Devlog: Week 15

I've come to the realisation that the todo list for this game will never be empty as every time I playtest new things are inevitably added. It's all about becoming better at prioritising and consistently moulding the experience to the vision.

That said I'm quite pleased with this week's work. The starting area of Providence will most likely be featured in a future demo, so I want it to be as fleshed out as possible and thus have been improved further. This will probably continue until there's nothing more to add.

I've also begun adding a few more consumable items that can modify other items. Repair and Eternalise already existed, and I've also added Sturdify, Lighten, Persist and Duplicate. Lighten works on any item that has weight, Persist works on persistable items for now (item will persist between runs) and Duplicate which has no restrictions at all, even quest items can be duplicated. Sturdify works on any item with durability.

The recently added item mods are rare drops (except for Sturdify) and has a default 50% risk of destroying the item it's applied to. However, this can change with the Break resistance added, which can itself be modified by equipment. I haven't fully tested this out in practice, and it might turn into some kind of inventory minigame, but we'll see.

Elemental spawnrates and durations are now moddable by items. Currently global spawn rates and durations are affected by the players equipped items, so for example if the player has a helmet that gives +2 tick duration, then all spawned flames in level will live for 5 ticks instead of 3. This might be good if you want to maximize you fire damage, but less so if you are overrun by enemies using fire against you.

Now that I think of it, maybe it could be based on a median value for the active area and using that for initial spawns, which would let enemies affect the value with their EQ as well. Will try it out and see.

I've finally added custom map chunks which can be inserted in empty spaces in the Coil. The first one will be the demo boss arena on floor 5. Encountering something new that breaks the default visual structure of the dungeon feels fresh, and reminds me of the excitement of discovering new custom map segments in games like Diablo.

Changelog:

• add shopping music (unused for now).

• do sorting of tile entities to get correct drawing order.

• fix when dropping items from dead enemy an item took the place of a blocking tree tile.

• render eligble items green in item list when applying Repair or Eternalise etc.

• add orchard and gardener in Providence.

• add cartographer with info about minimap toggle.

• let Steward hint about conferring with the statues.

• let boy hint about inspection mechanic.

• add scrolldown indicator in dialogs if input hints are enabled.

• inform about non-default talk action option for hostile or neutral entities.

• make tutorial firesword unrepairable.

• show weapon damage higher up in character status.

• show weapon proficiencies for player only.

• include proficiency in lowest damage calculation visual info.

• hide base stat mods in status screen.

• add Sturdify item: increases item durability.

• add Lighten rare item: makes item weightless, might break.

• add Persist rare item: makes item persistent, might break.

• add Duplicate rare item: makes a copy of item, might break

• add Weightless item modifier.

• do a break resistance roll when modifying an item.

• add items mods for affecting global spawn rates and durations for elemental tile entities.

• add support for custom map chunks.

• make custom map chunk for cat army boss.

• fix missing portrait palette change reset for posthumous interaction.

• fix missing key info in level metadata persistence.

• show total weapon damage higher up in item info.