[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Re-added generous mode to Co-op options
  
• Snow blocks now also block light in the Anticropolis. The exit door can no longer spawn with snow blocks around it
  
• "Backspace" now resets controls in the control rebinding menus
  

• CRASH: The obj_break alarm0 crash is fixed FOR REAL THIS TIME
  
• CRASH: When triggering laser traps in the Anticropolis
  
• BUG: D-pad in Versus Mode menu moves too quickly
  
• BUG: Crush traps in Versus Mode "Temple" level do not trigger
  
• BUG: Mushrooms don't spawn any more(!)
  
• BUG: Title menu doesn't prompt loading crashed saves unless the cursor is moved to another option first
  
• BUG: Strange behavior upon employing the third combo attack with a hammer, and turning around mid-strike
  
• BUG: Can earn catacoins in all Daily Runs, and in Seeded Runs
  
• BUG: Errors with the new seed generation resulting in excessively common repeated floors and runs
  
• BUG: Several text formatting errors, especially in Chinese
  
• BUG: Repeatedly continuing and then quitting out of a saved co-op game caused many issues, including player duplication
  
• BUG: Cannot reset "sprint" on keyboard back to its default double-tap input once changed
  
• BUG: Daily run time always shows as 00 : 00 : 00
  
• BUG: Item descriptions in the "equipment" pause submenu use the wrong text and do not show their stats properly
  
• BUG: Hammer skill 1 (Heavy Bat) can no longer bat items away
  
• BUG: Quit to Desktop doesn't actually exit to desktop if you're prompted to save before quitting
  
• TEXT: Unformatted "use" text when lighting lanterns using other flame sources
  
• TEXT: Removed obsolete STR description text from tutorial ghost's dialogue
  

More bugfixes! On all platforms this time.

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• BUG: Game becomes unresponsive when playing a single player mode after playing a two-player mode
  
• BUG: Backing out of pause menus (pause, level-up, spellbook, etc.) in 2p reverts the players' stats, equipment, spells, etc. to what they were before pausing, making it impossible to equip spells or properly level up.

Just a couple quick fixes! Windows only for now but should be on Mac and Linux by tomorrow at the latest.

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• CRASH: Crash when spawning encyclopedia pages in Seeded Runs
  
• CRASH: When casting the teleport spell
  
• BUG: Rerolling floors in non-Daily Run-runs does not actually change the floor's seed
  
• BUG: Framerate option can still load as 50 from the previous version
  
• BUG: Forgot to disable some debug keys
  
• BUG: Shopkeeper's specialties display the wrong price

Hey.
Long time no update! I've been mostly plugging away on UFO 50 in these intervening months (Go wishlist it!!), but I've still been making progress on CK when time permits - in between moving to a new apartment and doing contract work.

[h2]Light and Shadow[/h2]
Here we have at last; one feature in particular that I have dreamt of for years: shadow-casting lights and line-of-sight based fog-of-war!




At long-last, things can truly lurk unseen around corners and behind closed doors! This is a pretty significant change to a long-standing gameplay mechanic, but hopefully it will be a welcome one. In all other regards lighting still works the same way; lightsources, once encountered, remain visible thereafter. It's still useful to toss torches ahead of yourself to get the ley of the land, but this change also has the effect of making the Wanderer's class ability, lanterns, and equipment that grants telepathy suddenly much more valuable.

Title Overhaul
The other main thing you'll notice is that the title menu looks...completely different!



I called myself clever with the previous version, trying to do something unique with a menu based on quadrants but it turns out there's a reason most games have a menu in a nested list format and that's because it's intuitive and easy to navigate. Lesson learned: don't reinvent a wheel unless it's really central to your whole deal. As it turns out, title menus are in fact: not central to CK's whole deal. So something more typical is warranted (and welcome).

Along with the new menu however, come some other new features:

Seeded Runs, etc.
Seeded Runs are a new kind of game mode where you can enter the seed yourself and play it as many times as you like. Unlike most of the other game modes, however, Seeded Runs never save (not even a little bit).



Daily runs have also been updated to allow you to try them as many times as you want, though only the first run counts for earning coins. Currently the Daily Run and Seeded Runs are pretty similar in that they allow you to play the same seed as many times as you want, but I plan to eventually add twists to Daily Runs like "all corpses explode", "you hate all weapons", or "all damage is 2" etc.

There have also been a smattering of other tweaks, bugfixes, and general housekeeping too so check out the changelog for a full list.

[h2]New[/h2]

• New title menu.
  
• New single player run type: Seeded Runs. Seeded runs earn no coins or encyclopedia entries and - like daily runs - never save at any point!
  
• New lighting system that utilizes the Bulb lighting library by Juju Adams. Lights now cast shadows and rely on line-of-sight to illuminate the darkness.
  
• Now using the Input library by Juju Adams to handle player input, (which should hopefully resolve a lot of the issues with using various controllers, and not showing the proper style of button prompt)
  
• Added language option menu. Only Chinese and English are currently available, and Chinese is incomplete. If you want to help localize the game (or harangue others into doing so) hop onto the discord! It's an ongoing effort!
  
• Added in-game credits (finally!).

• Daily runs can now be attempted as many times as you want per day. Separate records are kept of your first attempt, last attempt, and best (aka furthest) attempt.
  
• Changed the format of save game files; each save is now its own directory (your old saves will not survive the change, sorry!)
  
• Multiplayer modes now prompt players to join before play begins
  
• Added unstable effect to Temporal Step
  
• Green slimes will now prefer to fall off of a ledge than twitch back and forth on a single tile
  
• "Grapple" now treats non-humanoid enemies the same as humanoids: If the strike would kill them they die only upon release. Additionally, corpses released this way now strike enemies as though thrown.
  
• Weapons with the quality "hard" now take less damage from hitting boulders, and deal more damage to them.
  
• Tweaked the descriptions and effect text of Vampirism and Plague to be more lore- and mechanics-accurate.
  
• Changed the appearance of co-op player selection to better match the other character selection menus.
  
• Spruced up shopkeeper menus a little.
  
• Tutorial now uses new button prompts.

• CRASH - Upon Grumbul Tank taking acid damage to death
  
• CRASH - When adding second ingredient to soup
  
• CRASH - Relating to obj_break_Alarm_0
  
• CRASH - Killing non-humanoid enemies with Raise Dead + Magic Blast multi-cast combo
  
• CRASH - When losing the interest of the grumbul in the tutorial
  
• BUG - Tinkerbot dialog does not close when the owner player dies or leaves the floor
  
• BUG - Tinkerbot can bust open locked doors simply by bumping into them
  
• BUG - Paused grumbul tank legs behave oddly
  
• BUG - Can clone Orbs of Leveling by abusing item drop pipes
  
• BUG - Oogs spawned from an oog hit with a potion of regeneration become linked; setting one on fire with a warhammer of heat set the other on fire as well
  
• BUG - Can overlevel stats in VS mode as player 2
  
• BUG - Re-rolling floors in Daily Mode generates the same floor again
  
• BUG - If grumbul tank is destroyed mid-cannon-fire, it continues to spawn flames to the point of impacting performance
  
• BUG - Several bugs relating to buying and selling to shopkeepers
  
• VISUAL - "fontLarge" Numbers in Player Stats on VS Mode Menu
  
• VISUAL - Classes cycle through character select header instead of displaying the currently selected class
  
• VISUAL - Some shopkeeper description text doesn't fit into the dialog box; the box now resizes dynamically to fit any necessary text
  

Just a horde of bugfixes.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Minor visual change to class abilities in the character select ui

• Crash: Crash upon spawning grumbul soldiers
  
• Crash: Crash upon descending to the anticropolis via the unlocked shortcut
  
• Crash: "equip_weapon .isBasic" crash
  
• Crash: Several crashes related to audio emitters
  
• Crash: When a humanoid corpse has a helmet but no armor
  
• Crash: "obj_corpse_dog" crash
  
• Crash: Casting "Break" on an enemy after hitting them
  
• Crash: Pressing confirm on the tinkerbot repair menu while having no valid metal objects to use
  
• Crash: When equipping tomes sometimes
  
• Crash: checking for "has_leg"
  
• Crash: When making soup
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot repair item qualities are not shown
  
• Bug: Rats are broken
  
• Bug: Balls of mucus blow up when you try to roll them gently
  
• Bug: Throwing boulders and creatures with trajectory does not show their predicted path
  

An update!

No new content or anything particularly fancy, but this is one I've been working on for a while; Finally upgrading to the newest version of Game Maker Studio instead of using the pre-2.3x version that is - at this point - over two years out of date.

It was one of those situations where upgrading to the more recent tools fully broke the game, but continuing to use the older engine was gradually accumulating its own slew of problems, to the point where at last it became imperative to make the jump regardless of the cost in time and effort. So for the past few months that's what I've been doing! I wish I had more content for you but alas, it's mostly just the invisible kind of progress; rewriting old bits of code that have obsolesced or depreciated into non-functionality.

In any case, the upgrade has gone relatively smoothly and has also given me access to a huge number of new engine features that I'm eager to use, which should help hasten along the rest of the game just that much faster.

I did also manage to fix a bunch of crashes and bugs -- including one elusive crash in particular that had been hounding the game for years! And now that the engine update is mostly out of the way (I'm sure there are still some issues here and there that need addressing, but hopefully nothing too major) I'll be refocusing my efforts fully back onto finishing and releasing the Deep Dark.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Updated to Game Maker Studio version 2.3x
  
• Lava no longer generates in the Grumbul Tank fight
  
• Grumbul Tank arrows no longer destroy or interact with the wooden platforms when first fired
  
• Striking the Grumbul Tank's turret with aimed stab no longer causes knockback from striking the tank's armor
  
• Made hitting the Grumbul Tank's weak points slightly more forgiving
  

• Crash: Crash if limb is lost during taunt animation
  
• Crash: Crash upon trying to rebind game controls
  
• Crash: Crash upon stowing hated daggers
  
• Crash: Crash upon throwing a potion of smiting
  
• Crash: Various other crashes
  
• Bug: Typo in "diseased" status effect message text
  
• Bug: Certain Encyclopedia entries don't work properly
  
• Bug: Grumbul Tank's arrows behave strangely when passing thru the wooden platforms
  
• Misc: Owlmen can kick again
  

Happy Thanksgiving! Have an update.

[h3]New[/h3]

• You can now toggle on and off the different tiers of weapon skills via the "traits" menu
  
• Added ability to ban spells in VS mode
  

• Claw arm now replaces third combo attack with grab move, like other prosthetic arms
  
• Increased VS mode win condition from "first to 3 kills" to "first to 5 kills"
  
• Removed fishanha ability to crit
  
• Made the timing of humanoids' three-hit attack pattern much more forgiving
  
• Altered the ability of Powered Arms: They now shoot lasers and slightly auto-target nearby enemies
  
• In Co-op, the "telepathic" status effect now only highlights enemies on the affected character's split-screen
  
• Slight minor alterations and improvements to the UI here and there
  
• Increased cooldown time between Ogo attacks
  
• Eeols now take extra damage from Push and Break cast by swallowed creatures
  
• Normal Bear has a new, better death animation
  
• Dead players appear as ghosts now on the level generation screen in Co-op
  
• You can now blast through the fragile ice passages in the AC with Breakthrough
  

• Crash: Various menu-related crashes in Co-op
  
• Crash: Crash upon loading a game throwing a "boon_list" error message
  
• Crash: Various other crashes
  
• Bug: Casting Shadow Cloak to dismiss it will still siphon dark charges from the environment
  
• Bug: Can siphon dark charges from frozen corpses indefinitely
  
• Bug: Eeols can detect humanoid targets through walls
  
• Bug: Fixed several issues with prosthetic limbs
  
• Bug: Claw arms don't animate properly
  
• Bug: Sometimes reloading a game after dying results in a stage of solid blocks
  
• Bug: Bear doesn't awaken in co-op as long as the screen is split
  
• Bug: HP for ghost players in co-op sometimes displays as a non-zero value
  
• Bug: Ghost players can still be controlled and partially seen during level generation
  
• Misc: Improved performance of reaper's lingering slices
  

More fixes, tweaks, and balance changes!
A long-requested feature is for orbs of leveling in co-op to impact more than just the kid that uses them, so I've added a little submenu to the side of the main level-up screen in co-op that grants the other player a half-level.

Also, this update should (finally!) bring the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions all up to the same version!

[h3]New[/h3]

• In Co-op, when any player levels up the other player gets a half-level

• Wanderer's "Vision" ability and lantern items both move the view in co-op split-screen now
  
• Slowed the rate at which food rots
  
• Made frozen corpses look more frozen
  
• Reduced knockback on Chain Lightning
  
• Electrified objects hold their charge for longer
  
• Changed Ogo's attack pattern to be more accurate; they now launch themselves at angles
  
• Goos Oogs and Ogos will try to avoid entering lit furnace tiles
  
• Increased the rate at which the catacoin value of the "innocent", "relatively innocent", and "pacifist" reputations scale by floor
  
• Made the kill summary split into separate columns if it gets too long
  
• Boulders can now break doors open if they're traveling fast enough
  
• Flame wave can now relight standing torches
  
• Slow now takes up a 1x2 space in the spell grid

• Crash: When opening the chest containing Boost Boots in the Tutorial
  
• Crash: When casting Air Dash Multi-Casts
  
• Crash: Whenever a message appears after cloned slimes have been slain
  
• Crash: When trying to throw a boulder with trajectory
  
• Crash: When drawing humanoid enemies who picked up a bow but did not spawn with one
  
• Bug: In Co-op, when both players opt to unequip items from the pause menu, only one player actually unequips upon unpausing
  
• Bug: Corpses don't change color when cold burst is cast on them to reflect that they are frozen
  
• Bug: Can't toggle the "Death Review" and "Splitscreen" options without backing out of the menu and returning
  
• Bug: After eating a humanoid corpse, the skeleton left behind retains the corpse's cooked state
  
• Bug: Weird collision issues with trying to navigate around boulders partially intruding on narrow spaces
  
• Bug: When relighting standing torches with the Fire and Ice booksmack, the relit torch illuminates the entire floor
  
• Bug: After selecting a weapon to hate for Living Weapon, if you have a weapon of that type equipped you can continue to wield it, causing issues
  
• Bug: When equipping a tome as a weapon, the book that appears in the event alert box doesn't match the equipped book's coloring
  
• Bug: Using unarmed Uppersmash on boulders just straight up kills you
  
• Bug: Using unarmed Downward Thrust doesn't create a hitbox until much too late in the animation
  
• Bug: Headless enemies can escape the floor
  
• Bug: Left a debug key in for disabling the UI
  

Goodness gracious, when will I stop breaking my game? Here's some more molten hot fixes:

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Crash: When firing arrows
  
• Crash: When loading a game as a wanderer with tracked objects
  
• Bug: The STR stat in the Custom Kid Kid Customizer still displays as two separate values
  

Some quick hotfixes for the latest build!

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• The chain of the Grumbul Tank's Chained Cannonball now breaks if the tank takes damage while the ball has been extended for more than 10 seconds
  
• Tweaked collision with boulders to hopefully be less finnicky and weird - I might have made it worse
  
• Added an option to "Options > Graphics" to switch between 50 and 60 fps

• Crash: The Grumbul Tank crashes the game
  
• Crash: When examining explosive arrows in a Tinkerer shop
  
• Bug: The stowed-item selection in the Custom Kids Kid Customizer menu can't be seen

Here, have an update; 0.2.12! (Technically, 0.2.12b now, after a haphazard bug-fixing morning)

This should address a lot of common bugs and crashes.

I've also changed the way the STR and DEF stats work for calculating melee damage, finally collapsing STR down to a single value like the rest of the stats instead of being a weird range of "x to y".

"Why did you do that?" you may ask.

"Because it always bugged me, having this one odd-stat-out that is represented in a way completely unlike any of the others," I reply.

Now that all the stats are boiled down to a single value, it's a lot more consistent. Additionally, the algorithm for calculating damage is much simpler than it used to be and should be easier to tweak if I need to in the future.

Attacks now deal between 65-100% of the attacker's STR stat, and DEF reduces that amount by (roughly) 10% per point of DEF (capping at a 95% reduction at 10 DEF, with some exceptions for crits and other similar defense-bypassing blows). There are a few extra steps in there to ensure that attackers don't deal too many 0s in a row, but that's basically the gist of it! It's much simpler than the convoluted and opaque 10-step process that damage calculation was before.

I hope I didn't change the way things feel too much, but let me know how the new formula feels!

There have also been a few balance changes to shut down some extremely cheesy builds - like High-LUC + Multicast resulting in essentially infinite spells, or using pilfer and secondhand to constantly trade the same weapon to enemies and get extremely good equipment. If you didn't know about those exploits; sorry, but you missed your chance! I'm sure there are new ones to find that I'll have to fix soon enough, though.

In future news, the Deep Dark update (aka 0.3.0) is coming along very nicely! I'd say it's looking on-track for release later this year - hopefully sometime in autumn? One of the last things left to do is a big audio pass on all the new content; making sure it sounds sufficiently wet and scary, and that all the enemies are properly aurally horrifying. Don't forget that I do weekly dev-streams where you can catch me working on the game, if you ever want to stop by and see what's new (though beware if you don't want to be spoiled!). You can also catch me on the Catacomb Kids Discord, where I'm very active.

We had some unexpected trouble building for Mac and Linux, so 0.2.12 is up on Windows only for now. The other platforms should be available next weekend.

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Rewrote how melee attack damage is calculated
  
• Consolidated STR into a single numerical value
  
• Partially-filled bottles of lava now solidify into normal rocks when submerged in water
  
• Amulets now identify faster under certain circumstances depending on the amulet's type
  Ex. Amulets of shadow identify faster when worn beyond the range of a lightsource, amulets of health only increment their identification each time they tick a heal, etc.
  
• Resourceful now causes meal effects to last for an additional floor
  
• Added more trackable objects for wanderer's vision ability; Campfires, switches, standing torches, etc.
  
• Torches will try to spawn next to the entrance door on Anticropolis floors when there's space
  
• LUC's effect is now capped at 10 for the purposes of ending status effects early and getting no-cost multi-casts
  
• Wellwished's spell gain no longer applies on Get Luckys caused by Multi-Cast
  
• INT now has a stronger effect on dipped weapon duration
  
• The Poison and Might status effects now cancel out one another's recieved damage multipliers
  
• Shield bash status effects proc chance now scales with INT and LUC
  
• Made Whirlwind+Magic Blast multicast more useful
  
• Downward Thrust sword skill now stuns based on distance from the user; creatures further away are stunned for a shorter duration
  
• The duration of Slow also scales in a similar way; foes further from the center of the spell shake off the status sooner
  

• Crash: When Eeol corpses cook
  
• Crash: Upon gaining peppered fishanha meal
  
• Crash: Upon loading a game with corn kernel/popcorn in the meal queue
  
• Crash: ". [...] at gml_Script_unit_hit"
  
• Crash: Missing string "_LANG_OBJ_BLOOD_CRYSTAL_UNSTABLE" When blood crystals recieve damage
  
• Crash: When setting Player 1 Gamepad to disabled
  
• Crash: When descending floor or pausing after getting a leg severed without retrieving footwear
  
• Crash: When interacting with invisible torches (which are another bug that I've fixed)
  
• Bug: Flame-Warrior grumbuls that spawn with the device also spawn with an invisible torch (see above)
  
• Bug: Can kick open locked doors even without a key
  
• Bug: Getting chomped by eeols causes hp to increase instead of decrease
  
• Bug: It is possible for player energy maximum to drop below 2, in various situations
  
• Bug: Kills with soul-weapons that bring blocked energy beyond energy maximum bug out the energy bar
  
• Bug: Killing owl-men in their owl-form with reaper weapons or acid can cause the owl's humanoid form to reappear
  
• Bug: Blowing gasses with tinker-bot's gust propeller causes the gas to multiply and behave strangely
  
• Bug: Bottled skulls create 'skeleton soup', and bones cannot become soup - instead of them both creating broth
  
• Bug: The cracked ice barriers in the anticropolis sometimes leave behind invisible collision boxes after being destroyed
  
• Bug: Fire in the anticropolis transition stage sometimes melts the exit door even when it's in a completely different part of the stage
  
• Bug: Savory gorhounds only fill one meal queue slot
  
• Bug: Text of cracked mana batteries is different when held vs not held
  
• Bug: Tinker-bot retains status effect immunity from insulated chassis even after switching to another chassis type
  
• Bug: Tinkerer/Engineer's "Repair" option at the ghost doesn't have a description
  
• Bug: Trance spells, tracked creatures, and amulet effects - break, blink, -of light, etc - draw their character overlay in the wrong place
  
• Bug: Equipment improvement messages display with the wrong text style
  
• Bug: Sometimes loading games can cause the player's armor to have weird visual glitches
  
• Bug: Tunnel generation for the hidden shortcut room is frequently broken
  
• Bug: Attaching and/or regenerating legs can lead to a variety strange, buggy behavior
  
• Bug: Rarely, furnace tiles can spread out from the slime-switch room and take over the level
  
• Bug: Level gen issues with certain premade rooms
  
• Bug: Secondhand can be applied to the same weapon multiple times by planting it on enemies via pilfer
  
• Bug: Acrobatic auto-dodges ~all~ airborne attacks instead of only the first recieved
  
• Bug: Hack and Slash doesn't continue chaining unless you also have Weapon Master
  
• Bug: Hammers ignore defense and floor damage caps
  
• Bug: Changing Sound Effect volume mid-game doesn't affect the volume of humanoids' voices
  
• Bug: Pressing "Esc" to access the options/quit menu in two-player mode causes several issues
  
• Bug: Fixed several issues around the volume and panning of sounds in split-screen co-op
  
• Bug: In versus mode, players' limbs almost always fall off when they die
  
• Bug: Siphoning cold charges from frost bolt icicles does not destroy them
  
• Bug: Loading games into stages with escaped enemies sometimes causes the enemies to appear as giant portraits of the player character
  

A couple super quick fixes for the build from earlier today!

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Crash: When returning to the spell learning menu from the [esc] quit menu
  
• Bug: Unlocking doors will sometimes destroy all other unheld keys on the floor
  
• Bug: Sparks from amped weapons are absolutely ridiculous
  
• Bug: Humanoid shadows cast by torches draw wrong
  
• Bug: Accidentally left a couple debug buttons active >_>
  

Happy (just-about) New Year!

Here's hoping 2022 sees the world in a better place than 2021. Fingers crossed!

But at the very least, to round out this year (aka. "2020: Part 2"), have a Catacomb Kids update.
(Just on Windows for now: Mac + Linux following in a few days.)

[h2]0.2.11[/h2]
It's not the Deep Dark yet, but it is a bunch of bugfixes!

The Deep Dark update should be out probably sometime early next spring. It's very nearly done in terms of content, but still needs a big audio pass and some finessing of certain edge cases in the level generation. Once the Deep Dark is released, I'll get started working on the fourth - and final - area: The Mad Hell!

But that's all still in the future! In the meantime, here's the patch notes for this update. Most significantly, I've added a shortcut system, whereby activating a certain machine that occasionally appears in the Anticropolis will thereafter on every subsequent run spawn a shortcut between the Upper Dungeon and Anticropolis. It won't be a free trip though; the shortcut entrance is hidden, and guarded by tough enemies.

[h3]New[/h3]

• Added unlockable shortcut between Upper Dungeon and Anticropolis, which can be opened via a machine in the AC

• Arrows no longer collide with other carryable items, like corpses, potions, mushrooms, etc.
  
• Broken spikes no longer collide with boulders, letting them fit in li'l pits snugly now
  
• "Weakness" incurred by amulet of shadows no longer procs "Lucky!"
  
• Torches are now ignited by lava instead of extinguished
  
• Finally fixed the Anticropolis transition stage to re-introduce the frozen door and side-tunnels!
  
• Doubled the duration of blue slime on feet when thrown at foes
  
• Flames from "Fire And Ice" Tome can light campfires and torches now
  
• Locked doors can be opened by throwing keys at them
  
• Items have their prices locked upon being bought or sold
  
• LUC has a smaller impact on the prices of sold items, and a larger impact on the prices of bought items
  
• Improved the timing of the death replay, so that it always captures the moment of death
  
• Normal Bear body takes less damage when her limbs are severed

• Crash: When trying to read nonexistent string for nonexistent spell _LANG_SPELL_GROWTH'
  
• Crash: When trying to read the encyclopedia entry for Burrah Bois
  
• Crash: After tabbing away from the game while in the tutorial
  
• Crash: In co-op perma-split-view mode when the players coming near together after spending time apart
  
• Bug: Shopkeepers sell [No Armor]
  
• Bug: Getting crushed by a crush trap in the tutorial can cause an undo loop
  
• Bug: Aiming Wizard Throw up or down with spellwright causes the hand to travel too far
  
• Bug: Sideways- and upwards- facing laser traps still attract items from below when charging up
  
• Bug: Crabs can hang on to ethereal creatures and wraiths which have not yet appeared
  
• Bug: Spikes overlapping flame pipe traps are triggered to move when the trap is activated
  
• Bug: Broken Crush Traps don't destroy spikes
  
• Bug: Performing the "Execute" dagger skill drops you super fast, and behaves erratically when next to walls
  
• Bug: Named flame-warrior grumbuls use the head sprite of normal grumbuls
  
• Bug: The player cannot remove spikes that embed in them
  
• Bug: Sometimes hitting armored enemies causes a loop of continuous hits
  
• Bug: Some enemies that don't bleed still cause thrown items that kill them to become bloody
  
• Bug: Cannot dip or mix bottles of slime despite the "use" action saying you can
  
• Bug: Bottled corpses can still rot
  
• Bug: Casting cure makes you immune to headaches forever
  
• Bug: Spellbooks can burn when going through intra-level doors that are on opposite sides of lava
  
• Bug: Pressing "esc" again while the save game prompt is over the quit game menu causes issues
  
• Bug: Grumbuls can still flee the level while carrying keys
  
• Bug: Can stampede the bear while it's still sleeping without alerting it or waking it up
  
• Bug: Limbs draw incorrectly on character portraits in the level-up screen
  
• Bug: Mirror puzzles in the Anticropolis sometimes generate without switches to turn on the laser
  
• Bug: Campfires in the Anticropolis still warm the player even when extinguished
  
• Bug: Controls can switch between player 1 and player 2's saved input setups during the level generation screen
  
• Bug: Several bugs with the death screen in co-op, including being unable to continue in Generous mode
  
• Visual: Some elements of the ui were out of resolution with the rest of the game
  
• Misc: Fixed some memory leaks

Some new bug-fixes, as well as pushing some older fixes live for Mac and Linux.

Fixes

• Crash: Identifying potions completely by holding onto them with high INT causes a crash
  
• Crash: When striking Grave Monoliths with melee weapons, as they try to lose limbs they do not have
  
• Crash: Relating to items caught in whirlwind while already being held
  
• Crash: Relating to Spiked Barricades in the Anticropolis
  
• Crash: When going through doors with undead followers
  
• Crash: Relating to the Grumbul Tank's legs and some status effect shenanigans
  
• Crash: "voice_init" ... I think I finally fixed this one? Gosh I really hope so.
  
• Crash: When striking a humanoid with a wrench that doesn't have certain equipment
  
• Bug: Ogo spawn with daggers called "small weapon"
  
• Bug: Can't repair a Tinkerbot with a wind-up turtle
  
• Bug: Grenade-built tinkerbots spawn their explosion in the wrong place
  
• Bug: Grenade-built tinkerbots don't retain their self-destruct upon descending to the next floor
  
• Bug: Pouncing on enemies and attacking them with a dagger hits inconsistently
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot only takes damage from being "zapped" while not in water
  
• Bug: The "Execute" Dagger Skill frequently destroys the dagger used
  
• Minor: You can now initiate a dash while standing on water with gossamer shoes
  
• Minor: You couldn't heavy-lift other players in co-op
  

Changes

• Erasing game data now asks for confirmation, and allows you to be more selective with what you want to delete
  
• Trap doors can be broken open with Break, to make them more consistent with normal doors
  
• The game now prompts you to save when you quit from the esc menu in Generous mode, and warns you about losing your progress in Permadeath and Continues modes
  
• Made some improvement to the behaviors of vampiric thralls
  
• Made dropkick much more accurate against small creatures and rolling foes

• Crash: Tutorial crashes
  
• Crash: Game sometimes crashes when killing things with soul-weapons
  
• Crash: Several crashes related to vampiric thralls
  
• Goof: Some blocks have extra debug numbers all over them (that I forgot to turn off)
  
• Bug: Externally-loaded encyclopedia entries aren't rendering line breaks properly
  
• Bug: Trap floors sometimes generate without a proper entrance and spawn the player in walls or ceilings
  
• Bug: Sometimes the name of enchanted equipment ends with an extra "and"
  
• Bug: Sometimes when jumping up onto a ledge the player clings to the ground strangely
  
• Bug: Enemy footwear wasn't generating as the right type
  
• Bug: Pressing [delete] prompts the "are you sure you want to delete this file?" dialog even when no selected file exists
  
• Bug: Defeated Bosses display the wrong icon on the timeline for the Tank and Bear
  
• Bug: Shop door passwords aren't always consistent between level seeds/saving and loading
  
• Bug: Grumbuls in the Tank Fight will sometimes contantly generate "?"s above their heads
  
• Bug: Issues with controllers and keyboards stealing each others' input in co-op
  
• Bug: Campfires in Grumbul Forts draw behind the walls of the forts
  
• Bug: Weapons sometimes spawn as default templates 'small weapon', 'cutting weapon' etc.
  
• Bug: Equipment with telepathic enchantments is missing the "of empathy/telepathy/sensing" part of the name
  
• Bug: Shop passwords are sometimes too obscured by background elements to be of any use
  
• Bug: Doing a Daily Run after a normal run won't reset the internal floor/run time, making the timeline weird
  
• Bug: Quitting in Generous mode on Floor 1 creates a save summary with the wrong class name and hp
  
• Bug: Catacoins earned in the Daily Run aren't added to ones Catacoin total
  
• Bug: Overwriting another save when saving a recovered game in Co-op doesn't work
  
• Bug: Shopkeeper doesn't target player upon being lit on fire
  
• Bug: The wrong level music plays after loading games, sometimes
  
• Bug: View focus on breaking ice barriers is weird and impacts performance poorly
  
• Bug: Armor of reflection doesn't properly deflect plague flies
  
• Typo: The loading screen subtitle for the twins has an errant "#" in it
  
• Typo: Armors "of the Ghost" were misnamed "of Dreams"
  

New

• Saving and loading!
  
  
  • You can quit a run between floors and pick it up again later.
    
  • There are currently only 2 save slots each for single player and co-op. This might change later.
    
  • No mid-floor saving and quitting though
• New stage transition/loading screen! I think it's cool I hope you do too!!
  
• Three different game modes:
  
  
  • "Permadeath" is what you're used to!
    
  • "Continues" lets you spend Catacoins to retry a floor after death, getting more expensive each time.
    
  • "Generous" lets you retry a floor as many times as you want (but you won't gain Catacoins).
• New [esc] menu lets you change sound and screen settings mid-game
  
• New meals and meal effects:
  
  
  • Gorhound meal
    
  • Eeol meal
    
  • Frolix meal
    
  • Some others...
• Added support for PSX and Nintendo gamepad input prompts, and an option to choose between them in options > controls

• Suction feet now only activate when holding "up" while adjacent to a wall
  
• Renamed "dragon breath" to "bear breath" because dragons aren't real
  
• Added soups to Potion-dealers' shops
  
• Changed appearance of soups to show what they contain
  
• Added a new effect to peppered fishanha meal; grants armor while wet
  
• Breakthrough is no longer impeded by blocks of snow
  
• Gorhounds' pounce-bite scales in bite count with depth, but can now be shaken free of by button mashing
  
• On floor 5, the grumbul bearing the device now has it stown away instead of spawning it upon their death
  
• Made elemental shield enchantments' status effects proc less frequently
  
• The view holds on breaking ice barriers for a bit longer now, so you can see them break
  
• Dagger Skill 3, "Execute", now stabs foes 3 times, has a less complex input, and is generally better all around
  
• Made Plague less effective against bosses

• Crash: Determining reputations relating to shields after having blocked attacks but without having been hit
  
• Crash: Determining Reputations in a run after using only chain lightning or dark bolt without landing any melee combat hits
  
• Crash: When hitting enemies with poison blob trance or dipped weapons
  
• Bug: Only one prosthetic leg effect works at a time
  
• Bug: Prosthetic legs draw incorrectly in the character's portrait
  
• Bug: Could not properly rebind class abilities
  
• Bug: Could not properly reassign inputs to dpad
  
• Bug: Getting pounced on by a gorhound sometimes causes clipping through walls and floors
  
• Bug: Gorhounds facing direction can change while in their climbing animation
  
• Bug: Leaving the top of the level with dark phase causes a softlock
  
• Bug: Portals sometimes don't warp the player if they crouch-jump upwards through them
  
• Bug: Grumbuls don't always spawn on floor 5, making the tank door inaccessible
  
• Bug: The grumbul bearing the device can flee floor 5, making the tank door inaccessible
  
• Bug: Getting tumbled over water while wearing gossamer shoes can cause an infinite stun softlock
  
• Bug: Dagger skill 3 "Execute" often fails when it shouldn't
  
• Bug: Several issues with mirror puzzle generation in the Anticropolis
  
• Cosmetic: Spikes spawning on top of flame pipes look strange, so that doesn't happen any more
  

HEY!

It's me again, the guy making this game! It's been a minute but I'm back with an update!
(Including for Mac and Linux users!! Finally!!!)

Full Changelog Here

This update adds saving and loading to the game! Currently (and probably forever) you can only save/load between floors, but now if you're having a good run that you don't want to give up because you have a bus to catch -- or whatever it is that interrupts peoples' gaming these days -- you can just save and quit out upon each floor's completion and return to it later!


[h2]Saving and Loading[/h2]
This is something I'd been wanting to add for a long while, but as I worked on the Deep Dark and it became more and more apparent that an average, cautious run to reach the later levels would probably be an hours-long affair, the ability to save a game and resume it later suddenly changed from a nicety to an imperative. I want Catacomb Kids to respect your time, and not demand a disgusting amount of your day to beat.

So I took a (longer than expected) detour from working on the Deep Dark to figure out how to add saving and loading to the game. And as I toiled and approached a functional system, through my testing I came to realize something:

Playing the same floor over and over again can be really gosh-dang fun.

[h2]Game Modes[/h2]
A lightbulb went off in my head. Besides the long time this game is taking to complete, the number one complaint I get is that it's just too hard. This has never really bothered me much, because some people like hard games, and in any case I'm trying my best to make it hard in a way that feels fair. But my philosophy has always been; if someone wants to like your game, the game should not keep them from doing so.

In other words, if someone sees Catacomb Kids and thinks 'that looks like a game for fools and chumps', that's no skin off my back. I'd rather they go play something the would be more guaranteed to enjoy. But if someone sees Catacomb Kids and it seems like exactly their kind of game, they shouldn't be kept from enjoying it because of a lack of controller options, or because of strobing lights, or poor color choice, or awkward ui, or even - in some cases - the game's difficulty.

So all of this is to say that, in addition to the classic Permadeath - which is still the default game mode and will remain so for all of time - I've added two additional modes: Continues and Generous.


In Generous mode, you can retry a floor as many times as you want, and can even come back to it after quitting out in the middle of a floor (though it will still force you to play through that floor from the start again). You can't, however, earn Catacoins in this mode, so if you want to farm coins for a super sweet custom kid you'll have to play in the Permadeath or Continues modes.


In Continues mode, you get to retry a floor after you die, but doing so costs Catacoins. Each subsequent death increases the cost until eventually you decide it's not worth it any more or you run out of money. My hope is that this mode might act as a stepping stone between Generous and Permadeath, or as a sort of failsafe mode for people who enjoy permadeath but who would rather get one or two do-overs after dying in a particularly inglorious or anticlimactic way. In every other respect it's just like Permadeath mode, however; Quitting out of the game in the middle of a floor ends your run, and you can still gain Catacoins from your depth and reputations.


In both of these two new modes the gameplay is unchanged in every other way. That is to say; it's still the same hard game where you can get bodied by a room full of grumbuls or trip into a single tile spike pit on floor 1. But I'm hoping that these new modes will serve the manifold purposes of helping to ease people into the game a bit more, letting folks have fun exploring different solutions to the situations they find themselves up against, and in general adding to the different kinds of fun people can have while playing CK.

An example:
As I was testing Generous mode I managed to make it to the Grumbul Tank with only 2 hp left and a nearly-broken weapon. Needless to say it killed me. I swear I fought that fight at least a dozen times, always starting from 2 hp, always with a nearly broken weapon, taking note of every mistake that ended me until, at last, I emerged triumphant. The thrill! The rush! What a feeling that was! An impossible feeling before this update.

[h2]The Loading Screen (Doesn't Suck Any More)[/h2]

Lastly, because you can only save between floors, I needed to add a "between" for there to be. Previously the game would simply shuffle you automatically on to the next stage when you entered a door, but now you will be presented with a timeline of your run thus far, which will denote significant events like whenever you gain an orb of leveling, learn a new spell, beat a boss, etc. Shoutout to the viewers of my Twitch dev-streams for this timeline suggestion as I was brainstorming how to make the loading screen more interesting. I'm super duper pleased with how it turned out!!

[h2]Other Things You Cannot See[/h2]
Another thing I've been working on a lot lately is externalizing all the text in the game so that it can eventually be localized. This is a mostly invisible change going on in the background, except for the places where I've broken something. The text may look strange in some places but that's almost certainly just a side effect of the fact that I'm tearing out a huge amount of hard-coded text and turning it into something more flexible. Anyway I just wanted to give a brief mention of this here because it's SO TIME CONSUMING, good GOLLY I don't even remember writing half of this stuff. This game has so much text in it! And so much of it is some degree of modular!! What a task I've made for myself. I was hoping to have that done by this update but that definitely didn't happen - I'm maybe halfway there - but just be aware, I guess, that - as I stated above - I don't want the any meta-attribute of the game to get in the way of being enjoyed by folks who want to enjoy it, and that includes (eventually) having a means of localizing the game into different languages. Which languages? Don't ask me that, I'm not there yet. One step at a time.

Bouncing back and forth between implementing saving and loading, externalizing the text, and working on the Deep Dark has been where most of my time has been spent this past year - besides my work on UFO 50 and some other projects. I'd put the Deep Dark at around 65% ready for release? So hopefully it won't take too much longer. If you want to see how it's coming along, pop into one of my Twitch dev-streams sometime. It's probably most of what I'll be working on for the next few months. Alternatively, if you want to avoid spoilers, definitely don't check out my Twitch stream!

This post is longer than I had intended, so I'll post the patch notes separately for people who just want to look those over! There are a bunch of bugfixes and other changes that I really hope folks enjoy!

Some quick fixes for 0.2.6!

Changes

• Explosive arrows have a brief delay before exploding upon sticking in an enemy
  
• Spinner motor stops spinning near switches and shopkeepers
  

• Crash: When aiming trajectory while standing in front of a level exit
  
• Crash: Upon dying in water with a dipped weapon
  
• Crash: When casting blink or infernus in vs mode
  
• Bug: Characters can heal from being critically struck with Shake it Off with a sufficiently high level of DEF
  
• Bug: Player loses manual control of tinkerbot if hitting a switch pans the view too far away
  
• Issue: The reaper room returning to normal after defeating the boss or escaping is incredibly slow and sometimes hangs the game
  

An update! Still pluggin' away on the Deep Dark, but in the meantime here are some bugfixes.

Also, I've finally begun implementing some of the modular nature of the Tinkerbots! This is something that's been intended from when I first added the tinkerer class; you can now find different motors, chassis, and propeller parts for your bot in mechanist shops and from a new "grumbul workshop" premade room in the upper dungeon. Your bot will equip them automatically upon picking them up.

New

• New Tinkerbot parts, to be found in tinkerer shops or in the new "Grumbul Workshop" premade room
  
• New Grumbul type, found in the grumbul workshop: Grumbul Mechanic
  
• Several new encyclopedia entries
  
• New "Explosive Arrow" that can be purchased from tinkerer shops
  

• Slightly re-reduced impact of Luck on bought items
  
• Tinkerbot now no longer instantly dies from crush-traps, if there's a place to the side - instead it becomes 'busted', as though imperfectly repaired
  
• Gave Orb-Bearers improved abilities
  
• Made Plague flies dodge-able
  
• Changed the size of some spells on the spell grid: Break is now 2x1, Raise Dead is 1x3, etc.
  
• Allied non-humanoid creatures (spirits, tinkerbots, thralls, etc), are immune to the effects of amulets of force
  
• Normal Bears can spawn as early as floor 8 now, but only spawn once per game loop
  

• Crash: In Frolix Dens: data structure with index does not exist. "gen_map_make_reachable_path"
  
• Crash: When leaving levels while a tinker-bot has died off-screen outside of the game's 'active' area
  
• Crash: When a spring is struck by a melee attack as the attacker dies
  
• Bug: Owl-man arms and legs fall off upon death
  
• Bug: Whirlwind audio is borked
  
• Bug: Legs in character portraits draw with the wrong colors
  
• Bug: Can die by touching moving blocks in the Anticropolis while in Dark Phase
  
• Bug: Spring legs don't work
  
• Bug: Arrows that leave trails have incorrect collision boxes
  
• Bug: Shop types don't cycle properly
  
• Bug: Shopkeepers don't get mad if your tinkerbot grabs their wares
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot interaction points remain behind when their owner dies while the bot is in idle mode
  
• Bug: Wind-up Turtles and other carryable enemies can be struck even while held
  
• Bug: Softlock when traversing distant intra-level passages while a tinker-bot is in idle mode
  
• Bug: Pressing up in front of a door while aiming a trajectory throw will go through the door instead of aiming up
  
• Bug: Furnace passages don't heat soups
  

Just some bugfixes for now! Still hard at work on the Deep Dark.

Changes

• Luck has a higher impact on values of sold items, and items sell for slightly more generally
  
• Rewrote the code handling severed and unnatural limbs to make it more consistent and less buggy
  
• A new hidden tinkerbot function
  

• Crash: Breaking crush trap chains while standing on top of them
  
• Crash: Data structure with index does not exist. "gen_map_make_reachable_path"
  
• Crash: When trying to fix tinkerbots as a non-tinkerer
  
• Bug: Gas grenades still draw the old style of gas
  
• Bug: Gas grenades look huge until they finish expelling their gas
  
• Bug: Used/burning magical maps and spellbooks sometimes destroy other objects in the player's inventory
  
• Bug: Realized Amulet of Hunger doesn't grant immunity to negative statuses from balls of slime/goo/mucus or mushrooms
  
• Bug: Enchanters don't properly enchant headgear when using their second option
  
• Bug: Crush traps can get stuck in solidifying lava
  
• Bug: "Back" buttons don't work in the main menu
  
• Bug: Break doesn't cast instantly with incantation
  
• Bug: Whirlwind sound doesn't obey volume controls
  
• Bug: The name of a mushroom becomes ridiculous when spiced
  
• Bug: Spices do nothing when added to mushrooms outside of soup
  
• Bug: "Look" doesn't work properly in co-op
  
• Bug: Sometimes hidden ceiling spikes show through - and deal damage damage - on the tile above
  
• Bug: Unfinished "text resolution" setting is sometimes enabled, causing text to look weird
  
• Bug: Characters riding on top of boulders on top of elevators will be pushed through the ceiling
  
• Bug: Extra Tough and Amulet of Life-Saving don't negate being crushed by the moving blocks in the anticropolis
  
• Bug: Peppered fish meal grants byat meal effect
  
• Bug: Orbs of Leveling sometimes don't spawn
  
• Typo: "sough save!" instead of "tough save!"
  

Hey! You!

Oof, I was hoping to have this update out a while ago - it being mostly bugfixes and all - but fixing bugs is, as it turns out, sometimes difficult.

In particular there is one crash that I know I still haven't fixed yet but which I can't seem to reproduce and it's rare and severe and absolutely infuriating. after addressing some of the more common crashes I got so carried away trying to fix that one that time flew by and before I know it an apocalypse has happened and I still haven't pushed out the original fixes! Whoops!!

Well, I hope some of the new features help to make up for the tardiness of this one at least. I think the changes to the tinker-bot are particularly neat, personally.

Changes

• Lanterns' "use" range no longer decreases as the lantern loses fuel
  
• Changed color of mushroom cloud gas
  
• Added additional visualization to better indicate drowning/breathing gas
  
• Gave Tinker-bot "Extra Tough" and "Shake it Off" to make them less squishy
  
• Reworked Soups so they can now hold more than one ingredient
  
• Tinker shopkeepers get mad if you mess with their robots now
  
• Throw full mana batteries at tinkerbots for various effects based on the battery's charge types
  
• Added a couple new portrait hairstyles
  
• Moved thermometer in UI
  
• Changes to Vampirism Plague multi-cast

• Crash: Blocking attacks with a cracked shield
  
• Crash: Flipping switches sometimes crashes, especially after a player has died in co-op
  
• Crash: fx_text does not have 'hp' as a variable
  
• Crash: Maps and spellbooks burning away while held by rats
  
• Crash: Selling a burning book to a shopkeeper
  
• Bug: Sometimes switches become unflippable after flipping them a couple times.
  
• Bug: Amulets identify incorrectly in co-op
  
• Bug: Standing at the intersection of elevators and jump-thru platforms causes you to fall through both of them
  
• Bug: Music doesn't update sometimes when moving between floor - I swear to heck I fixed it this time for real
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot sometimes picks up blacklisted items by accident
  
• Bug: Bow-wielding tinker-bots still try to pick up arrows even when they're full
  
• Bug: Can still talk to shopkeepers even when they're hostile
  
• Bug: Some enemies never stop flashing red after being hit with chain lightning
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot still sometimes attacks enemies even when commanded not to

Here's another bugfix patch -- a small but important one, that includes the fixes from 0.2.3a being brought up to speed for Mac and Linux, as well as the following:

Changes

• Extendo-arms automatically become your main weapon hand when they're acquired
  
• Slightly changed animation of daggers' second attack
  
• View now scrolls to focus on breaking ice barriers

• Crash: Tinkerer shopkeeper crashes
  
• Bug: Can get softlocked by holding down when bouncing off of springs
  
• Bug: Weapon offsets were wrong - expecially noticeable for extend-o arms
  
• Bug: Two player input is broken in versus mode
  
• Bug: Moving blocks in the AC can kill you if they move into you while you're in a fairy barrel
  
• Bug: Wrong controller vibrates

Quick fix is up for Windows - Mac and Linux soon to follow in the next few days, but it might have to wait til after Christmas, sorry!

Changes

• Tinkerbot no longer auto-returns to you when left in idle mode outside of the view
  
• Springs now retain the direction they were facing when picked up and dropped, unless thrown downward
  
• Springs thrown downward now always have a vertical orientation
  
• There's now a slight pause when bouncing off of springs, letting you grab them more easily

• Crash: Crash when quitting out of the tutorial
  
• Crash: Nonexistent surface in "food_meal"
  
• Crash: undefined object in "AI_path_follow"
  
• Crash: Crash in "draw_hud_messages"
  
• Bug: Walls in the tutorial are invisible
  
• Bug: Ice passages don't freeze humanoids that get caught in them when they regrow
  
• Bug: Flipping switches with the 'use' button doesn't trigger cutscenes
  
• Bug: Spring item highlight was working incorrectly
  
• Bug: Gas traps not drawing the bottom tile
  
• Bug: Mirror mazes sometimes not spawning properly
  
• Bug: Tinkerbot class skill doesn't work properly in split-screen co-op
  
• Bug: Being "saved" from crushing by vertical shifting blocks in the AC turns them into broken crush traps
  

Hey, remember me? Have an update!

I'm hard at work on the Deep Dark, and it's coming along quite nicely but isn't quite ready for public consumption yet, so I wanted to push out some bugfixes and tweaks that I think will make the game a bit smoother and more fun.

In this update are mirror-and-laser puzzles that now spawn in the Anticropolis, acting as the AC's version of switch barriers. There are also frozen passages that must be broken through in order to traverse, and which slowly close up behind you, as well as a number of fixes for major crashes and long-standing bugs.

Also by popular request an option has been added for splitscreen-only mode in Co-op, which you can enable in Options > Gameplay.

New

• Laser-and-Mirror locks in the Anticropolis
  
• Frozen passages in the Anticropolis
  
• Option to force constant splitscreen in co-op under Options > Gameplay

• Changed the way Amulet of Force works a bit
  
• Redesigned class select menu
  
• Last played class is now remembered and selected by default even after closing the game
  
• Plague flies are now reflected by armor of reflection and mirrored shields
  
• Cracked shields now only let damage through with frequency based on the defender's DEF
  
• Successfully blocking an attack with a cracked shield can no longer kill the defender
  
• Shield-bashing enemies now reduces shield durability
  
• Swinging blade traps should no longer spawn where they will instantly kill grumbuls
  
• Significantly boosted use of Wanderer's farsight

• Crash: Crash when trying to leave to shopkeeper "sell" menu without any sellable items
  
• Crash: Wielding a bear arm with a missing joint
  
• Crash: Related to byat thralls
  
• Crash: When bear-trapping a shopkeeper
  
• Crash: When loading saved custom kid templates
  
• Crash: "draw_hud_messages"
  
• Crash: When dumping out corpses from bottles
  
• Bug: Rolling/bashing weapon attacks (rolling blade, uppersmash) can be initiated in mid-air
  
• Bug: Stove traps still tick and gas clouds still expand xduring gate cutscenes
  
• Bug: Can still drown during gate cutscenes
  
• Bug: Fixed behavior of byat thralls
  
• Bug: Amulets of Force would still affect objects when the world should be paused
  
• Bug: Can get stuck in solid lava blocks that have covered up shifting lava bridges
  
• Bug: Amulet of Force changes the alliance of plague flies
  
• Bug: Pipes in the background of the Grumbul Tank fight are scaled weirdly
  
• Bug: Beam Trap sound effect sometimes plays for way too long
  
• Bug: Slopes/stairs are sometimes drawn oddly/incorrectly
  
• Bug: Potatoes can become hot by fires even when carried in hand or pocket
  
• Bug: Creatures wielding bows can't be hurt by arrows
  
• Bug: Can't dump out balls of goo from bottles; can only fail to drink them
  
• Bug: You can lose both arms simultaneously using bear traps
  
• Bug: Sprinting up stairs with footwear of the glacier freezes the sprinter
  
• Performance: Optimized death review, so it should no longer affect performance much when enabled
  
• Typo: "Lighting" instead of "Lightning" in the chain lightning description

Not a whole lot of changes - mostly bug fixes and such. I did add a post-death preview thing that you can enable in Options > Gameplay, however! It's off by default, because I'm unsure of the impact it might have on performance, but I think it's pretty neat!

New

• Added a "death replay," if you press up/down to hide the results screen after dying. It may have an significant impact on performance, so it's disabled by default. It can be enabled in options > gameplay.
  

• Added 5-frame invincibility period after being hit
  

• Crash: DoAdd:2:Undefined Value in "obj_chest_normal_Other_13"
  
• Crash: Changing from windowed/fullscreen on the kid select menu
  
• Crash: floor argument 1 incorrect type (undefined) in "gen_map_features_details"
  
• Crash: When the tank dies from acid damage
  
• Crash: "unit_pickup" crash when disarmed enemies attempt to pick up weapons
  
• Crash: "voice_play" and "voice_init" crashes...I think. I hope.
  
• Bug: Spellbooks as starting items for custom kids have the wrong graphic color in the spell learning menu when used
  
• Bug: Standing on boulders on top of elevators causes clipping and strange behaviour
  
• Bug: Shopkeepers sometimes sell "[Burning]" equipment
  
• Bug: Ogos sometimes spawn with "[Burning]" weapons
  
• Bug: Grumbuls spawned in during the tank fight are sometimes stuck in the ground
  
• Bug: Spellbooks appear as the wrong color when spawned on custom kids
  
• Bug: Springs still bounce things away even when held and stown away
  

.2.0d fixes some things, and also brings forward the changes from 0.2.0c to Linux and Mac

Changes

• Increased range of teleport spell
  
• Breakthrough busts locked doors and pushes moving blocks out of the way
  

• Crash: "Trying to set a surface target that does not exist" when changing window size during level gen
  
• Crash: "obj_torch_Step_0"
  
• Bug: Repairing weapons above "good" quality reducees their quality to "good"
  
• Bug: Charge stars in walls no longer react to being hit
  
• Bug: Tiles that form the reaper room don't appear on the map in the pause screen
  
• Bug: Map information is lost upon alt+tabbing, window losing focus while fullscreened, switching between fullscreen/windowed mid-game, etc.
  As long as you pause before doing any of these things, that should no longer happen: Current "fog of war" information is now saved every time you pause.
  
• Bug: Can still get stuck in walls with Breakthrough
  

Changes

• All unique weapons (soul, wrench, etc) now effectively have the "durable" trait
  
• Removed durability cap from broken blade traps
  

• Crash: "gen_map_features_start" when no start location is found
  
• Crash: "anim_bowshot2"
  
• Bug: Grumbuls adds don't properly spawn in the tank fight
  
• Crash: "obj_snow_deep_Alarm_0"
  
• Bug: Twins fight loops forever
  

A quick bugfix build plus some changes!

The new rewards are much rarer in this build than in the last build - which is intentional - but they might be a little too rare now. I'm still tweaking the balance of their spawn frequency so just keep that in mind! I want them to be not littering the first floor but also not once-every-ten runs, and I haven't hit that sweet spot yet.

Anyway here's them notes:

Changes

• Heavenly weapons are no longer indestructible, now degrading to excellent after use
  
• Very slightly reduced quality of items from soul chests
  
• No longer alerted to lava by dangersense when immune to fire
  
• Changed appearance of stone platforms in the Upper Dungeon
  
• Reduced range of sound from killing humanoid enemies
  
• Soul chests combine their total soul count when they touch one another
  
• Slightly increased range of soul-gathering on soul-chests
  
• Soul-chests now must be touched before they start absorbing souls
  
• Made device more durable - no longer destroyed by fire or water
  
• Added unstable cold burst effect
  
• Can now pounce onto climbing ladders and ledges again
  

• Reward type items spawn far too frequently, too numerously, and in the wrong places
  
• Certain premade rooms that disallow verticality spawning break level progression
  
• Disappearing blocks disallow nearby ladders even when they're behind walls
  
• Shifting barriers can spawn in places that block off adjacent passages when flipped
  
• Shifting barriers in premade rooms spawn in the wrong place when the room is mirrored
  
• Unaligned text in death summary screen
  
• Crash when selling or piping potions partially identified with square bracketed tag items in their name
  
• Powered arm spams messages when carrying a full battery while still having charges left in the arm
  
• Crash with obj_goo_bottle_Destroy_0
  
• 1-height corridors sometimes force humanoids to crouch when climbing down from a ladder
  
• Climbing down into spikes as a pathfinder or cartographer deals damage as though falling into them
  
• Can use Breakthrough to jump outside of the level's bounds
  
• Prosthetic arms don't draw as the correct color on the in-game sprite
  
• Slimes kinda spaz out on corpses in spikes
  
• Lava drips can spawn on death blades, freezing them
  
• Blessings and certain amulet abilities block energy when active like trances
  
• Stowing an item while a hated dagger is already stown makes the dagger stop existing
  
• Crash when eating things while the statistic for number of things eaten is uninitialized
  
• Gills from fishanha meal do nothing
  
• Horizontal moving blocks get stuck over solid tiles
  
• CPU players in vs mode spawn in weeeeird places
  
• Going directly from one transition stage to another from shops still increments the floor count
  
• Cold descent transition stage doesn't have its frozen door or fog of war style transition
  
• Empty bottles have no name when being sold
  
• Crash when blinking in versus mode
  

New

• 4 New Boons!
  
  
  
  • Weapon Mastery
    
  • Martial Artist
    
  • Blastoff
    
  • Spin-dash
    
  
  
• Completely rewrote level generator
  
• Completely re-made Normal Bear fight
  
• Added two new weapons, dropped by Normal Bear
  
• Added collectible learning points
  
• Added collectible blessing items
  
• Bunch of new premade rooms
  
• New type of treasure chest
  

• Raised followers retain weapon skills, boons, and spellcasting abilities
  
• Grumbuls no longer spawn with amulets, gorhounds, or small turrets in the Grumbul Tank fight
  
• If a player with undead followers dies, the followers will reassign themselves to any player who comes near that also knows Raise Dead
  
• Weapon's status effects only apply when an attack deals damage
  
• Grumbuls in the Grumbul Tank arena no longer spawn with amulets of any kind
  
• Completely re-made the Normal Bear boss
  
• Regenerate now makes slimes multiply
  
• New flame visual effect
  
• New "zapped" visual effect
  
• Made dipper effects last longer
  
• Decapitated enemies who aren't immune to bleeding will bleed out now
  
• Reduced damage frequency of acid
  
• Completely re-made the Encyclopedia
  
• Added the ability to specify potion, spellbook, and grenade types on custom kids
  
• Can now jump up to 1 tile higher by holding up when leaping out of whater
  
• Amulet of Force now slightly pulls usable items towards you when fully realized
  
• Campfires can now bake nearby things, as long as the food isn't directly on the fire
  
• More things cause detectable noise now - like being hit, bear-traps snapping shut, corpses falling, and weapons clashing
  
• Can now roll by sprinting while crouched
  
• Unstable plague now produces many fewer flies
  
• Increased drop rate of fishanha corpses
  

• Swarm Form is broken
  
• Grapple breaks if the thrower dies mid-throw
  
• The same items sometimes persistently appear across multiple floors
  
• Disowned player followers remain persistent across floors in co-op
  
• Crash if a corpse currently being looted is destroyed by plague blight or some other means
  
• Lightning Strike (Chain Lightning + Air-Dash multi-cast) sometimes places the player in walls
  
• Reaper deactivates upon leaving the view during certain attacks
  
• Water isn't spawning properly
  
• "fx_sound" surface crash
  
• Byat eye trails never disappear sometimes
  
• Typo "You knows [...]" when looking at oneself
  
• Bear traps draw at the wrong depth
  
• Bear traps continually re-attach to large enemies after falling off
  
• Dangersense only grants a speed boost when traveling to the right
  
• Orbis Malus orbs are affected by status effects
  
• Crash when using Break on arrow turrets
  
• Crash related to fx_sound
  
• Crash related to obj_creature_handle
  
• Tinkerbot weapons don't persist between floors
  
• Reaper can consume keys necessary for progress
  
• Fur Hoods and Coats prevent heat loss entirely instead of slowing it
  
• Crab's skittering sound continues to play even when it shouldn't
  
• One player's pause menu doesn't draw when both players pause in co-op
  
• Raising the corpse of a dead co-op player erases their traits
  
• Controller still rumbles for players using keyboard controls
  
• Crash when backing out of "enchant equipment" shop menu when equipment is all enchanted already
  
• Crash when tracking tunnel doorways
  
• Arrows hit walls immediately when fired up or down while too near to a wall
  
• Can no longer press esc to back out of starting a game, or move the selection left/right after a character has been selected
  
• Spell-dealers now have the proper text for the "Slow" and "Haste" spells
  
• Fixed bug with fire sound effect continuing after explosions
  
• Using poet's Tome ability as a spell while also having incantation causes the tome to always cast its charged version, even as a non-wordsmith
  
• Tinkerbot stops animating when heavy-lifted
  
• Gamepad input doesn't work in single player character select menu if the menu was entered via keyboard
  
• Boulders on pressure pads repeatedly press them instead of holding them down
  
• Sometimes get stuck to ceilings with the sticky feet meal
  
• Tinkerer's class ability was named different things in different places
  

Hey!
Here's a video:
Catacomb Kids - Level Gen Update 0.2.0 Vlog!

If you don't want to watch that here are the same words below, followed by some extra words:

I know it's been a long time since the last update. There are a lot of reasons for that, but to keep things short, it's because I'm much busier now than I was before - in a good way, working on UFO 50 with Derek Yu and Paul Hubans and a couple other Super Rad Dudes - and because I was working very very hard on rewriting a pretty fundamental part of the game. Namely: the level generator.
So, here, have an update.

The Generator
The aforementioned rewritten level generator can now produce proper lock-and-key situations, or switch-and-gate situations, or switch-and-furnace situations, or whatever other kinds of "need to get X to go to Y" kinds of scenarios I decide to add in the future. The new generator also features many, many other tweaks to the levels that are probably less immediately obvious but no less impactful. There are also a boatload of new premade rooms that take advantage of some fun things now possible in the new level generator. I finally made myself a proper editor for making premade rooms that makes the process significantly faster and less of a headache than it was before, so just about every update from now on will probably feature some new premade rooms and setpieces to some degree or another.

The Rewards
While I was making all those fancy new premade rooms, I realized that there weren't enough things I could use as general reward type items other than Fancy Chests, so I added a few!

• There are now Soul Chests, which are special treasure chests that power up by consuming the corpses of nearby slain enemies. The more corpses they consume, the better the loot they drop will be!
  
• In addition, you can now find extra learning points and free spells just floating around sometimes.
  
• I've also added a new kind of item called "Blessings", which are permanent passive powerups, sort of like never-ending trances but a bit less potent. You can only have one blessing at a time though, so choose wisely. There are only three implemented currently but more are definitely on the way.
  

• Weapon Master lets you use any weapon skill that you have access to with any weapon regardless of its type.
  
• Living Weapon lets you use weapon skills while unarmed and removes the damage penalty on unarmed attacks. When you first learn it, it forces you to pick a weapon class to hate, but you then gain that weapon class' full moveset as unarmed attacks.
  
• Breakthrough lets you charge up a super-jump to launch high into the air, bust through single-tile-thick walls and ceilings, and crash through crush traps and boulders.
  
• Spider-Spin lets you charge up a roll that clings to surfaces as you zip around.
  

• I've completely rewritten a certain boss enemy from scratch, so look forward to that.
  
• I've completely overhauled the way the encyclopedia looks, and added a few new illustrations and entries to it.
  
• I've added a stats screen on the encyclopedia where you can see things like your best depth, total kills, and most frequently cast spell.

More bug fixes, and bringing Linux+Mac versions up-to-date.


Fixes
Crash when wraiths have no target
Player is annihilated upon entering a floor in a snowdrift
Humanoids trying to chase through locked doors constantly jiggle the doorknob loudly
AI_action_backhop crash
Energy bar looks weird when you changing to equipment with less MAG
Regeneration overwrites owl wings when flying
Ceiling spikes draw beneath jump-thru platforms in the AC
Lava bridges are now destroyed when lava loses it heat (Reaper fight, siphon, etc)
Pressing select+cancel at the same time over a gravestone select backs to class select but still shows the custom kid dialog
Backing out of kid select shows particles for destroyed mana batteries
Shopkeepers get mad at you if you're infected with any plague flies
Pressing select+cancel at the same time on the level-up screen levels the selected stat without advancing its tier
Flame cone traps shoot at the wrong angle
Crash when going through the tank door in co-op


SORRY. MY BAD. 0.1.5b should fix the "Fishahna Crash". It's only out for Windows right now, but Mac+Linux versions will be on their way later in the week.


Fixes
Fishanha crash when eating corpses


New
Added "Look" menu!
(default bound to "tab" on keyboard or "select/option" on controllers)
4 New Boons!
Multi-Cast
Siphon
Dangersense
Calculations
New shop type - Gadgeter!
4 new arm types!
4 new leg types!
2 New tinkerer items - Mana Battery, Spring

Changes
Reduced amount of durability damage done to shoes from mighty stomp
Throwing enemies upwards with Grapple no longer tumbles the player
Slamming enemies into walls with Grapple now deals 1 damage
Can more precisely place where enemies are thrown with Grapple
Increased time to aim grappled enemies
Added boon icons to level-up menu
Rewrote flame cone code (Dragon breath, fire pipe traps, etc)
It should behave mostly the same but perform much better
Plague now persists after creatures die rather than needing to re-plague corpses separately
Changed appearance of plague flies
Increased damage dealt by plague flies
Grumbul Tank Cannonball no longer destroys bridges
Slight changes to Grumbul Tank behavior
Reduced size of holes in side of Grumbul Tank arena
Water washes off acid
Kicks deals damage based on which leg is kicked with (differs based on facing direction)
Added gamepad rumble enable/disable option to controls menu
Grumbul turrets are now battery-powered
Grumbul turrets now have sfx when drawing and firing
Increased power of zap grenades
Gas grenades now continue to emit their gas for several seconds
Empty grenades can now be refilled if you have Alchemy
Armor of reflection now reflects boulders
Tracker and Pathfinder no longer stop tracking any items when descending floors
Increased distance of wanderer's farsight
Lanterns no longer reduce their effective distance when low on fuel
Rewrote screen split handling
Co-op split screen bubbles are now a constant size
Reaper platforms once more disappear after a moment when stood upon

Fixes
Spell inspection doesn't work from the skill grid
Undead creatures can drown
Screen steps back a frame when paused
Anticropolis ruin generation crash (for real this time)
Inputs are sometimes ignored when the player is Slowed
Tank door no longer spawns
Grappling enemies can cause the player to shift around strangely
Traveling through lava with Dark Phase still lights you on fire
Crash with certain bow shooting animations
Crash when trying to access a clogged pipe
Eating gorhounds and burrahbois doesn't heal with butcher meal effect
Gorhounds and burrahbois can't be cooked, and don't reflect seasoning in their names
Can no longer manually dodge with Acrobat using keyboard
More gamepads should be compatible, now/gamepad detection should be better maybe???
A shopkeeper crash
Not immune to fire or ice while in Dark Phase's dark phase
No spell description for Orbis Malus
Learning free spells (from the reaper pearl or spell-dealers) doesn't work in co-op
Tracking doors and crush-traps doesn't properly work when using a gamepad
Ceiling-portals repeatedly warp items in 1-high corridors
Crash when trying to track Grumbul Tank door
Screen sometimes continually splits and un-splits in co-op
Orbs summoned by soul weapons can take damage
Striking enemies while pouncing degrades your weapon and counts towards skill increases
Reaper platforms can be destroyed by fire
Reaper rooms don't remove lava drips from vanished platforms
Crush traps stuck between vanishing platforms shake the screen like crazy
Fixed crash upon resizing, moving, alt+tabbing, etc. the game window
Summoning the reaper destroys co-op ghost players if they're in the room
Slimes become faux-blighted when nearly but not-quite destroyed by crush traps
Stone platforms are discolored by burning
Frozen water surfaces can cause the player to clip into walls

A few bugfixes, and bringing the Mac version up to date.

Unfortunately we're still having issues with Linux. We've finally managed to get it to compile after transitioning to GMS2, but there are some severe issues with drawing the screen (ie. it doesn't) that need to be addressed.

This'll be the last update until after New Year's! Hope y'all all have a happy holiday season and New Year! See you in 2018!


Changes
Stronger Byats' eyes now leave glowing streaks to help with color-blindness
and also look rad
Some other stuff maybe.

Fixes
Context button tips appear in the wrong place on the screen
Crash dealing with bows and grave monoliths
Some other stuff probably


A few bugfixes, and bringing the Mac version up to date.

Unfortunately we're still having issues with Linux. We've finally managed to get it to compile after transitioning to GMS2, but there are some severe issues with drawing the screen (ie. it doesn't) that need to be addressed.

This'll be the last update until after New Year's! Hope y'all all have a happy holiday season and New Year! See you in 2018!


Changes
Stronger Byats' eyes now leave glowing streaks to help with color-blindness
and also look rad
Some other stuff maybe.

Fixes
Context button tips appear in the wrong place on the screen
Crash dealing with bows and grave monoliths
Some other stuff probably


Just a quick bugfix build - Windows only for now but again, mac/linux shouldn't be too far behind later this week.


Changes
Removed V-sync option as it's no longer necessary for Win 10 fullscreen
This may or may not fix the game running too fast on certain computers?
I couldn't reproduce that so I'm not sure.

Fixes
Screen goes black when picking up encyclopedia pages
Shaders draw over dialog boxes
Can't equip tomes from the spellbook menu
"Step Softly" pops up whenever you speak to the Ghost
Text popups draw twice at an offset on certain resolutions


Just a quick bugfix build - Windows only for now but again, mac/linux shouldn't be too far behind later this week.


Changes
Removed V-sync option as it's no longer necessary for Win 10 fullscreen
This may or may not fix the game running too fast on certain computers?
I couldn't reproduce that so I'm not sure.

Fixes
Screen goes black when picking up encyclopedia pages
Shaders draw over dialog boxes
Can't equip tomes from the spellbook menu
"Step Softly" pops up whenever you speak to the Ghost
Text popups draw twice at an offset on certain resolutions


Yo! It's update time!

This one might not seem too big at first but there are quite a few changes of note beyond just bug fixes:

Firstly, I've finally moved development fully over to Game Maker Studio 2. This is a much more friendly development environment from my end, and in addition to a number of improvements to the IDE that will make the game much easier to work on it also addresses issues that were a result of using GMS1.4, such as the black fullscreen on windows 10.

Secondly, I've started implementing shaders! I'm still learning about them so don't expect anything too fancy just yet, but with the first couple effects implemented -- heatwaves over lava, distortion to things under water, and a much improved "loud noise" effect -- the way is being paved for implementing much cooler visuals and replacing old ones with more computationally economical effects, which should ultimately help with the game's performance.

However! I am! Aware! That this build does have a few visual oddities as a result of both of the above facts! For instance, the shaders will occasionally render on top of UI elements, and the scrolling text that shows up when you level up or learn a spell might come with some strange side effects. These are all things that I'll be working through in the coming builds, but they tend to be relatively minor (as far as I know!) and don't impact the game too much aside from very occasionally looking pretty silly.

And of course, if you don't like or have technical issues with the shaders, you can disable them in the Options menu to go back to the way it was before!

Lastly! After much ado we've finally got Windows and Mac versions building in the new dev environment, but unfortunately Linux users will have to wait a wee bit longer! We literally (literally literally, not figuratively literally) only just got the Mac build working late last night after hours of trying, and, fingers crossed, the linux version will be coming sometime later this week.


New
Game is now being developed in Game Maker Studio 2!
Added 3 new meals and meal effects
Added new environmental hazard to upper dungeon
Added shaders!

Changes
Can now track entrance/exit doors, boulders, and teleport traps
Tracked objects now have arrows pointing to off-screen instances of them
Increased Catacoin value for depth
Invisible byats' eyes are no longer visible unless they're attacking
Removed hold-to-aim for spellwright to avoid conflict with trance and overload
Can now see the exact health of undead followers
Changed the behavior of teleport:
It now can either warp immediately or leave a waypoint
After leaving a waypoint, casting teleport again will bring you to it
Can now cancel teleport aim by jumping or attacking
Mushrooms now lose their poison regardless of how they're cooked
Cooked mushrooms no longer poison water forever; only when they're first cooked
Improved Anticropolis ruins

Fixes
Black fullscreen in Windows 10
Crash when tinker-bot picks up chests
Unable to cast spells when stuck in a wall
Teleporting into a wall with your last charge of teleport doesn't kill you
Incorrect description text for clothiers enchanting headgear with +Light
Fishanha meal does't work
Tracking light-emitting objects as a pathfinder lights all such objects
Owl-men corpse and zombie heads don't change color to match the rest of them
Potions of might, regeneration, and haste last for 660 ticks with resourceful
Tank door spawns on floor 10 in anticropolis
Tank still spawns in place of the twins
Amulets are equipped to missing arms when looted from corpses
Looting corpses behaves strangely with hates/likes weapons
Weapons near explosions and fire sometimes burn forever (behaving infernally)
Weapons thrown with deft throw and trajectory don't deal any damage
Shops sometimes don't upgrade your equipment (fixed?)
Arrow ammo draws incorrectly in co-op
Crash when attempting to loot the other player in VS mode
Cold burst has no name when casting

Near Future TO-DO
Leaderboards (for serious this time)
Flesh out Encyclopedia


UNFORTUNATELY this patch is only out on Windows for the time being. We've been having mad issues building for Mac and Linux but fingers crossed they'll be coming before too long. Alas, we're not entirely sure what the fix is yet so I can't provide an ETA.

In the meantime, Windows folk, have a bunch of bug fixes!


CHANGES
Reduced Tinker-Bot max hp increase from class-up from +5 to +3 each
Classing to Engineer lets tinker-bot carry heavy items
Reduced Tinker-Bot stat increase when going from Mechanic to Engineer
Added option to tinker-bot to only pick up unusable objects
Added input prompts to tinkerbot's manual mode
Added input prompts to character select menu
Engineer's Tinkerbot changes sprite to reflect improvement
Tinkerbot repairs damage from poor repairs by descending floors
Headaches now last for 2 floors instead of 1
Tinker-bot is better at avoiding shifting platforms in the AC
FIXES
Undo isn't removed from the spell bar when maximum charges reach 0
Missing leg causes air dash to behave strangely
Orb blinks when intersecting walls even when carried by Tinkerbot
Barrels sometimes burn them forever
Can be moved while going through doors
Moving Platforms in the AC can overlap the entrance/exit doors
Bot hits self with thrown arrows
Bot weapons don't disintegrate when broken
Can give bots heavy objects through the idle menu
Likes/Good With [Weapon] doesn't specify weapon type when loading a template kid
Spellbooks stolen by rats become invisible
Reaper weapons fly away after unpausing from tinker mode switch
Spikes in reaper room float when walls disappear
Wind-up turtle can be poisoned
Thrown weapons not reflected by armor of reflection
Potions deal damage incorrectly
Can't change Tinkerbot mode in coop while the screen is split
Bear trap keeps you caught after Undo
If you ride a boulder into a wall, the boulder may push you slightly into it
Weakness and a few other status effects aren't reciprocated by reciprocity
Lava bridges sprite turns to wooden bridge sprite when crushed by crush traps
NB sometimes spawns in walls and other strange places
Tinkerbot mode cannot be changed when class ability is assigned to SPELL
Custom Kids can't start with amulets
"gml_Object_par_player_Step_0" crashes
Locked rooms often generate without treasure
Wooden barricades can block off areas


So, it's been yet another while and a half, and here we are again. I come bearing gifts.

Watch this:

https://youtu.be/S0DF43O-3mU

If you don't feel like watching that then read this stuff (it's mostly the same words):

The Tinkerer!
First things first, this update adds a new player class to the game; The Tinkerer. Tinkerers are crafty item-users, planners, and mechanics, and as such they are associated with Intelligence. Their class ability isn't really an ability so much as a companion: All tinkerers have a flying robot buddy that can carry items and fight alongside them.

The Tinker-Bot has four different modes that the player can switch between at will:

• In Defensive mode, the tinker-bot will only attack enemies that you're already in combat with, but won't fly off and start fights on its own.
  
• In Offensive mode, it'll attack any nearby creature regardless of whether they're aware of you or not.
  
• In Manual mode, you control the robot directly, letting you move, attack, and pick up items with it, but you lose control of your Kid while doing so.
  
• In Idle mode, the tinker-bot enters an inactive standby state: You can use this mode to tell the bot to wait somewhere out of the way while you go do something dangerous. You can also interact with the tinkerbot in this mode to manage its held item or modify its behaviour.
  

• Blacksmiths can improve your weapon's stats and repair damaged equipment.
  
• Magic dealers will sell you a single spell that doesn't require learning points to acquire.
  
• Potion brewers will identify any potion type, for a price.
  
• Clothiers offer enchantments for your armor and shoes.
  

New
New Class! The TINKERER!
New Items - Grenades
Robot Follower
Catacoins!
Custom Kids!
Battle music!
AC Forts!

Changes
Oog now have energy for the void amulet to drain
Changed some reputation requirements
Large mushrooms are now heavier and bounce away creatures when not upright or when struck
Mushrooms are know knocked away by attacks
Improved Magic 101's charged tome attack
Improved Magical Combat's charged tome attack
As a Spellwright, projectiles from tome attacks will auto-aim
Undo is now removed from your skill grid when its max charges reach 0
Arrow types can be swapped by holding "Stow", even when having held/stown items
Made Anticropolis background details better and more unique
Added splash visual effect for entering water
Added bubble effect to lava surface
Changed explosion visual effect
Changed flame wave visual effect
Made icy slopes much more slippery
Added a V-Sync option in Graphics options for Windows users
Setting V-Sync to "ALT" should help WIN 10 users
with their black fullscreen issue but may introduce other issues
!!-This is only a temporary fix. A true solution is coming soon-!!
Added option to disable contextual prompts in Graphics options
Some changes to lighting in the Anticropolis
Orb of Leveling light now cycles through colors
Classing up as a wanderer more dramatically increases farsight distance
Improved camera point of interest functionality
Doubled charged duration of Soul weapons and added a damage penalty for losing charge
Changed behavior of shadow strikers for Soul weapons
Stronger enemies generate more shadow strikers when killed with soul weapons
Changed the behavior of lanterns to make them more useful
Lanterns now remove invisibility from lit enemies
Wearing sandals, going barefoot, or being naked in the AC increase heat loss
Sandals have less durability...
Sandals/bare feet kick faster and increase freerun wall-run speed
Boots have higher durability...
Boots kick slower, and decrease freerun wall-run speed
Heavy weapons and equipment increase freerun startup time
Boots reduce damage from ground spikes 1 at the cost of durability
Helms and Coifs reduce damage from ceiling spikes by 1 at the cost of durability
Slightly reduced input window for heavy lifting creatures
Added learned percentage of weapon skill to "Likes [Weapon]" description
Increased shop security
Shops now come in different types
Shopkeepers offer different services based on their store type
Added living space to shops
Added background details to shops
Merchants will buy your items for closer to their actual value with higher LUC
Mixed potions now identify if their components are identified after being made
Weapons clashing gains the attention of nearby creatures
Disarming enemies while you have [Pilfer] now [steals their weapon]
Using Grapple on enemies now [disarms them] if you have [Disarm]
Made gamepad input for mighty stomp harder to do accidentally
Refined Air Dash behaviour
Improved input responsiveness for quickly throwing things
after taking Trajectory or Deft Throw
Changed appearance of Trajectory throws
Trajectory now briefly slows time when initiated
Deft throw now has a slight auto-aim
Weapons thrown with trajectory only bounce once
Realized Amulet of the Void now only activates upon stealing energy/magic
Reduced Amulet of the Void's range
Increased INT requirement for enemy amulet use
Can now ride boulders
Can now initiate trajectory bow shots downward
Crush trap chain reeling sound is now emitted from the crushing head
Corpses are no longer valued by name length
Humanoid corpses' worth now take into account their equipped items
Added ruin structures to Anticropolis

Fixes
Fixed pools of water spawning incorrectly
Fixed amulets de-identifying when INT drops
Energy with Void Amulet drains one from max
Input icon for class ability doesn't display when using controller
Arrows behave a bit better in tight corridors
Crash when drinking Potion of Cleansing Flame
Icicles are fine in lava
Flame pipes add excessive "Charred"s to corpses
Teleport traps can spawn on the ghost and other "up-to-interact" features
Boulder traps don't trigger over too-short distances
Flame Wave, Infernus, and burning enemies don't properly produce light
Fixed a bug with disabling out-of-view instances
Interactable object title text is drawn in the wrong color
Burrah-boi meal doesn't work at all
Strange transparency artifacts with alphas while in fullscreen
Solidified Lava in reaper room is rendered incorrectly
Still climb up and down ladders while tracking/aiming lantern
Can heavy lift creatures while already holding an item
Heavy lifted creatures can be picked up by humanoids
other than the one who initiated the heavy lift
Ghost sometimes provides too many, too few, or incorrect trait options
All the music was in mono BECAUSE I'M AN IDIOT
Crash when ogo slime on feet explodes in a gas trap
Crash when losing one's weapon-arm mid-attack while using a bow
Potions are overly resource-intensive
Firing a bow homes in on switches even when they're behind you
Missing particle effect upon level up
Breathing Masks don't work
NB becomes unresponsive after being blocked or shield parried
Using raise dead on a player in co-op doesn't restore their charge stars
Dead things gain value as they degrade

Near Future TO-DO
The Deep Dark
Tier 3 Boons
More Minibosses

Just some quick bugfixes, as well as getting Mac and Linux caught up!

Changes
Disarm now disarms upon critical hit

Fixes
Some particles are drawing incorrectly
Fixed 2-tile water flickering bug
Tracking off-hand items as Wanderer doesn't properly show items equipped by enemies

Ahh! Sorry! This build is kinda way overdue! I know the last build was pretty buggy and crashy, and this should hopefully fix a lot of that. It's only available on Windows for the time being, with Mac and Linux following sometime this weekend, hopefully.

There isn't too much new stuff to play around with yet, but I'm making very good progress on the upcoming Tinkerer class, as well as implementing a currency to be spent between runs.

New
New Reaper Spell!
New Amulet!

Changes
Can now aim Chain Lightning's trance downward
Reaper spells are now considered "Dark" for charge types
Fully realized Amulets now have a (Realized) tag
Push and Push trance now affect crush traps and falling icicles
Amulet of [Void] no longer drains energy
Absorbing magic with the Amulet of [Void] now restores energy to the bearer
Amulet of [Void] no longer disables the Orb of Leveling
Amulet of [Hunger] now has a fully realized version
Enemy amulet abilities now tied to enemy INT
Enemy amulet effects are now invisible unless you already know said amulet
Can skip logo intro on main menu
Blink trance now protects from projectiles and being crushed by the Grumbul Tank

Fixes
Pouncing with Chain Lightning's trance expends all minibolts at once
Crash when trying to display context button prompts for nonexistent objects
Tomed spellbooks sometimes the visual of being used when using another object
Spellwright shopkeepers crash when casting an aimable spell
Looting menu shows stats for last selected item when selecting Amulets
Sometimes the same amulet type will appear and identify as two separate ones
Sometimes two different amulet types will have the same appearance
Plague poisons allies
Plagued flame bodies are excessively explosive
INT requirement for identifying amulets was wrong
Another crash related to Reaper arena blocks spawning in
Get stuck in ceiling while standing on grumbul tank with extra tough while it jumps
The bottom row of tiles in a level is often cut off or misgenerated
Running Water Anticropolis transition freezes during generation
Thermal indicator shows during level generation

Near Future TO-DO
Next Class
Metacoin Currency
Flesh out Encyclopedia

Have an update!

I've temporarily removed the Wayward kids from normal level generation since they were causing a lot of crashing issues. I'm gonna put some more work into them and hopefully they'll be back next update ready to rock 'n roll!

In the meantime, I'll be doing my usual dev-stream later today over at twitch.tv/fourbitfriday so feel free to come say what's up and talk about kids in 'combs and ask me why this game is taking so long to finish like I do every night as I fall asleep choking back tears.

MAC USERS: Please let me know if this update fixes the gamepad issues! If it does then I'll know what the problem was. If it doesn't then I'll rule out a possibility and know what the problem isn't.


Fixes
Pose doesn't change when climbing up onto ledges
Fixed a bug with giant arrow damage calculation
Arrows catch fire if stuck in someone who runs past a campfire
Player 2 Overheal UI is jank
Casting Raise Dead with overcharges costs no overcharge and ignores blocked energy
Negative status effects on allies may spread to you via Reciprocity
The number displayed for current energy when paused is incorrect when mp is blocked
Flames from Fire and Ice can also burn allies
Reaper room often reconstructs incorrectly after the battle
Goo meal can overheal for greater than ones INT
Teamed-up Wayward kids spawn as though fleeing when traveling to the next floor
Fire and Ice gave only Hot charges when picked up with Innate Power
Dark Arts gave the incorrect charge types
Eeol Labeled Eel in kixll list
Melting/dangerous slimeballs are not labeled as such
Crash when boiling an orb of leveling in a bottle of water
Can get pushed into walls by boulders and barrels
Cannot teleport out of a wall after surviving a teleport into one
Making soup from a frozen corpse makes potato and [thing] soup
Some kids don't drown
Melting and dangerous slimes are not properly labeled as such
Air Dash can be buggy at times
"Down" on keyboard still rolls/bashes even when roll/bash is bound to a different key
Extra Tough doesn't affect Bear Traps
Fixed some typos
Dark Phase has no spell description
Shops in the Anticropolis have no doors

New
New Anticropolis Transition Stages!
Amulets!
Added a few more Encyclopedia entries!

Changes
Increased arrow damage
Increased arrow accuracy
Reduced chance of enemies dodging arrows
Halved the rate at which bows degrade from use
Taunt now affects crabs and turrets
Increased frequency/severity of unstable undo's side-effect
Barrels are empty more frequently
of Health now heals to a minimum of 3hp, regardless of hp max
Spellbooks restore more charges and charge types when picked up with Innate Power
Added Teleport Overload
Added additional contextual button prompts
(Sorry, no way to disable them yet! But there will be!)
Temporarily removed Wayward Kids in order to address an abundance of crashes
Changed Frolix AI
Helms and Coifs now reduce stomp damage by 1
Non-"Hard Helms" and Coifs take a ton of durability damage when stomped
Removed STR requirement for pilfering enemies' weapons
Reduced frequency of barrel assassins
Improved warhammers' stats
Added "Farsight" to Wanderer's Instinct class ability
Spellbooks can be Tomed by using class ability while holding a book
Transition stages don't count against meal effect floor count
Added button prompts for actions
Encyclopedia entry requirements can be met over multiple runs
Animated title drop
Fat humanoids landing don't knock other fat humanoids into the air
Made fat grumbuls much less common
Added sound effects to crabs and eels
Added sound effects to laser traps
Skeletal mages now spawn in the Anticropolis
Made standing torches rarer in the Anticroplis

Near Future TO-DO
New Class!
Flesh out Encyclopedia


HEY!

Just wanted to give y'all a heads up that I'll be showing Catacomb Kids at PAX East in Boston later this week as a part of the INDIE MINIBOOTH! It'll be my first time showing the game officially at any sort of convention or expo type thing, so if you're in the area come say what's up and maybe gimme a high five or something!

Unfortunately this does mean that the next build won't be coming until after I get back from Boston. I was hoping to have it out in February but obviously that didn't happen -- With GDC going on and PAX stuff to prepare for, I was mostly bogged down in the whole "email and business and taxes" side of game dev that nobody likes to admit actually takes time. That side sucks, yo.

Anyway, wish me luck!

Fixed the Crab Crash:

Fixes

• obj_en_crab crash
  

Buncha bug fixes (AND SOME NEW STUFF) Windows only for now, Linux + Mac coming in the next couple days.

(Super sorry Linux folk for the delay in gettin’ this update to y’all! It's coming soon though

Fixes

• Balls of Goo, Slime, and Mucus become charred instead of properly melting away or exploding
  
• Undead Followers don't work properly in co-op when the screen splits
  
• Spell loss/gain upon being resurrected in co-op
  
• Daily Run menu marked as "Daily Failed" after backing out of the character select menu
  
• Rare crash if the player dies with a whirlwind still active
  
• Passageways on floors display the wrong graphic
  
• Boiling pools of water never cool
  
• Humanoid enemies with legs missing get stuck in a weird hovering state
  
• Crash upon entering a level with previously escaped grumbuls
  
• Escaped enemies in shops appear behind the locked door
  
• Turrets immune to Glacial Grinder overload
  
• Humanoid enemies freeze and spam "!" when attacking beneath them
  
• Roll sound effect is spammed when pressing down+sideways while using a lantern
  
• Potion identification is spammed in co-op if both players have the same potion
  
• Regenerate (Trance Cure) uses two charges
  
• Extra Regenerate (From Potions of Extra Regeneration or Trance Cure) doesn't actually restore hp
  
• Certain overloads/trances caused spell charges to become negative ("X")
  
• Ogo's weapons don't spin when they attack any more
  
• Severed heads are not destroyed when intersecting with physics objects, causing lag
  
• Overload Cold burst doesn't reduce "energized" charges
  
• Environmental slime emits light
  
• Sometimes 'Hates Weapon' is all jacked up (fixed?)
  
• Messages sometimes overlap one another when they are more than a single line
  
• Giant arrows and swinging blades can sever both of the player's arms
  
• Shields differ in different instances of the same Daily Run
  
• Peppered non-humanoid corpses behave as though they are both savory and peppered: savory does nothing to them
  
• Entering the tutorial from the "Extras" menu messes up the music
  
• Reflected dragon's breath is visually buggy
  

• Bows and arrows!
  
• Wayward wids!
  
• The Anticropolis! (And all that it entails)
  
• New Upper Dungeon trap!
  
• Another, different new weapon!
  
• The beginnings of an encyclopedia! (Extremely early version)
  

• Changed the behaviour of barrels to make them less annoying/reduce instances of surprise damage
  
• Humanoids can no longer stomp when tumbled or frozen
  
• Chain Lightning no longer travels through every single tile of water
  
• Boiling pools of water have their heat distributed through them
  Larger pools will cool more quickly, and smaller ones will stay boiling for much longer
  The position of the heatsource within the pool also matters
  
• Homing bolts no longer target invisible creatures
  
• Escaped enemies heal over time until you leave the level
  
• Improved spellwright's spell aiming capabilities
  
• Added minor squash/stretch upon hitting enemies
  
• Can Pounce with weapons now
  
• Arrows stick in non-humanoid enemies
  
• Trance Cure grants a longer-lasting immunity
  
• Overload Cure heals for more and grants overheal
  
• Added unstable Undo effect
  
• Overloads/Trances no longer require 2 charges to use
  
• Changed color of overheal to match INT and added indication for maximum overheal
  
• Flame Form lasts for longer, and becomes inactive when motionless
  
• Messages in the alerts area are now outlined
  
• Acid deals damage to all equipment, rather than just armor
  
• Creatures slain by acid leave no corpses behind
  
• New barrel sfx
  
• New sfx for arrows hitting walls and creatures
  
• Class select menu now remembers your previously-chosen class
  
• Once more removed conflicting starting traits
  
• Performing a basic 3-attack combo while unarmed will alternate attacking arms
  
• Holding a severed limb while regenerating attaches the limb without ending regeneration
  
• Unstable Caster made rarer for poets
  
• Added a new limb that grumbuls sometimes spawn with
  
• Added a new grumbul modifier
  
• Limited shields' block strength
  
• Spears and large weapons no longer considered 'heavy' for the purposes of carrying them with hate
  
• Swinging blades now interact with physics objects
  
• Reduced the effect of MAG on casting speed without Incantation
  
• Increased durability of Soul- weapons
  
• Can now focus strike flourish
  
• Moved tutorial text to the top of the screen
  
• Tutorial grumbul no longer runs away
  
• Reduced distance between floors for item-drop pipes
  
• Reduced the number of grumbuls spawned during the tank fight
  
• Can now directly attack the Grumbul Tank's legs
  

• Leaderboards (for serious this time)
  
• Anticropolis Transition Stages
  
• Flesh out Encyclopedia
  

The Anticropolis

I mean wow guys, for real.

Welcome to your new snowy wonderland: The Anticropolis. Once the underside of Abys' floating fortress before it fell to become The Catacombs, the Anticropolis is now locked in an everlasting, magical cold. Within, you will find undead that roam freely, and grumbul hunters whose excursions have brought them far from their comforts in the Upper Dungeon. Many fun new deaths await in the frigid depths, including but not limited to: being swallowed whole, crushed by giant icicles, spat upon by ghosts, and torn apart by winged beasts while caught in a bear trap and desperately fumbling for a potion. With it being so cold in the Anticropolis, you'll also have to keep an eye on your temperature to make sure you don't suffer from frostbite: Keep dry, dress warmly, and seek fire.

Wayward Kids

But it's not all bad in the snowy deep; with new enemies also come new allies in the form of other wayward Kids that you can find and form alliances with (after doing them a favor, of course). These Kids are a very early version of what they'll become, with the hope being that you'll eventually be able to to forge relationships with them over the course of a run and encounter individuals multiple times as you both descend and grow stronger. But that's something for later.

For now, they just want stuff (and are very formidable opponents, should you incur their wrath).

Bows and Arrows
You'll also find bows, a new type of weapon, and the first that exists apart from the five weapon archetypes. Bows are great ranged weapons that allow you to strike from afar, but their ammo is limited and precious, requiring you to retrieve your arrows after each fight. Once your arrows are exhausted, you may find yourself ill-equipped to handle the trials of more close-quarters combat.

Bows don’t have any weapon skills of their own like the other weapon types, but they do synergize with both the Focus Strike and Trajectory boons.

What's Next?
Now for a disclaimer: This might be obvious, but this release doesn't mean the Anticropolis is done. Far from it: this is the first version of the AC, with much, much more to come. With feedback from players, it will evolve into something even better. Notably missing in this build are transition stages unique to the Anticropolis. I've already started work on them but they were proving problematic and would delay this release even further had I pursued them to completion, so I've simply excluded them for now. There are also several more enemies and environmental features I have plans to implement, as well as a new boss creature (or two?). Anyway my point is: This is just the beginning.

I've learned a lot of things over the past several months of working on the Anticropolis -- things that I hope to employ going forward to help make the game progress faster, so that another months-long absence of updates doesn't happen again.

The first of these is: Hiring people helps LOADS. I have previously mentioned that I brought on one (1) John Sandoval to help lighten the animation workload on me, and subsequently he did most of the animation on many of the new enemies you'll be seeing in the Anticropolis. And gosh, as much as I love doing animation and pixel art that was a huge load off my shoulders. So this is the part where I implore you to spread the word about Catacomb Kids, since my hiring of people is still contingent upon paying them. I would love to bring on another coder and continue to employ the skills of John.

Another thing I've learned is: If I want to work on ~Secret Stuff~, I have to be economical about it. The Anticropolis' delays were ultimately caused by my failure to spread the work out evenly across prior updates, leaving an utterly massive amount of work to be done with little groundwork laid. When I look at how long it took to get the Upper Dungeon to where it is, and realize I expected to make another 60-70% of that amount of content again for the Anticropolis release, it's no wonder my projected timeline for the area was overly optimistic.

To help mitigate that from happening again, I'm going to be starting work on the Deep Dark immediately, even though I don't anticipate it to be released for at least as long as it took for the AC to come together (the better part of this past year). Even if the going on the Deep Dark is slow, the hope is that by the time I'm wrapping up the AC and ready to dive into the DD, work on the area will already be well underway.

For now though, while I continue work on The Anticropolis my next major goals will be implementing meta progression -- that is, the game progression outside of individual runs -- and the next class, which will be focused around Intelligence.

Thank you all for your immense patience, and I hope you stick around for even more fun in the future!

Tyriq P. <3

More bug fixes, including the changes from 0.0.16b now on Linux and Mac.


Fixes
Daily Run doesn't reset the next day after a failure
More fixes for gamepad/keyboard inputs
Crash when blocking attacks
Map sometimes fails to draw
Crash when stomping on Ogo or Grumbul Turrets
Two players can pick up the same object simultaneously
Charred corpses not labeled as such

Changes
Discovered teleport traps, doors, passages, and the ghost now appear on the map
Break breaks barrels
Flaming barrels burn their contents
Rottenness of food separated from burnedness of food


Bugfixes! Only on Windows for now, but Mac and Linux should be coming along in a few days. I'm out of town at the moment and not in the most build-ready circumstances.

Fixes
Humanoid corpses' heads crash like mad
Crash when fighting AI in vs mode
Sound effects from Player 1's split screen inaudible when above Player 2 in co-op
Cannot redefine Player 2's gamepad controls
Some fixes for gamepad/keyboard inputs failing for various dialog boxes and menus
Controllers rumble even when not in use
'Nevermind' on Pipes does nothing

Changes
Added action indicator to ui for ghost form in co-op
Made orb and learning points indicator in co-op look less ugly and dumb
Added message for using pipes with nothing to drop

Co-op is finally here!

In Co-op, players still only share a single orb of leveling (I figure having two players alone is a pretty big advantage even without them both being properly leveled). I may change this in the future but I wanted to see how it would feel for a first pass.

When a player dies they become a ghost, able to fly around and absorb the corpses of enemies in order to return to life. The higher your level was when you died, the more corpses you'll need to absorb before reviving. As a ghost, you can also spend some of your absorbed corpses to pick up and drag around items, lending a helping hand to your still-living partner.

There may need to be some performance improvements but for now it should be (fingers crossed) pretty functional!

Anticropolis still isn't quite done yet but I've finally managed to work myself out of the slump I was in, so it should be coming along without much further delay after this.

Also in this build are barrels, which can hold items (and enemies), and pipes that you can use to send items to a later floor for collecting.

Full changelog below:


Fixes
Enemies never pick up weapons
Making undead followers pick up weapons rarely works
"Loot" menu can be brought up for gorhound corpses
Using lanterns interrupts rolls
Kicking locked doors spams the failure message
Other stuff too, I'm sure

New Stuff
Co-Op!
New Main Menu
Pipes for sending items between floors
Barrels
Corn Kernels
One new meal effect

Changes
Significantly decreased steal-range of reciprocity
Can force a pilfer by manually grabbing while rolling past enemies, even if the chosen equipment slot is already taken
Can plant objects in enemies' pockets with manual pilfer
Replaced Heal with Air Dash for grumbul assassins
Removed Air Dash from skeletal spearmen
Reduced Haste charges for Undead Warriors
Changes to Versus Mode menu
Replaced Heal and Regenerate in Versus mode with Cure and Raise Dead
Added pathfinding to Versus Mode AI
Changed how potatoes are cooked

Next Build TO-DO
Leaderboards, Anticropolis???


PS: Ignore the "0.0.16 (DEV)" business in the versioning. It doesn't mean anything except that neither Stevie nor I could be bothered to spend another 5+ hours rebuilding the game to fix what's essentially a typo after we noticed it.

H'okay!

Unfortunately still no Anticropolis yet, but it's getting close. Co-op is very nearly done, so regardless of whether or not The Anticropolis comes out with the next update, co-op will likely be in for sure.

In the meantime, this build introduces many balance changes, including some alterations to the damage calculation formula to make both enemies and players: less likely to deal 0s and less likely to wham for 8-10+ damage in a single hit. I've also consolidated the Heal and regenerate spells into a single, less healing-oriented (but hopefully more interesting to use) Cure spell, with Heal and Regenerate being made its Overload and Trance, respectively. Overall, the result should be that being struck is less of an immediate death sentence but bears more of a long-term cost, with damage numbers being more consistent and healing being rarer.

Additionally, where before your maximum spell charges would increase by simply leveling up MAG, they now only increase once at MAG level 3, and apply to all spells both known and yet-unknown. Some changes to the way charge stars work for Overload and Trance should hopefully make those abilities a bit more fun to use as well.

In any case, there's a bunch of other changes, and some bug fixes that should make this build a bit less volatile. Guess you'll just have to read the changelog or play to find them out!

Fixes
Changing window focus while looting doesn't pause the game
Fixed(?) crash from humanoids attacking with missing weapons
Roll sound plays continuously when looking down with lanterns
Unarmed kick (dagger skill 1) doesn't work properly
Soul- weapons' dark bolt strikes miss frequently
First attack after Taunt doesn't always activate the power strike
Salting food doesn't actually do anything
Sticks continue to burn even in water
Fixed(?) Impossible trap rooms
Fixed several memory leaks
Some optimizations
Fixed wall-grumbuls
Bottles filled with water while held are drawn incorrectly
Voices of humanoid enemies wrongly positioned upon death

New Stuff
New Wizard Throw overload
Added unstable effects for:
Wizard Throw
Haste
Slow
Frost Bolt
Vampirism
Poison Blob
New Spell:
Cure
Removed Heal and Regenerate as individual spells

Changes
Changed how Charge Stars work for Overload and Trance
Stars are now shared among all overloads/trances,
rather than being spent per-spell
Changed how damage and defense are calculated
Fewer 0s and fewer unexpectedly high hits
Changed ladder sprites
Added focus strike abilities to Pounce, Downward Thrust, and Rolling Blade
+1 MIN STR instead of +1 STR at level 3
Max spell charges are now gained only at MAG level 3
Max spell charge increase applies to all spells, known and unknown
Unstable teleport is more consistently unstable
Taunt and Focus strike attacks win weapon clashes
Added different effects when pouncing with different slime balls
Changed rules of Soul-weapons
Increased range of unstable shadow cloak
Made Health and Regeneration potions rarer
Enemies use potions sooner in fights
Boiling Potions can be carried for longer before boiling away
Critical strikes made visible with a green streak
Poison damage now stacks when applied multiple times
Changed the Grumbul meal effect
Changed input of Flourish to match Heavy Bat and Dagger Storm
Improved range, knockback, and stun of Heavy Bat
Changed input for tier 3 Axe / Hammer neutral air to double-tap attack
Increased knockback on focus strike uppersmash
Removed Flourish from spears
Made byat spawn holes more visible
Soups now heal for 1 by default
Added two more ways to cook food
Smoldering foods char much faster
Shopkeepers now have classes and are smarter about catching thieves
Reduced default charge amount for several spells
Increased delay on enemies using weapon skills
Pursuing foes lose you slightly more easily

Next Build TO-DO
Leaderboards, Co-op, Anticropolis???

Fellow humans,

Behold, 0.0.14! Numerous changes in this one. If you missed the status update and are wondering where 0.1.0 is with The Anticropolis and Co-op, please check out the post I made on that subject right here. Long story short; they're a-comin'! Just need some more love and carressin', ya know?

In the meantime, peep this healthy changelog!

Fixes
Regeneration doesn't restore limbs if you have Overheal
Teleport always takes spell charges, even when Energized
Can't back away from ledges while shielding
Can't descend ledges while backing up with a shield
Slow fall while casting empty spell
Wrong coloration for some corpse's heads
Twins flee fights (legit fixed this time)
Grumbul Orb-Bearers can flee the floor
Having Incantation and Overload causes Vampirism and Haste to rapidly cast multiple times
Frozen food doesn't thaw over fire
Spiked equipment descriptions are wrong
Wanderers only hate hammers
Ghost spawns underwater
Bug drawing helms in ui when picking them up
Can't break fallen ceiling blocks in collapsing tunnels with weapons
Gamepad stops working on main menu sometimes (fixed??)
Hidden spikes often appear under gas traps
Grumbul Tank sometimes gets stuck behind the intro wall
Enemies can escape through barred exits

New Stuff
New Trait: Hungry
New Trait: Unstable Caster
New Trap: ████████████
New shopkeeper menu
New ghost menu
New class select menu

Changes
Improved stats of Claymores
Heavy Bat input changed to sprint+attack (same as Dagger Storm)
Ghost dialog box redone
Shopkeeper dialog box redone
Spinning attacks deal less damage per hit
Numerous changes to Weapon Skills:
Backswipe is now Flourish -- moved to tier 2 Axe Primary
Parry is a tier 4 weapon skill for Hammers and Swords
Spin Cleave removed from axes
Increased hitbox on Downward Thrust and The Drop
Numerous changes to Traits
Traits no longer occupy Skill Grid space
Positive and negative traits no longer paired
Loud is louder and increases the range of other noises
Hunger no longer universal: Moved to new trait
Hated weapons now behave like normal carried objects
Weapon hatred cannot be unlearned
Lucky Boots no longer a starting item
Significantly reduced range of Teleport
Leveling up INT increases efficacy of class abilities:
Bully gains more Power Orbs from taunt
Wanderer's Vision ability reaches further
Poet Tomes have more charges
Teleporting into walls will now kill you
Collapsing tunnels will destroy fallen crush traps and boulders
-of Removal weapons blink enemies further away, respecting knockback direction
Using items interrupts blocking with shields
Dropping through platforms requires less horizontal pixel precision
Added telefragging
Began adding Unstable spell effects:
Heal, Raise Dead, Blink, Magic Blast, Teleport, Infernus, Chain Lightning
Boulders and Crush Traps break spikes
Potions of Extra Regeneration last longer
Frozen potion shards have grace period before becoming dangerous
Reduced potency of "--of Light"
Added descriptions for footwear
Can sell items to shopkeepers
Killing a shopkeeper will return spent money
Humanoid AI dodges slightly less aggressively
Decreased LUC requirement for spiked armor to appear, and increased its frequency in general
Break made slightly more effective
Wanderer's "Vision" ability improved
Newest tracked object carries between levels
Can target items to be tracked
Pathfinder improved
Changes to Grumbul Tank
No longer jumps when player is in combat with summoned grumbuls (excepting the rider)
Tank Legs are no longer impervious to physical damage
Added more visual and audio cues for attacks
Removed time limit from chasing escaped enemies
Added indicator to exits when enemies escape

Next Build TO-DO
Leaderboards, Co-op, Anticropolis???


Fixing bugs! Back on that YYC for Windows, no more black fullscreen for Linux, and you can have your soup and eat it, too.


Fixes
0.0.13b
Fullscreen is black
Crash when drinking soups
Byat meal bonus doesn't always wear off
Spicy foods aren't indicated as such in food queue
Twins can flee from the fight
Crashes with AI in reaper fight
Shopkeepers are listed as "Other Things" in the end-of-run kill list
Frequent spawning in walls

Changes
0.0.13b
Added indicator beneath hunger queue to indicate currently active meal effects
Spicy meals made more effective
Added new soup type
Improved mechanics of hot potatoes
Can use grapple on Reaper
Completing a meal shows its final components


A new year, a new build!

Sorry it's a couple weeks late, mostly due to issues actually building the game and not content stuff. Which I suppose goes for the build itself as well: not too much new stuff, but it's now compiled using Game Maker's YYC (YoYo Compiler), which should hopefully help improve performance a not insignificant amount [crosses fingers]. [REDACTED] Unfortunately, said issues building affected osx the most and haven't yet been satisfactorily overcome, so the Mac version is still built without the YYC and as such won't see any performance changes for the better this time around.

Most of this past month was spent getting the YYC working nicely, working on Anticropolis stuff, reordering and the optimizing level generator, and an embarrassing amount of time being sad on holidays. Hopefully finally gettin' this build out will lift my spirits a bit though!

The main visible features in this build are soups - which can be made by boiling bottles of non-slime corpses with water in them - and spices, which are sometimes found on tables and can be used to improve food. Neither soup nor spice stuff is nearly finished yet, but it's a start and will hopefully prove an interesting addition that grows over time. Really I just didn't want to put out a build with nothing new to play with in it, after so much work doing invisible backend stuff. At the moment there are four 'spices'. What they do is up to you to find out.

Also relevant: I've hired an animator to help lighten the load on me and speed up the production of all the new frosty enemies that'll be coming to the icy depths of the Anticropolis (and beyond!) His name is John and he's rad. Everybody say "Hi, John!"

You can check out some of his other work here: http://imgur.com/a/HNtO7
and follow him on twitter at @bigbooty2dcutie

EDIT: Temporarily went back to a non-YYC build for Windows, hoping to fix an issue where the game is just a black-screen. Unfortunately this means the game won't have the performance improvements I had hoped using YYC would impart.

Fixes
Humanoid enemies no longer use potions or eat potatoes
Crash upon throwing bottled charge stars
Crash upon throwing charge stars dropped by grumbul tank guards
Grumbul Tank guards causing repeated non-fatal crashes
Undead followers sometimes appear at the wrong position when going to the next floor
Loudness of byat wings unaffected by sound volume setting
Loudness of boulders rolling unaffected by sound volume setting
Bottled mushrooms still burn and give off gas
Several pathfinding-related crashes

New Stuff
Make Soup!
Spices! (WIP)
Now compiled with YYC, which should give a significant performance improvement
Two new status effects
New music in ceiling trap transitional stage

Changes
Made a couple reputations slightly easier to achieve
Byat meals wear off after 2 floors, rather than lasting forever
Food queue gradually empties after a period of not eating anything
Removed COMBO input mode for class abilities
Wizard throw better aligns enemies to the tiles when grabbed

Next Build TO-DO
Leaderboards?

Build 0.0.12 time! Woo!

Golly this one took a while, and then a while again. In case you ever needed confirmation, implementing pathfinding for very mobile platformer characters through procedurally generated levels is tough. But I did it! Mostly! There are still some quirks and hiccups here and there, but I think this new AI, much like the level generation itself, will be the sort of thing that's constantly getting tweaked and improved as development continues.

However, this AI update now marks the last "Large Feature" I needed to get done before the Anticropolis + Co-op build. Does that mean the big chunky Anticroppy update is gonna be next? Well, unfortunately not. As I'm sure you've noticed this last one took way longer than I was anticipating and so I'm a fair bit behind schedule. As such, the next few updates will probably be -- if more timely -- a bit lighter on new features, as I'll be focusing almost entirely on Anticropolis and Co-op stuff. Stevie and I have also been making progress on the leaderboards, so expect those before long as well.

The 'smaller features' that I'll be working on in the meantime will be things like; more meals and food items, further additions and improvements to the new AI, more transitional stages, changes to the way traits are obtained and improved, and, as always, fixing crashes and improving performance.

Lastly, I'll be streaming some gameplay today on twitch.tv/fourbitfriday in about an hour (4pm PST), so if you wanna come by and talk about things feel free.

Without further ado, changelog below:

Fixes
Can interrupt Execute with Kick
Crash when bottling a charge star
Crash when throwing pure cracked force star
Can learn spells without the space for them
Crash in VS mode upon round end if one player's stick has burned away
Fishahna are unaffected by slow, pause, and haste
Horizontally held enemies sometimes push the carrier backwards
Byats grabbed with Heavy Lifting sometimes get stuck in walls
Crash upon casting overloaded Wizard Throw

New Stuff
New Humanoid AI
Enemies will now pathfind to their goals
[to the player, to allies, to water when on fire, etc]
Other tweaks to minimize their dying in idiotic ways
It's not perfect!
New STR Boon -- Grapple
Headgear now shows in character portraits!

Changes
Floor spikes are more forgiving when landing at low speeds; can be safely stepped on from corpses
Revised STR Boons:
Removed Overwhelming and Duelist
Pounce is a tier 1 STR boon rather than part of the default moveset
Focus Strike is a tier 2 STR boon, and more attacks can be focused
Can no longer shield-bash 0-hp enemies
Fixes and modifications to Heavy Lifting
Can climb while heavy lifting enemies
Much more maneuverable when holding small enemies
Descend while holding byats by holding down
Creatures hastened by taunt no longer gain Haste's evasion bonus
F1-F3 now toggle different information
If weird non-crash stuff happens you can turn on these layers to provide more info to help me fix things!
But don't be a cheater
'Overcharge' renamed to 'Energized' to be more different from Overload

Next Build TO-DO
More Traits and Meals


Sproing! Just a couple bugfixes. Literally two.


Fixes
0.0.11b
Game crashes when bottling corpses
Completing meals of +0hp with messy eater deals damage


So this past month I added a couple new transitional stages, made some changes to magic, improved certain boons, and implemented end-of-run Reputations. Unfortunately we weren't able to get online leaderboards done, but I'm hoping the reputations will help tide y'all over in the meantime. I've had leaderboards in too many "next-build to-dos" without delivering yet which makes me feel bad, so I'll leave 'em off this time and maybe it'll actually get done next month! That's how these things work, right? (In all seriousness, Stevie and I have been making good progress on leaderboards so it shouldn't be much longer! <3)

Magic has changed in that all spells are now of a certain type, noted in the bottom-right corner of the spell learning screen (and to be made more clear in more places with further updates). Regaining spell charges (for the most part) is now limited to only recharging one type of spell at a time, though there are certainly exceptions to this.

Charge Stars, previously only used to replenish trance and overload spells, have also become a much more interesting item. They're not quite finished yet, but I've got some fun plans for them in the future.

And as always, there have been a number of bugfixes.

Next month I'll be focusing on a long-coming AI update, as well as improving performance issues.

Here's the full changelog!


Fixes
Pressing "O" gives all grumbuls berzerk
"Delete" crash when opening doors next to boulders
Ice from ice bolt/cold burst/glacial shoes sometimes drawn behind tiles
Game crashes if you pilfer a hated weapon
Heavy bat and Hunter's Thrust don't work with sprint bound to a button
Grumbul Tank pilot is immortal
Still can burn your own shield
Game sometimes freezes after level generation
Byats can die by touching still boulders
Hitting boulders on the back-swing will knock them into you

New Stuff
2 New Transitional stages!
End-of-Run Reputations (WIP)
Status effect icons

Changes
Improved Tier 3 Axe skill
Travels further, curves both up and down walls.
Improved Mighty Stomp
Range based on height of fall
Reduced time after stomp before you can attack again
Improved Tier 1 Sword skill
Reduced time after landing before you can attack again
Improved Disarm
Weapons are flung further away, damaging other foes along the way
Shield parrys disarm
Improved Plague
Infects corpses; infected corpses explode after time
Effect of explosion depends on the type of corpse
Hard Helms offer more protection
Stone footwear offers more protection
Haste increases attack speed
Updated some spell sprites
Fancier/improved event text
Reverted 'Sprint button' to previous functionality; release to stop sprinting
Can no longer roll with heavy lifted objects above your head
Environmental green slime bounces items
Changed Charge Stars (WIP)
Stars are hidden in walls and no longer drop from enemies
They begin as uncharged 'Hollow Stars' and must be charged before use
Spikes can be broken
Rewrote food eating and meal code (behavior is mostly unchanged)
Byat meal doesn't stack
Disease occasionally causes weakness
Crouch-attacking on top of a boulder will strike the boulder
Player no longer immune to [ ]'s destruction
Placeholder sfx for swinging blade traps (WIP)

Next Build TO-DO
Better AI!


Fixed a crash. Windows only for now but Mac+Linux should be coming soon.


Fixes:
Crash upon using Trajectory
Crash upon pressing Enter


Bugfix update!

Fixes
0.0.10b
Magic Beam bending through portals
Fullscreen not centered vertically on non 16:9 resolutions
Wanderer instinct doesn't highlight stairs
Charge stars for Trance/Overload are incorrect for many spells
Stairs that look like blocks
Mixing slimes and potions with alchemy only works when holding the potion
Crash upon bottling orb of leveling
Crash upon using trajectory with bottled balls of slime and mucus
Alchemy and Dipper still say "unimplemented" in the Levels tab of the pause menu
Waterfalls flowing into lava have don't have a graphic
Heavy Lifting enemies while rolling still displays 'heavy lifted' even though it fails
Shopkeepers with Undo crash the game
Crash when looting a corpse with a burning stick
anim_swordStab crash
Learning 'Extra Tough' doesn't actually work :D
Incantation doesn't properly increase spell cost
Fixed and error with oogs that was affecting performance
Improved performance of explosions
Hits don't always connect when pouncing on enemies
Can't pounce when recharging energy
Infinite controller rumble upon death
Controller rumble when using keyboard
Unending purple sparkles when blocked energy is equal to max energy
Off-slot spell charge numbers drawn in wrong color with two-spell option
Blink Trance doesn't use charge star
Air Dash doesn't consume energy overcharge
Undo restores the energy overcharge used to cast it
Small pools of lava don't light up
Disappearing platforms insta-kill the reaper
Max mp STILL doesn't increase with the proper meal
Crash in shops selling unstable potions

Changes
0.0.10b
Push now has instant recovery
Slight changes to Grumbul Tank AI
Less lava in Grumbul Tank arena
Grumbul Tank doesn't lose as much mobility with busted legs
Break breaks boulders
Boulders break bottles
Overwhelming's speed boost lowered
Overwhelming no longer counts bosses
Changes to Hammer vs arena
Only need to tap sprint button to sprint, rather than hold
Assigning sprint to a button disables double-tap sprinting
Improved accuracy of Chain Lightning and Dark Arts Tome


Art by Joe Gribbin

SO.

It's been a minute, eh? A minute and a half, even. That's fine though, because I'm still alive, and this is still happening. That's right! As a beaten, bleeding, heart-still-beating Kid once said; "I'm not dead yet!"

So what have I been up to, you may be asking yourself. Maybe you aren't. How would I know? I'm not your brain. I'll tell you anyway though:

Wandering is what I've been up to -- as in, making the new Wanderer class. They're speedy and have senses sharp as knives, they do. I hope you enjoy them. As well I've laid the groundwork for unique weapons and added a few, and made some not insignificant changes to the level generator, not least of which are locked doors and new premade rooms. It may have taken a while but I can say at last that the generator is ready to be iced over and flipped upside down for the coming Anticropolis.

I've also added Alchemy and Dipper, the two second-tier INT boons, which marks at last the implementation of all the first two tiers of stat boons. Some of the other boons, spells and skills have also been updated and improved.

For the next update (IN A MONTH I SWEAR) I'll be working on finishing the things I didn't manage to for this update: Daily run leaderboards, more and better transitional stages, and certain talked-about changes to magic that those who watch the dev streams might be aware of.

Full changelog below:
[code=CHANGELOG]Fixes
Casting Flame Wave burns your own shield
Several crashes
Kept gaining overheal even after hitting max hp limit
Max mp doesn't increase with the proper meal
Poets' tome is unwielded after going through a level door
Class Input method doesn't save for gamepads
Class ability icons appear incorrectly in the spell slots
Third spell slot miscolored when low on spell charges
Issues with using tome as a 'Skill' class input
Food queue doesn't show up in pause menus
Eating twins results gives a grumbul food instead of undead
Heavy Lifting doesn't properly override normal object pickups when grabbing enemies
Certain spells show a charge star when they shouldn't
Tome attacks hurt your own followers
Footwear with stats don't apply their stats

New Stuff
New Class! -- Wanderer
New INT Stat Boons
Dipper
Alchemy
Waterfalls
Couple new weapons
Locked doors and keys
Wooden barricades
Stairs
Intra-floor doors
New premade rooms
Many changes to level gen

Changes
Sticks burn
Fire spreads more from enemies to you
Being struck physically by burning enemies has a high chance to burn you
Limited foes' ability to spam kick
Infernus flames start blue, but turn orange quickly
Infernus now burns the caster once orange
Sword Skill 3 (Hack 'n' Slash) is easier to use:
Strikes at least 3 times in succession upon hitting an enemy
Additional enemies caught in the flurry add more strikes
Stun upon missing or ending the flurry is longer
Gorhounds have more hp, more DEF, and are more evasive
Crush trap chains behave more predictably when struck
"Poised" now reflects knockback from attacks back upon the enemy
A few new things
Changed the way levers spawn and are placed
Changed the way ladders/elevators spawn and are placed
Improved Air Dash
Now chains from enemy to enemy
Added trances to Blink and Frost Bolt
Left joystick now triggers class abilities on gamepad
Class ability trigger now defaults to "Button" rather than "Combo"
Poet's Tome behaves differently
Activating Tome uses the books' ability rather than wielding/unwielding
[except on 'combo' input]
Charged Tomes follow behind the player charged until used again
Grumbuls will stow items that spawn near them
Relatedly, added two new grumbul types (based on what they grab)
Grumbuls no longer wield bardiches
Normal Grumbuls sometimes occasionally wield hammers
Grumbul assassins slightly more common
Blue slime balls (now "mucus") have their own properties
Reaper no longer immune to invisibility
Grumbul Turrets can now spawn on main floors
Shop doors lock behind you
Stat loss from severed limbs is now repairable
Stat loss from severed limbs doesn't stack through repeated dismemberments
Regeneration only restores one limb at a time
Losing an arm penalizes both STR and DEF
Learning points now appear next to the orb of leveling icon in the hud
Haste is slightly slower
Haste grants the auto-dodge from Freerun
Haste auto-dodges jump attacks
Removed auto-dodge from Freerun
Extra Tough protects from death as long as your hp is over 75%
Regenerate heals more slowly
Overload Break deals more damage to equipment
Jumping will cancel trajectory throws
Stampede no longer runs through cornered enemies
Stampede tramples multiple enemies at once
Poison Blob bounces off of walls
Temporal Tricks tome time bubble bigger by bunches
Increased range of Slow
Lucky footwear is luckier
Byats are more evasive

Next Build TO-DO
Changes to Magic
Daily Run Leaderboard / General Stat-Tracking (for realsies!)
[/code]

What! What! Another bugfix update, as well as a few minor changes.


Fixes
0.0.9c
Sometimes armors are mis-drawn with objects in them
Fullscreen is offset/doesn't fit at certain resolutions
Using shield-bash to pilfer weapons ignores missing arms
Eating severed limbs with resourceful screws up food queue
Shields are wrongly colored
Game crashes upon startup if game_data.ck fails to load
"MISSING DS MAP" In place of the Daily Run
Weapons are called shields in the equipment menu
Enders and their skeletal spawn aren't on the same team
Poet's Tome disappears upon Undo death-save
Closing doors forces you into crush-traps
Can get stuck in walls when defeating the reaper
Exit doors sometimes spawn in walls
More objects properly darken when outside of viewing range

Changes
0.0.9c
Overheal maxes out at max hp+INT
Wooden shields burn
Shields degrade with use
Health increase on level-up doesn't eat Overheal
Added missing indicators on spellbook menu
Changed Poets' "Combo" input to "Hold Stow"
Spirit followers are immune to fire
Being in lava deals more damage
Clarified that Dagger Skill 3 (Execute) needs to be done in midair
Evasion for Freerun and Acrobatic no longer trigger while attacking


Mad quick super small bugfix update!


Controller doesn't stop rumbling upon death
Tutorial ghost is aggressive
Tutorial text background is offset
Debug keys are active??? (could not reproduce)


~Enjoy

It’s that time again!

A not insignificant number of changes in this build, such as the game now being w i d e s c r e e n, with an accompanying UI overhaul, and Wordsmiths not being entirely useless! Also, there’s a Daily Run mode! I’m still working out some kinks though, so everyone’s levels and kids might not be as-exactly-the-same as I’d like for them to be eventually -- especially between different OSes. There’s also a lack of proper Leaderboards and such, which will also be coming in the future. But hey, the foundation is laid. Just needs to be built upon, now!

For the next month I’ll be focusing on finishing up the Poet (finally), adding the long-awaited new class, and working a bit more on the Daily Runs -- in addition to some Secret Things that I’ll not speak of here. I also anticipate touching up the level generator a bit, with new rooms and some funky new transitional stages, as well as more fundamental changes that’ll become necessary as I progress on to the Anticropolis.

Full changelog below:
Fixes
Crash when gorhound corpses are destroyed
Pressure plates aren't properly held down by the player
Class abilities don't appear when equipped to the third spell slot
Controllers rumble when not in use
Can't walk on lava with boots of gossamer
Corrected text descriptions for certain Boons
"Stuck!" text and noise spamming when in contact with purple slime
Aiming boulders downward with Trajectory kills you
Grumbuls spaz out in water
Armless enemies still punch
Legless enemies are mad whack
Flame Wave direction doesn't change through portals
Can take damage when going through the exit door
Can unstow and hold items without arms
Entering a level with one leg causes kids to fly upwards
The Reaper can strand player in the reaper room if distracted by another enemy
Black Chests can spawn Growth
Spells from the Black Chest twitch oddly
Spells from the Black Chest can be stown
Reaper's diving spin attack is basically instant-kill (oops)
Some bugs with properly choosing keyboard and gamepad inputs
Twins exit door can spawn on top of entrance door
Reaper gets drawn behind the environment after doing its super
Skeletal Mages leave no corpses
Black Chest missing noise when opened
Boulders don't release properly when grabbed for rolling
Crash when throwing a bottle of goo or slime through a torch
Flame Wave doesn't change direction through portals properly
Dragon's Breath doesn't ignite explosive gas
Overloaded Frost Bolt (Glacial Grinder) doesn't cost a charge star
Overloaded Slow (Pause) doesn't cost a charge star
Crash when sprinting up walls with glacial footwear
Pouncing on frozen enemies is mad whack

New Stuff
UI overhaul
Daily Run Mode (WIP)
Wordsmith Charged Tome abilities

Changes
Duelist now slows all enemies on screen, not just the ones targeting you
Added targeting reticle to duelist
Overwhelming made more visually obvious
Max HP caps out at 25
Spellbooks are destroyed after one use
Crush/Spike traps no longer trigger at all with boots of gossamer
Spellbooks can only be used once
Tome abilities come out much faster
Failing to identify a potion now results in a message
Might is now called Might instead of Strength sometimes
Disarm and Extra Tough switched places in the boon order
Byat holes now spawn a maximum of 5 Byats
Fire and Ice Tome attack burns for a shorter duration
"Pickpocket" changed to "Pilfer"
"Pilfer" steals shoes, hats, and weapons from enemies if you are shoeless, hatless, or unarmed
Portal no longer illuminates the darkness
Can no longer move portal outside of the view when aiming it
Poisoned slime poisons enemies when used to blind them
Can now aim Tome spells
Headless skeletons are blind
Tier 3 taunt no longer grants might
Tier 2 taunt weakness wears off faster
Shopkeeper gets mad a little more easily
Spirit followers have slightly more hp
Spirit followers shoot faster
Spirit followers don't return to you between shots
Ogo now ignore wooden platforms like oog do
Enemies become more aggressive when taunted
Alterations to Reaper
-of Stopping procs less frequently and for a shorter duration
Striking paused foes always unpauses them
Shadow Cloak lasts slightly longer
Tomes attacks cost the same amount, regardless of entities affected
Tomes start with more charges
Temporal Tricks' Tome attack deals damage now
Enemies have a brief warning before casting spells or executing any nonstandard moves
Most trances last longer
Charge stars restore energy when used
Charge stars auto-collect (like coins) if any trances or overloads are empty [experimental]
Spellwright's aimed spells are no longer offset in front of you
Tomes don't consume book charges if they fail

Next Build TO-DO
Finish Poet (For Realsies)!
New Class!
Daily Run Leaderboard / General Stat-Tracking

Just a quick bugfix build

Fixes
Crash upon defeating the reaper
Plague overload and trance costs no charge stars
Slow overload costs Magic Blast charge stars
Removed "L" debug key for disabling lighting
Crash if killed while in Force Bubble
Crash when casting overloaded Raise Dead
Flame Form burns your own spellbook
Crashes when killing yourself with dragon breath
Water looks weird at times
Magic blast overload costs 4 charges instead of 2
Spell-slotted class abilities cost energy
Portal shows a cost of 3.5
Leveling weapon skills via Bully class-up still rounds them down
Leveling weapon skills via Bully class-up doesn't remove 0-Skill traits
Game crashes when whirlwind and flame wave meet
Looting corpses tips over torches


HEY.

So here's the first full month update for CK! It's a lotta bugs addressed, gasses re-gassed, trances trancified, and goo balls ga-boinked.

Hope you're not too disappointed if you were lookin' for a new class and daily run mode. Between GDC, getting ready to move, and addressing bugs, I figured it'd be better to focus in this build on several less involved things so as to get you all something substantial rather than half-assin' two major features without first addressing the existing issues.

As I was working on those other tasks and thinking about classes, however, I hit upon a bit of a problem. My plan has always been to completely finish the Poet and bully Before moving on to the next classes - so that they can serve as sort of a template and guideline for the others in terms of scope and ability. However, as I tried briefly to tackle finishing the Poet this past month I found the UI unable to accommodate the vision I have in mind for the class.

So now, fixing up the UI has become a much larger priority if I am to finish the Poet and move on to the other classes quickly as planned, so that's going to be the first order of business going into April.

Don't be a blue blob, though! I had always planned on redoing the UI once co-op was implemented, and to change the game to a 16:9 aspect ratio. It's just gonna happen now rather than later. This is also good news because the new UI will be made specifically with multiple players in mind, meaning I'll be able to jump into work on Co-op much sooner than the 'later' I had planned.

So that's what's coming in the future, but let's check out the now: You can find the full patch notes for alpha 0.0.8 below!

Fixes
Fixed some issues with level connectivity
Orb of leveling spawns in walls
Non-humanoid enemies try to drop weapons when parried with Disarm
Grumbuls will attack mushrooms even when they're held by an invisible player
ACTUALLY fixed infinite byat flapping
For real this time
Removed debug shortcut for activating 'tome' ability
Fixed crash when dying while talking to the ghost
Trampling enemies with Stampede now makes them target you
Raise Dead spirit followers now properly follow you through doors
Chain lightning cost unaffected by energy overcharge
Spells equipped to slot 3 offset text alinment for alt spell charge count
"Your lantern goes out" text stays for as long as you hold a spent lantern
Rats don't bleed
Moving portals into boulders gets them stuck
Lifting boulders sometimes drops them on your head
Can't walk backwards while charging hammer focus strike
Crush trap chain sound continues even after breaking
Spaz out when dragging boulders
Crash when throwing certain enemies with trajectory
Potions caught in explosions boil infinitely
Performance improvements (Ever-in-Progress)
Item bottles played no sound when broken
Whirlwind doesn't cause items to hit enemies
Some Trances cast the Overload versions of spells
'Acrobatic' overrides taunt combo input
Ladders interfere with Sword Skill 1 and Axe Skill 3 (Downwards Thrust, Earth Splitter)
Reduced number draw calls for Temporal Step. Hopefully this fixes a crash?
"+" symbol offset when learning 1x1 spells
Balls of goo stay suspended in air if the wall they're stuck to is removed
Rerolling transitional levels doesn't bring you back to the same level type
Trances don't follow from floor to floor
-of Escape doesn't escape
Simple enemies die when they touch immobile boulders

New Stuff
More Spell Trances
Charge Stars
Overhauled Gasses

Changes
Globally reduced enemy damage on the first few floors
Enemy damage ramps up more gradually
Shadow Cloak wears off much faster
Statuses from armors "Of The Ghost" and "Of Power" wear off faster
Portal has fewer charges
Infernus has fewer charges
Balls of Goo have increased knockback
Balls of Goo bounce off of the environment and creatures
Being jumped on no longer immediately removes invisibility
Leveling up weapon skills no longer rounds them down
Being struck while speaking with the ghost will exit the menu
Fishahnas can no longer crit
Byats only crit on their charged attack
Moved "show info" to 'F1', instead of '1'
Looking around with lanterns shifts the view
Refueling lanterns gives a bit more fuel
Reduced size of camera influence area during reaper summon
Changes to lava and water appearance
Made spirit followers more accurate
Slime-blinded enemies are more blind
Mushrooms now only grow with each poison burst
Some level generator changes
Added option to control config menu to use class abilities
Changed collision shape of broken crush traps
Casting portal on top of a door breaks the door
Wet status shown in pause menu
Bottles and other items continue to make noise after first impact
Bottles of Lava
Potions slightly more fragile
Potions won't identify if the target is immune to their effects
Swarm Form is now the Trance of plague, rather than its Overload
Things thrown with Trajectory can pass thru portals
Can't go through level exits while attacking
Can't go through level exits while looking around with lantern
Purple Slimes ignore wooden bridges
The Twins' door locks behind you when the fight begins
The Grumbul Tank entrance door stays locked after the fight
Minor changes to Level Generation
Minor changes to enemy AI
The Cursor Keys, Enter, and Escape always work on the main menu
Press Delete to unassign individual keyboard controls and backspace to reset to default
Some Changes to Potions
New Potion "Colors"

Next Build TO-DO
Overhaul UI
Make game 16:9
Finish Poet?
Add Daily Run mode

(note: These are the actual, real changelog notes. Any others are dumb liars.)

So, it’s been a little over a month since the Early Access release!

Q: How’s it going so far?

A: GOOD.

Following the first quick bugfix build a few days after the initial steam launch, I continued working on fixing bugs and crashes, and easing back into game dev mode after the hectic weeks leading up to Early Access.

Then, March kicked off with the Game Developer’s Conference, where I gave a talk about procedural level generation. People seemed to like it, so that’s cool! Since I had to gather some resources and make slides for that presentation anyway, I’m gonna use that as an excuse/jumping-off point to finally do a write-up about CK’s level generation that I’ve been talking about making for a while, so look forward to that happening sometime very soon.

At GDC I also met a ton of rad people working on groovy things, like moppppin, who’s making Downwell, and Tim Keenan, who got me excited for Duskers, and Nihilocrat, who does cool nice things that I dig. And, I mean, there were a ton of other folks. Like wow so many — all doing groovy cool rad things. Jeez, just too many.

--

Anyway, after recovering from GDC and getting that wombat of creativity dug down in my gut again, I got back to The Kids.

Since the EA release I’ve been keepin’ three eyes on Twitch streamers and Youtube Let’s Plays of the game - due in part to narcissism but also so that I can see the areas people are having trouble with, take note of bugs and balance issues, and laugh at their many, many (many, many) deaths. Watching these videos has brought about a few balancing changes, like making enemies hit softer on the earlier floors, severely shortening the duration of the spell Shadow Cloak, and a few other tweaks and changes to make the game easier or harder in the proper places.

I mean really, why did Shadow Cloak even last that long in the first place?

--

During the Monday streams, I continued work on Trance, adding another valuable tool to the player’s arsenal. Trance is the counterpart boon to Overload: where Overload focuses on making spells more outwardly powerful, Trances are more about imbuing the player with a more passive aspect of the spell. This doesn’t mean that Trances are always merely defensive - though that is a trend they have - but that rather than having an immediate outward effect, they grant the player some trait or ability that persists for a short duration.

I’ve also made Trance and Overload require Charge Stars, which was actually the intention for them all along but which I didn’t have finished in time for the release. Essentially, casting a spell as an Overload or Trance will cost a kind of spell charge called a ‘Star’, and that spell can’t be Overloaded or Trance’d again until its Charge Star has been recovered. Charge Stars can be found in fancy chests and may sometimes be dropped by tougher enemies.

They also make a nice sound when they hit the ground; a consequence of the work Hryx and Doseone have been doing to make the game sound amazing.

Hey did I mention how pumped I am to have Doseone working on the game? I don’t think I have, so there’s that. Him and Stevie have been killin’ it together aurally for nearly a year now, and I can’t wait to make some headway on the Anticropolis so you guys can hear the beauty it’s shaping up to be even in these early stages.

Lastly and most recently, I’ve set to work knocking out some of the inefficiencies of the code that had been having a significant impact on performance. Not least among these elements are gasses, which have been completely reworked. They now are able to spread around corners an be blown around by Whirlwind, in addition to their previous functions. This is also good because gasses will be an important aspect of the Anticropolis, and even moreso the Deep Dark.

--

So that’s how my month has gone. The first real monthly build update to the game will happen sometime later this week, and include all of the above changes plus a bunch more, as well as a couple other announcements.

Look forward to it!