Last weekend I sent out a preview release of Build 11 to the team and small council. They provided a ton of excellent feedback on how the game plays, what is wrong, and what is right. So thanks to those who played it.
The first step was to collate the feedback from the variety of sources: video recordings, steam threads, email comments, people talking directly at me while I’m trying to work (Nic).
I used XMind to group issues by topic and figure out what ones were related. Anything reported by 3 or more people was an instant high priority.
The single biggest issue was the save file system didn’t work. I knew that when I shipped it out, but i simply ran out of time and wondered who would notice or care. Apparently everyone. :-) So I fixed that first. Then I just started working down the list. Here are some of the changes this week based on feedback and what I was able to do. It’s not everything, some bugs I fixed took 2+ hours to root out.
Progress since last week:
Fixed file save/load - I think it works now, I haven’t tested it much
Fix chat conversation crash
Fixed map icons appearing above the fog of war. It’s been bothering me for months, glad it is finally resolved.
Fixed a number of UI and quality of life issues
Rewrote the encounter menus to solve bugs, confusion, and make them better
Added confirmation dialogs to important things. For instance: attacking someone or stealing from them. Funny we didn’t have any OK/Cancel dialogs until this time.
Fixed sleeping at Inn issue and added ability to sleep at anyone’s house
Added running away from combat IN combat. Previously you could only run away before combat was engaged. Added the use of caltrops item to buff running away. Players will start with caltrops now.
Added non-lair monster camps. These are monsters who don’t grow, or move around. They just sit there causing trouble in a hex until you wipe them out.
Added additional races: wolves, spiders, and undead. The spawn based on the geography
I will be pushing out a new build monday morning to the testing group again, for those who are interested in testing it. I’ll be proceeding with fixing as much as I can before the release on Nov 16