Yay, new version is up, it features Music (Quite nice i must say, definitely worth listening to, something I will force you to do until mute is implemented) and different combat/exploration music.
Upgradeable equipment – Rune slots and three upgrade runes.
And bonus: Skills (use [B] to access skill book; use [U] to use ability) learned from runes.
This is first step towards unity: Item that represents skill can be used to learn skill or as consumable item to activate skill. It can be also used to upgrade equipment to produce effects similar to skill.
Idea here is to enable more fluid economy: Have each item provide several benefits. Not only gets each drop more love from player, it also gets more effective sink to increase its value.
See healing rune for example. This rune can be used to teach fairly weak self heal – something that player will generally appreciate, especially if he is in process of dying. Once he learns this skill, rune is still useful as it will offer self heal without needing to expend resources other than item itself – contrasting with having to use skill that consumer energy. And he can also always upgrade his equipment with this rune to get minor over-the-time heal. all in all there are good reasons for this item to keep some value.
Other new features include better AI and minor graphics tweak.
So, what is next?
First, Skill lines themselves should be more useful on their own, they should finally start offering bonuses to character actions. That means that dialogue to allow player to invest Skill Points into exped skills should be created.
Second, Game now consists of only one area that is, well, under designed. This means that we need support for portals and zones. That would be also nice excuse to do external configuration.
Third, We need targeting GUI. something to allow player interact with distant objects. [L]ook command to explore surroundings and also targeting dialog for skill use for skills/items that need it. Cue in for “lightning bold”, single tile distant magic attack.
Fourth, simple scroll up/down gui feature for bigger chunk of text ala more dialog.
