This was a big week, several long running tasks came to completion freeing people up for next week. We also introduced a more formal git branching strategy which had the adverse effect of tripping is up a bit yesterday, so we needed an extra day to get everything right. I'm proud of what we've accomplished this week. This build was real hard to get out.
New
- We now support up to 130% Text Scaling. It was a significant amount of work to pull this off, ~2 people for 3 weeks combing over the entire UI and tooltip system. We did this to allow people to play on many kinds of screens: 13" laptops, TV's, Steam Deck, etc. all at what is comfortable for you. We also did it to lay a foundation for future UI work. Note: There is a known issue it is slow to respond as you move the slider, and occasionally some text will pop out of a container. We will optimize in a future patch.
- Now support more (all?) 16:9 Screen Resolutions. 1440p and 4k screen users rejoice! Actual 4k support will come later. 21:9 probably never. (I say this as the lead dev working on a 21:9 screen I love so much I could kiss it. It's like my fourth child.)
- Using a dungeon door key will now remove it from your inventory. They were always magical, but now go *poof* so as not to clog up yer inventory. (The vendors were sick of buying your useless keys and raised a complaint!)
- Added 9 more character creation equipment bundles, for a total of 12.
- Added 2 more quests
Improved
- Removed an unnecessary click in spell casting, making combat play faster. You pick the spell, then can click the spot you want to cast it. No longer do you have to confirm "cast" above.
- Rewrote locked doors, levers, and keys. This was real broke, but now it should be good: keys and levers will appear on the correct side of the locked door (the side where you can reach it! ːsurprised_yetiː)
- Optimized game loading, starting the game is at least 10x faster. Sadly, this does not improve save game loading. Baby steps...
- Changed Magic School XP Level up cost from +100xp per level to +25xp per level cost, so 100, 125, 150, 175, etc. instead of 100, 200, 300... (player feedback)
- Camps no longer are consumable. They cost more now, but they never go away. Later we will introduce wear & tear or something, but we solved the immediate issue of needing stacks of 8 of them. (player feedback)
- Harvesting resources is down from 15->5 stamina. This is a bandaid based on player steam forum feedback (sleep simulator! ːhappy_yetiː). Stamina will slowly be taken out of the game entirely, but the beneficial need to sleep will not. (player feedback)
- Resource generation is much higher and now uniform in the code. HOWEVER, there is a deeper problem of the map showing a forest where there is no forest. Correcting the graphics to match the map is a longer solve and we didn't have time to do it this week. So this is a small improvement with a major improvement coming. (player feedback)
- Made the Ara and AP refresh a little juicier
Fixes
- Combat: Ground placement of corpses and things like acid pools and such is fixed. It was trying to place it in the right spot, saw there was something there (the monster) and then trying to find an open place to put it.
- Fixed showing wrong spell title/icon/radius in cast box. Oops. ːsteamfacepalmː
- Gambling: Somewhere around the player reaching 10,000g the game would crash. The issue was bankrupting the innkeeper! He would try to take his turn, but couldn't afford it, but had to take his turn, couldn't afford it. Infinite loop goodness.
- Gambling: Fixed natural 20's going firey. Nothing special happens during gambling so it shouldn't show the effect.
- Fixed inn sleep fire VFX. It was miss-firing (Ha! I'm a dad). It now scales correctly to whatever screen you are on and no longer looks like it is burning the furniture.
- Fixed text bleeding outside of popup boxes on world generation and spell school level up
- Fixed fellow student names must be unique in character creation. We had a player report going to school with Barbara, Barbara, and Barbara. It certainly made it an interesting challenge to keep them all straight, but we decided it was for the best to just ensure they are unique.
Known Issues
There are plenty of general problems in the game, but here are some specific ones we're working on:
- There is a quest, Gather Stone for Inquisitor, which has some ??? showing in it.
- Sometimes a new world has a bunch of the spells way up the tier. It's real weird, we can reproduce it, but not often. If you get this, just generate another world and it'll be fine.
Finally, thanks for all the great design ideas on the forums. It helps us to be able to read a multitude of opinions on a matter, picking the best elements. Yay Early Access! Thanks for adventuring with us.
Last note: Monday is a holiday in Canada, something about a queen. So we'll be back at it on Tuesday!