This Godforsaken Rock Update 0.7.5 (Glad, Tutorial Combat)

Hey all,

New update is up, and it's a meaty one. You can expect a vastly improved tutorial system, better lighting, and hardware acceleration!

(That's right, up until now I've cruelly forced your CPU to process every sprite at 60 frames per second. Now your graphics card will shoulder some of the burden.)

Major changes/additions:

- More thorough, less in-your-face tutorial system, with topics that appear in a list to be perused at your leisure. Topics can be hidden with the click of a button or cleared individually.

- Improved lighting system, as you can see from the new screenshot, where the light intensity drops in more of a circular shape compared to the squares from last time.

- Hardware acceleration. I'm happy to go through what I did here in a future post if anyone wants a walkthrough. Expect better frame rates and cleaner character movement.

- More informative inventory screen. PC strength, dexterity, charisma, and skills are listed as well as combat statistics like attack bonus, damage, and effective weapon range. Got plans for this information in a later update.

- As discussed in my last post, more illustrative NPC turns. NPCs now take their turns one at a time, so it's a little clearer what's happening and suspense builds better.

- Finally, "weightier" attack animations. This was one that took a few prototypes. Basically, now there's a good pause between each combatant's attack, so while things happen quickly, you can follow the order of events better... hopefully.

Things NOT resolved:

- The stupid stupid flickering when you pan the screen in certain ways. Mouse panning is still fine, but the keyboard (ASWD) panning and cinematic panning both create that flickering as if the rendering is getting interrupted. It's clearly evidence that my game engine is fighting Swing again.

Anyway. This version is pretty cohesive. This a great time to try out This Godforsaken Rock and let me know what you think of the turn-based combat style. Taking all feedback. Let's make it a truly engaging experience.

We're on track for the official demo release on Feb 29th!

Cheers,

PajamaWolf