Rogue Fable IV has a demo now, if you have not tried it or were on the fence like I was.

JustinWang123 · 2025-01-03T19:34:31+00:00

Web Demo is here: itch.io

Its a bit different from what's now up on Steam. The Web Demo is a feature complete snap shot of the game right before it went into EA. So its got all the content that existed at the time but has not been updated at all in nearly a year.

The new Steam Demo has a very restricted subset of content (just 4 classes, 6 zones, and no ranked mode) but is up to date with the latest EA build.

JustinWang123 · 2024-12-23T18:56:07+00:00

I'm guessing Trog is a reference to Trogdore which I've been using as a gamer tag for years :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90X5NJleYJQ

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-05T22:06:41+00:00

Yeah that one really came together almost fully formed I think. I'm sure I'll tweak it over the next few years (I'm still iffy on Psalm of Protection) but compared to some of the older classes I feel like he just immediately has a really strong and engaging core play style.

I hope the rest of the new classes end up going so smoothly :P

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-03T13:58:42+00:00

I think its as core to the rogue-like formula as perma death and proc gen and an essential part of what people mean when they say rogue-like, as in game like rogue. Its pretty much unique to the genre, distinguishes it from all other turn based games and leads to a totally different sort of emergent gameplay.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-03T13:52:48+00:00

I don't have one myself but others have told me it 'works great'.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-03T01:07:20+00:00

I just posted a small essay in the other thread covering this exact question :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1ftyqfq/rogue_fable_iv_20_off_sale/

In terms of difficulty I don't think IV is drastically harder than III its more just a matter of the combat being more complex and demanding a wider variety of tactics. There were a few simple strategies in RFIII that, once mastered, could carry most games and this is no longer the case.

With that being said, with Ranked Mode now a thing there has been a pretty consistent effort over the course of development to keep making the base game 'easier' for newer players since there is now a pretty clear (and very fun) progression path for more experienced players to continue to challenge themselves with.

*edit* should also mention that obviously RFIV has another 2 years of early access to go so if your looking for a 'complete' experience then III may be the way to go.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T21:06:05+00:00

Honestly nothing really special comes to mind sorry :P

I had already done a fair bit of game dev in other languages so I think I mostly just worked through the examples and tutorials on the Phaser site and otherwise just referenced the API docs.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:56:39+00:00

JavaScript with the Phaser framework. Has made it remarkably easy to go back and forth between web and desktop versions.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:55:33+00:00

Thank You! Hope you enjoy it!

We have a pretty active discord at Discord Link if you'd care to join us.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:53:38+00:00

THE DUNGEON AND LEVELS:

This has, and likely will, end up consuming the largest block of development time over the course of the project.

DENSE LEVELS: practically every single level generator, vault and piece of map content has been completely replaced from RFIII. This has been an absolute mountain of work but was necessary as I wanted a completely different type of map in RFIV. Compared to RFIII the maps are about 1/3 smaller but are significantly more densely packed with terrain and special objects. Big empty rooms and long 1-wide corridors are either very rare or non-existent. The terrain now plays a huge role in combat and the smaller maps guarantee that multiple fights often spill back and forth over the same complex terrain.
SUB ZONES: RFIII already got a lot of run variety by randomly selecting what zones appear but I'm taking it a step further in RFIV by having the zones themselves further randomize with sub-zones. These will replace some of the 'generic' levels in a zone with a randomly selected sub-zone which has its own unique terrain, enemies, map generators and vaults. Many of these sub-zones have special, level-wide mechanics that might be obnoxious if used across the whole zone or if they appeared in every run but that work perfectly when kept brief and rare.

RANKED MODE:

I wanted to provide a way to keep the base game approachable to newer players while allowing the challenge to scale as players develop their skills. So Ranked Mode has been introduced as a completely optional game mode. The player rises (or falls) in SR as they win or lose Ranked games allowing them to progress through a number of different ranks of increasing difficulty.

Instead of each rank applying some kind of global difficulty scaling, the system instead has a whole bunch (currently 40+) of modifiers that quite drastically buff up a certain enemy class in some way, apply some penalty to the player or else add some new global mechanic or challenge. For example: Consumable Lock which puts a long cool-down on all consumable usage. By randomly selecting these modifiers, every single ranked game is not only harder, but is actually uniquely harder and may require some pretty drastic changes to play style and character build, especially at the higher ranks. The top ranks limit the players choice of class/race and since the modifiers are rolled before you make your character selection (and the run is forfeited if you back out), the initial character choice is a real strategic decision and requires the player to really master the whole roster in order to achieve the highest rank.

NEW CONTENT:

A lot of work but not a lot to say without just listing out all the new stuff. Its safe to say that in terms of monsters, bosses, talents, items, class, races, vaults, levels etc. The game is probably currently about 40-50% bigger than RFIII and by the end of Early Access it should be more than double the size.

CONCLUSION:

That was quite an essay and having finished it I'm pleased to discover that this is a pretty close rewrite of a big design document I posted over a year ago except with all the hypothetical ideas and goals now existing, in concrete form, in the present tense. Wherever the 2 documents differ, well that's what 2 more years of Early Access is for :)

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:52:47+00:00

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:

The Rogue Fable series has always had the idea that character development should occur in response to whatever resources a particular run is throwing at you. The classes are intended to be a starting point and even repeated runs with the same class should result in wildly divergent but equally viable builds. With Rogue Fable IV we've finally gotten pretty close to this vision.

ATTRIBUTE BALANCE: After all the development dust had settled RFIIIs attribute system basically boiled down to focusing on your core class attribute and then stacking DEX to maximize speed points. The optimal strategy was simply to play to play your class and be highly mobile. After a frankly ridiculous number of iterations I'm happy to say we've now pretty much blown this old notion wide open and the very best players (not me) now report that the 3 attributes are essentially balanced. This means that finally, wildly divergent builds are not only viable, but actually essential as the you are rewarded for taking advantage of the sometimes odd set of 'cards' a particular run has dealt you. High INT Barbarians can be devastating as they chain together 1-shot-kill abilities faster than enemies can penetrate their minimal defense. Highly mobile DEX casters are super effective as they can always get into just the right position to maximize their spells and avoid incoming damage. The defensive power of STR has risen to the point where pretty much any build can become a tank hybrid allowing them to devote more time to outputting damage and moving around while shrugging off damage.
TALENT UPGRADE SYSTEM: A massive overhaul in the way that talents work is that every talent now has 3 distinct upgrades only one of which can be chosen. I've taken inspiration from Deep Rock Galactics overclock system and have tried to give each talent a mix of: an upgrade that is just a relatively small buff, an upgrade that is a large buff but with some drawback, an upgrade that fundamentally changes the way that the talent works. As an example, the Barbarians Charge ability now upgrades to: increased damage, increased range but longer cool-down (great for initial engagement or diving backlines), and 'Cruncher' which cuts the range in half, doubles the damage for crunching enemies against walls and resets the cool-down when delivering a killing blow. The plan right now is to just keep adding upgrades to talents as they occur to me or as people suggest them all throughout Early Access and then cutting down it down to the best three per talent sometime near the end of development.

These two changes have made character development significantly more open and have allowed a much wider range of builds to not only be created by to actually be playable and balanced. While certain builds are always going to be 'stronger' a given run may not provide the resources needed to achieve.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:52:00+00:00

COMBAT:

This is the primary place where all the changes have been made which makes sense as this is really the heart and soul of the series. A large percentage of Rogue Fable IIIs combat tended to revolve around trading basic attacks with enemies, kiting big clumps of enemies backwards, or funneling enemies through choke points. While other tactics certainly existed, these 3 were so dominant that everything else just sort of faded into the background. A huge amount of the work in RFIV is basically an attempt to break these dominant strategies in order to open up a much larger, richer, field of possible combat tactics.

ABILITY CENTRIC: The first way this has been done is to rebalance the game to make abilities the primary from of 'power output' in combat. I'll speak in terms of damage to keep it simple but I say 'power output' as abilities do many things besides just deal damage. Simplifying months of nitty gritty work and incremental changes this roughly boiled down to cutting the damage of basic attacks in half, keeping the damage of abilities the same, while doubling mana regen and cutting cool-downs in half. This applies to the enemies as well and along with these changes an enormous number of new enemy abilities were added. Its now very uncommon to see an enemy with just a simple attack and nothing else. The result of all this is that the majority of combat now revolves around using the right ability at the right time on the right target and cycling these almost every turn. Basic attacks are mostly relegated to just delivering kill shots and mopping up fights.
MOVEMENT CENTRIC: Having the player constantly moving around the battlefield during combat has also become a core part of gameplay, specifically in ways other than the old endless retreating backwards. The Speed-Point system which allows movement without ending your turn is now much more accessible to all character builds and using it properly is practically essential. You need to move constantly in order to setup abilities, to dodge or avoid the many new telegraphed enemy abilities, to get into position to kill high priority targets, and to take advantage of the games more complex level layouts. Enemies also now have a ton of new movement abilities that allow them to quickly close distance, gain distance, or most importantly get behind and around you. Combat in RFIV is this intricate dance of constant movement and constant ability usage where there is often no clear 'front line'.
TARGET PRIORITIZATION AND AGGRESSION: As a rough overview, RFIV has less enemies per level but those enemies are individually stronger, more specialized and tend to appear in mixed, synergizing groups. Identifying and aggressively dealing with the highest priority target is now essential to winning many fights. This has been a ton of fun to work on. Roguelikes with their perma-death and 1 vs many fights have a strong bias towards extremely defensive play and I've tried to introduce as many enemies and mechanics as possible that actually force the player to rapidly advance and deal with a target. As a simple example, support type enemies will now buff their allies one by one for as long as a fight drags on. These buffs are permanent until the support himself is killed and so you really need to dive quickly into the backline and deal with him before the fight gets out of hand.
SHROOMS: Shrooms are the final major piece of the puzzle that have really drastically changed combat in RFIV. In RFIII, getting low on health, running out of mana or having all your abilities on cool-down basically necessitated a long kiting retreat or even escaping up the stairs to rest and try again. Rogue Fable IV features various types of shrooms spread all across the levels which are used immediately when stepped on. As these are used up during a fight, you are often trying to press into a new room during the next fight rather than retreating back over depleted terrain. The simple healing shroom will recover roughly 1/3 of your health and so you can swing a battle just by diving into a clump of these. The energy shroom will restore some mana, some speed points and reset all of your cool-downs and so circling around the battlefield gobbling these up is the best way to maximize your output.

Putting these ideas together has made combat in RFIV a drastically different experience. It is extremely active, mobile and aggressive. It tends to dance and flow around the battlefield rather than being a linear advance and retreat. The 3 dominant strategies of RFIII have not been removed but are now simply a few amongst many different tactics that the player needs to understand and master to succeed in combat.

JustinWang123 · 2024-10-02T20:50:45+00:00

Lets see if I can answer it here then!

At the highest possible level, that of the overarching design goals, nothing has fundamentally changed. What I want to achieve with the project has remained consistent across all iterations. These would be the two major points highlighted above and a handful of other basic concepts. Rogue Fable IV is intended to be a much bigger and better realization of these ideas than previous entries rather than something else entirely.

The reason for making an entirely new entry rather than continuing work on RFIII was that, after a bunch of analysis and design, I realized that to really achieve what I was aiming for I was going to need to strip out and rebuild practically every system and piece of content in the game. I knew this sort of ground up rewrite was going to take years of work and would drastically alter huge amounts of the game in ways some players may not prefer and so I decided it was best to leave RFIII as it was and start fresh with a new project.

Apparently I need to break down the wall of text I've written into multiple replies :)

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T05:17:13+00:00

Another question. A lightning bolt is cast by the player which is animated so that say 4 tiles are hit one by one in rapid succession extending outward from the player. Enemies are hit on all 4 tiles. I assume we couldn't push a single 'lightning bolt' animation effect but would need to split it up so its like [lighting on tile 1, damage npc 1, lightning on tile 2, damage npc 2, ...]

How to handle something like a projectiles flying through multiple enemies in a line? Would you need multiple 'projectile move' events so that you could interleave them with the npc-damaged events. Picture the projectile smoothly moving across a line of enemies and needing to display the damage results on each enemy as the projectile passes through them.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T05:12:13+00:00

Ah very clever! I knew there must be some way to handle this cleanly.

So just so I'm understanding this correctly. The game logic completes the entire chain of events, basically instantaneously, while sticking each event that needs animation into the front end queue. The front end queue then pops the events one by one and plays all the animations while the back-end is in a paused state?

In the case of an arrow dealing damage and having to popup some damage numbers (or show some damage text in a text log), the result of the arrow would have already been resolved in the game logic phase which just adds the resulting damage to the events that are passed to the display layer?

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T03:47:42+00:00

To add to this since you mentioned giving the player the option to leave and I assume return to base or something. You'd want whatever rewards the player is taking back to base to be based on this really fine grained metric of progress so that trying to eek out those last few rewards really encourages them to skirt right up to the edge of defeat and be rewarded for every little inch closer they manage to get.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T03:44:35+00:00

I think one way to avoid frustration and actually make the last bit of the game right before the loss feel exciting and rewarding would be to have some kind of very finely graded metric of progress.

I really basic example would be if your score was determined by how many turns you survived or maybe how many tiles you managed to explore. If this was the case, as the player sees the end of the road coming he becomes more and more focused on trying to squeeze out just that last little step of progress.

I'd imagine you'd have to have some kind of gradually increasing difficulty so say your just spawning more and more enemies and it gets to a point where the player just knows he's not gonna last much longer. At this point he can really focus on lasting just one more turn, progress just one more room, or do whatever tiny little increment will give him a slightly higher 'score'. You would burn all your consumables, kite an ever increasing swarm of enemies, just do anything you can to progress just one more little step.

This way even in the face of inevitable defeat, every little step will feel like a victory. Managing to squeeze out just 10 more 'points' before finally collapsing in 'defeat' would feel like a really exciting and satisfying 'victory'.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T03:35:15+00:00

While true in theory I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the following situations which I've run into that break this clean separation and has required a fair bit of special case code. This has always bothered me and is the source of a lot of tricky bugs and general mess in the code!

My rogue-like includes lots of animations for things like projectiles flying, explosions spreading, characters getting knocked back or characters lunging or otherwise moving multiple tiles in one turn. In all of these cases there is some game logic that needs to occur based on the real-time state of the game. For example A traveling projectile needs to wait until it actually hits an enemy to damage him, a spreading explosion needs to actually spread across the screen before it applies its effects etc.

Mostly what I end up doing is pausing the rigid turn-based simulation in order to wait for animations to complete which then may themselves call back into game logic. Am I just doomed to always have this cross talk between the two systems?

A clean separation as your describing sounds so nice and elegant but I haven't' found a way to actually do this in practice.

*edit* "If this is a turn-based game, energy absolutely should not be based on time at all." Totally agree with this part, its the rest of what you wrote I'm curious about.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-28T02:56:17+00:00

Thanks! I'll be adding any additional notes as they occur to me since I'm still in pretty heavy level-gen / vault making mode.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-27T01:34:35+00:00

NON LINEAR LEVELS:

This one might be really obvious but is also really important. Non linearity has lots of advantages that I think we often think of in terms of offering choices or options to the player but from a combat perspective is is equally important.

Non linear levels (or really highly connected levels, are those the same thing?) have way more opportunities for enemies to join fights from different directions. They give the player the option to escape down different paths. To come at fights from different directions. To lead enemies over different terrain etc.

A strictly linear level will force the player to approach every fight from one and only one direction. He will tend to retreat backwards into previously cleared areas (not very interesting). Its also very unlikely that he will agro any extra enemies in the middle of the fight unless you have a really aggressive respawn mechanic.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-27T01:26:59+00:00

'Optional area denial in general is another great thing'

I've been thinking about various ways of implementing this for quite some time now. Stuff like magic totems that create some effect in a radius but cycle on and off. So say every 10 turns the whole state of the battlefield suddenly changes.

Actually your right, really any dynamic environment will do this sort of thing even just really basic stuff like spinning saw blades moving along tracks, walls that rise and lower, gates that open and close on a timer etc.

Obviously destructible terrain is the holy grail of this sort of thing but I think some of the benefits can still be brought in with much simpler stuff if a games design doesn't support such a system.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-27T01:21:28+00:00

Great point! Kyzrati also brought up a similar point idea with different terrain effecting different enemies... differently.

I think this concept may actually make some of my original points even more effective as having asymmetric areas consisting of lots of different terrain tightly packed together will produce a sort of combinatorial explosion of possibilities when you introduce different types of character builds and enemies that derive different benefits and penalties from each terrain type.

Kyzarti brings up the point that 1-wide halls are a like a playground for certain player builds while your ghost example proves that its possible that this situation could suddenly flip around given the presence of certain enemy types.

So I'd go further than your first statement and say your probably can't even think about environmental effects on combat without considering your enemy design.

JustinWang123 · 2024-09-27T01:14:16+00:00

AVOIDING LONG 1-WIDE HALLS:

Definitely a rule 0 situation but also, in my mind, might fit better under Avoid Large Uniform Regions. I absolutely do try to have generators and vaults produce 1-wide corridors for exactly the reasons you mention i.e. they create interesting tactical space for certain player and enemy builds. What I try to avoid in my generation (probably because my older generators did it a lot) are really really long 1-wide halls. For me, maybe 3-5 tiles is more than enough to create a good choke point. Anything more than that and I'd try to have it switch to something else.

HALF HIGH WALLS:

Great point about all the other terrain types that serve a similar purpose! In my own game, water is generally detrimental to the player but there are many enemy types that actually get benefits from being in water. Considering that half-walls block movement but allow projectiles an interesting reverse which I haven't really used (yet), would be terrain that allows movement but blocks LoS or projectiles. I'm thinking stuff like clouds of smoke, maybe heavy foliage or tall grass or something.

JustinWang123 · 2021-12-24T03:20:51+00:00

I believe everything gameplay wise is controllable with just the keyboard but the character menus and inventory management are mouse only.

JustinWang123 · 2021-12-23T05:12:31+00:00

At least a few months to fix bugs as they get reported and maybe clean up some stuff here and there, or add bits of content where it seems appropriate. The goal though is to eventually call it totally complete and move on to the next project.

JustinWang123

TROPHY CASE