V6.5 - a very experimental build

 Patreon LINK.

I decided to try a couple of things in this patch. 

The first is the experimental card background art you see in the picture above. Here is another screenshot on the Deck display:

I also upgraded the engine to use OpenGL 3.3. Some may see a slight performance improvement. More importantly, it allows me to use tools such as RenderDoc to help with debugging. RenderDoc, for example, only supports OpenGL >= 3.2. Everything should just work as usual but if you experience problems with this build please let me know.

The third experimental feature is a fundamental game mechanic change. Previously, your characters discard their old hand, and draw 4 cards at the start of every turn. Now, cards are kept in between turns. However, you draw 8 cards at the start of encounter, or if you start the turn with less or equal to 1 card in hand, or by using the new "Redraw Hand" button right above the "End Turn" button. I may very well revert back this change but I want to test how this new system plays out.

Exhaust mechanic got changed too. The game now separate between per-encounter cards, and per-rest cards (the old Exhausts are per rest). The Exhaust keyword now means that card can be used once per-encounter (aka, they get "recharged" at end of combat), and the "Long-Exhaust" keyword means that card can be used once per-rest. (What the old Exhaust did)

Finally, there is this new radar-ish feature in the minimap, which should help you determine which room each door actually led to.

Changelog:

• Added experimental card background art
• Added camera line-of-sight indicator on the room minimap
• Experimental change: Player-controlled characters do not discard their hand + redraw automatically every turn, instead cards are kept between rounds
• Added auto redraw if start the turns with less or equal to 1 card in hand
• Added redraw hand button that allows you to redraw your hand at cost of your turn
• Added new card keyword: Unplayable
• Exhaust card are now playable once per combat instead of once per rest
• Added new card keyword: Long-Exhaust for cards that are playable once per rest
• Added new card keyword: Free Action for cards that costs no action point to play
• Added new hand-affecting effects such as draw, discard and disrupt (not used in this build)
• Upgraded to Opengl v3.3
• Fixed softlock in Dresser
• Fixed AI releasing it's grab target too often
• Fixed Pass Turn button not reappearing sometimes

V6.3 - resolution change and more!

Patreon LINK. 

Resolution change and borderless option is finally here! It should probably be available sooner, but, in my defense, working out how to scale the various UI elements is not a trivial problem. The text scaling was particularly problematic.

One new feature of this patch is the Beckon, a self-inflicted status effect that cause enemy attacks to grab you instead, similar to what happens when you are KOed. This allows you to do things like "avoiding" a potentially big enemy attack, or enemy aggro management by sending someone in there and take one for the team. Of course, you can use this to sit back and enjoy the scene as well.

Armor/outfit breaking is also in! Pretty straight forward, characters take outfit damage when hit, and when they take enough damage, outfit will break and leaves them exposed! Currently, armor only protect against Finisher-type of moves, nothing more.

I also did some tweaking on grab damage values. Here is a summary of what each category of grab does:

== Tease ==

• Inflict Moderate H damage
• Inflict Minor O damage 
• Inflict Minor H damage to user

== Pleasure == 

• Inflict High H Damage 
• Inflict Moderate O damage 
• Inflict Modern H Damage to user

== Finisher == 

• * target must be stripped *
• Inflict High H Damage 
• Inflict High O damage 
• Inflict High H Damage to user 
• Inflict High O Damage to user 

* Using H and O here to represent the pink and white damage. Else the post gets flagged.

Changelog:

• Added resolution and borderless window settings
• Card effects are now scaled by character stats (the affecting stat is depending on card color, STR->scales red cards, INT->scales blue card and so on)
• Added new "Beckon" status, a self-inflicted effect that cause attacks to grab you instead, similar to when KOed 
• Added new "Shaken" status, which is a depuff that causes all attack to have disadvantage. 
• Added armor breaking and outfit/armor points.
• When not armor broken, Finisher type grabs cannot be used on the character
• Added new Pass Turn button
• Certain moves will no longer force temporary outfit removal 
• Attackers in grabs inflict higher self damage 
• Victim can use "Commit" as well during Finisher-type grabs 
• When using GrabSwitch, units must switch into a more intense grab type; Tease < Pleasure < Finisher 
• Fixed a potential crash in certain gpu drivers caused by "sampler arrays indexed with non-constant expressions"

V6.2 is here! First build in 2021! (Public)

 

Hope every had a good holiday and New Years. Here is my delayed Xmas present, an early public build! 

EDIT:

New Download LINK.

Updated to v6.21, fixed the following issues:

• fixed certain attacks not working (only plays animation but no effect)
• fixed push/pull cards not ending grab
• fixed card pool for Nera to be much smaller than intended (although the DEX card poll is still small)

This is a preparation build for the equipment and character progression system to come soon. One of the new features is card colors, which will have an impact on how the progression system works. What I don't want to do is having to create a card-only progression system where there are better and better cards like Strike, Strike II, Strike III and etc. Instead, character will have stats, like STR, DEX, CHA, etc and those stats will make card effects stronger. However, STR will only improve the effectiveness of red cards, DEX for green cards, and so on. 

You can also use the resting spots to remove a card from your deck to make it more lean and efficient. 

I also felt that the gameplay was a tad on the slower side so I want to make an effort to make it play out faster. So in this patch, you'll find characters have a significantly greater move speed and some animations were sped up. (More to come on that)

Changelog:

• added new feature that allows different prompts to be shown when interacting with dungeon objects
• added card removal option at rest spot
• added simple escape menu when ESC is pressed instead of closing the game
• added downed/lying state - atm this is only used as a better defeat animation rather than the old target disappear in the air
• added card color, some pickups will now only grant cards associated with each character's color
• added card rarity, you'll find cards of different rarity during runs. Generally, rarer cards are more powerful
• you are guaranteed rare card upgrades after boss fight
• the overall quality of card pickups have increased
• you only draw the Basic Action card token when you have more than 4 cards in your deck to avoid hand clutter.
• grab initial escape DC increased from 5 to 8
• sped up a couple of animations
• fixed bug that cause movement to be bugged on high move speeds; increased unit move speed
• fixed bug and now auto camera should return to current unit taking turn after that unit's action ends
• fixed bug with auto card suggest incorrectly displaying red attack-lines when there are no attacks possible with suggested card
• fixed bug with auto card suggest not resetting the card highlight state when player mouse over a card
• fixed bug with cards not shrink to the small size after the player move cursor outside of card bounds