The next major overhaul has arrived! This update comes with improvements and overhauled parts. So, what's new?
New installer
The installer is completely re-done. Moving it from Installshield to WiX Toolset and xeam Visual Installer provides a quicker and sleeker installation experience and improving the repair function.
NOTE: You'll need to uninstall the old version before installing the new one. Having both the old and the new version may damage both of them, making them hard to remove.
Overhauled Northbridge Platform
Northbridge Platform (Launcher, Save Manager, and the PDF Reader) was re-written from the ground up to the Windows Presentation Foundation. The new version utilizes DirectX instead of GDI, providing a lightning fast response to the GUI. There are under the hood changes to improve performance as well and making the launcher easier to maintain. In addition, some areas of the launcher use native dialogs for picking files and folders. And of course, it supports high DPI displays, so no blurry fonts. Did I mention that supports 64bit systems natively?
Improved performance
When I moved the battle system to the new one, there were some things that need to be ironed out. One of those things was the performance. In low-end systems, the game ran slowly during battles. It took me a long time to figure it out, but after moving around things, tweaking and doing some modifications, the game runs much faster. During exploration, the rendering was improved, using smarter calls to render and tweaking the garbage collection system in the engine. In battles, some of the scripts were removed, as they were causing severe slowdown. The result: vastly improved performance. Almost 60 frames per second.
Performance, performance, performance! (Sorry, I couldn't resist).
## And the minor stuff.
- Journal now records all side-missions.
- Some balancing changes.
- Celtia got a makeover.
- Some tweaks on some maps.
- New icons for the spears.
That is all for now. See you in the next post.
