Escape From The Maze

A party-based, first-person, fantasy CRPG with phased combat, class-based character progression, and programmer-art. I called it "old school" until the term got trendy. It started inspired by Wizardry VII and the lack of a free open source alternative. Today we are living in the indie revolution and there are far more influences, but the game still clearly shows its Wizardry lineage. It's playable end to end, but there is a lot more to do before it's done. This blog tracks that work.

Friday, December 28, 2012

v0.910 released

Version 0.910 is out, get it on SourceForge. Some interesting new features in there.
---------------------------------------
v0.910 (28 December 2012)
---------------------------------------
Features
- Initial work on automated balancing
- Added configurable and persistent user settings, plus a Settings screen
- Added user settings: combat speed, music volume, personality chattiness
- Added Tip Of The Day to main menu
- Added an OK/Cancel dialog when the player quits to the main menu
- Initial implementation of the automap
- Moved difficulty level implementations into the default campaign module
- Difficulty level implementation can now swap in a new foe combat AI

When I initially released v0.9, I planned for v0.91 to be the first beta. Needless to say, that hasn't happened yet. But we're on the road. I'll just keep adding versions in 0.001 increments, leaving me 89 releases until the big 1.0!

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Mid December Update

Balance had stalled a bit, so I have jumped into some feature work. The balance stuff had gotten thoroughly boring, so some relatively unglamorous dev was fun by comparison. What a pleasure to get into the glory of configurable user settings and the Options/Settings screen, as well as the long overdue Automap. They're shaping up well, with a bit of luck and time I'll be able to drop a December release.

IRL, my better half is 32 weeks along and all is well so far. The new house is mostly settled into. The new all-grain brewing system is up and running.

I'll leave you with Eric Schwarz's musings on Balance, perhaps I will leave what I have and forge ahead. I do still feel that there is a middle ground to be found... but hopefully it will emerge when the time is right.