[Released] Wrath of Cronos with heXercise

[CrazyEyes]

I think having options is supposed to be one of the Fighter's strong suits, since he is nearly mana-less.

Mm, I always felt that was the Cleric's role. He always has options, as he can do everything pretty decently. Fighter should be quite limited in ranged options, but be able to do just about anything if he gets close, while Mage has very limited and risky close-range ability (plus, sneezing on him sends him to the ER) but is capable of the most damage ever once he gets his spells going from mid-range and further. Cleric isn't as capable at close range as the Fighter but he can still hit pretty hard and has great sustain to make up for not having high defense and HP, and compared to the Mage his ranged/magic abilties might be lacking but he is definitely no pushover.

Sorry, I occasionally say things that are pretty vague or easy to misunderstand because I somehow think that people can read my mind through the internet. What I meant was melee options; in other words, weapons with a lot of variety so he can best any enemy (or indeed several enemies) in the game in melee if he has the right weapon for it.

EDIT: Probably already mentioned, but I was playing Cleric and I noticed that the shield bash sometimes won't reflect projectiles right. Sometimes they'll go off into the sky for some reason, but most of the time when it fails to work right the projectile will pass through you harmlessly then become solid behind you... preventing you from backpedaling for a second. This is really, really bad. Shield Bash in general seems odd... most of the time it doesn't push enemies at all but sometimes it'll work. Also, projectiles block projectiles, meaning a single Hell Knight shot can completely shut down a Serpent Staff wielding Cleric if he doesn't have the room to circle-strafe. Honestly making the projectiles solid seems to cause more problems than it fixes. Projectiles with a slow death animation can block your movement entirely.

Yeah. I might have to revert back to the simple built-in reflection flag + invulnerability instead. I put a lot of effort into it, relatively, but the novelty has worn off even for me.

I have made a playthrough as the Mage, and I would like to suggest something regarding his third weapon.

The secondary attack of the Arc of Death feels quite underpowered compared to Essence Drain. Seeing as the wand's attack scales with intellect, and also absorbs health, it makes using the melee lightning attack pointless; using the wand's secondary kills an ettin commander in less than a second, doesn't cost mana and heals you, whereas Arc of Death's lightning takes about 2 seconds and drains quite a bit of mana. And while Arc of Death allows you to move around when using its melee form, the mana cost trumps the benefit of mobility.

To counter that, perhaps it might be worth noticing the weapon's secondary as it appears on the mod Carnage Galore?

If you haven't seen that secondary, please allow me to describe it: It behaves like the Sphere of Annihilation spell from Heretic 2; the Arc of Death fires a ball of lightning that explodes over a medium sized area, and deals heavy damage. It is balanced by costing 10 mana instead of the usual 5 and does only a bit more damage than two Arc shots. And well, personally, I find the effect of the sphere explosion to be pretty cool, plus I think it fits in quite nicely with Hexercise's more franctic combat and bigger spells. If you'd like to see the effect in action, I'd recommend getting Carnage Galore yourself, it's a pretty good mod; or there's a playthrough on it on YouTube.

I'll take a look at that mod. I'll try to nerf the wand secondary a bit also. It's strange to tweak, since it actually hits 15 times for very low damage each time, so if you increase the damage by 1, you're actually increasing it by 15. I'll just have to lower the amount of times it hits, I think.

[Triple S]

Could just keep the damage low, but have the last hit trigger some extra stun depending on points in Intelligence. Make it more of an escape tool with some health drain, existing solely as a way to bail yourself out of a situation where some big guy is right next to you about to squish you.

[SallazarSpellcaster]

I'll try to nerf the wand secondary a bit also. It's strange to tweak, since it actually hits 15 times for very low damage each time, so if you increase the damage by 1, you're actually increasing it by 15. I'll just have to lower the amount of times it hits, I think.

There's another possibility that I hadn't thought about. What makes it very overpowered isn't necessarily the damage, but the health drain, since it allows the mage to sustain himself easily in a melee. To change that, how about instead of draining life, it drains magick? In-game there's no viable way to replenish magick, other than using a Krater of Might or using a Mystic Ambit as the mage, both of which are rather scarce; the mage is all about the magic damage he can cause, so increasing willpower for more magick recovery is a tradeoff with intellect for magic damage and mana. So if Essence Drain replenishes magick rather than life, it will not only add to the mage's playstyle and allow a pure intellect character, it'll be also a gamble since going close and personal will make him likely to die a terrible death by bludgeoning.

I still advocate for a different secondary for Arc of Death though, the sphere one I mentioned before. Personally I just find that attack to be awesome, visually and on efficiency.

[CrazyEyes]

I'll try to nerf the wand secondary a bit also. It's strange to tweak, since it actually hits 15 times for very low damage each time, so if you increase the damage by 1, you're actually increasing it by 15. I'll just have to lower the amount of times it hits, I think.

There's another possibility that I hadn't thought about. What makes it very overpowered isn't necessarily the damage, but the health drain, since it allows the mage to sustain himself easily in a melee. To change that, how about instead of draining life, it drains magick? In-game there's no viable way to replenish magick, other than using a Krater of Might or using a Mystic Ambit as the mage, both of which are rather scarce; the mage is all about the magic damage he can cause, so increasing willpower for more magick recovery is a tradeoff with intellect for magic damage and mana. So if Essence Drain replenishes magick rather than life, it will not only add to the mage's playstyle and allow a pure intellect character, it'll be also a gamble since going close and personal will make him likely to die a terrible death by bludgeoning.

I still advocate for a different secondary for Arc of Death though, the sphere one I mentioned before. Personally I just find that attack to be awesome, visually and on efficiency.

Magick drain, huh. That is an interesting alternative to the mana drain that I thought of originally (and quickly thought pointless due to Mana Charge). It would certainly complement the sacrifice-everything-for-offensive-magic concept of the mage. Personally I still think the damage is a tad too high anyway. I think I will make a few of the frames damageless but still force pain anyway.

[SallazarSpellcaster]

I found out another issue with projectiles, this one I found to be actually quite amusing.

A few posts above, it was reported that they bleed. Well, not only that, you can actually "kill" them; when you fire at the projectiles enough, or with an ultimate weapon (I did with Bloodscourge,) they take so much damage that they "die" and no longer do any damage to you. They still explode on your face and prevent you from moving, but they don't actually hurt you. Unless it's the Disciple or the Vampire's projectiles, those actually lift you off the ground and carry you back a little, they actually managed to fling me off a cliff that way. I must admit, it was hilarious.

[CrazyEyes]

A few posts above, it was reported that they bleed. Well, not only that, you can actually "kill" them; when you fire at the projectiles enough, or with an ultimate weapon (I did with Bloodscourge,) they take so much damage that they "die" and no longer do any damage to you.

I was actually aware of that one.

It looks like Zandronum works too slowly for my taste (yes, one week is far too long) so I'm just going to release a fix patch that gets rid of the shit people have mentioned over the last couple of pages.

Edit: After testing the magick drain on the wand, I like it, so I think that's what I'll end up sticking with.

Could just keep the damage low, but have the last hit trigger some extra stun depending on points in Intelligence. Make it more of an escape tool with some health drain, existing solely as a way to bail yourself out of a situation where some big guy is right next to you about to squish you.

I considered this, but it kind of goes against the fact that the attack makes you stand still in the first place. If I were to overhaul the weapon to be a mobile "melee stun" attack, that would be kind of useless, I think. Mage's escape/defense mechanism lies primarily in getting free Discs of Repulsion, and he doesn't need much more than that without becoming an untouchable damage spewing machine, anyway. This change already feeds into that by allowing you to make an escape by draining magick from a nearby enemy and immediately casting Telekinesis (assuming you were out of magick), so in a more indirect fashion, you have your escape benefit.

[Crudux Cruo]

I was thinking about the balance of the fists, how primary and secondary are virtually the same.... primary is fine, but the secondary needs more OOMPH to it. Here are some sprites to program in uppercuts. What do you think, will we see a possible uppercut attack?

[Triple S]

I considered this, but it kind of goes against the fact that the attack makes you stand still in the first place.

The way I looked at it, it'd basically be a "saving throw" thing. If you screw it up, well you just wasted your last chance to maybe escape and are now standing still offering the bad guy a hi-five. :v

That being said, I rather like the magick drain idea! Better overall, and fits the mage more.

[CrazyEyes]

I was thinking about the balance of the fists, how primary and secondary are virtually the same.... primary is fine, but the secondary needs more OOMPH to it. Here are some sprites to program in uppercuts. What do you think, will we see a possible uppercut attack?

Now this is a man who appreciates a good bone-crunching. I'll incorporate those for the next version. Being a Mortal Kombat fan myself, I find it impossible to resist adding an uppercut.

[Crudux Cruo]

Cool, hope its not to hard.

I was playtesting this some more and i found a bug with the hammer's secondary where sometimes the attack doesn't connect and you're frozen? oh, and the mage's secondary doesn't seem to block the projectiles, which kind of stinks.

Is it possible to add more frames to the vorpal blade to smooth it out? i was also thinking about making some alternate sweeps to add variation, and hoping that as an alternate the player could do a horizontal slash that would have shorter range, but let out 1 extra wide attack (3x wider) to get more monsters. i'll make frames for it.

OH, and i forgot to rescale the sprite on the B frame, here it is scaled down slightly.

[CrazyEyes]

Cool, hope its not to hard.

I was playtesting this some more and i found a bug with the hammer's secondary where sometimes the attack doesn't connect and you're frozen? oh, and the mage's secondary doesn't seem to block the projectiles, which kind of stinks.

Is it possible to add more frames to the vorpal blade to smooth it out? i was also thinking about making some alternate sweeps to add variation, and hoping that as an alternate the player could do a horizontal slash that would have shorter range, but let out 1 extra wide attack (3x wider) to get more monsters. i'll make frames for it.

I was planning on making the Vorpal Blade attack by cleaving in wide, melee-range arcs (sort of like a melee-range BFG, if you will, but not quite as high damage), but Thetis said he's working on changing the weapons for his next release too, so I was waiting to see what he would come up with before changing all of his weapons.

I have seen that hammer bug before. It is kind of a rare bug; I noticed it and kind of forgot about it later. I'm pretty sure it carried over from HeXercise directly, since I didn't change anything about that attack except for the damage values.

By the way, tell me how you like what I did with your sprites. I didn't want to make a "super powerful" punch attack for the regular Spiked Gauntlets, so I thought the best use for this animation would be the "Mighty Blow" and "Death Blow" attacks. I also made it so that the Mighty Blow pushes away enemies when you punch them to make the uppercut more satisfying (it is a very subtle effect in this video since I am level 1, but I tried to demonstrate it anyway; it's why the Ettins look like they're stopped when I punch them). The force of the push scales with your strength and scales heavily with your mastery of Mighty Blow. If you're high-level but out of mana, it can give clever fighters a projectile attack. A fighter with 47 Strength and level 10 Mighty Blow can launch an Ettin with the force of a rocket launcher (assuming the Ettin would somehow survive the punch).

Edit: Heh, yeah, I noticed that the second sprite was way too huge. I scaled it down myself.
Double Edit: However, after putting your scaled-down sprite in the game, it looks way better; the one in the video now looks like his arm is shrinking slightly. I've replaced it in the .PK3 so it will look better when it's actually released. This is why I am not an artist.

[Crudux Cruo]

That's friggin amazing! i'm not sure how BALANCED it will be if its tied directly into mighty blow and strength, but it looks sweet! also, the sprites seem to work ok, though i have a feeling i should add an intermediary frame or two. if you send this to me, i can play test this and get a better idea if i need to make anything new. that totally isn't just a lame excuse to play around with this fkin cool game mechanic ;P

oh, and i was toying with the idea of making kick sprites, MAY OR MAY NOT DO THEM since its actually a great deal more time consuming. The vorpal stuff should come by here pretty quick, so keep your eyes peeled.

[CrazyEyes]

That's friggin amazing! i'm not sure how BALANCED it will be if its tied directly into mighty blow and strength, but it looks sweet! also, the sprites seem to work ok, though i have a feeling i should add an intermediary frame or two. if you send this to me, i can play test this and get a better idea if i need to make anything new. that totally isn't just a lame excuse to play around with this fkin cool game mechanic ;P

Heh, I don't think it will be unbalanced, since it -is- Mighty Blow, and not a normal attack.

oh, and i was toying with the idea of making kick sprites, MAY OR MAY NOT DO THEM since its actually a great deal more time consuming. The vorpal stuff should come by here pretty quick, so keep your eyes peeled.

As much as I like kick attacks, I have no idea where it would fit in, so don't feel too bad about passing it up.

[Valherran]

Would look better if it sent the target upwards a bit and back.

[Crudux Cruo]

OH, i miss understood. i still wanna play test it though

kicks... ok, ill forget it then, and focus on the vorpal blade.