Friday 25 July 2014

Hoplite 2.3 progress II


I've finished up the last of what I wanted to get done before releasing 2.3 including a bunch of play testing with each prayer.  Unless any major issues come up, it should be available in about a week or so.

If you want to try it now, sign up for the beta

Changes from beta build 78 to 81


  • Max Energy/Bloodlust cost and gains reduced
  • Protection removed
  • Flawless achievement now unlocks Shielding Bash II
  • demon cooldowns no longer decrease while they're stunned
  • Hephaestus now offers upgrades of your current prayers with higher priority
  • fixed bug using Reaction and Shielding Bash together
  • spelling/description mistakes
  • minor graphical fixes/improvements for timing of animations/sfx


iOS

  • fixed double achievement pop-ups
  • fixed error reporting in iOS 6


android

  • xxxhdpi support

Friday 18 July 2014

Hoplite 2.3 progress

I've been playing a lot of Hoplite recently.

The main tasks for the next version were supposed to be adding support for Google Play Games and Game Center.  I finished doing that a while ago now but decided to make some quick balance changes before releasing it and, well, I'm still making balance changes.

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions that have been coming in.  There have been some great ones, which really helps.

Basically, I've been focusing on making the less popular prayers more appealing, toning down some of the really overpowered builds and trying to improve the "late game" as I am continually surprised to see how far some people are able to get.

There are a couple more things I'm still looking at changing but version 2.3 won't be too far off now.

Changes in build 78 (released today)

  • Hades Altars scraped - I just didn't find them fun.
  • "Unique prayer streak" bonus scraped - the idea seemed fairly unpopular and I agree there are some major flaws with it.  The game still tracks these streaks, though, for the awarding of a new achievement - "Hoplite Master"
  • Some minor graphical changes - you can now see when wizards and demolitionists are able to shoot and a couple of other small things.
A few other ideas have been and gone too.  What I've settled on to replace the Altars of Hades is simply tweaking the current game so that the difficulty no longer hits a peak and stops getting harder.  

The number and type of demons has been adjusted in the later depths instead of simply throwing more and more in to keep the difficulty going up.

There have also been several tweaks to various prayers - see below.  The change to Swift Leap doesn't look like much but it is a big nerf to builds that combined this with Shielding Bash and Wizard Beam, which was causing the most balance issues in the late game.

Changes since 2.2.4

Android only:
  • Google Play Games integration
  • Unlocks and achievements synced between devices
iOS only:
  • Game Center integration
  • Unlocks and achievements synced between devices
  • Improved performance, especially loading time (thanks to roboVM improvements.)  This has also fixed an issue where older devices would sometimes not be able to load the game at all.
  • Fixed the error reporting system.  Why did no one tell me this stopped working!? ;)
All platforms:
  • More bug fixes.
  • New Achievement - "Hoplite Master" for consecutive wins with unique prayers.
  • Minor graphical changes to show when wizards and demolitionists are able to shoot and when player has Wizard Beam.
  • Using recall on stairs will now trigger descending to the next depth
  • Shielding Bash split into two levels, each with a cost of 1.  Level one blocks a single attack and level two blocks all attacks.
  • Cooldowns are no longer decremented when Swift Leap is used.
  • Surge now restores 100 energy instead of all energy.
  • Protection and Patience have increased chance to be found
  • Protection only lasts for the turn you are hit and cost reduced to 0 (from 1)
  • Demons now die if they are knocked "through" magma instead of landing on the other side.  This does not affect the player (or bombs) so you can still fly over magma using Reaction & Might Bash.
  • Winged Sandals increases Leap range by 1 (from 2) and cost reduced to 1 (from 2)
  • Leap Strike cost reduce to 1 (from 2)
  • Wizard Beam cost increase to 1 (from 0)
  • All levels of Greater Energy have cost reduced to 2
  • Sacrifice cost reduced to 0 (from 1) for the following prayers:
    • Sweeping Bash
    • Greater Sweeping Bash
    • Spinning Bash
    • Recall
    • Follow
    • Plant Spear
    • Slashing Lunge
    • Sword Lunge

Beta Access (now iOS too)

If you'd like to play the beta version, see here