the spike trap floor and arrow traps.
  
• Boss 1: Removed the chest secret.
  
• Floor 5/6: Changed a small red diamond into a upgrade on a Pyramid top.
  
• Floor 6: Out of world fix.
  
• Floor 9: Opened up some paths.
  
• Act 4: Removed Golden ticks from the entire act, replaced with just money.
  
• Floor 11: Changed waypoint after the spike traps, it's easier to get now.
  
• Floor 12: Added an upgrade to the large fire trap floor.
  
• Boss 4: Changed how this room works when killing the dragon.

Enemies:

• Tweaked the Dragon boss to become harder.
  
• Dragon boss Fire Balls now have a proper splash damage radius.
  
• Lich_1 and Lich boss now shoots through players, can potentially hit other players behind.
  
• Lich boss mirror images now turns into white bats when they die.
  
• Towers and Flowers now have a chance to drop upgrades and vendors coins.
  
• Added minibosses to all acts. Minibosses has a lot more health and are much more dangerous then regular foes, they will always cast bloodlust on monsters close to them, they will always drop a random upgrade and a vendor coin.
  
• Lich 3 (healer lich) also has an ice spray (slows and damage players) and more health, he's also been tinted blue.
  
• Added flower markings around them, which outlines the range of a flower.

Editor/xml:

• Make actors immortal (new entity).
  
• Speech bubble system added (new entity).
  
• Added status effects on damage (xml).
  
• Added HP bar tag to actors (xml).
  
• Added penetrating projectile behavior (xml).
  
• Added melee hit to composite AI (xml).
  
• Added healing as a composite AI skill (xml).
  
• Added whirlwind composite skill (xml).
  
• Added whirlnova composite skill (xml).
  
• Notification text tag added, like "1up" on lives and what kind of upgrade you just picked up (xml).
  
• Spawn actors (enemies) via the loot system (xml).
  
• Added Optimize object IDs to editor, use before saving prefabs.
  
• Physics simulation can now be toggled off in the editor.
  
• Added prefabs (new "level" files).
  
• Collision on money drops, easier to select.
  
• Levels can now have a global Add light applied.
  
• ObjectEventTrigger can now be attached to dynamic object lists (like the "Last spawned" on the SpawnObject script).

Misc:

• Added glare effect (advanced graphical settings).
  
• Enemy difficulties now scale when people drop in and out.
  
• End-game damage upgrades are now more expensive.
  
• Added a "score" button to the stats screen.
  
• Added some tutorial texts, can be seen by hitting a clue stone on the ground.
  
• Added some hint texts, can be seen by hitting one of the blue thieves around the game.
  
• Changed a intro and extro, added a bit more story to the game.
  
• Some traps added to the minimap, like spike traps, fire floor and turrets in Act 4.
  
• Chance puzzle, increased the chance to get the purple chest, added the purple chest to the game.

New Achievments:

• Christmas 2013 - Find 24 Christmas presents before, well, when we choose to end it.
  
• Worse than Ghost and Goblins - When Beard vs Games played the game, they failed, fail like they did.
  
• Midway - Get down the special exit from Floor 10, back to Floor 1.
  
• The Grisly Combination - Solve it like it was E1M4, a Quake 1 reference.
  
• Combo Killer - Get a combo of 200.
  
• Combo Master - Get a combo of 1000.

Fix as of Dec 17 2013:

• Fixed crash when dragon died when playing campaign 1.0
  
• Upgrades no longer disappear when dropping in and out
  
• Fixed a spelling error
  
• Fixed a missing string in campaign 1.0

TLDR: It's better.

[TARQ WAVE]

Sounds great. Can't wait to try it out. :D

[FlashSoul]

Great work, hipshot. This will be awesome.

[Kookeh]

Just notifced something; me and 3 others are playing together, but one of them has a kind of bad connection, so his game will desync sometimes, making him have to leave and rejoin. But when he does, his upgrades reset. Help?

[DO NOT REDEEM]

Sounds great! Keep up the good work, much appreciated!

[Ravaj]

Keep it up guys great incentive to replay the campaign again! Though I'm waiting for that new desert one :D.

[blob]

Shouldnt the warlock's default health be nerfed too? I was playing him and my friend a wizard and my guy seemed totally OP compared to his. Especially with those super powerful life draining skills.

[Mordred of Fairy]

Originally posted by blob:

Shouldnt the warlock's default health be nerfed too? I was playing him and my friend a wizard and my guy seemed totally OP compared to his. Especially with those super powerful life draining skills.

either that or some wizard love. He seems shafted now.
The other Ranged character gets to shoot on the run, with higher range.
maybe the wizard should also be able to shoot on the run? or get slightly higher range to start with?
I know the chars are asymetric in a number of ways, but right now, it's no fun to play him in coop. The warlock runs around blasting stuff to smithereens, draining life to heal, the paladin is a walking tank healing himself for mana, the ranger can stay out of range. Only the poor wizard has to get somewhat close to enemies, has super-low-life and no way to heal except combo(and good luck with that if there's a warlock blasting in your group).

[BeatnutZ]

Not getting the "Midway" achievement. Walked back and forth a good 100 times now :(

[Spook [DK]]

Have you played with all 4 characters ??

[Spook [DK]]

I just checked - I didn't get it, but I only played the wizard and only completed the game once on easy

[Mike]

Does anyone know if the updates will apply to a playthrough saved prior to today?

[dinomeat]

So far I love everything that you guys added in the latest patch. This game is DA BOMB!!! We're playing it practically every lunch at work, it's brilliant. Gotta love those mini-bosses, and the new pick-upable stat upgrades are just what the doctor ordered. I also love all the status effects that the different enemy attacks now do, very cool. Love the little tutorials and extra details you've added to the game and the vendors as well.

I would suggest keeping the Ranger's new walk while shoot ability, it makes his class so much more fun to play.

The Warlock kicks so much ass now, he is totally awesome, and I hope he stays that way.

I agree with some of the others that the wizard needs more love. I keep wanting to play that class because I'm such a wizard fanboy but there are just too many disadvantages compared to the other classes. He has no way to get out of a tough situation because he must get close to enemies to do damage and doesn't have the heal or fast track abilities of the other classes, not to mention his extremely feeble life and armour ratings. Also the Meteor ability when I tried it forced the Wizard to stay put and he was a sitting duck taking away from its usefullness. I'm all good with having a 'Glass Cannon' as a class but something is missing from making him feel epic like the other 3. Maybe it's the damage he does, or maybe it's his overall arsenal of abilities all of which feel limiting in different ways, or maybe it's his lack of trump quick 'save card', I'm really not sure......it's a tough one that's for sure. Or maybe I'm just really bad at understanding the subtleties of this class and how to properly understand and play it.

Could you guys maybe think about allowing the character's special damage modifiers to effect bosses? For example the Warlock can't seem to poison bosses at all. It would be mighty fine if it would actually work on them as well. Same with the Wizard's Burn DoT.

I have 3 small suggestions, hope you don't mind me sharing.

1. In the Pause Menu I would dearly love to have a Character Profile/Stat screen where I can see my current characters abilities and stat levels. Especially now that we get all kinds of random stat pickups it would be really sweet to be able to see how powerful my character is. I don't even necessarily have to see all the possible upgrades that I don't yet have (like in Super Metroid, although that could be epic), I just want to see how relatively powerful I am getting as I progress in a more RPG style presentation that I can refer to whenever I feel like it.

2. It might be an idea to add a 100% completion marker that slowly fills in as the player explores each Act or Level and finds all the hidden nooks and crannies. This could motivate players to keep exploring and to give them feedback about how much they've discovered in each area of the game. Hey it worked like a charm in Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

3. The Map is driving us bonkers in multiplayer because we all run off in different directions and the tiny map area that is visible doesn't allow us to easily find each other again. I can think of 3 ways to remedy this off hand. (I've put them from simplest and least desirable to most complex as I see them, (I could easily be wrong here, I don't know your development limitations)).

a. In multiplayer keep the other players' characters' markers on the map screen even if they leave the map area that you can see and simply have the markers moving along the periphery of the map screen so that at least we can all see the approximate direction that our friends are in.

b. Make the map full screen so that we can always see the entire floor on the screen at all times. Everything will be smaller but that's fine because it was never the fine details of the level that mattered with the map but the overall layout, shops, saves, items and enemy clusters which could all be presented via coloured pixels and it would still work great.

c. Allow the player to zoom the map screen size between full screen map to the smaller more detail oriented map currently in the game. Not sure about the impact of having to resize all the sprites in the map UI but this would be amazing.

Sorry for the giant post but I'm really having a blast with your game and maybe some of my ramblings will resonate with some of your other feedback.

Thanks for making this game, it's really super fun. I can't wait to see what other improvements you guys come up with. :D

[💋 💋 💋]

So now there is even less of a reason to play pally, in fact the one good thing about that class is gone now.

Also the ranger was hands down the best choice before, now they are insanely the best choice ever. I can't think of a reason to play any other class.

The warlock change is great, but moving while shooting at long range ranger is just simply better.

The wizard, a class nearly as worthless as Pally before is now even more so because ranger.

4 rangers it is!

[x-calibar]

Defeated the final boss on medium! ...But didn't get the Worse than Ghosts and Goblins achievement. It was SO anticlimatic, to miss just ONE plank (didn't know), and get dumped into the score screen rudely... and no lolepic Worse than Ghosts and Goblins achievement... (assuming that's what it was for!)
We didn't start a new game though, we loaded a save from before the patch update.

Nice game though. I wanted this game as soon as I saw it because it reminded me of classic Gauntlet with a facelift... (The first time I entered a bonus area I laughed... xD)

Things I might suggest : Maybee a way to change the transparency of the map. I found myself toggling it off and on a lot after I discovered it. But would end up walking into random traps or at least had some difficulty walking around while it was up. And I agree with the above suggestion about maybe having some kind of indicator as to which direction another player is, if they are off your map entirely.
The levels were HUGE compared to what I imagined. It's too bad it isn't randomly generated for endless replay, but I enjoyed the level design quite a bit.
I hope to replay with hard difficulty using a different class sometime (used wizard this time) but I personally hope it isn't just buffed enemy HP and greater damage/less health. Not that I expect different, but it would be neat to find larger hordes, faster respawn, maybe faster enemy movement or new AI or trap behavior?

Lastly I'd suggest making slightly more story at the beginning and end. Though mostly just its the end lol But, perhaps if I survive I'll get the ending I'm hoping for...

Oh right, a quick word on the boss... the Lich was MUCH harder than the final. I thought the he was kinda anticlimatic, though awesome. I had a pattern that I stuck to, and I never took any damage as wizard after getting it down. It would be more difficult if the fireballs were aimed AT players, rather than another spread attack. Also, maybe additional meteor patterns during the battle, rather than pure random. Or even additional enemies to distract you?

Final verdict,
I recommend this game as long as you play with friends :D

[BeatnutZ]

Nvm.. had to restart the campaign and I got the midway achievement.. New campaign there's guys waiting for you there still ^_^