Update 7 is live, and it is wearing a costume
Happy Halloween! I timed this one on purpose. Darkstone Restoration now ships with a brand-new Halloween theme that reskins the entire interface, and it is the look new players meet first. On top of the seasonal paint, Update 7 brings a real visual upgrade (ambient occlusion, bloom and floor reflections), a pile of comfort improvements for mouse and gamepad, a smarter companion, and a solid round of fixes.
As always this is a solo project, and every one of these changes came out of your reports and requests. Thank you for that. Here is everything in Update 7.
🎃 Seasonal
- A full Halloween theme now ships with the game, reskinning the whole interface (bars, panels, inventory, the map, the frame) with a spooky seasonal look.
- New players get it automatically. If you already play, the game keeps the theme you chose, so you switch to Halloween yourself: open the HUD editor (the Edit the HUD layout shortcut, Ctrl+I by default, or the button in Options), then pick Halloween from the UI theme list. You can switch back to your usual theme the same way at any time.
🖥️ Visuals
- New graphics options: Ambient Occlusion and Bloom, both on by default for a richer, moodier image. You can turn either off in the graphics settings.
- Floor reflections: a new graphics option you can turn on or off, remembered between sessions.
- The fullscreen choice from the menu is finally applied on restart.
- The Graphics page now tells you when Windows is compositing the image, a common and easily missed cause of input lag.
🤖 Companion
- Your companion can now pick up loot for you. A new Companion tab in the options lets you tick which item families it should grab as it passes (gold, potions, armor, and so on). It never takes quest items, never grabs loot in town, and never touches what you just dropped.
- For script authors: new functions to find and fetch ground items from a companion script or flow-graph.
- The companion also reads danger on the ground better and keeps its distance as an archer when it should.
🎮 Controls and interface
- Gamepad: the reach for picking things up is now two cells instead of nine, so you grab what is actually in front of you.
- Local coop: the player on mouse can now drive their hero with WASD while the second player uses a gamepad.
- Gamepad: press R3 to bring up the character portrait panel for a few seconds.
- A full inventory on pickup now tells you which key opens the inventory.
- Comparing items: an unidentified item no longer reveals its hidden affixes, and the shop comparison bubble no longer overlaps the price.
- Item tooltips split into two columns when they would overflow the screen.
- Monster name labels are tidier: one stack per monster, icons side by side, text above.
🧰 Fixes
- The game now detects when DirectX 11 is unavailable (some old Windows 8.1 setups) and exits with a clear message instead of crashing.
- Fixed a crash caused by certain object-triggered traps.
- A stray mine left on the ground no longer bounces back harmlessly and now hurts whoever walks onto it.
- Loot no longer hands you the same item from the same monster spot floor after floor.
- Fixed a texture glitch in water caves.
- Stats can no longer overflow into negative values, and an elixir is refused once a stat is already maxed.
- A resisted spell no longer borrows the damage of the enchanted weapon in your hand.
- The gameplay mode (modern or legacy) is now locked per game, so a save always keeps the mode it started in.
Have a great Halloween, and as always, let me know what you think.