Others Going Deeper [Beta 2.1] [NRFB Games]

[Rosen King]

Well, I'm still alive for now. Time for some more bugs/feedback.

Spoiler: Bugs

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Now for non-bug stuff:

Spoiler: Not Bugs

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

And that's the run! Whew, that was eventful. And not just because my computer almost broke... I think I had more planned for the feedback section, but I'm pooped.


Edit: Also, according to my notes there are still 8 skills unaccounted for from previous updates, but I only found one of them in this run (possibly the one newly added one from this patch), and none in my last two runs. I wonder if maybe there are some that are bugged and unable to be found... Keep an eye out for any skills that you haven't heard anyone talk about.

 

[WellIGuess]

New Going Deeper update, getting online today paid off!

 

[Rosen King]

You must be registered to see the links

(Though maybe I shouldn't be the one to post this? I'm sure some people have me on ignore by now.)

Spoiler: Response

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[NRFB]

I was almost finished writing this whole post and then the above post happened but whatever I'm not deleting it.

I did a publicly available

You must be registered to see the links

/

You must be registered to see the links

post thing about the state of things. Figure some people might be interested in reading about it.

In response to Rosen King stuff:

Spoiler: Bugs

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Spoiler: Not Bugs

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[wtmsbaaaaaa]

Seems interesting, GOOK LUCK dev

 

[NRFB]

16.1 bugfix version is up and the OP post is all updated and stuff.

 

[Rosen King]

Tweet time!

Adding a few more (and stuff on other pages too). I personally don't recommend turning all of these on at once.

*Sees "Darkening Corruption Waves"* Nope.

On the one hand, that's pretty expensive. On the other hand though...

That's... actually not all that useful? Maybe for early runs when you don't have many spells memorized, but that's exactly when you're gonna be short on the KP to use it. After a certain point, the only difference between spells learned naturally and spells learned manually is a single time slot in camp. Especially if you're taking a lot of stat points and your main source of skill points is blank scrolls anyway, which would require a time slot just to get you to the point where you can open this screen.

(Of course, this is setting aside my own playstyle of just "give me all the skills".)

You must be registered to see the links

[Video shows an Eschahn shrine with the ability to select from different curses by pressing a left and right arrow.]

"Oh great goddess of desire, please grant me your blessings so that I may enjoy the pleasures of this life more freely!"

"Sure thing. Here, have some Paranoia. It will make you incredibly uncomfortable to spend time around your friends."

"But... I love my friends."

"Your friends are gonna kill you unless you kill them first. And since I'm a generous goddess, I'll make you Craven as well, so you're just as afraid of monsters as you are of your friends."

"My lady, I'm afraid I don't see how any of this counts as a blessing..."

"God, you're boring. You know what? That's my next blessing. You are now completely Unremarkable."

"How is that even a blessing you can give!? Aren't you the goddess of extravagance?"

"Bitch, do you see this hat? Making everybody unremarkable by comparison is my default state."

Just assume the Inquisitor has a gramophone or something that isn't anachronistic so you can switch the music to whatever you want in your tent. I dunno. Magic. Sure. Why not?

How does the Inquisitor talk to the knights when using the scrying spell? If Melos-brand magic extends as far as outright mind control, surely illusion magic is a simple (and legal) matter. It's completely reasonable to expect that they can record (or even conjure from scratch) a particular sound and cast it as an auditory illusion at will.

(This could also be worth keeping in mind if the Inquisitor ever ends up having one of the knights dance for them.)

 

[blue_krystal]

On the topic of soundtrack, is there a tracklist posted somewhere? There's a dungeon theme I really really like.

Oh I forgot to say, I really like the idea of the roguelike gameplay being diegetic, I assumed it was already planned to be from the start because it was pulled-off so well. I was amazed when the Witch first contacted me at the end of my first run and I was given the Knowledge-points book and all, I don't know something about the presentation/writing was really compelling, I've never seen a game do it so well.

 

[Rosen King]

On the topic of soundtrack, is there a tracklist posted somewhere? There's a dungeon theme I really really like.

I'm sure all the music in the game is open source, so if nothing else you can just search it up based on the names shown in the next update. (Assuming the dev sticks with their original name.) The game's credits don't show a track list, but do say that they all came from opengameart.org and itch.io, so that's where to look once you get the names. Actually, that seems to be the *only* part of the credits that doesn't include a link. Huh.

Oh I forgot to say, I really like the idea of the roguelike gameplay being diegetic, I assumed it was already planned to be from the start because it was pulled-off so well. I was amazed when the Witch first contacted me at the end of my first run and I was given the Knowledge-points book and all, I don't know something about the presentation/writing was really compelling, I've never seen a game do it so well.

Funny you should say that, since the entire thing is just a fourth wall break and hasn't been incorporated into the story yet. I feel like a lot of the earliest games to implement rogue-lite progression had it incorporated into the story, although I can't seem to think of any off the top of my head. But after a while it just became a common thing that games take for granted.

...Oh, Baroque was a game that included it in the story! Although that game's story was weird and told very vaguely. A major element of the plot was the fact that reality was breaking down, and you could store items inside God's consciousness that your clones could then pick up for your next run.

 

[NRFB]

So with Suggestive, I make sure the curse is maxed out. Because there are more ways to fall into trance, I end up having another knight going to help someone who falls into the curse. They are always woken up and never fall into the trance state. The past 5 runs have been the same situation. Max curse. Fall into trance. Watch the knight succeed and trancing the knight trying to wake her up never happens. ;-; I might have the worst luck if it does work.

You left this comment forever ago and I feel like I should apologize because I didn't look into it until now. It turns out that Suggestive is broken in literally 4 different ways, AND that trance is bugged in 1 way as well. Wild.

*Sees "Darkening Corruption Waves"* Nope.

It's only 2 rooms get darkened per wave per level of Darkening Corruption Waves. I was doing a play test with this recently along with a couple of other things. Doesn't seem bad at all... Unless you also took Double Corruption Waves. Then you'd probably have a harder time.

That's... actually not all that useful? Maybe for early runs when you don't have many spells memorized, but that's exactly when you're gonna be short on the KP to use it.

Maybe, although you have to know that you're pretty ahead of the curve as far as having a lot of skills memorized. In any case, I can see it maybe not being worth 500 depending on where your specific meta save is at, but it is still pretty nice.

It's completely reasonable to expect that they can record (or even conjure from scratch) a particular sound and cast it as an auditory illusion at will.

I haven't thought about it much for lore purposes, but my gut says "record probably not, create some set of sounds probably so"

On the topic of soundtrack, is there a tracklist posted somewhere? There's a dungeon theme I really really like.

I haven't actually added music selection to the dungeon yet. I probably will, but I'm not sure I have all the names/sources of everything that I've gathered together, so even if you have the name of a song, I might not know exactly where I got it originally.

I'm sure all the music in the game is open source, so if nothing else you can just search it up based on the names shown in the next update. (Assuming the dev sticks with their original name.) The game's credits don't show a track list, but do say that they all came from opengameart.org and itch.io, so that's where to look once you get the names. Actually, that seems to be the *only* part of the credits that doesn't include a link. Huh.

Some of the music is paid without requiring attribution (from sales/packs on itch or humble), most of it is CC0. I haven't always been as meticulous as I probably should have been in cataloging the exact sources of everything I download, but so far I've been intentionally avoiding downloading any song that would specifically require linking back to the source. I'm still 99% sure that I'm not stepping on anyone's toes as far as licensing for music goes.

 

[RagueltheUFO]

Finally feeling validated instead of being gaslit into believing that I just had the worse luck in triggering suggestive's requirements. Getting that curse was literally a get out of jail free because of how it never worked and then you can embrace the curse with no downsides.

 

[Nagadragon]

sorry im not sure if its cause i died before making my way to it but what floors would the bosses appear just wanted to know if someone was willing to inform me

 

[Rosen King]

sorry im not sure if its cause i died before making my way to it but what floors would the bosses appear just wanted to know if someone was willing to inform me

Right now there are only three "bosses" and none of them are tied to a specific floor number, although they do require having seen specific events. One of them can start from floor 5 or later (I think) when the Witch starts talking about a mad scientist. This unlocks a chance at a special floor with a boss in it (although your knights have to have a certain level of Knowledge Drive to find the floor). The other two are unlocked through quests, which are unlocked by progressing the Coraline storyline. After meeting her for the first time, check her profile in the research notes and follow the hints for her events until you're able to receive quests from her. Sometimes she'll ask you to fight a boss monster.

I haven't thought about it much for lore purposes, but my gut says "record probably not, create some set of sounds probably so"

The Goddess of Knowledge doesn't have a spell to magically commit something to memory? Maybe she considers it cheating... I guess that's why the Inquisitor uses a book and not just a magical record.

...Wait. Is the book not a magical record? On the subject of the game's rogue-lite elements possibly being tied to the story, there is the matter of the research notes carrying over across runs... But I suppose acknowledging that as canon could make things messy. Like, what, has the current iteration of the Inquisitor never researched anything in their life because their past selves have already done it? Are they aware that their past selves failed in the dungeon (or at least hit an end of content notice)? Or maybe Melos simply has a failsafe built into the system so that the Inquisitor *thinks* they did all the research in this incarnation, and hasn't questioned how they got so much information so quickly without eating into their free time.

 

[RagueltheUFO]

So I had another question. I don't think its been addressed but there are some scrolls that you can never get and those abilities are exclusive to each knight. I get why you wouldn't want a scroll for them if they ever forget their move, but the problem is that there's no way to fill it out and memorize the skill, so you see all of these Ms above the skill and then there are skills that are just never going to get M. Is it possible to separate those exclusive skills on a second page so it doesn't clog up the skills you can't memorize or can you get these scrolls so its possible to learn them. It would be nice to actually have Grace but its so obvious that its a skill exclusive to Elli.

I would also think if a skill is specifically exclusive to them, the inquisitor's spell should be changed to actually address that spell only working for that knight because Limelight only works for knights who have Grace but the only knight who can have said skill is Elli.

 

[NRFB]

After meeting her for the first time, check her profile in the research notes and follow the hints for her events until you're able to receive quests from her. Sometimes she'll ask you to fight a boss monster.

Related, it turns out there is a random chance that the first cutscene where Coraline shows up can be skipped (if floor 7 rolls to show the player the Experiments introduction scene and floor 8 is the reference floor so it shows that end cutscene). Fixing that in the newest version but yeah it could be an issue for some people.

So I had another question. I don't think its been addressed but there are some scrolls that you can never get and those abilities are exclusive to each knight. I get why you wouldn't want a scroll for them if they ever forget their move, but the problem is that there's no way to fill it out and memorize the skill, so you see all of these Ms above the skill and then there are skills that are just never going to get M.

Thinking about it, there isn't actually any mechanical reason why character exclusive skills couldn't be allowed to spawn as scrolls. I could just go in and set the spawn_as_scroll flag of those skills to true, as even if you had a scroll of Spin Move, you wouldn't be able to actually use it on Lucette or whatever. She wouldn't qualify for the requirement of "be Raine". All excluding them really does is mean that the pool of skills that a scroll could be is slightly smaller, which is a minor benefit to the player's chances of getting new things. Should that be changed? I dunno.

I would also think if a skill is specifically exclusive to them, the inquisitor's spell should be changed to actually address that spell only working for that knight because Limelight only works for knights who have Grace but the only knight who can have said skill is Elli.

While this is technically correct at the moment, say that with Grace for example some idea/balance decision came up with one of the following
A) I wanted to make it not exclusive to Elli by default
B) I wanted to make some event later where Elli teaches it to another character or something which makes it no longer exclusive after that point
C) Someone else wanted to make a mod that does either of the above things
All of these scenarios would then also require going in and changing the wording of all descriptions that touched the Grace effect and were specific in mentioning Elli. Essentially I've always purposely tried to keep the wording of descriptions for skills/spells/whatever agnostic of any character or other effect in order to mean less work in the long run. It's better future proofing for if any changes need to be made later.

 

[Rosen King]

Tweet time! And we're getting to the good stuff now.

bypnofis

(Did copy/pasting the emoji break something? Whatever.)

Yassss, dual hypno action. Although I'm guessing this is a standalone scene from the Suggestive curse rather than anything more significant, like teaching Lucette hypnosis magic. I thought Raine would be the "dominant" one in a curse-related scene, though, based on the fact that I think the only camp chatter related to it comes from Elli commenting on Raine's eyes. Of course, it seems natural that Lucette would take the reigns over Raine in a more "gentle" situation like this, but then, one of the draws of hypnosis is getting to flip the script over what would seem "natural".

...I also can't tell what's going on with Lucette's lower body there. Does she have her legs crossed while sitting off to the side? Are they spread open with Raine's head (and the couch) between them? As much as I like the art style, it can get a little hard to decipher sometimes.

Uhhh... It wasn't me?

On the one hand, yasssss. On the other hand, this seems kinda pointless from a gameplay perspective. -1 focus for (presumably) an entire dungeon floor to do something you can already do through hypnosis, which is (presumably) how you get this mantra to begin with? I'm guessing priority number one was "Add a Maid Mantra to the game" and priority number two was "find some way for it to affect stats I dunno". Which is the correct priority.

(...I just clicked the X in the image to try to close the Twitter close-up of the image.)

After talking about it for a while, I've finally put together a poll for content direction, this time centering around whichever character is voted on! For people not Knight/Paladin tier, here is a preview image of all the options!

You must be registered to see the links

You must be registered to see the links

Olivia sighting! Although maybe it's a bit unfair to include her in the vote when people don't yet know if they're going to like her? I imagine she'll handily win just because she's new and shiny and full of potential. Speaking of which... Is that quote from before or after she "falls"? I could see it going both ways. Becoming an anti-hero "dark knight" who continues the fight against Eschahn in her own way even after falling to corruption could be an interesting direction for her character.

And it looks like her slitted eyes weren't just a quirk of the art style after all. Interesting that she looks like that even in what's presumably her "before" picture. It seems I was right about her using an axe, too, although I expected a two-handed battleaxe. Didn't peg Coraline as a spear user, though. I always imagined her with a small shield and flanged mace, like a cleric. And... is she wearing bridal gauntlets? It's hard to tell from the art style, but she's got something going on with her middle fingers.

In any case, not that I get an official vote, but I'd probably vote for Olivia, purely because she's an entirely new major character. Lucette still best girl, though, and I wanna see more of her storyline. She'd get my vote in any other circumstance.

 

[WellIGuess]

Tweet time! And we're getting to the good stuff now.



(Did copy/pasting the emoji break something? Whatever.)

Yassss, dual hypno action. Although I'm guessing this is a standalone scene from the Suggestive curse rather than anything more significant, like teaching Lucette hypnosis magic. I thought Raine would be the "dominant" one in a curse-related scene, though, based on the fact that I think the only camp chatter related to it comes from Elli commenting on Raine's eyes. Of course, it seems natural that Lucette would take the reigns over Raine in a more "gentle" situation like this, but then, one of the draws of hypnosis is getting to flip the script over what would seem "natural".

...I also can't tell what's going on with Lucette's lower body there. Does she have her legs crossed while sitting off to the side? Are they spread open with Raine's head (and the couch) between them? As much as I like the art style, it can get a little hard to decipher sometimes.



On the one hand, yasssss. On the other hand, this seems kinda pointless from a gameplay perspective. -1 focus for (presumably) an entire dungeon floor to do something you can already do through hypnosis, which is (presumably) how you get this mantra to begin with? I'm guessing priority number one was "Add a Maid Mantra to the game" and priority number two was "find some way for it to affect stats I dunno". Which is the correct priority.

(...I just clicked the X in the image to try to close the Twitter close-up of the image.)



Olivia sighting! Although maybe it's a bit unfair to include her in the vote when people don't yet know if they're going to like her? I imagine she'll handily win just because she's new and shiny and full of potential. Speaking of which... Is that quote from before or after she "falls"? I could see it going both ways. Becoming an anti-hero "dark knight" who continues the fight against Eschahn in her own way even after falling to corruption could be an interesting direction for her character.

And it looks like her slitted eyes weren't just a quirk of the art style after all. Interesting that she looks like that even in what's presumably her "before" picture. It seems I was right about her using an axe, too, although I expected a two-handed battleaxe. Didn't peg Coraline as a spear user, though. I always imagined her with a small shield and flanged mace, like a cleric. And... is she wearing bridal gauntlets? It's hard to tell from the art style, but she's got something going on with her middle fingers.

In any case, not that I get an official vote, but I'd probably vote for Olivia, purely because she's an entirely new major character. Lucette still best girl, though, and I wanna see more of her storyline. She'd get my vote in any other circumstance.

Looks like she's sitting cross-legged on the side of the couch.

 

[NRFB]

...I also can't tell what's going on with Lucette's lower body there. Does she have her legs crossed while sitting off to the side? Are they spread open with Raine's head (and the couch) between them? As much as I like the art style, it can get a little hard to decipher sometimes.

This conversation also happened on the discord after the tweet.

(presumably) how you get this mantra to begin with?

As I said, it wasn't me.

Olivia sighting! Although maybe it's a bit unfair to include her in the vote when people don't yet know if they're going to like her? I imagine she'll handily win just because she's new and shiny and full of potential.

You say that, but guess who doesn't have any votes yet

 

[Privitarium]

As a nonpaying member (aka Peasant tier), I cast my vote first for Olivia for story advancement and second for Elli for horny.

(Also third for futa)

 

[Rosen King]

New update's out, although my anti-virus flagged it and immediately sent it into quarantine. I'm guessing it's a false positive, and

You must be registered to see the links

, but I have a feeling this might be connected to how my computer went haywire when I first started up the last update. I suspect the antivirus may have actually quarantined some of my sound and/or mouse drivers when the game tried to interact with them, which is... very unusual. I already had my suspicions at the time, but seeing something similar happen now has me wondering if the game has some behavior that's causing these flags. Even false positives usually don't get such an extreme response.

...And it's doing some really stupid stuff when I try to get it to restore the file, so it might be a bit before I can actually play.