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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: em312s0n on August 29, 2017, 04:26:43 am

Title: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: em312s0n on August 29, 2017, 04:26:43 am
Hey guys. Recently found an interesting roguelike called Demon (http://demon.ferretdev.org)

Quote
In Demon, you play as a Summoner who has donned a relic in hopes of acquiring great power, only to find that the relic has compelled you to enter a mysterious tower from which no Summoners seem to return. Starting with only a few meager powers and a weak demon ally that the relic provided when you donned it, you must climb the tower, recruiting more and stronger demons and through your battles alongside them acquire stronger powers for your own use as well.

Though the relics are powerful, they have limits: They do not allow direct control of demons, and the powers they grant are only enough to make the Summoner as strong as... not stronger than... the demons within the tower. Without powerful, well-chosen allies and clever use of the abilities learned from them, there will be no chance of survival.

Like a lot of roguelikes your goal is to progress deeper into a dungeon but its main feature is that you actually tame the demons you encounter and use them to your benefit.

You field a max of 3 demons at a time forcing you to think carefully as to what your lineup will be.

Demons have a unique skillset, weakness, strengths etc that you can view so that you know how to fight them and use them. Some demons are used as support for healing, buffs etc.. and some demons for fighting. You can even copy their skillset into your main character if you find that the demon's skill is useful in offense builds or support builds.

In addition to making demons fight for you can also customize them copying skills from one of your demons to another one or you can also fuse them granting more powerful skills regardless if the previous demons had them before and also making the demons stronger.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From the dev blog, the game has been in active development for 3 years now by one person. This game is seriously worth the try even for just trying out the monster customization mechanic going for it and its FREE. (http://demon.ferretdev.org/downloads.html)
Title: Re: Demon (Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling graphical roguelike)
Post by: Gigalith on August 29, 2017, 07:15:41 am
I kept meaning to post about this one. This is tactical party roguelike done right. The battles present genuinely interesting choices, and although your monsters are AI controlled, I've never had a shout-at-the-screen-you-stupid-AI moment. (Part of that is the ability to return a demon from anywhere, so an injured demon just goes back in the ball.)

Highly recommended.
Title: Re: Demon (Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling graphical roguelike)
Post by: Mephansteras on August 29, 2017, 09:34:58 am
Neat. I'll check it out!
Title: Re: Demon (Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling graphical roguelike)
Post by: Robsoie on August 29, 2017, 03:30:15 pm
There's a lot of very interesting idea and mechanics in this one, the visuals are really good and the mouse interface is very user friendly, i have enjoyed it a lot thanks to this party management that is very rare in roguelikes unfortunately (i often wish most of the RL i play had this kind of party management).
It's brillant in what it does.

The only bad point to me is that there's still no way to disable the game connecting to server, as it's due to that free version of the unity engine, at least fortunately it only happens when you die, so you probably don't miss anything (out of some character dump i guess) if you block that connection and then shut off the game manually (as the game is stuck waiting if it does not do that server connection).

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It isn't possible to turn off communication with the server unfortunately. :( Even if I provided a shut off for Demon's own data transfer, Unity games as a group send some stuff back to Unity too; that can only be disabled w/ the Pro version (either $1500 or $75/month.) That isn't really in the budget for a freeware roguelike. :(

If it helps you feel better, the stuff I collect for myself in Demon is strictly gameplay data only (score, relic and element choices, version you used, where you died, etc.): nothing at all about your computer or other software. I don't even have a way to tell if two games were played by the same player, or what operating system they were using, and that's by design. I can't do anything about what Unity does, but I can at least avoid being a snoop myself. :P

If you want to read more about what Unity collects, their privacy policy can be found at this address: https://unity3d.com/legal/privacy-policy

But other than that it's really great and refreshing to play a party-based RL like that.
Title: Re: Demon (Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling graphical roguelike)
Post by: Ygdrad on August 29, 2017, 04:27:47 pm
So this is a Shin Megami Tensei-like roguelike?

PTW
Title: Re: Demon (Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling graphical roguelike)
Post by: PrimusRibbus on August 29, 2017, 04:31:54 pm
Quote from: Ygdrad on August 29, 2017, 04:27:47 pm
So this is a Shin Megami Tensei-like roguelike?

PTW

That was my take on it too.

Color me interested.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on August 29, 2017, 06:26:30 pm
Please ditch the red text/drop shadow though. It makes me not even want to read the content of your post, it looks that awful.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: em312s0n on August 29, 2017, 06:34:37 pm
Quote from: nenjin on August 29, 2017, 06:26:30 pm
Please ditch the red text/drop shadow though. It makes me not even want to read the content of your post, it looks that awful.

I dont think I have the html CSS know-how to put in text/drop shadow. i just used the normal font when posting the topic. refresh your browser perhaps?

EDIT: searched for what text/drop shadow is.. yeah i dont even know how to do that. I edited and reposted the OP didnt make any changes though but hope that helps.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: em312s0n on August 30, 2017, 02:12:59 am
Holy crap! it did have those annoying red shadows! sorry I was using a work computer when I edited the post and it didn't actually show those things when I was viewing the post earlier. must be a problem with the ancient version of internet explorer over at work. Sorry about that. fixed now
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: StagnantSoul on August 30, 2017, 12:40:54 pm
This game looks awesome. How deep/long is this dungeon? And are bosses always the same or procedurally generated?
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Gigalith on August 30, 2017, 12:53:57 pm
The main dungeon is at least twenty floors, if I remember correctly. I've usually played longer games over several sessions.

As for bosses, they're always the same (IIRC) but each is significantly unique.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on August 30, 2017, 01:15:54 pm
Any suggested starting builds for those of us just looking at this? I pretty much hit the random button the whole way though, and died horribly on the second floor when I found out that the game is really quite serious about its warnings on looting corpses.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on August 30, 2017, 01:47:31 pm
Ah, yes, Demon. I stumbled upon it when I'd an urge for a monster-taming roguelike after a Pokemon binge. Haven't regretted ever discovering it.

Quote from: AlStar on August 30, 2017, 01:15:54 pm
Any suggested starting builds for those of us just looking at this? I pretty much hit the random button the whole way though, and died horribly on the second floor when I found out that the game is really quite serious about its warnings on looting corpses.

Try Orb of Power with Buff primary and Ice secondary. Pre-battle buffs really helps evening the odds against corpse spawns, if not outright fleeing from otherwise unfavorable conditions with Haste. Meanwhile, Frost Ring is one of the few ranged area spells given as a type secondary. Furthermore, I'd recommend starting with a Fairy, if just for easy early game healing.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Sirus on August 30, 2017, 04:42:06 pm
PTW. This looks interesting.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on August 31, 2017, 10:54:51 am
Gave it a run down.

Picked the Faith, Pyro.  They are half-way decent at being HP/SP regens.  Damage output is absolute garbage and I didn't pick up any decent damage dealers along the way.  Plus, costing 1 turn to dismiss and another to summon was really becoming a problem by the time I hit level 4.

So I wiped and went to the Glory route.  Healing slasher type.  Being able to slash away infections is pretty durn decent.
Picked up some 'Deadly' minions along the way.  They are pretty awesome with the area attacks.  Especially on the Jing Sha or however you spell it. 
Artemis Unique.... but, it feels like something is just plain wrong with her starting skill loadout.
Grabbed the Friar, but there was something else there... I tried to recruit it.... but... I ended up running away.

After that, my MaxHP steadily took a dive... from 57 to 28 to 10 to 6 to... 0.  It took a few hundred turns, but yea... There were no icons or anything telling me why that was happening.  Please fix.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on August 31, 2017, 11:59:42 am
Quote from: Zangi on August 31, 2017, 10:54:51 am
Artemis Unique.... but, it feels like something is just plain wrong with her starting skill loadout.
Curious - what was wrong with it? I ended up going with the deer, who's got nice HP, good evasive moves and an AoE debuff, but doesn't start with any kind of attack at all (I threw zombie bite on him). When I was fighting Artemis, her arrows seemed pretty powerful, but obviously I didn't get nearly the in-depth experience with her as you did.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on August 31, 2017, 02:13:30 pm
Hmmm.... well, maybe its just the DPS skill with half accuracy and the 'take-1-turn' debuff.

I don't like relying on RNGesus to decide if the DPS does damage or does absolutely nothing.  And using other skills = less SP and turns spent on killing things when all I want her to do is stay back and shoot.  (That weakness to melee skills is a huge liability when she runs out of SP.)

Anyways, I probably need more experience with skills, I am the sort to get decision paralysis when buffing my guys/buying new skills cost so much.

I might try a dark-light type Faith this time around.  Or maybe go for the one that sacrifices minions for credits.  Always short on credits.


Also, first game ever, Faith Pyro.  First enemies/anything I see are resistant to fire and I tried to recruit em.  It didn't go well.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: StagnantSoul on August 31, 2017, 03:28:30 pm
Gave it a shot, had my ass kicked three times in a row...
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Xantalos on August 31, 2017, 03:38:43 pm
Hmm. PTW me thinky
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: bloop_bleep on August 31, 2017, 10:29:20 pm
On my first run I chose everything randomly, since I didn't know anything about the game at that point. Turns out I got a pretty decent starting character. I tweaked it a little bit after that, and so far this is what I have:

Relic: Vodun's Mask -- It is very useful to see where the enemies are on the map so that I don't stumble upon one when I'm not ready, and I know where to look when I want to fight.

Primary Element: Mind -- Alluring Gaze is good to break up large groups of enemies that would otherwise destroy my party.

Secondary Element: Body -- Life Siphon is good as a secondary attack when attacking an enemy resistant to Mind attacks or when I want to heal a little as well.

Companion: Zaltys -- Zaltys's healing abilities come in really handy during combat, providing cover for those with more effective attack abilities.

If any of you have starting builds which you think are better, feel free to tell me.  :D
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on August 31, 2017, 11:08:49 pm
This sounds too good not to try at some point. Posting to watch with interest.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on August 31, 2017, 11:16:57 pm
Of the few games I've played, I'm having pretty good luck with crown of glory > light(?) > healing. Gave me some slash attacks that were decent in melee, and the secondary effects basically let me serve as my own healbot.

Worked well enough until I could grab a Nero, which has some pretty neat heal spells. One semi-straight one, which is generally pretty good, and another that grants any party member regeneration for a while. If you get to the side-dungeon that has them, I highly recommend picking one up- it's basically turned everything else into a tank.

---

Got to level five in the above game, and I chose the relic upgrade that lets you turn deleted monsters into credits. I can't say it's too impressive, unless there's something I'm missing. Only seems to pay out credits in the double-digits for level five and six monsters.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: em312s0n on September 01, 2017, 01:17:38 am
I totally suck at the game as I don't have much free time to spend yet but I'm sure other people could provide valuable feedback for the game so I invited the dev to drop by as the official forum for the game does not have as much members as we do. Hope he does.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 01, 2017, 11:48:19 am
Quote from: Zangi on August 31, 2017, 02:13:30 pm
Hmmm.... well, maybe its just the DPS skill with half accuracy and the 'take-1-turn' debuff.

I don't like relying on RNGesus to decide if the DPS does damage or does absolutely nothing.  And using other skills = less SP and turns spent on killing things when all I want her to do is stay back and shoot.  (That weakness to melee skills is a huge liability when she runs out of SP.)

Artemis is all about nova single target ranged damage; you keep her for a few turns then switch out. She's fantastic out of the box for first strikes or for mopping up things without pierce resistance. This only applies when she's allowed clear line of sight for Sure Shot. Otherwise, she'll just spam Arcing Shot, which, as you noted, is too dicey to rely on.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on September 01, 2017, 11:51:32 am
Had things go remarkably pear-shaped while trying to capture the boss monster Python - I'd gotten him down to a sliver of health with a single turn left to go. "No problem," I thought, "we've got multiple guys using attacks that he's weak against" ... as he shrugged off my (and my minion's) last hits, fully healed, slowed everyone, and got a power boost.

Total slaughter - I just barely got out a portal by sacrificing all my minions to give me time. Luckily, I had a couple of the chalice items, so I was able to insta-capture a couple of demons on the next floor, and I'm now slowly re-building my team.

Fun stuff.

Has anyone found a use for the 'chime' class of items? So far I've found one that summons a random hostile summoner, and another that makes hostile clones of you and your party. I'm trying to think of a good reason why I'd want to do either of those things, and can't come up with anything.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 01, 2017, 12:08:27 pm
Quote from: AlStar on September 01, 2017, 11:51:32 am
Has anyone found a use for the 'chime' class of items? So far I've found one that summons a random hostile summoner, and another that makes hostile clones of you and your party. I'm trying to think of a good reason why I'd want to do either of those things, and can't come up with anything.

Chimes're a high-risk method of gaining some extra XP. With some careful playing, the Recycler trait, and a bit of luck, they could also net some hefty Coins after killing the summoner and contracting their Demons. Worst case scenario, you're up against a ghost with Consume, whom would just kill off his own Demons like a prick before you could nab them yourself.

Quote from: Zangi on August 31, 2017, 10:54:51 am
Gave it a run down.

Picked the Faith, Pyro.  They are half-way decent at being HP/SP regens.  Damage output is absolute garbage and I didn't pick up any decent damage dealers along the way.  Plus, costing 1 turn to dismiss and another to summon was really becoming a problem by the time I hit level 4.

So I wiped and went to the Glory route.  Healing slasher type.  Being able to slash away infections is pretty durn decent.
Picked up some 'Deadly' minions along the way.  They are pretty awesome with the area attacks.  Especially on the Jing Sha or however you spell it. 
Artemis Unique.... but, it feels like something is just plain wrong with her starting skill loadout.
Grabbed the Friar, but there was something else there... I tried to recruit it.... but... I ended up running away.

After that, my MaxHP steadily took a dive... from 57 to 28 to 10 to 6 to... 0.  It took a few hundred turns, but yea... There were no icons or anything telling me why that was happening.  Please fix.

Whenever your HP goes below zero, you don't die immediately. Instead, your healed a bit at the cost of your max HP. In a few very bad cases, you'll end up just get ponged down to very low health before you could react, and even if you escape, you'll still have crap health. In any case, you recover max HP by gaining a certain amount of XP, or with a few specific dark-type spells.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 01, 2017, 12:49:17 pm
Nah man, I'm pretty sure I hit game over when my HP became 0/0. 

I must have gotten really unlucky, fighting against things that took my MaxHP one after another....  Obviously, did not have any skills to fix my MaxHP.


Current run: Necroguy, with Dark skills, cause MaxHP.  Doing pretty ok.  Randomly recruit things only to sell em. 
Cat Ccoa is my only unique right now.  And somehow picked up a lvl 16 Raiju.  He was one of those chase around guys, but he started inside a room, so he stayed there, making it super easy.  (Necroguy's dark starter mobility skill is also pretty decent at catching up to runners also.)

Level 5 relic upgrade = Dismiss Summon
This skill is practically a minimum requirement.  Cause instead of taking 2 turns to replace a pokemon, it only takes 1.  Gloryguy's 0 turn to replace things is nice, but meh, I'll have to take another look at his skill options later, now I got a better idea of what is decent and what ain't.

EDIT:
Serious Necroguy tip...
Recruit Corpse Pokemon

EDIT2:
Fist Wraith
#8273
2 Ecounters
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 02, 2017, 02:24:34 pm
Oh, hey folks. :D Demon's dev here; thank you for all the interest in Demon! I've read through the posts up to this point and wanted to mention a few things:

1. You can disable Demon's (but not Unity's) data sending in the options menu, accessed with the - key. Granted, since I can't block Unity's, this does still mean blocking the app the only way to block 100% of it, but turning Demon's off will at least get rid of the server connection pop-up from when Demon tries and fails to connect.

2. The Tower itself currently has 23 floors, with several small side dungeons and one larger side dungeon. The bosses are largely static: I say "largely" because of enemy Summoners: enemy Summoners use an AI to choose the demons in their party and what abilities they've taught them, so while you the Summoners themselves are the same name, appearance, stats, and abilities, the demons they use change from game to game.

3. "Relic Preservation" (the mechanic that causes potentially lethal damage to first be doubled and taken out of your MaxHP, with death only occuring when both HP and MaxHP aren't enough) is relatively new; I don't doubt I may need a bit more UI/visibility on it. :D But, until then, I'll go ahead and say outright it's possible to recover lost MaxHP via gaining XP, using MaxHP draining abilities of your own, or if you're desperate, using Pure Stones/Pure Gems.

I'll check in and answer any other questions / read any other feedback posted here from time to time. :D Thanks again for checking out Demon, and good luck in the Tower!
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on September 02, 2017, 07:01:28 pm
Man, why must the cost of soul armor (of something I actually want to become) be so much? I have this perfect target - a stormsworn will o' wisp, which would give me immunity to body, resistance to slash, pierce, impact, and electricity, while giving me a weakness to light and dark.

How much to do this, you ask? A steal at a mere 7553 credits!  ::)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 03, 2017, 09:19:58 am
Just wanna thank Ferret for making a wonderful game.

Quote from: AlStar on September 02, 2017, 07:01:28 pm
Man, why must the cost of soul armor (of something I actually want to become) be so much? I have this perfect target - a stormsworn will o' wisp, which would give me immunity to body, resistance to slash, pierce, impact, and electricity, while giving me a weakness to light and dark.

How much to do this, you ask? A steal at a mere 7553 credits!  ::)

Soul Armor costs scale based on the Summoner's level and both the donator's and Summoner's differences in resistances, speed, max health modifier, and various other things. For more extravagant cases as that Stormsworn Wisp, you'll have to wait until mid-late game for the right cred. And, to be fair, if you're going to make such a big investment, you'll do better in the long run sitting on those creds. Something better will pop up eventually, trust me.

Spoiler: Later Game Spoilers (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on September 03, 2017, 09:54:35 am
I ended up going with a profane easg saint - immune to light, resistant to dark, weak to body - cost was high (2,673 credits), but not as bad as the wisp.

The important thing is that it takes away my characters default weakness to electricity, which has been becoming a major problem recently.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 05, 2017, 06:51:42 pm
So..... what's the best way to get some kind of lightning resistance extremely early? I've had my 4 best runs so far end with "haha that one lightning douche appears, yourminionsareindangeryoureindangeryourestunnedstunnedstunned oh you died too bad lol".

It's a unique, the one with 3 modified shockbirds that's weak to pierce - which is irrelevant apparently since I get zero actions before death anyway.

If it helps, I've had the most luck with pure heart healing, so that's what I'd like to stick with until I get a little further.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 05, 2017, 07:49:18 pm
Quote from: Darkmere on September 05, 2017, 06:51:42 pm
So..... what's the best way to get some kind of lightning resistance extremely early? I've had my 4 best runs so far end with "haha that one lightning douche appears, yourminionsareindangeryoureindangeryourestunnedstunnedstunned oh you died too bad lol".

It's a unique, the one with 3 modified shockbirds that's weak to pierce - which is irrelevant apparently since I get zero actions before death anyway.

If it helps, I've had the most luck with pure heart healing, so that's what I'd like to stick with until I get a little further.

That'd be Vikhor. I usually deal with him by staying out of melee range with Vikhor (to avoid stunning) and finding a way to break line-of-sight with the shockbirds, usually by using a corner or putting more resilient minions in front of me. Unless you're in a hallway, the latter makes for a pretty patchy shield, but it's probably a lot better than nothing.

I play pure heart a lot as well, and I've actually noticed that the weaknesses/resistances seem to fluctuate. Haven't done too much testing on that, but I think it has to do with your initial choice of elements. My current run is lightning/light, which resulted in electricity resistance and a weakness to dark.

On that note, you might actually want to tinker with your element loadout a bit. Despite pure heart's supposed healing focus, I've had surprising amounts of luck picking offensive elements and then blasting away from the sidelines. Even if you don't start with any healing skills at all, starting with a fairy or picking up a zalthys early-game is easy enough.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 05, 2017, 08:05:51 pm
I have tried switching things up on the heart, a little. Fire didn't seem to offer enough healing per mana spent and lightning I never connected with a single attack, dying immediately.

I think the frustrating part with the Vikhor death was finding him and the pack on a wide-open room and having him immediately charge me. The first turn of the fight I was stunned and Headless was almost one-shotted, and from there the next 4 turns had to be spend doing damage control... which I was then chain-stunned to death from.

Until that point nothing in the game had been any problem and I'm not sure what could have been done to not get autokilled.

But yeah, roguelike, I get it.

For what it's worth I've been putting lucky aid and ... the extra SP passive from the decurse healers... onto fairies for early game healing. It seems to work really well - and make my relic wraiths extremely annoying to kill.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 05, 2017, 09:22:30 pm
Haven't had much success with fire myself, although I only tried it once. Pretty much the same observations, there- I burned through stamina pretty quickly, and the healing seemed mediocre even if it was AoE.

The heart's primary lightning abilities are actually pretty reliable, if you're using them in the right situations. There's one that thunderbolts 1-3 enemies at random, with a 70% chance of hitting each and a chance to shock, and another that restores a bunch of SP when you shock. It's pretty unreliable versus one enemy, but use it in the general vicinity of a group and you can crank out quite a bit of damage without using much SP.

I usually grab a second ranged attack for when I need actual reliability, preferably one that can't miss. The lightning/light combo I mentioned above is nice because it gives access to censure. 40-some power, but it's ranged, has perfect accuracy, and a lot of things are weak to it.

------------

Headless is weak to lightning, so that's probably why he took damage so quickly. If you're already picking up those decurse healers, they're resistant, and sort of decent at close range if you can actually get them to attack something. Might make okay meatshields, if you don't end up needing the slot for something better.

Vikhor is fast, so the key is basically just finding multiple things that can weather the attacks, then keeping him occupied in melee until you can beat him to death. I don't think he himself has any lightning attacks, so a properly-positioned zombie or headless might be more effective there. If you've got a good way to take out his support before dealing with him, that's probably also a good move, but that tends to be hard if you encounter him at a low level. Dealing with him is definitely hard, and I feel your pain on that particular situation. :/
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 05, 2017, 10:07:16 pm
Been watching the thread for a bit.

Loved SMT:N, though I haven't played much of the other Devil Summoner games.

This is really great. What I love most so far is a) the flavor and b) the polish.

The menus and dialog and so forth are all very nicely done, and I love the demon descriptions. The game really nails the addictive quality of getting new abilities, and all the different monster considerations break up the flow of your average roguelike, which is usually just *slay* *slay* *slay*. The little sequences for befriending demons are great and seem to have some real variety to them. I ended up failing a recruitment only to turn around and recruit a more powerful demon that was part of the previous recruitment "gimmick."

I also am really liking the flavor. Wasn't expecting indie references but I've already gotten one big one, i.e. West. That it had its own sequence of stuff going on was great, more than you get out of your average roguelike encounter. Really looking forward to more of that.

The pixel art is great and I'm glad for the closeups on demons so I can appreciate it.

And just the little other flavor nods, like credit piles looking like runes, offscreen demons looking like little souls.

Wishes for the future:

-Ability to see the whole message log. Unless I'm not seeing the controls for it, the best I have is the pause.
-Ability to get a bigger demon party pool? Already having to discard demons after a floor because I keep seeing new ones is kind of disappointing. Can't make enough cash to fuse them off either. The game's got a Pokemon quality to it but the inability to hold more than a few demons, while it has its game play reasons, kind of irks.
-Better mouse driven interface. I spent a few minutes looking for how to swap ability key around and trying different things with the mouse before realizing it was a "mode" you had to set through a keyboard shortcut.
-More styling for the tilesets. The monsters got the love and that's really important but the environment needs more stuff (like the eyes glowing from holes in the wall.) Maybe that gets better later on. Like, I think the game could go a lot farther with its setting and the way to do that is through the visuals of the level.

Looking forward to enjoying more of this.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 06, 2017, 03:14:20 am
There are more tilesets and you can slightly expand your carrying capacity later on.

That said, I'm learning that several of the abilities and demons are very specific, so you don't always want them on every character. I've stopped trying to hold on to Zaltys beyond tossing lucky aid around, for example.

I just finished my best run yet, with crown/shock/buff. Shock spear is ridiculously nice, but it felt like my stats were spread way thin and abandoning strength on a melee-range character still feels bizarre. I'm getting used to it though.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: beorn080 on September 06, 2017, 08:09:31 am
The biggest thing I've found is that enemies will not chase you outside of line of sight. At least not past where they last saw you. If you can keep a beefy tank in reserve, you can escape from pretty much everyone, and if you snag swiftness, you definitely can.

I will say that I like the lore. I went for actaeon one run. Usually skipped him as he didn't seem that good. That eas an extremely fun and rewarding fight.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ( Tchey ) on September 06, 2017, 10:17:55 am
If you can understand french, i did some introduction videos. It's not a "Let's Play", i cut lots of parts and i mainly try to explain the game's rules and ideas : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUY7fqffH8xyf_8z3DPgt9iQ

Also i have an issue : when i'm fullscreen (F11), the game goes fullscreen but stretchs to fit, instead of creating black borders if needed, so i only play windowed and i'm sad. Is it just me ?
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 06, 2017, 12:07:12 pm
Yeah don't have that problem. I wonder if it's your default desktop resolution that Unity is attempting to compensate for. Maybe there's a config file for the game somewhere but I didn't see it.

Right now my problem is a couple particular packs on Level 2. You end up fighting 3 Lvl 4 Cat Monsters with Guilty and they proceed to shred your level 3 guys pretty easily. That said I'm playing Orb Dark/Dark/Dark, and not having LOS for half the fight sucks. So that's likely my issue.

Also I kinda dislike how linking with one guy will inevitably pull you in to a fight with another thing you'd rather link with. I'm thinking Floor 1 1/2. Every time I link with something it runs me directly into the West fight, where I'd rather be linking with Headless.

Is there any way to see what the effect of all link failures are? There are a couple that are quite cryptic.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 06, 2017, 12:12:10 pm
Basically what it says on the tin. 
They heal to max, random status effects, spreading distrust or whatever.

Failing against heroics really suck.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 06, 2017, 12:17:36 pm
Not sure what distrust is though? It's not a status debuff like most of the rest. Will your demons fail to obey your commands? Is there a loyalty stat somewhere?

Some of them are quite clear, but like I said, a couple are fairly cryptic.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 06, 2017, 12:19:38 pm
Distrust = surly/ angry
You can't recruit them.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 06, 2017, 12:33:16 pm
Oh right, that distrust. So does it do it for the whole floor or just the ones you see?

Also small typo: in one of his link dialogs, Abbey Lubber says ...."we'll do it may wya."

Also...anyone know where the save file is? :P
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 06, 2017, 01:17:50 pm
For the floor, some of them is a few randoms and others are many randoms, depending on the fail notes.  Doesn't count the ones that spawn later / from corpses. 
(I've managed to fail a few...)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 06, 2017, 10:34:17 pm
Found the save file.

C:\Users\<userprofile>\AppData\LocalLow\FerrtetDev_Org

There's a FerretDev.org folder there too, created the same time I first ran the game. Nothing inside it though. Some vestigial folder naming convention before realizing . are problematic in folder names?
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 09:47:08 am
So I've been playing this way too much over the last two days.

After probably 10 or so runs I finally managed to get my groove going as an Orb of Power Dark/Dark/Dark character. I had no idea what I was doing, it just sounded edgy as fuck.

Last night I kinda hit a breakthrough where I was able to get past floor 3 for the first time without a ton of problems.

Mostly my strat consists of a) Guilt b) Pariah c) Flash Heal on the entire party and d) the best fuckin' uniques I can manage. Headless, Artemis and Ogre (not a unique) have been my stone cold wrecking crew for a while. (Viktor (sp?) turns out to be not that great compared to any of the above IMO.) Flash Heal on the entire party turns out to be magical for overall damage mitigation since your AI uses it all the time, and it's allowed me to evac more than one summon that was in real danger. Between that and Guilt (sadly not the one that applies on Melee attacks) they've been more or less unstoppable except for spell spam at range. I've yet to get the ability where they regen life based on the damage of their slash/impact/pierce attacks, but I imagine that would probably take them in to healing overkill territory.

So at around Floor 6 I found the save file and can save scum. So I figure that's the end of my legitimate progress in Demon. That said, I've pushed way further now. Got to see some different, rad looking tilesets and that makes me happy, it's exactly what I was hoping they'd look like.

If I have any feels after about 20 hours with this....

-I wish credits were a little easier to come by than just lying around each floor. Recycle on your Relic only really helps when you're forced to delete a really old, valuable summon. But it doesn't do much in the short term for making money. In my mind, fights with Demons should sometimes result in a small credit cache from time to time.
-This game needs a creepy little wizard shop when you can buy items or sell your existing ones for a very modest amount of credits.
-It needs the standard roguelike unidentified items thing slipped in there somewhere. For example the "Orange Essence","Purple Essence" stuff would be an ok candidate for making them ??? Essence.So you can slip a couple bad ones in there, or at least some weird ones.
-Demon recruitment too often comes down to credits, which is the only real resource you can't afford to give away. I feel like demons need more dialog options like SMT:N, where they want to know your opinion about something. Something like "iS It BEtTer tO bE L0vEd Or fEAreD?" Basically all my negotiation recruitments happen because they ask for life or items. Sacrifices and credits tend to get NOs from me every time.
-I find LOS super frustrating in this game. Short of Low Profile, having demons doing their job generally means your summoner is relegated to a support role. With how much shit transpires in one round of combat I often feel like I shouldn't move at all. As such a lot my offensive abilities end up doing very little. I realize that's probably how Orb of Power is supposed to play but still. I feel like hitting enemies past your allies should have a % to succeed. Maybe add a new trait for guys like the Ogre where they're too big and will fully block shots. (High Profile?) But I don't feel like every demon should. Low Profile should remove the chance for being hit entirely, but I don't feel like everyone without low profile should always get hit.
-Do Demons ever actually learn new abilities through level up? The text of their affinity implies they do but after most of them have gained 4 to 5 levels no new abilities have been earned. I feel like that text could be clearer on what affinities actually do, especially when you change a monster's affinity through fusion. If all fusion does is change their AIs preference for stat spending and award them a couple random abilities....it should just say that instead of what it says now.

All in all this probably the most addicting fan-made Roguelike I've played in the last few years. I like it enough I wish it had the full treatment of music and sfx. If FerretDev ever needs or wants some free fan help with writing or spriting, let me know!
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 10:39:30 am
I've hit around 6.  Died to a heroic unique.  Forgot his name, but I really wanted his skills.

And yea, much of the combat, you are the support, not DPS.  Mostly cause it seems like everyone around you moves 2-3 times.

And yea... Lighting spam floors...  I don't look forward to it with my next guy, who is weak to electricity.

My playstyle is 2-3 healers.  I keep the beginner fairy and give her the 0SP lucky aid.  The rest is varying levels of tank/DPS/Resistance.
I also like having the SP exchanger on my main guy.
There is also SP cost of your Pokemon skills to consider.  Many battles can be drawn out and you just don't want your magic/ranged DPS to decide to go in and hit em with their fists or having to switch em out too much.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 07, 2017, 11:40:17 am
Nope, don't think learning by level-up is a thing. If you have a certain relic upgrade (one of the ones pure heart starts with) you can pay to have demons learn a random ability from their modifier, but that's about it.

Not all ranged spells act as beams or projectiles, although I'm not sure whether Orb of Power can start with any direct ones. Off the top of my head, easig saints, Areas, and aethnir all come with spells that let you attack from the back line, so I'd recommend recruiting one or two and grabbing their abilities when you get a chance.

----------

PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.

I tend to pick up a zombie somewhere along the line, so the regen is actually pretty easy to deal with if I hang on to infectious bite, but I can't really think of a good counter to the other. Maybe keep one bulky thing in melee, and add as much ranged support as possible?

------

I've gotten to level 8 or so pretty consistently, but there seems to be a pretty big difficulty jump on nine. Usually end up dying after the first two encounters.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 12:26:42 pm
Electricity does seem to be pretty OP compared to fire or frost. Chill makes you less effective in combat and ignite does put on the damage....but shock both does damage, and regularly robs your characters of multiple turns. Aeras or whatever his name is has an ability that will often hit 3/4 party members at random and put shock on them. Every goddamn turn they have SP.

Orb of Power does come with a direct attack when you go Dark. It's called Snuff Out. Unfortunately it's one of those "only hits and deals damage if it would kill the target" attacks. So it's useless most of the time.

Quote
PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.

I've learned with enemy summoners you have to hit them with everything, or they will summon new demons until the cows come home. You can kill their healers and their debuffers all day but they'll just summon more. Had one guy summon 8 guys out of his relic before I finally wised up and just killed him.

Quote
I've gotten to level 8 or so pretty consistently, but there seems to be a pretty big difficulty jump on nine. Usually end up dying after the first two encounters.

The big jump for me was from Floor.....6 I think to:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on September 07, 2017, 01:07:49 pm
I had a fun WTF moment in the anomaly when I ran into a level 19 Shoggoth (I think my demons were all around level 5 or 6 at the time.) On the plus side, it turned out to be somewhat reasonable in its demands, so I recruited it - thing had nearly 100 HP.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ( Tchey ) on September 07, 2017, 02:02:10 pm
I feel i never have enough money to fuse my monsters, only to copy some skills sometimes. I think one big balance pass should be done here quite soon.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 02:21:30 pm
My biggest problem with fusing is it doesn't seem worth the pay off. Occasionally you get a bump in the right stats but otherwise.....? You lose a competent demon and randomly pass off some skills you may not use or may not jive with the demon being fused in to. After testing a bunch of fusions, on my starting list of 8 or w/e, I found one that actually seemed to be a good idea.

Like, recruiting any random demon and immediately fusing them doesn't seem that worthwhile. The limitations on your list of demons at the start also prevents you from freely fusing; you end up not fusing because you need those demons to win fights. So your best and most performant demons don't get fused because you still need them, it's super expensive, AND the loss of the demon and the credits may not actually equal the worth of the fused demon.

Put another way, I feel like Fusing was both easier and more worthwhile in the SMT games than here. (Not that this is supposed to be a direct copy.) Possibly because skills there are way more general, whereas here half the of passives are directly keyed to specific ability types.

It's to the point now I have a full roster of skilled up, unique demons that I don't want to get rid of, and like 1 slot I hold for "new blood." But even then, I use them for Transpose Soul (a specific power of the Orb of Power) to get an ability I want rather than fusing them and hoping/praying for something I want. I get that fusing bumps their stats and all but.....like I said, recruiting a random demon just to fuse doesn't seem to make established demons all that better. In fact most cases I fused they lost stats they should care about to gain stats they should care nothing for. On top of changing their affinity so their level up AI makes different decisions......yeah, I just haven't found Fusing that good or appealing or useful yet. TBH though I think I never really used what is essentially the same option in SMT/Persona either.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 07, 2017, 02:23:09 pm
Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 09:47:08 am
Mostly my strat consists of a) Guilt b) Pariah c) Flash Heal on the entire party and d) the best fuckin' uniques I can manage. Headless, Artemis and Ogre (not a unique) have been my stone cold wrecking crew for a while. (Viktor (sp?) turns out to be not that great compared to any of the above IMO.) Flash Heal on the entire party turns out to be magical for overall damage mitigation since your AI uses it all the time, and it's allowed me to evac more than one summon that was in real danger. Between that and Guilt (sadly not the one that applies on Melee attacks) they've been more or less unstoppable except for spell spam at range. I've yet to get the ability where they regen life based on the damage of their slash/impact/pierce attacks, but I imagine that would probably take them in to healing overkill territory.
Bloodlust (said life-sapping ability) only works for melee, so Artemis wouldn't benefit much from it. Also, it's much better for fast, area attacking uniques like Vikhor, as they'd attack often enough to take advantage of all the healing.

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 09:47:08 am
-I wish credits were a little easier to come by than just lying around each floor. Recycle on your Relic only really helps when you're forced to delete a really old, valuable summon. But it doesn't do much in the short term for making money. In my mind, fights with Demons should sometimes result in a small credit cache from time to time.
Recycle gives benefits for any previously leveled up demons you recruit, not just monsters you leveled up yourself. This includes monsters you encounter from corpse spawns and enemy summoners. As such, it's often a good idea to treat one or two demon slots as Recycle fodder. I personally find this Relic completely invaluable in all runs.

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 09:47:08 am
-Demon recruitment too often comes down to credits, which is the only real resource you can't afford to give away. I feel like demons need more dialog options like SMT:N, where they want to know your opinion about something. Something like "iS It BEtTer tO bE L0vEd Or fEAreD?" Basically all my negotiation recruitments happen because they ask for life or items. Sacrifices and credits tend to get NOs from me every time.
You could also get points by moving closer, unsummoning your guys, and deleting (hopefully useless) moves when asked. Also, some demons aren't as temperamental when you deny their requests, and some may join you outright if the dialogue chain goes on long enough. Such things tend to happen with light aligned demons, such as Zaltys, and is unlikely for outright villainous looking monsters.

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 09:47:08 am
I find LOS super frustrating in this game. Short of Low Profile, having demons doing their job generally means your summoner is relegated to a support role. With how much shit transpires in one round of combat I often feel like I shouldn't move at all. As such a lot my offensive abilities end up doing very little. I realize that's probably how Orb of Power is supposed to play but still. I feel like hitting enemies past your allies should have a % to succeed. Maybe add a new trait for guys like the Ogre where they're too big and will fully block shots. (High Profile?) But I don't feel like every demon should. Low Profile should remove the chance for being hit entirely, but I don't feel like everyone without low profile should always get hit.
1. There are very useful auto-hit spells and area spells here and there, such as Censure from Easg Saint.
2. As an Orb of Power summoner, you can Transpose such spells from Demons directly. Hint: Transpose a psychic demon (such as Buruburu) ASAP for Mind Scream(?) , an auto-hitting auto-targetting full screen area psychic spell.

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 12:26:42 pm
Electricity does seem to be pretty OP compared to fire or frost. Chill makes you less effective in combat and ignite does put on the damage....but shock both does damage, and regularly robs your characters of multiple turns. Aeras or whatever his name is has an ability that will often hit 3/4 party members at random and put shock on them. Every goddamn turn they have SP.
Ice has much more efficient area spells then the others, while fire kills things faster. As an Orb I usually go for ice.

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 12:26:42 pm
The big jump for me was from Floor.....6 I think to:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 12:26:42 pm
I've learned with enemy summoners you have to hit them with everything, or they will summon new demons until the cows come home. You can kill their healers and their debuffers all day but they'll just summon more. Had one guy summon 8 guys out of his relic before I finally wised up and just killed him.
Hit-and-run tactics work well too. Pick someone you think you can kill in three turns or less. When that's done, switch to healers, run away, and when sufficiently off-screen, unsummon your guys. Rest, rencounter, rinse, and repeat.

Quote from: Whisperling on September 07, 2017, 11:40:17 am
PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.
I tend to pick up a zombie somewhere along the line, so the regen is actually pretty easy to deal with if I hang on to infectious bite, but I can't really think of a good counter to the other. Maybe keep one bulky thing in melee, and add as much ranged support as possible?
Quite frankly, Heroes are best avoided than killed. You practically need a team specialized to deal with each one to take them down. There are cheesy hit-and-run tactics you could use with HP draining effects to take them out, but even that's not entirely guaranteed.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 02:28:58 pm
I ended up with +10k just spending money copying skills, maybe only one or two fusions.  Eating pokemon for their credits all the time is a huger money saver/gainer.  Especially the ones from corpses.

That was my +6 floor run with necroguy dark/dark.  Being able to fix/gain maxHP and essentially being able to tank a bunch of stuff is pretty good too.  (Enemy AI likes to attack squishier people though.)
With that build, you could essentially run 2 ranged units and a healer.  Once the ranged units run out of SP, you switch them out and bring in melee allies. 
Switch healer out for a more durable healer/place em out of melee range, when they run out of SP.  Or be like me and use the SP transfer skill for the healer/ranged to keep em in the fight longer.  The 0SP Lucky Aid is awesome when it rolls up 50 more SP to anyone.

When is the next Relic upgrade?  I know you get one at lvl 5.  (Fast unsummon = essential in my books.)   I had hit lvl 10... but no Relic upgrade.



Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.  But you also have to account for the stat changes... so yea.   You can at least remove the random skills for free if they are no good.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 02:40:50 pm
Quote
Bloodlust (said life-sapping ability) only works for melee, so Artemis wouldn't benefit much from it. Also, it's much better for fast, area attacking uniques like Vikhor, as they'd attack often enough to take advantage of all the healing.

Ah, didn't realize BL was melee only, I was just focusing on the Slash/Piece/Impact information. That said, BloodTHIRST, the one that regens SP based on damage, does work for ranged.....Have to check it when I get home.

Quote
Recycle gives benefits for any previously leveled up demons you recruit, not just monsters you leveled up yourself. This includes monsters you encounter from corpse spawns and enemy summoners. Personally, I find Recycle to be an invaluable rune to pick up.

It must apply ONLY to summoner's demons. Because every guy I recruit and try to delete is worth a measly 43c regardless of level. I read Recycle as "Any demon YOU level has their delete value increased." And tbh I'm not going to tie up a party slot just to level a guy so I can delete him when I need to. Tried doing that and the rate of return seemed shit.

Quote
You could also get points by moving closer, unsummoning your guys, and deleting (hopefully useless) moves when asked.

Moving up and dismissing allies almost always gets me 2/4 or 2/5 approval points. The rest from there is either life, credits or sacrificing/deleting one of your demons. Every. Single. Time. The only demon I have ever seen roll over at 2/3 acceptance has been Zaltys. I've literally gone through 20+ dialog options with a demon where they will accept nothing but credits, but refusing them doesn't generate annoyance. So it just kept cycling and cycling and cycling....until the RNG finally said "ok, he's pissed now that you've refused his credit request for the 20th itme in a row."

So yeah. More flavorful dialog options please. Persona and SMT already mapped this stuff out. Also consider that rather than fighting every demon you've pissed off, some of them throw you a debuff or something and disappear rather than engage in combat. I guess what I'm saying is that the negotiation dialogs seemed like they had variety to them when I started the game, but now are largely a matter of "will you actually ask for something other than credits." And that's kind of disappointing, I'd like more flavor and randomness out of it.

Quote
1. There are very useful auto-hit spells and area spells here and there, such as Censure from Easg Saint.

Saw Censure, have been a recipient of it multiple times. Wasn't too impressed with the damage though, it took three Easg Saints spamming at my summoner only over 6 turns before I actually became a threat. For one guy using it....probably doesn't perform that hot. In fact, that's the way a lot of skills seem: deadly as fuck when there are three demons all spamming it. Somewhat underwhelming on use as a single character. The same is true for Flash Heal; as a heal spell by itself it's underpowered and probably won't make the difference. When you've got FOUR of them though all with alternating cooldowns, suddenly it's a game changer.

Quote
Quite frankly, Heroes are best avoided than killed.

I've only encountered one (Vinji I think?) and I kicked the shit out of her badly. But that was with the Brute Squad and she was alone, so I'm sure the rest are nastier.

Quote
That was my +6 floor run with necroguy dark/dark.  Being able to fix/gain maxHP and essentially being able to tank a bunch of stuff is pretty good too.  (Enemy AI likes to attack squishier people though.)

Yeah, I've found myself tanking the bigger chunk of damage for my team, especially against ranged demons. And by tank I mean "stand there in the open and let them blast away at you, and wait for your own demons to hit you with Flash Heal so you don't die in two turns." Which is why I find LOS so annoying, when they can shoot you with their basic attacks and you're stuck in the back row turning in to a pincushion because your l33t relic skills can't hit anything without you literally wading through the fight to get LOS.

Quote
When is the next Relic upgrade?  I know you get one at lvl 5.  (Fast unsummon = essential in my books.)   I had hit lvl 10... but no Relic upgrade.

IIRC the help documentation, you get your first relic upgrade at 5 but you don't get your next until 15 (then 25, then 35....)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on September 07, 2017, 03:06:20 pm
Quote from: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 02:28:58 pm
Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.
I'd say it's this, 100% - ideally you'll also be getting a stat boost and two rare and/or desirable skills, but that's more of a crapshoot. Being able to (for instance) give Headless a resistance to electricity, however, is well worthwhile (IMO.)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 07, 2017, 03:14:49 pm
Mousing over a demon's type (ie Deadly for Melingee) will tell you what sort of resistances, stat distributions, and abilities will be passed on to demons. Weaknesses can even be converted to resistances in such a manner, though a demon must have at least one weakness left over for a fusion to be applicable. Hint: Fiery Dryads are very resilient.

Spoiler: Fusions (click to show/hide)

EDIT:
Quote from: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 02:40:50 pm
[Recycle] must apply ONLY to summoner's demons. Because every guy I recruit and try to delete is worth a measly 43c regardless of level. I read Recycle as "Any demon YOU level has their delete value increased." And tbh I'm not going to tie up a party slot just to level a guy so I can delete him when I need to. Tried doing that and the rate of return seemed shit.
Ah, guess I wasn't clear. Corpse-spawned monsters can sometimes generate at higher levels, especially when further up the tower. These can give decent to very profitable returns when they're high enough. Good rule of thumb is to find and Recycle things three or four levels higher than its lowest level incarnation for maximum returns. For instance, a recruited lv 5 Zaltys (a creature with a base level of one) gives about 480 gold when Recycled. These numbers only get higher for uniques and creatures with higher base levels and level differences (ie over 1100 gold for a level 9 Dryad, a creature with a base level of 5).

EDIT2: In the end, your party composition is completely mutable, early game ones doubly so. Monsters generally have a shelf-life of ten levels, after which they'll not gain enough XP to keep up with you. Best treat all your demons as good as expendable.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 03:25:26 pm
That's partly what has had me confused with demon types. Do I overwrite a good unique monster type with some garden variety one? Is it providing any benefit beyond the leveling choices the AI makes (and the resistances passed on.)

Again this is why I say the writing should be made clearer on what this stuff actually does. It passes on abilities, it modifies stats, it modifies resistances, it CAN pass on an ability from the archetype....but other than stat ups it has zero to do with the leveling process.

Quote from: AlStar on September 07, 2017, 03:06:20 pm
Quote from: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 02:28:58 pm
Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.
I'd say it's this, 100% - ideally you'll also be getting a stat boost and two rare and/or desirable skills, but that's more of a crapshoot. Being able to (for instance) give Headless a resistance to electricity, however, is well worthwhile (IMO.)

Wouldn't giving him fire/poison resistance and immunity be better, since he'd literally be unkillable due to Die Hard (or whatever that skill he starts with is called.)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 04:19:44 pm
That has a cooldown, he survives one hit, but won't survive the next for a few turns.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 04:40:04 pm
Quote from: Zangi on September 07, 2017, 04:19:44 pm
That has a cooldown, he survives one hit, but won't survive the next for a few turns.

Cool down is possible, not guaranteed. Still you're right, it's not absolute.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Paxiecrunchle on September 07, 2017, 04:43:04 pm
This sounds amazing, I think I'll check it out later today.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 07, 2017, 05:07:12 pm
Not everything is good for every relic. Fusions are absurdly good for Faith Heart characters because you can cheaply fish for other abilities with... Revelation, I think? The relic modifier that grants a new ability.

I had a 77th spot finish with a Faith Heart/Heal/Fire yesterday, died at level 15 on floor 11.

Spoiler: long dump is long (click to show/hide)

The icesworn slime was incredible for most of the run. I waffled about replacing him with an Alma but ended up not. The Ukobach and I both having ember burst and warmth meant SP regeneration in combat was through the roof most of the time. Upwards of 15 a turn or more in some cases. Tormentor on Headless and the slime meant they never ran out of buffs/debuffs to cast, either. Next time I'm going to have to get SOMEthing that can cleanse stuns. I've lost too many runs from it, I'm sick of that.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 05:48:53 pm
It's probably a faux pas to suggest this but I kind of feel like the game could use a better title. It's a great game and I feel like it has more character than the name "Demon" implies. Demon Tower, or Demon's Tower or something like that is a little more descriptive and evocative of the game. Makes it sound like an old school NES game.

No subtitle though.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 07, 2017, 10:04:29 pm
Oh wow, lots of feedback! Thank you, everyone. :D There's a ton here, lemme throw out some replies, though it looks like a fair number of gameplay questions at least have already been answered, particularly by ShinQuickMan (thank you!)

1) Whisperling: Starting resistances are indeed influenced by both your starting relic and, sometimes, the first element you choose.

2) Various: Vihkor is a big jerk. He's generally one of the first encounters you hit where it's very easy to get "checkmated" (i.e.: in a situation where you end up needing to unsummon someone each turn until you're out of allies and wind up dead.) You may not quite have a chance before you reach him, but while you're still learning the game, Quick Summon and/or Quick Dismiss can be amazing relic upgrades for digging out of these situations. (Crown of Glory starts with both of them: if you don't mind playing a melee, that's a good way to make sure you have them when you need them.)

3) nenjin: Yeah, the message log in general is... crap. I actually hope to largely get rid of it one day. :D There is unfortunately no way to see the log in game at the moment though. There are relic upgrades (available at 5th, 15th, 25th, etc. level) that expand your stable. The mouse interface could definitely still use some work.

4) Tchey: I saw the videos! I wish I could understand French! :( But regardless, thank you for making them, there has been a definite spike in activity connected with when they first got posted. :D I've had other reports of full screen mode not always working properly, but unfortunately I haven't had time to sort it out yet (and if it is Linux specific it may be tough: I release Linux builds for Demon, but don't have a Linux box to test on.)

5) nenjin, again: Thanks for the typo report. :D I'll fix it in the next build, though it's a big one so it will be awhile yet. I actually specifically avoided the "is it better to be loved than feared?" type question because they always felt too RNG to me in SMT; but, maybe that isn't as bad a thing as I think it was, and would it give some more variety to successful negotiation strategies. I'm glad you're enjoying the game so much!

6) Snuff Out's chances are affected by anything that affects damage dealt, such as various buffs, debuffs, and passive Abilities. It can actually get quite impressive, since the base damage is higher than an attack usually gets. :D

7) Fusion's primary use is usually to adjust resistances, followed by stat adjusting. The abilities are much more RNG, but you will sometimes get something quick nice as a cherry on the sundae. It's worth noting that any fusion adds about 12% to MaxHP (before resistance/stat changes are applied), so if you really like a demon or are trying to squeeze out some extra HP for a tank, it can be worthwhile for that too.

Thank you everyone for the feedback, comments, and suggestions! I'm always happy to see so many new players enjoying Demon. I did read everything here and make notes on much of it, even if I didn't have a specific reply, and will continue to do so (hopefuly more often so I don't end up with 3 pages to read and respond to at once and can be more on top of things.)

Good luck in the Tower!
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 07, 2017, 11:37:44 pm
Well to be fair, cycling through replies waiting to see one that isn't "give me all your money" or "sac a vital party member for 2/5 reputation" is also RNG. I feel like with the dialog replies there's at least some learning and some lore going on. Viles respect strength, holies respect honor, violents respect aggression, mindbenders respect cunning....that's how it always felt to me in SMT. Sure there was some RNG thrown in to those responses as well, but by and large it encouraged me to learn the attitudes of different species of demons and what demons fell under those species. Made me feel like a real smrt summoner.

Like I said, for me at least, in Demon asking for HP or items is doable. Credits generally doable but not in the early game and not when the repeat the same price or higher for 1 rep at a time. And saccing party members, for me, is generally always unacceptable. One advantage save scumming has is you can really take the RNG for a ride...and trying to recruit a shoggoth my choices basically were: re-roll until he asks for some combination of life and items (and actually accepts them instead of grunting at 24 HP he just gobbled) or lose between 1 and 2 party members. I think it took 6 or 7 reloads to finally hit that balance.

I guess my feeling is, if I'm going to be stuck with RNG no matter what, at least it should be flavorful RNG. (And by all means, make giving a really poor response to some flavor question have a pretty negative response in turn from the demon. Or throw some fun, positive RNG in there too. Lots of opportunity for more writing, and getting the demons in to character.)

Also on an unrelated note: it'd be nice if when moving at least one minion could move in front of you. I feel like you're constantly eating the brunt of the first attacks as the summoner because you effectively lead the party where it's going until combat starts.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Paxiecrunchle on September 08, 2017, 03:11:10 am
 I've now learned that the reason that this game is titled "demon" is because it's like wrestling with one just to download the thing, okay that first part was a joke but really hosting it on...google drive? Which doesn't let you do direct downloads, why?

Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: getter77 on September 08, 2017, 06:44:47 am
https://ferretdev.itch.io/demon   8)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: beorn080 on September 08, 2017, 09:28:59 am
A few suggestions for the early game.

1. Lowet the credit requests of goblins and redcaps. Fairies are extremely useful, so they should remain. But goblins are asking for just as much, and they ask for medium or large caches worth. Abbey lubbers are another, but they are also pretty worthwhile and ask for a lot of items.

2. Add in other requests. Fairies are tricksters, somewhat. Maybe have a request be something like, wanna see something interesting? Yes/no. If yes, approval and random effect. Teleported across the dungeon, put to sleep after negotiations end, 2 more fairies show up, your party is dispersed across the dungeon. Could work for other creatures too.

Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 08, 2017, 01:38:59 pm
1 is likely intentional,dependent exclusively on monster types; not all deals will be fair, and not all demons are created equal. Also, item requests may give two points instead of one based on the monster's (base?) level and item requested. What's more, pre-fused monsters are more difficult to impress.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: beorn080 on September 08, 2017, 01:47:47 pm
Oh i know 1 is intentional. I literally meant on just those two types, as both are very weak. To recruit one of each is almost an entire levels worth of credits on the first few floors.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 08, 2017, 02:25:07 pm
I'm not sure gobos and redcaps are that worth it in general unless you want a redcap for ranged support, and it's easy enough to start with one if that's the case. You can save your credits for faeries then.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 12:06:33 am
So I see what you're saying about Frost being more efficient now. Sudden Chill is, compared to the other area skills, pretty stupidly efficient. You get the chill benefits, reasonable 40 Power damage and it has no cooldown. Compared to the other more exotic AoEs like Light and Dark that's.....pretty damn good right out of the box, no supporting skills really needed, flat out better than Mindscream. Passives can change a lot of that but then you can just pile more easy cold stuff on to chill. It makes abilities like, lets say, Cull a lot less appealing to use because there's so many restrictions on it and so few on something like Sudden Chill. Why wait around for everyone to hit 50% health for a big 130 Power attack when you can do 160% Power damage over 4 rounds to everyone and get the chill benefit out of it?

Anyways, enjoying the upper level gameplay quite a bit. I'm enjoying seeing the different packs that get put together and going "yep, someone thought this through." Turdak is crazy strong, and his level was a master class of FU mechanics. Good times.

I keep leaning melee with like 80% of my demons. Even though I'm getting the sense that late game it gets pretty outclassed by machine gun squads of ranged demons. Spotting demons in the Tower right now is like having a gun fight in an empty parking lot....with you holding a knife. And yet it's so satisfying watching your melees go into a pack of demons and sustain all on their own.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 09, 2017, 12:34:16 am
I just lost a Crown guy to a pack of ... something. The japanese hand ghosts backed by two casters that spammed AoE Infection every turn. Melee will eventually simply end you, your party, and everything you hold dear.

And then there's Madevra...
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 02:11:39 am
Quote
The japanese hand ghosts backed by two casters that spammed AoE Infection every turn.

MaxHP down can be a bitch due to the conversion rate of XP to life restored (I was seeing on average 1 to 2 HP restored per enemy killed.) Strangely though some guys like Turdak and Artemis just....seem to ignore it and take it as normal damage? I know it's not because of Dark Resist because I have it and lose MaxHP to attacks. Maybe it's Body? After a couple rough experiences with my melee being made useless for an entire level by MaxHP down, I just started having Artemis tank those packs. She actually didn't do all that bad, either, because the enemies are squishy and more or less one note with swarming and draining MaxHP by the fist full. I don't know if her and others' seeming immunity to it is a bug or a feature but I couldn't figure out the reason for it.

Little spoilery down below.

Madevra was a tough fight because of all the layered melee defenses and Guilt on hit self healing. I went one round against her and she tore apart my best melee while self healing away all their damage. Round 2, she must have missed a lot of her blocks....but I also started aggressively applying MaxHP down. More on that below.

Some of the Hero and Summoner combos beyond her though just get more and more vicious. Remember Reshape from way back in the first levels? There's a passive later on that essentially makes it cooldown in 1 to 2 turns if you're getting hit. A freaking Endure cooldown. You wanna talk about unkillable? How about something that drops all its status effects and puts 150 power heal on itself every 1 to 2 turns as a free action. And then gets a Summoner Relic to shield them on top of that. And maybe the scariest looking unique I've seen yet as a pet, on top of all the other normal panic/stun/poison/infection shenanigans from 1 or 2 other summons. It's downright fucking fiendish. I had to burn like 5 items to ultimately win the fight. I just didn't have enough mobility, damage output or healing to deal with all that stuff. (Also putting a unique we'll want to recruit behind a really hard summoner fight? Kind of stressful trying to keep them alive through all that. I was literally aiding the enemy just so they'd survive the Summoner dying.)

I'm starting to think MaxHP down is like, one of the easiest ways to circumvent several challenges in the game. Or stand a chance in some fights at all, for that matter. The fights based around healing mechanics have been the toughest to overcome for me, and getting in there blasting away has often tipped the balance in my favor, even with just my Summoner doing it. Draining MaxHP also ends fights against enemy Summoners faster by nerfing their Relic, while making your Relic protection more robust.  I only just realized how Relics actually work with your HP, burning your MaxHP when you're at 1 HP to keep you alive longer. Put a whole new spin on draining MaxHP from guys. I seriously doubt I could have beaten half the difficult fights without it. (I feel like the last 3? Summoner/Hero fights I've done have all had some sort of crazy heal loop you have to overcome.) But maybe someone doing a lot more direct damage than I am would disagree.

I want to like Infection as an easier and cheaper way of dealing with healing but the cleanses are real and their casters are sitting behind a wall of unkillable guys. So I'm thinking I might do another game at some point with a MaxHP drain, melee focused crew and see how much easier that is than trying to overwhelm heals with raw DPS.

I also gotta say I was super pleased to see higher tiers of Demon affinities. This game just keeps delivering on the content. Of course many of them are just going to be better versions of their lower level selves but they've got cool names and got my interest again just when I was starting to think I'd seen it all.

If I have one suggestion that might make the game a little bit less....lopsided when you start running into higher level passives with ever more broken effects is.....SP cost multipliers. For example, if a passive targets a specific ability and makes it amazing, like almost removing the cooldown from Reshape or Second Wind, maybe it should multiply the SP cost (Or give it a cost to begin with). The jump from Tier 1 Skills to Tier 2 in SP cost isn't insignificant, but if cheap Tier 1 skills can be lifted to godly levels with one passive.....mmmmmmaaaayyyybbbbbeeee they should cost just a little bit more. At the lower levels it's not too bad, but at higher levels when I'm sure you'll have packs of 5 guys all throwing end-game damage AoE supported by end-game passives? I feel like every skill in game needs to be thought of in the context of "ok, what if there are 4 guys doing it?" That's kind of what I feel like the demon packs you encounter in each level are trying to teach you, "how do you deal with Panic when there are 4 guys spamming it on you" or "how do you handle 4 guys spamming fireballs and igniting you?" There should be as many vectors as possible in this game for players to break heal/invulnerability/status effect spam. And simply making everyone pay more for these crazy combos might make SP more relevant, especially for the cheap, easy combos like the one I just saw. I gotta give you props FerretDev, for Lilou or whatever her name was. That was a twisted SMT style boss fight, nice work.

I also think it'd be cool if there was a Relic upgrade that let you summon demons from your Codex as though you were reviving them. Just their basic, uncustomized version. Maybe make it more expensive than reviving so it stays balanced. I figure if players want to spend the resources to resummon old guys and pull skills off them they should be able to. I personally agonize a lot about what demon I have to get rid of to make room for Transpose Soul, and it's be nice to not truly delete them. The last 8 deleted demons thing is a nod towards it, but you just end up going through too many demons too fast, and don't have credits necessary to work with them when you need them. It'd just be simpler and more fun for me if I could recall Demons from the Codex.

I'm kind of posting stream of consciousness at this point as I play.

When I hit F5 Demon tells me it thinks my desktop resolution is 1152x864. And it's definitely not. I'm actually getting the black bars despite what I said before. Is there anyway to change that? Does Unity Personal have a pre-game config menu like I've seen in other Unity games?

Is the game pretty good about being explicit when things do and do not apply. I see a lot of "heal on x, y, z" specifically says it doesn't apply to reactions. Bloodthirst however doesn't mention that reactions aren't included.

Does the minion AI know which abilities to use based on the immunities and weaknesses it can see? I ask because when I have a demon with two of the same ability with different damage types (say a fire and an ice attack), are they smart enough to know to use the right one? Or should I scrap one for a good passive or something instead?

God the player relic wraiths who have stacked all healers around an AoE based Heart Summoner...I think one combat maybe went 90 turns.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 09, 2017, 04:29:08 am
I did some experimentation with a Death's Hand MaxHP drain character. I found it somewhat difficult to balance for, because you need SO MANY stats (magic, accuracy, vitality) that you can't really pull off a significant boost to any of them and need to rely on a demon with cunning and debuffs (Freybug, basically). Also the MaxHP buffer capped at about +15, which was nice but will get thin pretty quick.

It's amazing for getting back up to speed after a close call, though. Also good if you pick Body on an Orb of Power character to get the Siphon spell for added damage cushions.

Madevra is kind of a special case. I beat her by

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Regarding enemy healspam... this isn't universal but you can play a Crown character with.. Light? ... to get silencing cut, and then snag Bloodthirst from Artemis. It's another where you need a dedicated evade debuffer, but between those two skills you get 10 mana per turn, shutting something the hell up... forever. Bonus if you can fit an infection in there too, and they have to keep trying to cleanse that off.

I'm now a full convert of Instant Dismiss. It's like a free emergency action every turn if you need it. Getting it always feels like breathing room, and where the game "feels" right to play.

General thoughts about stuff:

I've had a really hard time fitting Vile and Blessed into parties. Vile because most of the stuff that has it feels extremely frail, and Blessed because it seems like they spend the whole fight casting buffs and nothing else, just constantly refreshing them. That's okay, but at that point it's buffbot and healer basically being non-participants bringing every fight to me and one other demon I constantly hotswap when they get into trouble.

I'm having a hard time finding use for Abbey Lubbers. You can't easily force them to get good Dark abilities without wisp-gambling Profane modifiers and that gets expensive... And by the time you're somewhere that you need that much of a heavy-hitting Dark damage dealer they get absolutely destroyed by the stuff you'd need them to kill.

Sometimes the demon casting priority is a little wonky. I had a ranged fire caster... the imps that start showing up right at the Anomaly, not the Fotias... who I gave Warmth and ember burst... and the direct-target ranged holy spell as a backup. During almost every fight, it would prefer to spam holy single-target until out of mana, instead of igniting stuff to keep his (and my) SP regen high. I'm thrilled that this is the only case where the AI control has done stuff off enough to make me notice, but I dunno. I do wish they'd look after themselves some, if that's even possible.

Otherwise, it's hard to put the game down. I really want to experiment with everything and playing mad scientist with innocent or not so innocent demon lives is addictive.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on September 09, 2017, 08:58:17 am
Quote from: beorn080 on September 08, 2017, 01:47:47 pm
Oh i know 1 is intentional. I literally meant on just [goblins and redcaps], as both are very weak. To recruit one of each is almost an entire levels worth of credits on the first few floors.
Goblins and redcaps can ask for life instead of credits. You can occasionally get away with not paying a single dime, though it's much more frequent with redcaps than with goblins.

Quote from: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 12:06:33 am
So I see what you're saying about Frost being more efficient now. Sudden Chill is, compared to the other area skills, pretty stupidly efficient. You get the chill benefits, reasonable 40 Power damage and it has no cooldown. Compared to the other more exotic AoEs like Light and Dark that's.....pretty damn good right out of the box, no supporting skills really needed, flat out better than Mindscream.
I usually go for Mind Scream to get coverage on a less-resisted element, though Sudden Chill is a good choice if you need a better AOE more immediately.

Quote from: Darkmere on September 09, 2017, 12:34:16 am
I just lost a Crown guy to a pack of ... something. The japanese hand ghosts backed by two casters that spammed AoE Infection every turn. Melee will eventually simply end you, your party, and everything you hold dear.
That team with Akateko and Arkhai? Yeah, they can be a real problem without body and dark resistant/immune melee guys. Worse comes to worse, form a link with either one; an Akateko link could buy you time at the cost of potential distrust, while a successful Arkhai conversion usually requires a bit of hp and max hp up front. Either's better than a party-wide HP drain or wipe, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 02:11:39 am
MaxHP down can be a bitch due to the conversion rate of XP to life restored (I was seeing on average 1 to 2 HP restored per enemy killed.) Strangely though some guys like Turdak and Artemis just....seem to ignore it and take it as normal damage? I know it's not because of Dark Resist because I have it and lose MaxHP to attacks. Maybe it's Body?
Dark resistance does diminish HP drain significantly, while immunity negates such attacks outright. Of course, this rule doesn't apply for damaged relics.

Quote from: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 02:11:39 am
Some of the Hero and Summoner combos beyond her though just get more and more vicious. Remember Reshape from way back in the first levels? There's a passive later on that essentially makes it cooldown in 1 to 2 turns if you're getting hit. A freaking Endure cooldown. You wanna talk about unkillable? How about something that drops all its status effects and puts 150 power heal on itself every 1 to 2 turns as a free action.

...

If I have one suggestion that might make the game a little bit less....lopsided when you start running into higher level passives with ever more broken effects is.....SP cost multipliers. For example, if a passive targets a specific ability and makes it amazing, like almost removing the cooldown from Reshape or Second Wind, maybe it should multiply the SP cost (Or give it a cost to begin with). The jump from Tier 1 Skills to Tier 2 in SP cost isn't insignificant, but if cheap Tier 1 skills can be lifted to godly levels with one passive.....mmmmmmaaaayyyybbbbbeeee they should cost just a little bit more.
Indomitable (I think that's the one) + Reshape is a great combo, but it's not without its flaws; since the target would need to actually take a turn, any effect that changes turn order (such as slow, haste, charges, stuns, and paralysis) could severely limit this tactic's utility.

Quote from: Darkmere on September 09, 2017, 04:29:08 am
I did some experimentation with a Death's Hand MaxHP drain character. I found it somewhat difficult to balance for, because you need SO MANY stats (magic, accuracy, vitality) that you can't really pull off a significant boost to any of them and need to rely on a demon with cunning and debuffs (Freybug, basically). Also the MaxHP buffer capped at about +15, which was nice but will get thin pretty quick.
There's a ranged, no miss series of HP drain spells in the game, along with a like breath weapon. They're far more costly, but they're great for builds that dump agility.

Quote from: Darkmere on September 09, 2017, 04:29:08 am
I've had a really hard time fitting Vile and Blessed into parties. Vile because most of the stuff that has it feels extremely frail, and Blessed because it seems like they spend the whole fight casting buffs and nothing else, just constantly refreshing them. That's okay, but at that point it's buffbot and healer basically being non-participants bringing every fight to me and one other demon I constantly hotswap when they get into trouble.
Vile is fine as is, thanks to its Body resistance.

Cursed, on the other hand, competes with both that and Psychic's Mind resistance, yet gives nothing else in return. I think Cursed and Blessed should get an HP boost similar to Lifebringers to be worthwhile.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 09, 2017, 01:06:19 pm
Re: Negotiation/RNG

The money requests aren't as evil as they look, at least sometimes. As you get to know the various demons, you may notice differences in the wording they sometimes use for money requests: these differences can indicate how amicable they will be to attempts to haggle them down, which can make a huge difference if you are haggling regularly and at the right times. (Of course, I'm not a great writer, so it's entirely possible I only imagine it is possible to figure this out from their dialogue. :D )

Wording can also be useful to examine for item requests: Demons use different wording with the requests for items that can indicate how happy they'll be to receive it / how forgiving they'll be if you refuse.

The amounts may still be a bit off though: Credits is (relatively speaking) still a relatively new concept to Demon compared to most of the game, and is probably going to get another pass at the same time I do another pass on Relic Upgrades, since the two are fairly related.

Sacrifice requests are rough. I agree they're probably usually not worth it on mundane demons... but when they come up on a particularly impressive unique or modified demon, that's when they shine, at least from my point of view. :D

HP requests are basically a level check. Shoggoth grunted at the 24 HP because he was much higher level than you. Granted, it's still better than him getting angry because you refused probably.

Still, I don't disagree there are some RNG elements (or at least, not easily discernable elements) involved. I can experiment with some flavor questions and see how I like them next time I take a swing at negotiation. There are other non-flavor ideas I have for negotiations too, just need to get to it on the list, so to speak. :) The in-progress build is a big one, so I can't promise that'll be anytime soon.


Re: Downloads

I initially went with Google Drive because it was one of the low barrier few ways (at the time) to get the game downloadable without Chrome issuing dire warnings about it being an EXE you downloaded from an untrustworthy source. I have itch setup now as getter pointed out (thanks getter!), but still keep the Google Drive links front and center on my blog because I don't want regulars (who are usually the ones who end up there) to get poked about the donation box each time. (I do *want* a donation box, I just don't want to jam it in regular players' faces every time I have an update. That probably makes no sense to anyone but me, but I'm rolling with it. :P )

That all aside, I do agree Google Drive's interface is capital T Terrible though. I wish to heck it was better. Sorry about that.


Re: MaxHP things

You may not have been seeing immunity so much as the AI deciding not to bother trying. Akateko are a bit infamous for being willing to punch if their HP/MaxHP drains aren't going to work out for them. If the target is weak to Impact (as Artemis and Turdak both are), this will only make it even more likely that they'll just bump attack instead of using spells. (Not having weak to Impact might be why they were still willing to try draining you even through resistance... they are much better at Magic than Strength, after all.)

MaxHP draining is definitely powerful stuff. :) I won't claim I've got the balance perfect on it by any means, but it's there as an extension of one of Demon's main philosophies: "If the enemy can do it, the player should get to too if they want." Allowing MaxHP draining by players is a relatively rare and unexplored territory balance-wise. I don't agree it's necessary to have a chance, but I will agree it's probably one of the more straightforward ways to improve your chances.

Overcoming enemy healing is definitely important. MaxHP drain is one way of doing it, but I think there are plenty of others: Silence, Mind magic, Infection, high DPS, beating them on the SP front, etc. :D


Re: Lioth

Lioth has been the most hated unique in the game literally from the moment I added him. :D Madevra's a close second probably, but Lioth still holds the crown I think. :)


Re: Codex summoning

Codex summoning would be messy since it operates in three different modes depending on your option settings, but I could see expanding the coffin size as a thing perhaps, or being able to "save" certain demons for assured later revival access. I'll take a look at it on the next upgrade pass. :D


Re: Resolution woes

It seems like there's definitely something going on here. Unfortunately, a combination of "FerretDev isn't a great graphics programmer" and "tiles are tricky to get working without seams" forced me to disable the usual Unity resolution pop-up: going through that for any reason caused tiles to have seems. I'm 100% certain there is a problem here, but I'm going to need to carve out some time to dig into it and it's probably going to make me weep blood. :P Please accept my apologies on this one: I will look into it, but it's probably going to be a bit.


Re: Explicit

I try to be explicit about such things. :D When I'm not, someone yells at me and I fix it. :) If something seems super unclear, lemme know. :D (Bloodthirst, by the way, does indeed work with reactions. One of my favorite Titan's Fist builds is to start with Bloodthirst + Riposte.. I sort of think of it as a vampire? :D Probably a weird concept for a relic called Titan's Fist, but it's pretty fun, especially once you stack some goblin passives and get Riposte firing much more often... and if you swipe Parry from Madevra... or start using Spin Slash + Evade Step... )


Re: AI and resists/immunities

The AI is very good about this.. in fact, it is almost evil about it. Not only will it account for resistances/immunities in your enemies, it will in your *allies* as well. i.e.: If you have one ally with Flame Orb, he won't hesitate to bomb your own Fire immune allies with it if he needs to to maximize his damage to enemies, since he knows your Fire immune won't care. :D

One odd note worth pointing out re: Ice though. Since Ice resistance doesn't protect against Chill status at all (only immunity does), you will sometimes see your buddies use Ice attacks on Ice resistant targets more readily than you might expect, particularly if they feel the Acc/Evd/Move debuff would be useful for some reason.


Re: Ukobach and smite spamming

Ukobach is probably preferring the Light spell since it can't miss... but, that is a little odd since they don't have much trouble hitting with Ember Burst, and as you say, they have plenty of reasons to want to use Ignite. It may be that it's not probably accounting for Warmth in some way, I'll take a look. :D


Re: Buffbotting

Buffs don't last super long: a buffer with more than one buff is probably going to have to spam it in order to keep both going on the party 100% of the time. Buffs tend to be a high priority when available on a demon, since they can't miss and have a pretty big impact on combat performance. It can be dicey if you have both a buffbot and a healer out though: as you say, that puts a lot of pressure on the other two combatants. One solution might be to experiment with the self-buff cantrips instead. It does eat up skill slots on more party members, but they never get spammed, and are also cheaper SP wise too.


Thanks for the commentary and feedback everyone. :D This is great to read and I'm glad you're all enjoying the game. :)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ( Tchey ) on September 09, 2017, 02:21:51 pm
Thanks for taking some time answering all this.

What about the name of the game ? "Demon" is very generic, and makes it hard to find by simple chance.
I feel the game is quite often refered as "Demon Roguelike", so it's something, but still not good enough i think.

- Tower of Ancient Demon, so it's "ToaD" ?
- Party Tower Special Demon, so it's "PTSD" ?
- Demon23, so it's D23 ?
- Pokedemon ?
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 09, 2017, 05:45:17 pm
Summoner's Delight :P

Seriously I agree. Demon as a name doesn't punch hard enough or do this game's awesomeness justice. Demon in the title somewhere, absolutely. Just need to spice it up a little bit. Even Demon Summoner would make this game easier to find.

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I did some experimentation with a Death's Hand MaxHP drain character. I found it somewhat difficult to balance for, because you need SO MANY stats (magic, accuracy, vitality) that you can't really pull off a significant boost to any of them and need to rely on a demon with cunning and debuffs (Freybug, basically). Also the MaxHP buffer capped at about +15, which was nice but will get thin pretty quick.

Vitality increases the amount drained or the amount received? I'm much less concerned by the amount received.

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Indomitable (I think that's the one) + Reshape is a great combo, but it's not without its flaws; since the target would need to actually take a turn, any effect that changes turn order (such as slow, haste, charges, stuns, and paralysis) could severely limit this tactic's utility.

I'll agree with "limit" so far. Yes in isolation any skill has its weaknesses but the Lioth fight is a pretty good example of the enemy having all their bases covered. Cleanses make it hard to focus fire anything because your choices are either a) make the enemy AI focus on their summoner to keep them alive or b) eat the summoner's BS while you try to whittle down their healers and cleansers and debuffers. And if the Summoner is a healer like this Heart Summoner I've been running into a lot lately.....you can win but like I said, I've had some fights go upwards of 60, 70 turns playing "healer/cleanse whackamole." For melee letting the AI decide who it is going to hit is a recipe for losing by attrition. That said my party is only now starting to get some AoE potential. Which helps overwhelm some healer groups.

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Of course, I'm not a great writer, so it's entirely possible I only imagine it is possible to figure this out from their dialogue.

Hey, don't sell yourself short. I've enjoyed what I've read so far and there's a fair amount of text between all the different demon descriptions so I feel like I've got a decent take on your style. As far as the demon dialog writing so far, I've enjoyed the variety. I will read the demon dialogs a little more carefully for context clues though, and I have noticed many of them. Like when I killed all of an angel's companions and tried to link, and deliberately argued that he had allies too even though I know what that response generally gets. And I got a good laugh when he said something like "Thou hast slain my host and now you mock me?!?!" I knew he wouldn't take it well. Anyone that says thou does not have a sense of humor. :P

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(I do *want* a donation box, I just don't want to jam it in regular players' faces every time I have an update. That probably makes no sense to anyone but me, but I'm rolling with it. :P )

As a player I appreciate this kind of thinking. I'd be absolutely ok with, assuming you had a legit game start screen right now which you don't, embedding a donate link button there.

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Bigger Coffin

I like this as a halfway solution but not as part of the current Relic Upgrade schema; there are too many things in there I already want and leveling is slow (although I feel like it actually gets faster as you get higher up the tower....) Consider maybe making some kinds of Relic upgrades as discoverable items or fight rewards or something. I don't think increasing the size of your Demon Party is an upgrade people should really have to choose between and things like, Instant Summon/Unsummon. If there's X upgrades for party size in the game right now, then maybe it should be Y + Z upgrades split between the normal Relic upgrade system and ones found in alternative ways. Maybe just make a generic discoverable item that lets you immediately upgrade your Relic. (Maybe the big NPC Summoners drop Relic fragments that you can use to power up your own Relic.) I know Demon really isn't about loot like other games, but right now the loot we do have (while useful) isn't very exciting. Bronze/Silver offerings (is there a difference? I don't have one of each in front of me to compare the wording) are about the only thing I'm super stoked to see right now in the midgame. I suppose I'm also pretty happy to see Essences too. I think more items that mimic skill abilities would make for good additions as well. (Blink/Short Jaunt items for example.) You could also make some of the Runes "discoverable" in the way most roguelikes handle potions. Like, as a Summoner you'd know the basic Bolt/Flame/Freeze runes, but the more complicated AoE runes would be unknown until you use them. And then you can throw some ultra-mega cool runes in there like, I dunno, temporary demon allies or insta kill runes or instant level up runes or something.

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Wording can also be useful to examine for item requests: Demons use different wording with the requests for items that can indicate how happy they'll be to receive it / how forgiving they'll be if you refuse.

I've noticed the wording matters. I also like how you made sure at least simple context (like killing everything before linking) matters.  Like with the angel and various others. On the RNG side of things, the Shoggoth HP check still seems random, because I did it several times. Weighted sure, but I got that response once out of maybe.....10 requests for it. And I'm happy with that incidental RNG. I just didn't like how in the early game cycling through responses just kept coming back to money. Perhaps that's more specific to other demons as well.

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Re: AI and resists/immunities

This is all good and helpful information, thanks. So it is useful to retain the same ability essentially if it hits different damage types.

I agree with a couple above posters that I'm starting to see some weird AI behavior when I start trying to add abilities to creatures. Like I gave Python Weigh Sin and I swear his behavior changed completely. He'd run up to one square shy of melee combat and spend the rest of the combat spamming Weigh Sin instead of attacking. Other times I swear Headless or a couple other large creatures are sandbagging, standing back with the ranged for no real reason until I choose to move. As one more oddity/point of confusion, I've been having problems getting my AI to attack sleeping targets on command. I know this was the case because I was running a really tight link attempt at the end of a Relic wraith fight and I simply could not get my AI to start attacking another sleeping target. It's not the first time I've experienced this either. I'd command all day, they'd agree. But they'd wait on me to actually deal damage to the target before they'd start attacking. And when you're completely drained on both HP and SP at the end of a hard fight with a still hostile link target beating on you....yeah I need you guys to do as your ordered here, please. Sometimes it works fine. Sometimes I have to start the attacks myself.

Lastly, I'd prefer if the melee AI priorities maximizing surrounding coverage on an enemy. More than once I've seen melee AI not try to swap with someone so they can attack, instead waiting for the other friendly AI to decide to move. I'm sure there are programmatic/logical reasons for some of this but it's a little annoying occasionally to watch your melee just stand there for various reasons. While I can see they don't do it, I think Monster AI should be willing to swap places with the Summoner. I'd rather not have to spend a movement action to let them in. For melee summoners that might be a little frustrating but they're players, they have the wherewithal to adapt and make decisions. The AI really can't.

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Re: Resolution woes

Not a biggie in my book.

Just sort of jumping to a couple things I was thinking about....

I guess you're not responsible for the tile art, but the tower really needs to evolve and look different as you go up it.

A few Demon Types like Blessed seem pretty anemic compared to others. I think Blessed has maybe 6 abilities in it. I know it's all a work in progress and it's not something I'm actually bothered about, I'm just wondering where you feel you're at on that stuff.

I also find myself wishing more that demons could pick up skills from their Type as a level up perk. I understand that recruiting demons, luck, and swapping skills around is the name of the game here. But I feel like if you've invested long enough in a demon (possibly to your own detriment) that should be rewarded. For example, let's say that the first time a demon has gained 10 levels in your service, they're award a random skill from their type. I've got a real samey problem with my lineup right now (which, going melee, will tend to happen) and it'd be nice for something to shake that up outside of the whole recruiting loop.

Did you do the pixel art for this yourself FerretDev?

I'll close by saying, I've praised you a lot but I think I should praise you some more. Setting aside that I love the setting and the genre of Demon and that's a big sell....there's just a lot of thoughtfulness put in the game mechanics here. There's subtlety all over the place. From the fact that wording actually matters in many places and implies gameplay, like in dialogs. That the text is reflective of the mechanics (demons that are below your level and eat your HP are thrilled, and vicea versa.) That the RNG isn't there for its own sake, it has rules attached to it that are flavorful and sensible. The way you handled cooldown timers, something that generally is pretty goddamn banal when it comes to RPGs, in a cool way that actually adds to gameplay instead of just limits it. The various attack types and how really important they are to balance (I'm starting to see way more ranged direct attacks now in the higher tiers and mmmmaaaannn it can make life difficult for you as the summoner.) That combat is as tactically rich as it is. And just the "one more floor" quality of gameplay that every roguelike dungeon crawler aspires to but doesn't always achieve. I've played my fair share of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, which has years and years of multi-contributor content behind it, and I'd say Demon ranks close to it in overall goodness. It's got the freedom and flexibility of play like Tales of Maj'Eyal while feeling a hell of a lot tighter in design and the schema of the mechanics. Of course it can't match DC:SS or ToME in terms of scope but what it already has is quite impressive. And it just feels fully realized as an idea, much like DoomRL or CastevaniaRL both knew and loved what they were inspired by and really captured it in their game.

I guess I hope you can make some real money out of Demon and invest more in it graphically, sound and UI wise, because it's already got a rock solid foundation of gameplay. And is something I would heartily recommend my friends buy. I hope you stay with Demon for a good long while.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 10, 2017, 12:19:15 am
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I did some experimentation with a Death's Hand MaxHP drain character. I found it somewhat difficult to balance for, because you need SO MANY stats (magic, accuracy, vitality) that you can't really pull off a significant boost to any of them and need to rely on a demon with cunning and debuffs (Freybug, basically). Also the MaxHP buffer capped at about +15, which was nice but will get thin pretty quick.

Vitality increases the amount drained or the amount received? I'm much less concerned by the amount received.

In this case, neither. But I felt I needed enough caster-boosting options with the Dead Hand that I couldn't afford tanky passives and had to compensate with Vitality points. The situation may be different if you run an Orb relic and rip the can't miss Body spells yourself, but that's expensive and will take some time.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 10, 2017, 10:53:17 pm
Nenjin, don't suppose you'd mind telling me how to interact with save files? My computer ran out of memory as I was playing, which (after rebooting everything) seems to make the game throw up a blank black screen after the title sequence. Would love to be able to salvage the run, but if not I assume that deleting the potentially-messed-up save might at least get the game to work again.

The problem persists after uninstalling and reinstalling the app itself, so I figure this is my best bet.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 01:13:30 am
Yeah that's your best bet. Just delete the Demon folder in the FerretDev_Org folder, in theory the game should create the necessary files when it starts up again.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 11, 2017, 01:31:50 am
Quote from: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 01:13:30 am
Yeah that's your best bet. Just delete the Demon folder in the FerretDev_Org folder, in theory the game should create the necessary files when it starts up again.

Yep, that seems to have worked. Thanks a bunch.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: beorn080 on September 11, 2017, 06:39:51 pm
Question.

I just got Poison Needle for Artemis via Revelation. Does that stack directly with Venomous, or are both separate checks that can proc together?
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 13, 2017, 12:19:59 am
Sorry for the slight reply delay. :) Monday and Tuesday are my busiest days in general. :D

Demon's name: I know Demon's not a great name... and if I were a commercial venture, I'd definitely need to change it. But, I'm not... and changing it at this late date will probably be more trouble than it's worth. Demon's fairly well known within roguelike circles at this point, and I don't feel like it has a large audience outside of that, sooo... at least for now, even though I acknowledge it's not great as a name, I'm not strongly inclined to go changing it at the moment. (Random aside though: at least for me, Googling "Demon Roguelike" brings up 4-5 Demon-related responses as the first hits. Heck, I've even clawed my way to page 5 on just "Demon", and considering the competition that's not half bad. :D )

Max HP and Vitality: Vitality increases the amount of bonus Max HP you can have, since the cap on this is a % of your base Max HP. More Max HP = you can have more bonus Max HP.

Writing: There are some cute bits in there. :D For example, have you ever tried giving HP to a monster when you're Poisoned? :D (Note: Check their Body resistance level first for best results!)

Upgrades: The Upgrade revamp will be switching to a point system (largely so that I don't have to try and balance all upgrades equally, which isn't working out): under such a system, coffin upgrades would probably be cheaper. I might even just allow infinite rezzing, but I'll have to clean up an annoying bit of bad code in order to make my save system and UI systems tolerant of what could be a large, large number of entries depending on how players play. (If you've ever noticed a huge delay when loading the Codex, it is related to this bit of bad code. I tolerate it there because the Codex is cool and not gameplay critical, but I can't let it go in something like the Coffin.)

Negotiation: Yeah, money eventually ends up the last one because certain choices get turned "off" as you refuse them, especially if you refuse them a certain way. (For example: simply refusing to give a demon an Item doesn't forbid it from asking you again... but convincing it you don't have any does. Of course, sometimes they think you're lying and get angrier about that than they would a plain refusal. :D A more obvious case is that you never get asked to give HP if you're already down to exactly 1.) Money can be turned off too, but it's much harder to manage than many.

AI: The AI is generally pretty good, except when you start to give a demon two different directions to run at once, so to speak. The one thing the AI can't really do is read player intent. Python has Weigh Sin and an attack... so which should he prioritize? It sounds like you'd prefer he'd attack more, but I can equally see someone wanting him to focus on debuffing. There are ways I could fix this by adding more control over how demons behave, but I'm reluctant to do that because I have nightmare visions of people tweaking their demons' AI per fight, or worse, per round of every fight... and at that point all I've done is create a really clunky TRPG. :D

Commanding to attacking sleepers: Hmm.. that *should* work. I'll look into it for the next build!

Surrounding enemies AI: I agree this needs to be better, but for the reasons you state, I'm a bit reluctant to have AIs be able to swap with the player. The rest I agree with though, just haven't gotten around to writing the algorithm (or swiping it from DCSS :P ) yet.

Tile art: The default character sprites are done by Geminimax, one of Demon's earliest fans. All other art, including the other set of character sprites you can swap to in the option menu, is my own. Unfortunately, I have no real artistic skills, so reaching even the level you see in Demon is rather slow for me, which is part of why there aren't many tilesets for terrain yet: they involve a lot of art, and it is hard for me to justify spending days and days on them when I still have gameplay stuff to do. :D I do occasionally force myself to do a new one though: the Sanctum tilesets are fairly new. :D I think my next tileset project will be doing different looks for Tower:11-20 and Tower:21-30... and maybe color-shifts for 6-10, 16-20, and 26-30? We'll see! Not sure when that will be though.

Skills on level up would be cool... but there's already a heck of a lot to juggle here too. That said, I have considered adding a "loyalty" system to demons. In fact, there used to be a very rough sort of one way back in the early days: rather than credits, Demons accumulated Training Points you could use to pass their skills around to other demons, but to learn them yourself, you had to wait until they gained enough levels: basically, each level, they'd teach you the next skill on their list, and they could only teach you ones they started with or learned as a modifier, so if you wanted specific skills you had to keep specific demons around for awhile. It had some upsides to it, but the Training Point system in particular was clunky and had some odd quirks I didn't like, which is why it went the way of the dodo. But, another swing at a loyalty system might be in order at some point. :)

Praise: Thank you very much for the kind words. :D Warm fuzzies are always nice, and I'm really glad you're having so much fun with Demon. :) Demon may not ever make a ton of money or have access to awesome music/UI, but I intend to continue working on it for quite some time still and keep the content and other goodies coming. :D Thank you again for all the kind words, I really appreciate them. :D

Save Files: grumble. I can understand a very sudden shutdown causing save file corruption, but Demon should probably handle it more gracefully than that. I'll look into it, though I can't promise next build on this: I'm not super knowledgeable on proper file/data management save/load type things and may have to dig a bit to get anywhere. Sorry for the trouble Whisperling (and thanks for helping them nenjin!)

Poison Needle + Venomous: This comes out as two separate Poison chances, which means if both land, something could go up 2 poison levels in one attack (though remember, poison level increases have a chance to fail without the Vile Alchemy passive, so you could see both work but only get 1 poison level.)

Thanks again for all the feedback, and good luck in the Tower!
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 13, 2017, 12:46:22 am
Don't sweat the name thing, I think we're all just being fanboys.

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Negotiation: Yeah, money eventually ends up the last one because certain choices get turned "off" as you refuse them, especially if you refuse them a certain way. (For example: simply refusing to give a demon an Item doesn't forbid it from asking you again... but convincing it you don't have any does. Of course, sometimes they think you're lying and get angrier about that than they would a plain refusal. :D A more obvious case is that you never get asked to give HP if you're already down to exactly 1.) Money can be turned off too, but it's much harder to manage than many.

See this is the logic that I love. It's stupidly obvious when you think about it, but I guess I'm kind of jaded by dialogs in games to assume they just full of bad loops. (Unless it's something pretty top tier like Witcher.) The poison example is great too. More "obvious but hidden" stuff like that please!

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Python has Weigh Sin and an attack... so which should he prioritize?

I guess my player expectation was: cast Weigh Sin, move into melee, refresh or add new Weigh Sins every other couple of attacks. But your buffing code looks like it's pretty strict; I noticed it with the Holy cat demon (I forget their name atm.) As soon as I had one they threw down Weigh Sin on every foe, often before I'd even realized it. It works great when you do want a dedicated buffer, but I feel like it pigeon holes characters because the AI weights it so heavily. It's a tricky problem, but I guess for me personally I'd prefer the AI to generalize and take its hints at specialization from me, when I for example take away all its active abilities except two buffs.

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Tile art: The default character sprites are done by Geminimax, one of Demon's earliest fans. All other art, including the other set of character sprites you can swap to in the option menu, is my own. Unfortunately, I have no real artistic skills, so reaching even the level you see in Demon is rather slow for me, which is part of why there aren't many tilesets for terrain yet: they involve a lot of art, and it is hard for me to justify spending days and days on them when I still have gameplay stuff to do. :D I do occasionally force myself to do a new one though: the Sanctum tilesets are fairly new. :D I think my next tileset project will be doing different looks for Tower:11-20 and Tower:21-30... and maybe color-shifts for 6-10, 16-20, and 26-30? We'll see! Not sure when that will be though.

No I get it. It's a roguelike and content is way easier and faster to create than art. Again I'm just liking the game enough I wanna see it go to the next level of visuals. I think your sprites are great though, very charming. I and a friend who has been watching me play did have one moment where we looked at a sprite (The Goddess of Beer irrc) and both of us had like a Magic Picture moment where we couldn't tell what we were looking at, but when we finally did see it we couldn't unsee it.

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Skills on level up would be cool... but there's already a heck of a lot to juggle here too. That said, I have considered adding a "loyalty" system to demons. In fact, there used to be a very rough sort of one way back in the early days: rather than credits, Demons accumulated Training Points you could use to pass their skills around to other demons, but to learn them yourself, you had to wait until they gained enough levels: basically, each level, they'd teach you the next skill on their list, and they could only teach you ones they started with or learned as a modifier, so if you wanted specific skills you had to keep specific demons around for awhile. It had some upsides to it, but the Training Point system in particular was clunky and had some odd quirks I didn't like, which is why it went the way of the dodo. But, another swing at a loyalty system might be in order at some point. :)

I can see where that got complicated. Sounds like you'd end up passing on a lot of demons just for the skills you'd want to acquire from level up.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Darkmere on September 13, 2017, 01:07:39 am
How about "if character has debuffs AND direct attacks, debuff enemy targets that have been attacked my allies last turn who do not already have the debuff. Else, attack."

Same for buffs, prioritize allies who have taken damage in the past 3 turns, then try something else.

Listening to a focus target command should put that enemy at the top of the list.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 13, 2017, 01:12:11 am
I've noticed some odd behaviors with Focus Target too, particularly with Artemis. There are a couple times she's straight up ignored my commands in favor of firing at the first enemy in her range. I assume she believe it's the highest priority target or the only target she can reach or something but....it's happened often enough to make me question what's going on there.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: beorn080 on September 13, 2017, 07:53:45 am
For demon skill usage, maybe just a tag that prioritizes one skill over others? For examplr, I had an ukobach pick up that 100%ignite plus 40 power attack skill from the heart relic, yet he would still spam his basic bolt, presumably due to higher power. It would have been nice to get him to set everything on fire with me since my best three demons and myself had all been given warmth.

Speaking of warmth, it is hilarious during the actaeon fight.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Whisperling on September 14, 2017, 04:55:34 pm
Just want to take a moment to thank you for all the responses and such, Ferret. The game itself is great, and that's only compounded by having such an active and involved dev.

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I'm currently at level eight or so in a really neat run. The build is titan's fist with slash/body, which gives me a counterattack, a 70-power 100% accuracy slash, and bloodthirst. Threw some AOE attacks, flesheater, and an ember dive on later, which made me into a weird sort of shock unit. I jump in, kill as much stuff as possible with AoE attacks, and keep my health up with the drain abilities.

Going to have to be careful not to throw myself into a dangerous situation (not to mention Madevra) later, since I'm still coasting on the post-anomaly levels, but this is pretty fun.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 17, 2017, 11:03:10 am
Buffing Code: The buffing code is actually pretty different for each buff/debuff. :D

Since we're talking about Guilt, we'll use that for our example. The factors considered here are:

1) Base value: 200 (Guilt is considered to be a fairly good thing thing to do... for reference, an attack expected to deal roughly 16% of a target's HP in damage would be 100.)
2) Success rate of the attack. (Note: Accuracy below 50% starts losing value rapidly.)
3) Guilt specific: Threat level (How threatening the target is: basically, it's level, speed, and whether it's a hero, a minion, or normal rank)
4) Guilt specific: How damaged the target is (The more damaged the target is, the higher this evaluation comes back)
5) Guilt specific: Is the target under a kill order? (If yes, higher evaluation)
6) Guilt specific: Is the taret at full health? (Special case of 4: returns a lower evaluation)
7) Guilt specific: Do I or my allies have multi-target damage effects? If NOT, then reduce the evaluation drastically if there is already one Guilted enemy.

whew, okay. Now to explain why Guilt does all that. The first two are relatively straightforward: the base value of 200% is something I came up with myself, and success rate is an evaluation factor in literally everything; in fact, it tends to be a straight multiplier on the evalution. i.e: a 200 evaluation with a 70% chance to work comes out at 140. As noted, chances below 50% start to have an additional penalty: the AI doesn't like gambles very much.

Next up: Guilt checks threat and how damaged the target is because these are the same factors damage effects check. Since Guilt triggers off of dealing damage to the target you applied it to, it makes sense that you'd want to use similar criteria in some regard.

Checking for a Kill Order of course also makes sense: kill orders (at least, when there aren't any bugs :P ) force allies to attack the target, making them an extra good target for Guilt.

A full health target is a fairly mild penalty, only there to nudge the AI into choosing an already damaged target over an undamaged one in close call cases. For example, I want the AI to choose a 55% success rate 80% HP target over a 60% success rate 100% HP target. Why? Because a target that has already been damaged once will likely be attacked again. :D Factor 4 on the list already handles this to some degree: factor 6 is just to underline it a bit for the specific case of full health targets.

Finally, the 7th one: If nobody has multi-target attacks, there isn't a large amount of point to guilting multiple targets, so we strongly discourage that here.

Anyway: I could adjusting the base value, perhaps. 200 is relatively high... but I confess I tend to aim high when dealing with healing effects because I have a phobia about the AI having ways to heal the player, not using them, then the player dying and coming to my forum to yell at me (or worse, just walking away from the game and never coming back.)


Focus Target: The AI will allow itself to target non-focus targets, but only if it seems to have no way to reach who you told it to attack. I'm starting to think there might be a bug in this somewhere, based on discussions here and back on Demon's forum, but I haven't gotten to looking into it yet.


Skill Tagging: What I worry about with this sort of thing is players changing the tagged ability every turn though: that's when you land in "TRPG with a particularly clunky interface" territory. I think there might be an issue where Warmth isn't properly considered in Ignite's AI which will address this specific instance... but yeah, in general, a Ukobach will probably pick Flame Dart over Set Alight, since Ignite (ordinarily) has a relatively low evaluation. (And yes, Warmth is indeed very powerful if there's an unusually large number of targets to burn. :D )


Thanks again for the feedback, comments, and compliments everyone. :D Work's finally calming down a little, so I should be able to get back to work on the next build here soon. :D
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 17, 2017, 02:34:59 pm
That's some pretty robust logic. My guess would be it was the count of AoEs on my side that was triggering Python to cast it so much. I had at least three AoEs on me (do they count their own AoEs in that calc?) Python had one. Can't remember who else I had with me but if it was Turdak, that'd make 5 AoEs.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on September 17, 2017, 02:41:37 pm
It's more of a boolean check in this case: if there is at least one ally with an AE nuke available, the penalty for multi-Guilting is waived, since in such a case there is a good argument for it,

Chances are good this is a problem with the specific values I've assigned to those evaluation elements. I don't often review them, and I think most of this code has probably been unchanged since Guilt was added to the game over 2 years ago. I've made a note to give it a more detailed review sometime soon and see if I can calm it down a bit. If nothing else, I may reduce the base value of this and many other enchantments: if you're playing the game now but hadn't before, it is actually only a recent change that most buffs/debuffs are relatively short duration. Up until a couple of builds back, enchantments tended to have durations of 10 or even 20 turns, not the 3/5/10 that are much more common now.

I didn't change the evaluations then mostly because I didn't know what the overall effects of that change would be on the value of each individual enchantment yet, but I would feel more confident making some tweaks now that I've had time to get feedback.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: StagnantSoul on September 18, 2017, 11:34:25 pm
Gave it a second try, getting it this time. Though I'm often running out of C... My parties keep losing members, sadly my precious willow wisp has died. Currently working with a psychic Zar, Jiang Shi, Echenis, and an Abbey Lubber. Using the Crown of Glory with light main and secondary. How strong are those portals to the fire and forest realm? I haven't tried them yet.

MY ECHENIS DIIIIIIIIED!!!!!!!

How good is a score of 4012?

Well this game is addicting once I got the hang of it. My general strategy is throw in Headless while Holy Nero and Fiery Fairy provide healing for me and Headless, with me applying Guilt, Shock, Mute, and Panick as necessary while tanking. Regen+guilt+bloodlust+parry+that ghost ability that heals me when others die makes me kind of a regen tank paladin thing. When Headless gets beaten up I throw in a Violent Ogre in his place, and if he goes down a Violent Abbey Lubber. I've been looking for someone to soul armour myself with, though so far everything gives me equal amount of weaknesses as resistances.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on September 20, 2017, 06:59:14 am
Quote
How good is a score of 4012?

I think that's more or less a pre-Anomaly score? At least I recall scoring around 6000 by that point.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ( Tchey ) on November 12, 2017, 07:10:04 am
Hi,

Any teasing on the next update to come ?

Still working on it ?

Page on ithio is quite too
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on November 25, 2017, 12:37:37 am
Ah, sorry. :D The thread had gotten quiet for awhile, so I'd gotten lazy about checking it. :(

Development's been at a slower pace in general since July when I resumed full time employment, but I've still been posting updates regularly at my blog: http://demon.ferretdev.org/devblog/

I admit I don't tend to update the itch page nearly as much as probably should: probably a bit of a chicken and egg thing there; it never got much traction, so I don't spend much time updating it except for releases, which probably is part of why it continues to not get much traction. :P I was slightly better about it when I was in full time development, but now that time's more precious I tend to stick to the blog.

To give a short summary of what's coming up: the next build is the "Matter build", which I call that because it will be adding a new elemental type, Matter, to the game. :D Matter abilities operate based on the physical form of the target: acid attacks, disintegration, entangling, and blindness are the major themes, but there are others lesser themes present as well: like Body and Mind, Matter covers a fair bit of ground.

Since they literally affect the matter of the target, Matter abilities tend to work quite well on things with fragile, squishy, or small physical forms... not so well on things with unusually sturdy or large forms... and not at all on things completely lacking a physical form, such as spirits and ghosts.

The Matter build is quite extensive: Matter is being added to the game as a fully supported element, hopefully indistinguishable from the original elements. That means over around 70 new abilities and 18 new demons: roughly a 15% increase on the amount of abilities and demons already present in the game. It will also be supported in all the other smaller ways: some Matter abilities will be available in starting character packages, there will be Matter modifiers, some older demons will have some of their abilities swapped out for new Matter abilities if they're more lore and/or balance appropriate, etc.

I still have a bit of ways to go before it's ready for release, but progress has been steady, if slower than I'd like, with a nice surge just now because of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. :D

Sorry again for the slow response! Good luck in the Tower!
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: nenjin on November 25, 2017, 08:19:38 pm
You in to taking user submissions FerretDev? I could be motivated to make some level tiles for sure.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 25, 2017, 09:17:34 pm
Will Headless use matter? From the description it feels like he would.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: FerretDev on November 26, 2017, 11:00:50 am
Nenjin: I am! :D Sending you a PM. :D

StagnantSoul: Headless isn't currently slated to have any Matter abilities. (I'm curious though, what about Matter or Headless made it seem like he would?)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: StagnantSoul on January 19, 2018, 05:41:11 am
Been trying out playing this again, Artemis is sure nice to have along as ranged support beside angel, add in some self healing from poisoning i found on a turd we tamed then deleted and a charged angel enabling our stormsworm cocoa who regains sp and shocks surrounding enemies when she shocks one (who had her ice abilities deleted) and we can tear through almost anything... Except this one hero who guilted everyone and dodged all our attacks, even dropping five frost and fire glyphs into her face did nothing... Nine heal gems, two dead uniques, a slaughtered lifegiver nero and charged angel later I finally died.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: AlStar on January 19, 2018, 09:14:37 am
Sometimes it's definitely better to cut-and-run rather then sticking it out. Sure, you miss out on the power-up you get for defeating a hero, but it's better than getting cut down.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Tegga21 on January 19, 2018, 09:54:48 am
Is there an extended game? Aka branches with bosses for keys to enter the orb area, where you could do more to get extra keys?  (Like DCSS)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Tegga21 on January 19, 2018, 10:20:06 am
Where to see what things like 'low profile' do
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: ShinQuickMan on January 19, 2018, 11:30:57 am
@Tegga21

There're side-branches, namely, the Anomaly and various lairs for uniques  Prolly the closest thing to an extended game is to pick fights with ghosts on the last floor. Also, to see what abilities and traits do, you'll have to mouse over them.
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: Zangi on January 19, 2018, 11:36:52 am
Quote from: Tegga21 on January 19, 2018, 10:20:06 am
Where to see what things like 'low profile' do
Can't you highlight over it or something?  Pretty sure all the info is easy to find in-game. 

Low Profile = Ranged allies, like Artemis, can shoot(straight) over the character with Low Profile. 
(There are 2 types of shooting, arc and straight.  Artemis has both, the arc type has longer cooldown and doesn't get blocked by obstacles/allies, while the straight type is basically her normal attack.)
Title: Re: Demon(Demon-taming, Monster-crafting, Dungeon-crawling Graphical roguelike)
Post by: notquitethere on May 30, 2022, 02:11:04 pm
I'm still playing this and there have been some interesting changes in recent years. The dev added Brands, which are permanent alterations you can put onto your demons which can have drawbacks as well as positives. There are a load of new abilities and monsters.

The starting choices of relic and abilities have changes a fair bit-- I think I preferred the more granular choice of starting monsters and powers that were there before, but it's probably more straightforward in its current incarnation (https://ferretdev.itch.io/demon).