Legends of Dawn is Reborn, Free to Current Owners
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Dreamatrix has announced the release of Legends of Dawn Reborn, a re-architected version of their action RPG Legends of Dawn that benefits from much of the work they have done since on Wave of Darkness, including a completely new engine. In fact, the original Legends of Dawn has been retired from Steam and the new title has been launched in its place. Here's word on what to expect from the enhancements, which are entirely free to owners of the original game:
Most of you are aware of our work on Wave of Darkness ("WoD" in the following text) which will be released very soon. The work on WoD helped Legends of Dawn ("LoD" in the following text) as we were able to move it to 64-bit architecture world thus ensuring support and updates for much longer and you were able to witness a number of improvements during the last two years.
However, as the development on WoD continued further we realized that we would need another refresh of the Legends of Dawn engine in order to remain in sync. But changes in WoD Dreamatrix 2 engine were too deep and we couldn't risk patching the old engine further by injecting the new code. Too many things could have gone wrong. Instead, we moved the content (the world, graphics and quests) from LoD to the new WoD engine and decided to re-release LoD with the added suffix in the title: Legends of Dawn Reborn.
A few months ago we retired the old LoD on Steam in preparation for the new LoD Reborn which will now replace Legends of Dawn, with its own page, price, fresh forum, achievements etc.
LoD Reborn has its own APP ID so it will appear as a separate title on Steam, with new higher price on the same level as release retail price of the Wave of Darkness and with the new community hub. There is a clear trend in recent years, showing that most of the purchases happen during introductory and season discounts so the new price will allow us to offer greater discounts. With the new price the game will now be less likely perceived as a casual title which it isn't. The new community hub will help us start with a clean slate.
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Here is the list of most important changes, fixes and new features:
The new engine:
The biggest and the most complicated part of this work was to convert the whole game to the new engine, which was created for Wave of Darkness. That means that the engine makes the game more stable, more robust, more future-proof, and much easier to patch.
Inventory overhaul:
The new Inventory system now includes an ability to expand the inventory space with bags, and is stackable and sortable.
Inventory problem:
Placing items from chests and other itemholders into player's inventory did not work correctly. Only first bag was active most of the time. Now it works.
Crafting system completely changed:
A complex crafting system with over 25.000 usable items, allows you to make everything from food, metal, wood, stone, leather to weapons and fashion armor.
Crafting resources in item tooltips:
We have added option in Options panel where you can choose if you wish to have item crafting resources displayed in item tooltip. Idea was to display crafting resources even for items that are not recipes so that players know which resources they need to collect. This leads to large tooltip windows for some items (especially magical weapons and armors). Note that required resources are always shown in recipes.
Upgraded spell system with mastering:
Powerful spell creation system gives unlimited possibilities and is easy to use, if you have magic runes. Just drag them to the slots in the spell panel. Name them, give a representing icon and level (faith consumption). Click create and your magic icon will appear in the inventory. Then drag a spell into one of the slots.
Chest unlocking upgraded:
We have added a key to open chests, so players can now choose whether to open a chest using a key, or using the old method, with runes.
Major Map Update:
Bigger Maps Panel:
One of our primary concerns when creating GUI was that each and every GUI panel must fit into minimal supported resolution for the game - which is 1024x768 pixels. That means no panel can be higher than ~700 pixels. This is all fine but most of the gamers today play at 1680x1050 or higher resolutions which means they have extra space and no panel uses it. Smaller panels are not a problem for most of the time. Characters panel, or Legendary Items panel never need extra size, but maps panel could really benefit from being bigger. Now you have it.
Various map fixes:
We have fixed various hidden locations throughout the map. Some of them contained no monsters or no itemholders and those locations are usually made specifically to hide such rewards. That's fixed now, although the world of Narr is too big to be absolutely sure. You'll let us know if there are other places that need our attention.
Map zoom changed:
Zooming on the map was slightly off at around 1/3rd of its screen size. This has been fixed. Maps panel should now work fine no matter what the size of the map window is.
Map 'Size' button:
We added 'Size' button to Maps panel. Clicking on it will toggle panel size between (almost) full screen size and one 3rd of the screen size.
Empowered, Blessed and Cursed items:
Empowered items: some items have magical bonuses which draw their power from certain relics. Player can have up to four such relics active at any given time. These relics improve all item's special bonuses.
Blessed items: these items are blessed by one of three main Gods - Perun, Svarog or Veles and they give players additional bonuses at the cost - each item has blessing that lasts for up to one hour of the gameplay. Once the blessing runs out, item behaves as normal non-magical item. Blessings can be 'recharged' using God shrines that are placed throughout the wilderness.
Cursed items: these are magical items whose properties player does not know until he (Identifies) such items using oracle stones. They look like normal or magical items but they carry curses with them. Once equipped, the curse becomes active and the item cannot be removed unless you visit the shrine of a favorable God.
Notification for Cursed Items, God Shrines and Blessings:
Each time you click on the shrine of the good God, curses on all identified cursed items are permanently removed. This feature was unclear and reported as bug. We have added notifications to the console window (one in the bottom left corner of the screen) so that now you can see which item had their curses removed and which items had their blessings restored. Everything else remains the same - unidentified items will not reveal if they are cursed or not until you try to wear them or until they are identified at oracle stones. Also, it is possible for some items to be both cursed by one God and blessed by another. In that case removing the curse will make that item just as any other blessed item since the blessing cannot be removed.
Cursed item icon overlay:
Some cursed items did not have red glow over their icon. This has been fixed.
Cursed item notifications:
We have added notification icons for cursed items. When you have equipped cursed item, skull icon will be displayed beneath player's name and level (similar to icons representing spell effects). Placing your mouse over the skull icon will show you which items are cursed and what you have to do to remove the curse (identify at oracle stones and/or then pray at God shrine).
New Feature: Quick Save:
Before this fix when you pressed the quick save, every save created a new save entry and you quickly ended up with a clutter. Now you can choose from a minimum of 3 quick saves up to original unlimited number of quick saves.
QuickLoad key/action:
We have added QuickLoad key that loads last saved QuickSave game. If that game was deleted, game will load the most recent QuickSave available. This key ignores regularly saved games.
Camera speed during movement:
Now you have a slider in the Options Menu where you can adjust the camera movement speed.
Added feature while looting:
While looting, you can now close both windows with just single ESC press. When the camera is completely zoomed-out, some objects block the view to the character. That is now fixed.
Blood overlay problem:
We have removed blood overlay when damage was caused to friendly NPCs. Before this update screen edges displayed red overlay each time player was attacked.
Sort All button:
'Sort All' button was inactive. 'Sort' button still works just as before:
it sorts inventory items for currently active bag. 'Sort All' now works similarly except it sorts each bag separately.
Minimal requirements for (magical) items:
Some items have minimal requirements in order to be used or equipped. Requirements can be some of the following: min level, min ability score (strength, dexterity, vitality, intelligence or charisma) or min combat skill. Sometimes it's not easy to spot missing requirement in item tooltip, especially when looking at tooltips of magical items which have tons of data in all sizes, shapes and colors. We have made blinking unmet requirements so that it's obvious at first glance that player should pay attention to that.
Low Item Durability Warning and language keys:
Low item durability warning text bug will be fixed. It should be visible in item tooltips.
Save Game Panel Change:
New Save Game' line should be placed on the top of the save game list, not on the bottom. This is now changed.
Framerate drop:
Sometimes when fighting monsters using a bow and arrow there was significant drop in framerate during the course of the battle. This has been fixed. Everything works fine now on our configurations, but this bug was configuration-dependent so more testing is required before we can close it for good.
Tooltip window clipping problem:
Tooltip window should always be within visible screen area. This was however not true for comparison item tooltips. For example, when you placed mouse cursor over sword in your inventory bag, there would be two tooltips displayed - one for the sword and one for the weapon you currently carry in your hand. Second tooltip was not clipped against screen. This has been fixed.
Store tooltip window clipping problem:
Tooltip window for items sold by merchants was not clipped correctly. This has been fixed.
Stairs and Navigation:
We have improved character navigation over the stairs. It's still not perfect but it is easier now.
Music combat and transition/fadeout fixes:
We have changed time needed for music fadeouts. It was too short and music change was sometimes too abrupt. Fade in is now increased from 1 to approximately 10 seconds.
Standing creatures' corpses and frozen monsters:
The game had a nasty bug with animations not being played on dead creatures during the saved game loading. Now those animations should play correctly. Also, it is very likely that this issue is connected to a bug that sometimes occurs when player kills a monster and death animation is not played so monster would stays frozen in place. This bug is a visual bug only - it has no other impact on the game, but it is annoying. Game should be tested some more to see if the fix removes death animation bug also. In our testing so far, it does.
Missing water at some areas in the game:
We have fixed the issue where water is disappearing and suddenly appearing around the area of the city of Recea.
