[ver.0.1.2-demo] – 24/09/2023

Comment:

• Hello everyone!
  I’ve been looking at how players have been enjoying the game so far and I came up with a list of improvements that could help with most of the common issues I’ve noticed players have been experiencing.
  
  The most notable issue being the game struggling to convey to the user how it is supposed to be played and the fact the player only has a limited amount of lives at their disposal.
  
  I also got to add a gameplay feature that I’ve been wanting to implement into the game for a long while now!
  
  I hope you will enjoy the changes to the game!
  
  

New Features:

• A new “Rogue-lite” subsystem called “carryover items” has been added to the game.

  • The player can now preserve up to 5 items from their previous play-through into the next one so long they were stored inside the inventory storage box, the first 5 valid transferable items will be selected (this items will be marked with a blue tag on the top left side.)
    
    

  • The number of transferable items varies based on the selected combat difficulty, with the minimum of 2 items on the “King of Shades” difficulty and the maximum allotted of 5 on the “Normal” difficulty.
    
    

  • The system is currently restricted to healing items and ammunition and it will also include weapons in the near future (puzzle items are still under consideration.)
    
    

  • The global pool of transferable items gets updated whenever the player completes a play-through or reaches the game over state, the items can be found on the inventory storage box from the start of the game.
    
    
    
    
    

• An interface context bar has been added at the bottom of the screen whenever the player is interacting with any form of UI.

  • The context bar contains a list of the four most relevant inputs and their names for the given context, the input icons automatically update based on the current input device (keyboard & mouse or controller.)
    
    

  • The context bar is intended to aid players to navigate the interfaces with added expanded descriptions for each interaction.|
    
    
    
    
    

• Full overhaul of the player inventory screen:

  • Added health, stamina regen and mana status bars at the bottom of the interface, a “sand clock” icon that functions as a vertical bar is also added to represent the state of the “speed boost buff.”
    
    

  • Added usability validations for certain items (for example, blocking the player from using a healing item when they are already at full health.)
    
    

  • Added an “equipped” status icon to the item that is currently equipped by the player.
    
    

  • The inventory screen doesn’t “blink” anymore whenever certain operations are performed, this is both a visual and playability improvement since the input capturing could sometimes miss a player input in that split second when the interface would reset.
    
    

  • Added a dark background to the units display on item slots for improved readability.
    
    

  • Added a secondary highlight color (green) whenever the player is in the middle of an inventory operation that involves a second item slot (swapping, combining or taking items out of the storage box.)

    • The player item slot that would contain the item about to be taken out from the storage box is now highlighted for better readability.
      
      

  • The manual combine operation (activated through the item action menu) now disables all the items that the player cannot combine the selected item with and highlights those that can be combined.

    • The process of combining items aims to expand player agency and the discovery of new possibilities, going through a trial and error process of clicking every possible item wasn’t part of the intended experience.
      
      

  • Merged all the confirmation inputs to complement each other, for example the swap operation (“Left Shift” by default) used to be only finalized with the same input that started it, now it is also possible to confirm the operation with mouse or the dedicated confirm button, the same applies to all other operations like “drag & drop” with mouse.
    
    

  • You can now confirm item actions by clicking the inventory slot instead of only being able to press the respective item action button.
    
    

  • The swap and combine operations are not meant to interact with the storage box, therefore its item slots will now disable themselves whenever the players starts any of these two operations.
    
    

  • The amount of units the player can transfer in or out of the storage box is now mouse scroll-able without needing to hover the button during the process.
    
    

  • Updated the item description fonts.
    
    

  • The life counter is now blue by default and turns red once the player has 0 extra lives (game over on death.)
    
    

Adjustments:

• The ‘support item’ classification has been added to the game with the intention of better reflecting the purpose of certain items.
  
  

• All the recovery items have been rebalanced to heal a percentage of the current maximum health pool and the modifier combination now also heals and permanently increases the maximum player health pool.
  
  

• The SM solution’s effect has now been transferred to the concentrated stamina solution (S2) and it now heals and increases the maximum stamina pool instead.
  
  

• The amount of damage melee weapons apply is now affected by the player stamina, the further down the stamina is from its starting point the lower the damage becomes but the opposite applies as well, amplifying the maximum amount of stamina grants the player the opportunity of inflicting a lot more damage than they would otherwise.
  
  

• A great amount of widgets now have proper framing and padding to better distinguish them from one another.
  
  

• The life counter is now displayed on the screen whenever the player respawns post-death (shown in color red) or gains a new life (color coded blue.)
  
  

• Optimized the performance of all the widgets in the game (Tick related.)
  
  

• Added descriptions for all the combat and puzzle difficulties when the player is on the new game difficulty selection screen.
  
  

• The “Controls” section in the settings menu has been restored, you can now customize the game’s input mappings to your heart’s desire, it works the same way as it did before but with the addition that the keyboard & mouse inputs are now represented with icons.
  
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a rare bug that would cause the game to improperly load a previous save.
  
  

• Fixed an issue with the “pause menu” input triggering in the main menu screen.
  
  

• Fixed a visual bug where the player animation pose could get stuck on the “blocking” state if stunned by an enemy right after the melee weapon breaks.
  
  

Crash Fixes:

• Solved an issue where the game could crash while on the main menu screen on Linux systems.
  
  

Known Issues: