Thanks for taking it for a spin, Yan. I'm actually myself only semi-happy with the water. I originally wanted "Ultima 6" style water - where it actually flows - as a subconscious reminder to the player that he's basically made to "go with the flow" of the odd circumstances he finds himself in. Trouble was I ran out of tile buffer space, which is hard to change, after I upgraded the desert area which was very bland at first. So I had to stick with "shimmer" water. The whole style of top-down oblique is sort of Ultima 7 tilted 45 degrees clockwise. Did this literally because it was easier from a programming standpoint, and so the characters walking animation matched the tile size. It was quite a trip to do! The render varies a little as it tries to adjust to different PC speeds to keep the character from moving too fast, while still allowing a range of walking speed choices. Mostly he'll go pretty smooth, but will sometimes take an extra quick step or two as the timer kicks in. Might work on smoothing that in a future patch. Good idea with the ESC! I keep bragging about the super-intuitive interface, odd I should forget this! But let me know how you make out for now, and have fun with it. Madman tries to deviate quite a bit from the standard rpg conventions and gets pretty bizarre as it goes. Thanks again! - Dr. D.
