Online Co Op and Graphical Update

I apologize for the long period of silence since the last major update. Things have been a bit busy over here. In that time, I graduated college and got a new job that has been keeping me fairly busy and required me to move to a new state. But despite this, I have continued working on The Baleful Tower in my quest to make it the best game it can possibly be.

This update is a prime example of me proving myself wrong. Early in the process of making this game, when I sent the first couple development builds to my friends prior to the initial Early Access release, a few of them made negative comments regarding the art and graphics. My response to this was basically to just ignore them, because I liked the look that the 2D, unlit rendering provided. But later, when testing this update, several of my friends mentioned that some of the enemy units and projectiles blended in too much with the color of the floor. Since this was a complaint about the functionality of the game rather than a purely aesthetic critique, I began looking into ways to improve the readability of the game while maintaining the cartoonish art style. So I eventually added a simple cell shader, and after I tested it the first time, I had to admit that all my friends' initial critiques were correct and the game looks much better now. While the changes may be subtle, especially in a side by side comparison, it makes a great difference in motion.

Also, in the period after I graduated but before I had my new job lined up, I was working on the game and testing everything, when I came to another realization that ran counter to my initial idea of the game. When I sent the very first build of the game to my friends to test (a build that is drastically different from what you can play today), I included a note in the ReadMe file stating “I will not be adding any sort of multiplayer, especially not online multiplayer. You'd have to make a really compelling case to convince me otherwise. I'm talking ‘Grant I'll do all the work myself’ level of compelling.” However, as I continued working on the game that summer on my parent’s farm, I realized that the best version of this game is one where you can play together with your friends, sort of replicating the experience of playing a game on a 4-player arcade cabinet.

And so began a lengthy and challenging process, that admittedly might have been a bit ill-advised, of adding online multiplayer. It was an especially rough process since I did not have multiplayer in mind when making the game originally, so I essentially had to tear the whole thing apart and put the pieces back together within a client server architecture. This was a lengthy process, and I learned an awful lot doing it, in particular that I should probably make all games going forward with multiplayer in mind, even if I just plan on it being single player, just in case I change my mind. But anyways, after a lengthy period of developing, testing and iteration, we now have functional, a four player cooperative online multiplayer mode. And it’s really fun. I am very excited for you all to try it out. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Below is a bulleted list of some of the more specific changes.

Enjoy, Grant

Patch Notes:

• Added Online Multiplayer

• Redid graphics to use a cell shader instead

• Redid the game balance in order to increase the overall pace of play

  • Increased the attack of all player classes and enemies

  • Reduced max health of enemies

  • Redid the stat scaling of enemies (per floor and biome) and player classes (per level)

  • Increased the movement speed of all player classes

  • Considerably increased the roll animation rate for all player classes

  • Lowered the value of goal thresholds for each floor

  • Reduced the time allotted for each floor

  • Reduced the price of all shop items

  • Increased the frequency and quantity of enemy spawning

  • Altered the mana cost, cooldown time and potency of player abilities

  • Tripled the attack power of the regular bombs bought in shop

  • Reduced the unlock thresholds for all player classes

  • Reduced the duration of all player status ailments

  • Altered the max health of the bosses

  • Barbarian Rage no longer lowers Defense

• Fixed a bug where the character select might occasionally start spinning wildly

• Added support for “A” and “D” keys as input in character select and Bestiary

• Extended Zombie line of sight range

• Fixed a bug of erratic behavior for the effects volume slider

• Fixed bug where the shop would block the exit ladder

• Added the Shop to the tutorial

• Added a bell sound that rings at the beginning of floors with a shop

• Redid the Fishmonger enemy behavior. Now it makes quick dashes in a single direction rather than chasing the player

• Fixed some bug that might cause game to hitch up or crash when using the Barbarian Spinning Ax or Bard Harp Throw ability

• Altered the chances of Mindflayer projectile causing status ailments

• Fixed bug where Mindflayer projectiles would be unaffected by Reflective Coating effect

• Player movement when Panicked should be less erratic

• Added a frame rate cap

• Fixed problem where Crimson King would get stuck in a state where he would no longer attack

• Fixed bug where the Zombie Naturalist Vine Strike would stay spawned and keep growing in size after the Zombie is killed

• Fixed issue with normal music failing to resume when transitioning floors with the Bard’s Music Box playing

• Emperor Penguin now bounces off players when sliding

• Changed the mesh of the Blinding Mine in the Light Biome to better distinguish it from the gold coins

• Added a sound effect that plays when stepping on a Blinding Mine

• Holy Priestess now attacks with the gold ring variation of the Ground Pound attack occasionally if a player is too close to her

• Fixed bug where the second set of vines on the Great Pumpkin might push the player above the field of play