Hello everyone and happy new year!
Alpha 9 is released! The most-awaited feature is finally here. It is requested since the version alpha 1. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the crime system!
Reputation
First, there is now a reputation system. When you complete quests for a village, you will earn reputation points that will unlock certain actions such as buying a house. I will add more features linked to reputation in future releases. But, be careful, if you commit a crime, you will lose reputation points.
You can see your current reputation points and bounties in the character window. By the way, a coat of arms is now generated for each village.
Improved AI
Villager AI has been improved. They will sleep and they won't leave you alone in their house or shop stealing everything you want.
They also have the option to talk to you directly without a dialog window. You can also make your character talk using the "/say" command.
Pathfinding has also been improved, there were issues, especially with monsters and it should be better now.
Crime
Currently, there are four different crimes: theft, lockpicking, assault, and murder. If a villager sees you committing a crime, they will call the guards. Currently, a villager can see everywhere when in an interior. But outside, they can't see through walls and only at a limited distance.
After committing a crime, the guards will try to arrest you. Then either you pay the fine and give all your stolen goods or you resist the arrest. If you resist, they will try to kill you. And if they succeed, they will seize all your goods, put them in a locked chest in the barracks and you will respawn in the prison.
But you can run away and if you are a member of the Thieves Guild, you can contact the guild master to bribe the guards to forget the bounty.
Stealth
If you break into in a villager's house at night, be careful to not awake the owner. You can enter in the sneaking mode using the Left Control key by default. A new bar will appear below your hunger bar. If the bar is full you will awake someone.
A few tips: the slower you walk, the less noise you make, so be sure to walk and don't run. Moreover, using a tool, opening a container or picking an item is louder than walking so make sure the bar isn't nearly full.
Conclusion
I'm sure there are a lot of bugs. I was so eager to release the new version that I didn't test all the new features as much as I should have. If you face any issue, please send me a message. I will fix everything in the coming weeks.
Vagabond will participate to Steam Next Fest in February. I hope I will have the time to release a new version with new quests, in particular for the Mage Guild, and a draft of the skill system.
Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps me improve Vagabond!