I feel like I'm farther away on this one; adding lots of new features means lots of potential for new bugs. But it was stuff that had to get done, so...
Features:
Again, a complete combat rebalance.
Death's Coil has been cut. I always hated that map and according to the feedback so did everyone else. The Oubliette is now the map that leads to the Slorn King's castle.
Speaking of the Oubliette, it's been extensively reworked, along with the Passage to Apocalypse and Passage to Doom. Part of this rework involved creating some new enemies!
You can no longer teleport through walls. This should prevent people like Seth from beating the game in two freakin' minutes.
You can now accept the Evil One's offer. The other ending, where you defeat him, hasn't been scripted yet.
Various bug fixiness.
Code put in to allow female main characters. This will be in the options screen when I have time to code it.
As we get closer to the project, your feedback becomes more and more important. I'm hoping this is the last time I'll have to touch the maps and that once I get all the special NPCs scripted and any remaining bugs fixed, the game will FINALLY be ready for release.
After stepping into the magic field and reloading from a savepoint before that, your sprite is still the slornking. When you quit the game and then restart and continue, the sprite is the original one. When you then go to the main menu and start a new game, strangely all the aquired abilities stay. If you quit the program and then restart and start a new game, the aquired abilities vanish. (except the smite ability of course).
Great work so far! Interesting levels, new NPCs and the game balance is nearly perfect. Never felt too strong, had to be careful, even tried to avoid enemies and used long-range attacks a lot!
If you get killed and then go back to the main menu, the slornite battle doesn't happen, everyone stays in the same position. This seems to be the only combination where this happens (as far as I know).
The Oubliette wasn't much of a threat (though I enjoyed it). I think I was level 12 when I entered and it's a level 6 map. The Slorn king still beat me half to death and I believe I finished at level 14.
The new maps are the best of the bunch.
Heal may be a little too strong, and I keep wishing Enchant Weapon lasted longer. Sometimes I don't even score a hit while it's active.
I just finished my first game, so maybe I'll think of more to say later.
Bugs, sort of:
Magic Unlock and Lockpicking don't change the mouse icon like Bash, Teleport, and Smite.
Smite cancels itelf when you left-click on the interface or a place where you can't use it, but Bash, Teleport, Magic Unlock, and Lockpicking stay active.
The slornites win every intro battle. Weird thing is they keep chatting after everyone is dead like they are still fighting. I feel like this has been maybe been mentioned, sorry if its a duplicate.
I find I don't have the money to buy enough potions to survive and I don't have enough 'time' to escape to the ladder. Most combat rounds obliterate at least 50% of my health.
I'm missing something then - what IS the first dungeon? Because I have no idea. As a new player, seems like a bunch of people would go there first, since that's all people talk about....
EDIT: Did find what appears to be the first dungeon (level 2?) The Deadly Maze of Death, kinda cheezed my way through with smite/running to town. If this is indeed the first dungeon, I suggest moving it so that players will see it on the way to the second town and know something is there to try out - maybe right next to the bridge?
Seems like there's something off with the 'get' cursor. When I got to the center of the deadly maze of death, actually opening and getting stuff was a nightmare of dozens of waggly clicks.
EDIT: Ok - it seems like the 'get' icon's click area is actually way to the left top of the hand. Far off from the left end of the icon. The caret on the top right of the icon is also a red herring.
In Deadly Maze of Death I can't use smite on the firebird, but with the improved smite (multiple targets), I hit something next to it, which then hit the firebird and turned it into an enemy. Is this a bug with targeting of the second smite effect?
Beta7 packaging bugs?: images\button1.pdn - file included; is Paint.NET file, as opposed to .png images\poison.pdn - file included; is Paint.NET file, as opposed to .png
Hi there! Looks great so far, except for one little annoyance...every time I want to "talk" to an npc, I have to click one, twice three times in the "mouth" icon, whereas in beta 4 or 5 you could click once in the mouth and cancel it by pressing right click.
One thing I forgot to mention. Regarding leveling up and prices (items, armor, etc) I think that the price range, for example in case of potions of health, at level 1 they cost 5 gold, at level 2 they cost 10 gold, so there's an increase of 100%, wich I think it's excessive. In my opinion, to balance things a little better, it would be appropriate that prices should increase maybe 10% per level, according to the total of levels the character can gain, then do the maths (20 levels total, 5% each level maybe). It's just an idea, of course, maybe it would make the game unbalanced, don't know.