Ephemeral Tale News

EDIT: This went up a few hours later than I expected, but this is the benefit of releasing late at night! Hopefully a minimal amount of you were impacted. Sorry for the delay ːsteamfacepalmː

Heck YES, my pupper fam! We're BACK this week with another great Pupdate lined up for the game, and some nice reading for your eyes to enjoy as you download this MASSIVE patch of several megabytes! You thought Warzone was hitting your hard drive? I mean, yeah, they have us beat by a factor of several hundred still.

Anywho, this week, we have the second wave of companion changes, and some additional niceties as well! We’re not quite done with the QoL changes yet, but over the next few weeks you’ll see an additional wave of these changes here and there. Additionally, I do hope that all of my Siegfried fans out there can forgive me for swapping his default ability! I do believe it’s ultimately best for not only him, but the game as well. But instead of talking about what the game is now, let’s talk about what it can be, shall we?

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.8.4 Changelog[/h2]

• Fixed a weird stray pixel on Gribbler’s sprite (truly, I apologize you had to suffer w/ it for two weeks)
  
• Balance adjustments made to the Cavern to be more beginner friendly
  
• When comparing various pieces of gear, the players HP and MP will now properly reflect the changes that will occur
  
• The rainfall in the Corrupted Castle is now more severe
  
• Fixed a passibility issue in the Sunken Summit
  
• Addressed an issue where the Corrupted Castle and Occluded Oasis Jelly rooms had little to no loot
  
• Added more noise to the grass in the Forgotten Forest
  
• Siegfried has been given a significant adjustment pass:
  
• Siegfried no longer knows Cleave by default (he hit his head, if you need some canon justification)
  
• Siegfried now knows Taunt by default, this skill ensures enemies target him first and foremost
  
• At Lv. 15, he will learn Rally, a buff lasting a few turns that returns HP when he deals damage
  
• At Lv. 25, he will learn Cleave, his classic wide-hitting AOE
  
• At Lv. 40, he will learn Bulwark, a buff lasting a few turns that significantly ups his maximum HP pool and damage reduction
  
• Enemies of the Corrupted Castle have received a balance sweep as well:
  
• Enemies of the Corrupted Castle are now weaker to their weakest elements (Fire, Shock) by an additional 20%, bringing the weakness to a total of 40%
  
• Candlenap has been given more Magic Defense, and lost some Defense
  
• El Caboney has been given more Attack and Defense, but had has Magic Attack and Magic Defense lowered as well
  
• Zombobber’s have lost significant amounts of Magic Defense, but gained significant amounts of Defense
  
• Upholstergeist is now a lil bit weaker in Attack and Defense
  
• Cacoffiny is now significantly weaker to damage, but does more damage as well
  
• Vampyr is now weaker in Defense, and stronger in Magic Defense
  
• Trunkster is relatively the same
  

Last week, we spoke about the challenges that content development can have. This is something that continues to constantly fluctuate, but over the past few weeks I do feel that I’ve found a goalpost for us to strive for with Ephemeral Tale, and I hope to get there together! That goalpost is ultimately, where I’m likely to call the game “ready for a full release.” Fret not, however! There are plenty of kinks left to work out still in Ephemeral Tale, including the (frankly abhorrently) poor tutorial experience. Right now, the game has a weird problem right out of the gate: it’s hard as nails. Then, you get out of the cave, you’ve started to grasp how everything pieces together, and then you’re thrown into a dungeon where you (once again) get the ever-living crap slapped out of you. That… isn’t the best feeling bit in the game, eh?

To compound this issue, there is a point where this stops occurring, but then the challenge of the game practically dissipates entirely! What gives? Shouldn’t the balance rework have caught this stuff? That’s a complicated question to answer, but the short of it is that it did catch it, the game was just never meant to handle that situation with very much grace. I’m a firm believer that if a game is good, players are smart enough to figure it out and really dig in and enjoy it, rough edges and all. This actually rings rather true to the Ephemeral Tale community as well, but would eventually need to be addressed. I’ve been talking with a few of you guys on our Discord and some trusted fellow developers about all this, and have plans in place to address this, sooner rather than later. One of the primary hopes of these balancing patch sweeps is to increase the amount of depth that enemies convey, while properly setting things up for future changes as well. With that said, I’ll be straightforward with you guys here: by the end of these balancing sweeps, the hope is for the tutorial experience to feel much better, and be better represented as well. Additionally, instead of difficulty spiking somewhat randomly and slowly declining over the course of the game, it should instead NOT spike, and slowly rise from a much more pleasant base. Game development is a weird, constantly changing thing, and I don’t want to promise you guys the moon but only deliver a pizza. So, TL;DR: tutorial experience changes coming, more QoL stuff, easier at the front-end, harder at the back-end. Got it? Cool.

Sneak preview of some upcoming stuff for you!

That’s all the energy I have for this week, but I hope you enjoy the new patch, and as always, have fun!

-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf

It must be that time again, yes? Where you sit down, curious what wonders have come to the world of Ephemeral Tale, and sip your favorite beverage of choice. Well, my child, let me learn you some insight of our process developing content, and how weird things can be behind the scenes. Well, after this message from this weeks changelog, of course!

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.7.3 Changelog[/h2]

• Adjustments to the main menu have been made, including a replacement of the face sprites with full body sprites
  
• Similar changes have been made to the save menu
  
• Targeted enemy highlight will now show above enemy portraits in the turn window
  
• Text should be less squished in combat windows now
  
• Small balance adjustment to enemy hit rate when the player doesn’t have a party member present
  
• Merlin has been given a significant adjustment pass:
  
• At Lv. 15, he will learn Gust, a single target damage spell that deals 1.4x damage
  
• At Lv. 25, he will learn Storm, an AOE ability that deals 0.75x damage
  
• At Lv. 40, he will learn Arcana Surge, an ability that gives him a buff to MAT for a few turns
  
• Additionally, he has received an HP buff (from 830HP at Lv. 50 to 1,000HP at Lv. 50)
  
• Enemies of the Forgotten Forest have received a balance sweep as well:
  
• Enemies of the Forgotten Forest are now weaker to their weakest elements (Fire, Spirit) by an additional 20%, bringing the weakness up to 40%
  
• Chunkier mobs now have slightly more base HP and a fair chunk (10) more base DEF
  
• Bibbity has been given more Magic Defense and Magic Attack
  
• Floryn has been given more Defense and Magic Attack
  
• Bootwalla has been given more Agility
  
• Boldude and Boldozer have been given more Defense
  
• Bobbity-Boo has been given more Magic Defense
  
• Adjustments to various scenarios of improper ellipsis use (you’re welcome, Tyler)
  
• When in New Game+, the quality of in game drops is now increased
  

Generally, whenever I begin to develop content for Ephemeral Tale, it's in a bubble. It's always *technically* in the game, but is never accessible to you guys (until I make it so). The best way of explaining this is with an example: the Sunken Summit. Work on the Sunken Summit actually began long before Ephemeral Tale was even on Steam, as the first technical tests for it were done in early December of 2019! The game wouldn't actually hit Early Access until almost a month and a half later, in mid January. By the time the game released into Early Access, the Sunken Summit was about 60% done.

You see, something that I've brought up before in these Pupdates is the ever-changing nature of development and how my approach has had to change to accommodate the needs of the players first and foremost. In my head, I assumed (foolishly) that due to how strenuously my circle of testers had run the gamut of the game, that launch would be relatively smooth (spoilers: it wasn’t). In my head, I assumed that I would fix a few bugs the first few days, and then within a week transition to weekly updates while cracking away at the Summit.

This is not at all how things played out in reality, of course. The game came out, and had a slew of issues with balance at launch, gear was meaningful the first time you acquired it but never again, crazy difficulty spikes out of nowhere, and a metric ton of bugs that had never been seen or caught in the hundreds of hours of testing! While I won’t go through the kit and kaboodle of repeating how I addressed these issues (with lots of help from you guys and friends!), this served as a great lesson for developing with a lead of sorts. To put it simply, I generally attempt to stay one or two weeks ahead of what you guys see in these updates. For example, I’m writing this Pupdate on May 7th, but it likely won’t go live until the 19th! This allows me some degree of flexibility if I’m in need of extra time. See, above I mentioned that content is developed in a bubble, but it’s incredibly difficult to maintain that bubble for technical changes-- things can (and do!) accidentally slip through the cracks all the time. For Major Update #3, keeping the changes for the Great Palace separated would have not only required literally remaking the dungeon, but then properly transitioning to that new iteration of the dungeon when the time came. That’s simply put, not feasible for developing weekly patches.

That’s where the lead comes into play: if I need time to test something that sits on the edge of both new content, and big technical changes, having a week or two of leeway can be make or break for it. The two new bosses implemented in last week's patch, for example, required a new approach to how I was treating certain aspects of the game (mostly in regards to event occurrence), and as such required a bit more time than I would have otherwise had if builds were released as they’re ready. Additionally, this lets me try things that are potentially controversial: if Merlin swings too much in one direction after this week, I can see and be able to adjust him or other changes as quickly as needed, without impacting (too much) the update schedule. We’ve been able to have a weekly patch every week for a few months now, and the lead approach is a big part of how I’m able to do that while still actively changing things daily.

With the New Game+ changes that hit last week, there were quite a few snags along the way. Gear didn’t properly scale, enemies were doing weird things, mechanics didn’t function as intended, etcetera-- without the ability to test these things both internally and externally (beta branch folks, y’all the best being my guinea pigs), it’s impossible to ensure that you guys are getting the best possible gameplay experience when a patch hits. Another area where we faced challenges was actually in the performance sweep! As I’ve mentioned time-in and time-out, I’m not much of a programmer. We’ve had a performance sweep underway for some time now (still, even!) that has been pushed back due to the scale of things. What started as a simple “hey, let’s see if we can get a couple FPS here and there” quickly evolved into an entire restructuring of the engine from the ground up. While Major Update #3 was able to deliver on some great performance gains (and thus free me of my guilt of not being able to deliver on time), they were not actually the changes originally intended! So yes, there will be another performance sweep at some point in the future, but as per the norm, I won’t be disclosing when *quite* yet.

I've spent a great deal more time working on Ephemeral Tale the past few weeks than I normally do (about 60 hours a week, as opposed to 35-40) trying to get some upcoming stuff ready for all of you. While I'm not ready to talk about it quite yet, I am confident in saying that there's a solid concept of what the road ahead looks like, and what it means for the game. We'll talk about that in more depth soon. In the interim, you can join me and some of my friends & colleagues over on our new Discord server! Share your loot finds, bug reports/feedback, or just chat with us! We'd love to have you.

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan

Wassup, my pups?

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.6.5 Changelog -- Major Update #3[/h2]

• When choosing to distribute stats, all possible options will now show
  
• Fixed an issue where save files could show party members being in the party that weren’t in the party (FINALLY)
  
• Fixed an issue where status effects could show their indication text repeatedly
  
• Fixed an issue where the turn order windows would stutter like mad (thanks, fmoo!)
  
• Added Options menu to the main menu per user request
  
• Performance improvements in CPU bound situations (thanks, fmoo!)
  
• Significant improvements in save file load/save times (thanks, fmoo!)
  
• Due to the above change, save files on this version will NOT be backwards compatible to versions prior to 1.6.x
  
• Further changes to the battle HUD, specifically in the turn window
  
• Changes to the main menu and how gauges are drawn/represented
  
• Fixed an issue where players using Fragile Recall Runes while on a staircase or ladder would be slower elsewhere
  
• Additional fixes to collision issues
  
• Additional fixes for bloom blow-out scenarios
  
• Merlin’s skill costs will ramp to be more aggressive as he levels up now to better co-exist with his ever-increasing crit rate
  
• Various corrections to the layout of the main menu
  
• New, less annoying overlay in the Great Palace
  
• Changes and updates to the “weather” system to allow for future updates
  
• Adjustments to how Hit, Critical Rate, and Evade work
  
• Critical Rate is now capped at 75%, and more Luck is required in order to cap it out (from ~200 to ~350)
  
• Due to this, the Luck bonus for crit damage scaling has been increased (from 230% criticals at 200 Luck to 240%)
  
• Hit rate is now capped at 150%
  
• Hit rate now scales based on a combination of agility and level, and requires more agility to cap it out (from 100 Agility to hit 100% at any level in previous versions to 480 at Level 50 to hit 150% in current version)
  
• Reminder: Misses are calculated based on the hit rate of the user versus the evade rate of the target. Due to this, there is a reason to have over 100% hit!
  
• Evade is now capped at 75%, and more Agility is required in order to cap it out (~25% more)
  
• More changes regarding percentage stats (Hit/Crit/Evade) are currently planned to improve their functionality and “fun factor”
  
• New mouse cursor for the mouse fans in the house
  
• Globe Scatterer is now significantly more rare
  
• New Game+ is now properly implemented:
  
• Enemies in NG+ have more mechanics and are significantly tougher
  
• Enemies will aggressively scale up as more playthroughs are completed
  
• Additionally, the “level cap” for gear is raised in NG+, and continues to rise as players go through various playthroughs
  
• Two new, hidden bosses are available for players to search for
  
• Two new pieces of gear have been added
  
• Additionally, a ton of bugs had to be ironed out for NG+, as the original implementation had a bunch of fundamental flaws
  

Alright, y’all-- it’s here! Major Update #3 is now available for players to enjoy! This has been in the works for a while, and has required a lot of back-end changes to get to this point. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished as a community since Major Update #2-- the battle HUD has improved dramatically, the options menu was reborn from the ashes, tons of small dialogue tweaks/changes/additions, balance changes, bug fixes (really, a stupid amount of those), changes to existing content (like the Great Palace and the Jelly Rooms), and some stuff I’m sure I’ve forgotten! As always, if you encounter any issues, please let me know! This update had a bunch of last minute additions and changes, so there may be lingering issues that didn’t get caught in time.

The pillars of Major Update #3 are three-fold: changes to the Great Palace, New Game+, and a performance sweep. Next week, we’ll go into some of the technical hurdles Major Update #3 faced, let’s go over these pillars, and see what that entails, shall we?

[h3]The Great Palace[/h3]
One of the staples of “Major Updates” is generally some fundamental shift in the gameplay experience, one way or another. Major Update #1 did this through the overhaul of how leveling worked, how gear worked, and how things scaled (not to mention the sandbox changing with the addition of loot that didn’t have any abilities). Major Update #2 accomplished this by expanding on the gameplay with an entirely new zone, new enemies, loot, etc. The Great Palace had severe issues in terms of flow, general bugginess, and visual cohesion. While it still may not be perfect, a handful of changes have been thrown at this dungeon near every week to slowly improve it. Normally, pillars of Major Updates are held until the update actually releases, but for both logistical reasons and because it’s not fair to make you guys suffer through a poo-poo dungeon, these changes were pushed to live every week as they were ready.

[h3]New Game+[/h3]
New Game+ is a staple of not only the RPG genre, but the replayable sector as well. It ticks a huge box for some folks, and for good reason! I’m much more likely, personally, to replay a shorter title like Shadows of Adam than I am an epic like Witcher 3. And that’s not a diss on either of those titles, either! In Ephemeral Tale, New Game+ serves two purposes: 1) allow the player to keep improving their builds, and 2), challenge the player. I continue to get feedback from both players that feel the game is too challenging, and players that feel the game is too easy. It’s a tough line to walk, and I believe that the best solution is multifaceted. Last month, I patched in a difficulty menu with a few modifiers that players could change to customize their experience. This ideally allows both parties to find a sweet spot for themselves that best suits the needs of the individual behind the controller, but isn’t a perfect solution. It being hidden in a menu means that some players will simply never know it exists in the first place, even if they regularly interact with it.

Scrolls of Power were originally envisioned as “the solution” to the above issue, should it arise-- if players were getting walloped, they could never get themselves into a spot that was irrecoverable simply due to the existence of Scrolls of Power. For power hungry players, they would serve as a happy cherry on top of their desert. New Game+ allows me another avenue for helping players find that sweet spot, and serves as the antithesis of Scrolls of Power-- if Scrolls were meant to bring up the weakest players, and help them, New Game+ is meant to bring down the strongest players, and whack the stuffing out of their ego. By scaling beyond the original bounds of the game, and adding new mechanics to existing encounters, New Game+ is aimed at players who want an extra layer of thought put into their daily dose of Ephemeral Tale. And due to the ever-increasing nature of it, even the most GDLK of builds will eventually feel the wrath of New Game+, given enough times through the game.

[h3]Performance Sweep[/h3]
Ephemeral Tale runs pretty well for most folks! For example, I can run it at 144FPS on my personal rig, and one of my go-to test benches is a friend’s laptop running integrated graphics and an Intel i3 (which also manages to run the game at 60fps). But, unfortunately, these anecdotes don't intrinsically speak for everyone, nor their hardware. I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’d had concerns that the performance sweep may not make it into the update (we’ll go into that more next week). TL;DR: It’s here! The big difference is that the issue with save files taking progressively longer to load/save as time went on has been resolved, reducing save times in extreme cases from 13 seconds to 1.2 seconds, and reducing file sizes by almost 30% as well. Additionally, a metric ton of optimizations have been made to various combat components to increase average framerate in combat as well. In the most extreme scenario I was able to personally put it through (can’t talk about it more specifically yet, sorry!), frame rate increased from 9FPS at its lowest to 23 at its lowest. This optimization pass is all thanks to a friend of ours giving me a hand with this (as I’ve said before, I can sometimes program in a pinch, but nothing like this).

So here we are: Major Update #3 is now live, and we’ve talked about all of the pillars it brings to the table. Next week, we’ll talk about some of the technical challenges involved with bringing this update to you guys, and the first sweep of inevitable bug fixes for whatever you guys manage to break!

Until then, have fun, and may your loot be juicy!
-- Ryan

Time marches ever forward, greedily consuming each of us, moment to moment. But even the inevitable march of time cannot stop the great work we do here, my pups! This week, we have a fun patch in store! Let's hop right in, shall we?

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.5.1 Changelog[/h2]

• More back-end changes to prepare for Major Update #3
  
• Added a small secret to an item (hint: it’s a counter of some sort)
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Mimic fights in the Corrupted Castle to be visually harsh (tl;dr turn down your bloom, fellow devs)
  
• Fixed a bug that blocked progress on Jackson quest
  
• Removed the screen blur effect from the Caverns after a certain trigger occurs
  
• A metric bunch of collision fixes in various areas (Caverns, Oasis, Castle, Respite, and Forest)
  
• Fixed an issue with changing maps in the Oasis
  
• The “Jelly rooms” now function differently, all changes below indicate the differences
  
• Jelly rooms now have 1 set layout per dungeon, but it is significantly larger than before
  
• Loot locations are now static, and will always be in those locations (but still reset every time you clear the “room,” and return to the dungeon proper)
  
• Enemies now spawn in these rooms as well, they are no longer a safe haven
  
• Treasure goblins have a significantly higher chance of appearing in these rooms

The big bit of this week’s patch is a complete overhaul of the “Jelly rooms.” Originally, these served as a bit of extendable content that were thrown in during Major Update #1, but ultimately had issues. The reality of week-to-week patches is one that makes overhauls of features like this hard, as I need to plan them out and effectively make all of the changes necessary, but in a bubble-- at which point I can pop the bubble and send ‘em out to you guys. In this particular instance, I’ve made the first series of changes to these that I expect to make, with more to follow in the future. I’ve got a few ideas as to how I can further extend on these in the future, one of which you'll likely see next week!

I want to take a moment to thank you guys for your support through these past 22 weeks, and really take a moment to appreciate all the time you've put into the game, the feedback you've given, and the awesome community that you guys have helped form. I know that I'm far from a perfect developer-- I'm slow, I regularly break things (almost always on accident!), and can be a bit stubborn when it comes to certain design tenants. Despite that, you guys continue to play, and you guys continue to share the game with your friends. When I say that Ephemeral Tale is more than just my game, I truly mean it! You guys are a staple part of the game and the development process, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Next week, we've got a big changelog in store. As such, this week, the Pupdate is going to be shorter than usual. Until next time!

Have fun and stay safe,

-- Ryan

Has it already been another month? Has time really slipped by that much? No worries-- change is constant, and everflowing through Ephemeral Tale. This week is no different! I figured we could maybe, iono, go over the changelog and then maybe talk about our dear friend Siegfried a bit? If you, y'know, wanna.

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.4.9 Changelog[/h2]

• Fixed several instances of mapping errors in the Traveller’s Respite and connected areas
  
• Fixed a bug where falling into holes would show the players current Power
  
• Fixed an issue where I didn’t properly push some image assets because I’m a big dumb dumb poopoo butt
  
• More passability issues resolved (Thanks, Kak!)
  
• Arcane Bolt has been buffed slightly
  
• Opened up some of the pathways within The Great Palace to break up the annoying-ness of the maze elements
  
• Addressed an issue where the staircase to the final encounter could cause the player to be unable to run in other areas
  
• Fixed a bug in The Great Palace where the player could be teleported to an inaccessible spot due to a cutscene
  
• Fixed a bug where the visual filters option could cause a crash upon entering an encounter
  
• Addressed an issue where Swiftstep didn’t have an icon

This week is very clearly about The Great Palace, mostly. I'm hopeful that the Palace has become a much improved dungeon in light of all these changes (including prior ones), but I'll need to do a play-test to confirm the improved quality. You guys have given me some great feedback lately about skills, companions, and a whole slew of stuff recently! I'm working on parsing through that and figuring out how to address that feedback. Some of that ties into the upcoming companion reworks. We spoke recently about the changes coming to Merlin, the damage dealer companion. Today, we're gonna talk a bit about Siegfried, your friendly, neighborhood tank companion!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

From the above clip, you might notice Siegfried will be getting a few new abilities with his rework! Let's go over his new toolkit:

1. Cleave
   His OG ability: Cleave tears through all viable enemies in a large swipe.
   
2. Rally
   A new ability: Rally is a buff that makes it so that Siegfried's attacks will return a portion of the damage he deals as HP! This is a sweet little self-heal ability that plays very nicely with Cleave and large groups of foes!
   
3. Taunt
   A new ability: Another new buff, Taunt is an ability that taunts all viable enemies into targeting specifically Siegfried for it's duration. While this will mean Siegfried taking more damage, this can be an advantage if your player character is rather squishy! Additionally, you can combo this with Rally + Cleave for some nasty plays where enemies are focusing on Siegfried but can never quite get the job done!
   

I'm still working on what his final ability will be, but suffice to say, Siegfried will play significantly differently once these changes roll out. I'm looking to potentially move Cleave from being his default ability, to Taunt being his default ability when these changes go live. As you can tell, this is an early peek into some of what I've been working on behind-the-scenes for you guys; it's nowhere near ready, but it's fun to share and get feedback from you about what you like about it!

This is a shorter Pupdate this week, but that's because I've been so busy improving the game-- I can't wait to talk to you guys next week! It'll be fun.

Have fun and stay safe,

-- Ryan