Patreon Weekly #2 - June 13th 2019
Added 2019-06-13 20:06:56 +0000 UTCHey Patrons!
I'm mostly finished the high-concept phase of 0.7.4 now, and I'm moving on to implementing. I'll likely be covering all of these in more detail in the eventual blog post, but here's some early info on 0.7.4's main content: new and improved allies!
Existing Allies
Firstly, I'm looking to tweak and improve the behavior of existing allies so that they are more useful and less cumbersome. Allies which follow you can now all move between depths, and will no longer charge into combat against enemies that haven't seen you or can't reach you. The sad ghost in particular will be able to be given simple commands like 'go here' or 'attack this'.
Wand of Warding
Rather than directly zapping an enemy, this wand zaps the ground and spawns a glyph there which attacks enemies. Glyphs start out only firing a single shot, but can be upgraded by zapping them again. Eventually glyphs power up into a magical sentry turret, which has its own health and continually fires at enemies. The wand can do very consistent damage, but requires some setup first.
Wand of Living Earth
This wand shoots small rocks which both damage enemies and return to the player as a sort of shield. Once the player has built enough rock on themselves, the wand will shoot it all forward and it forms into a rock guardian which fights with the player! The guardian doesn't do great damage, but is very sturdy. The guardian will form back around the player as rock shielding when enemies are defeated.
I'm hoping to get the beta for 0.7.4 out sometimes in the next couple of weeks, though there'll be more patreon updates before then. Please let me know what you think in the comments, and whether you have any suggestions for future things to do with this patreon.
Comments
Some wands are a more simple point and shoot, and these are definitely on the more complicated side. The main way I'm aiming to manage that is by having the turrets be totally immobile/autonomous, and the golem be heavily tied to the shots of the wand. In this way there's potential for the player to center their gameplay around the allies, but the fairly standard 'fire and forget' wand gameplay will still be useful with them. My old original designs for these wands (back when I made the sprites) was a decent bit more complex, and I scrapped them as a result.
Shattered Pixel
2019-06-13 20:37:07 +0000 UTCYes, the immobility of the turrets is going to be the major limitation of that wand. Though at the same time if you want the turrets to stick around a higher traffic area, that immobility might be an asset.
Shattered Pixel
2019-06-13 20:33:10 +0000 UTCNice to see you finally getting around to using those sprites! My chief critique about these are that these seem a whole lot more complex than the mechanics behind all other wands. How do you expect these to compare to wands like Lightning?
Zrp200
2019-06-13 20:32:32 +0000 UTCIt's great to hear about improvements to allies. I never feel like I use them enough. The wands sound really interesting. Are the glyphs/turrets immobile, so you're incentivized to lure enemies to them?
CarvedRunes
2019-06-13 20:30:03 +0000 UTC
