World Building

Arnthak's been growing and reshaping the last month, though it's been subtle, behind the scenes changes. I've been working on code to allow the player to store items within containers, which gives rise to some interesting potential. Additionally, I've been working on joining some map areas together, allowing traversal to various areas that though fleshed-out, weren't reachable at the time.

Mapwork

One of the big changes, is the total restructure of the Archmage's tower. I always felt it was too big, and not very 'tower-like'. This has been fixed with a complete redesign. Here's the progress chart from last month:

Here's the most recent version.

Here's a list of map sectors that have changed in the last month:

• Map now extends from one end of Arnthak to the other (the whole width)
• Map chunks between Ice Caverns and the area where you can exit to the underside of Arnthak completed
• Ice Caverns extended
• Caverns underneath Burial Grounds now extended and completed
• Mine sections extended and connected
• Tower overhauled - Aquarium removed, players can now store fish, etc in the Tower's new moat

Other changes

I've also been working on 'containers' - sprites can now have contents, and menu code has been developed to remove the contents (and in some cases, add to the contents). Non-Map changes are:

• Reworked sprites for Furniture
• The Archmage can now acquire a steam powered clock for his/her tower
• The Alchemy laboratory now has a special bookshelf that holds various tomes (when they are found), enabling the fabrication of various potions
• Damage types & Protection types (fire damage, ring of fire protection, etc)
• Implementation of significantly improved NPC sprites
• Ghost Projection of Crube added
• Added new item - Jar of Wind
• Added new item - Glass Ingot
• Added new item - Bucket of Sand
• Added new item - Tomes of Alchemy (7 total)
• Added new item - Oidium Pickhead
• Added new item - Oidium Pickaxe
• Added new item - Sprig of Fireweed
• Added new item - Crowbar
• Added locked chests (must be bashed open with Crowbar)
• Added new foliage - Fireweed (Hazardous due to fire damage, can be harvested for Sprigs of Fireweed)
• Fireplaces now must have a piece of Fireweed in them in order to work
• Fabrication of Glass Bottles
• Fabrication of Rings
• Alchemical Bookshelf added
• Spiders now repair broken webs
• Various sprites now change animation dependant on their contents (fireplaces are aflame when they contain Fireweed, bookshelves look full when they have books, cupboards are closed when they have items inside)
• Huge amounts of new dialog, menus and item interactions

At a glance, here's the changes to furniture that I made earlier today:

Here's some of the new(er) items that have been added: