Defender's Quest HD Demo, initial public test

Hey everyone!

Defender's Quest HD now has a public demo. It's not 100% polished as of today, so I'm not going to put this out on the newsletter or give it much more than the laziest amount of attention I can, but I do want to get this out so that people can see what we've been working on.

This build covers the same amount of content as the original Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten demo, encompassing the first two acts and introducing the first four characters.

Right now I'm just trying to get some initial feedback on this and clean up all the immediate issues and start slow-rolling our momentum as we look to full release in the near future. I'm not contacting any journalists or youtubers directly just yet because I still want to improve this demo, but I guess some of you reading this might fit that description anyway, so:

if you want to write or record something about this demo, we kindly ask that you notify your audience that this is still a preliminary build and we will be making significant improvements before final release! :)

You can find the latest Mac/Windows/Linux builds in this shared google drive folder:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B82nNNq_hucHOEV1eF9pQ1B1eXM

If you find a bug, report it here:
https://github.com/larsiusprime/tdrpg-bugs

Please be aware of these limitations:

1. I have not tested this vigorously on Linux or Mac

2. English only (for now)

• Localization flexibility is baked deep into the engine but I haven't plugged in or tested international text yet

3. Graphics are not totally final

• Overworld & battle tiles in particular are still in the works (waiting on some artists doing some really good stuff)
• Cutscene art is largely final but needs some minor tweaking in certain spots
• Some artifacts exist because of placeholders, including several of the kind I criticized here, I'm well aware of these and will fix them before final release.

4. There's some bugs, and I'm aware of them

• If you see something weird, feel free to report it, but I do know about most of these glitches and I intend to fix them before final release.
• Known issues include: resolution menu, missing chunk from tutorial arrow, visual offsets on bouncy number text, original sprite mode issues with recoloring, lots of other miscellaneous annoyances.

5. Several features are missing/in progress

• Gamepad support is in the engine but needs polishing
• It's got a crash logger hooked up by default, if you see three little popup windows that quickly vanish when you start, that's what's going on. It's harmless, but in final release we'll make it opt-in rather than opt-out (this is an artifact from our private testing builds meant for testers).
• Steam integration / workshop / bonus levels / NewGame+ are all full-game version features, so you won't see any of them here.

Changelog:

12/04/2015 10:13 PM: Fixes some bugs, including summoning lag

12/09/2015 4:26 PM: Fixes null errors, graphical glitches, fixes bare-bones gamepad support.

12/10/2015 10:40 PM: Fixes many various things, including options menu in battle screen and other stuff.

12/11/2015 5:20 PM: Fixed fullscreen Alt+Enter issues, null crashes, misfiring virtual mouse/cursor clicks on "enter", path problems with demo, black eye-whites for characters in original art mode, moonwalking enemies (maybe?), ketta stops attacking at boost level 4 (maybe?), improperly colored ranger arrows in original art mode, un-centered battle damage numbers, various other annoyances.

12/14/2015 5:19 PM: Fixed errors in shops that would sell the wrong items, fixed visual glitches, and lots of minor stuff.

12/17/2015 1:22 PM: First linux build!

12/18/2015 12:05 PM: First mac build!

12/21/2015 5:14 PM: First round of cross-platform bugfixes for Mac/Win/Linux:

• Jaggy rendering on Linux
• Crash bug on Linux when placing defender
• Window size options overflow video menu
• Able to click through equip menu to skills menu
• Cutscenes/towns look wrong in 16:10 aspect ratio
• Various other fixes

12/22/2015 5:34 PM: Mac/Win/Linux Bugfixes:

• Bad coloring on upgrade text in skills menu (+5 to this, +2 to that, etc)
• Make the "wrench" folder work on linux (opens your save file folder)
• Make cutscene back button vanish correctly on first slide
• Fix looping for battle music
• Fix incorrect skill tree prerequisite text
• Fix ugly tutorial arrow
• Fix cutscene error on retina macs
• Various other fixes

12/30/2015 6:06 PM: Win Bugfixes (Mac/Linux to come later):

• Fixed annoying pause when summoning defender in original art mode
• Fixed green upgrade preview text in skills
• Fixed item description tooltip in battle
• Enemies and defenders now flash when hit
• Fixed defender technique bar tooltips, before they wouldn't reflect boosted stats
• Fixed weird tiling glitch on PSI balls
• Fixed artifacts on 16x9 title screen, applied proper centering

01/01/2016 5:06 PM Win/Linux Bugfixes (Mac to come later):

• Now, pressing ESC ("back") when nothing is selected in battle opens options menu
• Fix "target boss" bug (defenders ignoring non-boss enemies)
• Added basic enemy stats to enemy selection menu
• Fix some jaggy rendering on Linux

04/06/2016 8:57 AM Mac/Win/Linux fresh builds

• Lots of bugfixes & improvements. From here on out just follow the waffle page

Onwards and Upwards Too much stuff to summarize

• The demo should be fairly stable now, I'm getting tons of great bug reports that I work on daily and we should be releasing the full game pretty soon. I'm linking directly to the shared google drive now rather than individual builds because I have continuous integration putting up nightly builds and its too tedious to update this blog post every day.