It's been over a week now, and I promised a new update for the game. So what's up? Where is it at? Well, I am excited to say we are just short of getting that new update released. In this post I will go over what has gotten done and what we are waiting on. I'm really excited because we are adding some much needed systems and settings that I think really help with the flow of the game.

So, what's new? Well, there are about 5 new updates coming your way within the next week. Without beating around the bush, we have Grindwheel and Quench Tank Reworks, Item Tooltips, Achievements List, Audio Controls, and a new Save/Load system. We've been hard at work adding some much needed polish to the build, that will also prepare us for the next big leg of development. Let's Look at each one of these.

Grindwheel and Quench Tank Reworks

This is our only mechanical change to the game, but it plays a big part. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the grindwheel mechanic has been bugging me and I have been wanting to change it for a while. This is because it didn't really provide anything to the crafting other than an arbitrary damage bonus. This has been completely adjusted to make the grindwheel play a part in what it was really intended to, balance. Now, each Sword must be properly balanced by lightening both the blade and the pommel. But be careful, the more you grind away at an item, the more fragile it is and prone to breaking. Also, sharpness is a gradient now instead of a switch, much like in real life. This has really changed the feeling of the game, and allows the player to use different materials for both the pommel and blade without missing out on the value of their sword because it isn't balanced. You can totally use a quality 5.7 tungsten blade with a quality 0.0 copper pommel and make an excellent sword from it, so that is awesome!

Also, while I was at it I decided that the Quench Tank didn't quite feel right anymore. It felt strange that you could interrupt quenching, your blade has cooled, but you have 0% quench on the blade. So, we have changed that to be more of a gradient, and quenching is now tied to the blade cooling. You can now totally take a fully hot blade, dunk it in the quench tank, and pull it out half way through to get a 50% quench on it. Or, leave it in there until it is fully cooled to get a complete quench. Whatever you need to make your sword the best you can. These reworks have made the ending of making your sword feel much more interactive in my opinion and I am excited to see what yall think of it.

Item Tooltips

Okay, so what even is this? Well, I realized that you had no idea what was going on in the process of making the sword until you got to the workbench. This means that players have no idea what the actions they take are doing to the final sword. So, I added a tooltip to the mouse when you hover over an item, showing some of the stats of the item. This means that the player can now see what those stats are and how they work together before they get to the workbench. This works for the hotbar and all of the station UIs, so you can compare swords in the storage chest, or keep track of different ingots in your hotbar just fine now.

Achievements List

The game now has a list of achievements for you. I figured this would be helpful, especially as the game grows, to see what you may have missed if you want to get a 100% run. If you've tried the game already, you may even see some achievements you hadn't seen before. For this version of the game, none of the achievements are new, but we do plan on adding more to the list in future updates.

Audio Controls

One request we got was to allow for volume adjustment. This was from one player who wanted to hear the game, but the audio was too loud on their machine. So, we added an audio controls menu for you to mix and adjust the audio of the game at your will. For now the toggles have also been removed from the game UI just to keep things a little neater. We may add them back at some point, but we haven't decided yet. Hopefully this will allow you to have an even more immersive experience with our game.

Save/Load System

This is primarily for the next leg of development, but I felt it was time to get a save system in place for the game. Even with just the two mechanics we have added, we have at least a couple of hours of content (woohoo!). But we also understand that is a lot to expect a new player to commit to on their first playthrough. So, we've been working on adding a way to save your progress in the game so that you can keep your progress and come back later if you wish. We are new to these types of systems so it may take a few updates before this system works across updates, but for now we hope to have something implemented for you guys. I will also throw in, this is one of the systems that isn't quite done yet, and the reason we are planning release by the end of the week. But rest assured that you will have an update soon!

What about that third image?

Some of you may be asking, what is up with that third image? Well, it is another thing I've been working on. One of my first posts was on lighting systems. It was long and in depth, and way out of scope for the project at the time. But, low and behold, I am now working on a lighting system for the game. So, that image is a custom shader I made to render lights. It took a bit to get working, but I have a light renderer in the game resolution that I plan to work on throughout the next leg of our development. So keep an eye out for lighting updates. I might do some posts dedicated to that and how I've been working on the shader.

Anything else?

Well, that is a lot of the big stuff coming down the pipe. Apart from that we have done a good bit of bug fixing and updating some of the UI art to be more consistent. Overall I think this new update will be fun and easier to use. I'll make another post announcing the new update, and after that I may make a post for the development plan of the shop management system. I hope you guys will try the new version of the game, and if you have tried the demo out already, feel free to leave some feedback on our feedback form, or comment on the page. We love hearing from people trying the game and do our best to listen to player feedback. Thanks, and I'll see yall again by the end of the week!