v0.11 Video
by Sunburn. Warning: a couple spoilers of the new Cave level.
Over 1500 downloads in 2 days
No real publicity or advertising — basically there are hundreds of people very interested in the project and its progress. Excellent!
So the obvious question….
What’s Next?
Every time I put out a new version I get a flood of great feedback. Now that we’re seeing what kind of Powers can be done easily, it’s tempting to think about making new powers and replacing old ones. It’s tempting to rework the entire Powers menu and make it talent-based with optional trees of powers. That may come eventually. But for now it’s important to actually finish something — I have a constant desire to replace just about everything in the game, but it’s far more fun to actually have something worth playing.
The To Do List says that Vendors are up next. It’s a much-needed addition for two reason: (1) a way to get the correct weapons at early levels and (2) potions! It’s pretty hard to think about combat balance when a fundamental feature like “buying potions” isn’t implemented yet.
Vendors
I’ll probably do Vendors as a left-screen menu. Perhaps the menu will show the name of the vendor as a caption. There will be a large block of sale slots (similar to the Inventory menu). Probably drag and drop to buy or sell. The starting vendors might have: dagger, shortsword, leather armor, buckler, wand, rod, slingshot, shortbow, health potion, mana potion, and 10 random items level 1-4.
Vendors can have a fixed item list plus a number of random items. I’ll probably use the Loot algorithm to give vendors random items — just assign the Vendor a Level and he’ll carry random items +/-3 levels.
Potions
I’ll do a new implementation of Potions in v0.12 that uses the Action Bar. The Action Bar is not storage (like Diablo’s belt system) but shortcuts to powers and items (like WoW or Torchlight). Put a potion on the Action Bar and it will show the number of potions in your inventory. It should be grayed-out or darkened when there are zero potions remaining.
Potions can be implemented with Powers. Perhaps with a new “requires_item” or “consumable” field that tells the system to remove that item upon use.