Dev Diary 58 - Levelling Up

February 11, 2023 · 3 min · Vsevolod

This period consisted mostly of rebalancing and changing numbers randomly until I feel better! As a result, we got much more challenging and stable gameplay, but still there are a lot of issues and now I want to steer player a bit from exploration to town-building. And of course there was a lot of bugfixing - I solved A LOT of old issues, including some game design ones. Anyway I’m starting to be happy with the result, which means I’m going to draft some new people to test it out. BONUS: some soundtracks in the end of that post.

Creeps in the world (especially in more elite areas) are now much harder to defeat. Abilities are still very powerful and game-changing, but now rules are slightly changed: you can’t reposition a creature after spellcasting (this led to abuse of ranged casters, where a player puts all casters into back lanes and gets them out only to quickly cast a spell - with big controlled areas that was very strong and didn’t make any sense). Also, creatures in battle can cast each spell only once per battle. I consider changing this to simple cooldown, as it’s simpler to understand.

I did some crazy UI polish for level ups, getting knowledge, and picking up gems. Then I played a lot of times because that small polish makes levelling up feel so rewarding, haha!

There also was some improvements to procedural effect generator for passive abilities, limiting some edge cases. Now I see how procedural abilities could work, but I still think I’ll refrain from that. I also need to spend some time to think on how to bind generated icons and spell names to the effect, then how to bind skills stylistics to archetypes.

I worked on soundtrack again for fun, and I made new main menu music. I think I’m going to update it again to a more coherent one with more recognizable parts, but this one already sounds pleasing. The previous one I shown long ago is too ambient and you can’t remember it even after a few listens, though, it transferred the atmosphere well. Waiting for an inspiration for a third track which combines the good sides for both! Actually there is already, I just need to find time to sit at home and make it.

Changelog

But the changelog is still quite small due to some fun and unfun events in my personal life, e.g. ending a 5.5 year relationship, or visiting a show by one of my favourite bands (and even meeting someone!). So, nevermind, here it the changelog:

  • Combat mechanics updates
    • If a creature has casted a spell this turn, you can’t reposition it anymore
    • A spell can be cast only once in battle
  • UI polish
    • Level up effect
    • Knowledge particles fly to player’s top left of the screen to indicate that knowledge has increased
    • When player gets gems, particles fly to top left of the screen
  • Balance
    • Stronger creeps overall, remade creeps placement algorithm
      • Creep creature levels now (at least try to) tell you if it’s too early for you to go for them
    • Much stronger far away creeps
    • Dropped weapons take durability damage
  • Procedural passive improvements
    • New effect parts
    • Prevented conflicting/too powerful effect parts
  • Soundtrack updates
    • New track
    • New main menu track
  • Faction select track set from one of previous tracks
  • Uneven Dungeon logo at start
  • Fixed a ton of small bugs
  • New bugs

Existing Soundtracks

As a bonus, here is a list of all published tracks!