Lost Gateways Development Update 4-17 news

Me and David had a pretty decent chat on Skype this morning about the class choices at the start and he was able to convince me that starting out as a trade skill class was not that interesting so as a compromise players will be able to choose a primary class (Priest, Wizard, Fighter, etc, etc) an addition to a trade skill class.
Now keep in mind that your starting class and trade skill are strictly for determining your starting skills, stats,equipment, and abilities and currently there is no bonus for the various classes (maybe in the future each starting class will have unique passives in game).

But the goal will be to keep the game open, for instance if you choose your starting class as a fighter you won’t be able to start working on healing spells until you find or buy a healing spell, but starting out as a priest you will have starting spells like a basic heal to raise your skill levels.

Speaking of spells and abilities, I would like some spells and abilities to be learned by leveling your skills, and some spells to be items you must obtain in game either from drops or buying them from vendors.

Today I worked on fixing some bugs with NPC knock back to prevent them from being knocked back into unpathable terrain, the system is working pretty decently it might need some tweaks to make everything more fluid but as we get actual character animations for the swing types it will feel more fluid I think.

Here is an early GIF of the stabbing animation

I think here we are at a point to where I need to add some more interesting mobs to fight to really start fleshing out the combat system to make it fun, I don’t want a crafting simulator that has combat elements I want a combat game that has crafting elements so literally we are going to get this right before we go much farther.

Some features I’ve started work on this week that are partially implemented:
- Class Selection
- Spells and Abilities

Here are some things added since the last update:
- Stabbing Animation for stab type weapons
- Slime Balls are now consumable and lower thirst and hunger bars by a bit
- Overhauled the item management class making adding new items and equipment to the game super easy
- Added stone pickaxe
- Added stone axe
- Added Leather Hat
- Added Copper Boots
- Added Copper Helm
- Added Copper Leggings
- Added Copper Chest
- Added Iron Boots
- Added Iron Helm
- Added Iron Full Helm
- Added a few Sword Weapon Types

Here are some things I am going to try to implement this next week (hopefully)
- More interesting Enemies (Possible a water based creature that shoots stuff at you, it will pop out of the water shoot a few times and then submerge again)
- Maybe a flying creature like a bat
- Skeletons with halfway decent combat AI, I would like they to swing weapons like the player if possible
- A non aggro mob that can be killed that drops hides and meat
- Interface improvements to add buttons for all the various interface screens instead of needed to know the hotkeys
- The game tends to slow down a bit when you get to over 10000 mobs in the world so I think I need to rework how I am processing enemy AI, currently if an enemy is off screen for a few seconds it skips its AI functions, but when you have a ton of AI mobs even though its returning right away it still bogs down the system a tiny bit, so I think I might just loop through the onscreen mobs + a few tiles and process AI that way we will see I will have to play with it.

Here is a screenshot in game with the new inventory system and some of the new equipment equipped.