Abalon News

[h2]Version 0.77.1 Release Notes[/h2]
[h3]Changes also apply to Demo[/h3]

Hi everyone!

You asked. We delivered. Our "Big Controller Update" brings full gamepad controller support to Summoners Fate. It was an interesting challenge, and I learned a lot in the process, including some discoveries that I hope will help Valve further improve the Steam Input APIs. My son, Wesley, was a major contributor testing the controls and helping me find and fix all of the bugs. I even recruited the kitties to help test, but they mostly just looked cute holding the controller :)



Let’s dive in on the changes…

[h2]Full Gamepad Controller Support[/h2]
Summoners Fate can now be fully played using only the controller and you can fully customize your controls via Steam Input. I recommend our Official Configuration as the starting point, as this includes all of the localized game actions.

Note: In order to use Gamepad TextInput (for naming custom decks, sharing feedback, etc.), you’ll need to run the game in Big Picture Mode. This is currently a limitation of the Steam Input API that I hope will be improved in a future version.

[h2]Full Keyboard Controller Support[/h2]
In addition to being fully playable with just the mouse and just the controller, you can also play Summoners Fate entirely using just the keyboard. I’ve added full key mapping for all game actions as well as hotkey mouse over tooltips if you combine with mouse. All of the control inputs work seamlessly together.

[h2]Improved Targeting Controls[/h2]
I received a lot of feedback on controls and realized that many players prefer the "click to select" -> "click to order unit" style rather than dragging the character with the mouse. So, you can now click units and view the movement path they will take as you move the mouse (without having to hold the button down). Then, just click to select a target. To make Sprintshot more intuitive, you’ll now see a new action flag to indicate move confirmation. To command a unit to move and shoot, decide where you want to move after selecting the unit. If there are targets in range, you’ll click once to choose where you want to move, then again to select the target.

Farshot units can now move and melee attack (Thanks mr.kitty). By default, they will shoot their target. To force them to melee, first click the adjacent tile near the enemy you want to melee. Then, select the enemy to attack them.

[h2]Improved Casting Controls[/h2]
Casting spells is a lot easier now. Alternative to dragging cards, you can now click the card to initiate targeting. Then, select your target or cancel the action. Likewise, you can now click Satchel cards to cast them instead of dragging them.

[h2]Improved Deck Building Controls[/h2]
Deck Building is much easier. Players can now click to add cards from their collection to their deck and click to remove cards. Dragging cards also still works. (Thanks yashakami)

[h2]Character Look Up Customization[/h2]
You can now control the frequency that characters look up at you or disable the look up feature from within the Gameplay Settings.

[h2]Additional QoL Improvements[/h2]

• Made it so that spending marshmallows to restock campsite automatically sets up camp (eliminating need for a second click)
  
• Make the "You’re almost there" prompt a tip that can be disabled (Thanks mr.kitty) and did the same for "Heart Container", "Soul Gem", and "Boss Key" prompts.
  
• Fixed layout bugs for portrait/landscape mode (Thanks Yura)
  
• Fixed Dreadnought Spellweaver so it can be discovered in exploration and unlocked (Thanks Latieon)
  
• Changed "Exit Game" in Adventure mode to "Save & Exit" (Thanks RyuSage)
  

[h2]More To Come[/h2]
I had more QoL changes planned that didn't make the cut this round. Expect these in a future update:

• Mouse Binding
  
• Quick Loot (button to insta-break barrels/gather goodies)
  
• UI Scaling
  
• Disable Screenshake
  
• Disable individual SFX
  

[h2]Let Us Know What You Think[/h2]
This update took a ton of work, so please let my son Wesley, our kitties and I know how much you appreciate the changes by writing us a Steam review on our store page. These go a long way towards building our community here on Steam, and we would most appreciate your feedback :)

Join the Discussion:
- Steam discussion board: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/
- Discord: https://discord.gg/d20studios (RossD20Studios#2359)

Thanks so much!

~Ross

Hey everyone!

We're approaching the timeframe I had hoped to release our next game update. I'm currently working on addressing the QoL requests I've received from you.

This includes:

1. Key-binding
   
2. Mouse-binding
   
3. Gamepad controller support
   
4. Disable screenshake
   
5. Disable character lookup
   
6. Various UI customization options (ex: larger cards, larger stats for visibility on TV screens)
   
7. Better overall controls for character movement and attacking (particularly sprint shot)
   
8. Many more usability + bug fixes

The full list is quite extensive, but just wanted to give a sense of the scope. As the game was initially designed for mouse-only control, adding key-binding and gamepad support has taken a lot more work than I'd hoped (and requires a lot more testing). But, I know how important this is for many of you, so I have diligently kept at it.



Summoners Fate will be featured in the upcoming Tacticon event on Steam (an event dedicated to strategy/tactics games) that runs September 22nd-26th, and I wanted to let you know that I am pushing hard to deliver this update to you on or before these dates.

Twitch Streamer kormakrtv (https://www.twitch.tv/kormakrtv) will be interviewing me and streaming a Let's Play of Summoners Fate on Saturday, September 24th from 10AM-1PM MT.



Thank you so much for your patience and support of the game! I'm absolutely thrilled by the positive Steam reviews (I can't express enough how much these matter to me) - we're now at 93% Very Positive rating.

Any questions, concerns, or just want to chat? I can be reached as always here:

- Steam discussion board: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/
- Discord: https://discord.gg/d20studios (RossD20Studios#2359)

~Ross

Don't you love it when your hot-fix needs a hot-fix? "It's a hot-pocket, hot-pocket!"

This fixes (hopefully for good) another bug with Error: Clock cycle error: TypeError: Error #1009 at hm.gameLogic::ProceduralSpawnLogic() that was preventing ability to start up battles for some players. Thanks for your bug reports 不赦之业 and Kuza :)

Thanks everyone for your bug reports! Here's the fixes included in this patch:

1. Fixed bug where Big Beard would not drop his helmet as reward if player defeated him as the last unit using a mind control effect (Thanks 镜中人)
   
2. Fixed bug where Big Beard's health was being assigned an incorrect low value in higher difficulties of the Arena Ambush encounter. (Thanks mr.kitty)
   
3. Fixed bug where Error: Clock cycle error: TypeError: Error #1009 at hm.gameLogic::ProceduralSpawnLogic/removeSpawnPointFromArray() was thrown when attempting to enter the boss room because there wasn't a valid space for the boss to spawn centered with the hero. The boss will now pick a random alternative spawn point if it fails to find preferred spawn. This bug occurred as a result of expanding the potential boss fight rooms to medium/large within the dungeon. (Thanks wolvje27 and (●,...,●))
   

Psychic Loot Drop Functioning Correctly:
https://youtu.be/hT07LVdxB8M

Psychic Loot Drop (Pre-Fix):
https://youtu.be/u0g2wkcNDeA

Psychic Loot Drop (Post-Fix):
https://youtu.be/A9cCqGbYdJM

Hi everyone -

Thanks so much for your feedback and support! This is shaping up to be just the kind of collaborative Early Access I had hoped for. Over the past couple weeks, I've carefully reviewed your game balance suggestions as well as our Steam gameplay data and painstakingly recalibrated the game with a new difficulty curve that I hope will satisfy most players' desires.

I've also added a ton of new content to the game, so let's dive and see what's new!



As the name suggests, this update focuses on bringing new enemies to the game - a whole lot them - including 3 new bosses and 3 new elites (the Masters) and 15 new enemy encounters (the Minions). That's one additional boss per each of our current biomes, totally 9 bosses (3 per biome), plus new lore to boot!

In addition, Masters and Minions will allow you to unlock one of the game's bosses, the Liche King, as a playable Summoner. It's prestigious to play the boss, so to receive this reward, you'll first need to claim a bunch of souls, prove yourself in battle, and defeat the Liche King in adventure mode to unlock the Revenant Regicide achievement. Doing so will reward the Liche King as a playable character in adventure mode as well as unlock a new All Star deck in Battle Mode.



Every aspect of the game's difficulty curve has been carefully re-tuned to create a more rich experience for beginners and advanced players alike:

1. The desert biome can now surface in the first chapter so that any biome can now appear in any order. The experience of each biome will be different depending on which chapter it is played on. For example, deserts in chapter 1 will not have heatwaves and deserts in chapter 2 introduce sandpit arenas.
   
2. Each biome has been re-calibrated with chapter-appropriate minion encounters: easier enemy groups in the first chapter and harder enemy groups in successive chapters.
   
3. Elites now have a progressive health distribution. This means the difficulty of each elite fight will escalate with each new elite encountered during the chapter.
   
4. Elites now have chapter-specific Minions. Elites in chapter 1 will have fewer minions so they're more evenly matched to the player's available resources and additional minions when they are encountered in higher chapters.
   
5. In novice mode, we've introduced a "mana curve" to Elites (-2 mana starting mana in Chapter 1, and -1 in Chapter 2) to help new players better onboard to the mechanics.
   
6. In advanced and hardcore mode, the final chapter adds further additional Minions to Boss and Elite encounters for extra challenge, plus much harder minion mobs!
   
7. Improved enemy spawn logic now prefers placement of ranged units at the rear.
   

[h2]Additional Improvements and Fixes[/h2]
[h3]*This update is also applied to our free demo version.[/h3]

• Improvement: Expanded the radius of a looting treasure chests to a 5x5 area around the player’s hero so that’s easier to collect the gold from sets of 3 chests if you don’t click the center one (Thanks Abaddon)
  
• Improvement: Further improved parallel animation system to allow more concurrent unit movement and attacks where possible and fix some issues where newly created units could move/attack before they were finished being summoned or walk through units that were knocked back.
  
• Balance: The Freeze mechanic has been changed to fix the OP perpetual lockdown Cora and Ice units could previously achieve on bosses and provide more tactical utilty. Details here. (Thanks all players who engaged in our discussion)
  
• Balance: Dreadnought Spellweavers gain ability Inflict -2/-0 until end of their turn
  
• Fixed bug where unit cards cast by Zenon or summon spells that were countered would remain momentarily stuck on the screen instead of being removed on cast.
  
• Fixed bug where resetCardPositions() might try and act on disposed cardViews resulting in exception TypeError: Error #1009 at com.d20studios.aura.animation::Animate$/killProcessArray() at view.smartAssets::HM_CardHandView/positionItem() (Thanks LittleLionMan)
  
• Fixed bug with localization where game state was storing the literal name of encounters rather than the localization id. This meant that if the language setting ever changed, the name would remain the same, and if the new language didn't support the characters, it would show no name.
  
• Fixed bug where some elites (ex: Gremella) were showing the Sprintshot or Farshot keyword twice on their card. (Thanks RyuSage)
  
• Fixed bug where equipment keyword was showing on some Elites (ex: Wight)
  
• Fixed bug where clicking twice to interact with a chest would result in the game showing the nearby chest's gold removed before the animation to doober the gold had played.
  
• Fixed bug Error #1009 at view.screenLayouts::TitleScreenLayout/jumpDevButton() (Thanks Baffledtoast)
  
• Fixed bug where some unitViews were still lingering after disposal of the game view. Hopefully this also helps with performance and memory leak problems. Any unit views that were getting trapped in memory should now be getting disposed at the start of each new battle.
  
• Fixed bug TypeError: Error #1009 at view::HM_UnitView/toggleLifebarStats() that could appear upon exiting game to return to the title menu (Thanks cxp032, Vindi008, fantom0020 and TheBaldr)
  
• Fixed bug TypeError: Error #1009 at Main/handleExitToCamp() that appeared after the game crashed on entering the portal to complete tutorial (Thanks Cheschire)
  
• Fixed bug where "I am currently unable to interact with the cosmic tortoise at the end of the tutorial." (Thanks tacocat and Squashbelge)
  
• Fixed bug where units still lingering in the mist from past world saves (before our units in mist fix) would still show on the board.
  
• Fixed bug where clicking on a goblin in the mist would result in the goblin party being repositioned away from their cake. They can't party without their cake, afterall ;)
  
• Fixed bug where retreating from a goblin party and then returning would result in the goblins being repositioned and no longer around the cake. Let them have cake!
  
• Fixed bug where TypeError: Error #1009 at hm.gameLogic::GameState$/getGameStateObj() could appear after retreating from a battle after having visited a map containing a shopkeeper. (Thanks 巷羽Azarisa and zyeast2005, scottoconnell30)
  
• Fixed bug where TypeError: Error #1009 is called on PointValidMove(). (Thanks Muppet and 堵塞)
  
• Fixed bug with Chinese translation of Ryu Sage Pendant (Thanks typiglet)
  
• Fixed bug where hero could become "stuck" and have the screen jitter on last tile after clipping an obstacle such as a tree. (Thanks Wesley)
  
• Fixed bug where some of the game server messaging (such as notification of in-game feedback being sent successfully) was not displaying.
  

[h2]Coming Next[/h2]
Up till now, I've delivered regular weekly updates since launch to address most players' immediate concerns and keep everyone engaged. The next goals I'm working on include remaining QoL issues such as keyboard mapping, gamepad support, performance plus continuous bug monitoring and fixes and additional cards per our road map. There's quite a bit of work involved, so I'd just like to communicate that I'll be doing the best I can, but going forward, please don't expect regular changes every week ;)

Gamepad support, in particular, is new for me, and I want to make sure I spend the time to get it right. I'm aiming for another update between end of August and mid September - and I'll keep you posted in our discussions if I plan to change that as I work through the process.


All these changes take a ton of work, and it's my pleasure to deliver regular new experiences for you to enjoy in the game. Help me out by taking a moment to write a Steam review and let me know what you think of the progress :)

And of course, I'm always available for regular communication via our usual means below:

Join the Discussion:
- Steam discussion board: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1681840/discussions/
- Discord: https://discord.gg/d20studios (RossD20Studios#2359)

Thanks so much!

~Ross