Rogue: Genesia, May monthly Dev-Blog
This is something I've talked with a lot of precaution before, and I'm still not 100% sure it'll stay, but outside of major negative feedback from players, it should be included and be a major part of the 0.10 update. I've seriously started to work on equipment for the last few days, and it helped me properly refine the idea, find what could work both on a technical and design standpoint. There are a few things that I definitely wanted to avoid while designing the equipment system: [olist]
When first asking players about how they envisioned the equipment system, the main fear of players was that it would become a super grindy, RNG source of frustration system. It was very clear to me that making an equipment system similar to Path of Exile or Diablo wouldn't fit the game nor please most players. This is also something I've seen and experimented with in the first version of Death Must Die, where equipment became a major source of frustration since it was the only way to become stronger and it led to a lot of RNG and stalled progression.
Another feedback I received is that most of what could be accomplished with equipment could simply be done with talents, and it fitted very similar roles (limited slots, important bonuses), which pushed me to change some minor things in the final design of equipment to make it clearly different from talents.
It's another thing I want to avoid: having equipment be "+X Stats" and simply making the whole game too easy. Multiple ways to counteract that were:
Something else I wanted to avoid was having an equipment system that would add too much additional work to the point where it would greatly hinder the overall progression of the game. This is the main reason I mainly went with a mainly procedural equipment system. This doesn't exclude having a few handcrafted items, but they are extra flavors that wouldn't require a lot of work. The equipment system is code-wise very separate from the rest of the code. The main reason for that is that it was created with the question of whether it would be kept in the game. And there are like 5 or 6 points in the game code when the equipment system interacts with the rest of the game. (Actually, there is even a switch in the game code that allows to disable equipment very easily in case modders want to modify it.)
The last of my worries was to make the equipment system almost impossible to mod. But the design I finally went for is highly moddable, with even equipment slots being easily modded in. [/olist]
Each character has multiple slots, each slot designs themselves what their positions and size in the equipment UI. Each "Procedural Equipment Object" has a list of slots they can be equipped in (this allows for multiple accessory slots, or having light equipment being equipped on heavier slots, for example). Those objects also have a list of "Main Modifiers" that they can be equipped with. Each "Main Modifier" has a list of valid Negative and Positive secondary modifiers, and each modifier has a maximum count of maximum positive and negative modifiers. Each modifier has a "Card Level" variable that increases or decreases the item card level requirements (negative modifiers reduce it while positive ones increase it). Modifiers don't have any randomness in the value of their effect (so not having a +1% Attack speed where you could have +5%, but you were not lucky). Different Modifiers have a set "Rarity"; higher rarity has better effects but also increases the card level more than lower rarity ones. Rarity also affects the odds of having them in an equipment, as well as the minimum Tier of an equipment for it to be generated on. Equipment have both a "Level" (that goes from 1 to 10) and a "Tier" (from F to S (even more with modding)). Power of the modifiers is only affected by the Level and Tier of an object. Equipment are rewarded as a reward of a boss stage; the Level of an object depends on the zone the equipment is dropped in, while the Tier depends on the World Difficulty. (there is a bit of randomness in there). Equipment can be leveled up to level 10 in the main menu; it'll cost Soul-coin depending on the tier of the item. Equipment, once they reach level 10, can have their Tier upgraded in exchange of soul-coin and crafting materials. Equipment can be recycled and will refund all the soulcoin invested in the item and give crafting material of the corresponding tier. Later in the game, the player will unlock a new tab that allows them to customize their equipment: Equipment recycled will have all their modifiers saved in a "Modifier glossary" where they will be marked as "Learned". In exchange for a certain price, the player will be able to change/remove/add any main modifiers and secondary modifiers (up to the limit defined by the main modifier). This is where the positive/negative soul card level plays an important role, where the player could create very powerful equipment that is only enabled in late game, or make equipment with tradeoffs that can have an impact super early on. Equipment will have a "Rarity", but it's just a visual thing, based on modifier rarity (50% from the main modifier alone, and 50% by the average of secondary modifiers). Equipment can be equipped/unequipped during a run (in the pause Menu). I know this is a lot of information, and that it's changed quite a lot compared to the usual equipment system, but I believe this a system that both adds depth and involvement in it.
So out of the whole idea, what is already implemented? Code-wise, almost all of it. UI-wise, it is very, very barebones at the moment, and I focused on the minimum to make it work. The save/loading of equipment is also working well. Here is how it looks like right now:
Recycling and upgrading of items is also functional.
A lot of the work left is also in the content itself. I've already done more than 144 Modifiers, but there are still many left to add all the slots I would like to make.
The modifier crafting is still missing. The whole process of learning modifier is there so modifiers from recycled items won't be lost. There is also a lot of work to be done on the UI/UX. Item tooltips are the bare minimum, with no comparison. You cannot drag and drop items yet, nor can you see only equipment specific to a single slot either. Item Icons are just placeholders. A ton of balancing; most of the values are just straight out of nowhere and will require some playtesting before it's good. Equipment presets (so you could define early-game/later game equipment and easily swap between them). Unique equipment from specific bosses. These will come when I'm sure the system is set to stay in the game.
If feedback on this is negative and there is no way to properly integrate it into the game, the whole system will be disabled in the code. That means that for those who love it, a simple mod that tells the game "enable equipment" would allow it to be enabled very easily.
Another big task I was focused on during this month was the AI of the 5th zone boss, the Vampire Queen. One of the main aspects of this boss is that she also possesses the ability to slow down time, similarly to the player. This special characteristic is represented by 3 things: [olist] [spoiler]She has a passive that makes her temporarily immune to Anachronistic, meaning she can damage you.
She has a bar that depletes during anachronistic, and that slowly fills up overtime. When the bar is empty, she's affected by anachronistic like any other enemies.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Active ability that slows down time. This ability was a bit tricky to balance and make sure it's not frustrating.
This ability slows down the entire world (player and projectiles) by 50% and slightly speeds up the boss. 50% feels like a good balance between giving a clear indication that the player is slowed down without making it frustrating.
The ability also only lasts a few seconds.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Ability that plays around time stop.
After completing the first phase, she'll occasionally almost stop time (1% original speed) and quickly throw multiple knives at the player before resuming time.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]([strike]Yes, that's a Jojo reference[/strike])[/spoiler]
[/olist]
The boss also has other abilities, but I'm not going to spoil everything.
The last month was mainly occupied by making the new boss and the equipment system, but there are a few noteworthy things to tell about:
This is mainly a beneficial fallout from the Vampire queen boss. There was a need for much better telegraphing, so I made 3 different types of telegraphing that also got added to other bosses.
A minor thing that I wanted to add is a bit of camera shake. Obviously, there is an option to tone it down (or increase it for the brave) if it's uncomfortable. They are mainly used in boss intros to give more impact and a few of their attacks.
As many may know, modding is a little bit dead at the moment. This is easily understandable; the game is still in early access, and some mods can easily be broken by an update. While the base support for modding is there, there is a clear lack of documentation on the subject, and the API could clearly use improvement. I'm totally open to suggestions on what guides people would like to see on mod creation, as well as things that are not clear or that could be improved. Modding is not the highest priority right now, as I prefer to focus my attention on the game itself. I also plan to make a modding contest with small cash prize, especially after version 1.0, when the game programming will be stabilized. I originally come from a modding background, and I believe this could be a great opportunity to develop a community in the game modding, and this is the sort of thing that could definitely help the long-term lifetime of the game once I've finished working on it. I'm thinking of making the first contest about challenges.
In the comment on the previous Devblog, someone asked about a coop. Even overall, this is something that got asked a few times, so I believe it's a good subject to talk about. I have no plan for coop in the game, either online or locally. There are both technical and design reasons for that. First, an online multiplayer would have too much data to synchronize between users. 4 players each having 200 simultaneous projectiles at 20 ticks per second would require about 1 MB/s, which is a lot for a game (a typical FPS usually uses around 100 KB/s). And 200 simultaneous projectiles is not that much in Rogue. Genesia (I've seen games with tens of thousands of simultaneous projectiles). Secondly, there is also a technical knowledge limitation. I have almost no knowledge or experience in networking or multiplayer. and those things are far from easy and could easily end up becoming development hell and taking multiple years to implement. especially as the game architecture was never designed with multiplayer in mind, none of the systems support such a thing, and it would basically mean remaking most of the game from scratch. Then comes the possibility of offline co-op. It's technically much easier to implement in the gamenot easy, but definitely more realistic. However, it would also require a lot of small things to be reworked to support multiple players, especially on the UI. We are talking about a about a month of work. Then comes the design reason that pushes me against multiplayer: Rogue: Genesia power scaling during a run is exponential; enemies usually have their health multiplied by 100 for each zone on average, and the player is meant to follow a similar trend on his power level. This means we could easily end up with one player carrying the game and the other players simply being powerless. This is a design issue. I've noticed a lot in Risk of Rain 2, and the scaling there is much less aggressive than in Rogue: Genesia. Those reasons are why I don't plan to make the game multiplayer. However, if a moderator were to try to tackle this challenge, I would provide any assistance I could to make this a reality.
I sadly cannot yet give a release date for 0.10. There is obviously the fact that equipment testing just started, and there are a few things I want to add to the update. But again, the enemy animation is likely to add additional delay to the update. which again is fine as I'll simply advance some planned stuff for 1.0 into the 0.10 to prepare ground for 1.0 content in advance (notably the talent upgrade tree). I would also like to hire an additional animator or sprite artist around July to speed up the development of the game. I prefer to avoid hiring anyone right now for reasons that I cannot disclose yet (and that I hope I'll be able to during my next development blog).
[ 2024-05-08 00:17:24 CET ] [ Original post ]
Hello everyone, time for the monthly dev blog!
Equipment System
This is something I've talked with a lot of precaution before, and I'm still not 100% sure it'll stay, but outside of major negative feedback from players, it should be included and be a major part of the 0.10 update. I've seriously started to work on equipment for the last few days, and it helped me properly refine the idea, find what could work both on a technical and design standpoint. There are a few things that I definitely wanted to avoid while designing the equipment system: [olist]
Heavy and frustrating RNG
When first asking players about how they envisioned the equipment system, the main fear of players was that it would become a super grindy, RNG source of frustration system. It was very clear to me that making an equipment system similar to Path of Exile or Diablo wouldn't fit the game nor please most players. This is also something I've seen and experimented with in the first version of Death Must Die, where equipment became a major source of frustration since it was the only way to become stronger and it led to a lot of RNG and stalled progression.
Simply be a more complex Talent system
Another feedback I received is that most of what could be accomplished with equipment could simply be done with talents, and it fitted very similar roles (limited slots, important bonuses), which pushed me to change some minor things in the final design of equipment to make it clearly different from talents.
Make Early game too easy and Useless in late game
It's another thing I want to avoid: having equipment be "+X Stats" and simply making the whole game too easy. Multiple ways to counteract that were:
- Having some multiplier modifiers & having effects that scale with the player level. This made the effects lower in the early game, and still relevant later on.
- Having "Soul Card Level" requirements depending on the modifier of the weapon before the equipment has an effect. This will play a super important role in the design of the equipment system.
Become a development hell
Something else I wanted to avoid was having an equipment system that would add too much additional work to the point where it would greatly hinder the overall progression of the game. This is the main reason I mainly went with a mainly procedural equipment system. This doesn't exclude having a few handcrafted items, but they are extra flavors that wouldn't require a lot of work. The equipment system is code-wise very separate from the rest of the code. The main reason for that is that it was created with the question of whether it would be kept in the game. And there are like 5 or 6 points in the game code when the equipment system interacts with the rest of the game. (Actually, there is even a switch in the game code that allows to disable equipment very easily in case modders want to modify it.)
Mod unfriendly
The last of my worries was to make the equipment system almost impossible to mod. But the design I finally went for is highly moddable, with even equipment slots being easily modded in. [/olist]
Final idea of the equipment system
Each character has multiple slots, each slot designs themselves what their positions and size in the equipment UI. Each "Procedural Equipment Object" has a list of slots they can be equipped in (this allows for multiple accessory slots, or having light equipment being equipped on heavier slots, for example). Those objects also have a list of "Main Modifiers" that they can be equipped with. Each "Main Modifier" has a list of valid Negative and Positive secondary modifiers, and each modifier has a maximum count of maximum positive and negative modifiers. Each modifier has a "Card Level" variable that increases or decreases the item card level requirements (negative modifiers reduce it while positive ones increase it). Modifiers don't have any randomness in the value of their effect (so not having a +1% Attack speed where you could have +5%, but you were not lucky). Different Modifiers have a set "Rarity"; higher rarity has better effects but also increases the card level more than lower rarity ones. Rarity also affects the odds of having them in an equipment, as well as the minimum Tier of an equipment for it to be generated on. Equipment have both a "Level" (that goes from 1 to 10) and a "Tier" (from F to S (even more with modding)). Power of the modifiers is only affected by the Level and Tier of an object. Equipment are rewarded as a reward of a boss stage; the Level of an object depends on the zone the equipment is dropped in, while the Tier depends on the World Difficulty. (there is a bit of randomness in there). Equipment can be leveled up to level 10 in the main menu; it'll cost Soul-coin depending on the tier of the item. Equipment, once they reach level 10, can have their Tier upgraded in exchange of soul-coin and crafting materials. Equipment can be recycled and will refund all the soulcoin invested in the item and give crafting material of the corresponding tier. Later in the game, the player will unlock a new tab that allows them to customize their equipment: Equipment recycled will have all their modifiers saved in a "Modifier glossary" where they will be marked as "Learned". In exchange for a certain price, the player will be able to change/remove/add any main modifiers and secondary modifiers (up to the limit defined by the main modifier). This is where the positive/negative soul card level plays an important role, where the player could create very powerful equipment that is only enabled in late game, or make equipment with tradeoffs that can have an impact super early on. Equipment will have a "Rarity", but it's just a visual thing, based on modifier rarity (50% from the main modifier alone, and 50% by the average of secondary modifiers). Equipment can be equipped/unequipped during a run (in the pause Menu). I know this is a lot of information, and that it's changed quite a lot compared to the usual equipment system, but I believe this a system that both adds depth and involvement in it.
What has been done already
So out of the whole idea, what is already implemented? Code-wise, almost all of it. UI-wise, it is very, very barebones at the moment, and I focused on the minimum to make it work. The save/loading of equipment is also working well. Here is how it looks like right now:
Recycling and upgrading of items is also functional.
A lot of the work left is also in the content itself. I've already done more than 144 Modifiers, but there are still many left to add all the slots I would like to make.
What is left to be done
The modifier crafting is still missing. The whole process of learning modifier is there so modifiers from recycled items won't be lost. There is also a lot of work to be done on the UI/UX. Item tooltips are the bare minimum, with no comparison. You cannot drag and drop items yet, nor can you see only equipment specific to a single slot either. Item Icons are just placeholders. A ton of balancing; most of the values are just straight out of nowhere and will require some playtesting before it's good. Equipment presets (so you could define early-game/later game equipment and easily swap between them). Unique equipment from specific bosses. These will come when I'm sure the system is set to stay in the game.
What if it's not left in the game
If feedback on this is negative and there is no way to properly integrate it into the game, the whole system will be disabled in the code. That means that for those who love it, a simple mod that tells the game "enable equipment" would allow it to be enabled very easily.
The first version of the equipment system is playable in the beta of version 0.10
5th zone boss
Another big task I was focused on during this month was the AI of the 5th zone boss, the Vampire Queen. One of the main aspects of this boss is that she also possesses the ability to slow down time, similarly to the player. This special characteristic is represented by 3 things: [olist]
Other changes
The last month was mainly occupied by making the new boss and the equipment system, but there are a few noteworthy things to tell about:
Better telegraphing
This is mainly a beneficial fallout from the Vampire queen boss. There was a need for much better telegraphing, so I made 3 different types of telegraphing that also got added to other bosses.
Camera shake
A minor thing that I wanted to add is a bit of camera shake. Obviously, there is an option to tone it down (or increase it for the brave) if it's uncomfortable. They are mainly used in boss intros to give more impact and a few of their attacks.
Current and Future Modding
As many may know, modding is a little bit dead at the moment. This is easily understandable; the game is still in early access, and some mods can easily be broken by an update. While the base support for modding is there, there is a clear lack of documentation on the subject, and the API could clearly use improvement. I'm totally open to suggestions on what guides people would like to see on mod creation, as well as things that are not clear or that could be improved. Modding is not the highest priority right now, as I prefer to focus my attention on the game itself. I also plan to make a modding contest with small cash prize, especially after version 1.0, when the game programming will be stabilized. I originally come from a modding background, and I believe this could be a great opportunity to develop a community in the game modding, and this is the sort of thing that could definitely help the long-term lifetime of the game once I've finished working on it. I'm thinking of making the first contest about challenges.
Online and Local Multiplayer
In the comment on the previous Devblog, someone asked about a coop. Even overall, this is something that got asked a few times, so I believe it's a good subject to talk about. I have no plan for coop in the game, either online or locally. There are both technical and design reasons for that. First, an online multiplayer would have too much data to synchronize between users. 4 players each having 200 simultaneous projectiles at 20 ticks per second would require about 1 MB/s, which is a lot for a game (a typical FPS usually uses around 100 KB/s). And 200 simultaneous projectiles is not that much in Rogue. Genesia (I've seen games with tens of thousands of simultaneous projectiles). Secondly, there is also a technical knowledge limitation. I have almost no knowledge or experience in networking or multiplayer. and those things are far from easy and could easily end up becoming development hell and taking multiple years to implement. especially as the game architecture was never designed with multiplayer in mind, none of the systems support such a thing, and it would basically mean remaking most of the game from scratch. Then comes the possibility of offline co-op. It's technically much easier to implement in the gamenot easy, but definitely more realistic. However, it would also require a lot of small things to be reworked to support multiple players, especially on the UI. We are talking about a about a month of work. Then comes the design reason that pushes me against multiplayer: Rogue: Genesia power scaling during a run is exponential; enemies usually have their health multiplied by 100 for each zone on average, and the player is meant to follow a similar trend on his power level. This means we could easily end up with one player carrying the game and the other players simply being powerless. This is a design issue. I've noticed a lot in Risk of Rain 2, and the scaling there is much less aggressive than in Rogue: Genesia. Those reasons are why I don't plan to make the game multiplayer. However, if a moderator were to try to tackle this challenge, I would provide any assistance I could to make this a reality.
0.10 Release Date
I sadly cannot yet give a release date for 0.10. There is obviously the fact that equipment testing just started, and there are a few things I want to add to the update. But again, the enemy animation is likely to add additional delay to the update. which again is fine as I'll simply advance some planned stuff for 1.0 into the 0.10 to prepare ground for 1.0 content in advance (notably the talent upgrade tree). I would also like to hire an additional animator or sprite artist around July to speed up the development of the game. I prefer to avoid hiring anyone right now for reasons that I cannot disclose yet (and that I hope I'll be able to during my next development blog).
Rogue: Genesia
Huard Ouadi
iolaCorp Studio
2022-09-19
Strategy Casual RPG Singleplayer EA
Game News Posts 192
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🎮 Full Controller Support
Very Positive
(5218 reviews)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2067920
[387.69 M]
Game is not tagged as available on Linux on Steam.
Walk upon a new world and slay foes endangering it.
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Master of all weapons, Rog can use anything to slay his numerous foes.
Kill, grow stronger, and kill some more!
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Fend against vast enemy forces, reaching hundreds of foes on screen at any given time
In this action rogue-lite, you play as Rog.Master of all weapons, Rog can use anything to slay his numerous foes.
Kill, grow stronger, and kill some more!
Make your build from more than 60+ passive upgrades and 16 weapons.
You define Rog's adventure
You can choose which path Rog takes, feel brave enough to take on a powerful foe, or would you prefer to rest at the shop? The choice is yours!30+ Powerful Items to discover
On this journey, you'll collect many unique and powerful artefacts that will greatly impact your game experience, harness their power to help you on your quest!GAMEBILLET
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GAMERSGATE
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