v0.3-alpha

Gameplay:

• Native support for Windows and Ubuntu.
• Improved keyboard input in DOS, repetition rate no longer depends on the OS.

Under the hood:

• A brand new engine to support the new platforms.
• Removed unused code in the DOS engine (a test at initialization, an interruption, a hack to handle the keyboard).
• Unified executable in DOS.
• Major updates on the SDK, hopefully more legible.
• Palettes load at runtime.
• And of course tiny fixes over the code :).

v0.2-alpha

Important changes since v0.1-alpha:

Gameplay:

• New backgrounds in a proper pixel art style. The previous ones were images lazily scaled down.
• Same treatment for the game title, and now using a new typography (Archivo).
• New pause menu. Now the game don't quit abruptly.
• Damage during an attack is show in screen.
• Added a missing frame in Kuro.
• Balanced actions and actors (enemies/heroes) stats. If curious you can see them here for actors, and here for actions without having to inspect the code.
• Enemies number was previously calculated in a linear fashion (first encounter: one enemy, fourth encounter: two enemies, eighth one: three...). Now it follows an zigzag pattern, adding a period to breath between action.
• Measures against difficult enemies appearing more that twice.
• Adjusts on the HUD and panels appearance.
• "Hold" action in an actor now shows in purple on the time meter.
• Messages dialogues using milliseconds rather than frames to count the display time. Resulting in the same behaviour on faster and slower CPUs.
• Fixed English typos.

Under the hood:

• In the code a new way of handle actors, personalities and actions. Three new concepts in this release (and horribly mixed between files in the previous one).
• Simplified game draw commands, previous release included tons of repeated lines scattered over multiple files, making it illegible.
• Enemies number and possibilities to appear in a encounter are now calculated at runtime. Before, the game relied on a precomputed table that didn't scaled well and added complexity to the compilation procedure. A single command now compiles the entire game logic.
  • This required add a new module to handle fixed maths.
• Amount of RAM destined to sprites grown to 128K (a fantastic addition considering that i386s uses a segmented memory with blocks of 64K).
  • A new memory pool is handled by the engine, all this transparent to the game logic.
• C game-logic code now passes strict compilations checks (in modern compilers).
• New commands to draw vertical and horizontal lines.
• Fixed potential soft-locks in actors states.
• Fixed a dangerous bug in the engine commands table.
• Lot of tiny optimization here and there.

v0.1-alpha

First release!