Raving and drowning

So let's take a break from those Consuming Shadow updates to talk about a couple of videos I put up on Youtube lately. It's a new vaguely Let's Play-related thing I've been doing with Gabriel that we call Let's Drown Out. We did a video on Quake 2 first and then we did one on Blue Stinger. Here they are.

The idea was, there's a lot of LPs where a couple of guys pretend to be LPing a game when actually the game's just kind of there, and they're not discussing it but mainly wittering on about whatever comes to mind instead. Why do that, we wondered, when we could do precisely the same thing as that but be completely up-front about it. So we play a really boring game, with no intention of actually finishing the thing, and then when we can't think of anything to say about it, we pick from a list of newsworthy podcast topics to discuss instead. Is it an LP or a podcast? It's neither. It's Let's Drown Out. Enjoy it before we got bored of the concept.

Yet Another Consuming Shadow Update

One more version of the Consuming Shadow beta to fix the last few major issues. Not that I want to give the impression of being fussy or anything. I've uploaded it as a .zip this time because the installer was a bit crap (the uninstall had a tendency to delete everything in the same directory) Download it from the usual page, and here's the list of changes for 1.0.0.2:

Bug fixes:

- Fixed an error that crashed the game if you tried to get equipment when all equipment has been acquired
- Fixed that darn 'spawning trapped inside a wall' bug
- Fixed flying insect monsters getting stuck outside the room
- Fixed loot items dropped by monsters ending up outside the room
- Fixed an error wherein the Ministry kept sending the same gameplay tip over and over
- Fixed the thing where arriving in a town with an injured passenger prevents quest events from occurring
- Fixed lockpicking icon not appearing on east/west doors when player has zero picks

Gameplay changes:

 - Tweaks to safe town jobs:
    - Job payment is now partially based on distance to town
    - Jobs screen now shows distance and vague direction to town
    - New job: Single monster fights (similar to combat encounters on the road)
    - You must now complete dungeon jobs before you can receive payment
- Texts and encounters that interrupt car journeys now resume journey automatically when resolved (except when a new quest begins or your position is changed)
- Lockpicking now shows percentage chance of success
- You no longer lose sanity for fleeing from hunter enemies (because you're supposed to)
- Rooms with unrecovered loot now show up yellow on the minimap
- Added couple more tutorial messages to clarify new controls
- Enemies now only start making noise when they're close enough
- When possessing multiple special injuries, hospitals will now treat severe bleeding FIRST
- 'Shoot yourself' trap now only appears when sanity falls below 75%
- Removed wall runes from endgame dungeon; they had a tendency to flat out give away the invading god's rune
- Raised pitch on sounds made by the smaller puker to differentiate it from the bigger, stronger puker
- A few tweaks to monster behaviour 

Save files and score data from old versions won't carry over to this one, I'm afraid: had to change some file names and shit.

Also, a number of users who were playing it under Windows 8.1 reported a weird graphical problem where everything looked completely messed up with art assets where they shouldn't be all over the place. I took this up with the Game Maker people, and they assured me that this was a known error that has now been fixed in the latest version, and now I've compiled the game in a fully updated version of GM, it should be fixed.

I swear this will be the last beta release, 'cos I'm going to concentrate on the full version now, with more events, dungeon types, characters, alternate text, etc. Actually, you know what occurred to me after I released it, like the mother in Home Alone sitting bolt upright on the plane and screaming 'KEVIN'? Final boss fight. That was literally what I did, sat bolt upright and screamed 'FINAL BOSS FIGHT!'. Seems a shame you don't actually have to face off the Ancient after you cast the banishment ritual. So I'm gonna rustle something up in that sort of direction for starters.

Thanks again to everyone for the feedback and bug reports. I haven't been able to reply to your emails because there's just too many, but I read every single one and made use of the data, so rest assured you all made a difference to this lonely Englishman and his silly hobbies.