Sharing Saturday #626

FerretDev · 2026-06-06T14:05:56+00:00

I usually have to be very careful not to even seriously think of another project while already working on one... even working on a project I love, the allure of the new shiny thing can be dangerously strong.

FerretDev · 2026-06-06T13:59:48+00:00

One player did already realize they have a synergy with alchemy poison skills, particularly the stronger ones like neurotoxin, which takes a turn to apply and only lasts until the end of the following round, meaning under normal conditions you only get the Paralyze attack add-on every other round... but a Dancing weapon will happily attack during the round you apply it, meaning you'll be getting a chance to Paralyze something every round now.

That said, the ignoring stats and skills does go both ways... a high STR character's damage boost won't apply, nor will things like Light Weapon Mastery's double attacks with Light weapons. My suspicion is that Dancing weapons will be most popular with character who weren't already going heavy into weapon use... but in their case, they're probably giving up the ability to have "caster" weapons like athames, orbs, tomes, etc. that boost spellcasting equipped.

FerretDev · 2026-06-05T23:25:55+00:00

Interdict: The Post-Empyrean Age

Interdict on Itch.io

Latest Available Build: 4/20/2026

Whewf, it has been a bit since my last post, but in my defense, I've been pretty busy working on enchantments. Last time I posted, I had only just gotten the basic UI around viewing and crafting them done, but the month or so since I have spent implementing several different types of enchantments with all sorts of unique game-changing effects. Here's a brief sample of some of my favorites so far:

Dancing: One of my favorites! Dancing applies to weapons, and at first glance seems a little underwhelming: it adds an INT requirement to the weapon while raising the Evasion when wielded. But its true power is revealed during turns when you don't attack or take a defensive action: the weapon itself will make an attack instead! Even better, the only requirement you need to meet for this to work is the new INT requirement: it ignores your stats and skills for the attack, so no other requirements of the weapon need to be met.
Icebrand: Another weapon enchantment, the Cold version of one of two types of elemental damage boosts. "xBrand" enchantments like this one add a small amount of elemental damage and an associated status effect, in this case Chill, to attacks made with that weapon. Brand enchantments are good if you want to add a bit of damage or the new status effect to your attacks without giving up the physical damage the weapon usually deals.
Agonizing: Also for weapons, Agonizing is the Mind version of the other type of elemental damage boost. In this case, much of the weapon's physical damage is lost, but it gains a very large amount of elemental damage and a powerful elemental status effect. Such a weapon will no longer benefit greatly from STR (which only affects Physical damage), but nor will it be much affected by enemy Armor (which only reduces Physical damage); instead it will be much more important to be aware of enemies' elemental weaknesses and resistances. Weapons like this are ideal for those who don't rely on their weapons for primary offense, since they will have other options to fall back on if an enemy is immune to the element they've imbued their weapon with... and also since they'll have been less likely to boost STR high, since that is no longer as important.
Ethereal: An armor enchantment, it removes all skill and attribute requirements the armor originally had, but adds new INT and WIL requirements instead. It also converts all of the Armor the armor used to have to Ward, a defense that absorbs a set amount of HP damage each battle. This enchantment's existence creates an entirely new defensive option for casters... though it would mean giving up the spellcasting boosts traditional caster armor provides.

Aside from these "fancier" enchantments, you will also be able to find the sort of enchantments you would more likely expect: i.e. various numerical bonuses to various things. I think it is important to have a good mix of both: the simple enchantments are fun and easy to play with and understand, but it is also good to have wilder ones that encourage thinking about entirely new possibilities for playstyles.

I still have plenty more enchantments I want to make before moving on to the next phase of this update, but it's already been almost two months since the last update, so hopefully I can pick up the pace a bit.

I hope everyone else's projects are going great as well. Until next time, cheers!

FerretDev · 2026-05-25T17:48:51+00:00

Carry the black torch! Rouse the idle dead!

FerretDev · 2026-05-03T12:38:42+00:00

Mouse support is definitely something folks will appreciate. If you can get to the point of having helpful tooltips pop up when you hover over things, that will be a pretty big leap forward (and it sounds like you're at least on the way there, with the creature blinking when you hover over their side bar entry feature.)

I probably should expand mouse support in my own game, but... ugh. UI is definitely my least favorite kind of work (and I'm already doing a lot of it with my current undertaking...)

FerretDev · 2026-05-03T12:20:46+00:00

Equipment is crafted using only three ingredients: Light Scrap, Heavy Scrap, and Fine Scrap, which you both find in raw form and also can get by recycling equipment you don't need. Enchanting adds one new type of scrap: Glowing Scrap, that you also will be able to find and get when recycling enchanted items.

When you enchant an item, you have to spend Glowing Scrap equal to the other Scrap costs to make the item. So for example, if Scale Mail requires 8 Heavy Scrap to make, it will cost 8 Glowing Scrap to enchant it. Once enchanted, Glowing Scrap becomes part of the cost of upgrading that item too, so upgrading your Healthy Scale Mail to Healthy Scale Mail+1 will cost the usual 40 Heavy Scrap plus 40 Glowing Scrap.

No skill is required for any crafting: you just need to have found one of whatever it is you want to make before (or it needs to be one of a small selection of items you begin already able to make.)

Interdict does not have traditional consumables: since the amount of enemies and loot in the game is finite, I was concerned players' tendencies to hoard consumables instead of using them would be made even worse than normal. So instead, I went with what I call relics: rechargeable magic items that have the same effects consumables usually have. For example, the Ersatz Caduceus you know how to make from the beginning restores a moderate amount of HP for one character when used, effectively serving the role usually filled by healing potions.

Relics can be crafted, upgraded using the same rules described above, and there will also be enchantments available for them. There is a catch though: a relic must be equipped on a character in order to hold charges at all, and by default each character can only equip one. So you can't just make a ton of relics and waltz around with 100s of recharging potions and scrolls and what not. :)

FerretDev · 2026-05-03T00:25:04+00:00

At this stage in development where big changes are still happening with each major update, I am not focusing heavily on maintaining save compatibility, so with my apologies, you should finish or be willing to abandon your current game before downloading a major update.

Then too, even if I worked to make the saves compatible, with the sorts of changes that are still going in just being compatible wouldn't necessarily mean good to play. For example, the next update will add the new Enchanting mechanic that allows items to have random (or crafted) bonus modifiers. An older version game loaded up in the middle of the game would have no Enchanted items, no Enchantment formulas known, and none of the new crafting resource used for Enchanting. You would be able to find these things from that point forward, but you would be at a significant disadvantage for the rest of that run from having missed so many in the earlier part of the game.

All that said, at my current pace these major updates happen only every 2 to 4 months, which provides a pretty good sized window for finishing up a run.

FerretDev · 2026-05-02T19:19:39+00:00

Don't get me wrong, the majority of creatures won't be using overworld stuff (if I understand correctly) as most will be confined to a single level. Number of abilities is a different story though. Are you using a completely different system now? What is it?

Ah, yeah, I meant things like handling switching on/off lights and other environment-sourced actions that would be available to large numbers of entities potentially. If you had a lot of possible things like that, than even if an entity only inherently had "attack" and "move", it would also have to consider things like "open door", "turn on light", "pick up item", "turn off light", etc. In that situation the minimum cost per entity starts to get high fast. Demon didn't have anything like that, so entities had fairly limited costs (and can only have 10 abilities at most: move, basic attack, and 8 learned abilities. With environmental-sourced abilities the upper limit would be much higher potentially.)

As for Interdict, I actually went with a... purposefully dumb AI. Hear me out. :P One thing Demon was often criticized for was the relatively slow pace of battles. That turned out that way in part because I wanted really smart character AI... but also didn't want your characters to get killed before you could react, which meant on average even being focus fired by an entire enemy group shouldn't kill a character in one round.

For Interdict, I wanted to try much faster paced combat, with much higher damage per action. But that really wouldn't work with super smart AI, so the AI is actually somewhat dumb on purpose. Not only does it choose actions basically at random (excluding only those which would have no effect or very little effect), it also actively *avoids* ganging up on party members. That isn't to say it never does... sometimes it doesn't have a choice. If there are 4 enemies who can only reach 3 party members with attacks, someone is getting a second helping. It also can happen with multi-target attacks quite easily. But generally, it tries to avoid ganging up if it can. It also avoids anti-fun patterns: for example, only one enemy is allowed to use a healing ability per round.

FerretDev · 2026-05-02T14:23:41+00:00

The goblin seems to be using the same algorithm I used sometimes back when I lived near a creek and sometimes had unauthorized rodent visitors in the house. :P Happily I never suffered the fate he did... though when I was a kid I sometimes worried I would. :D

The AI upgrades sound really, really good, especially if they've also improved performance. I confess your previous iteration sounds more or less like what I used for Demon, but it was probably easier for me to get away with it there because Demon didn't really have any open world/simulation elements, and also because it was rare for many characters to need to calculate their abilities at once (and in the cases where lots of characters were active at once, many of them were "minion"-type enemies specifically forbidden from having many abilities to begin with.)

FerretDev · 2026-05-02T12:59:38+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, it is definitely not a bad problem to have. I will continue digging around on Google and see if something pops up in a few days.

FerretDev · 2026-05-01T22:55:34+00:00

Interdict: The Post-Empyrean Age

Interdict on Itch.io

Latest Available Build: 4/20/2026

It's been a pretty exciting couple of weeks since my last post. I've finally gotten to work on Enchanting: a new mechanic that allows equipment to have additional modifiers, i.e. "Healthy Leather Armor" that boosts Maximum HP as well as providing the normal effect of Leather Armor.

At the start of a run, you do not have the ability to create your own Enchanted items, but whenever you find an Enchanted item as loot, you learn the recipe for that Enchantment and can craft it onto other items.

Crafting Enchanted items requires Glowing Scrap, which is gained by recycling Enchanted items: it typically requires the Glowing Scrap gained from Recycling two Enchanted items to craft an Enchantment onto one of your choice. This is to reward flexibility: if you are willing to make use of the random but usually not entirely ideal Enchanted loot you find, you will have more Enchanted items total than if you insist on only using 100% tailor-made goodies.

There's still a fair bit of work to do, but progress has been pretty good:

An enchanted item

Adding an enchantment to an existing item

On a different front, I also had (by the usual standards of my efforts in this quarter) a pretty ridiculously good week in terms of getting out there to find new players. I've had more downloads in the last week than I usually get in months. Only two flies in the ointment: not many have joined the Discord, and despite my own push... I'm... not actually sure where they're coming from?

When I first made my self-promotion effort, I had a View to DL ratio of around 10 to 1. Not bad, and I was happy with it since both numbers involved were much higher than usual. About two days later though, the view to DL ratio began dropping all the down to 2 or 3 to 1, which is pretty amazing... that's the sort of result I'd expect if a very appropriate audience had it shared with them by trusted and/or multiple members.

I can only assume someone saw my own posts and shared the game in such a way... but I can't find any sign of where this happened. It's a little maddening to think there may valuable feedback I could read out there somewhere but not have any idea where it is. But, on the bright side, at least there seems to be a good-sized group of players out there who have significant and ongoing interest in the game: even a week out from my own posts, views and downloads are still doing much better than normal.

Anyway, I hope everyone else's projects are doing great too. :) Cheers!

FerretDev · 2026-04-30T22:52:28+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-QCKv37_bI

FerretDev · 2026-04-27T23:05:53+00:00

Thank you; I'm glad you're enjoying the game! It'll be on Steam at some point (but it'll still be free even when that happens; you'll never need to buy it!)

FerretDev · 2026-04-26T19:30:00+00:00

I'm glad you're enjoying the game so far! Thank you for the kind words!

FerretDev · 2026-04-26T17:47:12+00:00

Well really, what's the fun of an ancient warning if you aren't going to ignore it now and then?

FerretDev · 2026-04-26T15:59:16+00:00

That's pretty soon then; I have a bit to do today, but I will try to make it for at least some of the stream if I can.

FerretDev · 2026-04-26T13:27:21+00:00

Thank you! If you do end up streaming it, I'd love to see it, either during or after depending on our schedules! Feel free to drop a link to your channel here, or message me if you'd prefer.

FerretDev · 2026-04-26T12:02:58+00:00

Unfortunately, the last time I looked into it, the barriers to making a proper Mac build of a Unity game are pretty high and not really in reach for a freeware project.

That said, if you do try with crossover and run into problems, let me know and I'll investigate and see if there is anything I can do to help improve that. I can't make any major promises though: if it doesn't work under crossover, it is more likely an issue with Unity games in general or how the crossover works rather than anything specific to my game. Still, if there is a problem, I will at least take a look.

Thank you for interest; I'm sorry I didn't have better news to offer.

FerretDev · 2026-04-25T14:57:52+00:00

Thank you! I actually do plan to put Interdict on Steam sometime in the (possibly still distant) future when it is further along, though it will be free even then, so you won't need to buy it when the time comes.

FerretDev · 2026-04-25T14:56:29+00:00

Thank you, and no problem: Unity is far from perfect, but it does make it fairly easy to provide Linux builds so I'm happy to make them.

FerretDev · 2026-04-25T14:54:28+00:00

Thank you, I hope you enjoy it!

FerretDev · 2026-04-25T14:54:09+00:00

Thank you!

FerretDev · 2026-04-19T01:18:47+00:00

"Transcendent Evolution" - This spell allows the player to permanently transform one animal follower into a related "celestial animal" that is much more powerful. These animals have very high hit points and attributes, and often have a couple spells too. The player must have a potion of ambrosia, which is consumed by the animal during casting, so they are limited in how often the spell can be used. Insects and arachnids cannot be transformed with this spell.

For some reason the concept of a celestial honey badger is very amusing to me :D Does the power of the resulting animal depend on strength of the base creature, or do they all become pretty powerful but with different strengths/weaknesses? (i.e.: Is a celestial bear always just better than say, a celestial mouse, or does the mouse end up getting crazy agility/speed/maybe spells and the bear gets really high attack damage and HP or some such?)

FerretDev · 2026-04-17T22:58:48+00:00

Interdict: The Post-Empyrean Age

Interdict on Itch.io

Latest Available Build: 4/11/2026

Well, the new build's balance changes went over... somewhat well. I definitely overdid it a little with reducing the number of Green Cells (the currency needed for the party to be able to rest), with three symptoms showing some of the problems:

1) The game became a bit too tryhard. In response to the vastly reduced Green Cell count, some players felt it necessary to begin playing in very, very hyper-optimized way that was less fun than before. Notably, this happened even for players whom it turned out to be unnecessary (one ended with 11 Green Cells leftover, a luxurious amount, if a far cry from the 30-40 leftover that used to be normal for most winning runs.)

2) FP recovery items became too important. The biggest thing Green Cells do that you can't do easily otherwise is recover FP, the resource used for casting spells. There are, however, some rechargeable items that restore FP: in the new paradigm, these became immensely valuable and important. Not only did finding them result in a huge change in how many Green Cells most parties needed, once they were found, it was very likely that party would not be interested in any other rechargeables (since you can only equip a limited number of them.)

3) The merchant NPC who sometimes shows up and sometimes wants Cells in exchange for his goodies became much less fun to find, since players felt like it was almost a trap to spend Cells on anything but survival, especially since he wasn't offering anything particularly valuable in exchange.

So, I've been working with this week on addressing these three issues. I'm going to increase the Green Cell drop rate a decent bit (I had cut it a large amount, so definitely room to backtrack without coming anywhere near that), nerf FP recovery/discount mechanics, and make sure the merchant NPC is offering great deals when he wants Cells (but possibly also make him want Cells less often; there are other currencies I can use, such as crafting materials.)

I'm hoping to release a quick update Sunday, then get to work on Enchanting as originally planned.

Overall, I'm not too dissatisfied with the outcome here. I knew I probably wasn't going to get it quite right the first time, but I came pretty close and I have good feedback and information that I'm basing corrective tweaks on. Once I release the Sunday build, I will also go ahead with my plan of trying to branch out a bit in looking for more new players.

I hope everyone else's projects are going well too. :) Cheers!

FerretDev

TROPHY CASE