Hi all,

I think I owe you guys an update on 5.4. So far I don’t have anything flashy or visual to show off–a lot of the changes are under the hood, and will be impacting how major NPCs are handled.

For now, note the patron NPCs running around with colored names. These are NPCs who patrons submitted names for, and some of them (e.g. Melissa) have custom sprites too.

At the moment these are cosmetic, but I figured as a demo of the system I’d enable persistent NPC features for them. So now they can wander between maps and, in the features I’m working on right now, spawn with party members that follow them between maps. Ultimately, this should lead to some gameplay that feels more like you’re facing an organized group rather than a bunch of disorganized agents. And it can allow for sidestepping powerful enemies that you can’t face by staying out of the way until they go to another map.

Probably the biggest change this will lead to is the existence of dragon lairs. Currently, the dragons (and their dragon girl forms) simply tie you up and… do nothing. This is a little anticlimactic, but the lack of proper NPC tracking meant that dragons couldn’t have a ‘Lair’ map that’s separate from the map you encountered them on, which would require modifying map generation specifically for them and having to harmonize possibilities such as “what if the dragon tile spawns but the dragon doesn’t?” or vice versa. And it would preclude them from spawning on handmade/semi handmade maps like the elevator rooms unless each room has specific carveouts for dragon lairs, witch laboratories, and any other possible lair type that could be added in the future.

Now that dragons are persistent NPCs with the power to roam the map, they can have a ‘lair’ tile that they can go to and from. If you defeat a dragon queen but fail to capture her dragon girl form, she will try to run to her lair where she will transform again. If she defeats you, you’ll wake up in her lair along with her other prisoners, and perhaps some shiny magic items that you could try to take with you–at the risk of attracting the dragon, who senses a disturbance within the flow of magic (or some other explanation).

In addition, there are a pair of NPCs that will be making a showing in this patch (hopefully), the Maid Knight and her Squire! Their outfits are available as “Light Maid Knight” and “Heavy Maid Knight” respectively, but in the 5.4 patch these will be a pair of minibosses that you can encounter and fight.

Again, this is all a work in progress, but I hope it won’t take as long as the 5.3 update did, since 5.3 is where I laid the groundwork for persistent NPCs that can be spawned from the collection.