Greetings Wizards.  We’re back from Pax and have been working on adding the final content game for the September 27th, launch on Steam!  If you’re not on our mailing list, sign up for it on the RogueWizards.com website.

Pax was just simply amazing.  Not only did we get to meet a whole bunch of new gamers that loved the game, we were able to meet a bunch of the original Kickstarter backers for the game as well.  We had great placement in the Pax Rising area, a curated selection of 12 games picked by the Pax organizers themselves!

Rogue Wizards at Pax West 2016

We also got in the 4 pets into the game, each with a different ability.  We wanted to make more of these, so we’ll look into that after launch.

Pets

And Phil has been busy cranking out the final item artwork.  He’s been able to make a crazy amount of variations for a few of the weapon types so far … the rest will be ready in about a week!

Weapon artwork

Below are all the changes from August.  Talk about them in our Steam forums.

Major Changes:

• 4 pets now show up in the game and can be recruited to join you in your next dungeon from the Inn
• Dragon Whelp Pet: Melee attack and projectile fireball with burn magic
• Snow Crab Pet: Melee attack and freeze enemy magic
• Owl Pet: Melee attack and silence enemy magic
• Pets now rest at the inn and can be selected to join you on your next quest when they are fully rested
• Dragon Whelp, Crab, and Owl pets now show up in the first dungeon and in random dungeons
• Random NPCs now have a chance to show up in story games
• Steam achievements
• 8 new sword art pieces
• 8 new bow art pieces
• 8 new axe art pieces
• 8 new staff art pieces
• 12 new proc item enchantments (burn, silenece, freeze, ring of fire, explosion, singularity, banish, electric field, collapse, shield, swarm)
• New boots enchantment: Immunity to ground hazards (immune to trap triggers, fire, ice, goo, etc)
• Non elemental staffs are now guaranteed to have one intrinsic proc style affix on them, even at normal quality
• Item artwork now changes slowly over time as you level up using a new distribution system
• All secondary story scrolls are now distributed throughout the levels
• Reworked the Quest Log UI so that you can read all scrolls found at present

Minor Changes:

• Summoned Mystics now only heal 10% of health instead of 40%, because champion Mystics that summoned other Mystics is too difficult of a combination to fight when they all heal each other quickly. Mystics that were *not* summoned heal values remain the same at 40%.
• Defense value tooltips now display the defense value in blue if there is a defense bonus on the property collection
• Limited a few monster types from showing up until progressing a bit into the game
• Adjusted when a new dungeon floor decides to generate a new set of monsters or use the same monsters encountered on the previous floor. Basically small floor sequences use the same monsters for consistency for a floor or two, and then a new enemy set is generated on the next floor where it felt good, this also slows the encounter of new monsters which is good too.
• Buying and selling items now shows visual feedback of a floaty coin, this makes right-click buy/sell more obvious too
• Caverns now have stalagmites in their foreground
• Up drop rate for legendary and divine items by 2x
•  When items level up from use mastery, they now gain a new enchantment (great idea Jeff D!!!!)
• Reduced the use mastery turn time by 50% for faster advancement

Framework:

• Town progress gems now have tooltips showing their percentage and state
• Fixed journal scroll 2 auto reading on pickup … this is instead done by quest logic
• Fix rare case where turn mode UI can rapidly flip back and forth over and over betwen normal and combat mode due to an animating enemy at the edge of the screen
• Fix crash from singularity spell when pulling mutliple items stacked on the same tile
• Fix summoned actors (stalagmites) dying on their summon turn due to electric fields and causing a crash
• Added cheat for spellpoints
• Added auto reset of demo save games and an option for it in the debug menu
• Cheat damage is now a tri-state mode (none, all, enemies only)
• Quests are now failed for the current before using the travel cheat so that they don’t linger around since they cannot be completed
• God mode now allows all vendor buy operations
• Fix followers being queued up in the follower inventory for non-dungeon maps
• Item distribution tier windows are now larger
• Buildables are now centered on screen before opening the ring menu
• Added audio effects for buildabe over and active states
• Added audio effect for automatic camera moves
• Reworked the CavernForeground logic
• Added CavernFeature to ease stalagmite/tite logic
• Chests can now be populated with specific loot items via code
• Versioned save files to allow for code specified additional loot for chests
• Added Architect plan for secondary scroll population
• Fixed bow string being visible on character select screen
• Added QuestLogUI, it now replaces the QuestUI in the Player UI setup
• When UIs auto push the DualWindowUI, the current active tab is preserved when the UI returns
• The QuestLogUI is no longer present in Gauntlet games since it serves no purpose
• SpriteTextEx can now auto size itself to fit within any sizing limits set
• ScrollUI now autosizes the text to make sure it fits in the UI
• Added all bonus scroll journal entries and items (not found in world yet)
• Tweaked last mainline scroll text to include line breaks
• Added support to DialogImporter for bonus scroll text
• Generalized all the recruit logic in Pet to the Follower base class
• Added FollowerAcquiredCountProperty
• Follower architect map generator plan now works for both followers and pets in both story and guantlet mode
• Generalized UseFollower to work for pets
• Removed UsePet
• Unified the Player Follower and Pet API as just a Follower API
• Added Follower.Recruitable, set for the pets and all recruitable followers are available at the inn
• Pet roster inventory is now “Follower Roster”
• Added QuestPrototype.FollowerPlanAllowed, only true for the Kill template quest
• FollowerExtra property is now called FollowerDepartAtExit
• Added support for importing dialog for random NPC story mode dialog
• Imported all 8 random npc dialogs
• Pets are now healed by consumables
• Added Follower.HealedByPartyConsumables
• Only humanoid followers now trigger a consumable party healing tutorial conversation, we don’t want pets talking about that stuff
• Removed hard coded 4x defense multiplier for followers
• Renamed all pets and followers to have a consistent suffix in their name to make multi-select and editing easy
• Rebalanced all follower and pet health and defense values
• Rebalanced the frequency and range of the Snow Crab frozen stare skill
• Restricted pet plans from happening in several generators
• Added heal skill for artichuk
• Added support for skill cooldown in turns
• Added additional audio to artichuk and mystic heal skills
• Slightly increased pet defense
• Reduced artichuk footstep volume
• Invisibility modifiers are now auto removed when their actor is involved in a ceremony
• Fixed invisibility sound not triggering on action start
• Silence now requires target health
• Disable feedback reminder
• Disabling alpha welcome message
• Camera anim input fixes so that input is optionally disabled and restored if camera anim is cancelled
• Fix teleprot to point of interest debug command trying to go to actors that were not in the world
• Tweaked Merrol’s quest dialog to talk briefly about pets
• Inn UI now automatically opened after speaking with Meroll
• Tweaked pet AI so they do a mix of melee and magic
• Enabled pet architect plan during map generation
• Increased follower inventory capacity to accomodate pets and other actors we throw in there
• Pets now start their recovery time when you return to town and not when they die in a dungeon
• QuestActionSpawn can now spawn pets
• Added random pet spawn on 2nd level of intro dungeon
• Added debug “make pets ready now” button at inn
• Input is now disabled during camera moves and fades
• Town buildable mouseover visuals are now disabled when global input is disabled
• Pet selection is now functional at the Inn
• Added GuestUI as elements on the InnUI
• Added PetRoster inventory to the player, pets are swept from the follower inventory to the PetRoster inventory when entering town
• Versioned save files for player next pet selection saved in player transfer method
• Added a bunch of audio for death effects of pets
• Added hit boxes and center of gravity nodes for all pets in their spine files
• Added debug menu options to acquire a pet and clear all pets
• Added Actor.OnMapReady( … ), called via MapBase.OnMapReady( … )
• Added Follower.RecoveryTimeRemaining (always zero, Pets overirde it)
• Added all necessary logic for pet acquisition, selection, and cooldown in Pet component
• Added pet API methods to Player (PetAddToParty, and HasPet)
• SpriteTextTimer now supprots an expired callback, realtime, and passage of time when appliation is paused
• Fixed infinite loop when followers were trying to teleport to you from off screen, but could not because they are off screen and Actor.CanExecuteSkills() failed
• Added flags to Actor.CanExecuteSkills() to ignore off screen
• Added SkillPrototype.ActionOffScreenOk, set to true for “Teleport To Owner Skill”
• Fixed ActionManager from keeping an infinite loop going when the action to start could “never” be started … although the action was cancelled the actor was not properly removed from the actors to run that turn and now they are
• Generalized the modifier conncect effects used in InvisibilitySkill into base class ModifierSkill
• Set proper attack, defense, and health multipliers for all pets
• Added pick box to snow crab
• Fix bow string not showing and hiding when it should when swapping weapons
• Added Owl pet silence skill and effects
• Added wardrobe slot support for mouth and beak
• Added a bunch of Owl sound effects
• Added hit box to spectral axe
• Added flap sounds to Dragon Whelp low health animation
• New audio for spectral axe drop to ground
• Added generic body fall sounds (used for owl only so far)
• Animated male and female player bowstring as a separate animation from all bow images
• Added all 9 bow variation actor prefabs with distribution and sizing settings
• Added support for additional bow attachments, their glow layers, and the blow string slot and attachment
• Fix crash in ActionSkill.CanStart()
• Fix ActionManager not clearing m_nextActionToStart when that action was destroyed
• Dragon Whelp audio and skills hooked up and he’s functional as a pet follower
• Created Firebolt skill for the Dragon Whelp, basically fireball with mutliple projectiles and smaller visuals
• Added soft winged footsteps, putting these on flying followers is less distracting the the full blown enemy winged footsteps because they are a lower volume and more in the background since they are constantly walking with your player
• Added UsePet, similar to UseFollower but starts a conversation when you find a pet
• Added anim event “Flap”
• Added ArchitectPlan.Availability.LevelIndexFirst
• Added find dialog assets for all 4 pets
• Added ArchitectPlan.LimitOnePerLevelChain
• Level and LevelChain now store the generator architect plan ids of plans used in the level generation
• Added Level.OnGenerateComplete()
• Fixed failed level generations now clearing out some partial data from the last generation if it failed
• Removed LevelChain.m_populatedFollowers, this is now done with the more generic system of architect plans used
• Versioned save game files for the new LevelChain.m_usedArchitectPlans data
• Added plan for pet population
• Added Pet class
• Added AllPets list reference in ActorManager
• ActorMangaer now constructs a list of all “allowed pets” taking into account Kickstarter installation flags (not yet working)
• Moved DragonWhelp from Enemies to Pets folder
• Fix quest rank not properly getting reset when returning to main menu and starting another game
• Fix pulse logic causing a divide by zero when trying to pulse to the current color
• Reset tooltip transform position, scale, and rotation upon initialization so that we clear out any previous values where the tooltip was last used … tooltips in town that were rotated were being reused for other tooltips and didnt’ have their rotation cleared and were all angled
• Added Transform.Reset()
• Fix more Z fighting on rocks near tower
• Fixed swords not using the correct images on the character to match their in world images
• Fixed Z fighting on some platforms surrounding the Wizard Tower
• Fixed inventory slot selection effects not timing out
• Removed all old HOTween refrences
• Now on Unity 5.4.0
• Converted rope effects to use the current unity particle system
• Added list of enemy prefab keys in Level for the selected enemies used on that level/floor, save game archives have been versioned to include the new data
• Removed all old Forest environment assets
• LevelChain floor prototype lists now have a checkbox for each floor that indicates whether it should use the same enemies from the previous floor
• Removed the deprecated LevelChain.InfiniteLevels
• Added the notion of item distribution tiers to replace the “allowed rank range” given to items before. With distribution tiers, loot will cycle in and out via tiers as ranks increase, and when reaching the last tier items from the first tier will by cycled in ad nauseam
• Removed some unused range serializable structures, its better to just have two fields to make text searching easier so you can see the field name and value on a single line in any text searching program
• Removed unused allowed rank range from affix prototype
• Switched which sword art appears when to provide a more diverse visual variety
• Prefab sets default to sorting by name
• Went through all prefab set .prefab data files and changed them to sort by name
• Added Item.DistributionTier and set for all equipment that has variations (not yet functional)
• Renamed a few equipment prefabs to prepare for upcoming variation artwork
• Created Axe 02 from the Axe Long 01 image, added item, put in spine rigs and spine texture atlases
• Open flame now has on create sound
• Added data driven support to NumericOnePropertyTooltip to display the tooltip value in the enhanced color when the optional second property is present in the property collection
• TooltipManager now has just one field for “enhanced value” instead of different ones for rank, attack, defense, etc.
• Fix shield orb effect not resetting its size to the correct scale upon recycle
• Fix enemy team not set in combat manager causing some attacks to be done on the wrong team (on die explode for instance)
• Fixed property definitions shifting to the wrong value type due to new ‘Invalid’ enum value inserted at top that is now removed
• Icon art for proc singularity and ground protection affixes
• Added AffixGroupCollection with support for using “all” or “num picks” of the affix groups contained within
• Replaced the list of affix prototypes in Item with an AffixGroupCollection
• Added “NoFlag” flag to Affix, intrinsic affixes that come from an “all” collection set these so that the affixes are not saved in in archives and instead are recreated from prototype data every time … we’ll use this for unique or set items in the future
• Reduced the frequency proc and damage affixes turn up on weapons
• Slightly increased the proc frequency on helms
• Weapon tooltips now display the total and bonus damage in blue, all other damage values are white and no longer colored for their damage type
• DamagePayload can now track the enhanced status of every separate damage type in the payload
• Better logic for selecting which affixes modify the name of an item
• Added “Ground Protection Property”
• PropertyCollection.HasProperty() is now done by trying to get values instead of searching for the key in the collection itself … this is required due to subclasses of PropertyCollection that impoement property values procedurally
• Added PropertyDefinition.GetValueType() which takes into account simple values and formula results
• Fixed StaticTextPropertyTooltip adding tooltips when the value was not actually present in the property collection
• Added Trigger.ProtectionAffixPreventsTrigger which indicates that the trigger will not fire if the user has a ground protection property on them … set to true on traps, fire, ice, goo etc
• Added ExplosionSkill
• Moved got hit procs into combat code so that damage that occurs without a skill (burn modifier, counter damage) will still have a chance to trigger a proc
• Reduced the % chance for many proc affixes, a top of 20% is just too powerful
• Added support for “got hit” triggering item procs
• Fixed Swarm skill not destroying the boid missile carriers after the pixie/boid attack was over
• Moved proc skills from Weapon into Equipment base class so it can be used by armor too
• Proc “boulder” property and data has been renamed to proc “collapse” since it actually executes the CollapseSkill and not the BoulderSkill
• Skills now record their last execute turn when the action running them is cleared and they are totally done, this way we won’t accidentally think we’ve already run this turn while we’re running skill logic … this is critical for proc skills that are limited to executing once per turn that is checked in
• Skill.CanExecute() and Skill.CanTarget() which can get called mutliple times during the execution of a single skill
• Actor.TryHitOtherProcs() now removes invalid or dead actors from the CombatTarget used for proc execution so they don’t fail to target dead or missing actors if they can target an empty location (banish)
• Modified BanishSkill to work as a single target proc as well as a normal multi target spell
• Support for modifier based “proc” affixes
• Fixed sprites attached to actors not having the correct lighting (burn flame effect)
• Added property icons for burn and freeze affixes
• Formalized and added Actor.TryCombatProcs( … ) from which we do knockback, burn, silence, and freeze
• Actor.TeamPrefab is now TeamDefault
• Mass replace all instances of TeamPrefab with TeamDefault within all .prefab files
• Burn now summons a stationary flame
• Support for electric field proc
• Moved all proc affixes into a folder
• Fixed electric fields hatched from eggs not doing any damage
• Added actor class to “Limit One Per Cell”, set on all traps to avoid identical trap stacking (flames, electric fields etc)
• Created Electric Field Hazard that executes a self contained skill for the hazard, this is used by procs and is different than the electric field summoned that links to the owner skill when executing the combat logic
• Added several proc properties, property icons, affixes, and affix groups
• Proc summons are now assigned the rank of the instrument doing the proc
• Fireball and Firebrand flames are now assigned the rank of the skill user
• The framework for skill based procs is now in place
• Modfied ignite skill so it uses the combat target at the center of the ring instead of the user so it’s good for procs and the player spell
• Actor.OrientTo() no longer orients the actor when there is no target actor and the alignment between the actor and the coord is vertical
• All melee attacks now complete immediately after all contact frames are done, this makes the procs feel good as they occur on contact since we don’t have to wait for the melee skill animation to finish … but it also speeds all of the melee based combat which is super cool
• Scripted and standard actions now respect Action.CanStart() returning never and cancelling the action
• Moved the code that removes the actor from the action manager ‘actors to run’ to a place that works for actions that were destroyed during their Start() call … this was specifically for the melee skill which now complete (and therefore destroyes itself) during the Start() call in order to speed up combat and make procs fire at a good time
• Actor.TryHitOtherProcs() is now driven by a ‘combat target’ param and can handle target actors that are present/missing and target coords as separate evaluations
• Skill.CanBeExecuted() now considers procs that have already fired on the current turn
• Skill.CanStart() now calls m_skill.CanBeExecuted(), this seems like a good idea since we expect the action manager to cancel an action which can “never” start … so if the same actor tries to regenerate the same action, hopefully eventually the condition will arise where the actor choose to do something else (most likely from the target becoming hidden) … note this is not fixing something, it just seems like a good idea as a safeguard that came to me when plugging in the cancel logic and thinking about procs
• Moved proc execution into Skill after combat occurs, even if the target dies or there was no target … we still try to proc. This lets us swing at nothing and have a chance that a fire ring (or other) proc will execute. Similarly, if the target dies we can still proc at their empty location which feels good too.