It's been ... so much time.
But I am happy to announce that 1.1.0 beta 1 is out, finally.
Here are the links:
Source:
https://gitlab.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/-/archive/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1.tar.gz
Windows installer:
https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/releases/download/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1-installer.exe
Installer MD5: e9f8329dfc872471f818273f04c9a036
And a screenie, hinting the most intruiging feature:
 |
| Skill graph implemented! |
So what is in this beta 1 you're talking about?
- A complete revamp of the game balancing and game economy
I bet some of you might remember making quite a lot of money without ever needing to actually use it. And never be able to buy interesting items throughout the whole game. It was quite the game breaker for me, too.
Both should now be gone. As now, you'll get material and other items from enemies that you will be able to either sell or trade right from the first merchant to get a bit of equipment, potions and so on.
Life won't be easy for low levels anyway, though ;P
I also reviewed each and every enemy stats and attacks to provide variety and more visuals. This was a ground-breaking task in itself, and took me basically 6 month to do, when taking real life concerns at the same time.
Last but not least, to help with the rebalancing, I wanted the heroes to have more meaningful skills, with a twist ;), and provide the player with a bit of choice. I've thus decided to have the craziest idea I had so far ...
- Skill graph implementation
See that as a the kind of skill pathway you had in Final Fantasy X minus the boring payment system that could completely break your choices.
The skill graph system permits you to invest hard won XP points to unlock skill nodes, providing you with statistics improvements, skills, and so on.
I also made a skill graph editor from scratch, as a proof of my own insanity.
For this release, there is only the first skill graph layer implemented, up to level 20. But more is to be expected in the next chapter.
- Faster battles
Battles are now faster and special attacks are now announced. This is a small improvement compared to the rest. Yet, due to the fact that you fight a lot in those games. It really changes the way the game feels in a pleasant way.
- Better (starting) story
The story was tuned to become more logical and provide action faster. It's been a long complains to many players.
- UI related improvements
It should hopefully be subtle, but it's there. We now have:
- Better understandable status effects and statistics (at least for me ;])
- Tooltip signs
- Interaction icons for some exits and healing points
- Auto save support
- Escape point support (more UI based than anything else, really.)
...
- And a LOT of bugfixes
The 1.1.0 engine doesn't look like the previous for many aspects and I would have to thank a lot of people here. (Feel free to have a shout out ;])
The most noticeable ones being:
- The map scripts code was not unloaded after being loaded. Making the game memory go up and up. More here: https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/commit/3dc767df548c2ab7f1d02009f7d263408ba84ada
- Crash with audio code with very specific conditions but happened
- Much better GL backend (Thank you so much Authenticate)
And what's next?
I've been caught in very very big feature for a sole person to code, mount and test all data and I beg you to have a go at this beta to report any bug you could find so I can fine tune the Episode I.
As I said, I've been caught in big things, so from now on, I'll tie myself to small releases with small improvements.
The good thing is, I realized now is the good time to start scripting the episode II and add small gameplay features up to an interesting point in the story and then release again. So next release with include some new story pieces. :D
On the other hand, expect more beta things and small improvements until I polished them, but at least I hope to release more often.
Have fun and stay tuned!
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