I'm excited to announce that the Hexiv demo is in the Deckbuilders fest happening now on Steam! The festival will go from now through May 11th.
I had expected this to be a challenging task to put off until a future date, but this week I implemented tile shadows in only two days! It's effectively pixel perfect, determining the length of shadows based on the height of tiles at each pixel. Here's a before and after:
I've also put a lot of work this past week into cleaning up my backlog of bugs and lots of smaller updates based on feedback, particularly from new players.
Changes:
Tiles now cast shadows! Incredible how great this looks and helps with depth and seeing tile boundaries more easily.
Added 1 pixel alpha blend for top of tiles in front another taller tile. Helps to soften the transition visually.
Added arrow indicators for certain tutorials with required actions to finish them.
Updated pause menu with correct dynamic buttons.
Added tutorial prompt for activating Trader.
Update reward menu to allow skipping random card selection only rewards.
Added water symbol to Refueler description.
Added confirmation + info step when ending run. (and apology about save game being wip)
Added tutorial prompt when attacking for zero damage with the Medic.
Added Wishlist + discord promo banners to pause menu.
Log files now correctly stored as hexiv.log instead of godot.log
Added tutorial prompt when entering first shop with Cargo Lander reminding you to but electricity.
Removed "(DEBUG)" from application window title. I do not ever anticipate shipping the non-debug version of Godot since it makes it much more unstable, and prevents me from collecting debug log information from players submitting bug reports.
(Alpha) Game app in library renamed: HEXIV -> Hexiv.
(Alpha) Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 difficulties have been swapped. I believe Fiori Structures is a lot more interesting, and also less difficult. I also hope this will help to reduce the difficulty jump slightly from Intro to Chapter 1 which players have struggling with.
Bug Fixes:
Fix after launching, next valid islands are not showing in map grid.
Fixed card getting stuck to hand when ending turn while dragging it.
Fixed escape menu quit button refreshed game over screen instead of going to main menu.
Fixed No Worker tile warning tooltip showing up when moving crew to that tile and being stuck visible.
'Fixed all dirt tiles showing up as Arid dirt tiles. I had grown accustomed to how this looked so I lightened the original dirt texture color after fixing it. The original dirt color was darker, but has not been visible since this bug was introduced probably months or years ago.
Fix card card alignment issue on Escalate+.
Fix Lander sprite rendering behind water after landing.
Fix various UIs still visible in game over screen when ending game with them visible.
Fix various tiles (most obvious with Caravel) leaving holes in the water shader behind after being destroyed.
Fix camera mouse drag latched on after tutorial completed.
Fix various UIs showing over the game over screen if they were open when it triggered.
Fixed some tiles like Gas Vent showing as upgradeable in card details panel but Fish, Herbs were not.
Fixed box alignment for several artifact descriptions.
Fixed Structure action buttons showing up as wrong size until hovered over once.
Fixed attack with Medic and Flaming Rapier not applying Heat.
(Alpha) fixed Demo Locked showing up in card properties.
I have also been working hard this week on finishing the much requested Save + Reload feature. It's mostly functioning but there are some bugs and a lot of exceptions I'm working through. It's a system that just has to work, and pushing out a half-baked implementation would be more frustration to play with that it would be worth. This ended up being a gargantuan task, but the end is in sight! I hope to have it to you soon!
Cheers! Graeme