Version 0.6.40: UI improvements, gamepad support improvements, and bug fixes!

Greetings, tactics fans! Some of you may know that I am but a single dude with a day job--and as it happens, that day job was quite busy this past month. I wasn't sure if I would have the time to add the ambitious new main-plot content I had planned (spoiler: I didn't), so I decided to spend what time I had on adding high-impact content like new conditions for proc gen battles, polishing the UI, fixing bugs, and giving gamepad support another pass.

Before we get to that stuff, though, I want to tell you about the one new feature I'm most excited about adding this month...

[h3]...Day Logs! [/h3]

For quite some time, I've been wanting to add something to the game that lets you look back on everything that's transpired during each day of your playthrough--and now, that very thing has arrived in-game!

in the calendar screen, you can now review the logs of all tracked events and choices that happened on every day of your run!
in last month's second, mini update, I started having the game track certain choices and events for use in day logs. That tracking has now expanded to cover more things like character recruitments, character deaths, characters recovering from being wounded, characters going off to train, the results of job board missions, and so on.

Next up, we have...

[h3]...a variety of other UI improvements![/h3]

combat objectives now auto-display at the start of each battle! No longer will you have to infer your victory and loss conditions from dialogue (or manually open the objectives menu)--the game now simply gives this information to you automatically.
in battle, the "I" key now serves as a hotkey to open the current selected character's inventory. (Of course, this just amounts to opening their character screen, since that is where the inventory resides--but this should still be an improvement for new players who missed that in the tutorials.)
move tiles, along with the step numbers and path arrows that appear within them, now have outlines to make them visible against snow and lava tiles!
I was dissatisfied with the aesthetics of the New Turn box in battle, so I redesigned it with new, hand-animated painted banners. (I seldom have time to paint much new art myself these days, but I'm quite happy I did so here--I think they look a whole lot nicer than before! 🙂)

[h3]Next, we have improvements to gamepad support! [/h3]

Ask any game dev and they'll tell you: anytime you fix something in a game, Fate performs a secret die roll to determine if the fix quietly broke another thing somewhere else in the code. Unfortunately, it seems that gamepad support suffered a critical failure on that roll sometime over the prior months.

On the plus side, however, I recently discovered these issues during testing, so I made sure to pack this month's update with a slew of gamepad/Steamdeck fixes (as well as some straight-up improvements)! Here's the list of those:

dramatically improved gamepad navigation on the recruitment screen (which was pretty haphazard before).
added gamepad support for the battle objectives screen.
added gamepad support for the new day log UI in the calendar screen.
added shoulder button support to the character inventory pop-up window within the reserve supplies screen when playing with a gamepad; the shoulder buttons now automatically switch to the next/previous character in the roster.
added shoulder button support to the shop screen when playing with a gamepad; the shoulder buttons now automatically switch to the next/previous item category.
added shoulder button support to the calendar screen when playing with a gamepad; the shoulder buttons now automatically switch the currently displayed month.
when switching item categories in the shop in gamepad mode, the game now jumps the selector over to the first item in the new category instead of leaving the cursor down among the category buttons.
fixed: at some point, the UI arrows had ceased appearing on reply buttons during dialogue when playing with gamepad.
fixed: gamepad support for the promotion screen was completely missing during non-combat scenes (such as camp).
fixed: when playing with gamepad and using the reserve supplies screen during deployment in battle, the game would inappropriately shift gamepad cursor focus to the battlefield when hitting "B" to back out of an individual character inventory.
fixed some more spots where gamepad support had broken in recruitment and in camp.
fixed: the UI arrows had become misaligned with various elements of the interface in the recruitment screen when playing with gamepad.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, physical traits were not inspectable in the recruitment UI.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, the next page / previous page buttons in the recruitment interface remained selectable with gamepad even when disabled.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, it was possible for the game to become "stuck" at the conclusion of evening camp activities.
fixed: the game was displaying character health bars when mousing over a character under an attack tile, thereby blocking the player's view of the hit chance text.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, visiting the jobs board would cause the gamepad cursor to jump up to the calendar button at the top of the screen.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, the "B" button would not exit out of the calendar screen.
fixed: when playing with gamepad, the UI arrows were no longer appearing in their intended spots on buttons within the reserve supplies screen during deployment in battle.
fixed: character tooltips could remain onscreen when dialogue was triggered mid-battle (particularly when playing with gamepad).
fixed: it was possible for character tooltips to pop up over the top of the promotion screen when a character promoted in battle when playing with the gamepad.
fixed in version 0.6.40b: the pop-up confirmation windows for custom menu buttons were missing gamepad support.
fixed in version 0.6.40b: when playing in gamepad mode, the game was pulling focus away from the confirmation window for auto-equipping newly grabbed equipment, essentially freezing the game.
fixed in version 0.6.40b: when playing in gamepad mode, the recruitment tutorial was not receiving gamepad focus when first entering recruitment..
fixed in version 0.6.40b: the recruitment tutorial was returning focus to the recruitment interface prematurely.

And that's that! Based on my testing, playing TIB on Steamdeck is now once again a downright pleasant experience--but please do let me know over in the forums if there's anything I've missed.

[h3]We have new content and miscellaneous improvements![/h3]

wrote a new, two-part random evening event for depressive characters.
a new unique arena event can occur in Tiger League: "Powerbot 5000."
the ash weather condition during Gharial League now has an actual effect, spawning additional fire around the arena every two rounds.
the snow weather condition during Snow Leopard League now has an actual effect, spawning a new battlefield object around the arena: ice patches! These positively wreck dodge and cold resistance for whatever unit stands on them, significantly reducing their accuracy as well. Worst of all, if a non-flying unit moves onto an ice patch, they will become Slowed until the next round.
new random caravan battle condition: numerous enemies. The caravan is attacked by an unusually large force of bandits.
when sending units to serve as caravan guards, the player is now much less likely to get a caravan defense battle without any complicating condition.
at last, gasuls now gain a distinct spriteset upon promotion! (Note that the Bonebreaker/Cripple/Stunner animation is still in progress.)
new swordsman skill: Cut. 1 energy, deals 50% of normal slash damage, doesn't end the turn (and therefore can be combined with other attacks, applying bonus damage from the user's weapon with every attack made).
swordsmen now always learn either Shove 2 or Pull 2, always learn Defiant Stance or Preemptive Stance, and always learn either Lunge or Cut in the later part of their skill progressions.
reduced the dodge gain upon promoting a barudit to Wyrm to make Drake stand out a bit more as an option.
new skill: Shockwave. Deals Crush damage to every unit adjacent and immediately diagonal, with a chance of stunning.
new visual effect: Shockwave.
updated the objectives on all in-game battles for greater clarity; objectives that count as victory conditions are now clearly labeled as such.
AI improvement: I capped the AI's space danger modifier at 3.0 for short-range moves to avoid situations where the AI chooses not to make optimal moves merely because the current unit is too low on health.
received a new Palace Gardens cutscene background (necessary for the next main plot scene, but not yet integrated into the game).
new in version 0.6.40b: implemented the finished Bonebreaker animation for promoted gasul!
new in version 0.6.40b: boosted the mental resistance debuff on Terror from 150% of the user's Psy to 180%.
new in version 0.6.40b: added an explicit "Doesn't end the turn" to the end of Aim's skill description.
new in version 0.6.40b: added "Requires light armor mastery" to the description for Fur-lined Cloak.

[h3]We have a variety of bug fixes:[/h3]

fixed: Snow Leopard and Tiger Leagues were missing checks to ensure that the vengeful brother scenario couldn't recur multiple times in the same playthrough.
fixed: the game could pick golems as team leaders in Tiger League, leading to situations where a golem was the team leader and the "brother in the stands" condition was picked, the combination of which would lock up the game as it tried and failed to generate a unique name for a male golem (which does not exist).
fixed: the game was not paying the player the second half of their commission for successfully defending caravans.
fixed: the player would be locked out from visiting the jobs board if no characters were available on the team, preventing the player from participating in card tournaments.
fixed: status effects would hang around on units after a battle if the scene was switched without the battle formally ending in a victory or defeat.
fixed: due to a scripting mistake, kidnapped characters with maximum health above 30 weren't having their current health reduced as intended at the start of Battle at the Northern Stepwell.
fixed: the Caltrops 2 skill description didn't match its AOE pattern.
fixed: non-flying, non-bridge units and objects created on chasm tiles would not immediately fall in.
fixed: the AI was not creating a move tracker for enemies it enthralled during its turn; thus, if the AI enthralled a unit and that unit's best move was a non-turn-ending attack, the game could get caught in a loop.
fixed: an off-by-one error in the game's experience staling tracker was effectively causing all skills to grant an additional, unintended 12.5% experience if they'd been previously used on a different target during the same fight.
AI fix: the scoring bonus for self-healing moves when very low on health was being applied to moves attacking allies, which in some circumstances could lead the AI to regain health on near-death units by attacking allies with Feedback.
AI fix: the scoring bonus for self-healing moves when very low on health was being applied even when the target was completely immune to Mental attacks, which in some circumstances could lead the AI to make some highly questionable targeting decisions when using Feedback.
fixed: template enemies in proc gen battles without specified names (e.g. the dacoits in caravan defense battles) were not being leveled up to the correct levels, making job board missions much easier than intended.
fixed: template enemies in proc gen battles without specified names (e.g. the dacoits in caravan defense battles) were having their names inappropriately changed to match their load IDs.
fixed: it was possible for combat winnings to go into the negatives with enough stalling during an arena fight.
fixed: the adult female Dese civilian's right-facing walk animation had gotten overwritten with an up-facing walk animation in the sprite sheet.
fixed: one of the wall chunks in the recruitment duel fight had become rotated incorrectly.
fixed: unpromoted swordsman sprites were using the wrong color for the brightest secondary highlights, resulting in the most highlighted portion of their helmet plumes appearing red even when their secondary army colors did not include red.
fixed: promoted spearman sprites were using the wrong color for secondary highlights, resulting in the glossy bits of the top half of their tower shields appearing red even when their secondary army colors did not include red.
fixed: promoted shadowling sprites were using the wrong color for secondary highlights, resulting in half of their mask appearing red even when their secondary army colors did not include red.
fixed: both promoted and unpromoted cavalier sprites were using the wrong color for the brightest secondary highlights, resulting in the most highlighted portions of their flags and of the designs on their shields appearing red even when their secondary army colors did not include red.
fixed: both promoted and unpromoted crossbowman sprites were using the wrong color for the brightest secondary highlights, resulting in the tops of the shoulders on their non-crossbow-holding arm appearing red even when their secondary army colors did not include red.
fixed in version 0.6.40a: the game was saving "was wounded" day logs for arena opponents and other characters not controlled by the player.
fixed in version 0.6.40b: spriggats could generate with an "I'm something of a red/golden/frost/dark spriggat myself" greeting response line when talking about their respective character classes.
fixed in version 0.6.40c: when spawning unique proc gen units in battle via a script, the game could produce units with no gender information and throw a range error upon reaching the name generation step.

[h3]And finally, we have improvements for the campaign creation suite:[/h3]

the character creator now automatically marks all equippable items as equipped when you save a character with a built-in inventory.
new object: Ice Patch! Ice patches reduce dodge by 75, accuracy by 25, and cold resistance by 50; non-flying characters who move onto them become Slowed (i.e. they immediately lose half their maximum movement and simply cannot dodge at all) for 1 round.
new special character: -SPECIES-. Gets replaced with the species of the character who triggered the dialogue.
new special character: -CHAR2SPECIES-. Gets replaced with the species of the secondary character in the dialogue.
you can now set one of a unit's coordinates to a valid integer number and the other to -1 to have the game try to spawn them on a random space within a specific row or column of the battlefield.
the SetWinAura script action now supports multiple operations in one call, delimited by commas.
fixed: the "Sex" field for procedurally generating units in the map editor did not actually force the resulting unit to be of the specified gender if the unit was a generic.
fixed: when generating a unique named character from a class not defined in Classes.xml using the GenerateUnique script action, if the unit's species was not specified, the game would pull a species of "ERROR," resulting in the character having no valid value for gender, which would in turn cause the game to be unable to generate a name and freeze.
fixed: the FindClosestCharacter script action could cause the game to throw a null error if used with a list of characters to exclude that didn't actually exist.
fixed: golems created in the character creator were not receiving the golem voice set for their babble sounds.
fixed: the SetStringByStat script action was not accepting First Name or Last Name as valid string stats.

That's all I have for you this month, folks. For next month, I'm aiming to create a new plot mission, write a new interrogation scene, create a new random event or two, and--time permitting--add support for creating custom characters that can show up in recruitment in-game. We'll see how things shake out. Until next month!

Tactically yours,

Craig