Beta Update 1.1.1, fixing some issues from this week's update.
Bug Fixes - Fixed crate miscount errors. - Fixed ESC not working on levels. - Fixed Exit button on title not working. - Corrected some issues with Explosive crates not scanning. - Fixed an issue where the event timer for Entity A on Saturday was set too high, so they'd never spawn. - Fixed issues with the Reality Anchor button teleporting, and sliding, and just generally not working. - Fixed multiple major issues with Thursday causing the tutorial to be unplayable. - Fixed an issue with the Blacklight letters not aligning with the correct TAR reading. - Fixed final scores displaying as decimals instead of percents. - Fixed some score calculation errors. - Fixed game booting on options menu.
Feature Changes +/- Changed how final scores are calculated. Now getting the decoder game incorrect no longer counts into your score. Only your final answer will be counted in the score.
In this iteration, our primary goal was to polish everything to get ready for a demo. There were good weekly testers from discord, finding a lot of things and bringing the game forward.
Ore
There are now ore resource types like Sand, Iron ore and Copper ore that can be mined the moon, including complete new Recipes for the Smelting and Chemistry table, another step to get independent from earth.
Garbage
The holding of recipes has also changed a lot and is now more clear. It includes the internal handling and the ui. As a result of this, there are now garbage bags that are created when some recipes get canceled. Later I plan to add some better garbage handling to be able to recycle these, for now, you have to throw it away.
Visualize Resources
To make it easier to see what the crafting Workbenches are doing, and what is needed there, there are now the needed and produced resources shown, depending on the chosen Recipe.
Automatic Batteries
The Batteries are now fully automated and change between charge and uncharge, depending on the ship's energy.
Presetup
Due to some bigger refactorings, it’s now possible to set up the interior item before its done. Including setting recipe, creating connections to storages and setup the crafting queue.
Testing and Bug Fixes
The biggest part of this long iteration was bug fixes and smaller improvements. We got very good weekly testers last month to build huge ships and found a lot of potential improvements that are going to the game. In total they played over 500h and built ships for up to 150 persons. In total the last iteration contained 28 minor releases with around 190 fixes, 30 addings and 130 improvements.
Other improvements
There are a lot of improvements, like a ctrl+F menu to find items or persons, Colorizing borders depending on the state, more clear task handling and pi menu
There is also new ResourceContainer Overlays and a complete new structured Tutorial, to make the start of the game easier for new players.
Also a new starting ship, Recipe Configuration tool and a better Reporting tool has been created in that time, to prepare for a larger group of testers.
Other changes
This time I will not add this huge amount of changes, but you are free to review it in discord or in the games main menu. I also created a tool to generate dif changelogs for further patch update news of the steam's default branch.
Want to see more?
I also post the progress and more pictures to our Discord:
And don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.
You may now edit the equipment slot of an item. Changing its category may trigger a call to the AI to generate the new abilities or status effect.
Image cropping for entity images
You may now adjust whether to crop or scale images (or a combination of both) under Options. This mitigates the stretching issue that was bothering many users.
Misc
Added option to put entity titles on bottom instead of top
Added separate x y sizing for exploration background image gen
Added enter key logic for most confirmation modals
Added double clicking logic for loading a game
Added open folder button when loading game
Fixed favorite star icon bug for merchant inventories
Improved NovelAI image gen retry logic (less chance you’ll need to restart the game if NovelAI rejects the request)
Reduced chance of adjective item issue (e.g. acquiring an item called “old”)
Wraithbinder is launching into Early Access this Monday, May 27th! Visit Wraithbinder's Steam page and Wishlist in order to be notified when the game goes live.
You can get a taste for all the Early Access version has to offer with the playable demo, which has been updated in a major way. Let's take a look at what's new.
Major Gameplay Enhancements
The experience you gain is now permanent across runs, meaning you keep your player level even when you die. Going up a level grants you one Salty Tear, a new currency that allows you to unlock powering up your armor with the new Mystic NPC.
Going up a level in experience also means you can wear and find a higher tier of armor. Higher tiers of armor have better base stats. Like a tier one ring might have +6% Melee Damage while a tier 2 ring will have +8% Melee Damage.
There are now four NPCs that you gradually rescue within the world who will come to inhabit your home area. They are the Trader, Mystic, Architect and Blacksmith.
The Trader sells you the Automap, Compass, Teleporter and can exchange currencies like Gold, Light, Salty Tears, Ability Keys and Metal.
You can meditate with the Mystic to permanently power up your armor, even the new armor you find later. You unlock an armor section, such as Helmets, using Salty Tears. Then you invest light into your Helmets in order to power up all the helmets you currently own and even all the new helmets you will ever find. As you invest more light, more stats get added to the armor and the quality of the stats increases.
The Architect enables you to permanently power up the world. You give them Metal and they deploy their designs into the world. One such power up is Jars of Health I. It costs 50 metal and gives you a 0.5% chance to find 5 Health within any Jar.
Buy and sell armor with the Blacksmith. Peruse his offerings to see if there is maybe a new magical ring you'd like. Or sell him all the equipment you aren't wearing to gain some Gold.
Act I
Wraithbinder's story plays out in a three act structure. Act I is available now and playable in the current demo. Act II will come during Early Access. Act III will come at 1.0 launch.
You are the captain of a Sky Sailor ship who must save your child from the clutches of evil... Enjoy the Act I story in the Early Access version this May 27th.
Major Gameplay Enhancements:
You can choose your reward after defeating enemies in each room. Often you will be faced with the choice to improve your character during the current run, like picking up an Ability Point Orb, or to improve your character in the long run, like picking up some Metal to spend with the Architect back home to upgrade the world.
The Wraithbind ability is now permanent across runs. Once you discover this ability, you will start your next run able to bind one wraith.
Mana Regen has been increased significantly so you no longer need to hit the environment to harvest Mana.
You now power up abilities by finding Ability Point Orbs and the maximum ability level has been increased from 3 to 9. Ability levels bring significant gains to your abilities. For example, the level 2 Sword ability does +33% damage.
You now keep 100% of the Gold, Light and armor you find during each run. (The game used to drop 50% of Gold, Light and 100% of unequipped armor.)
There's also a sweet new animation for when you vanquish a boss.
Translation
Wraithbinder has now been translated into 10 languages in preparation for the Early Access launch: English, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Español, Português-Brasil, 简体中文, 日本語, 한국어 and Русский.
Release Notes
Here's the full release notes for Wraithbinder's version 0.9.0, in case you want all the details:
v0.9.0 : May 11, 2024
Home Area NPCs and Powering Up:
The Experience you gain is now permanent across runs
Going up a level grants you one Salty Tear, a new currency that allows you to unlock powering up your armor
Going up a level in experience means you can wear and find a higher tier of armor
Higher tiers of armor have better base stats
Created 4 NPCs that you can rescue who come to inhabit your home area: Trader, Mystic, Architect and Blacksmith
The Trader sells you the Automap, Compass, Teleporter and can exchange currencies
Meditate with the Mystic to permanently power up your armor, even the new armor you find
Give Metal (a new currency) to the Architect to permanently power up the world (like finding Health powerups in Jars)
Buy and sell armor with the Blacksmith
Story Elements:
Wrote a three act story. You are the captain of a Sky Sailor ship who must save your child from the clutches of evil.
Act I is available now. Act II will come during Early Access. Act III will come at 1.0 launch.
Major Gameplay Enhancements:
You can choose your reward after defeating enemies in each room
Made the Wraithbind ability permanent across runs
Increase Mana regen so hitting the environment to regain Mana is no longer necessary
Made it so you keep 100% of the Gold, Light and armor you find during each run (used to drop 50% of Gold, Light and 100% of unequipped armor)
You now power up abilities by finding Ability Point Orbs
Showed how much each Ability Point improves an ability (like bonus damage for your Sword going from 0 to 33%)
Increased the maximum ability levels from 3 to 9
Artwork & Visual Clarity:
Created a sweet animation for when a boss dies
Made damage numbers to or from yourself bigger so you are more aware
Moved health and mana baubles to the edges of the screen for clarity
Created a high-resolution, anti-aliased font that scales nicely to any resolution
Used camera stops along the edges of floors so it naturally hides secret rooms
Improved the artwork and aesthetic of the main menu
Made all enemies have glowing eyes
Improved the aesthetic of background colors
Made the fog of war less dark, nearly transparent
Make blocks in other areas darker
Character Creation:
Expanded character color choices from 8 to 28
Added an option to change character clothes color
Expanded character skin color choices from 1 to 5
Your child is show by your side; you can name your child
Other Gameplay:
All the boss sidekicks die when the boss does
Created two new mini relics: the Speed Nudger (+5% move speed) and Haste Nudger (+5% attack speed)
Made chests locked until you defeat enemies
Made floors flow effortlessly just to the right areas with minimal backtracking (especially floors 1-6)
Created safe connector floors where you gain new abilities, learn how to use them and sometimes trigger story elements
Created secret bridges that allow access to secret rooms
Allowed holding ranged attacks to repeatedly fire as long as you have Mana (used to be a limit of 16 total attacks)
Allowed holding Grenade attacks to repeatedly lob
Allowed using the Shield use as long as you hold the button; Changed Shield Duration stat to Shield Damage Block
Made relics have prerequisites so you won't find something like Wraithbinder if you don't yet have the Wraithbind ability
This build was a challenging one to test in order to get the crafting fixes in. I might not get a release out next week as I'm visiting family; but I'm a workaholic so I might sneak some time in!
Smarter Crafting
A highly requested change has been to make the crafting system smarter when dealing with chaining ingredients, auto-ordering, and multiple in the same room. I'm happy to say I think I have it in a much better place!
This new "smart" chain crafting is behind a new gameplay option that will default as Smart. This rethinks how the chained ingredients will be added to the tower. It will take into account the current quantity on hand, ordered, to be consumed, and auto-generated tasks. It will only fill stocks where items are missing instead of blasting your rooms with tasks!
With this update two more changes for crafting that will be helpful. Firstly, mages will try to stay in their current room when crafting a similar type. For example, if you have two Fabricas the mages won't start bouncing back and forth but stick to one room.
Next is the idea of blocking chain ingredients from showing up in specific rooms. As you can see below there is a new option in the crafting window to block these tasks from showing up. This will allow more control for higher tier rooms from getting spammed.
Moving Rooms
A small change with big impact is the ability to demolish upgraded rooms and get the ingredients back! This allows you to easily move your rooms around without worrying. Essence will be the only "tax" for this move!
I've also made a tweak to the upgrade tooltip to show what values are changing:
Options
Since the first playtests the Daily Report has split players, some people hate it, and some people love it. I've tweaked it before with an option to stop the game from auto-pausing but it wasn't enough. This update adds the ability to completely disable it from automatically appearing:
More Fixes
Speed update of the Private Study was not displaying
War Chamber -> Not showing the correct days wasn't reloading after boss
Some effect types are not showing an icon correctly
Repairing rooms with tasks was hiding the health and taking too long looking like they were broken
New notification if mages are wielding Training Staves while fighting
Students are suicidal and keep running into combat - hopefully fixed for good!
Shield room to shield room - mages won't move when in combat
Disable Room - Trap Rooms will still fire munitions
A special thanks this week to @stretch, @Chopper Dave, @anja, and @Devath.
