Salve, dear readers! It's the end of June and time for a major update before I head off on vacation for a couple weeks. So...
What's New in 0.5.0
Major Features
- Healing: Gladiators wounded in combat will now remain wounded after the exit the arena. Each day (more on that in a second) they will heal a small fixed amount of health. You can, of course, return them to the arena should you be in a foolhardy mood.
- Exhibition Matches: Before all matches were fatal and you had fight matches continuously to advance. That made it difficult to feel like you were progressing your gladiators and getting to know them. As of this update, you only need fight the major, preset 'sponsored' matches. However, to have a chance to beat those, you will need to judiciously participate in optional, non-lethal exhibition matches (at most one a day) to make the money and gain the experience you need to stand up to the sponsored matches.
- Time for Time: To underpin healing, exhibition matches, and - soon - training, Forum Mortuorum needed a real concept of time. This update adds it along with a new schedule UI.
Minor Changes
- Added some new tooltips to buttons that have only icons displayed
- Added a 'shine' effect to some buttons to help orient and remind you what actions you likely need to take
- Expanded the 'navigation bar menu' to include buttons for the upcoming training and school upgrade pages
- Changed the cursor graphic on the Main Menu and added fade-in/out when starting the game.
- Rebalanced match sizes, difficulty, and starting denarii to adapt to the various new changes, and to make the difficulty curve more intuitive
What's Next?
Next (major) update (0.6.X) will be focused on making gladiators uniquely skilled (right now they're all blandly similar) as well as a bit quirky. Additionally, it will introduce the ability to train them (while they're healthy) to further develop their talents.
That's all for now. See you next patch!
Nick