I'm thrilled to ship another patch today - welcome to Roguefort 0.33.0.
The first big update is that overworld travel just got a big change, because every village, town and city now has a waystone. It's an actual stone, too, which is always spawned close to the market stone. More than that, you can now build AS MANY WAYSTONES AS YOU LIKE. So, you can create a supermassive portal network, not only in Cantal in Adventure Mode, but also in the infinite worlds available in The Crossing mode. The cost of them gets higher with each portal, but there's now a sink for crystal, so save up your crystal.
The second is that I have implemented the first foundations of screen reader support in the game. I am grateful to community member chronos_sacaria for raising this in the Steam discussion forums and providing helpful information for me to work with. The end goal is to provide a complete and AAA level of screen reader support for Roguefort, so that people with any level of sight can play it. If you are a blind player, please get in touch if there are features you'd like to see or particular reader support you require.
There's also a few fixes bundled into this patch, but it's not as a bug fix focussed as the previous two. I took a "break" from the bug fixing to focus on feature development again, to keep things moving along.
Thanks for playing and for your time,
Tim
Waystones in every settlement
- Every village, town and city now has its own waystone, which a real standing stone on the square, on the main continent and on every Crossing shore. Your current save gets them too, so the places that never had one have one now. (bobinhedgeorge, madness5520, nalathnidragon, jamesjamesjames666, coffexu, nastytoxic, rexymoo22., rovingrover, uwumagnet, pocketnuts, ravenor., everyzig314)
- A waystone looks like one at long last... it is a rough standing stone with a crystal in its face and three rune dots, dark while it sleeps and lit blue once it's a awake, in 2D, 2.5D and first person.
- The market stone is gold now too so you can tell it from a waystone at a glance. Riftstones stay violet, waystones are blue. (bobinhedgeorge, tetraphyte)
- you can walk into a sleeping waystone to wake it. Passing within 30 tiles still wakes it too, the same as before. Walk into an awake one and the world map opens on its Waystones list.
- Fast travel, a defeat or loading a save sets you down beside the stone, and (I hope) never on top of it.
- An awake stone sends blue motes up off its crystal, glints now and then and glows faintly at night. When a stone wakes its runes light up from the bottom, a trip lands in a flash of blue and the stone at the far end answers. All of it follows your Comfort settings and Sensory-friendly mode.
- The Look command tell you the name of the stone (e.g. "Winterford Waystone") and tells you whether it's awake or not
Build as many waystones as you like (powerrrrr overwhelmingggg)
- Building a second waystone no longer knocks down your first. Raise as many as you can pay for, anywhere on the overworld, as long as each one stands 10 tiles or more from any other stone. (coffexu, tthfry, ravenor., calandro, naikhou.)
- Crystal is the price: the first stone costs 20 crystal, the second 40, the third 60 and so on, on top of the wood, stone and gold it always took. A stone you build is awake the moment it stands.
- Each of your stones gets its own name, like "Odelette's Waystone 2", and you can rename it from the map. Demolish one of your own and you get a quarter of its base cost back.
- Undoing a build now gives back crystal and stone you paid from your pack. Only the counters used to come back.
The world map
- The world map has a Waystones list (the chip on the map, T, or Menu on a controller): your own stones, the awake settlement stones and the sleeping ones you've found, nearest first, each with Travel, Centre and Rename. It says "You are here" when you're standing at one.
- When a trip can't happen, the list tells you why in one sentence. Trying to travel from a dungeon or from a ship's deck used to do nothing at all.
- Your own stones have their own map icon, indigo while asleep and blue when awake, and the minimap marks every stone in view.
- Rivers no longer cover towns on the world map. The Fen's mouth used to hide half of Fennmarche, and riverside towns lost their bridges and quays under the river's band. (everyzig314)
Screen reader support
- The game now talks to screen readers properly. New log lines, Look command readouts, each line of dialogue and the menu row under your cursor are all read out, and a window that opens is read by its title first. (chronos_sacaria)
- Pronouns now show in brackets after a name, "Odelette (she/her)", everywhere a name shows its pronouns. The old dot between the name and the pronouns was skipped by screen readers, so they heard "Odeletteshe/her". (chronos_sacaria)
- Settings -> Gameplay has a new Screen reader box. "Read the game to a screen reader" is on by default, because a blind player can't find a setting they can't hear. It also lets NVDA and JAWS pass your keys straight to the game. If your screen reader isn't picked up, tick "Always turn on screen reader support".
- Walking around a village used to read the whole "Location" line every time you crossed its edge. You now hear the full line on your first visit, the place's name on a return trip, and the danger level only when it changes.
- This is the first step, and there's more to come, including but no limited to a voice of its own for the Steam Deck, "read status" and "repeat last" keys, a way to read the map around you, audio cues and more settings for how much gets read. If you play with a screen reader, I'd love to hear how it goes, and like I said in the intro to this post please do let me know because I listen and I will implement stuff as best I can
Fixes
- Ground effects showed in 2.5D again. Level-up seals, scorch rings, frost and every other mark on the ground were being drawn under the ground itself. sorry to the 2.5D players :(
- The flash when you arrive from fast travel now shows. The camera jump used to wipe it before you saw it
- In co-op, a partner could attune your waystone from anywhere on the map. They have to stand at it now.
- The market stone could be demolished by a player in town. It's protected now, like the waystone beside it.
- In older saves, a few tutors and training dummies stood exactly where the new waystone goes. They've moved to the nearest free spot.
- Co-op partners need to be on 0.33.0 to play together, because the waystone changes are sent between you.
