Friday, March 14, 2014

Alpha 3.0 Release

Believe it or not, here's another demo (not sure if "demo" is really the best term, maybe "alpha" would be better?). I've made a lot of small and cosmetic adjustments to the prologue and Grassland section, and appended a brand new forest town and related dungeon. The game opens in the Developer's Studio (modeled after my current apartment), where you can access some special Developer's Tools (added by request), before selecting whether to start the game from the beginning, or from where Demo 2.0 left off (with approximate stats/equipment).

While the prologue and Grassland area is slightly refined since the last demo (gosh, has it already been half a month?), the new stuff is maybe a bit rougher than you might have come to expect (the town, for example, is sparsely populated, and not all of the enterable buildings have been completed). I just don't have the desire to spend a lot of time polishing it up right now when I really need to be fleshing out the rest of the game first. But I'm pretty satisfied with the skeleton of it, and I'm really proud to show off the new maps and the second dungeon quest. At any rate, this release ought to keep the vultures happy for at least a day or two. :p The combat balance may be far from perfect for the new areas, but I tried to make it at least reasonable. I must also remind you that the world map is currently a "SparkNotes" version of the landscape, to be fleshed out in full later on down the line.

One other note before you dive in. One of the things I've added to this release was what I've taken to calling the "Monster HUD", which is basically just a visual display for the "encounter clear" system I've worked out so far. In lieu of explaining it all right here, I'll let the in-game tutorial and your own experience do the talking. I had to break down and utilize some scripts to get it working, but I found some nice, simple ones that I felt comfortable with. I might change the mechanics of the Monster HUD in the future - so feedback would be helpful. But that's something to look forward to trying out.

3/15/14 Dragonfaith Alpha 3.1 (33.6 MB)

I haven't pored over this version as much as the previous two, so if there are any glaring errors I missed, I apologize. However, please let me know, in that case, so I can fix them.

Edit: Speaking of glaring errors, I forgot to let you keep all those nifty Developer's Tools after you leave the Developer's Studio and start the game. It has been fixed in version 3.1.

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