UPDATE: An updated Windows build has been posted.  Please use that build instead of this one.

Here it is, a day early;  milestone 8, the “everything outside the game” milestone.  Mostly what you’ll find in this build is an outside-of-game structure including a startup sequence, a title screen, credits, a loading screen, etc.  The Windows build has also received a lot of love, including a fixed application icon, an installer (and uninstaller), and saving files into OS-correct locations.

Notable changes:

• Now have a brief (and rather placeholder) startup sequence. (Skippable by mouse click)
• Added a title screen, where game modes can be chosen.
• Added an options dialog, which provides *some* options.  (Note:  video options require a restart.  Not yet providing access to resolution options.)
• Simple credits scroll, accessible from the title screen.
• New loading screen and transition into the game.
• First-pass at a system for supporting game tutorials. Very simple example tutorial in place now, accessible through the Scenarios interface.
• Game camera now behaves more reasonably in tricky situations while zoomed in.
• Quest editing interface now opens and closes automatically as NPCs are selected/deselected.
• No longer intentionally drops to 10fps when the game window is moved to the background. (We do still intentionally drop to 10fps if the window is actually minimised)
• Now supports disabling HighDPI/Retina rendering, on HighDPI/Retina screens.  (Often useful if the device’s GPU can’t quite keep up with its actual number of pixels)
• As a test, when placing a building the mouse wheel is used to rotate the building, instead of zooming the view.  The “click and drag” interface to set a building’s facing works as well, the same way it worked in Milestone 7.

Fixes:

• Removed the visible ‘selection circle’ which used to be visible when a region was selected.
• Support for non-animated cursor.
• Towns can now be destroyed after having been placed.
• No console window on Win32.
• Game icon now works on Win32.
• Window title is now set properly.
• When a build tool is active, its building outline is no longer drawn in the world when the cursor is over a GUI item.
• First “End of day” summary now correctly reports that it was Day 1, not Day 2.
• Fixed a lot of crashes and other issues around destroying buildings which were pointed to by quests, or destroying NPCs which had given PCs quests.
• NPCs can’t be placed in a region which has no respawn point. (With no active buildings int he region, they would end up in an infinite loop trying to generate their initial set of quests)
• Fixed spurious “and return” string in the quest editing interface, for quests which don’t require returning to the quest giver to turn in.

Technical changes:

• Now using PhysFS for file loading/saving
• All water ripples are now drawn using a single instanced draw.
• All clouds are now drawn using a single instanced draw.
• Initial game map generation now runs in a background thread;  all still runs.

Otherwise, this build is very much like the Milestone 7 build.  It is not yet a fully playable vertical slice, but it’s getting close.

If this is the first build you’ve looked at, you can use the in-game tutorial to learn some of the controls, but mostly you’ll need to rely on the first-time instructions from Milestone 7;  they all still apply.

Download links:

• Win32 build (updated build available:  see here)
• OSX build (requires OS X Yosemite)

Have a play, and I’d be quite grateful if you’d let me know how well it works for you, either in a comment here, or directly via e-mail.

Thanks, everyone!  Now it’s time for me to start thinking about what’s coming in MS9.  I’m thinking that save game support is a pretty big requirement, so that might be next.  Also, I have some big improvements in mind for how towns and grinding zones are created.  More details on that in the next day or two, though.