New Beta Build: Balancing, Bug Fixes, and New Content!

I just finished uploading a new beta build, v0.946b. The build includes several fixes, balance tweaks, and some new content.

New Music!

Josh's second piece is now in the game! You'll hear it crescendo slowly into the foreground in the skill selection screen. It's ripe with dark pensiveness and anticipation, perfect for planning your ability strategy!

First Aid

You'll also start seeing a new item in the game: the first aid kit.

It's no nanorobotic medkit, but it's better than nothing.

Generally, we'll be seeing a lot less of our trusty nanorobotic medkit (NRMK). It's an advanced medical device, a sort of biometric computer with fluid suspensions of plasma and nanorobot antibodies/antiviral agents. Basically, an emergency stabilization cocktail. It's too expensive for most folks, and will be accordingly rare in the world now.

Instead, the first aid kit will appear in most of the NRMK's old haunts. First aid kits usually include at least a few clean bandages, and a handful of painkillers and/or antibiotics. It won't cure as much as the NRMK, but it'll help in a pinch. Plus, the kit doubles as a container for your other loot!

Also, it turns out a few of the new items I created never made it into the game. I forgot to add them to the loot tables. Sorry! You should start seeing over-the-counter and prescription painkillers in the game now.

Blind Combat

As some folks have pointed out, combat can be a real drag if you can't see your opponent. In some cases, this resulted in a near-infinite loop of futilely searching for the opponent. In order to give creatures (and players) a fighting chance in complete darkness, I've added some blind combat options:

A "shot in the dark," literally.

The left one is a blind attack, for both melee and ranged weapons. It's swinging at shadows, or a shot in the dark. Not likely to succeed, but maybe if you flail around enough, you'll get lucky and land a hit.

The right one is a blind retreat. Like above, you have no idea where your opponent is, so this gives a slim chance of escaping the battle. If it fails, you may end up further from, or even closer to your opponent. Plus, you'll probably trip over something. But hey, you're blind, and it beats standing there and taking hits.

Other Updates

The following changes were also made:

• Diarrhea - So, it turns out I accidentally set diarrhea to be fatal in the last build. Whoops! Sorry! That should be fixed now.
• Wound Rollovers - A couple folks suggested that wounds would be easier to diagnose if there were pop-up tooltips when the mouse was over them. That was a great idea, so I've added some basic info when the mouse touches a wound now. It's not perfect, but hopefully it's an improvement.
• Clotting - Some folks noted that bleeding was lasting forever. Turns out, this was a math mistake on my part. Bleeding should now clot naturally within 2-4 hours for most wounds. Severe wounds still present a threat of bleeding out, but this should reduce the frequency of players bleeding out through a paper cut.
• End Turn/Combat Weirdness - I think I've fixed a pretty nasty bug in the battle system, which might have been causing some skipped turns and battles with phantom NPCs. The bug was causing players to be stuck in battle even after leaving, which causes all kinds of weirdness. If you've been seeing phantom attacks or skipped turns, this might be the fix for you.

And that about does it for today. Hopefully, this addresses most of the major problems we've been seeing. Keep me posted in the forums if you notice any other bugs or issues!