Those Who Rule News

Hey everyone!

Changing these to "Patches" rather than "Hotfixes" as I think I've ironed out some of the biggest issues in the past couple days. That is not to say the game is bug-free! I still have some lock ups in weird scenarios that I'm doing my best to reproduce, but they're getting more and more rare. If you do experience one at any point, please go into the local save location, and grab both the "Player.log" and "Player-pref.log" and send them to [email protected] so I can get them fixed!



I really appreciate your patience through this time. I know a good amount of you were affected by the recruitment flag/unit reset, so I appreciate everyone who sent me their saves last night to give me the chance to make it right so you could finish your playthroughs as you intended.

• Fix: Build tooltip no longer references AGL penalties.
  
• Fix: Screen edge sensitivity slider no longer affects WASD.
  
• Fix: Player units that were defeated in chapter 2 will now show up in the base portion of chapter 3.
  
• Fix: Light Footed ability no longer overwrites Mountain boots 0 rock tile move cost.
  
• QoL: Added a small half second delay between the "Enemy Phase" and "Ally Phase" popup so it doesn't cover up the enemy action.
  
• QoL: Added "Main Menu" button to both base and battle prep for an easier time exiting the game. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.
  
• QoL: Dialogue update in chapter 16 to better communicate what certain allies are doing.
  

Really appreciate everyone who gave me the opportunity to fix their saves. Again, I'm really sorry about any of you that were affected by the bug, but I have not heard any new reports about it cropping up since v1.0.5 went out yesterday evening. (Fingers crossed)

If you do still have a save in that state where you lost a unit, I've already fixed around a dozen saves, and it is super quick and easy, so please send them my way and I'll get you your characters back!!

Also thank you everyone for leaving feedback in the forums/Discord. Your passion towards the game is incredibly motivating for me to keep working hard to bring you the best experience possible. Appreciate each and every one of you.

Best,
Eldin T.

Please accept my deepest apologies that this took so long, it was a nasty bug and I've been working on it for the better part of a dozen hours. I am incredibly sorry for those of you who had runs affected by this, I know it is just about the worst kind of bug to run into when you work so hard to train your favorite characters. This update will not retro-actively fix your save, so if you want it fixed please keep reading.

IF YOU WERE AFFECTED BY EITHER OF THESE BUGS AND WOULD LIKE YOUR UNITS RESTORED YOU HAVE A COUPLE OPTIONS, ALL INVOLVE SENDING ME YOUR SAVE AND ME EDITING IT AND SENDING BACK

[h3]Benched units being reset[/h3]

• If you tell me the rough level they were at and their promotions, I can manually reset their stats back to what they should be.
  
• I can also set them to the average level of your party.
  

[h3]Recruitable units lost[/h3]

• Send me your save and I will toggle on every recruitable flag in your save. This may end up giving you some extra characters, but it's better than losing ones you've trained.
  

Local save location: C:\Users\{your_username}\AppData\LocalLow\eBrothers LLC\Those Who Rule\thoseWhoRuleSaveFinalV1_{X}.es3 (Where 'X' is the save slot, 0 if it's a mid-battle "continue save").

My email: [email protected]

• Fix: Benched units will no longer reset their levels/inventory in scenarios described below!
  
• Fix: Recruitable units (Finn, Melanie, Sven, Hilda, Quincy, etc) will no longer disappear seemingly randomly!
  
• Fix: Small dialogue fixes (punctuation, wording).
  
• QoL: "Quit" will now show "Save & Quit" during battles to better reflect actual behavior and clear up confusion.
  

Why was this happening? The game has a cached save mechanism, as well as a battle save for events happening mid-battle. For performance, when I load up the game, and you choose a slot, I copy the "slot save" into the "battle save" cache. This allows us to start the battle with all of our units/stats correctly loaded. Well, once you finish a chapter and go to the next, this "battle save" gets written back the "slot save" so we can save new levels/items/promotions/etc, that happened in battle. We then blow away the continue save cache and go to the next chapter with the slot save. THE ISSUE is that I wasn't putting the "slot save" back into the "battle save" so when we start the battle and go to create the "hard copy" of the battle save from cache, since the cache is empty we can only save the data we loaded into the scene (your starting units). Your benched units do not get persisted, as well as the recruitment flags, and that's why they're reset to base level and the game no longer knows who you recruited. If you go on to beat the chapter without restarting, and you save into the slot again, this shortened "battle save" will be persisted back into the "slot save" and you will lose your recruitment flags and benched units.

Now, this would only happen if you beat two chapters straight after chapter 8, without restarting the game. So if this happened to you, you're 1. kind of cracked at the game or 2. doing an iron-man (also cracked).

Either way, I'm incredibly sorry if this happened to you. With this patch you should not see new instances of this issue. I was able to reproduce the issue, as well as test that the issue went away with the fix. If you have any save files where you're missing recruitable characters that you'd like me to fix, please send them my way! I'd be more than happy to assist.

As always, thank you for your support and patience.

Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Another hotfix hot off the press. It seems like yesterday's fix solved a lot of the storage issues I was seeing pop up, but there are still a few issues with benched units resetting that I need to solve.

This time, I dedicated a little bit of time to a feature that has been requested that was easy to implement, a way to reduce edge movement (or turn it off completely), you'll find it in the game settings.


Also a tool-tip has been added for all new game options:


My next main focus is going to be on the bug where benched units are getting reset. It seems this isn't an issue to do with the cached saves. If this has happened to you, please send me your save files, as well as Player.log files in the same folder! I'm going to be prioritizing anything that makes you lose any amount of progress today.

• QoL/Feature: Slider for edge of screen movement speed. You can make it faster, or you can even set it to 0 if you want to disable it.
  
• Fix: (Bleed, Poison, Burn) Causing game to freeze when killing an enemy. This was caused by two things, the unit dying to bleed and then attempting to regenerate shield on a dead unit, as well as dying and trying to trigger turn start effects (like being on a mushroom). I've now hard coded a max of 5 seconds the game will wait for the status, and then it will return control to the player. I also check for the unit being dead before doing any shield regen, or start of round effects. I tested this by putting bleed on about 50 units and having them die one by one, and gave control back to the player every time, so if you're still seeing any weirdness around this please let me know!
  
• Fix: Dove Effigy refreshing turn even when ally is healed to full if the healer is injured.
  
• Fix: On deleting a save and starting a new file, the cached save wouldn't get cleared, causing storage to carry over in a weird "new game plus" lol. We now clear the cached save when deleting a file. Sorry NG+ enjoyers.
  
• QoL: Tooltip added for all the new game options. Just hover over the row and a tooltip should come up!
  
• Balance: A slight nerf to (chapter 8 spoiler) Finn, with both SKL and AGL growth dropping by 5% down to 60%. He's meant to be slow to start and eventually get really strong, but he's ramping up way quicker than I planned. He'll still be very good, just a light slap on the wrist... for now.
  
• Balance: A 20% boost to EXP on casual mode. Also, allied units no longer get the stat penalties that enemies do, helping them hold their own in a certain chapter 6.
  

As mentioned above, going heads down on anything that makes you lose any amount of progress today. I haven't been able to reproduce it yet, but thank you everyone who has sent me their saves! It really helps a ton with cross checking data.

And I want to take a second to thank you all for being an amazing community. You've been super patient and understanding as I'm fixing everything. I really enjoy interacting with each and every one of you, so thank you for making this release such an enjoyable time in my life.

Best,
Eldin T.

Sorry everyone for not responding as quickly as normal in the forums today, I've been "locked in" as the kids are calling it trying to get as many fixes out as possible. Here's the second for today!


[h3](units disappearing/re-appearing, levels/stats reset, quests/mid-chapter events re-triggering)[/h3]
DISCLAIMER: This hot-fix will not bring your units back if you were already affected by this bug (really sorry). It will only try to stop it from happening in the future. Please email me your save at [email protected] if you'd like me to take a stab at bringing back your units. If their level was reset, please tell me what their level and promotional options were, and I can manually update it to the average for that level.

The game is now properly deleting cached saves when you restart from the menu option/defeat. I believe this will solve a myriad of strange issues some of you are seeing: units disappearing/re-appearing, benched units having their levels reset, etc.

Since I still haven't been able to reproduce these issues exactly, there is a chance these save caching changes don't completely fix them. Please continue sending me feedback if you continue to see the issue even after you get this update (you have a "v1.0.3" at the bottom right of the main menu screen). If it's still happening I will try something new. I can see WHAT the issue is in the save files, but the WHY is elusive.



[h3](items disappearing, re-appearing, duplicates)[/h3]
Okay going to get a little technical here.

Storage in the code is loaded as a singleton. Basically how it works is: On new game start, I check if a "Storage" object exists, if it doesn't, I create an instance of the Storage object. This is also when your storage is loaded from your save file into the game, and ONLY at this point. This storage object is then used constantly throughout the game to put items in and out of (in base), and getting new items from chests/enemies/quests/drops/etc. All of this is managed by a single instance. Well... when you restart through the main menu, this storage is still instantiated, so the code doesn't bother creating it again (and triggering a fresh load from your save file). SO, all I had to do was reset the singleton storage instance when you hit the main menu button or hit a defeat screen.

This should significantly reduce any issues with items/storage disappearing. And it also explains why the items are still on characters, but not in the storage, because characters are always loaded fresh. This should also address the issue of item duplication. That would happen when you take an item that was equipped on a unit, put it in storage, restart from the menu option/defeat and the item would be duplicated because your character resets from the save to have the item again, but the storage wasn't reset.

tldr: static variables are very powerful and very dangerous.

• Balance: Weighted refinement now gives +4 ATK instead of +2. Still keeps SPD nerf.
  
• Balance/Fix: Scabbard now has 0 weight instead of 1. This will help get rid of some weird scenarios where you have to un-equip a bunch of weapons first to equip he scabbard for it's weight reduction. Now you can just equip the scabbard.
  

Hope this brings the game closer to stable for all of your folks. Really sorry to those who experienced these bugs, I know how frustrating it can be to lose progress. I can only deeply apologize and thank you for the patience you have shown me thus far. I really do appreciate it.

Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Second hotfix is now live, and this one is focusing on smoothing out the experience for anyone affected by "losing control" after a mid chapter event triggers (reinforcements, talk events, etc). If you've ever gotten into the state where you could move the camera around, but couldn't click on any units after a mid chapter event, this is the patch for you!

Basically what was happening is during certain events, sometimes I'm assuming a certain character would be on the map. During mid-chapter events, player in put is disabled, and if an exception gets thrown for any reason, the code to return control to the player is not executed. Illyana in chapter 2 for example when the reinforcements come will have the camera pan to her, but if she's dead, that code will throw an error, and player input is not re-enabled!

This has now been fixed for every event in the game. I've wrapped every single event in a try/catch block, and on catching any errors, the event will simply end, and I will re-enable player input. The underlying exception will still be there, so I will continue looking into those, but at the minimum you should be able to continue playing through the chapter.

My main priorities right now are:
1. Making saves sacred. Right now there is one main issue that is causing ripple effects throughout the game, and that is the lack of proper resets on the cached version of a save. In simple terms, when you hit the "Main Menu" button in battle, or get the game over screen, and restart the battle from the main menu, some parameters aren't reset correctly, causing things like keeping your rewards from any chests you opened, doubling items, keeping exp gain, etc. I believe this is also the cause of some other things such as. I've been able to reproduce this somewhat consistently, and I'm hoping to get a fix for it out ASAP. I'm going to spend all of today solely on this issue because I think it'll fix a lot of strange behavior people are seeing. IN THE MEANTIME: I would recommend if you're going to restart a chapter, completely close the game and re-open and then restart to ensure the cached save is properly deleted. You shouldn't have to do this, but it's the best way to avoid this bug until I fix it.
2. Making sure you do not lose progress while you're playing a chapter due to a bug/game freezing. Still have a couple of these to iron out (like poison killing an enemy with a droppable item).

Thank you all for your extreme levels of patience. My goal is to get all of these ironed out by the weekend when most people will have the time to be opening up the game. If you experience a loss of any items/characters and would like me to look at the save, please grab the save file, the player.log, and the player-prev log and send them to me at [email protected] and I can try to manually edit to fix any issues you have!

Local save location: C:\Users\{your_username}\AppData\LocalLow\eBrothers LLC\Those Who Rule\thoseWhoRuleSaveFinalV1_{X}.es3 (Where 'X' is the save slot, 0 if it's a mid-battle "continue save").
Local Player.log and Player-prev.log location: C:\Users\{your_username}\AppData\LocalLow\eBrothers LLC\Those Who Rule\Player.log AND Player-prev.log

• Fix: Full pass on all reinforcement events, and any other mid-chapter events to add safety net for exceptions that could disallow player input. On any issues, the game will fallback to code that returns control to the player. This should fix the issue of people still being able to move the camera, but no other input being allowed, essentially freezing the game. It should also fix when conversations come up mid battle, and you lose input controls. Please report if you still experience any of these issues after the update.
  
• Fix: Game no longer freezing in chapter 2 on reinforcements if Illyana is dead.
  
• Fix: Dialogue panel fix in a particlar chapter 13 base conversation.
  
• Fix: Incorrect labelling of certain chapter 13 base conversations as side quests.
  
• Fix: Fixed text in Fencer's lunge ability.
  
• QoL: Default difficulty that shows up at the start of a new game changed from "Veteran" to "Normal".
  
• QoL: Small tweaks to Indomnitable and Drakkar's Idol ability text to better reflect their reliance on combat.
  
• Balance: Chapter 7, while meant to be a difficulty spike, is proving a little more challenging than I planned. Reduced the average level of enemies by 1. Replaced the Steel Bows of Longbowman with Iron Bows. Also slight manual nerfs to particular enemies in difficulties other than veteran. Hope this makes the level feel a bit more fair. It's tough to straddle the line of challenging, but fun. I hope this change gets it a little closer to the middle. Please let me know what you think after trying out the changes! You will have to hit "Restart Chapter" to get the new changes.
  

Again, thank you all so much for your patience if you've experienced these. I will continue to work to get them ironed out ASAP.

Best,
Eldin T.