This update brings in a bunch of new features that were developed for Toward The Ice. Many of them are things players had asked for in the discussion area.
Here's what's new in this release:
- Added the ability to have a roster of "extra" characters. You can have up to 25 characters total with 6 in the party and up to 19 "extra". These extra characters will stay at an inn when not in the adventuring party, and new characters can be created at the inn. You can also delete a character. Deletion is not permanent until you save the game. I plan to add a confirmation prompt to the deletion process at some point, but there isn't one now, so be careful.
- The option of using a pregenerated adventuring party. If you don't feel like going through the process of character creation and just want to get into the game quickly, you can start with a pregenerated party. You can always create more customized characters at the inn later and leave the pregenerated characters at the inn via the character roster.
- A bestiary where you can view info about monsters you've encountered. The more of a monster you kill, the more info is revealed.
- Resting in the wilderness to regain hitpoints and mana. It will require that the party be in an outdoors zone (somewhere they can camp) and have enough food in their inventory to feed everyone. While resting, there is the danger of being attacked by wandering monsters, and some or all of the party will begin combat asleep. It may be worth noting that areas can have different random encounter chances (and always could in all of the previous games). I may adjust the amount recovered, but currently the group will recover 6% of their mana and hitpoints per hour of rest, which means two rests will be required for a full recovery. Resting is entirely optional and you can always pay to recharge hitpoints and mana at healers and mana rechargers.
- Since resting requires food, there is now a new food shop in town, and one somewhere in the wilderness.
- Adding notes to the map. When you discover something like buried treasure but don't have a shovel, you can add a note to the map to remind you that it's there so you can find it later. Notes are visible as the letter "N" on the map and are stored with your game save data. You can also view all of the notes from a window that can be opened from the overview map and they will be displayed as a pop-up message when you enter the location that contains them. Right now there is just basic note adding and I plan to improve the user interface so you can edit and remove notes.
- Added footstep sounds. These can be turned on or off via the settings menu.
- Counterattacking. When dodging or blocking, all characters will have a chance, based on combat skill and level, to swing back at the enemy. Warrior-type classes will also have a very small chance to do this during normal combat when not actively blocking or dodging. You should not expect to counterattack with low-level characters.
- Better resistance bonuses on items that have them. They've been doubled.
- You can now drag-and-drop items on the character sheet to equip or unequip them.
- Some improvements to some spell sound effects.
- Added a graphics quality setting to the settings on the main menu. Since this is a very low-poly game, it's not likely to affect your frame rate much - it's something more useful for the later games.
- Added translations for the feedback form so it's easier to send feedback in every supported game language.
- Added a loading progress bar when entering the main game. It sits at 90% for a bit and that's just the nature of how the zones load in Unity.
- Game manuals have been updated.
- Some translation improvements.