As of today, Fractal Odyssey has officially passed 2,000 wishlists on Steam. I really couldn't be happier about that, and I'm eager to see the next milestone fall. To everyone who wishlisted, and everyone who played the demo, thank you!
I've mostly finished fixing the system-level issues exposed by the demo. This was a very complex problem that could barely be seen (though would've been a bigger deal later). It basically boiled down to effects not always executing in the right order, and required me to completely rework how Clashes were handled. The new system seems to work smoothly, and should support the rest of the game. Most actions needed minor rewrites to play nicely with the new system, and I'm finishing those up now.
Note that, from the player perspective, nothing really changed as a result of this. Clashes still work the same.
The map editor has consumed the rest of my programming time. It's still a bit too early to show, but it's starting to take shape. The new editor has more-or-less matched the functionality of the old one but runs in the actual game. Once I tidy up this version a bit, I'll be able to move on to the next stage of development.
There are a lot of really cool features I want to implement in future stages. Moving tiles, mutli-floored maps, fog of war, etc. These features largely don't exist in the early sections of the game, but I need to make sure that the systems I've made support them. Thus, the plan - pick out the "most complex" parts of the game, and build out detailed prototypes of them while developing the map editor. By working on the content alongside the support structure, it should ensure that everything works as I want it to (and, most importantly, that I never have to make a third map editor).
Additionally, I'll be starting development on the second Chapter of the game fairly soon. It doesn't have any overly-ambitious features, so the current version of the map editor can almost fully support it. I'm finalizing enemy mechanics and such, as well as starting to write the dialogue.
On the note of dialogue - combat dialogue is high on the feature list. As with most things on the feature list, it'll be tied to the map editor (meaning that once the map editor is public, player stages should be able to have custom dialogue). This is going to be heavily used in the tutorial, and I'll share more about it in the future.
I'm probably getting too ambitious with my musical aims, so I haven't got any finalized tracks out since the demo. I've been focusing on learning a few new styles, and getting better acquainted with my tools. I'm happy with how (most of) the demo soundtrack turned out, but I don't think it meets the quality bar I'd want for the full game. The exception to this is 'The Price of Passion', which I could see surviving until the end (at least in terms of composition).
To close out, I have a little preview to share - some WIP art for a future chapter. It seems like a far cry from the snowy wastes, doesn't it?
