Alpha test v0.6.9

[ctnbeh13]

2nd Post...

Some of the things that stood out in the way of enhancements that are well deserving of mention are; the larger numerals indicating enemy damage inflicted at time of impact, the transparency overlay displayed at the top of the screen when in battle, the majority of the new map area with its detail, rich color, & new tiles, and last but not least... New Content!

Not to seem unappreciative, but I have to admit, at one point I did feel like Jack, minus the benefit of Jill's companionship, going up & down that mountain over & over again. It was like Groundhog Day for Jack.

I wandered around the map visiting all the old familiar places in search of a road or path that led on to someplace else. During my travel I found new map sections pieced in between two formerly connected sections. The problem with that was a screen size display reduction occurs in at least some of these new pieces. The ones I took note of were; a grove with larger logs and forest beetles (found by starting outside the entrance to the wolf den, go up 2 screens, then right), and a 2nd that is 1 screen below the spot on the map where you see the path that's lined with rabid foxes to your right (at the end of the path is the abandoned house with a basement). Please keep in mind that these directions are based on my device's landscape display, and were relayed from early morning scribblings on a small piece of paper that I had some difficulty reading.

In the settlement of Prim, edit Bjorgur's dialogue text by adding "about".

When ascending the mountain from leaving Prim, right before the 3rd ladder, you'll find a stone cliff top on your left that you can walk over (this may have been already corrected in release 0.6.9a3).

Many new enemies that have temporary damage effects have issues with their info/stats display window not fitting on screen (again, based on my device's landscape mode display). Dialog window should be elongated proportionately to accommodate text. Enemies that I took note of that were affected by this were the young white wyrm, white wyrm, & wyrm trainer. There may have been others, but these were the only ones that I wrote down at the time.

I wish to thank Oskar for allowing the privilege of running through this release. I definitely enjoyed the experience & like the direction of the continued development. If there was a 2 thumbs up in the collection of Smilies, I'd put it here.

[Samuel]

When looking at the Overview of your character, you now no longer have the display of your Base stats. Not fond of that.

Oskar did remove them to create space for the new status effects displayed there.

I did find out why the blackwater misery effect did not unequip.
If I equip something without status effects (replacing an item with status effects), then the effects are not "recalculated". Only if I equip or unequip an item with status effects, the effects are "recalculated".

I used this bug to walk around with regeneration but without the RoLS equipped.

BTW: I did take part of the prim side and mentioned there are no valuable things to buy in their shops.
Previously I thought the BW items were not good, but now it seems they have the better shops, so I better take their side.

[oskarwiksten]

I have now uploaded beta 1 that should adress most of the issues that we have open at the moment.
http://code.google.com/p/andors-trail/downloads/list

Changelog:

• Changed backgound of exp bar to darker shade of yellow.
• Added scrollbar to monster info dialog,
• Vertically centered hp and exp bars.
• Item "Shadow of the slayer" now has a "on kill" effect insetad of a "on hit" effect.
• Corrected walkable tiles on blackwater_mountain16.
• Corrected conversation for Bjorgur.
• Bug: fixed conditions that are removed when equipping items without conditions.
• Bug: fixed items that raise max HP and AP.
• Added fixed 50 exp reward for monsters that have attack effects.
• Regeneration effect has slightly lighter shade of blue for the amount of healed HP.

I currently equip the flagship pride &have an attack chance of 188%. I just looted the blackwater iron sword that lists at 50% attack chance while the flagship's pride is showing at 21%. But when I equip the blackwater sword my attack chance FALLS to 167%. Something wrong with the math there.

You also get the "Blackwater misery" conditions. I wanted it to be warts and blisters on the character, but at the moment we have no good way of conveying that to the player The condition affects your combat abilities in a negative way, thus resulting in the attack chance that you see.

Blackwater misery reduces your AC by 50, your critical chance by 50 and raises your AP usage by 1.

My intention is that there should be a way to use those items anyway. I wonder if anyone can figure out how?

I when I equip the Shadow of the slayer, I think I should have another 2AP points added to my total AP (to make 12AP). However, when I am fighting, it still says 10AP.

This should now be fixed. Could you please verify that it is corrected?

I Found another bug with the ring of shadow embrace. Equip it and your HP goes up by 20. Now go to the inn in prom and rest. Your hp is back down -20

Should be fixed now, with the same fix that daveandviv requested above. Could you please verify that it is fixed now?

I basically started off with checking out the new UI. I observed that the HP & Experience level bars were now shorter, taller, and had larger numbers in them that were easier to read, but yet not centered vertically inside each bar.

The bars should now be vertically centered. Thanks for reporting it!

The XP bar is still a pale yellow, which I was expecting to be a different color to offer more contrast with the white numerals.

The exp bar is now modified to use a darker shade of yellow. Hope this one is easier to read than the previous one.

When looking at the Overview of your character, you now no longer have the display of your Base stats. Not fond of that.

The base stats rarely change (except when levelling up). You can still view your base stats by unequipping all items.

I've read this topic from the beginning, and have had issues myself with the RolS regeneration effect. At first I didn't think it got implemented yet. It wasn't working, so I checked my inventory and looked at the 3rd ring's specs shown after the icon thinking I'd find the details changed, but didn't. Much later in game play, I actually checked one of the rings I was wearing and noticed Regeneration listsed at bottom. It may have been the next time my HP's dropped that I noticed the cool blue spark of life illuminate within/upon my character followed by the +1 (I never removed & replaced a ring). At the same time, the red cross was visible in the lower right hand corner. The only thing I know for sure is that there was a great delay in regeneration taking effect.

Yes, the game only recalculates your stats when you re-equip something. Since we changed the stats of an existing item, the player stats were not recalculated without you re-equipping something (or getting hit by a temporary condition by the new monsters). This should be a minor thing, and only a consequence of the way that we changed the item stats of the RoLS.

I had assumed, as I felt with good reason, that a wearer of 2 RolS would have twice the regeneration benefit as they do with all of the rings other attributes, but read this is not true. Obviously this is a unexpected disappointment to anyone who's worked to acquire 2 RolS & has been eagerly awaiting its new bonus effect.

I'm sorry if I had given you the impression that the regeneration effect would be stackable. That was never my intention. But I can totally understand your frustration if you had thought that. I would really like to award you somehow for finding more than one of those rings, what would you suggest we add as sufficient reward? Should we change the stats of the ring itself, maybe the crit chance?

2nd Post...

ctnbeh13, I want to give out a very big thank you for posting your thoughts on the new version. Your feedback is very valuable for the next version, and I think a lot of players will benefit from the points that you bring up. Please keep up the good work!

Some of the things that stood out in the way of enhancements that are well deserving of mention are; the larger numerals indicating enemy damage inflicted at time of impact, the transparency overlay displayed at the top of the screen when in battle, the majority of the new map area with its detail, rich color, & new tiles, and last but not least... New Content!

I should direct the credits for the improved interface towards Uwe Jugel, that did all the UI changes. He deserves a lot of praise for that - all of the additions he did really make the UI look a lot better, IMO!
Also, the new maps are all courtesy of michischmid2000. All of the new maps are his excellent work. In my opinion, he did an excellent job at creating those maps. My personaly favourites are both the rocky stariways up to the first mine shaft, and the tomb areas around Bjorgur's family tomb quest area. I must say, exceptionally well done Michi! Really looking forward to the new northern and northwestern maps that you have made!

I wandered around the map visiting all the old familiar places in search of a road or path that led on to someplace else. During my travel I found new map sections pieced in between two formerly connected sections. The problem with that was a screen size display reduction occurs in at least some of these new pieces. The ones I took note of were; a grove with larger logs and forest beetles (found by starting outside the entrance to the wolf den, go up 2 screens, then right), and a 2nd that is 1 screen below the spot on the map where you see the path that's lined with rabid foxes to your right (at the end of the path is the abandoned house with a basement). Please keep in mind that these directions are based on my device's landscape display, and were relayed from early morning scribblings on a small piece of paper that I had some difficulty reading.

You are correct, we added some "filler" maps in some places to make the world consistent. One day, we will add a worldmap, and to make the distances line up according to each other, we had to add some maps where there previously were gaps. Now, the worldmap lines up perfectly, and we are prepared to do a full worldmap (just need the coding and graphics for it). Well spotted anyway!

In the settlement of Prim, edit Bjorgur's dialogue text by adding "about".

Thanks, added now!

When ascending the mountain from leaving Prim, right before the 3rd ladder, you'll find a stone cliff top on your left that you can walk over (this may have been already corrected in release 0.6.9a3).

Thanks, this is now corrected. Well spotted!

Many new enemies that have temporary damage effects have issues with their info/stats display window not fitting on screen (again, based on my device's landscape mode display). Dialog window should be elongated proportionately to accommodate text. Enemies that I took note of that were affected by this were the young white wyrm, white wyrm, & wyrm trainer. There may have been others, but these were the only ones that I wrote down at the time.

I have updated the monster stats window to be scrollable now. This should make all stats viewable regardless of screen size. Thanks for reporting it!

I wish to thank Oskar for allowing the privilege of running through this release. I definitely enjoyed the experience & like the direction of the continued development. If there was a 2 thumbs up in the collection of Smilies, I'd put it here.

Thank you ctnbeh13 for the encouraging words. Comments like this is the main reason for me to keep developing this game! I appreciate the way that you mix encouraging words and things to improve. Please post more of your insightful comments and thoughts!



Now that we have reached beta version, we should have resolved most of the early issues with the new version. I am interested in hearing about anyone that still has problems with the new quests, are they unsolvable?

[oskarwiksten]

I decided to put the alpha version on my Nook Color. It works great so far. Some of the maps still display at 1/4 the screen. I did try the "scaling" and while it does make the smaller maps bigger, on the Nook Color they look blurry. After trying the games already saved on the NC, I transferred the saved games from my phone to the NC. All seems to be working just fine so far.

Sorry, forgot to comment on this earlier. Thank you kabbie1882 for testing on a tablet device.

I am able to reproduce the behaviour you describe by using the emulator (using 1024x600 screen at 169dpi). Thanks for reporting the device you were testing on, and the effect!

While I agree that it looks different compared to a smaller screen, I think the dpi changes will surely make up for it. Since the screen has a lower dpi than most handsets (my htc desire has 240dpi), the scaling effect should be correct according to how large a tile should be in real-world-size. I want each tile to be just about as large as the touchable area that a finger produces. Is that the case for your tablet, or is it too large/small? Given the approximate size of an average finger, I think using the dpi indicator as scale factor is a good estimate. Those playing on a larger screen with identical dpi as those of a smaller screen will have an advantage by seeing more of the map. I don't think that is a problem given the amount of detail (or lack of detail) we show on each map.

All of you other people, playing on a device with smaller screens, is that a problem to you? Should we make the tablet display as much (or as little) of the map as other devices show?

[Antison]

So after visiting kazaul shrine on behalf of the man in blackwater, and getting the milk for the miner, I am right back to not having any completable quests anybody else in the same state as me now?

[oskarwiksten]

So after visiting kazaul shrine on behalf of the man in blackwater, and getting the

milk

for the miner, I am right back to not having any completable quests anybody else in the same state as me now?

So what you are saying is that you were able to complete all the new quests in v0.6.9? That is great news if that is so, since it means that the quests are ready for release.

What were your impressions of the new quests, were they too easy or too hard? Were the monsters too tough or too easy? Were the conversation options fluent?

Thank you tek for testing the alpha release!

[Antison]

Yes my new quests are complete! Very easy to complete.
How about adding HP increase or attack chance or increase AP for the 2nd RoLS?

[Sarumar]

Yes my new quests are complete! Very easy to complete.
How about adding HP increase or attack chance or increase AP for the 2nd RoLS?

Alpha completed (level 58 character). I pick Blackwater Storyline and it is great. Only the shine part is too easy. I need to use prox 400 regular potion of healt in prosess

I try the Prim storyline next (level 20 charter and beta)

[oskarwiksten]

I try the Prim storyline next (level 20 charter and beta)

Thank you for testing Sarumar. My intention was that the rewards of each possible solution of the quests should be comparable. For example,

Prim quests enable the potions that cause "minor speed", which I personally think would make a great difference in combat ahead.

and Blackwater provide

potions that cause the rage conditions, that when used correctly, could be very useful. Blackwater also provides the items that are tainted by the Blackwater misery curse. Maybe they are useful somehow anyway?

Was your impression that the Kazaul shrine quest was too easy? How would you suggest that we increase the difficulty of that quest? Spawning more monsters, or making the existing monsters more difficult to defeat?

Thank you for your comments!

[Sarumar]

I try the Prim storyline next (level 20 charter and beta)

Thank you for testing Sarumar. My intention was that the rewards of each possible solution of the quests should be comparable. For example,

Prim quests enable the potions that cause "minor speed", which I personally think would make a great difference in combat ahead.

and Blackwater provide

potions that cause the rage conditions, that when used correctly, could be very useful. Blackwater also provides the items that are tainted by the Blackwater misery curse. Maybe they are useful somehow anyway?

Was your impression that the Kazaul shrine quest was too easy? How would you suggest that we increase the difficulty of that quest? Spawning more monsters, or making the existing monsters more difficult to defeat?

Thank you for your comments!

Shrine is off balance, its is much easier than some other area in Blackwater area.
I suggest to make imp more difficult. Maybe really high damage reduction and critical chance and more of them ? The boss is weak too.


Now i play Prim side (starting alpha in level 20 character). Just got the forged papers... Game is well balanced, all the money and loot is going to bonemetal potions.

Aulaeth even the strong one are too easy ( level 21 character beat them easily) I suggest to raise attack and defence a bit


I need to say, i really like the shrine idea - hordes of small demon.