Hi all! It's been a while (again), so I thought I'd share some of my progress I've been making behind the scenes. I'll go over them again when the next update comes (if I don't forget to include them in the changelog).

Waterfalls
Added in waterfalls! They're a bit simplistic, but they get the job done. The idea is that they'll be used in puzzles.

Terrain and Grass Overhaul
Yes... I did another overhaul again. In short, the terrain system should be more efficient now, all in the name of being able to paint grass on with a brush. It's neat! It's also allowed me to add in other detailer features (currently the other ones are ferns and loose pebbles).
Oh, and did I mention it should (theoretically) be faster?

Fancy new dialogue system
I'm super happy with how this one came out! I did a complete redesign of how the dialogue box looks, as well as adding in the ability to give each word their own special effects! There's a partial demonstration here:

Note: The scrolling effect will probably only be used for this joke, so don't worry about having to see it constantly (it's also the only dialogue you can't skip to the end for, because I'm evil (:< ).

There are some effects that aren't shown there, such as name highlighting and wavey text. The main thing it's currently missing is any kind of sound effect, but that's low priority right now.

You'll probably notice that I went from letter typing to full word typing - this was a suggestion that was given by another LÖVE developer, and they were absolutely right! Now I know about it, I'm not really sure why this technique isn't used more often - it's closer to how people read (not one letter at a time, but taking in the full word), and is also less confusing than typing it. A word that is only half typed is a bit strange to show - you can't actually understand what it means until it's done, so it serves little purpose other than to make it harder to read.

Fireball Mechanics
Oh yeah, there were also some changes to how fire works... but I'm going to keep those to myself for now.

How are things going?
Overall... I'd say slowly. Writing this out has made me realise that I have actually made a fair bit of progress, but I still have a long way to do before finishing the first dungeon. I am, however, starting to see the fruits of my labours for my new underlying systems, and it's quite gratifying seeing how easy it it's becoming to edit things. Here's a rough checklist of everything that needs to be done:

• Overall Level Design [Complete, but subject to change]
• Adding Level layout to engine [In progress]
• Adding in waterfalls [Complete]
• Adding in new fire mechanics [Completish]
• Adding in better fireball UI [Current one is pretty bad. Might still get shipped with the next update though]
• Adding decoration assets for the level [In progress - I'm not a very good artist]
• Designing final boss [I am terrified of doing this]
• Adding in prologue [optional]

So yeah... fairly good progress, but a lot left to do. As I think I mentioned before, I plan on releasing all of this stuff at once, but I am very tempted to push a new update with specifically these features so everyone can try them out, though I'd like to make most of it a surprise.

Until we meet again! *Slinks back into evil dragon cave*