I’ve updated Necropolis with some tweaks and bug fixes.
Changes:
- The player character now starts with 4 health instead of 3. (suggested by guyblade)
- Text readability enhanced in some situations. (suggested by Andrew)
- Disable skill made more useful. (suggested by several folks)
- Small chest contents probabilities adjusted.
- Minor stability improvements
- The Bracer is now properly marked as not plural.
- Fixed crash when equipment was generated with a suffix but no prefix. (reported by Andrew)
Game certainly feels more stable, though I have to click on the flash box occasionally to regain keyboard focus there (no idea why it loses focus). The disabling is also modestly less dangerous than running pell-nell into traps, and the font is more readable.
Though I certainly could merely be rolling poorly, I have to say that the patented health tonics have a seriously regulated supply (artificially enhanced demand and prices?). I obtained two early on an never saw another till I died at level 20. This may be perfectly fine, though, since the health up items basically covered the bill, and the caution to move sanely is reasonably enforced by you-gonna-die-later.
Part of my difficulty-balancing issues is that I have amazing luck with this game. I will sometimes find two tonics in the same room, and will regularly get a stat above +10 by level 15.
I’m just not sure about the focus issues. I’ll look into it; it may be the result of equipment dialogs popping up and retaining focus when they disappear.
Hey Greg,
I found a small treasure box that can’t be opened on level 8. It’s one of two in the room, the other one being a “real” box. I just walk over it if I try to open it. I don’t know if this is intentional and I’m not getting what to do here, but I thought you might want to know. I took some screen shots of it if you need them, too.
Other than that the game is really cool!
Weird. Unfortunately, it’ll be hard to track down given the procedural generation of the levels… yeah, send me the screenshot if you could. Gregory.Weir at gmail.
I’m still getting hangs between levels. This was between 7 and 8. If it matters (and it shouldn’t), I’m playing on Linux.
Please add a way to disable the music.
The messages disappear too fast. Also, the music loop is annoying. My X and Z buttons are not next to eachother.
Imani: At the lower right of the screen is an icon with a “musical notes” symbol on it, beside the icon with a “speaker” symbol on it. Click the “musical notes” symbol to disable music.
Imani: It’s probably good that your ‘x’ and ‘z’ buttons aren’t next to each other, so you won’t accidentally waste tonics or tools when you mean to use the other. :-P
Gregory: I’ll back up Andrew by saying that after about level 10, I didn’t see a damn tonic ™ in the place, and I was desperately hitting all those little treasure chests by the time I died on level 14 or 15. :-D
Lissa, Andrew: You folks are just wicked unlucky, I’m pretty sure. Level depth doesn’t enter in to the small chest content calculations.
Final Thoughts:
Okay, I’ve played the whole thing through twice and these are my thoughts.
Regarding the music, you should add a disable music button to the initial start screen. It not being there totally through me off and it took me forever to find the thing on the game screen. The music itself is fine, but when the song ends and loops back to the beginning, the transition is very jarring.
Dodge is way overpowered.
It was totally lame when I got injured trying to disable a trap that wouldn’t have hurt me if I’d just walked through it.
I ended the game both times with over 50 tools. I’d say you should weight having tools drop heavier in the lower levels, but much much lighter in the later levels.
The item drops are just weird. I came across an item that had only a negative effect on it. What’s the reasoning for this even existing? Getting a good item in the first 7 levels radically alters the difficulty of the entire game. I’d be interested to know how you determine what items are going to appear in the big chests.
Overall, the game is pretty fun, although I had a much better time playing it when we were running through it while still logged into teamspeak after the Cthulhu game. It was fun to listen to people comment about stuff.
I don’t think it has a lot of replay value. I didn’t die either time I played and after that you can’t really get any better at the game. The best you can do it try to get more gold, but I’ve already totally cleaned the dungeon twice, so it just comes down to chance.
I don’t wish to review this game in anyway
I just want to tell you that I loved it and it was genius.
If there is anything I can do to speed up the process of making another game, please contact me.