We want to thank the thousands of players who have come to play our first public demo, and for all those who reported bugs to us on our Discord and gave tons of great feedback!
This update is our way of saying thank you to those who've played, and making the experience just a little bit better by fixing a bunch of bugs and issues that many people have reported.
We don't want this demo to be a static thing that is the same from day one. We want this to be a show of what the overall development of Below the Stone is going to be; Listening to the community, talking about our plans. And then delivering updates that are strongly based on player feedback to show that
we are listening. Though, with full disclosure, it needs to be clear that some updates may be more strongly focused towards our own internal plans for things that need to be done. But the importance of devs listening to the community will never be forgotten, and will always be a priority. We know this very strongly, because we are also gamers who've witnessed studios/devs slowly loosing touch with their community. And we believe that is a sign of the downfall of a studio.
Community always matters, when it comes to games on the internet.
So with all of that being said, I now present the change log for this update. So everyone can go out and witness these changes for themselves.
Change Log
[h2]Below The Stone - Pre Alpha 0.7.1[/h2]
* Those really annoying explosions that would happen in the caves? Yea those, we call them "weak walls". Those were intended to be "cave-ins" that were easier to avoid, but also just as freaky. So we have replaced the explosions with a longer "cave collapse" sequence which is fairer in terms of avoidance, but at least twice as thrilling and enjoyable to encounter.
* "Weak walls" (the things that used to explode) now spawn 2.5 times less than previously.
[from 0.5% to 0.2%] (Trust me, those percentages are small, but it's a considerable difference)
* Tweaked the loot tables for normal/gold chests in dungeons; you'll have to work a little harder for that good armor now.
Gold chests will also have some more goodies, though.
* Also tweaked loot tables of "bonus chests" that you get in the kingdom
+ Added "remainder bar" to shopkeep ui (Imogen) to indicate that when you sell some items, the gold amount may have a little left over that doesn't go over into the next whole number.
* Selling items at the shopkeep will have a value reduction of 40% now (as was originally intended); hence the need for a "remainder bar".
* Addressed an issue where eating healing items (mushrooms) would cause the health bar to randomly show more health than there actually was, which made it appear that you would lose health when eating another mushroom. (should be fixed)
+ Added numerical health display along with the existing health bar
* Updated the "shadow texture" that appears over wall tiles, to give a more fair view of what ores or other things could embedded in the walls. (just not ears)
* Addressed an issue where walls would sometimes be broken/unminable, combined with distant explosions (no, that was not the game self-destructing). Long story short, the distant explosions were related to the bug. Things weren't being unloaded properly.
* Torches now burn enemies when hit!
+ Added some extra description to some items
* Made descent end screen (escape drill pod) ui sounds a bit more quieter. Hopefully, it's not as jarring now.
* Adjustments to creature ai to try and fix object avoidance
* Updated colors of "object selectors" to be more consistent
+ Added special "can't mine" icon to "mining selector" to indicate that a wall can't be mined.
(helpful for our color-blind peeps)
* Kroz the Grizzled Miner (in caves) now has a light and tries really hard to not occupy the same space as another rock. 🤞
* Updated wood sprite to now be an image of a plank. (you're welcome Jonny)
+ Added Dopefish.
* Spiders no longer machine-gun their spider webs rambo-style into a wall when their view of the player is obstructed.
* Reduced the health of skull spawners (skeletons) and tent spawners (kobolds), so you might have a fighting chance now.
* Fixed a bug where dead kobolds may still move around and attack even though they are clearly laying face flat on the ground.
* Spawners (skull and tent) now act a bit more like Minecraft spawners; their respawn timer only counts down if their "total entities spawned" counter is not at its maximum. So you can kill a spawned monster, and another one won't instantly spawn right as it dies, which should make dealing with spawners more fair.
* Fixed a bug where the player would sometimes get flung at high speed after closing a dialog window. This was due to the dialog window pausing the physics simulation (as intended), but for some reason, the velocity of the player would "accumulate".
* Fixed a bug where players would be stuck frozen if they exited the game while in a dialog window (physics was still paused, and would never unpause).
* Updated dynamite recipe to require guano 🤤
+ Added a literal trash can to the kingdom that you can throw items into.
* Updated newsletter button on the main menu (now directs to a webpage with form).
