Dreadmark became a program today: a standalone Windows build you can double-click, with a version number in the corner. That milestone pulled a train of "a real game needs this" work behind it.
Why a build, and what it immediately taught us
The trigger was practical: the AI test bot now fast-forwards through arena batches at 3× speed, which makes the editor useless for human play-testing while it runs. A standalone build solves it — the designer plays his own instance while the batches churn, and both write to the same telemetry pipeline.
The first .exe immediately earned its keep by breaking: enemy health bars were invisible in the build while working perfectly in the editor. The culprit is a classic engine trap — shaders that are only referenced from code get stripped out of builds as "unused." Our procedural visuals (health bars, telegraphs, every effect) conjure their materials at runtime, so the build quietly shipped without their shaders. They're force-included now, and the build pipeline re-checks on every build.
ESC, at last
With an exe in hand, "quit the game" stopped being a joke requirement. ESC now pauses the world and opens a menu: graphics quality, display mode (fullscreen / borderless / windowed), master volume, an interface section, and quit. Settings persist between sessions. Versioning discipline landed alongside: vX.Y.Z, patch number climbing with every update, the version always faintly visible bottom-right next to a PRE-ALPHA badge — so every screenshot and every bug report is anchored to an exact build.
The surround, done properly
A standing player used to collect a polite crowd: five skeletons attacking from one side, the rest queueing behind them with open space all around. Now every skeleton claims its own bearing on a ring around the player — spread by the golden angle, so any number of them distribute evenly — and packs genuinely close the circle. The heavy got priority in the crowd too: it shoves smaller skeletons aside instead of waiting in line behind them, exactly as something twice their size should.
And a small dignity fix for the ranger: its crossbow now actually sits in its hands — grip-fitted by hand, in play mode, with the same tuning tool the hero's weapons use.