#rmvx ace

i was editing/bugfixing throughout this test play so it was more like... 6 months... lol

now i have to do it again with a few other characters and hopefully without having to stop and fix something so much (unlikely)

it’s been a while since i shared art or any screencaps here, huh?

please, i assure you. i am a competent writer.

The next major overhaul has arrived! This update comes with improvements and overhauled parts. So, what's new?

New installer (This doesn’t apply to the Microsoft Store version) The installer is completely re-done. Moving it from Installshield to WiX Toolset and xeam Visual Installer provides a quicker and sleeker installation experience and improving the repair function.

**NOTE:**You'll need to uninstall the old version before installing the new one. Having both the old and the new version may damage both of them, making them hard to remove.

Overhauled Northbridge Platform Northbridge Platform (Launcher, Save Manager, and the PDF Reader) was re-written from the ground up to the Windows Presentation Foundation. The new version utilizes DirectX instead of GDI, providing a lightning fast response to the GUI. There are under the hood changes to improve performance as well and making the launcher easier to maintain. In addition, some areas of the launcher use native dialogs for picking files and folders. And of course, it supports high DPI displays, so no blurry fonts. Did I mention that supports 64bit systems natively?

Improved performance When I moved the battle system to the new one, there were some things that need to be ironed out. One of those things was the performance. In low-end systems, the game ran slowly during battles. It took me a long time to figure it out, but after moving around things, tweaking and doing some modifications, the game runs much faster. During exploration, the rendering was improved, using smarter calls to render and tweaking the garbage collection system in the engine. In battles, some of the scripts were removed, as they were causing severe slowdown. The result: vastly improved performance. Almost 60 frames per second.

Performance, performance, performance! (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

And the minor stuff.

Journal now records all side-missions.

Some balancing changes.

Celtia got a makeover.

Some tweaks on some maps.

New icons for the spears.

Now, this is pretty new tech. If you have any issue, please let me know and I’ll fix it as soon as possible. This update will be available in Microsoft Store in a few days.

What do they see???

Yeah... I need to be more active, but doing rewrites takes a good chunk of time.

While the launcher's re-write is almost complete (just need to write a bit of code that missing from WPF), I needed a new tool to make the installer. Flexera seems to have stopped supporting the LE version of installshield. It's a shame since this was a great tool (mainly since I could install the .NET Framework when needed). So, I needed to search for a new tool. And I found a combo. WiX (Windows Installer XAML) provides a good suite to write an installer, along with fetching dependencies via its bootstrap. Which is great. But this is a pretty complex tool. Luckily, I found another tool that helped to make the GUI for the new installer. The result is this:

This combo is pretty neat since it allows better customisation (so, fewer pages to go through and give it a nicer flair) and lets me add languages to the installer. Pretty handy indeed.

Speaking of the launcher, I did some re-tooling in the logic, thanks to data binding. In the current version, I had to practically program the entire logic to manipulate the GUI (such as disabling some buttons when no saves are in the folder). WPF allows a "code-less" way to implement that logic, by simply binding some properties of the items in the GUI to specific things. This makes the launcher less of a hassle to maintain and cut down unnecessary code from it. It does need some things to work on, but for the most part, it's easier for me to develop the game and the launcher. Here's a snippet of the implementation:

eidolon demo download here! explore the forest, lake, hot springs and mountain caves to find friendly monsters to help you form a small city, and even transform into the creatures yourself.

there are still placeholders here and there, mainly in the animations. also, nothing is final in this. the skills will probably end up tweaked or different, and the skill system itself might change, ect....

there are a few known glitches:

an enemy that is ko’d to bleed damage stays on screen instead of disappearing at the end of battle

sometimes the menu shows your last character after transforming instead of the current one. you can hit the left/right arrow keys either on the main menu or in the skill menu to fix it

music/ambient sounds sometimes don’t change when they should

Game:

Balancing changes:

Tweaked the HP values.

Parry will grant Evasion boost instead of counterattack.

Shout will lower attack and defense alongside a chance to stun an enemy.

Axel can access Mystic Arts.

Changes on some of the Arts.

Beefed up some enemies (along with a boss).

Changes to maps and dialogue.

Added bits of lore.

Fixed a crash caused due to a syntax error.

Various graphical and bug fixes.

Northbridge Platform:

UI changes.

 Added a workaround to prevent a crash when a user disabled recent documents in the OS settings.

 Added a standalone version of the PDF reader.