Pre-Release 0.8

Pre-Release v 0.8

A major milestone for this release: the full USA campaign has been
successfully played from start to finish. This completed playthrough used
native graphics and covered all six towns, all 12 acts, Death Heim and the ending.

This update adds customizable regional gameplay, ten independent save slots,
an optional modern town menu, 3D church interiors, a completion ocean scene,
and editable scenery effects with combined editor projects.

It expands widescreen and Diorama authoring, moves more rendering work onto the
GPU, improves frame pacing, and adds styled translation templates. The Builder
also starts and builds faster, with a clearer update workflow.

Open the in-game settings with Esc, F1 or L3 on a controller.
Menu paths below start there unless they are marked Workshop.

Changelog

Regional gameplay and media

• Choose US, Japanese or European gameplay presets, or mix individual rules
  for combat, enemy behavior, stage layouts, magic, lives, scoring and town
  development under Regions. Regions → Presets → Apply gameplay preset…
  applies a whole preset; the other tabs let you customize individual rules.
• Combine European Beginner, Normal or Expert difficulty adjustments with
  your preferred regional gameplay rules using
  Regions → Action → Difficulty adjustments.
• Select regional artwork and music independently from gameplay and language.
  Choose them under Regions → Art & music. Extract supported media from
  your own donor ROMs in Workshop → Assets → Regional media.
• Save regional choices separately for each campaign. Settings explain when
  a change takes effect and whether it affects an existing town.
• Review population-rule changes at the Sky Palace before redeveloping towns.
  Confirming a conversion creates a recovery copy of the campaign.
• Customize magic controls and costs, starting lives and spell inventory,
  score-earned lives, retry scoring, room timers, pickups and Action Mode
  availability, including European Action Mode behavior.
• Choose regional enemy stats, hitboxes, movement, attack timing and boss
  strategies independently of their artwork. Supported encounters include
  the Centaur, Minotaur, Wizard, Antlion, Pharaoh, Aitos dragon and skulls,
  Marahna plant/head and Viper, Northwall bosses, and Tanzra.
• Select regional terrain, enemy and item placements, hazards, Aitos mosaic
  patterns, scene music routing and Death Heim arrival rules. Room-dependent
  changes take effect at the appropriate entry boundary.
• Customize town construction costs and timing, development and recovery,
  fishing, earthquake behavior, house-loss accounting, population and level
  goals, lair reserves and rewards, SIM combat, and story prerequisites.
  Persisted lair history prevents switching rules from replaying rewards;
  older saves receive an acknowledgement when their missing history matters.
• Fix Japanese placements on statue-materialization entries, check room actor
  capacity before changing state, and correct regional hook and return
  behavior around stage completion and town actions.
• Support regional title art, Death Heim graphics, European item graphics,
  town symbols, pyramid details, actor art and music sequences from donor
  packages, with fallback when a selected media package is unavailable.

See Regional Differences for more details on how each region plays.

Save slots and campaign tools

• Keep ten independent campaigns, each with its regional settings,
  randomizer recipe and enhanced player name, through the Saves menu.
• Automatically import older save.srm, save.ini, or actraiser.srm saves
  from the selected data directory into Slot 1 on the game's first upgraded
  launch, with the originals retained. See Upgrading from v0494.
• Set up regional rules for a new campaign before starting an empty slot.
• Switch campaigns or restart the game without closing and reopening its window.
• Export and import a complete campaign as a single .arsave file, including
  its regional settings and enhanced player name. Use Export campaign or
  Import save under Saves → Advanced → Actions.
• Choose save import and export locations through file pickers.
• Save your edits and restart in the same window with
  Saves → Advanced → Actions → Apply and restart, then choose Continue
  at the title screen to load the changes.
• Keep Advanced tools beside the slot list and clearly identify the active
  campaign they will change. SNES Y (default keyboard A) opens Advanced
  directly; previewing another slot does not change the edit target.
• Store every slot in its own numbered directory, with separate imports,
  exports and campaign backups. Automatically upgrade older slot layouts and
  preserve their original files and prepared new-game choices.
• Save SRAM, regional metadata and enhanced names as one recoverable snapshot.
  Interrupted writes preserve a complete previous campaign; invalid or missing
  managed metadata is reported for recovery instead of silently loading defaults.
• Persist confirmed regional edits for the active slot even before Continue,
  without advancing gameplay progress. Keep global boot overrides from
  accidentally applying to a different campaign.
• Prevent two game instances from owning the same save collection, and offer
  startup recovery for unavailable saves or interrupted slot switches.

See the manual's Save slots and
Save editor.

Experimental randomizer

• Save the randomizer's seed and options with each campaign. Continue restores
  the same setup without rolling it again.
• Independently randomize regional action and town rules for a new campaign.
  Enable Regional action rules and/or Regional town rules under
  Randomizer → Seed.
• Apply randomized stat scaling over the chosen regional base values and
  preserve the recipe, generator version and campaign identity across saves,
  imports and deterministic replays.
• Prepare a randomized game in an empty save slot without replacing an
  existing campaign; restarting before its first save retains the same setup.

To access these options, enable System → Tools → Show debug settings, then
open Randomizer at the title screen. See Seeded campaigns
for setup and current limitations.

Town menus and everyday play

• Choose a compact town command menu that remembers selections and lets you
  read about a miracle or offering before using it. Set
  Town 3D → Scene → SIM menu to Modern; it also works with 3D towns
  turned off. Original remains the default.
• Adjust the modern town menu's size with
  Town 3D → Scene → SIM menu scale (%).
• Skip repetitive SIM action explanations with an optional quality-of-life
  setting for the original town menu. Enable
  System → Game → Quality of life → Native menu quick use (off by default).
  It skips optional miracle explanations and selection instructions while
  keeping confirmations and outcomes. Use Describe menu item to read the
  full explanation when needed.
• Continue with the Sky Palace positioned over your last visited town using
  System → Game → Quality of life → Remember last town. This option is
  on by default and remembers the location separately for each save.
• Improve town-menu navigation, confirmation and offering handoffs, message
  paging, timed notices, native menu sounds and the remappable Describe hint.
• Keep the settings overlay accessible on The End and Best Player
  screens so you can restart or exit after completing the game.
• Fix repeated soft resets from the Sky Palace and retain working audio and
  input when restarting or changing saves in the same window.

See Modern SIM menu and
Native menu quick use.

Visual improvements

• Turn scenery lighting and particles on or off independently of spell effects
  with Video → Effects → Environmental effects (on by default). This
  controls the Fillmore and Bloodpool additions below in flat and Diorama views.
• Add canopy light, falling leaves and drifting motes to Fillmore's forest.
• Add water accents, mist, drips, dust and lighting to Fillmore's caves,
  temple and tower.
• Add moonlight, red-water reflections and low mist to Bloodpool's marsh.
• Add window light, torch glow and interior atmosphere to Bloodpool's castle.
• Improve the Centaur's lightning effects, controlled by
  Video → Effects → Action spell lighting and Action spell particles.
• Improve Northwall boss magic and water impacts, using the same
  Action spell lighting and Action spell particles options under
  Video → Effects.
• Add Bloodpool Act 1 boss-fireball lighting, embers and lingering moonlit
  smoke. Launched shots retain their effects after the boss dies, and frozen
  shots keep their smoke and motion clocks aligned.
• Refine powered sword-beam lighting and particles, including their room
  priority. Native sword and beam damage behavior is unchanged.
• Keep projectile effects attached to the correct native actor through phase
  changes, pauses, source retirement and reused actor slots. This includes
  Marahna Viper lightning becoming a ground charge in both its original fight
  and the Death Heim rematch.
• Preserve scenery effects in Skybox-only rooms and align wat...

Pre-Release 0.494 - Windows Improvements

Note

This prerelease has been superseded and its downloads removed. Only the current
prerelease ships builds — see the latest release.

Original Notes Below

---

WIndows Fixes & Improvements

With these fixes, I can confirm that the game should largely work on Windows. Testing confirmed that both Action mode and Sim mode (authentic + enhanced renderers) properly execute along with the initial build and install process.

The fixes include the following:

• [Global] Bug fixes for path prefix handling that caused Windows to treat local paths like network paths. This should fix a multitude of issues around settings persistence and saving
• [SIM Mode] Performance improvements towards DirectX APIs - reduced the number of texture updates per frame that caused expensive GPU allocations within DirectX 12. This fix resulted in roughly a ~6x increase in frames per second on my test machine bringing it's performance in parity with the other platforms
• [Settings] Add option to select graphics API via in game settings menu - you can now select between DirectX 12 or Vulkan

Pre-Release 0.493

Note

This prerelease has been superseded and its downloads removed. Only the current
prerelease ships builds — see the latest release.

Original Notes Below

---

Pre-Release 0.493

This update lets you add your own instruction manual to the Workshop and the
game, and groups the game's settings by what they actually change.

Add your own instruction manual

• Choose a PDF under Help & manual and it is read both in the Workshop and
  in the game, from the Manual entry in the game's settings.
• The Workshop opens any PDF. The in-game reader needs a scan album — one page
  image per page — and the Workshop tells you at install time whether your file
  will work in the game, rather than leaving you to find out from the game's
  menu.
• Remove manual clears it, and installing again replaces it. A manual you
  install takes effect the next time you start the game; no rebuild is needed.
• With no manual installed, the game simply omits its Manual section.

Imperfect scans are accepted

• Pages do not have to be exactly the same size. Anything within 5% of the
  booklet's most common page size counts as a page.
• A home scan is never perfectly uniform: auto-crop finds a slightly different
  edge on each sheet, and the odd page sits crooked. None of that prevents a
  manual from being used.
• The comparison is against the most common page size in the book, so a cover
  scanned separately does not disqualify the rest of it.

Settings menu

• Game changes are now grouped by intent, under Original game bug fixes and
  Quality-of-life improvements, making it clear which options restore
  intended behavior and which go beyond it.

Existing installations

• Your saved settings are preserved.
• The page-size rule is part of the game itself. You WILL need to rebuild your game with this release for the new manual acceptance logic to work.

Pre-Release 0.492 - Hotfix 2

Note

This prerelease has been superseded and its downloads removed. Only the current
prerelease ships builds — see the latest release.

Original Notes Below

---

Pre-Release 0.492

This update refines the connected 3D towns and adds an optional fix for an original-game dialogue bug in Aitos.

Connected 3D towns

• Towns now follow the globe’s curvature instead of sitting on a separate flat surface. Terrain, buildings, mountains, water, actors, and effects share a consistent perspective.
• Reduced rendering overhead, with improved performance in the tested Steam Deck town scenes.
• Restored ground and coastal-water dimming around the visible town area, including while panning.
• Improved camera orbit behavior at connected-world limits, including when loading older saved camera positions.
• Adjusted default landscape height, haze, cloud overlap, and distant blur for clearer views. The cheaper flat-world option remains available.

Aitos dialogue fix

• Added Correct Aitos messages, which prevents the northeast-mountain discovery from repeating the earlier “all monsters defeated” message when those events overlap.
• This option is off by default, preserving the original game’s behavior unless enabled.

Existing installations

Your saved settings are preserved. The revised visual defaults apply to new installations, missing preferences, or settings you explicitly reset.

Pre-Release 0.491 - Hotfix

Note

This prerelease has been superseded and its downloads removed. Only the current
prerelease ships builds — see the latest release.

Original notes below

---

Fix some crashes due to broken caching.

Pre-Release 0.49

Note

This prerelease has been superseded and its downloads removed. Only the current
prerelease ships builds — see the latest release.

Original notes below

---

This release transforms the flat overworld into a spherical world, connects that world to the existing 3D towns, and adds language packs, translation tools, and a desktop Builder.

Spherical world navigation

• The previously flat navigation map now wraps around a globe, with raised mountain ranges and developed towns populated by regional 3D buildings and scenery.
• Cloud cover, cloud shadows, and atmosphere follow the curved world against a starfield backdrop.
• An optional enhanced Sky Palace background shows the selected town below the original angel, pillars, and menus, with moving cloud layers.
• Separate terrain, model, mountain, lighting, cloud, and atmosphere controls let you tune appearance and rendering cost.
• Travel and town entry continue to use the original menus.

Connected 3D towns

• An optional globe backdrop replaces the flat map surrounding the active SIM town, showing neighboring terrain and lower-detail towns beyond its borders.
• The active town keeps its detailed models, authored terrain, actors, and interactions.
• Haze, lighting, and curved cloud cover help distinguish the active town from the surrounding world.
• Camera movement stays within the local area while allowing the connected landscape to remain visible when tilting or zooming out.

Language packs and enhanced text

• Install .arlang language packs without patching the ROM.
• Unicode text, font fallback, right-to-left layout, adjustable sizing, and Crisp, Smooth, and pixelated font options.
• Translation support for dialogue, menus, HUD text, world labels, name entry, and credits, with native US fallback for missing entries.
• Workshop tools for side-by-side editing, validation, font-coverage checks, project backups, and language-pack export.
• English, French, German, and Japanese Builder and settings interfaces, independent of the selected game language.

Game translation coverage depends on the installed pack. A complete Japanese translation and Japanese-version gameplay mechanics are not included.

Desktop Builder and installation

• A desktop Builder with integrated Workshop tools and persistent build progress.
• Locally generated macOS applications, Linux/Steam Deck AppImages, and directly launchable Windows game folders.
• Portable or per-user game storage on macOS and Linux.
• Explicit workflows for updating an installation or importing an older one while preserving the original data.
• Windows startup progress and cancellation controls, plus support for non-ASCII installation and data paths.

Rendering, performance, and diagnostics

• GPU-resident models and terrain, shared geometry, cached animation data, and batched cloud shadows limit repeated CPU work and uploads.
• Portable multicore processing distributes suitable rendering work across helper threads.
• Graphics capabilities and pipelines are prepared at startup, with unsupported settings disabled.
• A new Performance overlay under Video → General provides summary and detailed diagnostics across game modes and menus.
• More reliable overlapping and retriggered sound effects in the existing extended-audio mode.

Rendering cost depends on the scene, hardware, resolution, and enabled effects; the new globe is substantially more detailed than v0014’s flat navigation map.

Upgrading and compatibility

• Back up your saves before updating. Use Update existing installation or Import previous installation… in the Builder.
• Quick-state restoration is disabled. Debug snapshots are inspection-only, not resumable save states. Use normal in-game battery saves.
• Switching between portable and per-user storage does not automatically transfer saves or settings.
• Your own USA ROM is still required. Generated game applications contain ROM-derived content and must not be redistributed.
• Original rendering remains available, and 3D and CRT enhancements remain opt-in on fresh installations.
• macOS Apple Silicon and Steam Deck remain the primary validated platforms. Broader platform testing and Northwall validation are ongoing.