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I've reworked most of the core game mechanics, from subtle details like damage calculations all the way up to large-scale concepts like generators and enemy AI. The goal was to provide more tactical and strategic depth, while at the same time employing less obscure mechanics. Was I successful? Well, you can download the demo and find out for yourself!
First of all, this version will load characters created with any of the previous versions, including all of your equipment. However, it will reset your levelling progress (after a warning, of course).
When creating a new character, you can now choose between three modes:
- Happy-go-lucky is a simplified mode without any loot, crafting, or customization. This is perfect for casual gaming or if you just want to give some combination of attacks a quick try. It's not meant as an "easy mode" though. In fact, attack and defense levels are limited, which presents new, interesting challenges.
- Hard-core mode makes you lose camps (and therefore some levelling progress) when you die. This spices things up a lot by raising the stakes!
- In epic mode, loot, crafting, and death work exactly like they did in the previous versions. Existing characters are automatically set to this mode.
I've revised pretty much all of the game mechanics. The most significant changes are:
- The generators now charge all by themselves, but you have to harvest them to gain their benefits. Also, all three of them work the same now, they just start at different power levels. I made these changes so you can focus on fighting spiders instead of charging generators.
- When you harvest a generator, a kill flash destroys all spiders within a 30 meter range around your character, irrespective of their health and the amount of power harvested. You also gain ammunition, a temporary attack boost, and a permanent defense boost, but these benefits depend on the available power.
- Attacks and defenses now scale linearly with level, so your DPS doesn't depend on how you distribute your points anymore.
- All defenses deal damage now, exactly the same amount (depending on the level). This allows for much more creative usage of defenses. The only bad news is I had to remove the deception and repulsion defenses, because with the new system they were totally overpowered. Existing characters still have them, but they're now longer usable except for recycling and as crafting resources.
There're a few new features, including:
- You can now hover, which allows for much higher speeds than by running.
- I've added a new saver called time stasis, which freezes time for everything but the player. Quite useful to escape when you've been overwhelmed by poison attacks, but can also be used offensively, like attacking a few healers inside a bulk of spiders or safely walking to the perfect spot for triggering a kill flash.
- You can now change the default difficulty setting.
- You now get extra reward points for very high difficulty settings ("ultra" or above).
- I've added ice defense, which works like fire defense, but deals ice damage.
Installation
If you've installed one of the previous versions, the installer will automatically upgrade it to the new version. Otherwise the installer creates a fresh installation.
Features
- 12 maps
- 7 attacks
- 7 defenses (2 dropped, 1 added, see above)
- 9 enemy types
- 46 types of clothing
Technical requirements
- operating system: Windows 7 (Vista, 8, and 10 should work as well, but are untested as of now)
- recommended hardware:
- quad core CPU with 4 GB RAM
- DirectX 9 compatible dedicated graphics accelerator card with 1 GB VRAM
- minimum hardware:
- CPU with SSE2 support
- DirectX 9 vertex shader model 2 compatible graphics hardware
- RAM: no idea
Changelog
SVN reports over 200 commits since the previous version. I hope you don't expect me to wade through that just to distill a proper changelog. I mean, come on.