Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer News

[p]A small update to address some issues.[/p][p][/p][h3]Patch Notes:[/h3][p][/p]

• [p]Fixed a bug that activated spring water collecting when trying to open certain chests in Twin Falls Riverside North and the Great Forest[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug that activated spring water collecting when trying to exit a secret area in the Great Forest South[/p]
• [p]Increased the damage of Fireball spell[/p]
• [p]Lowered the resistance of light spells on certain enemies[/p]
• [p]Spell scrolls are now described as scrolls in the inventory[/p]
• [p]Corrected Warlock's Cloak's description[/p]

[p][/p][p]Thank you and have fun![/p][p][/p][p]Jani/Witchgrove Games[/p]

[p]Welcome to Steam's Summer Sale![/p][p][/p][p]It's been a challenging month, but eventually I managed to create an update that became much bigger than I planned for with some great new features. One thing that I've been planning for a while is an optional Party HUD that can be enabled in the 'Options' menu and finally I can release it with this update among other improvements and enhancements.[/p][p][/p][p]To celebrate this new update Chronicles of Vaeltaja is 40% off during the Steam's Summer Sale.[/p][p][/p][p]Let's get to the details! From now on the Party HUD with portraits, status icon, health and energy bar is no longer restricted only to battles and it can be activated from the 'Options' menu. Because of this new feature I have relocated the 'Tool Bar' to the upper edge of the screen, as can be seen in the screenshot below. The 'Tool Bar' is also smaller than before, so it won't block too much of the view.[/p][p][/p][p]The Party HUD makes a small performance impact on the cpu, but the good news is that I've found some ways to improve the performance, so the update also brings some optimization and there will probably be some more coming in the future.[/p][p][/p][p]When it comes to combat, the Party HUD has been improved in a couple of ways to make the encounters faster and easier to follow. Firstly, when a character is having a turn, the portrait rises a little bit to separate the active character from the other party members. Every time a character takes damage, the portrait shakes a bit to give the action some impact. But that's not all: When 'hit points' are low, the portrait becomes reddish, and finally, when a character is dead, the portrait becomes grey. The screenshot below shows some of those features.[/p][p][/p][p]But there's even more! The item and skill menus have been overhauled too give the player some details about available items and skills, just like in the shops when browsing the inventory. The new system makes use of the item icons to help finding the right item. Also the combat works now a little bit faster, so the overall experience is now more enjoyable.[/p][p][/p][p]The Great Forest, Pramea Region and Lake Road (including the Islands of the Prophets) have new battle backgrounds to match the game's current graphics. Twin Falls and all the previously mentioned areas have gone through some visual improvements also: I've adjusted brightness, contrast and colours of all the textures and made some other small enhancements so some of the textures. Also the leaf ceilings have been improved to match the current areas better and Cubbo has a new battle sprite with attack animation.[/p][p][/p][p]Those are the major changes and improvements, but there's also some balancing, a few new shields and other small tweaks.[/p][p][/p][h2]Patch Notes[/h2][p][/p][h3]New:[/h3][p][/p]

• [p]Small, medium and large shields (Sakari the Traveling Merchant, Castle Town and Pramean shops)[/p]
• [p]Optional Party HUD[/p]
• [p]Improved combat UI to make the battles feel more dynamic[/p]
• [p]Character portraits react to damage, low health and death[/p]
• [p]Information window to give details about items and skills during the battle[/p]
• [p]Battle backgrounds (The Great Forest, Pramea, Lake Road and Islands of the Prophets)[/p]
• [p]Cubbo battle sprite with attack animation[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Improvements and Enhancements:[/h3][p][/p]

• [p]Brightness, contrast and colour adjustments to all the forest, ground, water and treetop textures[/p]
• [p]Brightness, contrast and colour adjustments to all the bush and tree sprites[/p]
• [p]Some small improvements to Twin Falls', the Great Forest's, Pramean regions and Lake Road's (including the Islands of the Prophets) forest textures[/p]
• [p]Improved party portraits[/p]
• [p]Battle log now works a little bit faster[/p]
• [p]Battles are a bit faster overall[/p]
• [p]Improved the performance in the Great Forest North by optimizing enemy mobs, adjusting the leaf ceilings and removing unnecessary lines of code[/p]
• [p]Overall optimization to improve performance[/p]
• [p]Updated few of the core plugins used by the engine[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Changes[/h3][p][/p]

• [p]Spring water can now be collected by pressing the action button when standing next to a spring[/p]
• [p]Tool Bar is relocated to the upper edge of the screen[/p]
• [p]The lock picking difficulty has been lowered in Bandit Cave, Well of the Ancients, Pramean Lighthouse, Halls of Onkalo, Traveler's Hall, Twin Falls Forest North Catacomb and the Great Forest South Catacomb[/p]
• [p]Using a skill and casting a spell have separate animations that will appear on the character's portrait or the enemy sprite[/p]
• [p]Changed correct animation and some other details for some of the skills and spells[/p]
• [p]Slight combat optimization[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Fixes[/h3][p][/p]

• [p]Shadow character class can now pick the lock in the Traveler's Hall[/p]
• [p]Leino no longer appears in two different locations after saving Pramea[/p]

[p][/p][p]Here it is, though once again I feel like I've forgotten to mention something. Whatever the case, I hope you'll enjoy these new improvements while adventuring in the kingdom of Twin Falls.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank You and have a great summer![/p][p][/p][p]Jani/Witchgrove Games[/p]

- Fixed an issue where 'Digging a Grave' quest didn't update properly after founding the 'Orb of Leventine'.

- Fixed and issue where 'Pramean Silk' quest didn't update properly after delivering the silk.

- Corrected some grammar on some dialog.

Just a small update to fix an issue where a certain encounter with the green slimes in Hedge Maze caused a crash. This happened because the enemy encounter tried to access an old battle background that doesn't exist anymore.

Good day, Traveler!

I'm happy to announce that the Wizard's Tower Re-Visited Update is here and even though it doesn't bring any new content, it contains much more than I originally planned. And there is more... I'm excited to reveal also a new feature trailer that showcases the gameplay and mechanics of Chronicles of Vaeltaja. The trailer can be watched below the patch notes. Unfortunately not all the colour related visual changes listed in the patch notes made it to the trailer.

Anyway, I think all this is worth a sale, so the game will have 30% discount until Sunday, starting in less than half an hour from this announcement.

I would also like to thank everyone who has supported this project so far. I was glad to notice that March and April were the best months sales wise since the launch, so the game is starting to find it's audience. Thank you!

Now, let's get to the update! I've got some feedback about the Wizard's Tower's puzzles since it was added to the game and I completely understand it. I was never satisfied with some of the puzzles and I knew some of them had to be remade at some point of the development. I wanted it to happen sooner than later, but it took some time to come out with ideas that were good enough.

The biggest changes were made to the 5th floor. I completely remade the main puzzle of the floor and added a reward to another puzzle on the same floor that didn't have a outcome. This new puzzle will take a much better advantage of the Eye of an Oracle and has a logic that is much easier to understand. Same goes with the floorplate puzzle on the 3rd floor. I also added clues in form of riddles to help to understand and solve some of the puzzles, including the mirror puzzle on the 6th floor.

Personally I think these changes are a game changer and make the Wizard's Tower much more enjoyable experience.

But there's more! Just about every building and dungeon texture, npc, enemy and some other sprites have been improved by adjusting colours, contrast and brightness to bring out details and make the overall look more vibrant. This lead to some colour errors, but I managed to fix all that I could find. There's always a chance that I didn't notice all of them, but I'll fix them later if found.

I've also made a new sprite for dead bodies and now they are the same size as the npc sprites. Rest of the changes can be found from the patch notes below, though I have a feeling I might have forgotten to mention something.

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]New Stuff:[/h3]

• Re-designed puzzles to Wizard's Tower's 3rd and 5th floor
  
• Hints in form of riddles to some of the Wizard's Tower's puzzles
  
• New sprites for dead bodies
  
• Improved sprites for the Knight's of the Golden Scarab
  
• New outer wall textures to Well of the Ancients
  
• Improved bridge textures to Marsh of the Condemned
  
• Side and back profiles for the Great Wanderer statue in the Southern Castle Town
  
• Adjusted colours, contrast and brightness of building and dungeon textures
  
• Adjusted colours, contrast and brightness of npc, enemy and most of the decoration sprites
  
• Adjusted colours, contrast and brightness of dungeon battle backgrounds
  
• More Spirit Potions to the Wizard's Tower
  
• New secret somewhere in the Wizard's Tower
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So there it was. I hope you like these changes as much as I do and enjoyed the new trailer.

Thank you and see you in Twin Falls!

Jani/Witchgrove Games