Welcome Traveler!

It's been a challenging month, but eventually I managed to create an update that became much bigger than I planned for with some great new features. One thing that I've been planning for a while is an optional Party HUD that can be enabled in the 'Options' menu and finally I can release it with this update among other improvements and enhancements.

To celebrate this new update Chronicles of Vaeltaja is 40% off for the next seven days.

Let's get to the details! From now on the Party HUD with portraits, status icon, health and energy bar is no longer restricted only to battles and it can be activated from the 'Options' menu. Because of this new feature I have relocated the 'Tool Bar' to the upper edge of the screen, as can be seen in the screenshot below. The 'Tool Bar' is also smaller than before, so it won't block too much of the view.

The Party HUD makes a small performance impact on the cpu, but the good news is that I've found some ways to improve the performance, so the update also brings some optimization and there will probably be some more coming in the future.

When it comes to combat, the Party HUD has been improved in a couple of ways to make the encounters faster and easier to follow. Firstly, when a character is having a turn, the portrait rises a little bit to separate the active character from the other party members. Every time a character takes damage, the portrait shakes a bit to give the action some impact. But that's not all: When 'hit points' are low, the portrait becomes reddish, and finally, when a character is dead, the portrait becomes grey. The screenshot below shows some of those features.

But there's even more! The item and skill menus have been overhauled too give the player some details about available items and skills, just like in the shops when browsing the inventory. The new system makes use of the item icons to help finding the right item. Also the combat works now a little bit faster, so the overall experience is now more enjoyable.

The Great Forest, Pramea Region and Lake Road (including the Islands of the Prophets) have new battle backgrounds to match the game's current graphics. Twin Falls and all the previously mentioned areas have gone through some visual improvements also: I've adjusted brightness, contrast and colours of all the textures and made some other small enhancements so some of the textures. Also the leaf ceilings have been improved to match the current areas better and Cubbo has a new battle sprite with attack animation.

Those are the major changes and improvements, but there's also some balancing, a few new shields and other small tweaks.

Patch Notes

New:

• Small, medium and large shields (Sakari the Traveling Merchant, Castle Town and Pramean shops)
• Optional Party HUD
• Improved combat UI to make the battles feel more dynamic
• Character portraits react to damage, low health and death
• Information window to give details about items and skills during the battle
• Battle backgrounds (The Great Forest, Pramea, Lake Road and Islands of the Prophets)
• Cubbo battle sprite with attack animation

Improvements and Enhancements:

• Brightness, contrast and colour adjustments to all the forest, ground, water and treetop textures
• Brightness, contrast and colour adjustments to all the bush and tree sprites
• Some small improvements to Twin Falls', the Great Forest's, Pramean regions and Lake Road's (including the Islands of the Prophets) forest textures
• Improved party portraits
• Battle log now works a little bit faster
• Battles are a bit faster overall
• Improved the performance in the Great Forest North by optimizing enemy mobs, adjusting the leaf ceilings and removing unnecessary lines of code
• Overall optimization to improve performance
• Updated few of the core plugins used by the engine

Changes

• Spring water can now be collected by pressing the action button when standing next to a spring
• Tool Bar is relocated to the upper edge of the screen
• The lock picking difficulty has been lowered in Bandit Cave, Well of the Ancients, Pramean Lighthouse, Halls of Onkalo, Traveler's Hall, Twin Falls Forest North Catacomb and the Great Forest South Catacomb
• Using a skill and casting a spell have separate animations that will appear on the character's portrait or the enemy sprite
• Changed correct animation and some other details for some of the skills and spells
• Slight combat optimization

Fixes

• Shadow character class can now pick the lock in the Traveler's Hall
• Leino no longer appears in two different locations after saving Pramea

Here it is, though once again I feel like I've forgotten to mention something. Whatever the case, I hope you'll enjoy these new improvements while adventuring in the kingdom of Twin Falls.

Thank You and have a great summer!

Jani/Witchgrove Games