First things first – here is a link to a vastly improved demo:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2488.0.htmlWe spent the last 5 weeks working on it, so it’s loaded with all kinda goodness:
- Tweaked THC (to hit chance) formula shifting the focus from defence to offense.
- Tweaked weapons damage ranges and added THC stats to differentiate similar weapons in the same class (a saber, for example, has a THC bonus (easier to wield), whereas a broadsword has more damage).
- Tweaked combat difficulty, balance, and starting positions.
- Tweaked stat bonuses (replaced STR bonus with %, limited INT bonus to quests only (not kills), etc).
- Changed skills thresholds from 50/75 to 50/70/90.
- Increased the amount of skill points you get at character generation.
- Added several alternative quest solutions.
- Tweaked skill checks to avoid min-maxing (now, we check the sum of several skills, so you won’t fail a check just because you are a few points short).
- Added partial success to many Critical Strikes checks and reduces the number of insta-kill outcomes (when you fail checks).
- Added more conversations with NPCs.
- Added starting slides, introducing your characters properly.
- Added an easy difficulty mode.
- Added a grappling hook for climbing enthusiasts.
- Added a looting menu when you have several bodies on one square.
- Increased the font size for higher resolutions.
- Reduced teleporting.
- Fixed a LOT of bugs and issues.
The list is fairly long –
click here to read it, if you care. The gist of it is the new update is more than some minor fixes and it’s definitely worth playing.
Next stop – autosaves and reduced loading times. We didn’t want to delay the update anymore, but more fixes and tweaks are definitely coming, so stay tuned.
We’d like to thank everyone who has pre-ordered the game. We got 245 pre-orders to-date. It’s not Kickstarter-level of support, but every bit, every pre-order counts. We’ll put the money to good use and produce more content for the game.
Now our animator will be able to do what he simply didn’t have time for before, being too busy working full-time elsewhere. For example, those who follow the game know that we have “stone guardians” in the game. Originally, they were supposed to have 4 arms (anyone’s old enough to remember the Golden Voyage of Sinbad? Granted, the statue of Kali had 6 arms but the principle is the same), but it required a different skeleton and different animations and the part-time nature of the project didn’t leave much room, especially for characters you only run into twice. Now that we have some money to buy time (basically), we can breathe some life into the wasteland, making it a more memorable and interesting experience.
I don’t want to do the Kickstarter thing here and say “raise that much and we’ll add this or that”, but you can rest assured that every penny we get from the pre-orders will go toward making the game better.
I hope you’ll enjoy the demo. We’ll now start tweaking and adding more content to the other areas of the game. We’ll continue these monthly updates and will keep you informed of our progress (and yes, we will do a May one).