Next build is in testing! Have an update log to read while you wait. With any luck, should be releasing this tomorrow. Cheers!

Updates, 10/13/2016

UI
 - A new option has been added that determines whether or not you see
 other players' summoner names on the scoreboard... and other future
 online features.
 - The option defaults to off, and when off, you will only see your own
 summoner names on the scoreboard: all others will be replaced with
 the default "Player".
 - For anyone who is interested, the game identifies your scores by
 a local file that is cross-referenced with the online data: I take
 seriously my pledge not to track user-identifying information, and
 have not violated it here.
 - F1 and ? can now be used to view the manual in many more locations,
 including during character creation, while viewing character sheets,
 and while choosing things from a list of things.
 - Particularly large scores are now handled better by various interfaces,
 including the use of K and M abbreviations when required. i.e.: A score
 of 1203246 might show up as 1203K instead if the given display does not
 allow 7 digits. Note that even when an abbreviation is hiding part of
 a score, the hidden part will still be used properly for ordering the
 scores in sorted lists.
 - Tooltips for stats now show how effective the level of the stat will
 be against other relevant targets. When viewing friendly stats, it
 will compare to the last enemy you moused over. When viewing enemy
 stats, it will compare to the last friendly unit you moused over, or
 the Player if that unit is not available.
 - Tooltips for abilities and items now show the range of the ability or
 item in question.
 - Tooltips for characters now show HP and SP numerically, rather than
 only showing an adjective describing HP.
 - You can now press Shift+V in game to view a "resistances report" on your
 current party. This will show you how many demons you have that use
 attacks of, are immune to, resist, and are weak to each attack type.
 - The same report is also now a part of party dump files.
 - The last 50 messages will now be shown in party dump files.
 - You will now get reminders when entering new floors if you have unspent
 bonus points or relic upgrades. These reminders will get more dire if you
 have large numbers of bonus points/relic upgrades unspent.
 - Using the scroll wheel in the manual now scrolls the text much more
 quickly.

Balance
 - Levels now require about 8% more XP to gain. Note this does not mean your
 level will be 8% lower, due to how XP works. In most cases this will
 probably only work out to -1 level by the current end of content,
 or -2 at most.
 - Bonus MaxHP now caps at 33% of your base MaxHP, rather than 50%.
 - Soul Armor's credit costs have been reduced by about 20%.
 - Quick Summon and Quick Dismiss now have cooldowns of 0.1 instead of 1.
 The only practical effect of this is that characters with > 100% Speed
 will be able to use these every turn even at their hasted speed.
 - Modifiers no longer count reactive abilities when deciding whether or not
 the first bonus ability needs to be from the "untrained in this type" list
 or not. This should generally improve the results of applying modifiers to
 demons that do not already use the element(s) associated with that
 modifier.
 - Reduced the item spawning rate for side dungeons from 150% of normal to
 125% of normal. 
 - Enemy summoners with Consume or Recycle should no longer delete their
 unique demons.
 - HP and MaxHP drain effects now round a bit differently: you are much more
 likely to gain at least 1 HP or MaxHP if you dealt any damage at all to
 the target. (This is still not assured, by design.)
 - Ghost Pierce must now target a character.

Sprites
 - Geminimax has updated several of the sprites in his character sprite set,
 with a focus on improving the player summoner sprites. Thanks Geminimax!

Bug Fixes
 - The Full Power passive no longer causes crashes in very rare
 circumstances.
 - Fixed a bug that caused some mouse over/click zones for interface objects
 to be slightly off.
 - Mobility no longer erroneously gives less than the listed movement speed
 bonus.
 - Bloodlust no longer erroneously returns less *total* SP per additional
 target.
 - Leadership will no longer erroneously proc on the holder's enemies.
 - Fixed a bug that limited the effect of Vitality on MaxHP. (The effect of
 the bug was fairly minor except at relatively high Vitality.)
 - Improved level creation spawning considerably. This will be most
 noticeable on the two maps using the "forest" generator, which before
 this fix usually spawned with far fewer items than they should have.
 - Pyre Rite can no longer be used while Muted.
 - Enemy summoners with Soul Armor no longer end up with immunity or
 resistance to... unusual... damage types.
 - Mending can no longer target enemies (but it never affected them anyway.)
 - Jayle has finally spent her leftover relic upgrade point.

Refactors (usually not noticeable to players)
 - Improved how abilities handle various restrictions like 'must target an
 enemy', 'must target a character with Ignite', etc.
 - May have improved performance on very low power systems, since the old
 method was somewhat burdensome during AI calculations.

Hey everyone. Just wanted to drop a line that the next build will be up within a few days. Mostly UI improvements and quality of life features, alongside bug fixes and small balance adjustments. A bit dry, I confess, but I think what’s planned in the build that follows this plate of veggies will be a bit more exciting. Stay tuned!

One of the hopefully helpful UI upgrades coming in the third polish build: tooltip upgrades!

Three specific tooltips have been upgraded for this pending build:

First, ability tooltips now show the range of the ability. (For abilities that radiate or blast out from the user but can’t actually be aimed, it instead shows the area of effect range.) Here’s a few examples.

Flame Dart is a straightforward ranged attack that can hit almost anything you can see:

Mending is a heal spell that can be cast on anything you can see, including yourself:

Terrifying Cry can’t actually be aimed, it affects everything in a radius around you. Since this effectively acts as range for such a spell, that is the value used by the range indicator here.

Finally, Bull Rush has both a minimum and maximum range, and this is represented in its indicator as well.

Next up: character tooltips now show HP and SP numerically instead of just using vague language about the character’s relative HP.

This Slime has seen better days. Just like in other HP displays, the HP will be colored appropriately for its value.

Chindi usually spawn with a few bonus MaxHP since they sometimes demand it during negotiations, and like in other displays, you can see this indicated by the different color for MaxHP.

 
And finally, mousing over stats in a character sheet not only shows the bonus versus an average character of the same level, but also shows the bonus versus the last character of opposite faction you moused over:

Level 1 might be a bit too early for a summoner to take on the likes of Bigfoot… +186% damage, yikes!


Early characters often find Will o’ Wisps to be agile and annoying opponents… but it doesn’t look like Bigfoot would be too impressed.

But with the help of some free levels from the dev cheats, we can at least get Ogun’s Cunning vs. Bigfoot into the green.

Hopefully players will find these changes helpful for having a clearer idea of what their abilities and stats actually do, and make it easier to keep an eye on HP/SP levels (particularly of enemies) during combat.

Hey everyone. A brief update on what’s coming up next:

I’d like to do one more small-ish “resting hamster” polish/refinement style build before returning to adding new mechanics/features. This one will hopefully be relatively short and sweet, I mostly just want to knock out some UI related bugs/requests that I’ve been putting off because I don’t like working on UI bugs/requests.

My intent is to have this next build out relatively quickly. Once it’s done, I’ll be ready to talk about the next new thing being added to Demon. Cheers!

Hey. Hope everyone’s enjoying the new Sanctums.

I wanted to take a little bit to talk about the future real quick.

Short term: I’m taking the next week or so off, other than working on bugs. I pushed pretty hard to get the Sanctum build out by 9/18… and also, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse came out. Given SMT is the series of games that serves as Demon’s primary influence, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone I want to take some time to enjoy it.

Long term: For about the last year or so, I’ve been working full time on Demon. If you’re new here and that seems crazy to you given that I’ve sworn more or less in blood to never charge money for it in any form whatsoever… yeah, okay, it probably is crazy in some form.

Of course this means that I have to take other work at various points in order to maintain a proper budget, and that’s what we’re coming up on now. With any luck, I will probably be working again starting sometime next month, which will mean Demon development will become part time instead of full time for awhile.

I want to stress that point though: part time, not no time. Demon development *will* continue, but I anticipate a significant slow down for a couple of weeks once the job begins as I ramp up on it, and then things will go a bit faster after that. It’ll still be slower than full time development was of course, no getting out of that, but based on past experience it should still be an acceptable pace.

This seems like a good time to thank everyone for playing up to this point, so: thank you, seriously. Demon may not have many players yet, but I’m happy with even the number it does have, especially given how much some of you play it. As a certain Sanctum included in the last build should prove for those who have found it, the Tower has plenty of surprises left to reveal. Stick around, and maybe you’ll find out what they are.

Cheers, and good luck in the Tower!

- Herbie (FerretDev)

The characters I’m using to test aren’t having as much luck, but then, it IS Demon. There may be a few entries on the scoreboard before the build is actually available.

Here’s a screenshot of the latest test subject, a Faithful Heart priest who just entered one of the new sanctums.

Almost there! Hang tight!