Sunday, September 21, 2014

Gigapatch Notes!!!

Hey wizards!

We've been hard at work improving Magicmaker for its launch on Steam on September 22nd. Though we've been showcasing a couple of the changes via screenshot Saturday, we've been pretty quiet on the particulars. No more! Below is a compilation of all the changes made since the last alpha demo back in May. Get your beverage of choice, you're in for quite a read!



Patch Notes: Alpha (0.9.1.2) to Launch (1.0):

New Content:

  • A playable introduction sequence has been added.
  • Dörwall Community College has (again) been completely remodeled after an unfortunate accident in the alchemy lab.
  • A finale story mission is now available after the player has completed the main story (gold) quests
  • The Master's difficulty temple quest has been replaced with an improved mission.
    • Some of the other temple story quests have been adjusted
  • There are now seven race tracks and seven target tracks, 1 themed for each zone and two bonus missions.
  • Many oddities have been added to level generation
  • Several new cosmetic items have been added.
Features:

  • Crafting menus have been streamlined. Players can now customize their wands, spells, robe and artifact via any of several crafting stations around the hubworld, located near core NPCs
    • Spell tooltips have been streamlined and colorized.
    • Hovering over a slotted material now displays its effects in your spell.
  • Zone menus have been reworked
  • Alchemy menu has been remodeled for clarity
  • Quests no longer require trips to and from NPCs
    • Quests are accepted upon entering zones, and their completion is handled at the level results screen.
    • Quest progress is no longer stored in the journal, and is instead a persistent HUD element.
  • Challenges have been added to free play missions!
    • Random Loadout: Your equipment is randomized, but your first spell gains an extra material slot!
    • Bag of Spilling: Taking damage sometimes knocks a material out of your loadout!
    • Plug and Play: Materials you pick up are randomly slotted into your loadout!
    • Super Murderfest: All enemies deal 100x damage, but your spells cost no mana!
    • Goblin Revolution: All enemies have been replaced with goblin wizards that all cast the same spell!
    • Challenges can be mixed and matched however you want
    • Completing a challenge awards a ribbon
    • Each difficulty on each zone has a unique set of ribbons
  • A new camera mode has been added that follows the cursor instead of always centering on the player. This is enabled by default.
    • The old camera style can still be set via the options menu
  • The cursor can now be locked in the window via the options menu
    • This is disabled while the game is paused
  • Several different HP display options are now available
  • Enemies now leave behind persistent bits and pieces
  • Spells now have impact effects
  • NPCs no longer need to be interacted with to speak
    • All dialog appears when near an NPC
    • Any functions accessed via crafting benches near the associated NPC
  • Wizard goblins now roam free and cast spells! What witchcraft is this?!
  • Levels are now generated with slightly randomized dimensions
  • The turret flower enemy now spawns in a wide variety of colors
  • Added many, many sound effects.
  • Bosses now enter with more flair and silly titles.
  • File select menu has been improved
  • Improved options menu clarity
  • Multiple costumes can now be saved and loaded 
  • Players are now warned about incoming desert sandstorms
  • All background music tracks have been polished and equalized for improved quality.
  • All art assets now comply with the style update (alpha 0.7.2)
  • UI elements have been overhauled to be consistent with new aesthetic
  • Improved messaging on successful execution via Guillotine Blade
  • The player's mana bar now flashes purple when taking mana damage (cavern gem enemy, mana shield effects, etc)
  • Enemies now indicate more clearly when they are suffering status effects
  • All levels now have an entrance animation where the level is pieced together.
  • Improved/adjusted many particle effects
  • Loading screen tips have been added
  • The test dummy in Dörwall Community College's HP values can be set by interacting with it (E key)
  • Score attack and all related systems have been removed
  • Gold doesn't exist


Gameplay Changes:


  • General:
    • Pacing Rework:
      • Enemy spawns have been increased
      • The player's cast speed has been doubled (spell/wand cooldowns now 0.5s, from 1.0s)
      • Base spell mana cost has been halved (now 15, from 30)
      • Adjusted spell power
      • Player's base movement speed has increased.
      • Spell projectiles now vanish after some time without colliding with enemies
        • This timer is refreshed if the spell redirects or other material conditions are met (i.e. Sticky Slime's wall-follow duration will always run its course)
      • The player is kicked back slightly when casting spells
        • This kickback scales with spell power
    • Spells can now pass through one-way platforms
    • Reward artifacts are now chosen when opening the big treasure box instead of requiring the player to go to the vault
      • Vault of Silence has been removed
    • Benign spells have been removed
    • Ice is now broken in large chunks instead of one tile at a time
    • When the player is hidden behind something in a level, their shadow is drawn on top of what they are behind.
    • Windstorms in the forest have been greatly reduced in strength
    • Main quests now require the player to defeat the level's boss monster in addition to other objectives
    • Temple traps are now sealed with anti-teleport barriers instead of normal barriers
    • Tutorial level has been optimized for learning
    • Optimized material drop distribution
    • Removed stats menu
  • Materials:
    • Materials have been rebalanced
      • Every single material's power level has been adjusted in some way. Only functionality changes will be listed.
    • Fire crystal's burning effect spreads faster, but enemies must come in contact to spread the fire
    • Noxious Spore's poison effect on spells now stacks up to 5 times
    • Soul Contract spells' health cost is now a percentage of the mana cost instead of always being 1:1
      • It still has a health cost on wands
    • Vacuum Cleaner spells now pull enemies towards the projectile instead of the player
    • Ectoplasm now increases the mana cost of the spell, and its mana restoration is a percentage of your maximum mana
    • Diamond spells no longer have damage reduction on hitting multiple enemies
    • Shade Spirit on robe's stealth delay minimum time is now capped at 0.5s
    • Philosopher Stone's mana shield robe effect is now capped at 99%
    • Trick Bullet now has damage reduction on multiple hits
    • Ton of Bricks has been renamed "Tonna Bricks"
    • Crystal Ball spells now only update their target selection if the target dies
    • Spider Silk can no longer spawn trail particles on top of another trail particle
      • This will also prevent too many trail particles from existing in the same location
    • Ninja Sword on robe now damages enemies the player passes through
    • Boomerang's robe effect no longer requires the target to collide with the orbs
      • Adjusted VFX accordingly
    • Siren's Seafoam robe effect now reflects bolts directly at nearby targets
    • Rune's robe effect is now capped at 95% mana cost reduction
    • Enemies charmed by Shade Spirit now deal increased damage in addition to being your slave
    • Magic Boomerang now causes your spell to appear near your cursor and travel towards you
    • Necrom-nomicon on robe's crows are now invulnerable and do not vanish on colliding with an enemy 
    • Vulcan Wrench spells can only have one turret out at a time (per spell)
    • Turrets now have a limited number of shots before they expire, rather than lasting for a set duration
  • Artifacts:
    • Izzy's Bookmark now sends you to your location 5 seconds ago, and activates almost instantly.
    • Jin's Lucky Dagger is now called The Heartseeker
      • Enemies defeated have a 25% chance to drop a bonus health pickup
    • Tipsy's Mysterious Flask now has no cooldown, but only 3 charges per level
    • Blessed Ancient Mystical Enchanted Cursed Voodoo Doll now sets your health to 50% when triggered instead of 1.
    • Spellblade of the Legion has new behavior
      • Enemies defeated charge the blade. At any number of charges, the blade can be activated to damage all on-screen enemies. Damage scales on number of enemies defeated, and resets on use.
  • Enemies:
    • Goblins now intelligently hop through one-way platforms and up small hills, and hide in leaf piles
    • All monsters have had their damage, attack speeds and health values rebalanced
    • Snowballs now split apart when damaged
    • Ice Gargoyles are now nearly damage-immune while frozen\
      • They can also no longer be knocked away in this state
    • Flipper Beetles now stun the player
    • Skeletons now only attack when the player is nearby
    • Lamias now avoid the player and spit poison
    • Fairies now attempt to attack the player and have variable movement speed
    • Velociraptors now stop chasing the player if they stand still
      • They also no longer moon jump

Bug Fixes:

  • General:
    • Breakable objects no longer spawn inside walls
    • Fixed an issue where the background would darken too much during menus and pausing
    • Falling through thin platforms is now more reliable
    • Fixed several texture tiling issues
    • The timer on training courses now starts when the player's entrance animation has finished
    • NPC dialogue no longer has extra blank space below their chatter
    • Smaller levels are now more compliant with high screen resolutions
    • Fixed a rare level-loading crash
    • Fixed many instances of incompletable levels
    • Fixed an issue where starting a new game would carry over some quest progress from the previous file
    • Fixed a crash caused by setting keybinds to non-alphanumeric keys
    • Fixed a bunch of typos, newline errors, and other dialogue issues
    • Haht the Wizard's Wizarding Hat now properly describes its behavior (off by 1)
    • Fixed an issue where Blessed Ancient Mystical Enchanted Cursed Voodoo Doll would proc but the player would still die
    • Fixed an issue where Grudge Talisman would double self-damage when not set to an enemy type
    • Fixed an issue where Periwinkle's Fairy Companion would simply not care about loot sometimes
    • Removed the ability to bind two actions to the same key
    • NPCs are now immortal, for real this time
    • "Reset" now consistently appears as a pause menu option in training courses
    • "Return to Hub" is no longer a pause option until appropriate
  • Materials:
    • Fixed an issue where the fire trail effect did more damage than intended or would stop working
    • Spells with Optic Lens now properly function for quest objectives
    • Rainbow Prism spells no longer leave behind lingering darkness
    • Noxious Spore's robe effect now works in levels without enemies
    • Fixed many instances of the stealth robe effect crashing the game
    • Optic Lens spells no longer build up Guillotine Blade's execute effect 10x as fast as intended
    • Philospher Stone's robe effect now works properly in cases where the damage would be split between health and mana
    • Fixed an issue where the player could heal via a combination of Philosopher Stone, Soul Contract, and several other materials
    • All materials now properly interact with Spider Silk
    • Players can now properly crouch-walk with Bouncy Ball on their robe
    • Damage over time effects (aura damage, etc) can now deal more than 60 damage per second
    • Fixed an issue where Sticky Slime and Spider Silk could cause a spell to last forever
  • Forest:
    • Bees no longer display health values
    • Fixed an issue where the grapple vine would get the forest boss stuck in walls
  • Castle:
    • The boss's shockwave boots are now properly named
    • Improved castle boss's mace weapon behavior
    • The darkness gauntlet is no longer chosen for the boss on the first difficulty (where the lanterns cannot be extinguished)
    • Carpet-sensitive objectives no longer randomly fail
    • Fixed an issue where spiders would crawl into walls
    • Skeletons no longer translate horizontally when possessed
    • Fixed an issue where chandelier glow would persist between levels
  • Desert:
    • Fixed a bug where the desert boss's wings would sometimes be invisible
    • Harpies now more reliably steal loot
  • Cavern:
    • Icicle platforms are now immune to knockback
    • Gargoyles no longer heal when dealt very small amounts of damage
    • Fixed an issue where snowball enemies were generating too many particles
    • Fixed an issue where two instances of the player would sometimes spawn in the cavern
    • Owl Medallion no longer triggers on ice
  • Temple:
    • Fixed a crash caused by the boulder chase
    • Traps no longer trigger incorrectly when approached from the right side
    • Fixed several instances of robe effects preventing the cut scenes from completing

Under the Hood:
  • Removed many unused textures and other asset files
  • Greatly optimized particle effects
  • Optimizations to memory management
  • Optimizations to tile rendering
  • Optimization to hidden logic tiles
  • Optimizations to physics
  • Executable icon is now less pixelated
  • Game objects are now roughly 10% smaller
  • Tons and tons of iteration on new content/fixes/features that always goes unmentioned but, good golly, is a lot of work




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