A Wild Boss Fight Appears!

What ho! It’s been a busy few weeks preparing Greed for its first public screening, so let’s get right on with what’s new:

A Boss!

Although early versions of the game had an end-of-level boss battle, I ended up scrapping it for various reasons. I’m much happier with this one, which turned out to be a lot of fun to script. In the finished game, I’m planning a boss fight every 2 floors, with some different random encounters (maybe shops, or gambling minigames etc) on the other alternate floors.

Anyhow, here she is: the Cave Mother. She maaad. You’ll meet her after Caves 2. Be ready!

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8 new rings

The third tier of rings is now in the game, bringing the total number of non-unique rings to 24! Whoo. Tier 3 rings can be crafted from level 6, which means they’re effectively uncraftable at the moment, but they do have a chance to spawn at any point in the game (higher-tier rings get more common as you progress through the floors).

The tier-3 rings are:

Spell

  • Ring of Blazing Burst
  • Ring of Frost Wave
  • Ring of Toxic Splash
  • Ring of Blast Helix

Passive

  • Ring of the Priest (+1 sec invincibility after being hit)
  • Ring of the Wizard (+4 MP regeneration)
  • Ring of the Thief (+100% pull radius)
  • Ring of the Warrior (+2% critical chance)
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This is a good point to mention that pull radius and critical chance are now things! Your dwarf now acts like a little hoover, sucking up loot as he approaches it, and Rings of the Thief increase the radius. Meanwhile, criticals deal double damage and have a 1% base chance to fire on every hit. Equip Rings of the Warrior to increase the chance and start dishing out more damage.

There’s only one more set of rings to go for the complete set of craftable rings. Plenty more unique rings will be added as I go on too!

MP overhaul

I was finding that as spell rings rings are upgraded, it was necessary to fill nearly all your ring slots with Rings of Magic to keep up with their mana consumption. As this is clearly Not Fun and limits the things you could be doing with those other slots, I’ve made a few improvements:

  • Base MP regeneration now increases with character level. Overall, you’ll regenerate more mana as you advance and should be able to handle higher-level rings with less support.
  • The effect of Rings of Magic has been changed: instead of providing +2 MP regeneration, each one now gives +20 MP per mana globe. 
  • The new tier 3 ring, Ring of the Wizard, effectively replaces the old Ring of Magic effect but provides +4 MP regeneration, a much bigger boost that frees up slots for other things.

And that’s about it for now. Screening tomorrow!

Play it

Q:I love your game, I like the graphics and how the levels generate... I'm looking for the same method for generate the level, I see your game, you have rooms, tunnel, and everythings make sense when you play the game... do you have any suggestion?I use construct2 too, I saw some tutorial but the 80% of the tutorial just generate casual tile and hole, how did you made an "Intelligent" procreation of the levels? thank you very much, and good works!

dangerfe

Hey man,

Sorry if this reply’s late, I haven’t checked my inbox in a while! Thanks very much for your comments, glad you’re enjoying the game. 

Basically everything I do in Greed’s level generation is based on this tutorial.

It’s hard to explain it fully here, but I work in steps: so first I cover the map in bedrock, then I use the miner method to generate the shape of the level on top of that. Then I use some geometry to generate squares and rectangles which become rooms & walls, then some simple miner method programming to add tunnels which run in a straight line (but have a chance to change direction every few steps). There are checks after each step to make sure rooms aren’t overlapping each other, tunnels aren’t overlapping rooms, etc.

I use two identical arrays: a “Map” array, and a “Test” array. The “Test” array gets the position and size of the rooms first, then checks against the “Map” array for overlaps with other rooms. If there is an overlap, “Test” is cleared and generates a new room in a new position. If there’s no overlap, it copies the room onto the “Map” array. The process can be repeated as many times as I want rooms.

Sorry if that’s not very clear, it’s not easy to explain in as much detail as I’d like! But the level generation isn’t very intelligent. It’s just a matter of layering sets of features (rooms, tunnels, ore etc) over each other and then making sure they don’t overlap if you don’t want them to. The tutorial only uses 2 values, but remember you can have as many values as you like, corresponding to as many tiles as you like.

Again, sorry if this isn’t very helpful for you. The best thing to do is just mess around with that tutorial a *lot* and try to figure out a method that makes sense for you. I knew nothing about procedural generation until I did that tutorial, and I’m certainly not a great programmer, so I’m sure you can do it too :)

Update v34: The Big One

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Whoop whoop! This update expands Greed to four whole levels, beginning in a brand new area: the Caves. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, and it’s one I’m really excited to reach. It means the vast majority of the infrastructure is done, and I can finally start expanding it, bit by bit, into the full ten-level game I’ve got planned.

A trapdoor now spawns on every level - to open it, find the key that spawns in a different room, then press C near the open trapdoor to descend to the next level. That said, the difficulty ramps up quite a bit from level to level, and there’s no going back once you’ve descended so make sure to explore around, loot all the things and level up a bit first :)

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There’s also a lot of new features: new enemies in the form of Myconids and Zombies, new potions, new rings, challenge rooms, potion quickslots and floor themes. Challenge rooms spawn a bunch of enemies and a chest when they’re entered - to pass you have to kill all the enemies within the time limit. If you fail, the chest goes boom.

As in Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, floor themes have been implemented as a way of adding a bit of variety to each playthrough. You might spawn on a level that’s covered in darkness, packed with explosives or that’s been overrun by a particular enemy type. More floor themes will be added as I go along.

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Potion quickslots are now in the game too - when you pick up a potion, instead of being auto-used it’s now added to your inventory and assigned to an available slot. From the inventory, you can edit your quickslot loadout by selecting a potion and pressing 1-4, and press the same number to use them in-game.

Mana globes have also been added, which act a bit like food for rings. I was noticing rings tended to run out of mana quickly after being upgraded, so instead of just spawning more potions, I made these as mini-boosts that keep you topped up as you’re clearing a room.

Finally, I’m extremely happy and a little bit terrified to say I’ll be screening Greed at Ga-Ma-Yo 8, an game dev event in Leeds next month. It’s an awesome-looking event for local developers, and I’m looking forward to seeing what people make of Greed and checking out all the other games people will be screening there.

This means the next few weeks will be the super busybusytimes: I want to at least add a couple of boss encounters and some cutscenes with a bit of backstory before the screening. Yipe! I’d love to get as much feedback on the current state of the game as possible, so let me know in the comments how you think it can be improved. I’d also like to know if anyone can actually get through all 4 levels as it stands at the moment - it’s really hard to judge the difficulty of your own game :P

Coming soon: Bosses! Backstory!

Play it

Update v34 changelog:

  • Level structure now implemented: Caves 1, Caves 2, Mines 1, Mines 2. More to come…
  • New enemies: myconids and zombies
  • Potion quickslot bar added
  • New potions: Sage’s Tonic and Leprechaun’s Draught
  • New unique rings, still very very rare. There are 6 in the game so far.
  • Mana globe
  • Floor themes
  • Tips added to loading screen
  • Tweaks and rebalances to effects, potions, damage etc

Update v31: Crafting with Cultists

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At last! This update introduces crafting to the game, letting you use all those jewels and metals you’ve been mining to craft superior rings. People always ask me what the metals & jewels are for. Well, now you know! They’re for making stuff. A forge now spawns somewhere on every level, and once you’ve found it you can put all that loot to good use by creating new rings, enhancing your old ones or salvaging ones you don’t like.

Crafting’s not something I just tacked on for fun - it was always going to be one of the game’s core systems almost from the beginning, and having it implemented represents a pretty big & exciting leap forward for the game. While there are only 8 recipes available at the moment, there are 32 planned in total for the finished game, and the rings you craft and how you decide to upgrade them will allow for a wide variety of playstyles.

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To use the forge, approach it and press ‘C’. You’ll have 3 options: Craft creates a new ring from scratch. You can create any of the eight tier-one rings currently available (the four spell rings - Ring of Fireball, Ring of Snowflake, Ring of Viper, Ring of Thunder, and the four passive rings - Ring of Health, Ring of Magic, Ring of Speed, Ring of Attack). I’m working on a bunch of higher-tier rings at the moment, which you’ll eventually be able to craft if you’re a high enough level.

Enhance adds another spell to an existing spell ring, and this is a meaty game mechanic that hasn’t really been a feature yet - multi-spells that dish out lots of damage, but burn through mana very quickly - so if you’re making these, make sure you craft some Rings of Magic or, alternatively, increase their mana capacity by adding the same spell again :D

Finally, Salvage lets you destroy a ring to recover half of its crafting cost (note that jewel values are rounded down - so you don’t get any jewels from salvaging tier-one rings).

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But it’s not all crafting. There’s a new enemy lurking in the rooms. Cultists (they get everywhere eh?) in four different flavours of pain. This was really just my way of getting the elemental effects code all done at once, but I’ve come to like the little fellas.

Finally, the first unique ring has also joined the game - you might find a Ring of Invisibility here and there. Unique rings are non-craftable and have weird effects - in the finished game they’ll be much rarer than normal rings, although this one currently spawns just as often as any other.

Coming soon: More levels! That’s right, more than one!

Update v31 changelog:

  • Crafting crafting crafting. Forge now spawns on each level; approach it to get crafting.
  • Pickups like food, loot and bombs now disappear after 10 seconds on the floor, and enemy attacks now break containers. I’m hoping together, these changes make things feel a bit more urgent: ie, once you’ve popped a door open and spawned the enemies, they could eventually destroy all the loot in the if you don’t get in there quick.
  • New enemy - four different Cultists with elemental attacks. Player’s resistances to all elements currently set to 50%, but this’ll change - the next tier of passive rings will be all about elemental resistance and enhancing your own elemental effects.
  • Floating XP text spawns when enemies die
  • First unique ring added - grants invisibility after 5 secs. Attacking or taking damage resets the timer.
  • New font! Many thanks to my broski Ty for that one.
  • Flavour text added for each ring.

Play it!

Update v29: Like a champ

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A mostly graphical update this week, but quite a big one. I’ve been busy implementing all the new tiles onto a newly responsive tilemap - meaning the tiles now adapt to the ones adjacent to them in real-time, offering an enhanced digging experience™. To do this meant more or less rewriting the tile generation stuff from scratch, but it was worth it! Check out those rocky rocks and that earthy, earthy earth.

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You’ll also now find champion monsters roaming the dungeon - 1 in 20 monsters will spawn bigger, meaner and yielding more XP. Keep an eye out for them!

Also, I fixed that Viper ring everyone hates.

Coming soon: Crafting! Honest!

Update v29 changelog:

  • Implemented responsive tilemap
  • Champion monsters added
  • Ring of Viper now 100% less crap
  • Fixed some bugs in the inventory system

Play it!

Update v26: Collect All The Things!

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Woop! It’s been a long time since the last update, but this last month or so I’ve been busy adding new stuff and tweaking others.

First of all, a big huge thanks to Ty Lagalo, who’s been very kindly creating a whole bunch of assets for the game, including new dungeon tilesets and a shiny new GUI. Ty’s the developer of Mystic Lake and the lead artist on Shipwreck, which was recently Greenlit on Steam. Congratulations to Brushfire Games - it’s an awesome-looking game and I can’t wait to play it on release. Go give it a ‘like’ or whatever it is you crazy kids do.

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One of the most important additions to Greed is the all-new inventory system. I’ll be honest, inventories and interfaces in general are right up there on my Gigantic Ballache list as a developer, and I’m really happy to have it complete and functional. Now, when you pick up a ring, it’ll be automatically equipped if you have a slot available, otherwise it’ll be stashed in your inventory for later. Press I to open the inventory, arrow keys to navigate and space bar to select an item, then equip, unequip or drop it.

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The next big new feature is levelling. You now have an XP bar running along the top of the GUI, tracking your progress to the next level - killing enemies increases XP, and every level gained opens up a new ring slot for you to equip those magical goodies. The XP rewards are currently on the high side, just to demonstrate the system - they’ll be toned down quite a lot as I start adding new dungeons and structuring the game a bit more.

As the screenshots show, I’m playing around with lighting effects too. Still needs some tweaking, but I’m pretty happy with the dingy effect it’s giving.

The boss room and key have also been removed for now. I wasn’t happy with how much space the boss room took up, and it tended to throw the rest of the level out of wack a bit, so soon I’ll be adding a trapdoor on every level that you can unlock and descend to a new area and fight the boss. This’ll let me hand-craft boss encounters without worrying about how it affects the procedural stuff.

Finally, there’s a couple of new potions to find - Miner’s Potion (reveals metal seams) and a Beserker Potion (temporary speed and fire rate boost).

Coming soon - crafting stations, challenge rooms, new dungeons, bosses!

Play it!

Update v26 changelog:

  • New graphical assets
  • Inventory implemented - press I to access
  • Levelling implemented - level up to open new ring slots
  • Lighting implemented
  • HUD info text
  • Food added. There are three types of food to find, which restore HP if you’re under your maximum. Potions of Healing now bring you back to full health.
  • Two new potions - Beserker Potion and Miner’s Potion
  • Changed the way treasure rolls from containers work. Containers can now spawn all four types of metal as well as potions and food.
  • Gems are now pickupable. Gems and metals still currently serve no purpose, but the crafting system should be coming very soon.
  • Boss room & key removed

Update v21: This Dungeon Has Changed

July 20th 2014

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This update makes big changes to the way the dungeon is generated. After a lot of prodding around with the level generator, rooms are now different shapes and can join on to one another, creating a more natural, connected and ‘dungeony’ feel than the separated oblong rooms there were before.

There are also 4 new ore types to mine: copper, silver, iron and jewels as well as gold! All currently useless, like the gold, but they’ll tie in to the crafting system that’s still being worked on.

Finally, there’s also a new enemy roaming the tunnels and hallways: cave butterflies. Evil cave butterflies. Thanks to my main man Praron for the sprite (check out his awesome pixel art! It’s fab)

Play it!

Update v21 changelog:

  • Level generator now produces rooms of different shapes, and rooms connect to one another by doors.
  • New enemy: cave butterflies that swarm and attack (and occasionally glitch out, I’m looking into it…)
  • Four new ore types. The HUD still only shows how much gold you’ve collected, though - I’ll eventually be moving the display for all metals mined to the inventory, which is still in the works. Jewels currently can’t be picked up (again, saving that implementation for the inventory) but will spawn when mined.
  • Eight-directional shooting now possible: hold multiple arrow keys to shoot spells diagonally.
  • Prompt to restart now displayed on death.
  • Doors don’t pop open on touch any more: smash or shoot them open instead.