Wednesday 18 December 2013

iHoplite

I'm happy to report that Hoplite was submitted to the iTunes app store for review a few days ago.

This version features new graphics by @ShroomArts.  Big thanks to ShroomArts!

Hoplite v2.2 for Android will also be released shortly.

In the meantime, checkout the Hoplite promo video.


Monday 9 December 2013

Hoplite Fan Art

Yes, it gives me great pleasure to say that Hoplite has fan art.  From the days of slimes and blue demons:


Dave Myers - Huzzah Comics



William Bray - @fylth11

Sunday 17 November 2013

Hoplite Beta Recap

It can be a bit hard to find and organise posts over in the testing community so I thought I'd post a recap of changes so far in the 2.1 beta

Features:
  • Achievements/unlock system
  • Sound/Music
Altars/Upgrades:
  • New upgrades (available after completing achievements): 
    • Plant Spear: Throwing your spear into the ground stuns adjacent monsters
    • Leap Strike: Allows leaping onto demons, crushing them
    • Wizard Beam: Throw is replaced by a wizard beam
    • Swift Leap: Gain an additional free action after leaping
    • Protection: Become temporarily invulnerable after taking damage
    • Greater Sweeping Bash: Affects targets in a cone
  • New altars of Athena and Hephaestus 
General gameplay:
  • Archers will now always attempt to stay in range of the player
  • Bashing demons into the edges of the map or the altar now kills them instead of just stunning
  • The proportion of swordsmen is reduced at deeper depths
  • Demon starting locations are now less "unfair" (each depth has at least one safe first move)
  • Prayers can no longer be cancelled after seeing the options
  • Scoring has been reworked to be more transparent
    • Turn count bonus is only awarded if escaping with the Fleece.
    • Bonus = 1 + 10 / sqrt(turn count)
Balance:
  • Restoration effect can only occur once per depth.  Cost reduced to 1
  • Patience cost reduced to 0
  • All levels of Bloodlust have cost increase by 1
  • Shielding Bash cost increased to 2

Friday 27 September 2013

Stabbing and Lunging

A lot of people have been asking me recently to explain how Stab and Lunge work.  I thought I'd try something in the latest beta release (opt in here) to try and make these mechanics easier to understand.

Tiles that would be affected by a Stab or Lunge are now highlighted in red while targeting a move (holding your finger down) as in the screenshots below.  The tile highlighted blue indicates the player's location after the move.


I'd be interested to know what people think of the change, especially if you were unsure of the mechanics beforehand.

Other changes in 2.0.3:
  • You can now tap on a monster to show which tiles it can attack
  • Better checking and handling of bad save files
  • Fixed repeated button tapping issues
  • Fixed spelling mistakes
  • Fixed wizards firing two turns in a row
  • More hints added

Monday 23 September 2013

Hoplite 2.0.1 (now 2.0.2)

Hoplite 2.0.1 is now available to anyone that has opted-in for early releases. (Go here if you'd like to do that now)  Assuming nothing goes wrong, I'll make it available to everyone else in around 12 hours or so.

Thanks for all the feedback, bug reports and spelling corrections.

Finish any games in progress before updating or your progress will be lost!

  • Fixed crash when throwing spear with recall after reloading saved game 
  • Fixed crash if device does not support in-app billing
  • Better stalemate detection and resolution options
  • Fixed spelling mistakes
  • More tutorial hints added
  • Device no longer kept awake at main menu screens
Edit:  v2.0.2 has now been released to production. 

Saturday 21 September 2013

Hoplite 2.0

Six months after the initial 7DRL release, Hoplite 2.0 is here.

The highlights:

  • New abilities and balance changes
  • Scoring and highscores
  • Descend below depth 16
  • Lots of user interface/graphics/animation updates and tweaks
  • New tutorial
  • Save/resume games automatically when the app is closed 

A note on Hoplite Premium:  This a once time purchase via Google play in-app billing.  Travelling below depth 16 requires premium as well as most new abilities.  It is still possible to win the game without it.

For those keen, here is an incomplete list of gameplay changes with some of my reasoning.

Abilities

  • Throw and Bash no longer require energy.  I wanted to make these two abilities more appealing.
  • Bash now has a cooldown while Throw has no cost other than losing the lunge ability until you retrieve your spear.
  • Energy regen for Leap is now a flat +10 when moving into a tile with an adjacent monster instead of being dependent on the number of adjacent monsters.  Originally, I wanted to reward the player for moving into "risky" locations but the old system didn't achieve this and was overly complex.
  • Regeneration, Surge (and the new Agility upgrade) now proc on three turns with consecutive kills instead of three kills in a single turn.  These abilities feel much less random now and reward the player for thinking ahead.
  • Knocking a bomb into a monsters now gives you credit for the kill.
  • Waiting (skipping turns) is no longer possible without taking an upgrade.  I find not having Wait results in more interesting choices and gameplay.  Bash can be used as a substitute for waiting making it more useful.
  • Altar upgrades may now require a sacrifice (reduction of max and current health.)  This has made it easier to balance upgrades and results in an interesting trade-off between more powerful abilities and having a higher HP pool and hence more effective healing.
  • Taking multiple levels of the same upgrade tends to increase the sacrifice required.
  • Premium allows higher levels of repeatable updates, ie. Throw III (for a greater sacrifice) 
  • All altars now offer increased max health (Fortitude)
  • Bloodlust: now gives +5 per level instead of +2 but only counts kills caused by you and requires sacrifices at higher levels.

Monsters

  • Slimes are gone.  I found them uninteresting and tedious to kill.
  • Archer and Wizard AI has been tweaked making them more deterministic.

Friday 20 September 2013

Beta Access

Anyone interested in testing beta releases can opt in here.  After opting in, your app will be updated to the latest release through Google play.  You can also opt out at any time.

The Hoplite 2.0 beta is currently live.  Thank you to the people who have reported bugs.