Windows Sword and Staff - Retro hack-and-slash dungeoncrawling adventure

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skeptile

Guest
EDIT 9/30/2017: Sword and Staff Alpha 0.2 is now available!
Grab the free demo here!
Changelog:
- Significant lag fixes
- Added character creation menu
- Added goats, a source of hide and milk
- Added NPC: Identifier (requires the bastion's Library)
- Fixed a crash caused by placing rooms in the Bastion
- Added coral
- Added new enemy: Ent
- Changed default resolution and made CRT filter disabled by default
- Decluttered and rearranged certain HUD elements to prevent overlap on lower resolutions
- Cleaned up the outline effect on text

After about 5 years (off and on) of working on my first full game, I'm proud to finally post the first Alpha build of Sword and Staff! The game can be purchased for $5 on itch.io. There's also a free demo version if you just want to try the game out! (It's the full game, just without the ability to load a saved game.)


Sword and Staff is a retro hack-and-slash dungeoncrawling adventure with survival and crafting elements. Fight your way through a randomly generated overworld and endless dungeons. Craft, enchant, and upgrade hundreds of unique and powerful weapons. Uncover ancient magical artifacts. Defeat challenging bosses and reclaim the legendary Tetragram to restore balance to the world.


Screenshots:

No trailer yet, but here's a quick look at the beginning of the game:

Trailer coming soon!
Follow me on Twitter! @_skeptile_
 
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skeptile

Guest
I downloaded the demo, loaded it, looks great, then it is so slow i cant play it basically.
That's not good... It runs at a nearly-constant 60 fps on my laptop, which doesn't have particularly good specs.
Do you have the "view scrolling" option set to Classic? And what world size did you try? If possible, would you mind posting your PC specs?
 

Kerv

Member
Just tried the demo, its beautiful. Not sure how much differs from the demo to the full version, but here are my thoughts.

-Default resolution was too big, any bigger and I wouldn't have been able to click 'settings' to change it.
-While adjusting things in settings (turning off that crt thing, sorry :p) the scrolling brick wall in the background kinda gave me a headache.
-Graphics are awesome, the pixel outline looks great, game feel is spot on when smashing and collecting a bazillion things.
-Having to do things on the edge of the screen with that area transition continually kicking in is super annoying.
-Flowers might need their sprite origin changed, they appear over the character.
-Crafting is a cool idea with the mini puzzle, but I found it tedious. There too much other stuff I want to be doing in the game than a sliding puzzle. (also couldn't make the campfire cooking stand thing, two of the squares didn't match the sprite at all?)
-The discovered item... catalogue thing is awesome, and impressively huge. Is there a way to navigate it faster? Tabs or something would be great (sorry if there is something already, didn't spend long looking)

Fantastic all in all. Very impressive. Keep it up!

ps: Really don't like the sun reflection on the water either. Sorrrrrry :D
 
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skeptile

Guest
Just tried the demo, its beautiful. Not sure how much differs from the demo to the full version, but here are my thoughts.
The only difference is that the demo version doesn't allow loading saved games :)

-Default resolution was too big, any bigger and I wouldn't have been able to click 'settings' to change it.
Agreed. The default resolution and CRT effect are actually mistakes in the default INI settings, so I'll change that.
Just out of curiosity, what's your screen resolution? The default resolution is 800 pixels high, which fits very comfortably on my screen, but maybe my screen is larger than most.

-Having to do things on the edge of the screen with that area transition continually kicking in is super annoying.
Agreed. The only reason it's handled that way is because with the massive number of objects in the room, I need to activate/deactivate regions of them all-at-once to prevent the game from slowing to a crawl. I'm still going to try to change this, though.

-Crafting is a cool idea with the mini puzzle, but I found it tedious. There too much other stuff I want to be doing in the game than a sliding puzzle. (also couldn't make the campfire cooking stand thing, two of the squares didn't match the sprite at all?)
Yeah, GM has some weird behavior where the edges of surfaces can get messed up for some reason, so the puzzle sometimes shows the wrong arrangement of pixels. I'm looking into it.

-The discovered item... catalogue thing is awesome, and impressively huge. Is there a way to navigate it faster? Tabs or something would be great (sorry if there is something already, didn't spend long looking)
I plan to add a "table of contents" or something soon!

Fantastic all in all. Very impressive. Keep it up!
Thanks so much for your input!

ps: Really don't like the sun reflection on the water either. Sorrrrrry :D
Haha, I'll add an option to disable it :)
 
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dannerz

Member
2GHz 3gm ram 32bit os and i tried the game again, still too slow, like last time. It's a shame, the game looks great, but i cant play it yet i guess.
 
S

skeptile

Guest
2GHz 3gm ram 32bit os and i tried the game again, still too slow, like last time. It's a shame, the game looks great, but i cant play it yet i guess.
Hm... I'm sorry. Since this is the first official build, there are definitely a lot of things that can (and will) be optimized in future versions of the game, and I'll make sure to test them on a slower machine. If you'd like, check back here when I finish the next build and hopefully you'll have better luck :)
 
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skeptile

Guest
SWORD AND STAFF ALPHA 0.2 is now out!!

Changelog:
- Significant lag fixes
- Added character creation menu
- Added goats, a source of hide and milk
- Added NPC: Identifier (requires the bastion's Library)
- Fixed a crash caused by placing rooms in the Bastion
- Added coral
- Added new enemy: Ent
- Changed default resolution and made CRT filter disabled by default
- Decluttered and rearranged certain HUD elements to prevent overlap on lower resolutions
- Cleaned up the outline effect on text

Grab the free demo here:

https://skeptile.itch.io/swordandstaff
 
S

skeptile

Guest
SWORD AND STAFF ALPHA 0.3 is now out!!

Changelog:
- Added a lockpicking minigame
- Added Guilds system
- 14 new Abilities related to lockpicking and guilds
- New artifact: Focus Locus
- Fixed overworld tiles not saving properly
- Fixed a crash when freeing the Architect
- Fixed a crash caused by placing rooms in the Bastion (for real this time!)
- Various minor bugfixes, tweaks, and additions

Grab the free demo here:

https://skeptile.itch.io/swordandstaff
 
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