Those Who Rule News

Hey everyone!

Still working on Brutal mode but I've still been making fixes as they're being reported, so wanted to get a few of those out there for you all. This patch also includes some fixes for ultrawide users. There are still some UIs that have some rough scaling, but there shouldn't be anymore heads being cut off in dialogues!



Right now my tentative date for brutal mode is June 2nd to coincide with the upcoming TBT Fest on Steam, OR June 6 so that people can try and complete it over the weekend for the custom character prize (read more below). I may hold a poll in the Discord to vote for this, so join if you haven't already! Or just let me know which you prefer in the comments here.

• QoL: Hotkey re-mapping can now be done for some in-game actions in the settings UI.
  
• QoL: Dialogue UI now scales correctly on ultrawide screens. (Heads will no longer be cut off).
  
• QoL: "Shop" and "Storage" labels added to the shop UI.
  
• Fix: Updated movement when affected by ZoC to not allow you to move more than 1 tile, even with movement buffs. This is quite a large change for a lot of movement abilities, but will increase consistency across the board. Also fixes some weird interactions with AI and movement penalties.
  
• Fix: Blade surge on invalid targets no longer lets you move again.
  
• Fix: Fixed a bug with selecting saves on the Steam Deck when cloud sync was enabled.
  
• Fix: Dialogue text fixes.
  
• Fix: Tutorial clarity updates.
  

Also, I set up a developer page, so if you want any updates on potential future games, feel free to give a follow there! https://store.steampowered.com/developer/eldinT


For those of you who have been waiting patiently for a brutal mode, it's on it's way! Here is a sneak peak at some of the changes I've been working on. Don't hold me to any of these as they are still subject to change!

• New Elite abilities.
  
• Some existing Elite abilities modified for brutal mode.
  
• Elite enemies appearing much earlier, and more frequently.
  
• Changes to group AI in some levels. e.g. attacking an enemy will trigger their allies to rush you.
  
• More enemies + reinforcements.
  
• Enemy lethality increased (Mainly STR + SKL). I won't be increasing defensive stats as much. I believe this way enemies will be better positioned to punish your mistakes without feeling like you're just hopelessly behind on stats.
  
• Slight EXP decrease, harsher EXP drop off when outleveling enemies.
  
• Cap on EXP grinding.
  

Sharing this to get any feedback you all may have! Let me know what you like/don't like, or things you'd want to see. The reward for the first person to beat the game on the new Brutal difficulty will be to create a new character that will appear in other brutal mode playthroughs!

Hope you're all having a great week, and as always, appreciate the support you've shown to me and the game. Almost at 500 reviews, absolutely insane, and can't thank you all enough!

Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Cloud saves are now officially supported for Those Who Rule!

• QoL: Cloud saves will now sync when you open or close the game.
  
• QoL: Added "(still needs to do damage)" to Elias' personal ability description for better clarity.
  
• Fix: Brutal achievement no longer accomplished on cutscene battles.
  
• Fix: Fixed issue with "Skill Issue" achievement triggering on enemies that couldn't counter attack.
  
• Fix: Making edits to some newly joined units wouldn't persist into battle preparation if you didn't save in base.
  

I tried a couple of implementations, but I ultimately went with Steam's "auto-sync" cloud saves. How it works is very simple:

• When you close the game, it will push all save files up to the cloud if they are newer/more recently edited than what's on the cloud.
  
• When you open the game, it will pull all save files from the cloud, overwriting any local files that are out of date with what's in the cloud.
  
• NOTE: If you have save files in the same slot over multiple systems, Steam will only store 1 of each save slot. If you don't want them to override each other (whichever is the latest), you will need to disable Cloud Saves.
  

By default it is enabled for everyone. Here is a great resource from Steam if you have any questions, as well as how to disable it if it's not a feature you need: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/68D2-35AB-09A9-7678


Your save files will still be in the same location locally. If you ever want to pull down your cloud saves you can do so here: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage


Hope this allows more enjoyment of the game for those of you who switch between computers or Steam Deck! Let me know how it is working for you.

Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Some exciting news, we have officially been given the green stamp of approval from Valve: Those Who Rule is Steam Deck Verified!

Along with this exciting news, this patch will introduce 30 achievements in the game ranging from engaging with game mechanics, to some seriously difficult side objective challenges. They are as follows:

• A Grave Mistake*: Defeat all enemies in the prologue.
  
• The Journey Begins: Level up a unit.
  
• A Painful Lesson: An enemy has backstabbed your unit.
  
• Insult To Injury: Defeat an enemy with a Shield Bash.
  
• How Do You Do, Fellow Smiths?: Add a refinement to a weapon.
  
• On Second Thought...: Remove a refinement from a weapon.
  
• A Cut Above: Promote to an Advanced class.
  
• Elkcellent: Defeat two or more enemies in one round of combat with the Elk Effigy equipped.
  
• Country Roads: Refresh your turn with Mountain Boots.
  
• Better Together: Heal 15+ HP with Ethal's Idol in a single turn.
  
• Just For Show: Gain 10 stacks of Wolf Effigy.
  
• Bonk: A player unit took a hit for 0 damage.
  
• Skill Issue: Dodge an attack from an enemy that has a 0% chance to hit.
  
• Forged in Battle: Promote to an Exalted class.
  
• Brutal: Hit an enemy for 40+ damage in a single attack.
  
• Frenzy: Attack an enemy 3 times in a single round of combat.
  
• Bloodletting: Finish off an enemy with the damage from the bleed effect.
  
• Expert: Hit SS rank with any weapon type.
  
• Thank YOU*: Complete the game on any difficulty.
  
• Ranger General*: Complete the game on Veteran difficulty with Permadeath enabled.
  
• Hunter: Refresh a charge of the javelin throw ability by defeating an enemy with it.
  
• Stolen Goods*: Complete chapter 3 while having defeated both pirates before they escape.
• You Weren't Supposed to Hear That...*: Complete chapter 6 while having defeated both elite enemies.
• Hero*: Complete chapter 6 while having saved all militia.
• Not According to Script*: Complete chapter 8 or 9 while having defeated Rickard.
• Turning the Tide*: Complete chapter 10 while having opened all chests.
• Scorched Earth*: Complete chapter 13 while having burned all 7 supplies.
• The Best Defense...*: Complete chapter 15 while having opened all chests.
• What Do You Stand For?*: Make a decision in chapter 19.
• Goodbye, Friend*: Defeat the defector in chapter 20.

Achievements marked with an "*" will be "retro-active" meaning if you already completed the game, if you load up the credits, the game will trawl through your save file to check if you've completed these, so you don't have to go back and do them over again.

Also some quick bug fixes for this patch.

• Fix: ZoC ignoring effects (Hidden, Rat Effigy) now work correctly with the Agile Ability.
  
• Fix: Inputs now disabled during promotion so you cannot double promote.
  
• Fix: Can now open unit info on torch enemies in chapter 6. Torches properly applying burn in all cases now.
  

I hope these achievements push the experience to the next level for some of you, as well as provide some replayability to those who've already enjoyed the game. I tried to make as many retro-active as I could, for 12 total. Some are triggered by certain gameplay events, so those won't be retro-active. Next up I'll be looking into a potential cloud save implementation, then on to Brutal difficulty!

The current plan is to announce the drop of the Brutal difficulty patch ahead of time. As a way of saying thank you to the community, the first person to complete it will be given a custom in game character that appears in other Brutal mode play-throughs. The game wouldn't be what it is today without you all, so thank you.
Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Quick small update. Was going to wait to release this with the achievements, but there really isn't a reason to delay it. Especially as it'll immensely improve the experience on Steam Deck.

• QoL: Controllers can now use the left stick to navigate the unit info and promotion UIs, allowing them to hover icons to read tooltips, and toggle stats/growths.
  
• Fix: Cleaned up some more unused assets.
  
• Fix: Show correct dialogue portraits for "Kicking the Habit" support conversation.
  

Achievements are going well so far! I have them all in the Steam backend, for 30 total. Now just need to integrate with the Steam APIs and trigger them from code.

Best,
Eldin T.

Hey everyone!

Spent the week learning more about Unity optimization, and how I can apply best practices to Those Who Rule. I think we've got some great improvements in this patch that should help everyone have a smoother experience, but especially those who are playing on less powerful hardware. The game is also currently 20% off!

• Optimization: Added a 30 FPS option. This will help extremely cut down on GPU usage for lower spec systems. NOTE: FPS is overwritten by enabling "vsync" so if you want to see the performance gains from reducing the frame rate, you need to disable "vsync" in settings.
  
• Optimization: Every 2D texture is now compressed, resulting in an average ~550 MB reduction in GPU VRAM usage in-game.
  
• Optimization: Compression of various assets has also reduced the download size down from 925 MB to 750 MB. Size in storage reduced from 4.1 GB to 3.4 GB.
  
• Optimization: Unity defaults to loading all audio clips to disk on startup. I have disabled this setting for background music, and am now streaming audio as needed. Basically loading/unloading a clip as it is used, saving ~1.2 GIGABYTES of memory as you play. The streaming method has a bit of overhead to "warm up" audio files so you don't notice a delay, but the memory savings will heavily offset any overhead costs.
  
• Optimization: Loading times across the board, but especially on startup, are now slashed due to not loading all audio assets at all times and smaller asset sizes.
  
• Fix: An issue with the Agile ability on controllers where it would sometimes leave the "focus" on the enemy unit, not allowing controllers to pick the Agile movement slots.
  

Hoping these changes allow more of you to play the game on less powerful machines. There is a lot of I've learned about proper optimization the past week. This has been an extremely useful exercise for my growth as a developer, and I'll be taking any learnings here and using them from the very beginning for any new titles.

The game still isn't perfectly optimized, and there were a lot of other changes I could have made, but ultimately decided not to for the stability of the game and getting to other roadmap items. Some changes would require large restructures of the way assets are loaded, which while a fun technical challenge, would likely cause an array of unforseen issues that I wouldn't be able to catch in my testing.

Thank you all for the continued support. Next up will be Achievements and Cloud Saves!

Best,
Eldin T.