Vampire Survivors: Getting the awesome skills and enjoy the feeling of smooth.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Vampire Survivors: Getting the awesome skills and enjoy the feeling of smooth.

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Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

new weapon is crazy and can out damage la borra, which is fitting because its an evolution and a combo weapon

# ? Mar 20, 2022 03:06

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 07:49

serefin99: Apr 15, 2016; Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Well I think I just got a new main. The guns are crazy, and the fact the new character starts with both of them is such a godsend.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 03:34

Dr. Fraiser Chain: May 18, 2004; Redlining my shit posting machine

What are these updates? I am not finding anything searching it up

# ? Mar 20, 2022 04:18

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

Mazerunner posted:

new weapon is crazy and can out damage la borra, which is fitting because its an evolution and a combo weapon

The Laser Wheel of Death is very satisfying in those last few minutes when all the monsters crowd around you.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 04:27

Hello Sailor: May 3, 2006; we're all mad here

Goodpancakes posted:

What are these updates? I am not finding anything searching it up

Probably nothing in search results because it literally went on the test branch today?

# ? Mar 20, 2022 04:27

Third World Reagan: May 19, 2008; Imagine four 'mechs waiting in a queue. Time works the same way.

I identify as an attack air plane

# ? Mar 20, 2022 04:37

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

1% might/level with no listed cap is absolutely nutty.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 04:56

BaldDwarfOnPCP: Jun 26, 2019; by Pragmatica

Third World Reagan posted:

I identify as an attack air plane

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to sparkle motion

(birb)

# ? Mar 20, 2022 06:06

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

I was mad when Green Death spawned at 10 seconds in, but then a rosary dropped and turned it into a treasure chest. So thanks Death!

# ? Mar 20, 2022 06:12

serefin99: Apr 15, 2016; Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Attractorb almost feels necessary with the guns. Even unevolved, they absolutely carve through mobs, and the orb really helps in grabbing all that exp.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 06:30

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

serefin99 posted:

Attractorb almost feels necessary with the guns. Even unevolved, they absolutely carve through mobs, and the orb really helps in grabbing all that exp.

Might as well so you can use La Borra to cover the deadzones in the lasers. Nothing will get through!

# ? Mar 20, 2022 06:45

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

What triggers unlocking the coffin in the new stage? I found it, walked into it and... nothing.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 08:03

serefin99: Apr 15, 2016; Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Avalerion posted:

What triggers unlocking the coffin in the new stage? I found it, walked into it and... nothing.

You have to kill all the enemies guarding it.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 08:05

tithin: Nov 14, 2003; [Grandmaster Tactician]

Warbird posted:

I�d be down to try it but lol no iOS port.

Wouldn't be too hard to play on an android emulator I wouldn't think

# ? Mar 20, 2022 09:50

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Evolved guns are fun. Needs the cooldown tome to keep firing permanently. Wonder what else they would scale with, area maybe?

# ? Mar 20, 2022 11:53

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

Avalerion posted:

Evolved guns are fun. Needs the cooldown tome to keep firing permanently. Wonder what else they would scale with, area maybe?

I believe Duplicator and Candelabrador work, but the beams don't get but so much wider. Now I want to see if I can use Mortaccio and see if I can get a gun run going.

On another note, I finally cleared Hyper Dairy Plant

# ? Mar 20, 2022 12:30

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

Avalerion posted:

Evolved guns are fun. Needs the cooldown tome to keep firing permanently. Wonder what else they would scale with, area maybe?

bracer effects the speed they rotate at

# ? Mar 20, 2022 15:33

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Mazerunner posted:

bracer effects the speed they rotate at

I'd already gotten both levels of duplicator + near-max bracer and cooldown when the evolution triggered and i didn't really see any enemies for the next five minutes or so.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 15:38

GreatGreen: Jul 3, 2007; That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.

What evolves the guns?

# ? Mar 20, 2022 20:39

dis astranagant: Dec 14, 2006

GreatGreen posted:

What evolves the guns?

tiragisu. having revives left also slightly increases their damage.

# ? Mar 20, 2022 20:58

GreatGreen: Jul 3, 2007; That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.

dis astranagant posted:

tiragisu. having revives left also slightly increases their damage.

Thanks!

# ? Mar 20, 2022 21:06

Nemo2342: Nov 26, 2007; Have A Day; Nap Ghost

From the wiki:

quote:

Pheiraggi benefits from every stats besides Duration.

Cooldown bonuses reduce the time between each activation and multiple lasers can stack on top of each other if low enough, the threshold for perfect uptime starts at -42% Cooldown. Area increases the width of the lasers. Amount increases the number of projectiles, and Speed increases how fast the lasers spin around. Revival uniquely increases Amount and base damage of the weapon.

Also the new character is just Bayonetta, right?

# ? Mar 20, 2022 22:31

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Nemo2342 posted:

Banish is kind of bad since it skips the level up entirely. Hopefully that will get adjusted.

I mean, that just makes it a strictly better Skip, right? So I don't think it needs adjustment?

# ? Mar 21, 2022 01:47

dis astranagant: Dec 14, 2006

yeah, if anything just convert all skip into banish.

# ? Mar 21, 2022 03:01

ZepiaEltnamOberon: Oct 25, 2010; I Failed At Anime 2022

Tetrabor posted:

I highly recommend Magic Survival for anyone who enjoys Vampire Survivors. The gameplay loop is more satisfying as you can compete for as long as you can stay alive vs being killed by Death at the 30min mark.

I built out the fandom wiki back when fusions were still a thing, but the Dev redid the entire system and now it's a wild-west as far as discovering new things goes.

I tried playing Magic Survival after reading the posts here and while it's fun, the game just feels a lot more grindy than Vampire Survivors, and a lot more annoying too (though that comes from me having to use a phone instead of a controller).

It also just sucks to play runs and not get the powerups you need, I've played repeated Energy Bolt Mage games where I never managed to get both Energy Bolt powerups and eventually died. It's nice that you can get as many skills as you want in theory, but since leveling gets so much slower, the levels where you don't get your main skill feel bad; I could go Battle Mage and go like 5 levels without seeing a Magic Bolt upgrade, at which point it's like, why isn't this game giving me my main skill?

# ? Mar 21, 2022 03:22

Snackmar: Feb 23, 2005; I'M PROGRAMMED TO LOVE THIS CHOCOLATY CAKE... MY CIRCUITS LIGHT UP FOR THAT FUDGY ICING.

Today is the second time that my computer has had a blue screen of death while playing Vampire Survivors.. It's such a simple game that it doesn't seem possible that it could have disrupted things but I dunno. Anyone else have a mystery BSOD while playing?

# ? Mar 21, 2022 03:50

Tamba: Apr 5, 2010

Snackmar posted:

Today is the second time that my computer has had a blue screen of death while playing Vampire Survivors.. It's such a simple game that it doesn't seem possible that it could have disrupted things but I dunno. Anyone else have a mystery BSOD while playing?

The most likely cause for blue screens is dying hardware or a bug with some device driver. A regular application (that does not ask for admin rights) should not be able to cause a blue screen by itself.

# ? Mar 21, 2022 09:45

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

science report:

if you banish a powerup that's on the ground on the map, if/when you do pick it up, you can't level it

which makes complete sense, but is also very trolly

# ? Mar 21, 2022 10:53

kanonvandekempen: Mar 14, 2009

Mazerunner posted:

science report:

if you banish a powerup that's on the ground on the map, if/when you do pick it up, you can't level it

which makes complete sense, but is also very trolly

Speaking of those powerups, I wish they were somewhat randomised.

# ? Mar 21, 2022 10:54

Snackmar: Feb 23, 2005; I'M PROGRAMMED TO LOVE THIS CHOCOLATY CAKE... MY CIRCUITS LIGHT UP FOR THAT FUDGY ICING.

Tamba posted:

The most likely cause for blue screens is dying hardware or a bug with some device driver. A regular application (that does not ask for admin rights) should not be able to cause a blue screen by itself.

Yeah, if others come forward it'd be nice to see if we have anything in common

# ? Mar 21, 2022 23:41

Chunderbucket: Aug 31, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Snackmar posted:

Today is the second time that my computer has had a blue screen of death while playing Vampire Survivors.. It's such a simple game that it doesn't seem possible that it could have disrupted things but I dunno. Anyone else have a mystery BSOD while playing?

On the same note, why does a second of game time take five actual seconds for me :smith:

# ? Mar 22, 2022 02:05

BaldDwarfOnPCP: Jun 26, 2019; by Pragmatica

Chunderbucket posted:

On the same note, why does a second of game time take five actual seconds for me

Seriously. After enough upgrades the game begins to drag even more than usual.

I suspect it was not well engineered. :thunk:

# ? Mar 22, 2022 02:18

GreatGreen: Jul 3, 2007; That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.

Chunderbucket posted:

On the same note, why does a second of game time take five actual seconds for me

Yeah me too. It seems like where before when you'd lose frames as the game got bogged down, now the game seems determined to render every one of them, no matter how much longer it takes.

It's not a good change.

# ? Mar 22, 2022 02:37

ExiledTinkerer: Nov 4, 2009

I suppose it is Any Month Now for the new game engine they've been working on in rough parallel and made large strides on recently.

# ? Mar 22, 2022 02:39

Canuckistan: Jan 14, 2004; I'm the greatest thing since World War III.; Soiled Meat

ExiledTinkerer posted:

I suppose it is Any Month Now for the new game engine they've been working on in rough parallel and made large strides on recently.

Ah, the DayZ gambit.

# ? Mar 23, 2022 11:16

Dr.Smasher: Nov 27, 2002; Cyberpunk 1987

Nemo2342 posted:

From the wiki:

Also the new character is just Bayonetta, right?

Legally Distinct Bayonetta, yes.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 07:59

Fitzy Fitz: May 14, 2005

There should be an option to skip the level prompt once you've maxed everything. Just give me the gold. It's tedious to hit enter every few seconds for the last ten minutes of the game.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 17:16

withak: Jan 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

The developer posted a big thing about future plans for the game:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1794680/announcements/detail/3131696199131643255

quote:

Overview of the Roadmap to 1.0

When Vampire Survivors first released on Steam in Early Access, it was estimated to be at 60% content completion. The game had 7 playable characters, 22 weapons, 12 power-ups, 1 stage, and 23 achievements.

Thanks to the overwhelming success and support from the players, new content has started to come out at a much faster pace than anticipated and the roadmap has also been expanded significantly. The amount of playable characters planned for version 1.0 of the game has been doubled and so has the number of stages with the introduction of bonus/challenge ones. A dozen new weapons have been designed and a handful of new power-ups thrown into the mix.

This is where we're at now (patch 0.3.1) :
- Playable characters: 15 / 24
- Weapons and evolutions: 32 / 48
- Power-ups: 18 / 20
- Normal Stages: 3 / 5
- Special Stages: 2 / 5

That is about 70% content completion for the new roadmap to 1.0, but it doesn't even include the content that two new major game mechanics will bring to the game. The first one, Arcanas, will arrive in April and will unlock a whole new level of viable builds and power creep.

Instead of the Story mode mentioned in the Early Access notes, we'll be implementing a new major gameplay mechanic, but which one is yet to be decided, with some kind of Endless mode being the main candidate.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Story mode is gone forever, but the deep lore of Vampire Survivors requires a solid grasp of theoretical physics to be fully appreciated, so maybe environmental storytelling and subtle hints are the way to go. Please don't take anything from this last paragraph seriously.

New engine, performance issues, and promised features pushed back

When I first launched Vampire Survivors, all I wanted was to have a little game that would allow me to have fun making new game content in my spare time. Thanks to your incredible support and a once-in-a-lifetime surge of luck, the game turned out to be an incredible success instead.
Getting help from some friends to try fix all the issues deriving from such a huge player base got very soon unsustainable, so I've also started a parallel project to port VS to an industry-standard game engine with the help of trusted freelancers.

The port to the new engine is going smoothly and the game is already fully playable, lacking mostly in polish and content, but we also ran benchmarks that show a tenfold increase in performance (and so in framerate).

The port going well is the reason why a few features promised back in January haven't been developed on the current version yet, like key-remapping, increase responsiveness when switching screens, localised text that fits the available space etc...
It's just more time effective to implement those things directly in the new engine, and the same goes for worrying about game performance and hardware compatibility.

While there could be a lot of stuff getting drawn on screen in VS, the real bottleneck are the physics calculations that are stuck on using only a single CPU core, which is why not even having powerful modern hardware guarantees a smooth gameplay. That list of hardware includes the Steam Deck unfortunately, with the game's performance dipping to an embarassing slideshow near the end of a run, while other graphics-intensive games run at a buttery 60fps.

The new engine will ensure VS runs like butter too.

We're aiming to release the version on the new engine in the summer. The executable will be completely different, but Savedata will be moved over of course.

Mobile version and other games

Vampire Survivors originally released on Android, in just a couple of test markets, and it ran terribly. It was so bad in fact that I'd just decided to stop developing it and move it to PC instead. With the new engine, the game is perfectly playable even on mobile, so hopefully we should see a proper version hitting the stores soon!

In the meantime, if you want to play on the go there is the Steam Deck option of course, but I'd also recommend once again to play Magic Survival on Android, which is the game that inspired the original prototype of Vampire Survivors. I doubt I'd have started developing VS if I hadn't played something as good as Magic Survival, as other mobile games in the same genre tend be the usual Ads & Microtransaction machines with a bit of gameplay attached.

Speaking of other games, there's another one I'd like to mention and that is Serenade of Chaos, an actual roguelike, for which the original asset pack used by Vampire Survivors was commissioned for. Here are some words from the developer, Slashie :

CastlevaniaRL is a completely traditional, turn-based roguelike that was originally created for the very first 7DRL challenge back in 2005. A lot of things were planned but this version only managed to have a "survival" mode in which you had to stay at the entrance of the castle, fighting round after round of enemies, getting upgrades for your whip and your mystic weapons. After some months of development, many things were added including different character classes and a full story mode, but the game remained using a traditional, character-based display. I was then contacted by the artist who would later be known as Oryx; he was looking for interesting roguelike projects to support with graphics and he created an awesome tileset for it. Amidst some more popular "xRLs" like DoomRL, CastlevaniaRL never became popular, probably due to being super difficult and somewhat hard to get into; Oryx then decided to release the tileset as his higher-res "Gothic" tileset and some other variants, available with a non-exclusive license on his website. Also, somewhere down its development, I added back the "survival mode" to it, just for nostalgia about its original roots. The game was recently added to itch.io for easier access and preservation, although it hasn't seen any update in ages.
I also made this vid some time ago: https://youtu.be/Fe3lGEqw99k

When developing VS I wanted to focus exclusively on gameplay and having fun, which is why I'd let the available sprites or just about the first thing that comes to mind to influence any aspect of the game. With playing games being my main hobby, that "first thing that comes to mind" very often turned into a reference to some other game I love, either consciously or not.

For example I've realised only recently that the no-nonsense approach of "mash a button to start playing immediately" of the main menu came from playing One Step From Eden a few months before starting to develop VS. Or that there's a cheat code that gives you exactly 2800 gold coins because that's the same amount you get by cheating in Kagero Deception 2.

The list of influences goes on and on, but I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that without Magic Survival and Serenade of Chaos there wouldn't be a Vampire Survivors today, so please check them out!

Thank you once again to the awesome community, see you on the update thread for patch 0.3.2 in a couple of days! 🙏🏻