Hello again,

once again its time for an update and a little recap what I've been up to the last two months. Things have changed visually a bit (new animated orbs!), but not drastically. More importantly, I pretty much reached all the goals I had in mind when writing the previous devlog.

Performance

As before, performance has been improved again. Now the amount of physics calculations per frame have been lowered significantly. The soft body physics of the cloaks reflect that too, they are less fluid. Movement of characters is interpolated and doesn't look choppy however. This ensures that the game doesn't get bogged down by rooms with a lot of enemies. Additionally some changes were made to the preloading of resources, so the amount of stutters should be a little less too.

Skill Tree Progression

It exists now. Companions are still lacking a lot of skills and abilities, but the technical side, to be able to make one skill require another, is there. It's represented by a connection and is lit up if requirements are met. Nothing fancy.

Levels

Levels 5 - 8 are in the game now and are populated with a bunch (4) of enemies. It lacks in the cosmetic department and there is barely any clutter/furniture to make it really look like something, but the layout works and can be fed more predefined rooms to generate unique dungeons. A new companion can be found on level 5 too!

Dialogue

This new companion was used to try out some more complex dialogues. Depending on who is in your party, some companions might chip in for the conversation. This of course makes it a bit more immersive for storytelling (which I still need to practice) and enables companion specific quests in the future.

Afflictions

Due to the companions and how they scale up via skills/equipment, more mechanics for balancing are needed. One idea was a more permanent debuff system. Other RPGs often have diseases that need to be actively cured in order to regain your full strength, which seems to be a foreign concept for ARPGs. This makes hordes of zombies or wild animals truly dangerous however, even if their damage numbers aren't that impressive. The priestess in town can do a health checkup and heal your diseases for a price. If your character has an affliction, you will also see some sickly greenish particles on the affected stat numbers.

Other stuff

A few more items and magic affixes for both items and rare enemies. More auxillary items for each category. Some AI behavior changes were made to make ranged attackers less dumb, and melee attackers take a break between swings (companions were rampaging through enemies and leaving none for the player this way). And probably a few more little things I forgot.

Future plans

• Non-magic abilities for the player to learn
• Nicer rooms, more interactive things like chests
• Enemy variations (goblins shouldn't be limited to spears!)
• More and better dialogue
• Quests