Indie Swords and Sorcery - Underworld: Definitive Edition

[Deuce Traveler]

It is a tough trick; trying to add a large amount of spells that people might actually employ. I don't use every spell in Might and Magic games, for instance. Same for the Gold Box games, though my spellcasters do try to employ a lot of different spells in pen and paper DnD. Limitations of the media, I suppose.

 

[Charles-cgr]

It is a tough trick; trying to add a large amount of spells that people might actually employ. I don't use every spell in Might and Magic games, for instance. Same for the Gold Box games, though my spellcasters do try to employ a lot of different spells in pen and paper DnD. Limitations of the media, I suppose.

Well I'll aim for it and see if I succeed I'll have more material for spells to be applied to than the MMs did though. Factions and crafting should open doors to things that aren't combat specific. Influence, localization of NPCs, places (...), ressource acquisition... And then there are buffs and debuffs.

Also monsters will have different levels of intelligence and alignment, with an impact on combat AI, which gives some more fodder for combat / pre-combat spells.

 

[belated]

No mention of the sale at the moment? You people...

On Sale until Sunday 10/28/12 – Just $9.95!

 

[Jaesun]

Bee just made a news post on it.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Thanks! Casting Animal Hide

belated I didn't tell them right away, got caught up on some stupid things... But thanks for putting in a word.

 

[Niektory]

OK, so I started the demo. So far the interface feels pretty clunky to me.

Also, a bug!
http://i.imgur.com/LFtWs.jpg

 

[Charles-cgr]

OK, so I started the demo. So far the interface feels pretty clunky to me.

Also, a bug!
http://i.imgur.com/LFtWs.jpg

This is due to the downsizing of the original file. That sprite is no longer in the folder because it is no longer needed and shouldn't be called. I'll replace that.

Bugs like that can't be in the full file btw.

EDIT: I just checked and it seems you have a rather old demo. The one currently online doesn't have it. Thanks for reporting it though

 

[Niektory]

Oh sorry then. It's v2.0.4, downloaded 10 days ago.

Hmm, so the demo only includes 1 map? Pretty short.
Well whatever, it looks fun enough. Getting the full version.

 

[Niektory]

I played for a bit, I'm getting ingredients for the alchemist now.

I'm getting used to the interface, but I still think there's room for improvement. So I have some suggestions, hopefully not too next-gen for your tastes. Even if you don't want to put them in at this point, maybe you'll consider them for the sequel.
In the inventory screen, clicking on the items without choosing an action first doesn't do anything. You could assign shortcuts (Describe/Use) to left and right clicks. Also, drag and drop support for equipping, packing and trading would be great. Like this.
In the combat screen, using 1-9 as keyboard shortcuts for enemies might be more intuitive than A-J. And again, clicking on them without choosing an action does nothing, so you could assign Fight/Shoot to left/right clicks.

 

[Charles-cgr]

I played for a bit, I'm getting ingredients for the alchemist now.

I'm getting used to the interface, but I still think there's room for improvement. So I have some suggestions, hopefully not too next-gen for your tastes. Even if you don't want to put them in at this point, maybe you'll consider them for the sequel.
In the inventory screen, clicking on the items without choosing an action first doesn't do anything. You could assign shortcuts (Describe/Use) to left and right clicks. Also, drag and drop support for equipping, packing and trading would be great. Like this.
In the combat screen, using 1-9 as keyboard shortcuts for enemies might be more intuitive than A-J. And again, clicking on them without choosing an action does nothing, so you could assign Fight/Shoot to left/right clicks.

So sorry Niektory, I swear I didn't see the notification

I'm writing these down for consideration. Sometimes things have an impact that isn't obvious straight away. Thanks a lot for taking the time for a diagram and all. And thanks for your support

 

[Charles-cgr]

Now the reason I came by was to say, oh-so matter-of-factly, that I'm buying an issue of CanardPC tomorrow morning

 

[Niektory]

The world has been saved!
The Big Bad gave me some trouble but finally my rogue and priest showed him who's the boss.
Finished at levels 14-15.
All in all, it was fun!

Some nitpicks:
- I felt that encounter density was a little too high at times, especially in places where there's no enemy variety it was getting repetitive.
- Ascend/Descend make buying food and resting underworld unnecessary for most of the game. I only did it at the beginning and in the anti-magic dungeon. Restricting these spells somehow (but not too much) would probably make it more interesting.

Some things that seemed odd (bugs?):
- Sometimes after casting Ascend and Descend I ended up in a different square than I left from. In the Air map this sometimes dumped me over a pit, though fortunately I didn't fall until I moved.
- In towns encounters can pop up in squares occupied by NPCs. This looks a little weird, and if you run away - the NPC then appears in the tavern.
- If you use Bleeding on dragons and they use an attack that hits the entire party they bleed 6 times in a single turn.
- After casting Spirit Bodies you can enter solid rock and move around freely in it, only needing to cast it a second time to go back to a corridor.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Hi Niektory,

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I'll look into those things. Ascend - Descend was pretty heavily requested so I'd rather keep that. There's a level 5 spell that pretty much had the same effect anyway. Those oddities you describe I'll look into. Probably after finishing the port to Studio though. Then the fixes will apply to all platforms, and the sequel. And I can always tone down encounter density in those places you describe.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Charles-cgr

Some suggestions. I'm running the game on an ACER computer with the following specs, but still getting a bad lag:
AMD Dual-Core C50
AMD Radeon HD 6250
2 GB DDR3 Memory

Because of the lag, sometimes I am typing fast in combat and mess myself up. For instance, I may have my priest up and want to heal my knight. So I type in M-D-1, but the game will miss the M input due to the lag or I'll mess myself up and type in D first, and then I just discarded an item from my priest's inventory. A query to ensure I want to discard an item would be nice.

Likewise, I have never wanted to use the 'N' option for move to the front in combat. But sometimes I hit 'N' when I meant for my sorcerer to cast a spell ('M'). This usually means my sorcerer rushes up to the front line. This is an operator error, but I still think a query would be better for rarely used keys that are near often used keys, such as the N and M.

Also, is there an item that lets you move to the other maps easily instead of making the party walk everywhere? I want to clear out the barracks, but I'm far off from them now. I have been visiting Moltenore for a town and am now as far as the Antichamber dungeon. I'll walk my characters over if I have to, but the lag makes such tasks painfully slow.

 

[Charles-cgr]

Charles-cgr

Some suggestions. I'm running the game on an ACER computer with the following specs, but still getting a bad lag:
AMD Dual-Core C50
AMD Radeon HD 6250
2 GB DDR3 Memory

Because of the lag, sometimes I am typing fast in combat and mess myself up. For instance, I may have my priest up and want to heal my knight. So I type in M-D-1, but the game will miss the M input due to the lag or I'll mess myself up and type in D first, and then I just discarded an item from my priest's inventory. A query to ensure I want to discard an item would be nice.

Likewise, I have never wanted to use the 'N' option for move to the front in combat. But sometimes I hit 'N' when I meant for my sorcerer to cast a spell ('M'). This usually means my sorcerer rushes up to the front line. This is an operator error, but I still think a query would be better for rarely used keys that are near often used keys, such as the N and M.

Also, is there an item that lets you move to the other maps easily instead of making the party walk everywhere? I want to clear out the barracks, but I'm far off from them now. I have been visiting Moltenore for a town and am now as far as the Antichamber dungeon. I'll walk my characters over if I have to, but the lag makes such tasks painfully slow.

Hi Deuce,

There's no item for that but a level 5 spell... I'd say you're pretty close to getting it at this stage. Ascend and Magic carpet might cut some of the distance (or running from fights on the way there takes you to safe spots that are located closest to the beginning each time)

Sorry about that lag. I'm on the fence about the suggestions because they add key strokes and rarely used options tend to become useful later (when your characters get slapped back, for 'n')... I'm reworking the engine for Sovereign though and finding a few things to optimize performance (such as no longer changing rooms) but implementing them to UW will be a slow process.

Sorry to hear performance is still an issue

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I'm probably a minority on the issue as I have an older laptop I game from. Academagia gives me the same problem. I just got the level 5 spell you were talking about, and now I'm making my characters walk the long way back to the first town in order to use it. A bit of a slog, but hey, I'll get some more XP out of it.

 

[Charles-cgr]

I'm probably a minority on the issue as I have an older laptop I game from. Academagia gives me the same problem. I just got the level 5 spell you were talking about, and now I'm making my characters walk the long way back to the first town in order to use it. A bit of a slog, but hey, I'll get some more XP out of it.

Or run from those fights & it'll get you closer each time

 

[Charles-cgr]

For those that wanter a more detailed manual it now has skill descriptions, spell tables...

Also, the combined use of Ascend / Descend, Magic carpet and Portal should really make walking around unnecessary most of the time, at least once those spells are acquired.

I also updated the Sovereign thread with the world map.

 

[Charles-cgr]

I'm running another sale. This time it is dirt cheap over a longer period of time. This should complete my data gathering for my indie pricing study.

I'm running an ad on RPS that should make the data more viable, given more mainstream players will be involved. Hopefully the ad will make me a millionaire at least pay for itself.

 

[Excommunicator]

You need to find ways to get better exposure Charles. Lowering your price for an audience who already knows about the game is unlikely to make much of a difference.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

What is the response from GOG.com and Steam and Desura about hosting the game on their respective sites?

 

[Charles-cgr]

You need to find ways to get better exposure Charles. Lowering your price for an audience who already knows about the game is unlikely to make much of a difference.

I've got an ad campaign running, hence the sale.

What is the response from GOG.com and Steam and Desura about hosting the game on their respective sites?

Gog said no, Steam greenlight says maybe in 10 years and Desura said yes. I still have to set that up though.

 

[Excommunicator]

Where is the ad being shown?

 

[Charles-cgr]

It's on RPS. Sorry for the delay

 

[tuluse]

I was playing the demo yesterday and I ran into a bug.

I bought the wand for my cleric so she could do something useful when she got silenced at the beginning of combat with mummies every single time. So anyways, I got a point where when I tried to use it the list of people I could use it on was empty (and when I clicked abort, it ended her turn which seemed unfair, but whatever).

I kept playing, and then I ran into another problem which may or may not be related it. I was fighting a mummy and I wanted to pull the same cleric back from melee. When I did that, it removed her from combat completely. I only had 5 characters listed. Then later in that fight, I used the protect option with my knight and the game froze when the list of characters to protect came up. It also listed only 4 correctly, the 5th had a corrupted name (I think it was just some numbers). I forgot to take a screen shot, sorry.