Sneak Peek (and Combat Updates)

Greetings! 

I'm in the middle of a cross-country move right now, so I haven't made as much progress as I'd wanted, but I still got quite a bit done. I managed to get all the renders done before I had to break down my monstrosity of a desktop, and I've been feverishly attacking the postwork in the evenings in my hotel (I'm currently writing from the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. I guess that could describe a lot of Wyoming, but this isn't one of the pretty parts :/ ). 

I've included a sneak peek at one of 0.6's scenes above.  As you'd probably guessed from my earlier posts, one of the scenes involves Val, and I wanted to give you guys a teaser! As I'd mentioned elsewhere, I'm using a new rendering technique and some new postwork techniques, and I think the images look better. Not a night and day difference I suppose, but noticeably better in my eyes.

I've also continued work on the new classes and revamping the combat system. Though the game isn't combat-centric, I wanted the combat that is there to have a bit of depth, and I'm ready to share some of what I've been working on. The basic idea is that I'm trying to provide meaningful choices between abilities and keep things from getting boring. 

One way I'll be doing this is through the use of 'procs'. Procs - short for Pseudo-random occurrences - should be a familiar concept if you've played MMOs, but if not, I'll give a brief rundown. In a nutshell, sometimes when you perform certain actions, something interesting will happen. The enemy might get an extra zap, or you might temporarily gain a buff or ability. That ability is said to have 'procced'. How often that 'sometimes' occurs is controlled by some parameter that isn't always transparent to the player.

In 0.6, I'm experimenting with granting the PC a special flash heal that sometimes procs - when it does, you can cast it instantly, without consuming your turn, meaning you could heal two targets in one turn. Also, for Cory (the rogue), I'm looking at giving him an ability that sometimes procs on an enemy, which would let him either stun the target or perform a really powerful attack.

"Oh," you might say, "you're just introducing RNG (randomness) into the game." Well, kind of, but though these abilities proc (pseudo-) randomly, I want to give the player a bit of choice in when they actually use them. I'm currently experimenting with giving you 3 turns in which to use a procced ability, which would let you employ it with a bit of strategy!

I've never played a Warlock, but whenever I think 'lock', I think of those old "more DoTs!" Onyxia raid videos, so I'm making Val's abilities mostly centered around DoTs. DoTs - short for Damage Over Time - periodically deal damage to the enemy, usually expiring after a set period unless refreshed. As I've implemented them, Val's DoTs stack, up to a certain maximum. Val can also consume all stacks of DoTs on a target to do certain things, like blast the heck out of a target, or perform an AoE attack against all enemies.

I'm doing similar things with some of the other characters, except Shiri. I plan on keeping Shiri really simple to play, as well as giving her really high damage (though she'll be a bit squishy).

Hopefully this will help make combat fun and interesting! I'm sure I'll end up having to tweak things later, but I think I've got the core of something fun here. To reiterate, though, the game will continue to be not-combat-centric, but I may include some optional arenas and stuff for people who really like it.

The move will be done early this week, and then it's full steam ahead. Thank you for your support!