Did you remove them recently? I got mine a few days back. I got it in that town where they sell the rogue armor (… the green stuff).
Many weeks ago, when I implemented bows for enemies.
Well, it’s not a big deal I suppose, thanks for reporting. Yeah, I forgot to remove from that shop 
Bows are not balanced or ready yet.
EDIT: Here we go again:
v.0.4.784 - 23/8/15
-Optimization: game is more memory-efficient now.
-Fixed the activable distance of containers. “Message in a bottle” quest is completable again.
-Bugfix: resting wouldn’t sometimes respawn the areas properly.
-Player collisions fixed: the player collision was slightly displaced. Fixed.
-Fixed the ending of the “Important research” quest
-Dragonslayer achievement should be properly activated now… if you earn it.
-Balance: wolves are not so difficult now, white wolves are rare and do a little less damage. Imps do less damage.
-Raised the “cap” of reputation that you could get in town hall quests, from 30 to 70.
Could you by any chance add a permadeath mode? I personally like it when you lose your character upon death. It makes you play more careful and makes it feel like you’re really accomplishing something when you progress far into the game 
Definitely, count on it… I still remember my “Ironman” run in Wizardry 8. It was awesome. I don’t know why I didn’t think of a perma-death mode!
I suppose, it will be an option at character creation, with its own Leaderboard in google play, and a few dedicated achievements.
Certainly, it puts some skills like “Divine Intervention” under a different light, doesn’t it.
This game is just getting better and better, the main quest-line is exciting and engaging.
I can’t seem to find Anton Gerdt though. Where am I supposed to find him after having found the Journal?
There’s like a weird palisade south-west of Kingsbridge, there are goblins up on ladders that I can’t attack and if I stand in the middle of the palisade I can rest there. What’s up with that?
Also, cross the river north of Lannegar and then after the river take the canyon to your far right, there’s a cave there that you can’t enter.
Also, I’d like to re-iterate my point about the hired help, I know you told me to get a companion but you really need to make the ones you can hire last at least a little longer.
Anyway, if anyone needs me I’ll be in Inori dessert collecting venom sacs.
Yay! but I need to make it a bit more engaging at the beginning, maybe.
In Kingsbridge, as your journal says. check your Journal when in doubt. He is not easy to spot because he is behind the Town Hall. Yeah yeah… I know, I’m like that. I’ll move him to the middle of the bridge.
Ahhh damn. I forgot to remove that for release build… it’s some content I’m designing, the “invisible inn” is there so I can test the respawns. Pretend you never saw that. 
Will check, thanks. That’s probably the second entrance to Gorx Lair.
Okay… I’ll beef them up a little more. But only because two people told me today already, and it’s 9 AM.
Do you have any plans on adding pets?
Yes, in three ways.
There will be a companion which is an animal, won’t spoil more.
The future Ranger specialization (yes… there will be class specializations at level 12), will be able to control animals as pets, train them and level them up.
The Wizard will have a Summoning school, so he’ll be able to summon a variety of creatures as pets. Maybe the cleric will, as well.
When I talk about this stuff, I realize how much I still have to do 
[quote]The future Ranger specialization (yes… there will be class specializations at level 12), will be able to control animals as pets, train them and level them up.
[/quote]
I’m loving that you already have big portions of the future for the game planned out!
[quote]The Wizard will have a Summoning school, so he’ll be able to summon a variety of creatures as pets. Maybe the cleric will, as well.
[/quote]
Really looking forward to wizards. Playing as a wizard is, in my opinion, a great way of pretending that you’re actually intelligent!
[quote]When I talk about this stuff, I realize how much I still have to do Sad
[/quote]
It’s not that bad… I mean… It’s a lot of stuff… But… Uh… Oh, well… Best of luck!
Hehe, true.
Wizards will go last, because I plan to make a complete spellcrafting system, in which you research your own spells and customize them from a variety of powers, derived from schools. There will be some pre-made spells inscribed in scrolls, but the idea is that your wizard will use mostly customized magic. Also, the way I plan it, you’ll be more of a Wizard’s Apprentice though the first X levels, an extremely weak character with very few hp and questionable powers. but if you manage to survive and level up, it’ll certainly be extremely powerful compared to other classes, as it should be.
Getting some crashes (sent reports) after the latest update. It started when I was fighting in Gorx, but now I can’t even resume the game.
Makes me wish I had backed up my game.
Oh well, it’s a reason to try a different class next time.
Don’t worry, you won’t lose anything and the game will be fixed&updated today
Just some sillyness on my part. I meddled with AI selecting targets, and forgot to check for null object somewhere.
EDIT: last builds
v.0.4.787 - 27/8/15
-Crashfix from previous build. (this fixes you, bornander)
v.0.4.786 - 26/8/15
-2 new quests in Kingsbridge.
-Adjustments and small changes to NPC locations, to make them easier to find.
-Hired mercenaries are a bit more resilient now.
-Added several new items.
-Bugfixes.
v.0.4.785 - 25/8/15
-Bugfixes
v.0.4.792 - 30/8/15
-Major optimization. The game should perform much better and use less memory now.
-Starting tips during the first minutes of play.
-Corrected and expanded a few conversations.
-Fixed a few chests that were spawning no loot.
Regarding this one, a few words. I had a lot of trouble on older/slower devices due to the garbage collector firing often and causing lag spikes… my code had no memory leaks, so I had to refactor code everywhere, preventing instantiation, at all costs. I have refactored code in nearly half of the classes of the game, changed the way I load and handle assets, changed foreach loops into for loops… now, this means there can be bugs nearly everywhere, so please, those testing, poke around as much as you can and keep your eyes open.
There’s a small fps/memory usage counter on the bottom of the screen, but that’s only because I forgot to remove it. Oh well
An update on where EK stands, and where it goes from here.
Build 797, which I’ll upload tonight to Google Play, will oficially be numbered as 0.5. For the playtesters this will mean little, as the features and content are the same as they were in yesterday’s build. However, for Exiled Kingdoms, and for me personally, it means a huge step from 0.4, released in April 22nd.
In these 4 months, much has been added or improved. Basic things, like item stacking, NPC ranged attacks, road encounters, achievements, leaderboards, savegames backup… not to mention world size has increased by 60%, and that includes not only new areas, but also quests, conversations, factions, enemies and items. Sprites have been upgraded, animations improved. The setting is now far more detailed, with factions like the Wizard’s guild, or the Church of the Three, making appearance. Little by little, the story comes to life, even if it’s still just outlined.
More important than that are the unseen improvements: the game engine is now far more efficient, especially in the last 2 weeks. FPS has increased by 30% on average, and battery usage should be much lower. Game entities are barely polled each frame, with most of the updating happening through events and messages. Of course a few things still are updated per frame, like animations or collision checks, but nearly all logic is messaged: AI, attacks, damage, doors autoclosing, traps being step on… Spawn tables are now complex and flexible, allowing scaled content, different spawn frequency, and at the same time conditioned to current world state easily. The internal scripting commands are now around 60, allowing me for instance to show a certain conversation option only if the player already completed certain actions, or has X gold, or is female, for instance. All of it hardcoding nothing.
However, the most crucial advancement that brings 0.5 is nothing of the above. The important thing is what it lacks. It has exposed what the game needs and still doesn’t have.
Of course, many things I already knew. More skills are needed, so combat can be more tactical and varied. Enemies need to use skills and special powers as well, for the same reason. Visually, the game still lacks lighting, shaders, more effects. Ranged weapons must be available, and overall, to work as an open-ended game, it needs to get much bigger.
But it’s far more than that, and I’ll detail a few of the enhancements and improvements that I’ll work on, from here to the first public release of the game.
-Skills revamp and expansion. Some skills will be dependant on equipment (Shield Bash), others will be customizable, and present you with tactical choices. Rogues will be able to set traps, and lure enemies to them, for instance. Warriors will be able to charge through enemies. Of course, some enemies will begin using these skills against you as well!
-Dungeons will be more interesting. Secret doors, traps, levers, bridges… the rogue will have some work to do, finally!
-Character Stats. In the Alpha, many mechanics were simplistic or hidden from the player. Things like, damage increasing per level automatically, as do HP or mana, based on the class you picked, or the skills you picked. Now there will be a six-stats system, (Strenght, Endurance, Dexterity, Intellect, Awareness, Personality. How original, right? :D). Through those skills, you’ll have different % chances of finding hidden things, hearing rumors, or detecting someone is lying to you in a conversation. Your character class will give you an initial distribution of stats, but as you level, you can choose to go with a “recommended” stat increase, or try for yourself more specialized or challenging builds. For players not wanting to delve into the mechanics, there’ll always be an “autopilot”.
-More interesting items. The above point has many ramifications, and one of the best is the variety it’ll bring to equipment. As of now, item bonuses are merely giving combat stats. But now you’ll find far more interesting items, like for instance, Gloves of Luck can add +15% to disarm traps, or a Ring of the Brute, +2 Strenght and -2 Intellect, etc.
-Ranged attacks, both for archery and spellcasting. this is obviously a must. My idea for aiming at targets is, if you are wielding a bow or casting, replace the attack button with a directional gamepad, that allows you to rotate your aiming. Maybe I’ll show a short beam around the character, so you can aim more finely, as sprites only show 8 directions.
-Factions system expanded. As of now, it’s not very versatile. Once fully implemented, guards of a certain town may attack you on sight if your faction is very low, and yes, you’ll be able to kill civilians or guards as well. Furthermore, some monsters will be on factions as well… maybe you can be friends with the minotaurs or hobgoblins!
-General improvements. Things like banking, housing, a new Skills UI, or item quick slots in the game HUD.
-More content. The current “geography” must be expanded, from 16 outdoor areas (total 50 areas) to 20 outdoor (total 80 areas), and of course filling with content all of them. the main quest should advance as well, and even branch into several options for the player, reaching at least 50% completion. Companions will have dialogues and a quest line.
All of the above, plus some other technical issues and enhacements, is going to take me some time to complete. I may finally discard a few of those before release, of course, but at least that’s my initial goal to reach with Beta 0.6.
After the public release, development will not stop. I’ll finish the main quest, and implement the Wizard class, Specialization classes, Crafting, and a huge world to design, which will keep me busy for a long time. And even after that, I can experiment with a lot of things, like co-op multiplayer or whatever the playerbase wants.
Just one final word: without my testers, getting this far would have been impossible to do. Thanks.
If you have scaled down this wall of text to the bottom, congratulations, you are now safely on ground and free to go.
Very ambitious. Do have a plan when this game will actually be “finished”? I’m just asking out of interest, because it took me almost a full year to complete all the npcs, dialog and quests for my game. Then again, I didn’t work on it every day.
My estimates are… let’s say… innacurate. Once Upon a time I believed I would have it finished in August. I mean, August 2014
However, all those failed predictions happened because I had no idea what I was doing, and kept adding complexity to the original concept. Now I think I have a clear list of what will make this game “publishable” and what makes it “finished”. And my estimates are, public Beta with at least 40 hours of gameplay, by October/November. Then “Finished” Probably in Spring 2016.
And yeah, writing is hard… and I write everything in two languages. I’d love to have a look at your game btw.
The same here…
[quote]I’d love to have a look at your game btw.
[/quote]
It’s almost feature and content complete now. I’m currently working on a simple endgame sequence and such stuff. After that, I have to play that sucker multiple times from start to end to see if it actually works as intended…
The new sprites are way better than the old ones, thank you for making them crisper.
The game does seem less resource intensive after the last update, I’ll try to see if I can spin it up on one of my older devices that previously struggled to run it.
I like how complex some of the quests are, the main quest line in particular, it’s much more engaging than a lot of other games were essentially all the quests are variation on “fetch 10 of these” or “kill 5 of those”.
(story spoiler below!!!)
[spoiler]The part where you get imprisoned and lose all your gear is excellent, and really does make you want to pursue the main quest line to completion.[/spoiler]
How much time are you spending on this on a daily basis, if you don’t mind me asking?
Wonderful, thanks! My own tests have been positive so far, but I want the game to run well in nearly any 4.1+ device. Efficiency has always been something I care about, but in this game I was still learning the ropes when I designed some core pieces so… it badly needed refactoring.
You’ll see, that’s kind of a “prelude” to the story. Once it’s complete, it will include many surprises and big choices to make.
Aside from my full-time job and some family time, all of it. I must have watched… maybe 3 movies in the last year, and haven’t played a videogame (except your 2 games) since spring 2014.
In total, 1740 hours in 16 months, which averages a bit over 3.6 hours/day, but I’d say very few days I work 3 hours. Some days I can do nothing or just work an hour, and others I work almost all day.
v.0.5.797 - 5/9/15
-Traps added! Be careful in dungeons.
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Regarding this, please if you want to help testing them, the dungeons including traps are Lannegar Mine, Bandit hideout near Kingsbridge, and tombs near New Garand.