Next update of Stratholm

[Baramos]

Next to nothing has been said about it, but since we've put a good dent in what we want to do for a current update, I'll talk about it a little. I'm not committing to any timeline (those of you who have played in the past know how that goes ) but I'll just fill you in on what we're doing.

There are 2 major changes, but from a coding standpoint, are monumental: a new interface, and new battle/item system.

The new interface will be more secure, more user-friendly, and will fix small nuisance bugs that have been around since day 1. From a coding standpoint, it will be much more update-friendly, and easy to make look more stylish, so anybody with some artistic creativity (Hazue and I combine to have about 0 ability here ) can chime in with ideas, and if we like, can easily implement.

The new battle system is what players will see as the biggest change. Again from a coding standpoint, it will be more secure, efficient, hopefully bug-free, and easy to update. I'll list several of the changes:
- balance to the force... fighters and casters will work almost identically. spell scrolls will have a base on them, just like weapons, so casters will be changing spell scrolls way more often.
- weapon/spell proficiencies... that's right, everybody has to level either their spell or their weapon. Not every individual one, just the weapon type or spell element type.
- a more equal mix of fighter and caster mobs... fighting caster mobs will be easier than current, even fighters will be able to fight them.
- stat changes... vitality will be renamed to wisdom, strictly used for a caster's chance to hit. The other stats all remain. damage and defense get split into 2 categories: physical and magical.
- item changes... there are big changes here, I'll keep the details as a surprise.
- more smaller things... again left as a surprise.
- of course, all of the above means the mobs will be redone totally.

Those are the 2 biggest changes for now, there are several other little changes as well. What's going to happen really is that you guys will be testing out these changes while Hazue and I work on the next update. We've done a fair bit so far, we still have a fair bit to do as well. We'll keep you informed on our progress.

[hazue]

I'd just like to add that the update interface will definitely include cross-browser compatibility. I'm testing in Firefox 2, IE7, Opera 9, and Safari 3 (windows version). I'm pretty sure this means it will work in pretty much any modern browser on any platform, except mobile browsers, where you're just SOL. Although, if you use Opera on a PDA or such, or Safari on an iphone, its theoretically possible it will work and just look awful.