v0.00.580 - Game Changer

This cycle rebuilds core systems from the ground up. Floor regions now control enemy spawns and player progression. Enemy AI uses GOAP to make tactical decisions. Auto-explore lets you automate navigation. Water becomes walkable terrain with oxygen management. Skills integrate with progression through unlockable tiers. Gems socket into gear for stat upgrades. Quests track objectives across multiple systems. Dynamic music shifts between combat and exploration. Traps detect, evade, and reward XP when disarmed. Strategic planning now connects directly to moment-to-moment decisions.

🗺 WORLD & EXPLORATION

• ✅ Floor regions
  • Modular regions with custom sizes, separated by floor
  • Player and stair spawn set by region
  • Enemy spawn by region
• ✅ Resting mechanic
  • Zoom-in mechanic
  • Vignette with blur shader
  • Resting label
  • Hotkey for resting
• ✅ Auto-explore mechanic
  • Hotkey for auto-explore
  • Modular system for auto-explore stop, or interactions
  • Wait-for-rest before auto-explore initiates
• ✅ Interesting terrain mechanic
• ✅ Oxygen System with Oxygen UI
• ✅ Water shader and character on water shader
• ✅ Water is now walkable & navigable for both player and enemies
• ✅ Illumination points from world objects
• ✅ Transition between screens (and floors)
• ✅ Brazier implemented (Light source needs fixes)
• ✅ New Lantern sprite
• ✅ Falling leaves added
• ✅ Tree leaves added to the hero trees

Exploration becomes strategic. Automation handles repetitive navigation. Environmental hazards force resource management. Dynamic lighting changes how you approach unknown areas.

🤖 ENEMY AI & BEHAVIOR

• ✅ GOAP plugin (Goal-oriented-action-planning) added
• ✅ Rework the enemy's old behaviors, now using GOAP
• ✅ More enemy behaviors (enemies can now patrol!!!)
• ✅ Enemy awareness states
  • Alerted
  • Engaged
  • Searching
  • Suspicious
  • Unaware
• ✅ Rework to enemy vision
• ✅ Rework to enemy states
• ✅ Enemy AI behaviour refined to match difficulty
• ✅ Enemy power curve
• ✅ Spawn density and variation refined
• ✅ Enemy trait chances are now related to game difficulty and enemy level
• ✅ New enemy Brown Bear

Enemies now remember past encounters. Awareness states track your presence. Goal-driven AI makes tactical decisions. Encounters respond to your behavior in real time.

⚔ COMBAT & SKILLS

• ✅ Rework Skill Cast System
• ✅ Rework Skill System
  • Modular skills
  • Foundation done, so enemies can also use skills in the future
• ✅ Skill and skill book integration, unlocking & tier progression
• ✅ Skill drag & drop from skill book to hotbar
• ✅ New skill types and in-battle effects
• ✅ Close button added to SkillBook
• ✅ DoT effects
  • DoT effect image shows on the right side of health bars (player and enemy)
  • DoT effect shader
• ✅ Refactor Combat Float Text
• ✅ Changes to Combat Float Text (related to font, color, size, text display etc)
• ✅ Changed Skill Book Icon

Combat integrates progression with real-time strategy. You unlock skills through discovery. Drag them into loadouts. Activate them with proper timing and resource management.

🎒 LOOT & GEAR

• ✅ Gem Socket system
  • Gem socketting and unsocketting systems
  • Gems will improve the stats from gears
• ✅ Gem system added as enemy loot and ready for future crafting implementation
• ✅ Adjusted drop chances of gems
• ✅ Chest loot added
• ✅ Target indicator as rarity system added
• ✅ Compare gear system
• ✅ Loot drops now merge if they are in the same tile
• ✅ First Mask Category added

Item progression extends beyond base stats. Gem sockets modify gear attributes. Rarity indicators show value at a glance. Comparison tools help you make informed decisions.

📜 QUEST & NARRATIVE

• ✅ Quest Window added
• ✅ Map Window features
  • Quests, Legend and Filter added
  • Open and close sections
  • Track / untrack quests
• ✅ New quest features
  • 4 new quests
  • New quest modules
  • Quest highlights
  • UI lock
  • "Scarecrow" system for enemies used in quests
• ✅ Lore fragment system
• ✅ Bark system added

Quest architecture supports tracking, filtering, and conditional objectives. Lore fragments appear as readable items. Contextual barks deliver narrative during exploration.

🎮 SETTINGS & DIFFICULTY

• ✅ Difficulty settings added
• ✅ Multiple gameplay settings related to auto-explore
• ✅ Rest and Auto-explore hotkeys added to Control settings
• ✅ Permadeath popup added
• ✅ Beautify Disabled Permadeath popup
• ✅ FOV usage updated to match difficulty

You control challenge level, exploration speed, and visibility rules. Settings adapt to your playstyle and experience level.

🖥 UI / UX & INTERFACE

• ✅ Character Status Window added
• ✅ Multiple lines for message elogs
• ✅ Snapshot button on load screen
• ✅ Pause menu background shader
• ✅ Text window close button fixed
• ✅ Text of Textbox status on character creation aligned
• ✅ Fixes to Character Sheet window
• ✅ Fixes to quest HUD
• ✅ Fixes to context menu not closing when necessary

Interface refinements improve clarity and flow. Character status tracking shows relevant data. Pause menu presentation gets visual polish.

🎵 AUDIO & VISUAL POLISH

• ✅ Dynamic music
  • Combat & Exploration music layers
• ✅ New SFX
• ✅ More dynamic to main menu game simulation
  • Roaming enemies in main menu
  • Tree & Water shaders in animated menu
• ✅ Change game intro

Audio responds to combat and exploration states in real time. Visual effects extend into menus. Atmosphere builds before gameplay starts.

🛠 SYSTEMS & TRAPS

• ✅ TaskHub and Tasks Components added
• ✅ Rework many game systems to be dependent on tasks
• ✅ Improved auto-walk detection system
• ✅ New trap system
  • Trap disarming, and gives XP when disarmed
  • Trap evasion
  • Trap detection
  • Traps now have a cooldown to auto-rearming
  • Traps apply DoT effects
  • 3 new traps (2 being variations of spores)
• ✅ Cleanup of old files

Traps function as hazards, skill checks, and XP sources. Backend task architecture unifies progression, AI, and world interaction through shared systems.

🐛 FIXES & STABILITY

• ✅ Fixed enemy and loot pile detection on POV
• ✅ Inventory reset after floor change fixed
• ✅ Fix to player not loading correctly under water, and not loading skills in their correct slots
• ✅ Many minor and major bugs & crashes fixed related to gameplay and UI
• ✅ Fixes to Resting mode

Critical bugs resolved, including inventory persistence, water interactions, and skill slot loading.

🔜 NEXT

• 🔜 Quest branching with world-state consequences
• 🔜 Enemy skill usage through AI combat systems
• 🔜 Brazier lighting fixes and illumination polish
• 🔜 Additional trap types and detection feedback
• 🔜 Auto-explore interruption logic refinement

v0.00.432 - Skill book & Loot

This cycle focused on expanding core gameplay systems. World interaction, quest architecture and player progression moved from prototypes to functional frameworks while the interface and inventory received major usability improvements. The result is a build where exploration, narrative and item management now operate as integrated gameplay layers rather than isolated systems.

⚙ GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS

• ✅ Quest framework implemented
  • Modular quest architecture built for long-term expansion
  • Quest definitions now handled through structured JSON files
  • Quest HUD added for active objective tracking
• ✅ Skill progression systems expanded
  • Skill Book UI implemented
  • Skill management integrated into the player interface
  • Text / Lore window added for readable lore fragments and narrative texts

Knowledge-driven progression is now part of the core loop. Ancient texts and forbidden tomes function as both lore artifacts and gameplay systems.

🧭 EXPLORATION & WORLD INTERACTION

• ✅ Lantern equipment added
  • Dynamic light source attached to the player
  • Custom lantern shader implemented
  • Improves terrain visibility in dark environments
• ✅ Minimap improvements
  • Loot piles now appear on the minimap
  • Exploration readability improved

These systems reinforce the exploration loop: darkness hides threats, while light and navigation tools reveal paths, enemies and rewards.

🎒 INVENTORY & ITEM SYSTEMS

• ✅ Weight system implemented
  • Carry capacity now tied to character attributes
• ✅ Inventory interaction expanded
  • Drop system implemented
  • Loot inventory window added
  • Context menu for item interaction
  • Lock / Unlock item option
  • Inspect item window added
  • Destroy item confirmation popup
• ✅ Loot system expanded
  • Loot icon system added
  • Randomized floor spawn visuals
  • Enemy drops visually represented in the world

The inventory now behaves closer to a full RPG system, supporting safer item management and clearer item feedback.

🎙 NARRATIVE DELIVERY

• ✅ Narration system implemented
  • Voice narration can play during exploration or events
  • Music and SFX automatically duck during narration playback

This system enables voiced story fragments, environmental storytelling and lore readings without interrupting gameplay flow.

🖥 UI / UX & INTERFACE

• ✅ Draggable UI windows implemented
  • Interface panels can now be repositioned by the player
• ✅ First-launch setup screen added
  • Language selection
  • Gamma calibration

These systems improve accessibility across different monitors, lighting conditions and display setups.

💾 CHARACTER MANAGEMENT

• ✅ Character preset system implemented
  • Save and load character presets from the Character Screen

Players can now store preferred builds and quickly recreate archetypes during character creation.

🔜 NEXT

• 🔜 Expanded quest content and world encounters
• 🔜 Further lighting and exploration polish
• 🔜 Additional lore texts and narrative events
• 🔜 Inventory feedback and loot clarity improvements
• 🔜 SFX final pass

December 2025 Build

This cycle focused on consolidation. Core gameplay systems, UI flow, and performance work were aligned into a single, stable build while lore, art and external presentation progressed in parallel. The result is a build with no placeholders and a clearer path forward.

⚙ UI & GAMEPLAY

• ✅ New Skills Window completed and fully integrated
• ✅ Character Creation screen implemented and expanded
• ✅ Skill system and database reworked for long-term scalability
• ✅ Skill visuals and logic now reflect real build decisions from the first screen
• ✅ Inventory scrolling and filtering stabilized

🧭 WORLD SYSTEMS & PERFORMANCE

• ✅ Fog of War generation implemented and rebuilt for terrain-aware visibility
• ✅ Map generation fully refactored and threaded
• ✅ Map size doubled (≈7200 tiles)
• ✅ Generation time reduced from 4+ seconds to ~1.5 seconds
• ✅ Scene loader refactored and fully implemented
• ✅ Full backend refactor across core systems
• ✅ FPS increased from ~800–900 to ~1300–1500

🎨 WORLD, ART & LORE

• ✅ Tarot cards Kalila and Yabel finalized
• ✅ New palettes applied to improve contrast, saturation, and readability
• ✅ New bosses and first NPC done
• ✅ Lore-focused intro cinematic in production, built with original score, narration and illustrated sequences

🧍 UI / UX & SETTINGS

• ✅ Tooltip system rebuilt from the ground up
  • New visuals and animations
  • Foldable sections with static and animated modes
• ✅ Full Settings screen implemented
  • Toggles, sliders, dropdowns, key remapping
  • Preferences correctly save and load
  • Audio bus cleaned and reorganized
• ✅ Loading screen implemented
• ✅ New UI textures and fonts added
• ✅ Menu navigation stabilized (ESC behavior, window modes, borderless switching)

🎵 AUDIO / PRESENTATION

• ✅ Audio system refactored with proper cross-fades
• ✅ New music tracks added for Main Menu, Character Creation and Selva Oscura
• ✅ Menu SFX pass completed
• ✅ Intro video added with multi language subtitle support
• ✅ In-game menu implemented

🌐 WEBSITE & COMMUNITY

• ✅ Narrator voice introduced for dev logs and future updates
• ✅ Preparations underway for an eventual Patreon launch

🧹 CLEANUP & MAINTENANCE

• ✅ Outdated plugins removed
• ✅ Deprecated enemies and files deleted
• ✅ Tooltip branch fully cleaned of errors
• ✅ Multiple long-standing bugs resolved

🔜 NEXT

• 🔜 Gameplay-heavy updates focused on world expansion
• 🔜 Further Fog of War performance optimization
• 🔜 UI scaling tests for wide, ultra-wide, and portable resolutions
• 🔜 Loot feedback polish and interaction clarity

November 2025 Build

This cycle pushed several core systems into a stable state while expanding content, visuals, and player-facing interfaces. Terrain, Fog of War, loot, UI, and character creation now operate within a unified framework that reflects the shape of the final game.

• ✅ Loot Framework completed with rarity bands, material tiers, affixes, and full drop rules
• ✅ Validation tools added for consistent and predictable item generation
• ✅ Fog of War rebuilt with terrain awareness, improved blending, tile culling, and visibility propagation
• ✅ Enemy roster integrated with AI, behaviors, stat profiles, and readable tooltips
• ✅ 38-weapon framework connected with silhouettes, material tiers, and damage rules
• ✅ Skillbar expanded with modular casting: cones, AOEs, and variable radii supported
• ✅ Inventory improvements including scrolling, filters, and smoother item handling
• ✅ Terrain & water enhancements including animated water tiles and dynamic decorations
• ✅ Better-Terrain + gdUnit4 now support generation and testing workflows
• ✅ Character Creation System expanded: stats, race, class, skills, passives, starting gear, and XP modifiers update in real time
• ✅ Portrait selection added with a classic RPG-style presentation
• ✅ New CGI lore block completed — the first cinematic teaser for the game’s world
• ✅ New tarot cards added: Harmas the Stalker and Kalila the Profaner, linked to worship mechanics
• ✅ Art pipeline refinements for character creation, tarot consistency, and weapon lineup
• 🔜 Loot feedback polish: drop markers, rarity glow, and improved pickup interactions
• 🔜 Fog of War performance optimization for larger maps and complex encounters
• 🔜 UI scaling tests for wide, ultra-wide, and portable resolutions