This one has a lot fewer bugfixes than the last few days, which is a great sign that we’re really nearing beta phase 3 — in fact, we hope for the next release, to come out tomorrow, to be the last release from beta phase 2.
This release is mostly focused on polish, clarity, and the planning menu. The minimap has gotten a minor visual upgrade, there are some tweaks to the intro mission, and there are a number of opt-out messages that pop up to explain new game mechanics as those mechanics arrive. More of that sort of thing coming tomorrow; my wife got a lot of those written, and I just haven’t had time to actually code them into the game today.
The planning menu itself is also really coming along, although there’s still more to do in terms of having it make good recommendations about things to do given your current situation. But 98% or more of the encyclopedia-type content is now in place, and the same is true of the “where to find stuff” section. The “things to do” section currently only has recommendations about
A hugely important addition to the planning menu has been the cataloging of “supplies” like suits, acid gills, wood platforms, and the like. This lets you know the best place to find these sorts of things (some of which, like the acid gills, is just a very low-chance luck of the draw, which isn’t much help). But for things like transmogrify-into-bat scrolls, and transfer glyph scrolls, there are places that you can reliably go to get a bunch of those, and I bet most people didn’t figure that out (I’d forgotten about it, myself, and I coded it in).
Tomorrow we aim to get a last bit of polish and bugfixing in, to get the last bits of the planning menu and the opt-out popups in, and then it’s going to be time to do new installer builds and a major press push starting tomorrow night. Then we’re into beta phase 3, and the focus shifts to more enemies, more spells, more missions, and so on — multiplayer server browser, too! And of course more polish and fixes, but honestly at this point it seems like we’re done the lion’s share of that in advance (though that’s a neverending job).
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the
in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you
launch the game, you’ll see the notice of the update having been found
if you’re connected to the Internet at the time. If you don’t have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.
