Look, a Gorgon!

Job’s kept me pretty slammed this week, but I’ve kept the weekend free for knocking out as many sprites as I can. You’ll see updates in that vein starting Friday night!

Finally finished the encounter design (including the encounters for the 2 new Sanctums!) Still have to enter them in, but that’s the easy part.

Roughly 400 or so different encounters exist in Demon at the moment. 85 new encounters (including 21 “rare” ones for non-Tower levels) are being added to the spawn tables, and 46 existing encounters are being changed as a result of the Matter build. (This only counts cases where the number and/or types of demons in an encounter changed: it does not include cases where a demon’s stats/abilities/resists changed, since at that point virtually every counter would count as changed. )

Once these’re entered in, the only major task left is finishing the remaining character sprites for the default set, then it’s test build time. That *will* be a major task, so we’re probably still several days out… but we’re darn close now!

Still finishing up encounter tables (so many encounter tables…), but I wanted to announce an awesome accomplishment by OneEyedJoe:

That’s right: across many games of Demon, OneEyedJoe has managed to recruit each demon at least once, including every unique and cryptid! Congrats OneEyedJoe!

Work on the spawning tables and new sanctums is going well! About 2/3rd the way done. Probably going slower than people might expect, but inserting around 20 new characters throughout the entire Tower is effectively a revamp of all the spawning tables in the entire game.

Fun note on the addition of 2 new sanctums: that will mean that a full clear of the Tower now has 1 more floor than before, so Demon will be a slightly longer game.

Some other fun quirks to shake out of the encounter table revamp so far:

• Many sanctums / side-dungeons have more rare encounters than before. (This doesn’t mean you’re more likely to get rare encounters in a given area, it just means that when you do get one, it will be selected from a larger pool.)
• Turdak’s Sanctum, which for some reason was on average *easier* than a typical Tower floor, has been brought back in line with the difficulty you should expect from a Sanctum. Gone are the days of running into packs of fodder demons. It also now has rare spawns, which were for some reason completely absent from its table!
• Some truly nasty groups were able to be formed with some of the new demons. Nobody is going to like Mandrake groups… at least, not until they make their own perhaps.

Keeping this here so folks can see the progress so far. I posted this list originally before the new year, and was editing it from time to time to show progress, but I don’t know if anyone actually noticed I was doing that. So I’ve reverted that one to how it was, and posted this one here with the progress on it instead.

As a reminder, once 1-6 are complete, I will release a test build while I finish up 7 (and so I can find out if there any must fix bugs with the new stuff to fix as part of 7, for that matter.)

1) <in progress> My versions of the character sprites. (Probably the biggest chunk left, but I’ve done some already at least.)
2) <done> Creating new modifiers, updating existing modifiers.
3) <done> Updating character creation (adding Matter options, resistances/weaknesses when appropriate)
4) <done> Capture mechanics for the new demons
5) <in progress> Placing all the new demons into encounter charts
6) Sanctums for the new uniques, when appropriate
7) Deciding which bugs on the bug list I want to address before release, and addressing them

Been having to do a bit of overtime at work since returning from break. Should clear up soon, but that’s why there’s no progress update from the past week.

A new element means new modifiers. Matter’s Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 modifiers are Culler, Destroyer, and Eliminator, in reference to Matter’s various nasty ways (acid, disintegration, petrification, etc.) of getting rid of problems.

Of course, there are some changes to other modifiers as well: many of the physical modifiers gained some new passives and attacks related to dealing out or removing Matter status effects, the Healing modifiers gained the access to the new Matter effect removal abilities, and many of the unique modifiers had some Matter-related abilities added as well, including Kamapua’a, Python, Anzu, Friar Rush, Headless, and others as well.

As previously mentioned in the last post, I just finished implementing the abilities for the Matter build.

Fair question you might be wondering: what all is left to do before I can release it (or at least, release the preview/test build)?

Here’s the major ticket items:

1)  My versions of the character sprites. (Probably the biggest chunk left, but I’ve done some already at least.)
2) Creating new modifiers, updating existing modifiers.
3) Updating character creation (adding Matter options, resistances/weaknesses when appropriate)
4) Capture mechanics for the new demons
5) Placing all the new demons into encounter charts
6) Sanctums for the new uniques, when appropriate
7) Deciding which bugs on the bug list I want to address before release, and addressing them

The good news is that *most* of these are relatively small tasks. 1 and 7 are probably the biggest ones left.

The better news is that I will be able to release a preview/test build once 1-6 are complete. 7 will be what I work on while people are playing that and sending feedback and bug reports.

Still going to have to avoid an ETA for now, but we’re closing in on the end. After the Matter build is out of the way, I’ll write up another post about how I’m going to approach things going forward in hopes of avoiding any more 5-6 month build cycles while at my current somewhat intense job.

Thank you for your patience everyone, I hope to reward it with something more than words and pictures soon.