Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 23 Jun 2021, 08:52

Sorry about that, the engine is being worked on even now, and it seems i dedicated to breaking it many times, Dorkster is very kind to make a fix each time i ask; hopefully this is the last critical update of engine and mod, i tested and everything works as intended.
New changes would be about gameplay and difficulty rather than bugs from now on, it was my fault since i was developing into an older version of the engine.

As for powers, did you finish Farwan quest? "a drink for a drunk", if not do it asap; if you did and they still dont appear go to world map and talk to the modder.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 23 Jun 2021, 09:18

Danimal {l Wrote}:Sorry about that, the engine is being worked on even now, and it seems i dedicated to breaking it many times, Dorkster is very kind to make a fix each time i ask; hopefully this is the last critical update of engine and mod, i tested and everything works as intended.
New changes would be about gameplay and difficulty rather than bugs from now on, it was my fault since i was developing into an older version of the engine.

As for powers, did you finish Farwan quest? "a drink for a drunk", if not do it asap; if you did and they still dont appear go to world map and talk to the modder.


I see. The idea is nice but from an UX point of view maybe could be presented better. As now the (newbie) player has this highlighted icon that… does nothing.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 23 Jun 2021, 09:36

Ok, I am playing it a bit more now (I thought the quest was linear, but there are many of them) and can only grasp how much material is there! That should be even more of a motivation to polish it, this game is ace content wise!
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 23 Jun 2021, 10:10

Talked to the modder, it unlocked all the things. Still believe it would be a better idea to have the icon highlighted *after* it is possible to spend points! Having great fun, having the ability to *choose* a quest is way better than linearity. If you are not ready or bored by a map you can select another one.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Julius » 23 Jun 2021, 10:34

Danimal {l Wrote}::cool: Thats why you start with so many potions, try to get some loot to sell and upgrade your equipment. But you are going to be chugging potions like crazy the whole mod, i intended it like that.
It worries me the players will get bored or stressed so soon, with a bit of equipment the cellar gets easy soon; ill see what i can do to clarify the initial quest line. Please keep on playing and tell your impresions, no matter if good or bad.


I am honestly not very motivated to keep playing because of that difficulty. And I also don't think it is a good kind of difficulty if the solution is to just drink more potions... no strategic play-style involved at all.

I think the main problem is how open the maps are, no matter where you go there are just loads of enemies and they follow you around.

Diablo1 had a lot of rooms you could clear out and retreat to if needed and thus even in hardcore mode you could still enjoy it with some strategic play-style.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 23 Jun 2021, 11:09

I guess for archer and mage the smaller maps are harder, no place to run and easier to get killed due to poor armor/hp, the solution i can think right now is to lower enemies numbers and/or their HP, which is actually not a bad idea since this is a hipotetical introduction first act (as a standalone it made more sense to be hard). As i said, its my first time doing something this big scope, balancing for different playstiles is hard, specially when i usually play as warrior and like it challenging, thats why i value your input a lot (specially with non warrior skills usefulness opinions).

As for the initial points sitting there, i can do nothing about it, except unlocking some of the pasives from the start, they should help the player a bit at first mission, even if pasives are a big WIP as of now; i had planned a way to reset all stats points somewhere in the future with an npc so min-maxers can get their kick.

Edit: is the fountain behaving well now in linux?
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 23 Jun 2021, 14:05

Fountain is fine.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 23 Jun 2021, 23:39

Arrived at the forbidden cathedral. Boy it is hard. As the game progresses it gets better, which makes me think the first map (cellar) is slightly longer and bigger than it should be for a fair and engaging intro. Had lotsa fun in the mine and fighting wyverns.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 24 Jun 2021, 00:44

Thats nice to hear :) . What class are you playing?, and skills used? i might need to de-populate the cellar and the green forest, how were the goblin camps difficulty wise?
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 24 Jun 2021, 10:03

My name is Laiko, I am a Magician, invested most of my points in Magic Bolt (IV) and Shield (III). I wouldn't be here without my trusty, respawnable pet bat. Goblin camps:
  • Mole clan was difficult and interesting, both for having some backstory and a nice boss fight (iirc the only boss that can spawn critters as you do, so you need to think about it and be overt without resorting to the usual «let us use the pet as cannon fodder» tactic).
  • Wyvern was a very good map, with difficult enemies throwing spears at you and close quarter combat, which was challenging but satisfying. Also compact, which is a plus imho.
  • Boar clan was the less fun of them all in my opinion: huge map, with bastard enemies that can knock you and your companion out, taking a sizeable chunk of your HPs. As I said, huge, so it is a chore to clean even the path to the bosses (which was a nice fight to be honest). I did beat it by running it to the river without fighting and kiling only the boss. I did not yet manage to find the ingredient for the Witch, too hard for me at my level (5).

Since I have finished Act 1 a few hours ago, here is some feedback, I hope that it can be useful to you

Like:
  • funny lines were funny and gave some comiedic relief to the carnage without distracting from the plot, well done.
  • town was well fleshed and its inhabitant believable, I came back to hear if they
    had somemthing new or just to check their backstory (see: Smallwood)
  • new monsters are really nice, some are hard without just relying on massive HP bars (as it was with Empyrean Campaign). I liked the Lux priests especially, boars were a nice addition too along with slimes: enemies that you cannot beat just by mindlessly rushing and slashing.
  • pet monsters add a new dimension tactically and they are very useful.
  • Side quests were very nice and gave a sense of depth to the game. At first I missed the innkeeper role of «quest collector» (my bad, skipped some dialogue), but maybe more than one NPC should point the player to Owens, reinforcing its importance in the whole game world.
  • Speaking of NPC, Goblins had for sure the best lines. Witty, at times manipulative, playing along with the Player Character, very good.
  • Nice self-insert fanfic. I always like when the game designer drops some notes on how he approached to envision the game, credits and flavour of the ouvre. Makes you appreciate the effort and understand design choices.
  • The story is nicely narrated and graphics helps. Maybe it is a tad overt in this Act (we expect Lucian to be evil from the start) there are things we do not know yet (dad, etc.) plus left me wanting for more, so it is ok.
  • Difficulty: I like a challenge, tho I know some other players do not. Thorny issue to solve, I suspect giving more difficulty levels (in which way? less monsters? more powerful starting character? I do not really know) will be needed in the future.

Maybe dislike:
  • I prefer the smaller maps (caves) to the bigger ones (green forest). Despite green forest having superb sections (the «ambush» by goblins, black wolf, strange beast), after so many encounters with wild critters surrounding you it gets frustrating.
  • I believe the beginning is the weakest spot. Church cellar is big, difficult and not very rewarding, nor slashing wise nor architecture wise. I know this is meant to be a Hard mod, but the first Quest need to be nice&easy to get the endorphine of the player flowing (plus the story flowing, too).
  • Also at the beginning you have power-points you cannot spend. That is a UX annoyance («is that a bug?», «why cannot I spend them?») which could be easily solved by allotting the points only when the player triggered that specific encounter (Farwam)
  • The biggest no no for me was installing different Flare versions to try it. There needs to be a clear instruction in the README and to be honest I expect the game to be compatible with the latest version available on flarerpg site or to have some kind of bundle (former is quite important if you want your game to end up in fedora/debian/ubuntu repositories.

This was one of the most interesting gaming experiences of 2021, congratulations!
edit: slayed the warboar
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 24 Jun 2021, 19:11

Thanks for all your feeedback and patience Ffaf, from all our conversations i get this:

- Bigs maps are disliked, not because of size, but from having enemies everywhere
- I forgot about Dink, i will have to give him his great destiny yet.
- Clearer directions to blacksmit at the start and innkeeper later.
- Difficulty, enemy depopulation would help, also shortening how much they follow you when aggroed, "safe zones" inside maps without enemies
- Cut down the number of monsters on cellar to just a handful
- Pasive skills available at start to spend those first 2 points, its a pity but thats the only solution

Im sorry about the versions thing at the start, i didnt account for the engine changing so much; thankfully its fully working now. I made a bundle for windows but have no idea how to for linux users. That takes me to another point, i would like more people to play it; how do i go about it? first thing would be convincing Dorkster to update homepage and including engine update and mod. Where else can i post it? Free Game Dev blog? already on Oga, what more pages dedicated to Foss are there?

Lastly, im happy you liked it, i poured many hours into it and would like to expand it, but i wont find the will to if it just goes unseen.

Pd. Did you get the the "Travel spell" or kill the forgotten hero?
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Julius » 24 Jun 2021, 20:02

Proposed changes sound good. Linux version was working fine here (Manjaro).

I don't think many people still look at the FreeGamer blog these days.

You can post here: https://lemmy.ml/c/opensourcegames (as well as on Reddit I guess)

And making a page on itch.io with the downloads etc would be probably nice as well.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 24 Jun 2021, 21:27

Danimal {l Wrote}:Thanks for all your feeedback and patience Ffaf, from all our conversations i get this:

- Bigs maps are disliked, not because of size, but from having enemies everywhere
- I forgot about Dink, i will have to give him his great destiny yet.
- Clearer directions to blacksmit at the start and innkeeper later.
- Difficulty, enemy depopulation would help, also shortening how much they follow you when aggroed, "safe zones" inside maps without enemies
- Cut down the number of monsters on cellar to just a handful
- Pasive skills available at start to spend those first 2 points, its a pity but thats the only solution

Im sorry about the versions thing at the start, i didnt account for the engine changing so much; thankfully its fully working now. I made a bundle for windows but have no idea how to for linux users. That takes me to another point, i would like more people to play it; how do i go about it? first thing would be convincing Dorkster to update homepage and including engine update and mod. Where else can i post it? Free Game Dev blog? already on Oga, what more pages dedicated to Foss are there?

Lastly, im happy you liked it, i poured many hours into it and would like to expand it, but i wont find the will to if it just goes unseen.

Pd. Did you get the the "Travel spell" or kill the forgotten hero?


I agree with Julius on promotion: Reddit, itch.io, twitter are a great. Then there are online publications, once the game is finished you can see if you can get picked by one of those.
I *did* get the travel spell, but I did *not* kill the forgotten hero, how to do that?

Keep doing the good work, this is an ace of a game!
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 24 Jun 2021, 22:46

Green forest, northeast corner, there is a tombstone in there near a lake, touch to summon; hes pretty tanky but only a menace to melee heros.

Thanks Julius, ill have a look at those.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby ffaf » 24 Jun 2021, 23:14

mhh, I touched that tomb before but I got a «Grave robbing is an evil act» and nothing else happened. Tried it now and it does spawn a zombie! Maybe it was becuase I was stading right on the spawnpoint? Nice touch in any case.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Unnamed » 01 Jul 2021, 18:47

I tried out the mod as well. I noticed the there are issues with z ordering, i.e. sometimes the player is drawn below walls.

I tried the magician. I haven't realized that I'm into girly dresses...
Anyway, instead of consuming tons of health potions you consume tons of mana potions. That is until I found a ring with 10% MP steal. At this point my mana pool was always overflowing because spell damage is usually much larger than mana cost.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 01 Jul 2021, 19:22

I haven't realized that I'm into girly dresses...


We are always finding things about ourselves ;)

I have had reported a few cases of draw order errors, i think all of them into linux; are you a linux user as well? does it fail into Empyrean mod as well?

Thanks, ill nerf the hp/mana leech, maybe increase the cost of spells, its very hard to try and balance such a big mod without any input.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Unnamed » 01 Jul 2021, 19:28

Yes, I use Linux. There are no draw errors in the Empyrean mod though.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 02 Jul 2021, 09:31

For the ones with graphical errors, could you attach flare_log so i can have a look?

Found here:
~/.config/flare/flare_log.txt
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby trevor » 03 Jul 2021, 06:59

Wow, friend! It's really cool. You are my hero now. Please keep working on this awesome mod.

Update comment later:

Man, I have one question. I found belt with weird big attributes and its cost is only one coin. WTF? o_O It is OK? I'm terminator now!

Image
I'm sorry. My English is very bad.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 03 Jul 2021, 12:58

Hehe, thats a dev item, its unlocked by talking to the modder on Worldmap, you unlocked a bunch of cheat items that the goblin sells now, like all the runes and pets.

Thanks, im still trying to improve on it before moving to the next act, are you a Linux or win user? Linux user reports graphical bugs here and there, please do if you find as well.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Wuzzy » 16 Jul 2021, 02:21

Hey, nice! I like that people still make FLARE mods.

I have just completed Act 1, pretty nice. The game timer was at 3h 42min when I reached the level exit. But I died a couple of times before I got there … :( Even in the first level with the nasty rats.
So, the game is supposed to be hard but when you die, nothing bad really happens. You just have to replay the map, it does't seem you lose anything. You don't even teleport back to your hometown. Not sure if intentional …

So the way I played this was basically hack-and-slay. Early on I tried to get as much loot as possible, always preferring the items and skills that increase loot chances (two lucky runes). Eventually I got so much stuff I just sold most of it (many duplicates), and bought lots of potions. Most armor I got was loot drops, but a few things were bought.
I didn't play ranged weapons. I only tried the slingshot once but gave up because it was too weak. Guess I used too few points for dex, hehe. I also tried to use the magic spells but they seemed incredibly short-range. Is there any longer-range magic or does it depend on my stats/skills as well?

One feature I like is that you can summon creatures that you discovered. The wolf fetish is my favourite item. Apparently you can only summon one wolf at a time, is that correct? Even if I have two wolf fetishes.
I noticed I often ended up switching between the wolf fetish and the lucky rune. I equipped the wolf fetish to summon the wolf then switch back to the lucky rune for drops. Only in intense battles I did not switch back.

Anyway, I like to have a trusty companion with me to aid me in battle! :D
I once tried to heal my wolf at the healer but it didn't work, so I had to wait. :/

What was slightly confusing for me is that some areas are not enterable at first although there are blue arrows pointing to it. I first thought the game was already over at the first map since I couldn't go anywhere, lol. I think the arrows should be removed as long you cannot enter the area yet, and probably add a character or something else telling you that you can't proceed to area X yet.

I think the map design is more or less OK. The only map I dislike is the hometown. This looks too simplistic and dull somehow. The stone paths looks kinda repetetive and also off somehow, and there seems to be a little bit of a lack of detail on the grass floor. I don't know how to explain it, but it all looks too ... flat somehow? Hard to put in in words. The problem is mostly with the inner town area IMO, which looks a bit artificial somehow.

Anyway, the most important thing is ... overall I had fun playing, even if it's just an early version, and that's a good sign! :)

Some bugs I found:
1) Typos … so … many … typos. They are all over the game. xD The final version definitely will need some proofreading.
2) In the wyvern tribe and boar tribe maps, there seem to be invisible barriers but eventually I managed ot get through. Later I saw by chance that my trusty wolf companion attacked a stone blockade?
3) If you destroyed that invisible stone blockade it says "Dead" (not "Destroyed"). FYI: I reported the same bug about Empyrean Campaign already, and they managed to fix it.
4) One of the chitin armours makes your body partially invisible. Strange.
5) When you enter the strange cave with the "strange creature" that the Wolf Tribe sent you to, your character renders above the cave entrance. It doesn't look like you actually walk into the cave, it just looks kinda buggy, lol.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Danimal » 16 Jul 2021, 13:32

Hello, thanks for playing.

Currently im trying to ease up the mod, since many players said its too hard. I lowered lvs exp, de-populated and rebalanced enemies, created safe buffer zones, erased "welcome parties" when entering new map... these changes should make easier to play ranged/magic (have to test); yesterday i had a melee run in 1:35 hours, almost hit Lv8. I think its a good time for a startert act, i didnt die as much, but not everyone likes too much difficulty.

When you die you lose 30% of current exp, not much problem now, but at high levels is a nasty penalty, i wondered if adding gold/item loss, but those penalties were far too punitive together. When you die character repawns at last save point which is automatic when entering map/cutscene/story teleport.

As for ranged characters, slingshot is the weakest and only a starter weapon, its intended since in Empyrean you can kill a lv8 minotaur with a lv1 char using it. It was beyond broken, a stone age machine-gun; so i made bows have bigger range and damage and be the staple archer weapon. Magicians are different, the spells get stronger, reach longer and adquiere special characteristics as they are improved; Magic bolt lv1 have short reach but at lv5 has long reach, armor/enemy piercing and mana leech. If not, you can a get a wand with spells you dont have and use them.

You discovered an engine exploit with the fetishes, you can basically get all of them, summon all pets and replace with runes. Nothing i can do, not very efficient tactic either. I love the antlion pet the most, its a little rabid thing and the boar pet is pretty tanky (so much it deserves a nerf). If you like pets the druid or ranger are planned to get multiple animal summons spells. Healing doesnt work on them, but there are skills to increase their Hp/def/attack... to be added in the future.

You are not the first to tell me about getting lost, ill add a message when you get near closed areas, im also checking if its possible some kind of visual quest/side quest marker. Maybe you havent noticed, but the first map is very "Diablo" like ;) , ill look to improve looks, but the tileset is very limited.

As for your main point:
Typos: i got a web corrector, im dealing with them.
Invisible "stone/spear barricades", i think it has to do with linux extreme case sensitivity, could you check if going "mods\HERESY\animations\enemies\ and downcasing Barricade_stone.txt =>barricade_stone.txt fix it? they are located at wyvern map. I think "Chitin armor" has the same problems, windows doesnt really care about capitals... You can see the spiked club and reinforced pants and chest, rigth?
The cave entrance looks nice in windows, but i will erase it if its that ugly.

All in all, thank you for the feedback, could you also attach your flare_log so i can have a look at the errors?. Found here: ~/.config/flare/flare_log.txt
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby Wuzzy » 20 Aug 2021, 09:52

I don't have to test to say that case-sensitivitiy absolutely matters. Just fix the casing. And yes, I can see most other items just fine, only the items I listed were problematic.

I don't know what I should send the logs for and more importantly, when exactly. It's not like I discovered a crash.

The cave entrance seems to be a "depth sorting" issue. I don't know if FLARE is capable of doing this properly.

I can test a later version, but not anytime soon.

Thanks for the reply.
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Re: Heresy, Flare mod - First Act Released!! Bug fixes

Postby freem » 07 Jan 2023, 01:51

I finished the 1st chapter today (or rather yesterday, but have not slept since this so...).

It is indeed harder than Empyrean, which is a good thing.
It suffers bugs, with invisible equipment and monsters. For equipments, it's not a big problem, but for the sonic bat and the barricades it's very annoying. There are a few typos here and there, too, not a problem, but I could not find a repo to which I could send fixes.
Another thing that I think might be a bug, or otherwise a weird choice that I would change, is that almost all the passive skills require 2 in strength. Including "Brains over Brawn" and "Fox cunning", which is very weird.
I think it also suffers several balance problems, which is hardly surprising considering it's age. Let me talk about a few of them:

* as Empyrean, there are too much potions drops at start. Although for some reason, when I got enough drop chances bonuses, health potion seems to completely stopped. Maybe it's related to the monsters, it seems only the cathedral area drops them?
* overall too many drops, which means most of them are basically just to be sold, and unusable.
* merchants only sell stuff you already dropped 20 times. They're basically useless. As in Empyrean.
* the level 3 monsters which are spawned when taking the witch's quest can't be touched by a level 2 character, at all. I could only hit them with a level 3, and only managed to kill them because I was a mage and hence had ranged attack, droped enough equipment with movement speed bonus, and rat/wolf fetishes.
* the 1st time I reached the book before chapter 2, I was quite powerful in regard from the other areas (I really had no problem clearing the areas there, because I had nice stuff), but still, reading it made me die instantly. Yes, instantly. And since I play in permadeath, this means: play again. Next time I went there, I farmed until being level 8, and it was too easy... not sure which level I should be to have that area interesting.
* health/mana rings are useless. It's better to use endurance or intelligence rings, as they provide the same amount of health/mana, plus the other benefits of the statistics. The problem here is that statistics upgrades are way too powerful compared to other things. Raw statistics are basically only useful to be able to equip stuff, then the stuff does all the job.

To be honest, those problems already exist in what I remember from Empyrean, and are why I consider Empyrean a pretty boring game. At least Heresy is harder, but I wish it would encourage less the farming, still. I also know it's not an easy task, and it's quite time consuming.
In any case, thanks for the mod, it was nice to play it.

Note: I had a more detailed post previously, but lost it because of forum disconnected me for some reason, and I'm too lazy to rewrite it in full. So I only put here the bigger points :)
I wonder how much it would be to write a mod to fix the potion, gold, merchant,... problems in a generic way, so that it would make both Heresy and Empyrean more interesting...
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