Version 0.7.00: character creation, hair and skin tone matching in sprites!

Greetings, tactics fans! I've spent this past month overwhelmingly focused on two complicated, big-ticket features for the game--things I've received numerous requests for, and which--in one case--I've been wanting to implement for years now.

So let's talk about those two big items...

[h3]...Character creation and skin/hair palette swapping for battlefield sprites![/h3]

• there is now a character creator button accessible on the title screen that lets you create and manage custom characters, each with their own name, species, gender, class, portrait, personality, physical traits, romantic preferences, and stat growths!
  
  
  
  Whenever you visit the recruiter in-game, if the game detects custom characters, there is an 80% chance that the game will pull one of them to appear among the procedurally generated characters. (If there are two or more custom characters, there's a 20% chance that the game will pull two of them instead!)
  
• human character sprites now support hair and skin palette-swapping! This manifests in a few different ways, but the most immediately obvious and impactful one is that battle sprites for your recruited characters now have skin tone and hair color that match their portraits, This really helps make characters feel like unique individuals in battle, helps sell the setting, and--perhaps most importantly--makes it much, much easier to tell who is who (especially when you have multiple instances of the same class on your team).
  
  
• by that same token, arena opponents now have randomized skin tones and hair colors, and premade unit types native to Kalkerapur now use region-appropriate skin tones and hair colors for their sprites.
  

[h3]Miscellaneous changes and improvements:[/h3]

• designed a new palace intrigue battle (not yet reachable in-game, but in preparation for main plot events to come in the next month or two)!
  
• the likelihood of getting the merchant side quests now increases with each week or so that goes by without the player getting them.
  
• further increased the likelihood that characters will choose to interact with other characters with whom they are already friends or lovers.
  
• added a tutorial explaining how to check enemy ranges.
  
• added tooltips to the main menu buttons on the title screen.
  
• updated the localization file to account for the new UI elements on the title screen.
  
• the game now creates a directory for mods when it is run if it doesn't detect one. (This is currently used only for custom characters, but forms a technical basis for supporting mods specific to the main campaign going forward!)
  

[h3]Bug fixes:[/h3]

• fixed: Silent Wings would not auto-promote upon reaching level 20 due to having the wrong class name.
  
• fixed: when explosive charges detonated on their own due to Burning status and thereby destroyed bridge tiles with characters on top of them, those characters would not fall fully into whatever hazards lay beneath.
  
• fixed incorrect palette highlight coloration for pants in the photokurios/photarch sprite.
  
• fixed: in rare circumstances, when slaying an enemy using a knockback attack into water, if the enemy had a defeat bark, the game could throw a null error.
  
• fixed: when clicking quickly through a late-night event with queued-up Wait actions (such as the "nightmare" event), it was possible to end the scene before the wait commands were fully cleared from the action runner, resulting in the next day's scripts not running and the game locking up.
  
• fixed some errors in the female kineticist Levitate animation.
  
• fixed some issues in the mentalist walk and cast animations.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00a: premade units were not getting skin and hair palette-swapped as intended.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: loading or creating a character with personality and physical attributes selected, then switching its species would not cause the character creator to update the personality and physical attribute pickers to match the new species.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: the custom character creator would not update the portrait for a golem upon changing its class from bronze to stone or vice versa.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: the game could throw a null error upon creating a spirit or golem due to trying to access physical traits (which spirits lack) or personality traits (which golems lack) when generating initial unit tags and camp activities.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: the custom character creator would expect the player to choose physical attributes for spirits (which spirits do not have), making it impossible to create custom spirits.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: the custom character creator would throw a range error upon attempting to load a previously created golem, spirit, or character lacking either a last name or nickname for editing.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00b: upon loading a previously created character for further editing, the custom character creator would not update the portrait feature pickers.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00c: the game could select custom characters to appear in recruitment even if they were of a species not recruitable in that setting.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00c: during refactoring of pronoun-choosing code for version 0.7.00, the variable to be substituted in dialogue had become unhooked from the method, leading to correct pronouns no longer appearing during dialogue.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00c: the game could select two of the same custom character to appear in recruitment if two custom characters were chosen to appear.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00c: the game was not calculating a salary for recruits plucked from among custom characters.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00c: the custom character browser did not display apostrophes in character names correctly.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00d: certain special characters appearing in proc gen dialogue referencing a character's NPCs used the "vertical bar" alphanumeric character, which the game relied upon as a delimiter when unpacking saved dialogue for custom characters. This, in turn, made characters generated with those dialogue lines essentially unloadable. (The -NPC:X- special character now uses a $ instead of a | to set off optional parameters.)
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00d: custom characters were not being assigned a nickname threshold upon being recruited, resulting in them potentially nicknaming allies before they had built up any friendship together.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00e: character family background dialogue could still sometimes randomly pull from an older, incorrectly formatted file of character attributes, causing the delimiter error to recur when saving a custom character.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00f: custom characters recruited at levels above 1 would revert to level 1 upon being recruited.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00f: custom characters would lose their equipment upon being recruited.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: recruitment in custom campaigns was throwing a null error due to expecting a custom character file that was not being loaded.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: slice data for the Photokurios cast animation spritesheet was no longer properly aligned.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: swordsman Double Strike animation settings were being overriden by settings forcing bilinear filtering on.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: human Psy Clash minions were no longer displaying their intended skin and hair colors (either on the table or in card art).
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: certain Psy Clash minions were no longer displaying at all (cavaliers, mentalists,
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: the Senator walk animations were no longer referencing sprite data.
  
• fixed in version 0.7.00g: using a Book of Power within the Manage Supplies menu in camp could produce a null error.
  

[h3]Campaign creator improvements:[/h3]

• new script action: ShowCharCreator. This summons the new character creation screen, allowing players to create a custom character during your campaign! Parameters: load ID to supply the created character, and list name for permitted species (in case the player should be limited to certain species for their character). Cutscenes only.
  
• premade characters can now have a range of possible skin and hair palettes assigned to them, allowing their sprites to match their portraits.
  
• expanded the Map Settings screen in the map editor; added a fifth objectives field and a new field to assign a battle background (i.e. a flat image that surrounds the battlefield and pans around with it when you move the camera).
  
• battle backgrounds can now be moved toward (or away from) the camera on a map-by-map basis to better align with the shape of the battlefield.
  
• new battle background: Garden.
  
  
• new destructible object: lavender flower bush.

And that about covers it!

[h3]Where we're at[/h3]

With this update, all big-ticket engine features planned for the game's version 1.0 release are now in. From this point on, it's officially just designing cutscenes and battles to round out the main plot, along with the odd random event.

With this benchmark reached, I've taken the liberty of bringing Together in Battle's price in line with what it will cost upon final release (i.e. $19.99). If you already own the game, then congrats: you got it at a big discount and nothing about that changes! If you don't already own it, then congrats: you get the benefit of buying the game when it's good and polished and plump with content!

Either way, thanks to everyone who's supported Together in Battle so far, and thanks to everyone who decides to jump in and support it going forward. I couldn't do it without you! Until next month...


Tactically yours,

Craig