Dev Log Update v0.16

May 31st, 2024

Socketed Items

I've added sockets to weapons and armor so that your character can upgrade their equipment through the use of new imbue stones and glyphs.  Find socketed items, stones and glyphs in treasure chests while exploring dungeons. Bring your socketed items to an Imbuer and combine all of the pieces into a magically enhanced item.

There are 4 different types of imbue stones, including; "Damage", "Resist", "Reflex" and "Vitality" stones. These combine with one of 13 different Glyphs to imbue magical effects into a weapon or armor socket. The 13 Glyphs include; "Physical", "Spiritual", "Acid", "Earth", "Wind", "Fire", "Cold", "Lightning", "Force", "Poison", "Necrotic", "Radiant" and "Death". These are all damage types in the game. I intend to add a few of the missing gaps later. Currently there are 39 total magical enhancements that exist. With 6 items that a player can wear, each containing a maximum of 3 sockets, that's 18 imbue slots. I've tested scenarios of maxing out all 18 slots to see how powerful the character becomes... It's bold, but not over the top.  I will likely need to tweak these in the coming months as I continue developing the game.

Here's a list of the current enhancements you can obtain through the new Socketed Items system...

• Resists (by Type) Examples; Resist Lightning, Resist Fire, Resist Physical, etc
• Damage (by Type) Examples; Fire Damage, Cold Damage, Radiant Damage, etc
• Attack Speed (affects the animation speed of your character's attack)
• Attack Range (affects the scale of your weapon's collider, making it possible to hit enemies standing a bit further away)
• Knockback (pushes enemies back a bit further than normal)
• Hit Recovery (reduces the length of time it takes for the hurt animation to finish, so that you can get back to attacking sooner)
• Loot Rarity (increases the chance of finding loot that it considered rare, such as imbue stones, glyphs, and other rare items)
• Loot Silver (increases the amount of coins discovered while exploring dungeons)
• Haste (increases the speed that your character can walk or run.
• Health Regeneration (makes you heal faster, but only if there are no enemies nearby)
• Health Leech (gives health for each point of damage you inflict on enemies)
• Health Max (increases your max health, giving you a higher health score)
• Stamina Regeneration (makes your stamina recover faster, but only if there are no enemies nearby)
• Stamina Leech (gives stamina for each point of damage you inflict on enemies)
• Stamina Max (increases your max stamina, giving you a higher stamina score)

Delve Details

When delving information about items in your inventory, you'll now see either a green or red triangle facing up or down, or 3 gray lines to indicate whether the delved item is better, worse or about the same as your currently equipped item of the same type.  This already feels extremely useful to me. 

Item Value

The value of every item in the game can now be seen in the delve details too. Instead of showing one static value, the delve shows the current value in the condition that the item is in right now as well as a greyed out and crossed out value representing what it would be worth if you repair before selling.

Currency System

I removed silver and gold coins from the inventory system, and setup a special indicator in the  inventory panel where you can see the total number of coins, rather than having silver and gold. It's much easier, and doesn't require you to shift things around in your inventory all the time when buying and selling.

Character Creator Updates

Added a button to the Mouths selection slider so that you can hear what your character will sound like when he talks.  I also fixed a bunch of other things in the Character Scene, but it's mostly just a bunch of boring stuff. UI is not fun, takes a lot of time, and not really that interesting to talk about, but I'm sure you all appreciate the efforts in the end.

Saved Game in Persistent Data Path

I've relocated the save files from the installation folder into Unity's PersisentDataPath directory. All that means is that your future save files will be kept in one place, regardless of whether you uninstall/reinstall, or relocate the installation somewhere else. Once I get the game on Steam, it will use Steam's Cloud, but this is a logical step forward for now.

Miscellaneous Stuff

It's now possible to grab items that are on the ceiling of caves, such as the rubies that you have to collect for one of the quests. Previously, if you saw some gems hanging from the ceiling, you might spend a lot of time jumping up and down trying to figure out how to get them down. Now, you can just look up, while standing beneath, and aim the cursor at them, and instantly grab them right off the ceiling! 

Fixed a game breaking bug. Previously if you completely emptied your inventory (not even any equipped items) and then exit out of the game. When the game loads back up with an empty inventory the character would freeze, unable to move. There was really no way to fix this other than to hack the save file.  It's all fixed now. Whew!

Steam Wish List

It won't be long before I move this demo over to Steam. In the meantime, I hope you'll Wish List "Go Deep Or Go Home" on Steam, to help support the development of the game. 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2550910/Go_Deep_Or_Go_Home/

What's Next?

The game needs to utilize the 13 different types of damage. I'll be spending some time adding new trap variants,  changing enemy damage types, adding more potions and scrolls that deal with different damage types too, as well as showing visual queues of those damage types when the damage is inflicted. So, big emphasis on Damage Types in the next update.

I'd also like to do something a bit more interesting with Merchant's Shops. If you've played the game, you may have noticed that Treasure Chests visually show the contents when opened.  I think this is a nice feature of the game, and want to extend that behavior to the Merchant Shops next. So, if the merchant is carrying certain goods, you'll see those goods in the shop. (you can't grab them off the table, but you can buy them through the merchant's inventory system. 

Another thing I'd like to do is give enemies some loot that they can drop when defeated. This would work exactly the same as breaking crates and barrels, except, each enemy might have certain types of loot, some of which might be more exclusive to that enemy.