Beta Demo 1.0 release. This will become the official demo once I finish the polishing. Ran across some placeholder text in recent play through. But, figured it was good enough to release.
This release includes various bug fixes, polish, and the re-addition of the Beastiary. This will become the official demo of the game. As such, you cannot complete the quest to leave the island in this version. The demo includes the starting zone and 2 dungeons which are accessible from this zone (don't recommend going into them - have fun if you do)
One of the biggest bugs that, I think, I finally squashed was an odd combat bug. It didn't happen often; but, it required an ALT + TAB and close of the game. This resulted in lost progress since your last save. Tracked it down to the window that I display post-combat that displays your spoils and a message indicating the party gained experience. Well, turns out, if the party didn't get any loot the window didn't display which is fine; except, the condition had the window waiting for the player to close the window. Should have seen that sooner. Took a while to figure out the no-loot condition.
Polish includes replacing a lot of placeholder text for spellbooks, spells, items, etc. Going through this, found some spells that hadn't been finished. I need to make another pass or two to make sure all things have been cleaned up.
The beastiary is working correctly now. An entry is made when you encounter a monster in combat. However, the details are not filled in. You will need a party member with the Lore skill which gives the ability to ID Monster (in combat). If successful, details about the monster will be filled in. I don't have them in game yet; a spell and a couple of items will grant the ability to ID monsters as well. There is a trainer on the island for the Lore skill.
I have added a few more quests on the starting island. By doing all the quests with some monster bashing (or lots of monster bashing if quests don't interest you), the party should be level 2 when leaving the island for Druinport. I have added more shops to the island which were necessary for crafting, buying spells, and combat books.
Alchemy is the only tradeskill available at the beginning of the game. There is a trainer on the island. You will need to find an Alchemy workstation (or buy a portable workstation) to brew your potions. The fennel plants have been "turned" back on for gathering. Thought about getting rid of them and just buying your ingredients, some people like to gather their ingredients when possible. I do it sometimes in other games that provide the mechanic.
There's a lot to work out, UI issues, typos, animations, etc. You have a pretty cool base to start with here, if you could pull a team together to help out with different segments of the game, you'd have a good game on your hands.
Didn't this comment was left just now seeing it 2 weeks later.
Thanks for the boost of confidence that I'm heading in the right direction.