That shouldn't even be possible. That boss hasn't received any changes.
Oh! That's what was happening? I thought entering a new floor reset the effect and that "need for speed", "need for super speed", etc, were stacking on top of each other, giving you 3 layers of bonuses every floor. But looking at the code now, I see there's a "remove system" in there. Ok, that's pretty neat actually. Once I play some more, I might have some duration suggestions for the super speed and super duper speed perks though. Thank you for clearing my confusion.
Yep, the previous perk systems should be getting removed. The durations are probably going to need fine tuning, yeah.
Yeah, the safe zones are at either end of the room, so if you want to be super cautious you can try to draw out as many enemies as possible, and fight in those areas.
As far as achievements go, because that is proper engine stuff I don't really know what's going on there. The achievement bugs have been pretty frustrating to deal with for that reason.
Yep, that sounds about right. You become a kind of blood phantom, although it's not 1 health per room it's life leech when killing enemies.
Sounds like it's working out. You're going to have a lot of restarts with the Penumbra, but when everything works out those runs should be satisfying.
I think the turrets are meant to be solid and dependable, so you can reliably use them tactically, so I'm not a big fan of adding randomness to those. Hopefully just being able to deploy sentries, and the tactical gameplay that creates should make the weapon interesting enough. Yeah, there is a delay on how fast you can put the turrets down...I guess there doesn't need to be, though. It's probably more about how you position them. The fire rate doesn't really matter, I guess, so I'll reduce that delay a bit.
I'll reduce the energy cost on that a little then, thanks.
I tested this a bit. Unfortunately, this seem more like a general problem. I've used as much wall_collision_reduction on shots as possible in order to reduce this effect, but sometimes if you are flush with the wall, the shots are stopped. For some weapons, the shots seem to be pushed to the side a bit...for some reason, which looks weird but gameplay-wise it's better. I'll have to investigate this a bit more and maybe ask Keith about it to see what's going on.
Yeah, the reason why I did this is so that if the Evaporater is hovering over an unreachable area, it's not halting your progress. It's a solution to that, but a janky one. I could just stick with the regular behavior on room clear, but then there would be some rooms where the Evaporater would hover in unreachable areas for a bit. You could just wait until the enemy moves, of course, but I was thinking that might prove frustrating for the player. I suppose I could just remove the ability to move through walls on this enemy, which isn't the original design, but it works, I guess.
I might look into something like this, but I think that once the patterns click and it's realized that the end of the rooms are safe, the room should be good as is....I think!
Darn. I should have recorded the fight. I thought it would be easy to reproduce in the test room, but it's not! Now all I have to offer is "It was going a bit forward everytime it went up or down", which is as unhelpful as can be. Now that's frustrating.
Okay, I got some stuff here.
- rooms with "JumpScare_x1" couldn't spawn whatever that is.
- you seem to not get as much XP as you used to get, so less health, damage, etc. could be associated with item drops being rare.
Also, some complaints about the melee enemy. Sidestep Abmoog, was it? I'm pretty sure that was the one. And a complaint about "too many bullets per enemy" which is going to feed in a bit to something else here.
Okay first of all, I'd like to congratulate Windows on being the worst thing to ever happen to computers. I have to type this up a second time because I maybe hit the windows key kinda almost sorta possibly. WHoever came up with that has hopefully been A: fired and B: banished to another galaxy while covered in bees.
Anyway. Biggest issue right now: Visual confusion. WAY too much of it. I'll put it this way: in just going through a run on normal mode, I've had a few too many times where I cant even entirely tell what's going on. Now, if *I* am having issues with this, it's definitely a problem. I'm used to Mushihime and it's infinite fields of tangled purple doom, and it doesn't give me that much trouble. The problem: Too many "large" bullets and particle effects. Way too many. These larger shots should be used sparingly. The problem isn't the hitbox size, it's simply the visual size of the sprite. It sort of "bloats" everything. But it also makes it nigh-impossible to tell what is going on when two patterns intersect, which is very frequent in this game. I'll just put it this way: There's a reason why the normal floors are using mostly bullets from the "simple" bullet art folder. Same with most of the bosses. There's already a lot that players need to process visually as it is.
I'd love to get some feedback from you testers on this one. Let us know what you think of this. I'm aware that it's a very subjective issue even just within individual games.
Let's see... other issue: Entirely missing enemy category (jumpscares). Facepalm. This one is probably my fault. I'll deal with that, and other related issues. I'm going to put the Misery Mode stuff on hold and try to push out an update tomorrow or the next day containing some new baddies to fill some voids that are currently there and just add more in general to the golden floor enemy selection. Also maybe new boss #8. In particular we could use some more of the "simpler" foes. Got lots of complicated ones in the golden floors, perhaps a bit too much.
Certain things also could probably do with a good whack from the nerf bat. Carrion Engine in particular could use a nerf nuke, I went a tad overboard with that guy, so it's getting some changes. A couple of the minibosses could maybe do with a mild nerf but I should test a bit more.
A couple of other things here.... elemental damage. It's hard to even tell what this is. It seems... out of place to me? What do you guys think? Also, most things capable of altering enemy firing timings (like the Narcotics Drone) could do with a toning-down. They pretty much ALL turn bosses/fearsomes into sad, easy things regardless of difficulty. There's a new module that was doing something like this, I forget the name. I should have written this down.
Challenge rooms are doing well, too. The one with the bazillion snipers might be a bit overboard though, I could see players getting a bit lost on that one perhaps. But for the most part, these have been very good. The more variety here the better!
Evaporator enemy: room cleared, this guy was still hanging around. No idea why. Happened more than once.
Skeleton Key: Not opening lock blocks. Probably an oversight instead of a bug.
Lastly: the biggest feedback I'd like to get right now, is what you guys think of the current difficulty, based on whatever mode you are playing on?
And yes I know I could have typed this up in an email, but I'd rather have all of it open for discussion among the testers as well.
That is actually a good spot, yeah. In my rooms, I've hardly used those glass containers. I'll add a bunch to mine where appropriate, cheers. I'll leave Draco take a look at his own rooms. Maybe it's just my rooms that are really lacking them.
These are probably the Sidestep Abmoogs. Those are actually slightly broken in the build that was sent out, so that they don't actually side-step (I think), which makes them a bit more terminator-esque. I've also slightly nerfed the movement speed for the next build. We'll take it easy with these guys, though. A couple of rounds of tweaks should get them into good shape.
Not sure about this. Generally, there are later floor enemies that unlock, so there should be a clear difference between late and early game. I am trying something a bit different with the elemental enemies, though, in just having same floor variants, I might have to change that in the future, although it's a bit early to say. The enemy HP values could be looked at a bit more, perhaps.
you seem to not get as much XP as you used to get, so less health, damage, etc. could be associated with item drops being rare.
XP values should be similar, I think. Unless something weird is going on.
I'm not at the correct computer just now, but I'll put a nerf in later, cheers.
The other errors with Challenge rooms and enemy seeding are all known, yeah. The empty challenge rooms won't be fixed for a long while.
Yeah, I'm going to have to just be reactive about this. If anybody can point out any specific problem enemies, I'll take a look. For myself, though, I don't really struggle visually for some reason. It may just be that it doesn't really bother me that much, even when I can't see fully what's going on, heh. I like the chaos of the moment too much. The only thing I do find bothersome visually is at some points when there is visual glare from the backdrops behind. As for particles, the only enemies that are using particles, I think, are 3 attackers which give off an AOE -- the drainer, energy drainer, and the healer, I think. I'm going through the enemies in my mind, but those are the only ones I can think of, and those don't even shoot at you, so it's just an area around the enemy. Should be easy enough to see. It's a general rule to not use particles on enemy shots, only player shots. This then also helps you distinguish between enemy and player shots a bit. As for large bullets, those can be looked at, yeah. Someone is going to need to point out the problem enemies for me, though.
I really didn't want to get too deep into the elemental damage stuff, so it's meant to be pretty simple. Mainly just some Dot and an associated effect. Ice just slows a bit, Fire burns you a bit, Acid does Dot and increased weakness to further attacks, and Ion stuns a bit. I can remove it if necessary, though, but most of this stuff is already in the base game -- the effects like time dilation, I mean.
Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to lose the flies through walls attribute on this enemy. It's a shame, but I've tried various solutions so far.
No feedback currently, just a question. Do we get a new final boss with this expansion, when it gets released? Maybe somethign like "Hand of Midas" or soemthing along that line?
Yeah, I think so. Misery can confirm this, though.
I'll run through my rooms and check on glass containers. I know that some of the simpler rooms I did recently didn't have any, but we're talking shops and secret stuff rooms, which probably don't need any.
Found 3 rooms to add glass shottables to that didn't have them previously.
Aw, that's too bad. I really like those guys. One just gave me a good fright with Penumbra, passing over a wall to reach me. An intense and surprising moment that couldn't have happened without their current design. Can't you give them some special ability making them commit seppuku when the room is cleared?
I'm not sure what this Hand of Midas thing is.
Okay, how about Enter the Gungeon? I don't know if you've seen that but it's a decent analogy I guess. The game's normal final boss is the Dragun, but if you've done enough things and completed a couple of special objectives, you have the option of going past that into another area (which in that game is literally named "Bullet Hell", someone was being very clever that day...). In there you reach the game's "true" final boss, Lich, who is really dramatically harder than the Dragun, BUT, he's optional. You don't HAVE to go to that area, you can simply end the game with a win right after the Dragun if you want. But if you do go fight the Lich, you better know what you're doing because it's one of those fights where it seems like the game stops being balanced in difficulty and starts simply trying to actively kill you. It's also a very long fight, as the boss has three separate forms. Bosses like this are usually very long battles.
Isaac is where the concept is inspired by though, as it does this sort of thing in multiple places. It's pretty common in the genre though. Usually in these games the idea is, if you think your build is strong enough (and if you think you have enough skill) you can go after the big optional guy on that particular run. But if it isn't, you don't have to.
I'm not sure what sort of conditions might be required here to get this boss to show itself. Havent decided.
It's also somewhat inspired by lots of the bullet-hell games I play, where there's usually some sort of horrible "true" final boss that only appears if you beat the game almost perfectly. Cave's games do this a lot, they're the bosses that are so stupidly difficult that even most experts don't stand a chance. I don't intend on going THAT far with it, but... I'll say that the misery mode version of this particular boss will be different than the rest. If I can get it to do the stuff I want, that is.
It's definitely not playable yet... right now it's a hideous jumbled mess. It's pretty low on the priority list at the moment.
Actually...yes, yes, I believe I can! (checks). Yep, that works. Thanks! We'll try that for now then. The only problems are that if a room is filled with Evaporaters then you only have to kill the remaining enemies to clear the room. This is fine if there is only one or two Evaporaters, and a bunch of other enemies, but it does feel a bit weird if the room is mostly Evaporaters. You might potentially also get a room that rarely spawns only Evaporaters, so the room will auto-clear. Anyway, we'll try this for a while. If it doesn't work out I'll have to remove flies_through_obstacles.
Mine layer abmog, vain, drove and trebuchet all do not give xp when I kill them. Not sure if it is intended since they are such easy kills.
Maybe pick up an item that could be a part of this boss. A weapon or a piece of armor or whatever. Then it checks if you have this part, if so then you can fight this boss. Make it available in the sacrifice shop to kinda guarantee it to show up.
The undead revival sacrifice perk doesn't seem to grant life on kill. It also prevents pickup of any weapon and resources too.
Well spotted on the Mine Layer and Vain. Mine Layer wasn't granting XP due to the enemy transforming into a mine on death. I've fixed that now using a different implementation. Vain is a super easy fix, but I'll leave Misery to deal with that. I don't like digging into his code when he's close to pushing an update, in case it causes conflicts. The others are popcorn enemies which are set to not give XP, I think...although maybe if they just gave a very small amount of XP that would be nice. Only really respawning enemies need to be set to 0, I think.
Yeah, setting it to not allow you to pick up any items is kind of a thematic thing, plus it adds a slightly different gameplay element. I didn't want to do just another straight revive item. It does actually grant life on kill, but it's not a 1 health per enemy ratio. You have to kill 5 enemies for 1 health, I think. I tested it quick, and it does seem to be working correctly for me.