The first four levels of the dungeon are now complete. Enemies, items, and abilities progress each level and there’s a boss at the end of level 4. I could release a demo at this point. It would be buggy, imbalanced, and filled with mismatched stock art. I need to find an artist, playtest more, and hunt for bugs.
New Enemies
- Giant Spider: This is the boss of the dungeon level 3. It was originally created probably 5 years ago, but its logic and abilities were hard-coded. It was refactored to take advantage of the systems that now exist. The AI still has some hard-coding for behavior unique to this enemy.
New Abilities
- Observant: Increases chance of detecting hidden doors and traps.
- Mass Slow: Slows all enemies in a 5×5 square.
- Spark Bolt: Like Chain Lightning, but only hits one additional target and damage is lower.
- Steam Cloud: Causes a 3×3 square of Steam.
- Farshot: Increases accuracy of shots more than 4 cells away.
- Overrun: Runs through enemies, pushing them to the side and temporarily stunning them.
- Spellweaver’s Focus: Reduces Sorcery ability cooldowns by 1.
- Teleswap: Swap positions with a selected nearby target.
- Pick Lock: Unlock a locked door or chest. Requires Lockpicks.
- Oil Puddle: Creates an Oil Puddle
- Oil Spill: Spreads Oil from an existing Oil Puddle to nearby Oil Puddles.
- Shaky Ground: Knocks down enemies near the player.
- Escape to Stairs: Teleport to the stairs at the beginning of the level.
- Shocking Grasp: Causes electrical damage to an adjacent enemy.
- Levitate: Temporarily ignore ground effects.
- Silence: Prevent the selected target from casting spells.
- Hold Breath: Temporarily immune to gas effects.
Dungeon Level 4
My initial thought was to place the Giant Spider boss at the end of a dungeon level 3. That would have required placing a very large room just before the final room. The map structure generator isn’t designed for this and would have needed extensive modifications. It was easier to create a new map structure generator on a separate dungeon level for the boss fight.
Minor Enhancements
- Bump into a locked door now unlocks it if the player has the matching key.
- Improved auto-explore messages. A message is displayed when there’s nowhere left to explore except both locked rooms and hidden rooms. The message appearing when a dungeon level is fully explored now suggests using the go to end of level key.
Bug Fixes
- Knocked down enemies don’t get back up.
- Can’t click cells under the message log.
Next week, I’ll look for bugs and complete playthroughs of the first four levels with each of the three starting classes.