Another questions about SKHD

Peppermaster

Dear Mr. Raptis

I have several questions about SKHD.

1. Do you think Health up and Mana up skill needs to change to be more useful? If so, do you have any plans for them in mind?

2. Do you plan to rework some bosses or make their pattern same as it used to be in the old Keep? 

3. How would melee attack work for mage? Do i move into enemy to automatically hit them like Dark or press a button to swing the staff?

4. Compared to Magic Storm, other secondary spells like Ring of fire and Call Leviathan has low efficiency in mid to late game due to lack of damage. Do you have plans to make them more viable or just leave it be?

5. Will the steam jet gain the arrow block ability?

6. Can you make the player and some undead monsters sprites less grey? They look too grey in the screenshot compared to the old keep and boneyard.  

7. If both elemental flourish comes in SKHD, are you going to allow players to get both of them or get one only?

It is true that talking about SKHD is too early at the moment but I am just curious about your thoughts and direction for the game. I hope boneyard beta work and RwK goes smoothly. Keep the good work, Mr Raptis. ;)

Raptisoft

1. They're going to allow more levels, and increase more with each levelup.  And unless this turns out to not work well, all skills in KeepHD get a special bonus at max level.

2. Rework

3. SKHD won't have melee skills for mages, because there will be a Paladin character for that.  But you will be able to whack things with the wizard, it just won't accomplish much (any and all melee powers that are useful to mages will come from enchanted items)

4. More viable.

5. Yes.  But welding is going to be different.  Too many people are confused by the admittedly crazy way that welding works.

6. Yes, one of the things I realized by porting Keep is that I had gone "too dark."  It looks cool and all, but it doesn't look fun, and the first commandment for games is fun first.  And that's why I'm going to reskin Keep HD to look all neon and shiny like Hoggy 2.

7. No, you can only get one.  BUT, one of the big differences in the Dark/KeepHD engine from the original Keep is I can put a LOT of interesting stuff on items.  There will be items/suits that amp up skillsets in the game.  Those who played Dark saw a bit of a preview of this with that suit that, if fully equipped, turned Summon Leviathan into the be-all-end-all-death-skill.

I don't mind the inquiries.  But after I get going really good on it, I'll stop answering-- or even reading-- questions, because making a game requires an insane amount of focus, and thinking about other ideas to put in the game at the wrong time can really delay things.  By comparison, just porting the old games doesn't require me to go into hermit mode.

Peppermaster

1. I really love this idea of bonus at max level. Do i get bonus if I use item(ex. staff with +2 health up) to reach that max level? 

3. I was asking about how you can swing the staff (by pressing button or simply moving close to enemy) not melee skills. 

6. I expect to see some pink and purple slimes that eat fruit in the keep :D

7. From what I have seen in the Dark editor, the options that I can put in an item was not as interesting as I wished to be. I wish there were more options like these:

cast xxx when struck, spell vamp, xxx happens when enemy killed, ignore xx%of resistance, do xxx after x number of attack, drain xx mana when x occurs, make x sound when x occurs, x occurs when not attacking, apply x debuff, stats randomly changes, cannot attack x type of monsters, breaks upon taking off, mana shield, cannot equip with xxx type of item, cannot cast xxx spells, reflect damage, increase chance to get xxx item, change x skill to x skill

Since I never saw how SKHD skills and items work, maybe some of these options are already in the HD. I just wish there were more creative options in the item so that there are more unique and interesting builds show up. 

>>I don't mind the inquiries.  But after I get going really good on it, I'll stop answering-- or even reading-- questions, because making a game requires an insane amount of focus, and thinking about other ideas to put in the game at the wrong time can really delay things.  By comparison, just porting the old games doesn't require me to go into hermit mode.

Well I guess I'll make sure to ask as much as I can before you are finished with porting old games. ;). But seriously, I am always thankful that you have been answering all of my endless raids of inquiries while dealing with these pesky porting issues. Once you are gone into hermit mode, I'll try to answer any questions about SKHD in forum based on the inquiries I had with you.

Raptisoft

1. I haven't decided this year.  It's a conundrum-- there's the issue of clarity (I get a bonus at level x) vs the unbalancing of a person who puts on his Dread Ripper Suit and maxes out ten skills right from the start.  Though clarity will probably win out.

3. Oh, it'll probably by just like dark, if you walk into things, you swing.  I won't be putting an additional swing button to go along with the directional firing thumb, if that's what you mean. 

7. SKHD won't have an actual editor.  What it will allow is for a person to replace bits of actual code with script.  So in THEORY (and this might not pan out as beautifully as this) you would be able to create an item that has hooks for whenEquipped(), whenUsed(), whenDequipped(), whenHurt(), Draw(), etc, etc and make modifications to whatever parts of the game I can expose.

But there won't be an editor + level sharing like Hoggy... I'm going to put some stuff to make it easy to down and test mods, even on mobile, but because the Keep modding will be so extensive, it's going to be an "at your own risk" endeavor and thus not an official playground, like.

Raptisoft

When answering questions, remember that in game design, whole branches of promises can be eliminated, or new ones added, just based on whether the gameplay feels fun or not! 

Also, one of the key, core, "most important" things about SKHD is going to be the inclusion of multiplayer.  So, anything that proves to be impossible or too lag-ridden to work well in multiplayer will get the old heave-ho as well.

SomeRandomHEFan

That means the iOS version won't be moddable, right? Given all the insane restrictions imposed on iOS users, I imagine inserting modified scripts outside of the game wouldn't be possible without jailbreaking.

Raptisoft

I would say it would be very DIFFICULT to mod on iOS, but it won't be an issue to download a modded pack on iOS and run it.  The only concern I would have would be speed-- if someone fully scripted a monster to replace all the native code, and there were lots of those monsters, it likely would slow the game down pretty badly.

I am going to literally have a place where you can enter in a link given by a person for where there pack is, and as long as certain key checksums are valid, it will install the mod.

Peppermaster

@Raptisoft

One thing that concerns me is that welded spells like burning bolt are already causing massive frame drop in the old games. If more than one player uses decently upgraded burning bolt, it will cause huge frame drop and ruin the experience (Same goes to other missile type spells). Also, as we know from Diablo II, necromancer could cause lag spikes.

Raptisoft

Well, I'll have to cope with such problems as they arise.

war2k

I don't mean to butt in on your conversation but just wanted to note that TheUnholy (3rd or 4th Varient) when he fires his fire walls and a ton of imps spawn from them  that causes a massive frame drop sometimes causing SB to crash in the process. i've reached him 3 or 4 times now and died trying to fight it out against the frame drops or the game just crashes from the sheer number of them lol

Raptisoft

Okay, I will do some imp-limiting.  This is most properly announced with a new thread as a bug, though.

war2k

sorry won't happen again