Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (V2) news & patch notes

RPGCodex Poll for 2019 of 101 Greatest RPGs Of All Time Only 22nd? I knew I should have fixed that stacking algorithm. Ranking here. Pretty good for an indie. Note that with the exception of Underrail (which is a fantastic post-apocalyptic game) that every other game on that list higher than Grimoire cost at least a million bucks and had a minimum of a dozen people working full-time on it under real producers. Grimoire is the only game in the top 25 of that list that was mostly written on a laptop during a train commute. I am currently working on the next update for the game, which will feature a new splash screen (just for the novelty) and numerous small enhancements in addition to the usual tweaks/bug fixes.

Update 2.0.0.20

• INT (Intelligence) now gains extra skillpoints for characters in MENTAL category at Level Advancement if INT >= 25
• Holy fountain effects regain SPIRIT
• Persistent spell "Sonic Shield" now working
• All spells involving attacks with illusion, hypnosis or light now have improved saving throws if persistent spell MIRROR MIRAGE or GAZE REFLECTION is active
• Crafts succeed with much lower skill in required skills once craft is acquired.
• Bug fixed applying poison to target on penetration in weapons poisoned by crafting
• Initial skills for races/professions are based on a 3D6 roll plus any bonus modifiers for their race-class combination
• Fixed Demonhead Coin Easter Egg
• Fixed Owl Miniquest
• Energy firearms correctly discharge power cells
• Lethal blow for open handed fighting for Assassins/Jesters only with LETHAL BLOW > 75
• MEDITATION skill now enhances SCRIBE skill when scribing spellbooks
• "ACCURACY" skill added to To-Hit bonus for ALL Thrown, Shot, Lashed and Hurled weapons
• Heal, regain magic points and restore vitality at double the normal metabolic rate sleeping in front of a hearth
• Fixes to some text formatting in message window
• Small fixes to interface to improve keyboard support
• Improvements to encounter groups and some monster data

Update 2.0.0.15 New icon with tooltip for dropping items on the cell. Resistances can now improve versus CONSTITUTION, up to a maximum of 60 out of 100 or the race limit for the resistance. Each time your character saves versus some kind of attack in the game, they have a small chance of increasing their resistance to those kinds of attacks depending on their CONSTITUTION ! Note that this is impossible until a character's CON reaches at least 50 or higher ! This is an incentive to increase a character's CONSTITUTION at level advancement, especially with weaker characters like Feyfolk and Aeorbs. Eventually the resistance will increase by successfully saving against attacks that apply a save versus that resistance. This is actually an original game rule in Grimoire that was simply commented back in. At the end of combats you will get a notification that a certain party member's resistance(s) have improved. Update 2.0.0.14 A longstanding bug involving a combination of keystrokes with clicks on the Inventory Hoard Selector box has been fixed. This bug was fixed thanks to excellent feedback on how to reproduce it. If you find any bug in Grimoire, please see if you can describe how to reproduce it in a reliable fashion. If you were holding down the ENTER key while clicking some of the buttons in this box with an item selected, it was crashing because of the keyboard buffer overflowing with keys in the middle of a redraw/repaint event. It was also possible to lock down the buttons doing this when they were disabled and then flipped to enabled while clicking and holding down the ENTER key. All of these problems are now fixed. Any other bugs related to this kind of bug are also fixed. Some minor glitches with monster attacks and some use of items around NPCs (caused by absent data) also fixed. Update 2.0.0.12 I have uploaded an extensive new version with far superior indicators for level advancement, new skills at character creation, fixes to items, spells, weapons and an assert fix. When you advance a level and have undistributed points, spells or increases remaining you get an icon over top of where the individual leap to Inventory Workshop is now until you have distributed them all. I thought it might help as a reminder. Also the funny glitch exiting after only selecting two spells is fixed. Many, many other minor glitches fixed.

If you have played Grimoire and enjoyed it, please write a review for it! If 10% of the players who have enjoyed Grimoire would write a review of it, the game would be rated overwhelmingly positive in only 24 hours. Early on, Grimoire was subject to an organized campaign that was coordinated on Reddit, Quarter to Three, Broken Forum and many private forums with political slants (no gamers, just social justice warriors) to abuse the refund policy on Steam by purchasing the game, letting it run for a few minutes and then writing a bad review before asking for a refund. Many of these "reviews" made it obvious that the "owner" had never played the game and almost looked like it was copied and pasted in from a forum somewhere, basically rehashing things that never happened and bugs that never were and issues that only existed in the minds of people at Reddit. This was all politically motivated by the same sort of people who screamed at the sky in public in huge crowds because Donald Trump won the election. For example, over a hundred people agreed on a forum that it was racist and cultural appropriation that one of the pirates in the game was named "Black Pierre." I wish I could make stuff up like this, it would make for a fantastic narrative but I am afraid even my talents fall short in the face of this kind of delusional thinking. I'm glad now I never put in that "Blackboard Puzzle" I was thinking about that was solved using "Oreo" cookies. Incredibly, many of the people who "refunded" the game simply made a pirate copy and have been playing the game for over a year, whilst asking for support on the forum and playing very intensively for hundreds of hours. With the release of V2, I started to ban these people if they didn't have the purchase icon beside their names on the forum. You have to draw the line somewhere. I estimate based on downloads from pirate sites that Grimoire has been downloaded and played by over a 100,000 people for well over a hundred hours on average. I don't really care about piracy because I wasn't making a game like Grimoire for pirates. I was making it for fans of the genre. Any game that goes on Steam has to put up with some of the great diversity in the Steam user pool, which is considerable. I don't believe Grimoire currently has a fair rating on Steam at all and I think it's been deliberately skewed by politically motivated attacks the same as Donald Trump has been in the newspapers the past 3 years. If you want to help correct this situation and you enjoyed playing the game, please take 5 minutes to post a review. The average game on Steam is never played at all or else only a couple hours before it is abandoned forever. Grimoire is one of the only games on Steam that people can play for 300 hours and then complain because they think this or that race does not recharge mana fast enough - or because their party got killed by a monster. Think about how crazy that is, then think about that plus a person who has actually pirated the game complaining in this fashion. You can see why supporting users on Steam can be very "challenging" and now you know why people call them "precious snowflakes." There's entitlement ... then there is entitlement. If you want to help Grimoire and you enjoy the game, please take a few minutes to write a review.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/3fcbd6a0f9a581f403985c5a440090fda4959953.png The manual is online hosted at the Golden Era Games site : Grimoire Manual Version 1.0 This is convenient until the permanent copy for printing is ready. The online manual will be updated regularly until it reflects any detail remaining to enjoy playing the game. Some of the tables are formatted oddly but revisions to these layouts will correct them so they print off correctly for hard copies. The manual is currently around 100 pages, will probably be 200 pages when it is ready to ship as a hardback. There is an "Australia Day Sale" on presently for Grimoire at 50% off until the 29th of January. The latest update to V2 will be available soon with numerous further enhancements to gameplay.

Have put an updated build on Steam that fixes a possible glitch in inventory management and a couple changes to configuration to protect users from screwing up their own configuration file so badly they have to delete it to get the default. You should not be able to set a screen mode or scaling in configuration unless fullscreen mode is first set to ON. Otherwise both these values will remain at defaults for a windowed mode. I suspect this might solve some problems where users toy with their configuration file and set something like a windowed mode with scaling and a different screen resolution on. Working on the manual every day, should be out by this Friday. Almost all Grimoire milestones are due next Friday and this one is no different. The manual is bound to come out by next Friday.

There has been a fairly brisk trade going on in micro-issues, minor patches, tiny bug fixes and tweaks since Version 2 went up shortly before Christmas. Response to the game is good, it is selling really well. I am working on the manual here, mainly adjusting the tables from the games so they are formatted correctly in the glossary and updating them to reflect changes to the data that has taken place in the past couple of months. The new game feels and plays substantially better than the first incarnation for many reasons. This often happens as a result of feedback from many people playing it for long periods of time. A game as complex as a Wizardry really needs 50 testers playing it full time for a couple of years to get it refined, so Grimoire is only now starting to show the mirror polish of a very well adjusted game. I have tweaked the data so many times to try to fine tune it you would not believe it. If you have enjoyed playing Grimoire, please write a good review for it. It helps enormously. If just 10% of the people who purchased it this previous week wrote a good review the rating would easily move into Positive and stay there for good. I will continue polishing it before it moves onto other venues next year but I am proud it was on Steam before it was anywhere else, it is truly a great distribution platform for Independent Game Developers. The support for developers behind the scenes is fantastic, believe me.

Version 2 of Grimoire is now live on the Steam Store with a 50% sale through to the New Year! The most incredible old fashioned computer roleplaying game just got a little more awesome! CURRENT WISHLISTS # : 39,812 (combined) Huge amounts of tweaks, fixes, adjustments and new content is found in this version, including the crafting workshop and all the item enhancements! You can see all the items in your inventory, sort them on a variety of attributes like type and value, assay them, poison them, forge them, enchant them and merge them into new items! There is now a forge, alchemy bench, shrine and hearth in the game where different classes acquire various crafting arts they can apply to items to modify them or greatly improve them in combat! The manual is being output to .PDF shortly and will be made available on the store from the main page freely so it can be examined by players who have not yet purchased the game to get a good feel for the mechanics. It is extremely extensive and explains all facets of gameplay with detailed explanations of all modes including combat, NPC interaction, character creation, level up, character review and the many mini interfaces like lockpicking and door forcing. It is suitable for printing and formatted for A4 output. Beginning a new game from the classic game start will reveal new monster graphics and additional features have been added to the original maps. None of this should affect existing save games but players who have completed these areas may not see some of the new events. This will not affect the new regions at all which constitute brand new areas in the game. If everybody who enjoys playing Grimoire wrote a review for it, we'd have 95% positive rating on Steam! Please write a review for Grimoire if you have had fun playing the game, even if you are now in a second playthrough! Help push Grimoire back up to it's original 92% positive rating before the assault of the SJW refunders!

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/d634ede1f3c4d5f494115d0ccdb2a3bd755c57a3.png You may believe that a single roleplaying game could not fulfill all your deepest desires and wildest dreams. That's because you have not played V2 of Grimoire. In Grimoire V2 these are just a few of the things you will be able to experience:

• Travel to the ends of time and back (or beyond)
• Hunt down exotic insects for the Rhattu Mafia
• Reach your personal potential at the world renowned Mass Gainers Spa
• Bust up an evil cult of Wyrm worshippers at midnight
• Enjoy a glamorous lifestyle as a high roller at the casino tables
• Have psychedelic visions of other worlds
• Explore the realm of the Titans and an abandoned village
• Actually cast purify air spell and have it purify the air

The manual is only a couple of hours away from being completed! YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN THIS WEEK!

For 25 years I have simply wanted to add some minigames to Grimoire when higher priority items were finally completed. I solved this problem to release V1 by cutting out the Rhattu Casino altogether, saving me all the work I would need to do to stock it with minigames. I figured I would do that at a later date and so I have. Nobody would ever miss it if they never knew it was supposed to be in there until I did finish it off. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/ba1310253c5534718cc733ae564cbe297effaf76.png I know it is ridiculous and largely non-essential for any game but the truth is that Might&Magic and Bard's Tale and many of the other great classic blobbers had minigames thrown into them. I always felt that in order for any RPG to be considered for inclusion into the ranks of the classics, you had to have some minigames in there somewhere. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/f7824dfecf717fa1917dbbb29abbe7027f49d2c5.png The minigames are done now. They are short, fun, zero learning curve and add a bit of color to the Rhattu's underground gambling casino where text might have sufficed but would not have been as much fun. The casino and it's inhabitants figure into the general plot with the two Paragons that have been restored to the storyline in place of just the one that was there before. Khan Raji now explains that one of the Paragons was hidden in the Grand Refuge of the Ancients - but the other one was pawned to the Rhattu mob when the Imperial Palace became desperate for money. We have to investigate to determine what the mob wants in return for giving the Paragon back to the Palace. This entails exploration of the now expanded regions like the Titan Mines and the Fissure. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/220730d81b0a99fe41be940b348980ef268e7d80.png

Face it, a game is no fun if there are no short routes you can eventually discover to do pretty much whatever you want to do in it. Even with more balance added, there is still a need for some backdoors so that players can tackle bigger challenges with wiser resource management. There must be spam and it must be salty or the game will feel stifling eventually! One of the biggest lacks in Grimoire has been the economy. Most players who know anything about merchants quickly discover they can make extraordinary amounts of gold just selling redundant/extraneous treasure. This is why experienced players refrain from killing NPCs, amongst other reasons. You need shopkeepers who can buy your goods to remain alive. Believe it or not, there was an original plan to manage these sums by providing useful ways to spend grand displays of wealth ... based on a very rare item called the "Patron Argent." This was in the original design document in 1992 but last year with pressure from all sides to get the game out, I slashed it out (with other features now present in V2) and it was sorely missed. It provided a simple way to level up players at shrines without having the required experience points, paying instead in gold to increase your players current level! You may wonder what the unicorn was doing in the Grimoire logo onscreen - that is the Patron Argent item, which was never placed in the game when V1 came out! It now works at all the new shrines in the game. You present the "Patron Argent" and are offered a one-time chance at that shrine to kick your party members up to the new level by parting with cash. Through strategic use of shrines you can reach much higher levels for characters without grinding the experience points. V2 + Manual is coming very soon, with these and many other new features implemented that practically make it a whole different game. I was glad to finally finish Grimoire the way I envisioned it, with the design document serving as my checklist for all the play mechanics I wanted to be present. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/25c77c0be91beba971288c7a0e9ee6831f0cff79.png

I never dreamed after I released Grimoire that the biggest outcry would be that the game got too easy with the exploits. I left the exploits in so players could discover them and that way nobody could say the game was too hard once you knew what they were. Somehow, MUH BALINSE became a thing. Woe onto those who ask for MUH BALINSE and receive it, for they shall weep tears of snowflake angst when it arrives! The biggest spell exploits like Deep Freeze have been nerfed down to much more modest levels. The Bards have had their skills trimmed to where they are formidable but not decisive. This has made the game much more difficult. Monsters think harder about targeting when they are directing their attacks and they save better against the attacks by the party in all forms. The game has gotten harder and fairer across the board, with spells like TIMESTOP reduced to brief advantages that fade quickly. I plan to release V2 within a week but it is likely that work on V3 will begin thereafter and there will still be tweaking going on before the end of the year. A game this complex requires colossal cycles of testing and adjustment that I was not able to complete before getting it out last year, despite several successive Q&As with thousands of players on the beta version. It is only recently within the last two years I got automated testing and test harnesses for Grimoire. If I had to do a similar game again from scratch, this time the unit testing framework would be one of the first things I'd get running. The fine tuning of the game is very difficult compared to most software because a single percentage point can tip the logarithmic curves of the way combat works and responds to the player. I was reading the original history of Wizardry once about the extensive test frameworks created by Woodhead and Greenberg - and it is obvious how brilliant they were to foresee what kind of testing was needed for quality assurance in a game like this. I had been working on Grimoire for five years before it became apparent that I had badly neglected this aspect when starting work on the game. Coming from my background mostly writing arcade games for the Commodore 64 this was something I had not been properly exposed to. Trying to play catch-up now but these things are much easier to design at the outset than at the end.

WISHLIST COUNT as of 30/10/2018 : 36,992

The original design document written in 1994 had several different cutscenes listed as part of the Grand Refuge of the Ancients in the game. These were supposed to be strange mystical visions you had in the scrying mirrors scattered throughout the Grand Refuge in addition to the encounter with Ganesh, the guardian of the Paragon Minor. As yet another deadline for release loomed, I could not source the artwork for the nine visions so I ended up vastly reducing the scope of this area and cut out the visions entirely. I did this in many other places where my plans had eventually outstripped my budget for artwork and supporting media. They are now present in V2 and very relevant to the spirit of these maps. Kind of changes the entire experience when this level is explored and restores the place to it's intended original purpose of providing the player a spiritual triptych as they make their way through it. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/5c24b94494f844cb686c89281c86bd6bb2ea918f.png https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/f0773fac4c6099692557c13c9ee96320c34bf0e7.png https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/29175391/a0e528a826cb312ce6aae5e3167e7ed499f9447c.png

I did quite a bit of work on the turns to make them a little more intelligent after doing buffer compares of views and found a way to make them a lot smoother than they were. They now more closely resemble the "swivels" in LANDS OF LORE except ours are a little more even. I had to get rid of the configuration for steps in turns in order to assure this happens at the right speed with the right perspective. Version Two of Grimoire is really looking SPECTACULAR! The new regions are awesome and all integrated into the existing story! Working together with the new crafting system you have added dimensions to game play mechanics that did not even exist in the first version. Inventory workshop needs a little more tweaking, one thing I was working on today was highlighting all possible merge candidates for an item when you click on the "MERGE" button to show you what you might be able to successfully merge given the current party member's vocation and skill levels. Extensive trials of poisoned items tested in combat, forged items, sharpened blades and enchanted weapons. All of them degrade with use in combat until they wear off. The enchanted weapons lose their aura if you kill a monster with them. All of these play mechanics have been balanced in order to make the crafts useful but not exploits. The wishlist had now climbed to a level that I am pretty confident will justify a $9.95 price discount when V2 comes out. After that the game will likely run a regular price of $19.95 including when it goes to GOG. If you purchase on Steam and Grimoire releases on GOG, you can be assured that your purchase on Steam will be transferred to allow you access on GOG as well - and you will have gotten it at half the price on GOG.

WISHLIST COUNT as of 25/08/2018 : 36,743

The second release of Grimoire at the one year anniversary of the game's release is progressing well! Brand new inventory workshop (see and sort all items, now apply all special crafts for classes) is done and extremely helpful during gameplay, almost changes the whole experience! In addition to new regions, new NPCs, new story lines, new enhancements to gameplay and two new title screens! Many players have complained about the high initial price of Grimoire compared to other roleplaying games on Steam. We are considering a major price discount at the release of V2 and you can help decide what it will be! Before we release V2, we will set the sale price according to the wishlist volume on Steam according to the figures below! Permanent & Sale price reductions at launch of V2 : (Spoiler below) 10K Wishlist = $29.95, Sale Price $24.95 25K Wishlist = $24.95, Sale Price $19.95 50K Wishlist = $19.95, Sale Price $9.95 100K Wishlist = $9.95, Permanent & Sale Price If you want to lower the price permanently on the Steam store both for V2 and any future updates, you can help by getting your friends to wishlist the game and encouraging other Steam users to wishlist it. This is a chance to make the game affordable permanently for diehard fans of turn-based old skool roleplaying games! Keep watching this page for further updates on our progress on V2, it is going to be even more awesome than the first release of Grimoire - if that can be imagined !!! UPDATE 14/09/2018 New Content Finalized New content to complete the story of Hyperborea and finish Grimoire as described in original design document written in 1994! New Regions : Tattletale Circus ! Ratfink Hideaway ! Tomb of Doom ! Theosophy Lodge ! Farulosonoth Fissure ! Titan Mines ! Titan Underground Lake ! Mount Periwinkle ! Periwinkle Village ! Mass Gainers Spa ! Cataclysm ! UPDATE 21/09/2018 Patronage Works In V2! Players noticed that the "Patron" tag for vocations was purely ornamental in the first version of Grimoire. It was another feature that was in the original design document but did not make it into the first release because of time constraints. The purpose of the "Patron" tag hinged on shrines, which did not yet exist when the game was released. Once added to support the new functionality of Inventory Workshop, they can also fulfill their original purpose to provide a unique way of leveling-up for certain vocations. When you find the shrine that is appropriate to a profession (they are scattered throughout the game) you have a one-time only opportunity to pay in gold at that shrine to advance a level! This should probably be saved for very high level characters so they can gain yet another level without grinding the experience points but simply BUYING a level increase! UPDATE 30/09/2018 More areas added to bring total closer to original 224 envisioned. Screenshot of the "house" portal added to main page. Endworld Cabin Periwinkle Blacksmith Periwinkle Kitchen Periwinkle Hostel Periwinkle Chapel Periwinkle Library Swamp Shack Accursed Church Evil Undercroft The last two are part of a Lovecraftian mini-adventure quest that is purely optional. The Accursed Church can only be accessed at night with a password given out as an Easter Egg for completion of another new quest in the game.

This update features the "Spirit" bar (SPI) mechanics now working! When you encounter a particularly evil or horrifying creature, each party member has to Save VS that monster's appearance with their DEVOTION attribute, which is really their courage in the presence of malevolence. If they successfully save at the start of the encounter and their SPIRIT bar is kept at maximum, they will not have to save during combat against that creature again. If they do not save they will begin to accumulate the FEAR condition and have to save each round once again for that monster. Their SPIRIT bar will continue dropping and their FEAR will increase, possibly incapacitating them. There are several ways that a character's spirit can be restored. One of the most likely ways is to sleep in an identified "Haven" cell (marked as a red flag in the map when pressing the Haven button). The character can also have "Bless" or "Cerebral Shield" or "Miracle" spell cast on them during combat. It is likely that this mechanic will undergo some adjustments by the time V2 is released but the underlying principles will remain unchanged. Some monsters may have their evil quotient adjusted in response to feedback. Otherwise, once the SPIRIT bar has dropped, until it is restored the party member grows more fearful in the presence of evil monsters in every combat afterwards until their SPIRIT bar is restored to full. Addendum : Each time you encounter an evil monster, you are a little less likely to be terrified of them. Each has a threshold after a certain number of encounters after which they will no longer trigger terror in party members.

Another small update to address a few critical issues before V2 + Manual come out. This is only to fix issues reported after previous release. * Sound and music volume controls can be adjusted to turn either or both off * Experience points drastically reduced to permit easier advancement after level 9 * Monster identification becomes easier the more times you successfully kill any of that monster type * Tablet robbers got slightly better at solving puzzles to reach tablets * Gauntlets and gloves have data edited to permit them to work correctly during combat as primary two-handed weapons (intended to be used alone) * Total AC sums now appear correctly when negative or in excess of 120. * Vending tokens can be stacked to +126 in machines. Hopefully this will be a small update that fixes a lot of particularly annoying problems reported by players.

This update is the LAST update before Grimoire V2 comes out with the manual! This update specifically targets the problem with full screen on 4K monitors and several other devices. There is a provision in the configuration menu now to test a very wide variety of auto-detected compatible resolutions for full screen mode with centering, scaling and window boxing as an option for all resolutions on your monitor that fall somewhere between the native resolution and 2x scaling. The DEFAULT is now full screen and your existing config file will be overwritten! You can go into configuration and change to windowed mode if you'd prefer as was the default in previous versions. You still have to reboot the application to see screen resolution changes. There are numerous fixes for various issues in this update and some of them are substantial improvements to playability. ESCAPE key exits NPC dialogue text input now which is convenient for exiting without typing "BYE" or "QUIT" etc. There is a new encryption scheme on the resource file which will break existing resource hackers but if you are a low test beta cuck using a savegame editor you should still find that works unmodified. The savegame files have not been encrypted because it might break compatibility with very early versions. The new splash screen for the main menu was disabled although a config option for it is present. The new splash screen will be present in the coming V2 and then this option will work to switch between classic original splash screen (the one now) and the new "Grimoire" tome menu screen. The option to activate TABLET ROBBERS is working but this is still being fine tuned and may exhibit some irregularities. No matter what happens, you can still get the tablets from The White Owl later in the game no matter who steals them away initially! It is likely additional information will be added to some of the spells to tell you who has what tablets and where they are going in the game. Some of this code was commented out for years and has only recently been commented back in. With more debugging and testing there may be multiple targets for sequestration of tablets robbed from caches, there is existing data now in the editor for the map that is not used to implement this very feature. For example, a Rhattu stealing a tablet and hiding it in Nerukruel Pyramid instead of it being collected by the White Owl eventually. All this is being implemented in V2 without disturbing existing savegames. Constitution lost through resurrection is now regained to the race base at character creation every time the party sleeps. Just thought this is something that should not be a permanent penalty when a character is resurrected. * Some players reported being unable to detect or set the default resolution of 1024x768x16 so a slightly altered version was updated to simply use whatever the current resolution is at bootup for the full-screen default. This means Grimoire will use whatever is present, assuming some sort of computer display device is hooked up. If you are viewing Grimoire on a VT102 ASCII terminal you are going to get an error.

This is another small maintenance release prior to completion of the manual. After this release it is likely more dramatic changes will occur in subsequent versions. This update permits the player to adjust mouse speed from inside of configuration to help accommodate different monitor resolutions and DPIs in newer technology. The scaling bug still appears on some machines but I was able to get rid of it on two different machines here and I am planning to eliminate it completely very soon so Grimoire can be stretched to fit any screen, including the colossal 4K screens that did not even exist when I began work on the game. There are also new lock riddles for doors and some improvements to fountains. The major NPC upgrade is coming soon that restores the wandering and seeking behaviors including robbing tablet caches that the player is also seeking.

This is another small maintenance release prior to completion of the manual. After this release it is likely more dramatic changes will occur in subsequent versions. This update permits the player to adjust mouse speed from inside of configuration to help accommodate different monitor resolutions and DPIs in newer technology. The scaling bug still appears on some machines but I was able to get rid of it on two different machines here and I am planning to eliminate it completely very soon so Grimoire can be stretched to fit any screen, including the colossal 4K screens that did not even exist when I began work on the game. There are also new lock riddles for doors and some improvements to fountains. The major NPC upgrade is coming soon that restores the wandering and seeking behaviors including robbing tablet caches that the player is also seeking.

Decided that some of the fixes and enhancements applied today should go up immediately. In particular, there is now help support in the character review screen for attributes the same way the skills are supported. Click on any attribute in the character screen to see the abbreviated description of what role it has in game mechanics. This should help until the manual is finished. Also in this update is a really useful enhancement to containers, with improved cues on screen including a current count of items in a container and the max number of items permitted for that container at the bottom of each item graphic in the inventory bar. I fixed some problems with Djinn wishes that could have messed up game logic. It is unlikely they did so but better to tighten up the code to make that impossible. Also worked on the NPC AI for basic tablet seeking. The NPC logic will be turned on again in the next update.

Decided that some of the fixes and enhancements applied today should go up immediately. In particular, there is now help support in the character review screen for attributes the same way the skills are supported. Click on any attribute in the character screen to see the abbreviated description of what role it has in game mechanics. This should help until the manual is finished. Also in this update is a really useful enhancement to containers, with improved cues on screen including a current count of items in a container and the max number of items permitted for that container at the bottom of each item graphic in the inventory bar. I fixed some problems with Djinn wishes that could have messed up game logic. It is unlikely they did so but better to tighten up the code to make that impossible. Also worked on the NPC AI for basic tablet seeking. The NPC logic will be turned on again in the next update.

The biggest problem for long-time players has been the bug with certain NPCs vanishing off the map and never returning. I'm truly sorry this was a bug in earlier versions and this bug remained in savegame files. This update features a substantial hack applied to saved games when they are loaded that tries to fix the incorrect flags and counters that some NPCs have carried forward from earlier versions. This should result in these NPCs reappearing in many locations at new intervals that have also been adjusted in their scheduling counters. The next update will likely restore the movement and dynamic pathfinding of the NPCs and also introduce their former competition with the player for tablets and other treasures hidden in Hyperborea. These things were commented out but some of the old code has already been incorporated to give the NPCs agendas and schedules of their own. The following update after that will be in tandem with the release of the manual for the game.

The biggest problem for long-time players has been the bug with certain NPCs vanishing off the map and never returning. I'm truly sorry this was a bug in earlier versions and this bug remained in savegame files. This update features a substantial hack applied to saved games when they are loaded that tries to fix the incorrect flags and counters that some NPCs have carried forward from earlier versions. This should result in these NPCs reappearing in many locations at new intervals that have also been adjusted in their scheduling counters. The next update will likely restore the movement and dynamic pathfinding of the NPCs and also introduce their former competition with the player for tablets and other treasures hidden in Hyperborea. These things were commented out but some of the old code has already been incorporated to give the NPCs agendas and schedules of their own. The following update after that will be in tandem with the release of the manual for the game.

Sorry the manual isn't finished yet, will be working on it through holidays to get it ready for a January release. Continuing to work on some of the remaining game systems that need a bit of polishing in response to feedback from players. An update for the game will be issued before New Year's and will resume regular updates afterwards as before preceding Grimoire V2.0 release.

Sorry the manual isn't finished yet, will be working on it through holidays to get it ready for a January release. Continuing to work on some of the remaining game systems that need a bit of polishing in response to feedback from players. An update for the game will be issued before New Year's and will resume regular updates afterwards as before preceding Grimoire V2.0 release.

I am just getting everything set up in my new office and am planning to resume work on Grimoire (especially the manual) early next week. It has been a lot of work moving everything and getting infrastructure organized. Should be hard at work on manual (first!) as soon as I get power and internet connection.

I am just getting everything set up in my new office and am planning to resume work on Grimoire (especially the manual) early next week. It has been a lot of work moving everything and getting infrastructure organized. Should be hard at work on manual (first!) as soon as I get power and internet connection.

+Maintenance release prior to 1.2.0.30 accompanied by manual. * Emergency fix to starting skill sets for newly created characters * Enchanted Blade spell enables non-magical weapons to hit magical creatures * Little Rosy toned down a little when recruited into party * SHOWMAP function in NPC scripts fixed so NPCS can mark maps * Adjustments made to some learning rates for skills

+Maintenance release prior to 1.2.0.30 accompanied by manual. * Emergency fix to starting skill sets for newly created characters * Enchanted Blade spell enables non-magical weapons to hit magical creatures * Little Rosy toned down a little when recruited into party * SHOWMAP function in NPC scripts fixed so NPCS can mark maps * Adjustments made to some learning rates for skills