New build is posted! Grab your preferred flavor from the links on the right. 
My previous post covered the main changes, so I don’t have a whole lot else to add. 
If you want more details, you can always check out the change log included with the builds.
Here’s a screenshot showing that the new build is still the same happy game everyone has grown to love. 
Enjoy, good luck, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US!
Hey everyone. The next build is nearing completion. I hope to have it ready sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.
Here’s a quick reminder of the major new stuff coming:
After this build is released, I’ll be taking a small break for the Thanksgiving holiday, then diving into content, content, content. I’ll post again when the build’s done.
Hey folks. Been a week since my last post, so I figured I’d give a small update.
The second half of the capture mechanic polish pass is going pretty well. “Defeat X in Y turns” mechanics now support travel between floors and also reveal the location of the nearest enemy on the map for the duration of the attempt. This should make these capture attempts much better and more fair gameplay-wise. You’ll be able to see the marker on both the mini map that is always visible, and on the main map.
Protect captureables now have the ability to spawn enemies to attack the target, finally bringing this particular mechanic to the level it was supposed to be at. Here we can see an Asrai being mobbed by angry peasants. (Note: The spawned enemies aren’t worth XP for balance reasons, but you do get XP for successful captures.. and of course the demon itself is also a reward.)
Also looking at a little more polish to encounter management: there’s still a teeny bit of double encountering going on of the ‘both at once’ kind I don’t approve of, going to see if I can tweak that out of existence.
Finally, going to see if I can figure out a way to squeeze the UI into a smaller size resolution so people can play on smaller monitors. No promises on this one, but I’m going to at least look.
Another build so quick? Yep. It’s even a fairly significant one! The build links on your right have been updated, grab your favorite flavor and go.
The major changes in this build are the introduction of a rudimentary set of encounter control features designed to prevent double encounters and (now that it is no longer necessary as an artifical/hacky means of preventing double encounters) and a very significant reduction in the size of dungeon floors.
It is my expectation that double encounters are virtually (not completely, but almost!) eliminated based on my own testing, which considering that is true on top of the dungeon floors containing roughly only 25% of the playable area they did before, is a pretty good result for a first pass.
You can see the difference in level size from this pair of Tower maps below. On the left you have one of the new levels, on the right, one of the previous ones. It’s worth noting that I have not made an attempt to upgrade level generation yet: this was just a size reduction. Level generation improvements will come once I’m back onto content development.
Next up, the remaining capture mechanics polishing, then… the wide, wide world of content development!
One of Demon’s more annoying design bugs for awhile now has been the lack of control I had given myself over how enemy encounters behave in in the game. The most obvious example of this is when you run into to ridiculously large groups of enemies (actually two or more groups that happened to randomly find each other and stick together), but it also manifested in other problems: the extra large… and largely empty… levels I asked the game to create to try and minimize that problem, and the resulting easiness of “chase me” captureables and near impossibility without a Trouble Chime of “kill X other guys” captureables that this not fix caused.
I’ve been quietly working on a real fix to the original problem, and, I think it is almost ready to deploy.
The main, immediately visible results should be:
* Much, much smaller tower levels. (If current testing continues to bear out my current parameter choices, tower levels would contain about 75% less playable space and occupy a 60% smaller grid.
* Virtually no more initially double encounters…
* …but there will be more frequent mid-encounter intrusions, particularly during longer battles.
* Enemies are somewhat much less willing to expend resources aiding other enemy groups. This will be most noticeable with healers and buffers: they will rarely use their limited resources on enemies on other groups, preferring to save their efforts for their actual friends.
The main result of these change I’m hoping for, as a whole? A much leaner exploration experience, encounters that are overall fairer while still challenging (you will almost never run into two groups at once anymore, but extra groups joining a long fight in progress will be more common), more challenging “chase me” and (to a lesser extent) “wait” captureables, and fairer “kill X in Y turns” captureables.
Early testing has been going well, if that continues to be the case, this next build might be released very soon indeed. I’ll keep you posted.
(Note: I should stress that this, however, is not the remaining part of the captureable review that is still in progress. Further changes are coming on that front, including direct fixes to some of the issues with “kill X in Y turns” captureables. )
Small bug fix release that addresses a bug 11/3 introduced with player allies sometimes refusing to acknowledge former enemies are friends now that you’re working on capturing them (Headless, Asrai, etc.)
Thanks go out to Rogueliker, whose stream of Demon I spotted this during last night.
Whew. At long last, the build with Geminimax’s new character sprites and improved negotiation mechanics is released. Go grab your favorite flavors from the download links on the right-hand side of the page.
I hope everyone is as excited about this build, particularly the new character sprites, as I am. I’ve been playing and testing with them for a few weeks now, and I couldn’t be happier with how they’ve turned out.
If you haven’t seen them yet, here’s a few screenshots… but what are you waiting for? Go play! Also, if you want to check out more of Geminimax’s excellent artwork, visit his DeviantArt page at http://geminimax.deviantart.com/
Enjoy, and as always, good luck in the Tower!
Tomorrow morning I begin the final testing on the next release build. I’m hoping for a Tuesday or Wednesday release. Assuming no ugly bugs pop up, it won’t be long now. I can’t wait to get the new Geminimax character sprites and negotiation goodies out there.
Hey everyone. Getting very close to being done with the next build, so I thought I’d share a bit more about what to expect.
The next build’s been focused on two sets of improvements: putting in and testing out Geminimax’s awesome character sprites, and improving the negotiation mechanic considerably. This post is going to focus on the negotiation goodies.
Previously, I’d mentioned that the negotiation interface had received a few UI improvements: an approval indicator and mouse support chief among them. So now, let’s talk about the new content that was added. With the help of a special Goblin and a special Slime (i.e.: Just because Goblins and Slimes ask for this stuff here doesn’t mean they will in the build ), here’s a set screenshots of the some of new demands that you might see during a negotiation.
The goals of the new demand types are:
* To give demons a bit more personality and variance in the sort of things they ask for.
* Bring back the feeling of mutual dislike some demons have for each other, but in a fuzzy fashion rather than the absolute “cannot recruit X while you have Y” method used long ago. (This is reflected in the ‘get rid of X ability/demon’ demands: refusing these demands doesn’t necessarily auto-fail, but having them in the deck and not being willing to give up what’s asked will make negotiations trickier.)
* To add some ‘awareness’ of recent events into negotiation (ex: the ones where the Slime is upset you damaged it, or where the Goblin is annoyed you killed one of its friends)
* To add in more demands that ask the player to take on tactical risks, rather than just hand over items and resources (ex: the “unsummon allies” demand)
In honesty I… may have spent a little longer on this than I should have, since negotiation is all in all a relatively minor part of the game. But, on the other hand, capture mechanics are one of Demon’s major unique draws, so it may still have been good investment. We’ll see what you all think soon.
Next up in the build following this: a similar (and hopefully much quicker per mechanic) review of the other capture mechanics. Most especially up for review here is the “slay (large) X in (large) Y turns” capture type: these will be getting upgraded to allow them to change floors with you, and I will also be adding ways to detect enemy locations (whether or not this is tied to the capture mechanic or something else I haven’t decided yet.)
The next build should enter testing soon: the wait for the new sprites and negotiation goodies is almost over. Until then, good luck in the tower.
Well, tonight’s the night. Time to reveal what’s been mostly secretly in the works for the past two months!
Back in August, one of Demon’s earliest fans, geminimax, contacted me and volunteered to do a set of character sprites for Demon. I could see from his DeviantArt page (http://geminimax.deviantart.com/) that he was quite talented, so I was happy to agree. :)
Over the past couple of months, geminimax has been hard at work on the new sprites, and now at last, we’re almost at the point where they will be in a build and ready for everyone to enjoy. Until then, here are a few screenshots showing off some of the new character art. I hope everyone else loves the new art as much as I do. Cheers.
And, just to repeat: These will be in the next build released, and it will be quite soon! The negotiation stuff isn’t quite done yet, but I want to get these out ASAP!
