Rouge-likes have become a modern gaming phenomenon. I have a deep love for these games and would love to share my top 15 with you. #gaming #rougelike #top15
Over the last 5 years, there has been a boom in the gaming industry. This boom was sparked by games like The Binding of Isaac, Dungeons of Dredmor and Tales of Maj’Eyal. It was the return of Rouge-Likes. Named after the pioneer of the genre (Rouge), this sub-genre is the benchmark for difficulty. Most are touted as “unforgiving” or “unrelenting,” and with good reason. These games have always…
[Halloween]
- Added Halloween mode with lots of decoration!
- A plethora of masks to choose from!
[Performance]
- Game is now compiled with YYC, which should improve performance for many machines which are restricted by a low-end CPU.
- Texture pages have been better assigned, which should improve performance for many machines which are restricted by a low-end GPU.
- The game now skips drawing frames when it detects that it's having trouble running at 60 frames per second. This should allow many more machines that are restricted by a low-end GPU to run the game at full speed.
- Replaced several object-based effects with particle-based effects. This should hopefully help with some users who encounter crashes due to vertex buffer overflow.
- Removed freezeframes triggered by various actions which were being mistaken for actual application slowdown.
[Audio Engine]
- Rewrote all sound-related code to use Game Maker's newer audio engine. This has made fixes for a number of sound-related issues possible.
- Fixed issues with master volume adjustment not always applying immediately or with the correct value for sounds which were already playing.
- Fixed issue with some users being unable to start the game without first manually editing their preferences file to disable music.
- Fixed all playing instances of a sound sometimes stopping simultaneously when only one specific instance of that sound should have been stopped.
[Monsters]
- Added new monster.
- Bat animation now slows instead of stops when stunned.
- Fixed the fire trails of flame walker elites not emitting light.
- Most types of elite monsters now emit light.
- Eye Saw now responds to impact force.
- Eye Saws can now be stunned.
- Titan Worm health no longer scales directly with the number of living players when it spawns.
- Lightning Elites no longer create hovering electric beams that do contact damage to players, and now instead will instantly strike the closest player in range at a fixed interval.
- Fixed several inconsistencies between the way monsters would handle visual effects.
- Changed the monster damage flash effect.
- Flamewalker elites, lightning elites, and agile elites have been given new visual effects.
- Fixed bug which caused flamewalker elites to not receive stat bonuses.
- Monsters are now launched into the air if they receive impact force while on the ground.
- Reduced golem mass from 9 to 2.
[Weapons]
- Added Chainsaw. The chainsaw is the first of the special weapons, which are found and equipped in the caverns and not equipped from the loadout screen.
- Added weapon pocket. When the player is not touching an interactive object, the Use button will put the currently equipped special weapon into the pocket; pressing Use again will take it back out of the pocket.
- Improved the way impact force is handled. Most weapons and attacks should now physically force hit enemies in an intuitive direction.
- Improved hitbox precision for melee weapons, which should now better match their visual effects.
- Reduced the nailgun projectile's hitbox size.
[Characters]
- Raised passive regeneration base rate from 0.125hp/sec to 0.25hp/sec.
- Passive regeneration rate now resets to 0 upon taking damage. The regeneration rate steps up by 1/4 the base rate every 5 seconds until the full regeneration rate is restored.
- Android's passive ability now activates at 50% health, rather than 75%.
- Android's passive ability no longer randomly creates hovering electric beams that do contact damage to enemies, and now instead will instantly strike the closest enemy in range at an interval which gets shorter as health diminishes.
- Android now has a blue outline while her passive ability is active.
[Powerups]
- Fixed Tome of Secrets not being properly unlockable by changing its unlock condition from unlocking all golden guns to completing a cycle.
- Fixed an issue which prevented the Parasite Egg unlock from triggering on its own and caused it to require another unlockable to be unlocked later in the same room.
- Parasite Egg buddy now picks a target and sticks with it for the duration of its attack.
- Parasite Egg buddy no longer faces in the same direction as the player during its attacks.
- Black Hole Box no longer attracts powerups.
- Fixed the Piercing Oculus debuff not being visually represented on some monsters.
- Phantom Missile projectiles are no longer affected by lighting.
- Raised Heart of Belial regeneration base rate from 0.5hp/sec to 1.0hp/sec.
- Heart of Belial regeneration rate now resets to 0 upon taking damage. The regeneration rate steps up by 1/4 the base rate every 5 seconds until the full regeneration rate is restored.
- Fixed Heart of Belial unlock progress not resetting when starting a new game.
[Standard Mode]
- Placed restrictions on when certain monsters are allowed to spawn in Standard Mode.
- Special weapons may now appear in the cavern shops in Standard Mode.
- Changed unlock timing of survival room doors in Standard Mode.
- Fixed key doors only displaying an arrow prompt when a key is held by the first living player.
- Fixed timed doors displaying an arrow when the first living player is holding a key.
[Arena Mode]
- Modified Arena for improved lethality.
[Misc.]
- Stats and unlocks now use Steam Cloud storage.
- Added VSync option.
- Fixed screen shake option not saving.
- Fixed lamp motion being affected by whether the screen shake option is enabled or not.
- Added new impact effects.
- Bomb fuse time raised from 0.83s to 3.6s.
- Bombs are now throwable.
- Crates are no longer affected by debuffs like poison, frostbite, curse, or scarabs.
- Fixed explosions being able to hit enemies twice.
- Fixed bug which caused the damage of any explosion a player was caught in to be 20 for everything else hit by that explosion.
- Fixed various unlock conditions only taking the accomplishments of the first living player into account during multiplayer games.
- (Hopefully) fixed an issue which caused lamps to not contribute to ambient light in a room until a block was destroyed.
- The level-up effect now slightly illuminates the room.
- Fixed issue with some objects not correctly bouncing off left-facing and top-facing edges.
- (Hopefully) fixed seams sometimes appearing between tiles on some machines.
A lot of work was done under the hood to expand what we can do with content and how fast we can make it, so expect to see some new stuff rolling out fast.
As usual, a lot of other things changed that didn't find their way into the patch notes!
b26 marks the largest patch notes in the history of the game! There’s like a million (and a billion behind-the-scenes ones) so I’ll start summarize it before getting into detail.
[SUMMARY]
- Brand new lighting system. Game runs and looks much better!
- Two new enemies and a brand new boss!
- Enemy spawner reprogrammed from scratch, enemy variation and spawning is much more interesting now.
-Many powerups were rebalanced. Previously gun-only powerups now work on melee weapons as well.
- Weapons can now be selected in the character select screen!
- Players can now wear hats and choose alternate skins.
- Arena completely revamped (though still under construction)
- Added shops where you can purchase powerups more than once!
- New block types, including a regenerating vegetation block!
- Rebalanced enemies and gem drop rates. Bosses put up a much bigger fight!
- Two brand new music tracks!
- ...and about a million other things:
[Graphics]
- Added lighting system with two styles which can be selected from the options menu.
- Added nicer upscaling for resolutions which are not multiples of 960x540. Can be disabled from the options menu.
- Updated tile graphics to look more natural.
- Grass now sometimes appears on dirt blocks.
- Fixed blocks sometimes spontaneously gaining wood overlays when blocks above them were destroyed.
- Reworked drawing order of several objects.
[Arena Mode]
- Crates and chests now drop into the arena over time.
- Fixed a bug where Arena Mode would save its records as Standard mode records.
[Standard Mode]
- Added shops.
- Redesigned enemy spawner behavior.
- Fixed dynamic camera snapping when leaving and entering rooms.
[Player Characters]
- It is no longer possible to select characters which have not been unlocked.
- Added cosmetic skins and hats, which can now be selected from the singleplayer character select screen and the local co-op lobby screen.
- Velocity is now capped to 4 units/tick upon taking knockback from damage.
- Raised invulnerability period from 0.16 seconds to 0.35 seconds.
- Improved noticability of damage flash.
- Yoji now unlocks after reaching and defeating a boss without firing a primary weapon.
- Thorax now receives only half the recoil of primary weapons unless moving backwards.
- Reduced Rex's life drain from 2.5% of damage inflicted to 2%.
- Raised Rex's maximum life drain from 3.3% of monster's max health to 5% of monster's max health.
- Fixed a typo in Top Hat's description.
[Weapons]
- Weapons can now be selected from the singleplayer character select screen and the local co-op lobby screen.
- Weapons no longer spawn on the surface, the first cavern room, or the Arena room.
- Golden weapons are now no longer available.
- All weapons now have laser pointers by default to assist aiming, which are now also player-colored in co-op mode.
- Fixed accuracy being affected by distance from the player to the mouse cursor.
- Fixed the first frame of the secondary attack animation playing when attacking with the primary weapon after the secondary weapon.
- Improved Sawdriver bounce behavior.
- Improved Sawdriver collision detection.
- Fixed bug which prevented the Sawdriver from damaging more than one monster at a time.
- Improved Drill Cannon collision detection.
- Improved the way Drill Cannon drills maintain their attachments to objects they hit.
- Improved Nailgun collision detection.
- Raised Nailgun damage from 9 to 10.
- Fixed Nailgun impact effects instantly disappearing in the presence of The Observer.
- Improved the way the Nailgun impact effects maintain their attachments to objects they hit.
- Reduced TNT Sling damage from 32 to 18.
- "Harpoon Rifle" is now "Rebar Rifle".
- Improved Rebar Rifle collision detection.
- Raised Katana digging power from 9 to 14.
- Raised Kinetic Fist digging power from 24 to 32.
[Enemies]
- Added two new enemies.
- Added one new boss.
- Enemies now become faster upon each successive cycle.
- Non-elite enemies no longer drop powerups.
- Mech Worms no longer spawn at this time.
- Improved appearance of Flame Walker elites.
- Fixed shadow orbs giving kill credits for Eye Saws and Cube Golems.
- Eye globs no longer drop gems.
- Fixed Eye Saws sometimes spontaneously self-destructing.
- Eye Saws no longer look at the top-left corner of the room when there are no active players in the room.
- Elite worms now draw correctly across the entire body, rather than just the head.
- Bosses now flash more noticeably when damaged.
- Improved collision detection for The Observer and its minions.
- Improved warning arrow for Giga Mech Worm.
- Giga Mech Worm now displays projectiles in its cannon slots briefly before firing.
- Fixed Giga Mech Worm sometimes teleporting.
[Powerups]
- Removed Mole's Orchid powerup.
- Added Titanium Ooze powerup.
- Fixed description of Aces.
- Increased damage scaling from Aces.
- Aces no longer affects bosses.
- Fixed a bug which would cause Aces to permanently change the crit multiplier of a damage inflictor to 3.
- Added flashing orb at the tip of primary weapons to indicate the charge level of Growth Battery.
- Growth Battery projectile size scaling is now subject to diminishing returns.
- Reduced Volcanic Bomb base chance to trigger from ~18% to ~8%.
- Volcanic Bomb explosion damage is no longer the number of Volcanic Bomb powerups held by the attacking player scaled linearly, and is now based on the damage of the attack that created it times the number of Volcanic Bomb powerups held by the attacking player with diminishing returns.
- Volcanic Bomb can now be triggered by melee attacks.
- Reduced Punchy Fist base chance to trigger from 13% to 7%.
- Raised Punchy Fist projectile base damage from 8 to 16.
- Doppelganger Torch projectiles now fire in random directions, rather than only to the right.
- Doppelganger Torch projectiles no longer chase crates.
- Reduced size of Doppelganger Torch ghost image.
- Fixed only one Doppelganger Torch ghost being allowed at one time among all players.
- Doppelganger Torch now starts at 3 projectiles and maxes out at 6 projectiles with 7 powerups instead of starting at 5 projectiles and maxing out at 100 projectiles with 11 powerups.
- Doppenlganger Torch projectile now spawns fewer particles.
- Cluster of Iron now increases the size of the weapon.
- Cluster of Iron now also increases melee damage.
- Cluster of Iron projectile size scaling is now subject to diminishing returns.
- Golem's Core now halves damage, rather than negating it.
- Paralysis Curse debuff now displays orbiting cross sprites.
- Fixed Paralysis Curse being inflicted on non-critical hits.
- If inflicting the Paralysis Curse debuff upon more enemies than allowed, the oldest curse will be lifted to inflict the new one rather than causing the new one to fail.
- Fixed bug which caused the expiration of a Paralysis Curse on an enemy to increase the limit of Toxic Flask debuff stacking on that enemy.
- It is no longer possible to stack multiple Paralysis Curse debuffs on a single enemy.
- Paralysis Curse debuff now stuns once every 0.75 seconds instead of once every 0.5 seconds.
- The number of times a Paralysis Curse debuff can stun before expiring now gets double the bonus from the number of held Paralysis Curse powerups.
- Fixed the bonus duration of Paralysis Curse debuffs being based on the number of Paralysis Curse powerups held by the first available living player, rather than the number of Paralysis Curse powerups held by the players who inflicted them.
- Fixed Flashbang projectiles only being thrown to the right.
- Fixed strength of Flashbang projectiles being based on the number of Flashbang powerups held by the first available living player, rather than the number of Flashbang powerups held by the players who threw them.
- Reduced Flashbang base chance to trigger from 15% to 14%.
- Siren's Harp now activates upon killing an elite monster, rather than upon leveling up.
- Reduced Siren's Harp base duration from 1.33 seconds to 0.66 seconds.
- Pylon of Frost debuff now creates falling ice particles and makes inflicted monsters use a special palette rather than blending their color toward blue.
- Fixed Pylon of Frost debuff strength being based on the number of Pylon of Frost powerups held by the first available living player, rather than the number of Pylon of Frost powerups held by the player who inflicted it.
- Reduced Sullied Kirpan base chance to trigger from 19% to 15%.
- Reduced Missile Expansion base chance to trigger from 13% to 7%.
- Missile Expansion missiles no longer chase crates.
- Reduced number of particles spawned by Missile Expansion missiles.
- Fixed Scattershot negating the effects of Growth Battery.
- Fixed Scattershot negating the damage boost of Cluster of Iron.
- Fixed Scattershot causing projectiles to use different scaling with Cluster of Iron.
- Scattershot no longer decreases the power of each fired projectile by a fixed scale, and instead scales the damage of all fired projectiles to maintain the original overall damage output.
- Raised Homesick Shard projectile damage from 3 to 6.
- Raised Homesick Shard interval from 0.08 seconds to 0.25 seconds.
- Halved size of Homesick Shard projectile impact effect.
- Fixed a bug where Philosopher's Stone would attempt to add health to full health players.
- Reduced health granted by Philosopher's Stone by 95%.
- Toxic Flask debuff now displays bubble particles instead of turning the victim green.
- Toxic Flask debuff stack no longer diminishes, and is only lost when the debuff expires completely.
- Toxic Flask can now be triggered by melee attacks.
- Phantom Missile projectiles now spawn moving upward instead of to the right.
- Phantom Missile projectiles no longer chase crates.
- Reduced Poofshroom cloud size by 80%.
- Poofshroom can now be triggered by melee attacks.
- Cyclops Skull accuracy bonus now only applies to the first projectile when multiple projectiles are fired at once.
- Tripled Cyclops Skull crit chance bonus.
- Reduced Tesla Coil base chance to trigger from ~18% to ~8%.
- Tesla Coil shock damage is no longer the number of Tesla Coil powerups held by the attacking player scaled linearly, and is now based on the damage of the attack that created it times the number of Tesla Coil powerups held by the attacking player with diminishing returns.
- Tesla Coil can now be triggered by melee attacks.
- Beetle Barrage projectiles now fire in random directions, rather than only to the right.
- Beetle Barrage projectiles now spawn fewer particles.
- Tome of Secrets now uses diminishing returns.
- Fixed Hero's Blade projectile sprite being off-center.
- Fixed strength of Vacuum Stone stones being based on the number of Vacuum Stone powerups held by the first available living player, rather than the number of Vacuum Stone powerups held by the players who spawned them.
- Fixed a crash caused by breaking a crate that was dragged inside a wall with the Vacuum Stone.
- Reduced Resplendent Vial's base gem bonus from 20% to 10%.
[UI]
- Powerup HUD display is now controlled by toggle rather than by hold, and now displays by default.
- Co-op control profiles are now selected when a player enters the local co-op lobby instead of after selecting a character.
- Added scrollbars to co-op recap cards to indicate that they are scrollable.
- Singleplayer recap screen now displays the game mode.
- Increased opacity of purchase and use prompts.
- Fixed the recap screen always displaying the money stat as $0.
- Fixed bug which prevents text entry fields from accepting the letter "v".
- Fixed purchase prompt text appearing as red when possessing the exact amount of money required.
[Misc.]
- Added regenerating vegetation blocks.
- Added sandstone blocks.
- Added two new music tracks.
- Reduced splash screen volume.
- Spike crates no longer inflict damage when making contact above the spikes.
- Gems and TNT no longer perform physics calculations while they are not moving.
- Tile system has received significant optimizations.
- Fixed the data erase option not actually erasing data.
- Fixed several objects that could be made to float out of the room by pausing and unpausing with the right timing.
- Fixed the destruction of keys and eggs granting all players 0.16 seconds of invulnerability.
- Fixed lamps at the title screen not being attached to anything.
- Fixed the local co-op lobby running at 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS.
- Fixed music volume not being affected by the volume setting.
- Fixed several memory leaks.
I haven't actually posted anything about my games for about three months now. You may or may not already know that I've been developing the multiplayer features for Vine's game Cavern Kings. As a result, I've been doing a lot of work in Game Maker, which has been both pleasant and frustrating.
Game Maker was where my interest in developing games was able to take off more than ten years ago, and I've since had the chance to learn and love various languages and tools and make some really cool stuff. Despite a number of limitations and quirks, coming back to it and bringing everything I've learned back with me has been exciting, with that experience letting me do things and solve problems my much-younger self couldn't have imagined.
I don't think I'll be returning to Game Maker for any personal projects, but working on Cavern Kings is a nice experience and I'll definitely have more to write about it soon.
