Since the last progress summary when entering Alpha phase in October we have released an additional five updates with changelogs of our ongoing progress.
For the past couple of months we have been releasing bi-weekly updates to our Alpha Build, progressing in a stable pace through our long list of items to improve upon, finish off or build. The goal is to enter Early Access once we reach Beta phase, as we have again seen this last couple of weeks what happens when projects release too early -- even if it is as an Early Access title.
Here is a highlight-summary of some of the things from some recent Alpha builds:
Books, Chests and Story-Fragments
The mechanics for finding, interacting with and reading books has been added, and the first sets of books inserted into the Dungeon. Books are a source not just for information of the history and motivations of the inhabitants of the Dungeon, but there is also special books to find that allows the Operators to gain bonuses or Special Abilities.
Another source of upgrades is Chests. Filled with gold and gems their true value is magical weapons that the Operator may pick up and replace their current weapon with. All weapon-chest's contents is hand- tailored and hidden throughout the Dungeon for the careful and inquisitive adventurer to find.
Radar and Minimap UI
One of the QoL additions added in a recent Alpha build is the radar and minimap UI - the ability to see the team members and observed monsters, while seeing a accurate representation of a minimap really helps one navigate around the dark and confusing corridors and rooms that make up the many levels of the Dungeon.
Other improvements to UI is the additional of Level Experience indication to the team-member overview, ability to see what Special Ability an Operator has and what effects (buffs and debuffs) that is impacting them.
AI Personalities and Behavior Types
Progress has been made to give Monsters some variations when it comes to AI Personalities, to allow for variations in movement-patterns and attack-behaviors. This is an ongoing area of development and will be much extended upon further when additional Monsters and their variations are added to the deeper levels of the Dungeon.
Experience for Levels
Another ongoing area that has be added to is the general Level of a Operator and the impact this has on the gameplay. What has been added currently is that the overall progress of an Operators skills leveling up also generates XP for the Operators Level-progress and on leveling up a Operator regains up to 25% of health as a celebration-bonus.
We are also looking into adding additional bonuses, at set level-intervals, towards increasing an Operators Attributes and possible some other stats. This area will need a lot of testing and revisions, as each adjustment changes the difficulty experienced for the average player, and we expect the final tweaks to this area to be needing to be done all the way through towards the late stages of the Beta phase.
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