Hello adventurers! We just updated Dustgrave to version 0.8.3!
We spent the last months rebuilding and cleaning part of the codebase, to permanently address some issues and bottlenecks in the game! Considering the limited traction Dustgrave is having in this phase of its early access, we decided it would be a wise thing to allocate some time to this process.
This meant creating new internal tools for content creation, testing, and debugging. A slow and tedious process, but something that made the game much stabler on the long run, while also giving us new tools to quickly add new content.
Now that the game's stability has been drastically improved, we will spend the next months adding content and larger improvements, with the goal of moving towards a 1.0 release!
Improvements and New Additions
Developed a new system to handle NPC barks. They are now more performant and reliable, avoiding some rare blocking issues or erratic behaviors. Multiple barks can also spawn at the same time for different characters.
Added a new additional tooltip that can be triggered at will to show additional info related to what's currently being inspected by the main tooltip. This can be useful when a Skill or Perk mentions a different game concept that is not fully explained in that tooltip.
Added UI pieces and feedbacks to let players know if they are trespassing.
Drastically increased reactivity and variety with barks, now triggering more often and with content related to what's happening in the world or in the local area. NPCs will now react to many more world events, ongoing or completed quests, and other things affecting the settlement they live in.
The Hammer specialization is now available and working as intended.
Removed some performance bottlenecks to ensure more stable framerates in certain scenarios.
The Action Selection Panel in combat now blocks the raycast reliably, meaning players will no longer risk triggering the movement when trying to select an action to use.
It is now much easier to recruit new companions since they will always spawn in settlements when the player's party is not full.
Now you can donate supplies to faction leaders and quartermasters, to replenish a town stock, gain some positive reputation, and help the settlement in case they are experiencing shortages.
We implemented a Fog of War on the World Map, to avoid overwhelming new players with all the data of a massive world with many settlements. Older savegames will have the world completely explored, to avoid confusing people.
The quest marker on the map is bigger and has an outline to be more visible in desert areas.
Balance
Drastically reworked the game's balance to provide a better experience, easier onboarding, more satisfying progression, and meaningful choices in combat. This is the first step in a redesign process that will improve the game in many ways. Expect more updates in the next weeks!
All weapons and armors have been redesigned to have a clear identity, abandoning the old rock-paper-scissor paradygm that was too restricting. It is now easier to experiment with different builds and many more setups have become viable.
Some old items will still show up in savegames, to ensure that older savegames could still be usable, but they will no longer spawn. This means that they will not show up in new games.
Enemy stats have been changed to reflect this new paradygm, and their AI has been tuned to ensure more consistent behaviors.
AI controlled NPCs in combat will no longer abuse their dash.
Flanking an individual will no longer prevent dashing, since it is now easier to pin down ranged opponents when outnumbering them. This allow players to avoid having their characters easily overrun by mobs.
Infested Drones will now prioritize using their Strong Attack if possible, with the result of inflicting less stacks of poison on their targets.
Fixes
Fixed some Actions with AoEs not being usable, due to wrong data preventing them to move or rotate.
Fixed some issues with Trespassing dialogues not showing up as intended.
Thanks to the development of new internal tools, a plethora of bugs related to databases have been fixed, including missing strings in all languages, missing icons, wrong data that could break specific quests or encounters, unbalanced items, and skills with a flawed progression.
Fixed Poison not being removed by Regeneration or Cleanse.
Fixed Attack Up stacking with separate instances instead of increasing duration.
Fixed an issue with the Prologue's Dungeon not having proper borders.
Fixed some rare issues that could soft-lock the combat, forcing a reload.
Fixed several issues with the Italian localization.
Fixed several issues with particles rotation.
Actions' Area of Effects have been improved to be clearer.
Thank you for your support!