Hello everyone! Just a bunch of bug fixes, balancing and more rewriting of messy underlying systems.

After some consideration I've decided to use the rest of this month to try to clean up a bunch of the stuff we already have and just try to fix as many bugs as possible. Now that we have the stat server tracking win % its also a good time I think to do some preliminary balancing work just to try to keep everything in line. Speaking of the stat server, me and it are going to have to have a round 2 during this time as well since there's definitely some issues with it.

I'm continuously having to reassess what to prioritize since this is by far the largest project I've ever worked on, so I'm learning new things every day. At the moment, the bug and crashes list has gotten a bit out of hand, so I'd like to take some time to fix all these little issues before moving forward and making more of a mess. I continue to be amazed at just how much work is necessary to clean and polish all the little nooks and crannies of this game, not to mention the massive amount of new content that still needs to be added. So with that in mind I'll be doing a bit of cleaning and polishing for the next week or two in order to try to stay on top of things.

For those interested here are the stats from our server roughly from the time of writing:

Wins: Deaths: Win %:
TOTAL: 348 5949 5%

DUELIST: 50 490 9%
RANGER: 54 681 7%
BARBARIAN: 30 469 6%
ICE_MAGE: 33 534 5%
NECROMANCER: 47 757 5%
WARRIOR: 33 692 4%
ROGUE: 33 633 4%
STORM_MAGE: 30 579 4%
ENCHANTER: 19 534 3%
FIRE_MAGE: 19 580 3%

It actually doesn't look nearly as bad as I was expecting so it would appear that the work we've been doing has had an effect. As a rough guide, I'd like to get the classes as balanced as possible with each other, since this would imply that their talents are roughly equally powerful. I think this is important since one of my goals with this game is to make multi-classing actually a viable option.

I'll be tackling race balance as a separate issue in the future (first bits of it coming with this update). Roughly speaking I'd like to see the human race be the default 'easy' race with a significantly higher win %. This should give new players an easier entry into the game.

I'd actually like to get to the point where the human race is a bit to easy for experienced players which has the added benefit of providing an option for experienced players when they just feel like say, cracking a beer and doing a few easy runs while relaxing.

I'd like to have a couple of races that are moderately difficult for players to 'graduate' to once they've mastered the fundamentals of the game with the human i.e. won with a couple of the classes. Finally there should be a bunch (the most) of races that are specifically designed to challenge experienced players.

So generally speaking, the classes should be equally balanced in terms of power, which means the talents are balanced, which means multi-classing is viable. Races on the other hand will act as an organic difficulty curve and provide 'alternate game modes' for expert players.

Also as a rough rule I'd like to get just the overall win % up a little bit i.e. make the game a bit easier. I'll be shooting for something like 10% overall. I think this is necessary at this point since we need to take into account that there are a significant number of 'expert' players either from the web version or from back in alpha that are inflating the win %s a bit. So, especially with the human, I'd like to see these average win %s increase quite a bit so that newer players arn't just completely destroyed from the get go.

UPDATES:
BUGS_AND_CRASHES:
- New clouds will now always destroy existing clouds
- Ice blocks (from the freeze spell) will always destroy existing clouds (they are on the same layer).
- Ice blocks will also now freeze the water below them.
- Summoning an item should never produce an item with greater than max mod.
- Summoning an item should never create an item you have already picked up.
- You can now descend into pits when flying using the key

BUTTON_REWRITE:
In response to a reported bug where some crazy combination of clicks and mouse movements on buttons in the acquirement menu could result in summoning multiple items, I've completely rewritten the buttons in the game.

All buttons will now only 'click' if the mouse is actually over them when releasing the click. This fixes the issue with acquirement menu and I'm sure fixes many other weird edge cases that are similar to this (I know we had a few like this before).

This 'rewriting' when fixing bugs is a policy that I've been adopting lately. In the past I would have just tried to fix the specific bug with some kind of little hack or quick fix. Now, as I'm noticing how massive the code base is getting, I'm trying to actually take the time to rewrite stuff to actually work correctly now and in the future. So hopefully, though it takes more time in the short term, it should pay off in the future.

As a side note, I'm finding it interesting to see with stuff like the menu rewrites, the state system, the button rewrites, the complete rewrite of handling input, etc. that I'm essentially getting what amounts to a 'game engine' out of all of this i.e. a whole set of generic components that handle all the common underlying functionality.

BALANCING:
In general I'm still just doing rough balancing at this point. In the future I'll likely be devoting a whole chunk of time to each class, one after another, and working through and updating their talents and abilities to both get things balanced and to really try to reinforce the classes 'theme'.

- Buffed warrior hit points from 24-48 to 26-52 in order to give him a bit of a boost and build on his 'theme' of tankyness.
- All fire mage spell damage increased a bit. Fire mage should be easy to balance since he's basically supposed to be the glassiest cannon in the game. We'l just keep buffing his damage output until he seems 'right'.
- The human race now gains an additional skill point every 3 levels at 2,5,8, etc. This is the first part of making them the default 'easier' class.

I feel like we'l have the human 'right' if experienced players basically find them to easy and a bit boring, while completely new players are still significantly challenge.

That's it for now! More bug fixes coming next time. Thanks as always for everyone's support and feedback!