The interweaving of story and gameplay in "White Cypress" has finally begun. The 0.95 build now includes a rough version of the first chapter of Cypress' main quest, with two more chapters in preparation for versions 0.96 and 0.97. (All three chapters' worth of assets are still included, though, so the download size of this build has ballooned to over 400 MB.) Download links are at the bottom of the article. Keep on reading to see what's new!
The world of Ildron has more than doubled in size, and will continue to grow as the quest is implemented:
And there are new characters and scenes, and boatloads of new art. Here's just a sample of stuff from all three chapters:
- To help set the scene, Geoffrey begins the game holding a summons-letter from Dr. Quine, and Lucius will introduce Geoffrey to the story.
- Geoffrey now begins the journey with only three spells in his spellbook: Cure, Spark, and Craft Wooden Arrows.
- Lucius joins you as a party member until you reach the first town. He teaches you the Travel spell upon joining.
- Lucius can also throw stones at your enemies.
- Ginseng is now a bit harder to find; try looking in various forests.
- Geoffrey can now eat snowdrops to restore 1mp each.
- The real quest begins when you reach the town. Try exploring the world map.
Here's a screenshot of the town:
There are plenty of bugfixes, too.
- If Geoffrey deploys the magic tent on top of himself, it will return to his inventory rather than pinning him to the ground.
- Reagents are now used automatically even when in inventory sub-containers such as bags and chests.
- An item must now be in Geoffrey's top-level inventory before he can equip it.
- Music is now used more sparingly and with context, instead of just randomly choosing a track whenever you start a level.
- Geoffrey can no longer open, pick items from, or drop items into faraway containers, and cannot activate distant objects (yet).
- Corpses being cured will not disappear when the spell is cast without enough other ingredients to complete the spell.
- Geoffrey can no longer give items to Lucius.
- Game no longer crashes when pressing keys on a scroll gump.
- The game now frees all its texture memory before loading a new level. This should make the game work on most recent video cards, but may result in more loading delays during gameplay. (A preloading system is in the works.)
My special thanks to all those who've played and provided feedback and bug reports for Cypress! I'll keep you posted as the final stretch continues. The game's 1.0 will be released in early July for playtesting of the full quest. Watch IndieDB for the latest news on "The Testament of the White Cypress"!
There is one known bug thus far: the game will crash if you double-click on the same map square you are currently occupying. Sorry, this will be fixed.
Here are the download links:
Cypress 0.95 for Windows: Indiedb.com
Cypress 0.95 for Linux: Indiedb.com
Cypress 0.95 for Mac OSX: Indiedb.com
