It has been a while since I have posted an update, but I was not idle. Tons of stuff has been completed on Dungeons of Desolation over the last month.
A lot of work has been done on balancing and the random level creation algorithms. I made it so the game could loop continuously through the levels with the player killing 75% of the monsters on each level. All of the level items, monsters stats and the player's stats were saved out to a CSV file that I could easily view in Excel. Also looping through the levels a couple thousand times allowed me to fix a couple very rare bugs that crashed the game.
On the feature side:
- Added a basic quest system. NPC's in town might give you some items if you meet a specific condition like finding an item in the dungeon or reaching a certain level without dying.
- Added in additional item enchants for stats for Concentration Points (CP - The resource pool that allows to use skills and spells) and CP Regen. Also these stats now show on the equipment screen.
- Added a healer NPC in town that will restore HP, CP and rebuff most negative effects.
- Added a NPC in town that will identify your items for gold. This is cheaper than identify scrolls.
- The skill tree now shows the Skill Point cost of skills that you can purchase and they will flash slightly too.
- Torches are now a stackable item, but will only stack with torches that have the same number of turns left on them.
- Added a help system to the pause menu that shows the stat legend, controls and some basic game play instructions/tips.
- Reduced the cost of almost all of the Grey Magic spells so they are more attractive to purchase.
- Added pointer arrows for the Detect Monster/Items/Traps spells that will point to things detected off screen.
- Changed the White Magic Buffs back to be sustained. Meaning they will always be active, but while active they reduce the maximum CP pool.- Equipping leather armor now requires a skill, but it is early in the combat tree and only costs 1 SP.
- Low health warning based on percent HP that can be set in the options.- Using unidentified items how will grant experience if you discover its use.
If everything stays on track the Xbox Live Indie Games version will be released in a couple weeks. I should have the trailer created and posted soon.
