However due to some strange circumstances, I was able to greatly reduce the work required needed to translate, probably at the cost of shaving a few years off my life. Likewise, I realised the game would need very little tweaking to actually work with gamemaker's save functionality, which is normally limited to simple games. I was very wrong and it was quite a hassle getting saving working, but still a lot easier than coding it from scratch! I still will likely be rewriting saving in the far future, so that visiting previous floors will be possible, but that's for another day.
I've been working with some translators to release a chinese translation as well this patch.
Saving
Your game will now save automatically every floor and when you quit the game. This allows you to continue runs in the event of a crash, power outage, or simply needing to leave your computer. Due to this system being an automatic feature of gamemaker, I'm not entirely in control of how it works, so just to be cautious, I would not rely on this unless you absolutely have to.
When you relaunch dredgers, you'll get an option to either continue playing or delete your old save and start a new game.
Save games are not compatible between versions. Even small patches might break them. If this happens, sorry in advance.
Translation
Almost all the game's text can now be translated! The main exceptions are a few places where the text is baked into the sprites, and difficult to recreate the effect with dynamic text. This is particularly noticeable in the main menu, along with most 'confirm' and 'cancel' buttons.
As a short tutorial, if you'd like to translate the game to your language:
Go into the language section of the options menu.
Export Language File
Go to 'C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Dredgers\Languages'
Copy the EN_GB folder and rename it to your language's name.
Then you can start editing the files inside it!
Due to the overwhelming request from Chinese players, a Chinese/CN translation was added, with the help of three fans. 谢谢！
Changelog:
As per usual, changelog is just a compilation of my #dev_logs on the discord, so it will not contain every single change unfortunately, but most of the major ones at least:
- Basically nothing.
- No really, there's been almost no changes outside of the two major features.
- Practically no bug fixes either.
- Announcements on the side of the screen are now colour coded by importance.
- Buff System has been entirely rewritten internally, but this changes basically nothing.
- Bogrisen, Trunkit and Tenders can no longer self extinguish fire, you'll need water or to splash a potion. I don't remember why I made this change but have fun suffering.
- Trunkits no longer activate rosy outcome when hurt by fire or internal damage.
- 'Heard Incantation' buff from the scribe's copy skill no longer floods the screen with buffs.
- Fencer's SPD boost is now LVL+DEX instead of a flat 10.
- Added a secret race specific class, shh.
- A new rare chest type can now spawn in the place of unlocked golden chests. Now and in the future, items from it will generally be a reference to my friends, and things I like. They'll also be added for anyone who significantly contributed to the game. Subject to time and my discretion. Items from these chests are not lore accurate in any way. These rare items can always be sold for 5 green gems.
- Mana potions are slightly more useful now, and a bit less deadly: They'll consume 1 stack to restore 10% energy, but pause when your energy is capped out at 100%. Stacks will also disappear, 1 per 10 seconds.
- Iron Skin buff now halves damage taken externally along with boosting DEF.
- Summon circles now automatically summon after 2 seconds, so you don't need to recast. This allows you to practically spam summoning circles.
- Wisps have been nerfed. This is due to them being entirely 'free' so you can amass a huge amount of them, making them quite powerful.
And that's about it. Thankfully this should be the last time I need to mention saving and translations in an update post for a long time! As for future plans? I'm hoping to have a 3 week holiday for Christmas and new years, after that? Still plan to work on my next game for the near future. However, depending how popular the update/Chinese translation is, I may spend some time each week developing dredgers because I'm addicted to making it. If you need a more detailed idea, refer to the Version 45 update post.
Hope you all enjoy your holidays, thanks for reading all the way through and supporting me!
