Version 0.4.50: rename characters, cave exploration, the first ending, and more!
Greetings, tactics fans! This month was a lot less hectic than the last two, and that means I was able to pack in a lot of improvements, content, and even a few long-awaited features!
To start, the single most-requested feature we've had since the launch of the game is now in: character renaming! To rename someone, hold a one-on-one with them in camp and tell them you want to change their name. As with most other choices in this game, they'll react to your decision!
Other big-ticket items include a new job type, multiple cut scenes, the game's first ending, a new random event, and more! Here are all of the biggies:
- created the first of the game's endings, complete with multiple new cut scenes!
- new job type added to the Jobs Board: Explorers! Send 4-5 characters away for 3 days to explore a dark and dangerous cavern in search of treasure. Beware traps, looters, derelict golems, and ghosts...
- added a new difficulty setting between Challenging and Brutal: Challenging+. It's identical to Challenging, but cranks the enemy AI up to maximum difficulty.
- created the next investigation cut scene, a branching behemoth with ~84 dialogue branches and replies that appear or vanish based on what you found in prior scenes.
- AI improvement: enemies can now path their way through closed doors, opening the doors as they move! (Previously, moments like this had to be scripted by hand.)
- added a new, two-part random event where one of your most hard-edged characters adopts a kitten (plus a new camp activity to go with it!)
On top of that, we have a slew of miscellaneous additions and improvements:
- the game now tracks which advanced classes you promote characters to.
- new achievement: Jack of all trades. Awarded for promoting characters to every advanced class in the game.
- new achievement for getting the game's first ending. (Between this and Jack of all trades, this brings the game to 75 achievements!)
- new destructible objects: trapped chests! These come in multiple varieties--but I'll let you figure out what those are for yourselves. 😉
- multiple new enemy types that can appear when exploring caverns.
- created the game's end credits.
- gave a buff to the Swordmaster and Marauder prestige classes: Marauders can now follow up Grappler Stance with other skills, and Swordmasters can now do the same with Preemptive Stance and Defensive Stance.
- rebalanced the game's salary calculations: for characters above level 1, stat increases beyond base now only factor in at 33% the strength of base stats when calculating salary, making higher-level characters much more competitive with level 1 recruits in terms of value.
- as a counterweight to the new salary formula, the "asking for a raise" event is now much more reliable, checking multiple characters to find one due for a raise and making it much less likely to get skipped. Additionally, giving a character only half their requested raise in this event now produces a -2 morale hit.
- the Psy Clash deck viewer now lets you deactivate cards you don't want to use in your deck (and/or reactivate cards you previously deactivated).
- added gamepad support for the View Deck button and the Deck Viewer screen.
- added a bit more gradation in how enemy decks improve over the course of a Psy Clash tourney. (The first deck will always be more basic, while the next two decks will now be a bit stronger.)
- received, incorporated new desert and forest battle backgrounds.
- received a new "dark alley" background, integrated it into the game.
- updated the fruit tree sprite so that it has a different silhouette from the regular tree, making it easier to spot (especially so for colorblind players).
- created an alternate fruit tree sprite with orange-yellow fruits, made it the sprite for mango trees.
- if Heavy status wears off while a flying character is dunked in water or lava, they no longer immediately return to flying movement--they must now swim to shore first.
- improved cut scene scrolling behavior. Instead of automatically skipping to the next scene, clicking now increases the scroll speed by 10x while the button is held down, then advances to the next scene when scrolling is completed.
- holding down the Escape button during a scrolling cut scene now mirrors the new behavior of left-clicking, speeding up the text scroll by a factor of 10 and only progressing to the next scene when scrolling has finished.
- added new backgrounds for certain camp activities.
- camp activities can now play associated sound effects.
- added a hammering sound effect to the "repair equipment" camp activity.
- AI improvement: CPU-controlled characters will no longer wander into campfires.
- massively decreased the amount of time the game spends reprocessing character dialogue upon renaming a unit.
We have bug fixes a-plenty:
- fixed: characters were still returning from the Infirmary one day early because I "fixed" it last time via adding a second mathematical operation to SetStat when SetStat did not yet support running multiple mathematical operations at once.
- AI fix: the game would consider 0-move destinations for Swim, which could potentially lock the game into an endless loop of an AI unit using Swim and not actually moving anywhere with it.
- fixed: in some circumstances, the animation for dropping a flyer into water or lava could play much too slowly.
- fixed: in some circumstances where a unit took a long time making a move on the battlefield that was destined to be interrupted by a trap, the game could start calculating the next move for that unit before the move was finished, effectively ignoring the trap's effects.
- fixed: the game was not calculating the difference between a character's current and calculated salary correctly in the "asking for a raise" event.
- fixed: the info bar was not visible during the "asking for a raise" event.
- fixed: players could hire out characters as caravan guards more than once per day.
- fixed: the game would not kick the player out if they went to hire out caravan guards without the minimum number of characters, potentially getting the player stuck in the scene until they clicked on the one character available.
- fixed: it was possible to get card tournaments multiple days in a row on the jobs board.
- fixed: the SetStat action was not working correctly when targeting the Salary or Appetite stats.
- fixed: the gamepad cursor logic could get confused when playing Psy Clash using the gamepad, resulting in the wrong card being deemed selected and leading to range errors.
- fixed: the game could freeze if character movement mid-combat sequence (e.g. with a skill like Charge) brought a character into an area of the map that triggers OnReachingArea dialogue.
- fixed: in some cases, the game running and then closing dialogue with an OnReachingArea trigger in the middle of an AI turn could cause the game to tell the AI that none of its characters had moved or acted yet, resulting in them taking multiple turns.
- fixed: the formula used to detect how many days away from payday the player is contained errors, leading to payday warnings appearing in town on inappropriate days.
- fixed a bug that was causing hair accessories in character portraits to display with incorrect scale and position.
- fixed: the investigation progress tracker wasn't being set upon completing the witness protection battle, letting the player go back to the palace and replay it ad infinitum.
- fixed: Battle with the Steel Bandits was still lacking a battle background.
- fixed a typo in the scene for hiring out characters as caravan guards.
- revised the text of the dissident's den letter so that it makes more sense in context.
- fixed: the game could lock up if the engineer from Battle in the Dissident's Den had his path from Hari to the desk blocked.
- fixed: during the battle in the dissident's den, if the engineer was tipped off due to the player wandering too close and the enemy getting the first attack, he would make his scripted moves during the player's turn instead of his own.
- fixed: during OnCharAttacked dialogue where the speaker's name was set via the -ATTACKER- special character, the game was leaving the resulting unique ID in place in lieu of the attacker's name.
- fixed: the game was leaving the "talking" symbol visible on the last speaker portrait when transitioning to a new dialogue branch with no speaker.
- fixed: the game was not updating data for the trigger character or the secondary character in dialogue after updating their stats via a SetStat action.
- fixed: the army overview button was missing from the Card Tourney scene.
- fixed: the team leader in the Monkey league Qualifier could start moving too early due to the AI detecting an item hidden in one of the bushes.
- fixed: in rare circumstances, the game could produce a range error trying to place an enemy with exceptionally long range on a proc gen battle map without enough space to get them outside of enemy range.
- fixed: when finishing deployment in a map with both a Fog of War condition and a Go First condition for any army other than the player, the game would reconfigure fog of war to reflect the perspective of whichever army went during the first turn, thereby inappropriately revealing hidden areas of the map to the player.
- fixed: missing-space typo due to localization implementation in the reserve supplies screen when asking the player if they want a character to automatically equip multiple new equippable items.
- fixed some awkward word combinations that could come up in evening dialogue discussing hobbies and objects that characters like.
- fixed: the wording of one variant of Pessimistic character practice narration could clash with character mood narration.
- fixed: the title screen news ticker would not reappear after returning to the title screen from playing the game.
- fixed an over-long delay between news items in the title screen news ticker.
And of course, we have changes and additions for the campaign creation suite:
- new, small jug variant made.
- new sound effects added to the game: Door Knock, Meow, and MeowKitten.
- new sound loop added to the game: Purring.
- added a bunch of newer sound and image assets to the AssetNames.xml file for use in the campaign creator.
- added several of the newer cut scene background images to the AssetNames.xml file for use in the campaign creator.
- proc gen maps now support setting a specific distance range from the player's army for other army groups to spawn. This can not only apply to enemies, but to allied armies as well! (Note that this is not yet represented in the map editor, but can be placed onto army groups manually in the XML file using the notation forcePlayerProximity="x-y", where x is the minimum distance and y is the maximum distance.)
- new after-attack type supported: "Can Attack." The character can continue using other skills, but can no longer move.
- new script action supported: NextFrame. Automatically ends any dialogue that may be open and advances to the next frame of the current cut scene.
- added multiple-operations support to the SetStat script action. (For instance, you can now call SetStat/Alan Basilleaf,Health,+:10,*:2,c:50 all in one go.)
- new operation type supported: abs. Sets the custom value equal to the absolute value of the operand.
- fixed: loading a dialogue tree containing a NewScene action in branch 0 within a frame of the cut scene editor would cause the game to actually load the new scene within the editor.
- fixed: the "force visual effect direction" parameter of skills was not being read by the game, ensuring that directional skill effects could never be locked in a given direction (or used at all by destructible objects).
That's all for this month's update, folks! For next month, I'm aiming to create a new interrogation scene, expand the cavern exploration jobs to feature multi-level caves, get some new art into the game, and add several new random events. We'll see how much of that comes to pass. Until next month!
Tactically yours,
Craig
To start, the single most-requested feature we've had since the launch of the game is now in: character renaming! To rename someone, hold a one-on-one with them in camp and tell them you want to change their name. As with most other choices in this game, they'll react to your decision!
Other big-ticket items include a new job type, multiple cut scenes, the game's first ending, a new random event, and more! Here are all of the biggies:
- created the first of the game's endings, complete with multiple new cut scenes!
- new job type added to the Jobs Board: Explorers! Send 4-5 characters away for 3 days to explore a dark and dangerous cavern in search of treasure. Beware traps, looters, derelict golems, and ghosts...
- added a new difficulty setting between Challenging and Brutal: Challenging+. It's identical to Challenging, but cranks the enemy AI up to maximum difficulty.
- created the next investigation cut scene, a branching behemoth with ~84 dialogue branches and replies that appear or vanish based on what you found in prior scenes.
- AI improvement: enemies can now path their way through closed doors, opening the doors as they move! (Previously, moments like this had to be scripted by hand.)
- added a new, two-part random event where one of your most hard-edged characters adopts a kitten (plus a new camp activity to go with it!)
On top of that, we have a slew of miscellaneous additions and improvements:
- the game now tracks which advanced classes you promote characters to.
- new achievement: Jack of all trades. Awarded for promoting characters to every advanced class in the game.
- new achievement for getting the game's first ending. (Between this and Jack of all trades, this brings the game to 75 achievements!)
- new destructible objects: trapped chests! These come in multiple varieties--but I'll let you figure out what those are for yourselves. 😉
- multiple new enemy types that can appear when exploring caverns.
- created the game's end credits.
- gave a buff to the Swordmaster and Marauder prestige classes: Marauders can now follow up Grappler Stance with other skills, and Swordmasters can now do the same with Preemptive Stance and Defensive Stance.
- rebalanced the game's salary calculations: for characters above level 1, stat increases beyond base now only factor in at 33% the strength of base stats when calculating salary, making higher-level characters much more competitive with level 1 recruits in terms of value.
- as a counterweight to the new salary formula, the "asking for a raise" event is now much more reliable, checking multiple characters to find one due for a raise and making it much less likely to get skipped. Additionally, giving a character only half their requested raise in this event now produces a -2 morale hit.
- the Psy Clash deck viewer now lets you deactivate cards you don't want to use in your deck (and/or reactivate cards you previously deactivated).
- added gamepad support for the View Deck button and the Deck Viewer screen.
- added a bit more gradation in how enemy decks improve over the course of a Psy Clash tourney. (The first deck will always be more basic, while the next two decks will now be a bit stronger.)
- received, incorporated new desert and forest battle backgrounds.
- received a new "dark alley" background, integrated it into the game.
- updated the fruit tree sprite so that it has a different silhouette from the regular tree, making it easier to spot (especially so for colorblind players).
- created an alternate fruit tree sprite with orange-yellow fruits, made it the sprite for mango trees.
- if Heavy status wears off while a flying character is dunked in water or lava, they no longer immediately return to flying movement--they must now swim to shore first.
- improved cut scene scrolling behavior. Instead of automatically skipping to the next scene, clicking now increases the scroll speed by 10x while the button is held down, then advances to the next scene when scrolling is completed.
- holding down the Escape button during a scrolling cut scene now mirrors the new behavior of left-clicking, speeding up the text scroll by a factor of 10 and only progressing to the next scene when scrolling has finished.
- added new backgrounds for certain camp activities.
- camp activities can now play associated sound effects.
- added a hammering sound effect to the "repair equipment" camp activity.
- AI improvement: CPU-controlled characters will no longer wander into campfires.
- massively decreased the amount of time the game spends reprocessing character dialogue upon renaming a unit.
We have bug fixes a-plenty:
- fixed: characters were still returning from the Infirmary one day early because I "fixed" it last time via adding a second mathematical operation to SetStat when SetStat did not yet support running multiple mathematical operations at once.
- AI fix: the game would consider 0-move destinations for Swim, which could potentially lock the game into an endless loop of an AI unit using Swim and not actually moving anywhere with it.
- fixed: in some circumstances, the animation for dropping a flyer into water or lava could play much too slowly.
- fixed: in some circumstances where a unit took a long time making a move on the battlefield that was destined to be interrupted by a trap, the game could start calculating the next move for that unit before the move was finished, effectively ignoring the trap's effects.
- fixed: the game was not calculating the difference between a character's current and calculated salary correctly in the "asking for a raise" event.
- fixed: the info bar was not visible during the "asking for a raise" event.
- fixed: players could hire out characters as caravan guards more than once per day.
- fixed: the game would not kick the player out if they went to hire out caravan guards without the minimum number of characters, potentially getting the player stuck in the scene until they clicked on the one character available.
- fixed: it was possible to get card tournaments multiple days in a row on the jobs board.
- fixed: the SetStat action was not working correctly when targeting the Salary or Appetite stats.
- fixed: the gamepad cursor logic could get confused when playing Psy Clash using the gamepad, resulting in the wrong card being deemed selected and leading to range errors.
- fixed: the game could freeze if character movement mid-combat sequence (e.g. with a skill like Charge) brought a character into an area of the map that triggers OnReachingArea dialogue.
- fixed: in some cases, the game running and then closing dialogue with an OnReachingArea trigger in the middle of an AI turn could cause the game to tell the AI that none of its characters had moved or acted yet, resulting in them taking multiple turns.
- fixed: the formula used to detect how many days away from payday the player is contained errors, leading to payday warnings appearing in town on inappropriate days.
- fixed a bug that was causing hair accessories in character portraits to display with incorrect scale and position.
- fixed: the investigation progress tracker wasn't being set upon completing the witness protection battle, letting the player go back to the palace and replay it ad infinitum.
- fixed: Battle with the Steel Bandits was still lacking a battle background.
- fixed a typo in the scene for hiring out characters as caravan guards.
- revised the text of the dissident's den letter so that it makes more sense in context.
- fixed: the game could lock up if the engineer from Battle in the Dissident's Den had his path from Hari to the desk blocked.
- fixed: during the battle in the dissident's den, if the engineer was tipped off due to the player wandering too close and the enemy getting the first attack, he would make his scripted moves during the player's turn instead of his own.
- fixed: during OnCharAttacked dialogue where the speaker's name was set via the -ATTACKER- special character, the game was leaving the resulting unique ID in place in lieu of the attacker's name.
- fixed: the game was leaving the "talking" symbol visible on the last speaker portrait when transitioning to a new dialogue branch with no speaker.
- fixed: the game was not updating data for the trigger character or the secondary character in dialogue after updating their stats via a SetStat action.
- fixed: the army overview button was missing from the Card Tourney scene.
- fixed: the team leader in the Monkey league Qualifier could start moving too early due to the AI detecting an item hidden in one of the bushes.
- fixed: in rare circumstances, the game could produce a range error trying to place an enemy with exceptionally long range on a proc gen battle map without enough space to get them outside of enemy range.
- fixed: when finishing deployment in a map with both a Fog of War condition and a Go First condition for any army other than the player, the game would reconfigure fog of war to reflect the perspective of whichever army went during the first turn, thereby inappropriately revealing hidden areas of the map to the player.
- fixed: missing-space typo due to localization implementation in the reserve supplies screen when asking the player if they want a character to automatically equip multiple new equippable items.
- fixed some awkward word combinations that could come up in evening dialogue discussing hobbies and objects that characters like.
- fixed: the wording of one variant of Pessimistic character practice narration could clash with character mood narration.
- fixed: the title screen news ticker would not reappear after returning to the title screen from playing the game.
- fixed an over-long delay between news items in the title screen news ticker.
And of course, we have changes and additions for the campaign creation suite:
- new, small jug variant made.
- new sound effects added to the game: Door Knock, Meow, and MeowKitten.
- new sound loop added to the game: Purring.
- added a bunch of newer sound and image assets to the AssetNames.xml file for use in the campaign creator.
- added several of the newer cut scene background images to the AssetNames.xml file for use in the campaign creator.
- proc gen maps now support setting a specific distance range from the player's army for other army groups to spawn. This can not only apply to enemies, but to allied armies as well! (Note that this is not yet represented in the map editor, but can be placed onto army groups manually in the XML file using the notation forcePlayerProximity="x-y", where x is the minimum distance and y is the maximum distance.)
- new after-attack type supported: "Can Attack." The character can continue using other skills, but can no longer move.
- new script action supported: NextFrame. Automatically ends any dialogue that may be open and advances to the next frame of the current cut scene.
- added multiple-operations support to the SetStat script action. (For instance, you can now call SetStat/Alan Basilleaf,Health,+:10,*:2,c:50 all in one go.)
- new operation type supported: abs. Sets the custom value equal to the absolute value of the operand.
- fixed: loading a dialogue tree containing a NewScene action in branch 0 within a frame of the cut scene editor would cause the game to actually load the new scene within the editor.
- fixed: the "force visual effect direction" parameter of skills was not being read by the game, ensuring that directional skill effects could never be locked in a given direction (or used at all by destructible objects).
That's all for this month's update, folks! For next month, I'm aiming to create a new interrogation scene, expand the cavern exploration jobs to feature multi-level caves, get some new art into the game, and add several new random events. We'll see how much of that comes to pass. Until next month!
Tactically yours,
Craig