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Hey Dungeoneers,

I'm hopefully going to have more vault quest stuff to show off next weekend, but for now here's a quality of life change that folks have been asking for for a while. Instead of immediately fading, danger indicators will now persist until the thing they are warning you about actually happens! This persists over save/load as well!

To be honestly I'm sort of iffy on the game's red danger indicators in general, which is why I took so long to make this tweak. They were a sort of phoned-in addition I made while busy with all of the enemy/boss changes in v0.8. They feel very visually noisy and 'videogamey' and I'd like to look into replacing them with more purposeful visuals for each hazard/attack at some point. However, there's no doubt that they're an important part of gameplay clarity for now, and having them persist is important for players who want to take their time or who just happened to be distracted for a moment.

Work continues on the upcoming vault quest. It's almost content-complete, though after that there'll still be some polishing that needs doing before it can go to beta.

As I briefly mentioned in the last blog post, there's going to be a new use for dwarf tokens in the vault, and it has something to do with this room and mirror. You lose all of your items when entering the vault, so wouldn't it be nice if there was some way for the heroes to regain their signature items in the vault and access most of their abilities again...

(Note that these visuals are a WIP)

Hey Dungeoneers,

With a bunch of spritework improvements starting in v4.0.0, I decided to spend a little time looking at historical stuff in the changes scene this week. Currently if a visual asset is updated in the main game it's updated in the changes scene too. It doesn't really feel right for something like a v0.1.0 change to use item sprites from v4.0 though, so I've decided to change that!

I've now converted the changes screen to use its own dedicated icons file, so that icons can be accurate to when a particular update was released. I've even decided to add the original release notes for Pixel Dungeon for good measure, going all the way back to v0.1 in December 2012! This ended up being a lot of work, the changes scene currently has almost 275 unique icons!

Here's how that looks on the oldest set of changes from 0.2 and prior. Current on left and new on right:

Hey folks!

I'm still working away at v4.0, and don't have a whole lot of new things to show off just yet after the recent blog post, but here's one new room from a bit ago that I never showed off publicly.

This is another lower tier treasure room that just requires a bit of timing to overcome. The sentry scans in a consistent pattern, but you'll need to make use of that pillar and good timing to avoid getting caught in a scan on the way to the treasure.

Hey folks!

Sorry for the extended wait, I'm back with some news on v4.0 and a new ETA! Unfortunately v4.0 is still a little ways out, it's ended up as a much bigger update than expected! Currently I estimate that v4.0 will ready for beta sometime in July, hopefully earlier in the month.

In this blog post I'm going to share a quick update on the vault quest, then go over some very exciting things also coming in v4.0.

(Please keep in mind that while I always try to keep to the ETAs I provide, they are just estimates. If you don't hear from me by the ETA, it means I'm still busy with the update!)

Read The Full Post Here

Hey Dungeoneers,

Expect a more full blog post later this coming week. That post which will go over all of what's coming in v4.0 and provide a new ETA.

In the meantime though, here's another new larger room coming in the vault quest! The hallway room features a long stretch with an enemy making rounds back and forth. The included tunnels tuck you away just far enough to avoid detection while they pass.

Hey Dungeoneers,

Work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon v4.0.0 continues! I expect I'll be making a blog post about what's coming sometime in the next week or so, though unfortunately I don't yet have an ETA for when the update will be ready for beta testing.

A big part of why it's taken so long is that v4.0 has become a bigger update than initially planned. I'll be sharing some more details on this soon, but here's a little teaser in the meantime. A bunch of improvements are coming to visuals in the dungeon environment, and this includes some improvements to the upcoming vault quest before it even releases!

Hey Dungeoneers,

Here's a little demonstration of the other two new enchantments coming in the next Shattered Pixel Dungeon update. Just like with the previous two (Venemous and Vorpal), there's an emphasis on bringing back some old enchants with new mechanics, and trying to make more enchantments that deal extra damage with some tradeoffs.

Firstly, Eldritch is a returning uncommon enchantment that has a chance to apply fear to visible enemies that aren't your primary target. Excellent for managing multiple enemies at once, and potentially juggling two enemies with ranged attacks.

Secondly, Crystal is a new rare enchantment that ALWAYS deals an extra 25% magic damage, but with a big durability tradeoff. Crystal weapons can crack and eventually shatter, but steadily repair themselves over time. You won't be able to depend on it constantly, but crystal offers the most consistent bonus damage of any enchantment.

Hey Dungeoneers,

In addition to the new quest, I'm planning to add four new weapon enchantments and two new weapon curses in the next update to Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Here's two of them, they make look very familiar to long-time players!

Venemous is a common enchantment that adds a stacking poison to the enemy. This poison can add up to a LOT of damage over time, but the initial application is delayed by three turns, meaning you'll need to plan around it to make use of the effect.

Vorpal is an uncommon enchantment that has a chance to deal bleed instead of a weapon's regular damage! That ends up being quite a bit more total damage, but it gets applied over time. Don't worry, vorpal doesn't apply to enemies that are immune to bleed and also doesn't apply if the regular attack would have killed the enemy.

These two new/returning enchants are actually a big reason I decided to add some DOT visuals to health bars, which I showed in last week's update.

Hey folks,

Here's a little quality of life tweak that's coming in the next Shattered Pixel Dungeon update. Health bars (enemy and player) will now visually indicate the amount of incoming damage over time by darkening part of their area. I'm making this change to go along with some other additions coming in the next update that will really benefit from being able to see total DOT at a glance.

This works with most sources of damage over time in the game, including ones with some randomness like burning and bleeding. When RNG is involved the amount of darkened HP can go up or down, but I've done some tweaking behind the scenes to make this less pronounced than you might expect.

Hey folks,

I've been working on expanding the various enemies you'll be facing in the dwarven vault (including some rather important changes to how the code works vs. the tester area). One thing I want to do is to base enemy designs in the existing dungeon regions, to make it easier to tell how dangerous an enemy is at a glance. That gives a chance to bring back and old enemy that was removed just about 6 years ago back in v0.8!

These skeletons are pretty similar to the ones in the prison, but you can tell that they're dwarves because they still have their distinctive beards, somehow. They used to be minions summoned by Dwarf King before I overhauled that fight.

Hey folks,

Last blog post I shared a bunch of designs for treasure rooms in the upcoming vault quest. Here's one that is in the tester area but that I didn't mention in the blog. The waves of lasers can be dodged with good movement, but a harder variant of the room could turn the beam speed up and require a consumable to get past.