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

[Danimal]

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.

[ffaf]

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.

[ffaf]

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!

[ffaf]

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.

[Julius]

: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.

[Danimal]

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?

[ffaf]

Fountain is fine.

[ffaf]

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.

[Danimal]

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?

[ffaf]

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

[Danimal]

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?

[Julius]

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.

[ffaf]

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!

[Danimal]

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.

[ffaf]

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.

[Unnamed]

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.

[Danimal]

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.

[Unnamed]

Yes, I use Linux. There are no draw errors in the Empyrean mod though.

[Danimal]

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

Found here:
~/.config/flare/flare_log.txt