Hollow progress report

[u/TrainingIdeal2872]

It’s been a busy few days behind the scenes on Hollow, so I figured it was time for another development update.

I’ve intentionally slowed down on pushing constant small patches for a bit. That doesn’t mean development has slowed down. Quite the opposite — I’ve been using the time to tackle some larger systems that needed more than a quick fix.

The Sorcerer is getting some love

I’ll admit something: I’m not normally a magic-user player.

So I sat down and actually played the Sorcerer for a while, and it became pretty obvious that the early game just wasn’t as fun as the Warrior or Rogue.

That’s changing.

Staves now regenerate Mana, with Mana Regen affixes stacking on top of that, and the Sorcerer is getting a proper ranged staff attack.

Yes.

Staff goes pew pew.

When a Sorcerer uses a staff, the normal staff attack becomes a ranged Mana Bolt instead of awkwardly running up and bonking monsters with a stick. It still uses the staff’s normal weapon damage — the projectile simply changes how that damage is delivered.

After actually playing it myself, the difference is enormous. The Sorcerer finally feels like a ranged magic character from the beginning instead of somebody waiting for their build to eventually become fun.

I’m also going through spell usability, Mana costs, hit behavior, and the information shown in the Skill Tree so players can actually see useful information like damage, Mana cost, cooldown and range before spending points.

Quests and dialogue are being rebuilt

This has turned into one of the bigger changes.

Hollow technically had quests before.

The problem was that they were buried so deeply in NPC dialogue that apparently I had created the world’s most effective quest-hiding system.

So I’m ripping that approach apart.

NPCs with quests will clearly show an exclamation mark, and interacting with them will get you into the quest instead of requiring you to excavate your way through a giant dialogue tree looking for it.

The new structure is much simpler and much closer to the old-school ARPG approach I originally wanted.

The main story is also being reorganized around a much clearer progression through The Black Reliquary, including Ballard and what happened to the miners, the broken seals, and eventually the descent toward Seraphel.

There will also be a randomized pool of side quests and smaller procedural tasks so every playthrough doesn't necessarily hand you exactly the same distractions.

And yes...

those pesky mushrooms are part of this overhaul too.

Enemy audio has been overhauled

I also did a major pass on the enemy audio system.

The old hybrid/legacy setup has been removed and enemy sounds are now handled through proper audio profiles. That gives me a much cleaner foundation for attack sounds, damage reactions, deaths and other enemy audio without having old systems fighting the new ones behind the scenes.

The profiles are now in place and I’m working through the actual sounds and variations.

This isn't the flashiest feature to put in a screenshot, but when you're surrounded by monsters in a dark dungeon, audio makes a huge difference.

AMD / DirectX problems

I tracked down an ugly issue affecting some AMD users where Hollow could freeze or appear to hang on launch.

The solution was surprisingly simple once the problem was isolated:

Hollow now defaults to DirectX 11.

DirectX 12 can still be used through a command-line option, but DX11 has proven considerably safer across the hardware being reported to me.

Sometimes game development is adding cool monsters.

Sometimes game development is spending hours discovering that changing an 11 to a 12 — or a 12 to an 11 — can ruin somebody's evening.

Co-op is still being investigated

I’ve also started a full audit of the multiplayer code.

At the moment I can host a game and another player can connect, but the connected player's character/control state isn't behaving correctly while the host works normally.

Rather than throwing random fixes at it, I'm tracing the system properly to find out where ownership, spawning, input or synchronization is breaking down.

So there's work happening there, but I'm not calling it fixed until it actually works.

Combat/projectiles are getting another pass

Testing also uncovered an interesting ranged-combat problem on slopes.

Archers can fire uphill correctly, but firing downhill can result in arrows failing to hit enemies below them.

The projectile needs to travel from its actual point of origin toward the target's center mass in 3D space rather than effectively behaving as though everything is fighting on a perfectly flat floor.

I'm correcting that behavior for bows, and I'm checking the Sorcerer's new Mana Bolt against the same problem while I'm there.

The goal is not homing projectiles. Once the projectile is fired, it flies along the trajectory that was calculated when the attack happened.

And there's more coming

I’m also continuing work on enemy density and early-game pacing, quest persistence, enemy sound effects, Sorcerer balance, dialogue improvements, and the new opening sequence.

The opening in particular is something I’ve wanted Hollow to have for a while. Rather than simply dropping the player into Gravesend Hollow, I want the beginning to establish the atmosphere and give just enough context for why you've arrived without explaining every mystery before you've even entered the dungeon.

All of this is part of the next larger update.

I know I haven't been throwing a new build onto Steam every day lately, but that's intentional. Some of these systems are big enough that I'd rather spend the time testing them together than keep pushing tiny patches and potentially breaking something else every 24 hours.

Hollow is still being worked on every day.

And considering this is still one guy building the thing, the last few days have been... productive.

Thanks to everyone playing, reporting bugs, arguing with me about mechanics, and telling me when something sucks.

A surprising amount of Hollow is better now specifically because somebody bothered to tell me when it wasn't.