Dear adventurers,
Version 0.9.934 is now live.
This build includes the new RPG rule system. For those of you starting a new game, we’ll be very interested to have a look at your saved game when you reach the end of the Temple. This will allow us to fine-tune the new system and make sure there aren’t too many differences between players when they finish the Temple. So if possible, please send your saved game to contact@hydro-games.com
The new system is better balanced, and allows us to more easily change combat and character progression. The new system also uses an external file to fully control all parameters, opening up the possibility for custom rules and even modding. We’ll be able to talk much more about this in the future.
We’ve made a lot of fixes and adjustments for this build, but here are the most important ones:
-You can now drop an item on a portrait to add it to the hero’s backpack, a feature that was requested by many players. There’s no longer any need to manually open the inventory and then click on a slot to put it there. Just left click on the portrait to drop the item, without opening the inventory. If the hero has an empty slot in their backpack, the item will be placed there. Note that, the right mouse button will still open the inventory. This will also work for ammo and stackable items, stacking them automatically.
-Stamina is now fully implemented.
-A cooldown is now applied to a hero after she casts a spell, just like when using items.
Bug Fixes:
-Fixed an issue with the white moon symbol when changing hero’s position.
-Fixed an issue with the adventure book not opening after using esc key.
-Fixed an issue with reading books after they were thrown, leading to some empty text.
-Fixed an issue with the cursor remaining visible when opening in-game quick menu.
-Fixed some jumps when using ladders in the Temple and Jail.
-Improved adventure book’s scrollview behaviour, useful when you have read a lot of books/scrolls.
-Improved auto pickup of ammo, it now by default adds the collected items to the non-casting hand.
Beyond all the changes above, we’ve made improvements to the engine. As a reminder, Dungeon Kingdom’s engine is designed to be used for several games. To make development faster, we need the engine of the first game to be powerful. That’s why we’ve improved it in several ways.
We recently added inverse kinematics to creatures. This allows, for example, the feet of a creature to perfectly touch the steps of stairs, or perfectly follow a slope, all computed in real time. We were not satisfied with the creatures navigation until now, especially in the next areas of the game where there are a lot of stairs and height variations (much more than in the Temple). This is now working great! Also, inverse kinematics gives us the opportunity to make realtime procedurally generated animations: I’ll give you a simple example: when a creature switches a lever on a wall, from any position, the arm moves perfectly with the lever, without any pre computation or any work from an human animator.
The last major feature and improvement is about the artificial intelligence of creatures. The previous navigation module was designed very early on in the project. Since that time, the game has changed and we decided to go deeper with regards to the design of levels, with potentially any shape, lots of floors etc. This game is far from simple 2D grids, as found in most classic dungeon crawlers. So we needed a better system, more robust and more flexible, and it has been developed on these last few weeks. We also improved the decision making module to make smarter AI, and more importantly, to allow mixing it with some specific behaviors when necessary. You’ll understand what we mean in the Jail and the other levels!
Please note that the current creatures in the Temple and City still use the old system and the old navigation module, but they are likely to be replaced over time.
Now I have some great news. In the next build, you’ll explore a new area in Dungeon Kingdom, you will be able to leave the cellar and we’ll open more of the levels to everyone! Finally!
Thanks so much for your patience and support, and thanks a lot to all those who help us fix issues and balancing in the game. To finish the post, check out a few new screenshots…
