[Blog Post] Upcoming WP8 / W8 RPG - Demon's Bane

[WaveLightGames]

Okay ... sounds good. That makes sense actually as once 1 & 2 are done, it should be a fairly decent, playable game ... just very short. So then it'll be easier to just keep adding levels at a steady pace. Of course options 1 and 2 are the least fun from a game development perspective ... but okay, may as well get them out of the way.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Quick update ... I think I've fixed the inventory. Made some further updates to make the in-game screen buttons / HUD easier to see on the phone. Testing now on my device.

 

[Usama Jawad96]

Got the updated link this morning. Download it for the first time on my 512mb ram Lumia 620. Crashes everytime on that character screen which looks like a demon with wings. Should I try reinstalling?

 

[DreadVenom]

Got DL this morning. Installed on my 1020 running DP Update 1 and so far no crashes. Only issue is UI scaling, some of the info boxes go off screen. Still superb effort so far.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Also for the ability descriptions, I have it so that when you hold down on an ability button, it shows a window that explains the ability, action point cost and such.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Got the updated link this morning. Download it for the first time on my 512mb ram Lumia 620. Crashes everytime on that character screen which looks like a demon with wings. Should I try reinstalling?

Thanks for letting me know. I wouldn't re-install it ... what you describe sounds like an out-of-memory situation. Does it crash after you press the "next" arrow on the Demon screen or does it load the Demon screen and then crash without you doing anything? If it's the former, then it means that the next screen (team selection) is still taking up too much memory and needs to be down-sized. This is the most memory intensive screen as it has all 14 current character meshes loaded into memory. I'll put some effort into reducing this screen's memory requirements for the next release.

 

[WaveLightGames]

To get around the memory issue with the character selection screen, I may just have two versions of that screen ... one for low memory devices and one for high memory devices. The low memory device will be identical except that it just won't display the 3D models of each character class and will instead just use larger icons or something. That should be no problem at all and I'll include it in the next release.

Otherwise, made good progress today on the in-game GUI. About half the icons are now at a proper mobile-friendly size and I've coded some of the extra info such as ability descriptions and a detailed character info sheet to appear on touch inputs. Also got the inventory working more or less ... though the contents of the backpacks and inventory slots are not being saved properly so I'll have to look into that. Also, I fixed the issue with the pinch to zoom going through the floor. It now stops at a normal level.

 

[Usama Jawad96]

Thanks for letting me know. I wouldn't re-install it ... what you describe sounds like an out-of-memory situation. Does it crash after you press the "next" arrow on the Demon screen or does it load the Demon screen and then crash without you doing anything? If it's the former, then it means that the next screen (team selection) is still taking up too much memory and needs to be down-sized. This is the most memory intensive screen as it has all 14 current character meshes loaded into memory. I'll put some effort into reducing this screen's memory requirements for the next release.

It crashes after pressing the next arrow

 

[WaveLightGames]

Thanks ... yep, that suggests a memory issue in the character screen. I ran a profiler program to look at memory usage in detail and it does get very close to the 180MB limit in that screen. I'll try some more tricks to reduce the memory usage for the next release on that screen.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Made a fair bit of progress on the in-game menu / HUD as well as the character selection screen. Will do some testing and will post an updated file today.

 

[GuilhermeManso]

Hi. This game will be available here in Brazil when it launches??
I can help with the proccess to publish here.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Also ... decided on the next (and likely final barring an expansion pack) 3 character classes to add:

- Stone Golem (Self repairing, self-boosting melee fighter that is slow but does a lot of damage and can take a lot of hits)
- Demonblood Vampire (evil human / vampire character that lives off the magical blood of Demons ... a fast, strong melee fighter with a long axe and with dark magical powers. Very arrogant though and generally doesn't like to be bogged down or cover their unnaturally good-looking body with much armour).
- Paladin (either elf or human knight that has both magical and morale boosting abilities)

Thoughts / opinions?

 

[WaveLightGames]

Hi. This game will be available here in Brazil when it launches??
I can help with the proccess to publish here.

Yes, I would love to publish in Brazil. I believe there is a challenge though in that I have to get it through a separate ratings board. Do you know the process? Does it require a language translation? I would welcome any and all help.

 

[dKp1977]

Also ... decided on the next (and likely final barring an expansion pack) 3 character classes to add:

- Stone Golem (Self repairing, self-boosting melee fighter that is slow but does a lot of damage and can take a lot of hits)
- Demonblood Vampire (evil human / vampire character that lives off the magical blood of Demons ... a fast, strong melee fighter with a long axe and with dark magical powers. Very arrogant though and generally doesn't like to be bogged down or cover their unnaturally good-looking body with much armour).
- Paladin (either elf or human knight that has both magical and morale boosting abilities)

Thoughts / opinions?

I'm looking forward the most to the Demonblood Vampire!

 

[WaveLightGames]

Cool ... working on coding him in now. Taking a break from the borin UI work to add some characters.

Any ideas for powers that he should have? I was thinking mostly melee attacks combined with some supernatural powers like being able to jump / fly to distant tile and some sort of dark spells that suck life force of enemies and regenerate the vampire?

 

[dKp1977]

Cool ... working on coding him in now. Taking a break from the borin UI work to add some characters.

Any ideas for powers that he should have? I was thinking mostly melee attacks combined with some supernatural powers like being able to jump / fly to distant tile and some sort of dark spells that suck life force of enemies and regenerate the vampire?

That's exactly what I was thinking of. But he should be vulnerable to light. Not sure how you would implement that though. Maybe special light skills of enemies, torches and so.

 

[WaveLightGames]

That might be do-able once I get to fine tuning tiles that damage characters that are on them. However, while I say "vampire" ... he's actually more like a Chaos Warrior from the Warhammer mythos, if you're familiar with it. Basically a human that's sold his soul to dark gods for power ... but in this case the rituals require him to continually feed on the blood / life essence of demons. Light vulnerability might be too close to actual undead vampire. Also, the enemies he'll face won't be using light as a weapon as they're primarily creatures of darkness as well. Will have to give it some thought. I was planning on adding a type of "Holy Damage" that some of the more heroic characters like the Priestess / Cleric and Paladin might use. I could probably add a vulnerability to those kinds of spells though he would likely only get hurt from friendly fire as again, few of the enemies would be using that type of attack.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Should have an updated version today. I've written code to circumvent the memory intensive team selection screen. I'd really like to know whether it works now on 512MB devices.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Uploading a new version now. Main progress is to refresh a lot of the menus to make them more suitable for mobile. The main camp site / quest level is still a complete mess ... I'm still trying to design how I want that one to work. Otherwise, lots of improvements in the HUD, load / save game screens and main menu screen. Also added the Demonblood Vampire and fixed some issues in loading and saving. Loading and saving of inventory items is still broken though as is the shop screen.

- Added special character selection screen for low memory devices.
- Added lower graphics setting for low memory devices.

HUD Changes:

- Touching the characters portrait icon on the bottom left of the HUD screen brings up a detailed character sheet that provides details on statlines, abilities and current effects (buffing / debuffing spells, etc.)

- Added a similar health bar / action point bar / portrait icon in the top left of the screen when selecting an enemy to attack. Instead of just showing the % chance to hit, the target's portrait, remaining health and action points are shown in the box. Similarly, touching the target's portrait brings up its detailed character sheet with full stats, ability details and current effects in play.

- Added an overlay of all characters that shows their current life total, faction colour and a bar chart of their health and action points total.

- Added a box that explains what an ability is when you touch and hold the respective ability button.

- Lots of windows resized and fonts made larger.

- Started to update inventory screen but this is still very much in progress.

Still lots to do here but just tackling it piece by piece. This game has an incredibly complex GUI / HUD so updating it for mobile will take more time.

Main menu screen updated. I added a fourth character (the Minotaur) and some new shadows. Also changed the name of the game to "Demon Hunters: Dungeons of Dorn" as "Demon's Bane" is taken by some fantasy novel. Name may well change again. Here's a pic of the new main screen:

 

[WaveLightGames]

Also the warlock is now gong to focus on fire magic so I switched his staff from a lightning ball effect to a fireball effect as you can see in the screen shot. He'll probably be renamed as "Ember Mage" or "Pyromancer". Demonblood warrior ended up being called "Demonblood Vampire" ... I may try to add some light sensitivity rules after all. I'm thinking it would be interesting to have certain warriors fight better in the dark parts of a level while others fight better in the light.