Getting very close now to being ready to release the next build now: most of what’s left is some polish and testing. Network stuff’s new to me, so I’m being a little extra cautious on this one.

The next build will also include some other changes, such as the ability to name characters (necessary for the high score list to make any sense!), and some balance/gameplay changes including but not limited to:

• T:1 and T:2 have been adjusted to be a bit less of a meat grinder and a bit more reliably sane. In particular: Will O’ Wisps and Freybugs have swapped locations (Wisps now appear on T:2 instead of T:1, and Freybugs take their place as a T:1 monster), and Raicho are now weak to Slash, Impact, and Pierce (in addition to Body and Mind, which they were weak to before.) I want a tough-as-nails roguelike, not an unfair one.
• All trait-based requirements/restrictions on recruiting monsters have been removed. Frankly, these weren’t a lot of fun and were making balancing a pain since it meant you could find yourself excluded from large numbers of  abilities unless you were willing to completely rewire your party around getting them.
• Hitting any key to “speed up” turns in progress will now automatically skip message log “more” prompts that are related to lots of messages coming in at once (though it will still pause and make you clear “next” prompts, which occur for very important messages, usually related to immediate danger.)
• Light and Dark “smite” abilities have been adjusted, based on how common their condition is, and how easily the condition is averted. As a result, some got stronger (Agony), some didn’t really change (Blight),  some got a little weaker (Punish), and some now act completely differently (Exorcism and Bane now do damage based on the target’s remaining HP, for example.) Also, Easg Saint now get Humble instead of Punish, so that the first introduction to smiting is one that can’t be fatal.
• Made the friendly demon indicator a bit easier to see (it’s now almost-neon green instead of a subtle blue.)

Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker vacation is winding down now (not that I’m anywhere near done with the game itself, it’s huge!), so it’s back to work on Demon. Next up will be tracking high scores via a server so that people will actually believe me when I tell them a score of 300 is actually rather good.

Here’s a screenshot of the game displaying the scoreboard using some obvious junk data… but, it is obvious junk data being loaded up from the server. Most of the early work has unfortunately been a bit more boring and difficult to make exciting to talk about: stuff like writing code to handle problems like losing your internet connection, retrying on a failure if the user wants, interfaces for communicating all that, bleh. Good news is, all that sort of stuff I only have to do once and then it’s there for any other server-based stuff I want to do, like say, perhaps Relic Wraiths. (Think typical roguelike ghosts… but for Demon. ) Not quite ready for those yet, for now I’m starting simple so I can focus most of my efforts on getting the framework and basics in properly.

Oh, and a shout out and thank you to Keylan (Jason) for helping me with the backend portion of this. Thanks Keylan!