Mancers: One More Floor Devlog nr. 2: Speed bumps

Hello again! And thank you for checking out this Mancers: One More Floor devlog!

Let's kick it off with a little bit of an apology for the lack of updates on the game. The last update we gave on the game was over three months ago, which is way too long! So this devlog is also meant as a fresh start as far as updates is concerned. We'll try to keep the updates more frequent from this point forward.

So why the big absence?

Glad you asked! To keep a very long story of programming and suffering short, we hit a speed bump in development. The pathfinding method we used for enemies to move around in the dungeon turned out to be very untrustworthy. Enemies would often get stuck, move in weird directions or just not move at all. That was alright to test stuff like the dungeon generation with, but had to be improved when we started working on combat, because you can't fight an enemy if they never come to you or stay too close to you at all times.

Needless to say, that took way, WAY longer then we expected. Godot, the engine we use to make Mancers with, has algorithms like A* implemented and it's relatively easy to use, but since the Dungeons in Mancers use a grid to move on, we had to translate the A* movements into one of the four general directions in a way that doesn't take too long to compute. That was a big struggle for us, but we figured it out after months of trying different algorithms, looking at tutorials and reading a bunch of forum posts and documentation.

Tl;dr: We had issues with enemies moving, but we fixed it!

Combat

We did work on the other parts of the game in the game as well though! Like we said in the last devlog, we have started development on the combat-system, which we are going to do in a different way then you might be used to in Mystery Dungeon games.

In other Mystery Dungeon games the combat is very fast and very much integrated in the exploration of the dungeon.. Basically, you walk trough a dungeon with your party, you spot an enemy, you use an attack at it, it attacks you back, you beat it and you're done. While this kind of fast combat keeps the pace of the game up, it's our opinion that it has some pretty major downsides as well.

For example there's little room for strategy in most of these games. For example it will almost always be your our team-leader who'll do most of the heavy lifting, while almost all other character will be controlled by AI. While that is not necessarily bad, it can be a real pain in a though fight to have the AI make some bad choices, like choosing a not very effective move or aiming at the wrong enemy.

Positioning can be another issue. If your team is attacked from behind, you have almost no control over that fight. And if you have a weaker or a supporting character at the back of your party, there will be little you can do to stop that character from dying. Personally that has led me to always have a team of strong attackers and tanks on my teams, leaving supporting or healing characters and the cool tactics they could add behind.

Since we are going for a fantasy theme with Mancers, a lot of classes, from warriors and tanks to healers and specialist are going to be in the game and we want players to use each and every one of the classes to their fullest extent. For some classes that will mean attacking enemies from far away while others do better from up close. Some classes will prefer to shield allies while other classes will need to be shielded to stay alive. Good positioning and full control of your parties actions will be needed to put each and every class we're aiming for to good us and we think that this way of combat is hard to accomplish in the traditional Mystery Dungeon combat-style.

So after this way too long explanation, what did we make then? Well, we chose to make a grid-based combat arena where the battles will take place.

You can assign a starting position for each character, which is the place in the arena where they will spawn, thus making possible to set up your team structure how you want it. You can aim your attacks using the highlighted grids and move your team around in the arena. Here's a little clip of the very bare bones version of the battles in the arena. Keep in mind enemies have no AI yet:

We do want to keep the battles short, as to not break too much of the pace out of you're Dungeon-exploration, but we do want to make combat more engaging, controlable and interesting this way.

Tl;dr: We're making a grid based combat system!

Story

For a quick closer of this already way too long devlog, we want to talk a little bit about our progress on the story side of Mancers. As of right now, we are still figuring out the backstory of the characters and events of the world of Mancers, but good progress is being made!

For example, we've thought out a bit of the story behind the first dungeon, which is gonna be the Gobster Hideout. This Dungeon will be filled with enemies of the Gobster variety, aka Goblin mobsters, which you can see a little bit of in the arena GIF. They're a ruthless bunch of thieves and criminals led by the Donlin, who will be one of the Mancers you will face in the game. More on him and his crew of gangsters later on...

Up next in development:

• Adding enemy AI: Enemies can't attack right now, so we are currently working on giving them some AI to fight back!

• Implementing classes: Now that all the basic Mystery Dungeon stuff, like dungeon generation, movement and starting combat is done, we're going to start thinking out classes and their attacks. Expect some class breakdowns in the coming weeks!

• Work on the story: Right now we're thinking out the world and characters for Mancers, which we won't spoil! But just know that that is in the works...

As always, if you're still here thank you so much for taking the time to read this. If you want to stay up to date on the progress of Mancers: One More Floor you can go to our page here on GameJolt and follow the game. We promise we'll keep the page better up to date from now on...

Talk to you later!

~Tea Mass Coterie