Twas the Night Before

If you celebrate Christmas, a merry Christmas eve to you! If you don’t, happy holidays of whatever form of winter solstice festival you choose to observe! 😉

I’m just about finished testing out spells. I’ve gone through all the different spell schools and cast most of them. In the the process I discovered several bugs and improvements to be made.

For example, I realized it wasn’t clear WHAT monster was taking a turn or at all. If you cast spells that immobilize them or put them to sleep, you had no idea if they were just not moving or what. So I added a “blink” effect on each monster’s action that causes them to flash white, much like the players do. That way you know it’s cycling through monsters and can see if one tried to do something and failed. I considered adding notifications like ‘Bandit is held!” or “Bandit is asleep” as well, but I don’t want to slow down the progression that much. I’d have to wait at least a half-second on each text notification so the player can see them.

So my last couple engine tasks are:

• Test the last few spells (disarming traps and unlocking doors mainly)
• Fix regressions in boss combats
• Reactivate monster special attacks

The numerous fixes I’ve made in other areas may have rectified a lot of the bugs. My next video should be a fight with something big…

After that, I need to start a fresh game from scratch and start playing the game through legitimately, checking that quests, content, and other elements all look good. I only have the first world disk completed, but I want to make sure I personally test all of it before I start involving beta testers.

Also, before I can start getting other people involved in testing, I need to complete the documentation. 🙂 That requires testing and feedback just as much as the game itself!