Version 0.9.5.0 is live and the game has had some major improvements, from massive performance boosts, to graphics enhancements, dozens of bug fixes, more localization and, most importantly, our exit out of alpha. Early Access is tricky because technically by standard definition: Early Access is a type of Beta, as testing exists beyond the internal development team. However, we never really considered this to be the case with The Forbidden Arts. We have strived to be 100% transparent about the state of the game, and when it first entered Early Access a year ago, the game was only in pre-alpha, and was a massive work-in-progress. Since those early days, the game has had dozens of updates, loads of new content and features and has been thoroughly tested as we continued development. We are now out of alpha, meaning we've tested all we can possibly test, and we have begun beta testing beyond our Early Access testers, which has begin to bring about tons more improvements and fixes. We will continue to Beta test and make improvements as we continue to port the game to consoles and add more polish to the existing content. Here's a list of what's new in version 0.9.5.0:
- Added localization support for Italian
- Modified level design in the Swamp Challenge Level, The Mountains of Orin, Korrath Village, and the World Map
- Added a tutorial in Korrath Woods demonstrating how to properly wall jump
- Increased the size of the crates in Green Vale overworld
- Removed animated grass from Black Fang Pass World overworld
- Improved texture quality, added normal map and enhanced lighting to the terrain texture in Black Fang Pass world map
- Fixed player's animation controller which could result in a rare bug where the player gets stuck in a stunned animation state
- Player can no longer switch abilities while collecting a health or power upgrade
- You can no longer spam the spirit tower assembly dialogue on the world map
- Changed the logic and improved performance in Hydromancer boss fight
- Optimized player controls and improved performance
- Updated Spirit of Flame ability icon
- If you die in a boss fight, the scene will automatically reload instead of reloading to previous save point
- Modifications to the Audio Management code
- Fixed a minor issue where geometry was being duplicated in the abandoned mines
- Adjusted particle effects for the Gnoll Shaman's attacks
- Performance boost and increase in FPS in most all scenes of the game
- Optimized and refactored hundreds of scripts
- major performance boost in The Hives and Mountains of Orin
- Tweaked level design and improved performance in all challenge levels
- Modified Guard Pathing in the Village
- cleaned up and improved grammar in various text dialogue
- Optimized animation rigs to improve performance
- Modified lighting in Mountains of Orin and Abandoned Mines
- Adjusted Physics for Phoenix to improve response time and accuracy of actions
- Adjusted camera visibility throughout Pools of Murk
- Updated Game Engine
- Adjusted shader for trees on the overworld (Green Vale and Black Fang Pass). Large obstructions will become transparent, improving camera visibility.
- Reduced the slippery factory when moving on ice
- Various bug fixes (dozens and dozens). Thank you to all the testers, and our early access community for finding them. We've fixed all that were found!
Thank you for following along as we continue to improve The Forbidden Arts. We look forward to finishing the game this year and can't wait to share the final product. For those that have purchased the game early, or provided feedback, we sincerely thank you for your support. You are awesome!