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Back to Work!

6 Jan

Happy New Year!

Sorry for the recent lack of updates. For the past few months I've been focusing on another project (that I hope will go public soon) where I work as design lead to pay the bills. Apparently indie devs moonlight at larger studios and not the other way around these days. Or at least I do.

With that out of the way for the foreseeable future, I'm now back to working on the next Bonfire update full-time. Majority of the back-end work is already done, but we're still largely in the woods re. content and overall polish/integration. Expect more info about what's coming soon.

Cheers!
-Tom

Bonfire

Patch 0.9.74

8 Mar, 2024

Patch 0.9.74 is probably the last larger hotfix for Witching Hour before we move to working on the next major content update. It brings some important balance changes, as well as a few minor bugfixes.

BALANCE:

Zhu's Inspiration ability no longer extends debuffs but instead grants one free use of an item.
Hexa's Inspiration ability no longer grants a Special buff and instead extends debuffs.
All stats now have effective caps of -100 at minimum and 200 at max.
Zivko's Boost duration now increases by 1 per charge instead of 2.
Zivko's Boost power decreased from 50%-200% to 50%-150%.
Witching Hour rune now applies its quickening effect before the Special buff takes place, making it a little less impactful.
Stat boosting items are no longer exempt from free item use effects.
Dark Feast should now always kill its target.

Dev Note: Zhu's and Hexa's Inspirations switcheroo is meant to better fit the characters thematically, but it also nerfs the ability to stack multiple Hexes.

Dev Note #2: As more characters and abilities are introduced, it's easier to stack multiple buffs to reach game-breaking stat values. Introducing caps should target-nerf these specific exploits while keeping normal gameplay unaffected.

Dev Note #3: Boost's nerf is pretty major and we may slightly dial it down in a future hotfix. It should still be a battle-winning ability when used correctly, though.

GAMEPLAY & QOL:

Free item use effects have a clearer indication when they trigger.
Tooltips and quest selection on the map screen behaves more consistently with overlapping pins.

BUG FIXES & MISC STUFF:

Fixed another rare crash caused by Dark Pulse.
Zapper attack now correctly tracks moving targets.
Fixed Inspiration descriptions on the hero screen. Again.
Zhu's Focus Fire no longer triggers Resonance when attacking a different enemy.
Zivko's Failure AI will no longer waste Boosts on weak summons.
Fixed incorrect pronoun usage in The Hiatus errand.
Fixed typos in some of Hexa's quips and dialogue.

We hope you are enjoying the update! If you still encounter any issues or bugs, drop by our community forums or MoaCube's Discord server[discord.gg].

-Tom

Bonfire

Hotfix 0.9.73

23 Feb, 2024

An important hotfix as -- keeping to the best traditions of game development -- last patch fixed some bugs by adding far worse ones.

Gameplay & QoL:

You can now equip Inspirations that are slotted by another hero without having to unequip them first.
Summoning creatures when at minion limit will now destroy the weakest summon to make space.
Added a tutorial message that explains this mechanic.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed a crash on Food and Glimmer tally in quest and errand reward messages.
Abilities that call for enemy reinforcements will now place them correctly in horde events.
Absorbing Shadowspawn should no longer crash the game in rare situations where it causes the Witch to die (such as Booby Trap chain reactions).

Dev note: The tally bug crashed the game at the end of many quests, which could result in them behaving as if only partially completed. This might temporarily affect your save file even after the fix, but will eventually resolve itself.

Bonfire

Hotfix 0.9.72

22 Feb, 2024

Balance:

Shadowspawn's free move upon casting has been changed to 66% towards a move.

Dev note: This makes the skill a bit more risky as it takes longer for it to be a net benefit in terms of turn economy.

Bug Fixes:

Brave Blade will no longer crash the game when attacking an already burning enemy.
Fixed a crash on skipping the quest reward message when it's at Glimmer tally.
Some fixes to string parsing for the scene system.
Inspiration descriptions on the hero screen now correctly only list the extra ability at Inspiration level 3.
The Undying will no longer take eternity to look for his friends when there are none, even if it's relatable.
Corrected the order of some scenes in Hexa's and Erzsi's story arc.
Improved some quest wording.
Fixed a few more typos in character dialogue.

Bonfire

Hotfix 0.9.71

21 Feb, 2024

A small but important patch. Especially for Intel Mac users.

Bug Fixes:

Bonfire should work properly on Intel-based Macs.
Witch's runes and rune items now use correct assets instead of placeholders.
Twist of Fate now correctly applies the Hex effects when removing immunity.
The dragon in Hexa's tutorial quest can no longer spawn immune to debuffs.
Several typo fixes.

Bonfire

Witching Hour Update

19 Feb, 2024

The Witching Hour Update is out, introducing a new playable character, expanded storyline, as well as numerous optimisations and bug fixes!

NEW HERO: THE WITCH

Hexa the Witch is the biggest new addition of 0.9.7. She's a support character who uses hexes and wards to weaken enemies and protect her allies. She's also able to halve her HP to spawn a shadow clone that doubles her action output, allowing for a more offensive (but also risky!) build. Especially as her abilities tend to ignore armor.

Her addition takes some weight off Hildie's shoulders as damage mitigator, and off Ephrem's as armor piercer, allowing for more diverse party compositions in the opening hours of Bonfire.

The Witch is unlocked very early in the game and requires no special actions to be taken. Just play as you would and she'll show up (don't expect her to be happy about it, though)!

MORE (BACK)STORY

Hexa is an old friend of Hildie and Ephrem, as well as a part of the original crew that assaulted the Overlord's keep before the events of the game. As such, her introduction provided us with a great opportunity to dig deeper into our heroes' backstories and the world's lore.

We also further developed some of the late-game character arcs, especially for Nadia who now gets her own questline.

FIXES AND STABILITY

While Bonfire has generally been pretty stable, there were quite a few outstanding smaller bugs, rare crashes, and missing or outdated assets that contributed to the "Early Access feel" we're trying hard to avoid (yeah, we know the game literally is in Early Access, but you know what we mean).

Developing better testing methods allowed us to catch up on a lot of these obscure bugs and we think 0.9.7 is the most stable and polished release the game ever had.

FULL PATCH NOTES:

NEW CONTENT:

Hexa the Witch joins the hero roster!
New skills, runes, inspiration bonus, and tutorial quests added for the Witch.
25 new story scenes involving the Witch added to the rotation.
10 new story scenes expanding other character arcs added to the pool.
Witch's reactions and custom dialogue added to already existing scenes.
A new questline and story arc for the Assassin.
New quests added to showcase the Witch's abilities.
New miniboss variant: Maladin.
New miniboss variant: Doomsayer.
New miniboss variant: Dire Wolf.
New elite type: Pulsating.
New quest rewards added for Gauntlet progression.
New combat encounters added to the pool.

Dev Note: The Witch normally joins very early in the game, so her story progression may seem oddly placed, if you're playing on an old safe file with significant play time.

Dev Note #2: Nadia's new questline starts with the "Elimination" story quest that used to be repeatable. Similar arcs are coming for other characters in future updates.

BALANCE:

Food drops have been adjusted to be more generous early on and less so in the endgame.
Minimum Health limit on the Failure difficulty changed from 25 to 30.
Minimum Health limit on the Journey difficulty changed from 25 to 50.
Enemy stats multiplayer on Journey difficulty changed from 0.85 to 0.9.
Applying a stronger damage over time effect to an already afflicted enemy now updates the effect's power.
Nadia's Secret Formula max uses changed from 6 to 5.
Hexes are now stackable.
Hex debuff power reduced from 0.7 to 0.5.
Zivko's Blast Bead power increased from 2 to 2.5.
Motivation XP gains from protecting another character have been doubled.
Runes have been added as rewards for some endgame quests.
Miniboss encounters have more difficult variants late in the game.
Ditto for Elite encounters.
Failures Health increased from 150 to 200.
Failures now accurately reflect the stats of the party when it got wiped.
Hildie's Failure AI has been significantly improved.
Same for Zhu's Failure AI.
Enemy mages no longer waste their charges on summons.
Increased the difficulty and rewards of the Treasure Hunt questline.

Dev Note: Journey difficulty has been adjusted to be more challenging when it comes to combat, but simply less punishing.

Dev Note #2: Protection XP increase is compensating for a double dip bug fix (see later), so it's not really a buff.

Dev Note #3: Failure encounters are now significantly harder, better reflecting the initial intention behind their inclusion.

GAMEPLAY & QOL:

Quest rewards tally up can now be skipped by clicking.
Maxed out skill trees now clearly indicate they are, well, maxed out.
Boost animation now takes much less time when cast at no charges.
Quest progress meter no longer replays the room slide animation when called manually.

Dev Note: Errand rewards still can't be skipped, because it's going to be reworked in the next major update.

COSMETICS:

Remaining low-res rune items have been updated to higher resolution.
Same for the remaining low-res runes themselves.
New FX for the Poison debuff.
New FX for the Special Formula Poison debuff.
New FX for the Burn debuff.
New FX for Erzsi's Sustenance skill trigger.
Updated FX for the Fire Arrow attack.
Updated FX for the Hero Sword attack.
Updated FX for Erzsi's Blood Ritual.
Updated FX for all campfires in the game.
Updated FX for coin collect skip.
Updated FX for skill/rune increase on the hero screen.
Updated some menu and GUI particle effects.
Characters can now close eyes and look smug in story scenes.
Updated all story scenes to actually include this.
Same for all generic quips and barks.
New icon for summoning abilities.
New icon for explosive abilities.
New icon for pulsating abilities.
New icon for the Witching Hour buff.
Corrected timing and FX for the Runesmith's rune upgrade sequence.
Corrected timing and FX for the Master's skill point purchase sequence.
Corrected timing for arrow ripostes.
Corrected timing for Protect FX.
Dust particles have been added to some areas.
Exploding booby trapped chests now properly remove their sprite cover.
Increased the volume of the hit sound effect on low damage.
Erzsi's "Majesty" inspiration has been changed to the more appropriate "Grandeur".
Unit portraits now tilt slightly on their turn for better clarity.
Miniboss aura effects have been unified to better discern them from elites.
Fixed summons' HP bar Y-sorting issues.
Depart message now uses character's true name rather than their class.
Adjustments to the breathing anim on some enemies and heroes.
Minor color adjustments for some GUI elements.
Scrollbar in the quest menu now works more smoothly.
Targeting beams now correctly take the caster's height into account.

Dev Note: Cosmetics have been a large focus of this update as some things (like the remaining low-res assets, DoT effects, or the missing skill icons) have been long overdue.

BUG FIXES & MISC STUFF:

Bonfire is now correctly notarised for MacOS.
Implemented an automated test system that made it possible to replicate and fix many of the following bugs.
The Ultimate Journey now uses the correct (and much harder) quest setup.
Further optimisations to texture and sound loading.
Fixed a relatively frequent crash on the first story scene.
Fixed a crash on auto-cast skills applying their effects to non-enemy NPCs.
Fixed a rare crash caused by AI being unable to find a sufficiently weak target.
Fixed a rare crash on AI searching for the most powerful target.
Fixed a crash on re-applying some debuffs.
Fixed a rare crash when skipping the coin collection sequence too soon.
Fixed a crash caused by Revenge effect triggering when there are no enemies left.
Fixed a rare freeze caused by an interaction between Riposte and Mournfolk Assassin's abilities.
Fixed a rare freeze caused by another Riposte interaction with Ephrem's abilities.
Fixed a potential freeze after the Master's introductory scene.
Fixed an issue that could result in double or even triple dipping on protection XP.
Losing all heroes now properly ends the run even if some player summons remain.
Entering and leaving the quest menu can no longer cause the map screen to become unresponsive.
Legacy saves can no longer end up with otherwise unattainable Rune levels.
Master and Runesmith events no longer appear where they shouldn't.
Undead and Mournfolk pseudo-boss encounters now feature correct compositions.
Cauterize no longer follows the Hex attack even if it kills its target.
Riposte no longer triggers when the target is protected or the attack is otherwise redirected.
Internal: Global food and gold multipliers implemented to better handle quests with extra drops.
Fixed armor sound not playing when the attacker has negative Attack stat.
Protectors will no longer protect other protectors.
Internal: Miniboss encounters have been merged, which makes them less prevalent in their respective pools.
All minibosses no correctly display their auras.
Claw Marks quest now grants correct XP.
The battle now ends correctly if all opponents are killed by Dark Pulse and similar effects.
Berserk elite buff no longer causes dragons to twitch.
Internal: Story scenes can now exclude heroes to prevent some very awkward situations.
Newer Runes can now correctly drop on respective story quests.
Added a failsafe for when all runes have been already collected (mostly on legacy saves).
Quest auto-grant for legacy saves now correctly includes those added more recently.
Changed the order of some early game scenes for better pacing.
Hovering over the resource panel no longer pauses combat.
Master's upgrade price now always correctly reflects unspent skill points.
Ephrem's Rune quest now gives the correct Rune.
Disabled some legacy save compatibility scripts that could cause a soft lock.
Master no longer double dips on difficulty mode multipliers in his introductory scene.
Hopeless Attempt quest log now correctly triggers on the map screen.
It's no longer possible to highlight two heroes at once on the camp screen.
Maxed out characters no longer play the XP gain animation in the quest summary screen.
Disenchanters now correctly spawn in quests with Mournfolk enemy pool.
Skipped quest summary tallies are now correctly tracked by backend stats.
Erzsi can no longer die in her encounters instead of triggering the join dialogue.
Fixed the location of the skill points tooltip in the hero menu.
Fixed overlapping tooltip hotspots for stats/skills in the hero menu.
Fixed a sneaky but long-standing dungeon scripting error for Auspicious Road.
And a similar error in quests with increased item drops...
...and increased food drops...
...and also with increased gold.
The first runestone quest now correctly requires three heroes to start.

Dev Note: A lot of stuff thanks to the mentioned automated test system that allowed me to find and fix some known bugs that I couldn't reproduce for the life of me. I'll write a bit more about it in an upcoming dev diary.

FUTURE PLANS:

Just like with previous major updates, we're now going into rapid hotfix mode to address any immediate bugs or balance issues you might encounter.

Once that's done, the next goal on our roadmap is re-working the journey and exploration systems to make the game's survival elements more engaging, with strategic choices beyond simple resource management. We also want to start adding personal questlines for each remaining hero.

As always, thank you for your continued patience and support! If you encounter any issues, would like to check our current development roadmap or make any suggestions, feel free to drop by our community forums. You can also follow me on Twitter or join MoaCube's Discord server[discord.gg] for more frequent updates.

-Tom

Bonfire

Quick Update on the Update

24 Jan, 2024

Quick news time.

As of today, we've completed the main bulk of work on the next major update that includes the new hero Witch and a lot of additional story content (among other things and fixes).

From now on, it's just functionality & balance testing with the help of a new automated testing bot that I totally want to write more about one day. We expect the patch to hit Steam within the next few weeks.

Cheers and thanks for your patience!
-Tom

Bonfire

Dev Diary: The Witch and the Hero Design Process

26 May, 2023

So as I chip at the next hero update, I thought I could share a bit on how the process looks like from the dev's perspective.

The Role

Every hero in Bonfire fulfills a couple roles[bonfire-game.fandom.com] that define their place in the party. For the initial five this was easy. We needed a character for each of the common roles (attacker, healer, damage mitigator, someone who pierces armor, and so on), and another one who can fill their boots in a pinch, to allow for some flexibility.

Things get more complicated for the heroes we started adding later on. These have to respond to the game's environment and fill up any unexpected niches that have formed. For instance, we've realised new players over-rely on Hildie, so a new damage mitigator available in the early game could increase build diversity. At the same time, highly armored enemies are a common danger in the late game, and only one character is truly adapt at dealing with them.

Enter the Witch. She uses hexes to weaken enemies' armor and power, places wards on allies, and can split-off her shadow to do these twice as fast.

The Code

Once the role and the abilities of the new hero are decided, I start hitting at the keyboard until a working prototype of the character comes out. Basic implementation of skills and runes doesn't take that much time, actually. Bonfire's mechanics are rather modular and I can whip out something 90% functional in a couple days. The problem is those last 10% take 90% of time.

Final visuals and polish can take a while (depending on the ability), but the biggest problem is always finding and solving all the edge cases. What happens when a hex ward is placed on someone who's already covered? Why does it reduce damage done to a different character when the attack gets redirected through another ability? And how to fix it without breaking the redirection system itself? As skills and interlocked systems pile up with concurrent updates, this gets harder and harder to do, but honestly I love this part of game development. It's basically a cool puzzle to solve.

The Silhouette

This may sound surprising, but finding the right shape for the character probably takes more time than drawing the final assets.

Once the hero's role, stats, and abilities are set, it's critical to convey them well through how the character looks. Their speed and power must be reflected in what weapon they use but also even their default pose. Their clothing and bulk has to reflect their armor levels in relation to other characters. And so on.

Kate, our artist, usually does anywhere from 10 to 30 different sketches (both on paper and in Photoshop or Procreate) before moving to actual in-game sprites. We often use the promising ones as placeholders first, just to see how they work on screen with other characters and enemies.

The Story

Bonfire may not be story-centric, but it is story-heavy, especially when it comes to characters, and we're currently at over 120 scenes, ranging from party banter to quest content. While individual scenes are relatively quick to write and implement (as long as I've got a good idea that is), this task keeps growing as we add more characters and inevitably come closer to the game's ending.

Each new hero requires interactions with all the existing ones, has to react to main story events, take part in group scenes, and posses a few mini-arcs of their own, including quest content. It's all very fun to write, and we consider it one of the stronger and more unique aspects of Bonfire, but the time it takes is one of the reasons why we've decided to reduce the target hero count from 10 to 9.

The Tests

This is where I wish our "studio" was larger and had some people who could regularly playtest the game, both to find bugs and to experience normal progression. With the game's procedural structure and various inter-dependencies, the only real way to test everything is to start a new playthrough and get to the new parts naturally. And it takes a lot of time!

That said, I may or may not often end up playing an a minute or sixty longer than it's strictly necessary.

I hope you found this interesting and let us know if you'd like to see more posts like this in the future. And as always - you can follow me on Twitter or join our Discord server[discord.com] for more updates (or just to chat).

-Tom

Bonfire

Hotfix 0.9.62

20 Jan, 2023

Bug Fixes:

Fixed a potential freeze on maps with high quest density.
Fixed all heroes being referred to as "she" during party departure scenes.

Bonfire

Patch 0.9.61

27 Dec, 2022

Update 0.9.61 is a small patch that nevertheless addresses a critical crash in one of the quests as well as introduces some minor balance changes.

Balance:

Zhu's Detonator power reduced from 220% to 200%,
Nadia's Assassinate power reduced from 100%-300% to 100%-280%.
Updated elite monster occurence for some late-game encounters.

Cosmetics:

Updated FX for the Champion buff application.
Updated FX and animation for Erzsie's Blood Ritual.
Adjusted volume for XP bar sounds.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed a crash related to the Undead Horde quest.
Abilities and items that were meant to destroy debuffs no longer also remove positive effects.
New highest difficulty encounters now correctly appear on Gauntlet and "Ultimate" tier quests.
Fixed some wording and typos in new quests description.
Boss explosion effect now correctly takes enemy's scale into account.

Have fun!

-Tom

Bonfire

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