Patreon Weekly #43 - Mar 30th, 2020

Hey Patrons!

This week has mostly been spent on polishing up 0.8.0 for release in early April. Beta-5.1 went out a few days ago and 5.2 is coming later today. Both of these are mainly focused around bugfixes, final additions, and some QoL tweaks. 

After beta-5.2 is out I’m going to shift my primary focus toward visual polish and get the remaining sprite work done for beta-5.3. Once that’s done, we’ll be all ready for release! I’m also starting work on a full ShatteredPixel.com blog post, which will discuss all that’s been added in the last couple months.

Read on if you'd like more details... 

Final Tweaks Before Release

You can check the changelog to see all that’s new in beta-5.1, but the most notable addition is a new red flicker when the player is seriously injured. This should help keep players mindful of their health while fighting the new bosses:

Something else coming in beta-5.2 are DM-201s! They’re using a placeholder sprite for the moment, but their mechanics are fully implemented and work quite well! There’s a tougher DM-200 that’s easy to avoid, but nasty to try and attack at range.

AI changes are another thing I want to work on a bit before 0.8.0 releases. I asked the folks on the patreon discord (which you should join if you haven’t already) which things they’d like to see, and three main points came up:

• Wandering mobs can get stuck together in hallways. There should be logic that allows them to pass eachother, or for one to yield.
• Mobs should be able to perform some actions, such as walking closer, if they can see an enemy but can’t reach them.
• Mobs should be more willing to switch from a target they can see but can’t reach. 

The State of Boss Balance

In addition to bugfixes and final misc additions, I’ve also been paying attention to the lethality of the reworked bosses:

DM-300 already received a round of tweaks earlier in the beta and so the only thing I want to adjust is the ease of learning the fight. I’ve consistently gotten feedback that players don’t think to check the sparks in the environment, and so aren’t aware the location of the active pylon is telegraphed. I’m planning on putting something in to push the player in the right direction, without making things too obvious. 

Dwarf King is doing quite well but is showing as a bit too difficult at the moment. I think an easy first place to start here is to scale back the damage of DK himself a bit, as the fight already has a lot of danger from his summons. I’m also planning on making a few adjustments to the later stages of the fight to give the player a bit more time, while still keeping things feeling hectic.

Yog-Dzewa is also showing as too difficult at the moment. In particular the bright and dark fists are more dangerous than the other ones, so I’m starting there and reducing the damage they deal with their ranged attacks. I’m also going to very slightly scale back the speed of Yog’s ability and summon usage, so players have a bit more breathing room toward the end of the fight.

There’s still about a week left of the beta, so I’ll keep an eye on things to see if further tweaks are needed.