Dawnsbury Days News

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the long-standing bug where scrolling in character editor, shop and combat log sometimes didn't work if your FPS dropped below 60.
  

Performance:

• Slightly increased the responsiveness to mouse and keyboard input throughout the game.
  

Details:

This patches fixes the most annoying bug in Dawnsbury Days. Over the past year since the game's release, this bug was reported 11 times in the Dawnsbury Days feedback form, at least 3 times on the Steam forums and at least twice on Discord, far more than any other bug.

The bug was that if you used the mouse scroll wheel to scroll through spell lists, shop items, your feats or anywhere else where scrolling is needed, sometimes the game didn't scroll. If you tried to drag the scroll bar by dragging with mouse left button, it also sometimes didn't work, and neither did clicking on an empty space in the scroll bar.

But despite the impact and the number of reports, the bug was also really hard to track down. Players who reported it couldn't reliably reproduce it. Often restarting the game "fixed" the bug, or moving the game to another monitor screen and sometimes the bug would appear only in some screens and not others.

This week, thanks also to recent detailed reports by beets and SwingRipper (thank you both very much!), I finally tracked down the bug and fixed it. Scrollbars should now always work for everyone, whether using the wheel or left-click-dragging, and regardless of your FPS.

The technical explanation is that if your game runs at less than 60 FPS, then two or more update cycles will sometimes happen without a draw cycle in between them. Update cycles normally handle input, but scrollbars are an exception and input to them is handled in draw cycles. On low FPS, there are more update cycles than draw cycles and as a result, the input may be "processed" and forgotten before it reaches the next draw cycle and thus the scrollbar logic.

Work on the level 5-8 expansion for Dawnsbury Days continues at speed and this week, I announced the casting call for voice actors for the roles of new characters in the new story. I thought this would be a good opportunity to update everyone here on the progress as well.

As evidenced by the casting call, the story and script for the expansion is written. It's a 4-chapter story consisting of some 24 encounters, slightly longer than the base game, and it takes place over four character levels, from level 5 up to level 8. The story continues where Dawnsbury Days left off, starting with an ambush against Dawnsbury and the search for a seemingly kidnapped child, but soon much greater stakes appear.

Private playtests have already happened for the first 3 out of the 4 chapters and while they discovered a lot of bugs (that's the point of playtests, in part), they also confirmed that overall, the concept of the expansion works.

I still expect a much larger private playtest to happen near the end of development, after voice acting is in and after most of the obvious bugs are fixed, because I'd like more people playing then to arrive at the proper balance for each difficulty level and to flush out the rarer bugs as well. The fact is that Dawnsbury Days has so much content that I think it's no longer possible for any one person to even play all of the content, much less playtest. For example, one of the latest bugfixes in the beta branch is "Fixed that the transmuter wizard's Shifting Form didn't grant a bonus to speed if you chose legs."

We were lucky that such a bug was even noticed -- and it was a modder who noticed this by reviewing the game source code. To find such a bug naturally, you'd have to play a wizard, of the transmutation school, cast your focus spell, choose legs, and then still notice that your actual speed didn't increase. My hope is that with a larger playtest before release, we can discover more of these bugs before release. I'll make a post here to announce this when it happens.

With regards character content overall, the game is pretty much finished.

There is a larger variety of spells at spell levels 1-4, for all schools and traditions, and a small sample of spells for higher levels, such as chain lightning, dominate or even time stop (this is mostly for use by enemies, though you can play with these spells as well in free encounter mode).

There is a lot of class feats, runes of all kinds, materials and a lot of different worn items that give passive bonuses or extra once-per-day abilities (or both). There's certainly a lot more customization available than in the base game. Customization is still lacking a little for the kineticist -- I mean, the kineticist has more class feats than all other classes, and a whole bunch of options at level 5 when expanding the gate, but because of how many different kineticists there can be, it still doesn't feel like enough so I still hope to add more impulses.

You may have also noticed that I haven't published a new update for Dawnsbury Days in a month now. That is unfortunate and I'm sorry but the fact is that the base game is now stable, and the codebase has diverged too much between the base game and the beta branch, and adding new functionality to the base game is now too time-consuming, so I'm adding the new features, including new character content, to the beta branch only.

If you want to benefit from these improvements, you can go to Steam properties for Dawnsbury Days and switch to the beta branch "v3.0". You will be able to use runes, new items, new spells etc. and even play some of the new encounters (though the actual new campaign will not be available to you unless you're in the private playtest). If you do this, I'll be happy for any feedback or bug reports.

In the end, the branches will merge and the new ancestries, heritages, feats, spells, items and other improvements currently available in v3.0 will become available for everyone, probably at the same tim as the Profane Barrier DLC releases. (Though these updates will be free and part of the base game -- only the new encounters and story content will be part of the paid expansion.)

So that's where we are now!

The casting call ends on January 10th and you're welcome to participate but I will note that the casting call spoils a detailed breakdown of the story as well as of all characters in the DLC, including all twists, so keep these spoilers in mind when deciding whether to click on the casting call link.

After that, we'll start recording the voice over and work will continue on the last chapter of the Profane Barrier.

Development on the Profane Barrier, a Dawnsbury Days expansion, is proceeding and the first three chapters of the expansion are now ready for early private playtesting.

This is not yet pre-launch playtesting. There is still no voice acting, and there is some placeholder art, and of course, there is a bunch of bugs and rules inaccuracies.

But most of the expansion content is ready for playtesting:

• High-level spells
  
• High-level ancestry and class feats
  
• Class skeleton and features at higher levels
  
• High-level items, runes and material subsystem
  
• The first three chapters of the expansion
  

If you're interested in reporting bugs, reporting on balancing and difficulty, explaining what you found fun and what you found annoying, and giving overall notes and comments on the high-level content and encounters, you can now register for the playtest at this Google form: https://forms.gle/b62mXMMYbroDWgo9A

This is not early access to the expansion — this is a form to request invitation into a closed private playtest, where you'd be expected to submit feedback.

The early private playtest is private — if you participate, I'd also expect you to not speak about the playtest content except in Discord channels dedicated to the playtest.

To show a little bit of the Profane Barrier, here's a scene from the opening of the expansion, with Scarlet gamemastering for children of Dawnsbury:



And here's some of the high-level character content you can now use, in this case, it's arcane spells:



But there is much more to playtest! So, if you are interested in helping with this playtest, please consider signing up!

Changes in rules interpretation:

• Kick. You can now make unarmed Strikes even with both hands occupied. If you have something in each hand, you can still make a kick, which shows up in the Attack maneuvers submenu. The kick uses the same properties as your basic unarmed Strike, which is usually the fist (which may be improved through, e.g. the monk's Improved Fist feature; in that case, that improvement applies to your kicks as well).
  
• Agile maneuvers by default. Combat maneuvers (grapple, shove, trip, disarm) made without a weapon are now made with your basic unarmed weapon, which is usually the fist, and accordingly count as agile, meaning that the multiple attack penalty for making a combat maneuver later in the turn will now be only -4 or -8.
  

Art:

• New art: Skeleton Soldier
  
• New art: Symbols for persistent damage and for afflictions.
  

Character content:

• Classes (Fighter): Knockdown
  
• Classes (Strategist): Strategic Repose
  
• Feats: Armored Stealth, Powerful Disarm
  
• Spells: hide from undead, restoration, spell resistance

Improved enemy AI:

• Tactics: Enemies will use Demoralize in some situations if they have nothing better to do and they're trained in Intimidation.
  
• Tactics: Enemies will not use fear effects against fighters, creatures in a champion's aura of courage or creatures otherwise unlikely to be affected.
  
• Tactics: Enemies with a reach weapon won't needlessly approach adjacent anymore.
  

Balancing:

• Monsters (Kobold Warrior): Reduced the Kobold Warriors' Dexterity to +1. (Its Dex of +3 from the tabletop game leads to the best possible course of action for the kobold being to drop the sword and use its fists, which is counterintuitive, and would also make the kobold warrior too strong.)
  
• Monsters (Skeletal Soldier, Skeletal Archer, Animated Statue, Tentacle Vine): These mindless creatures will no longer attempt clever strategies like flanking.
  

User interface:

• User interface: General feats and skill feats are now displayed separately, with general feats being more prominent
  
• User interface: Added option to filter for "One-handed" weapons by typing "one-handed" in the search box.
  
• User interface: Stat block is prettier and more informative:
  
• Spellcasting is now presented separately in a stat block.
  
• Basic unarmed attack is now always presented in a stat block.
  
• Immunities are now always presented in the stat block, in the top section.
  
• User interface: Removed the option to select "Darken outlines of all flyouts". This option is now enabled for everyone, since nobody really ever disabled it.
  
• User interface: The basic unarmed strike now appears in the main action bar for more classes, and is by default hidden only for the kineticist, psychic, wizard and sorcerer (in which case it's under the Attack maneuvers submenu).
  

Story mode:

• Character builder: All three evil alignments now show up as "not recommended" for the main adventure path.
  
• Character builder: Saffi no longer has Cleric as the recommended class.
  

Modding:

• Modding: Added Creature.FocusPointMaximum which can help with some feats or spells that refresh focus points.
  
• Modding: Added ModManager.RegisterEncounter which should make it easier to create encounters with custom code and logic, without needed to necessarily rely on code hooks and XML files.
  
• Modding: Added Trait.Unsellable that allows you to make items that can't be sold during a campaign.
  
• Modding: Fixed that new damage types added by mods display properly in stat blocks.
  
• Modding: Made ModManager.GetModdedEnumHumanName public.
  
• Modding: Modal dialogs can now appear during cutscenes.
  
• Modding: Obsoleted Creature.DealDirectDamage in favor of the new CommonSpellEffects.DealDirectDamage for consistency.
  
• Modding: Obsoleted Heal in favor of the new HealAsync in order to allow effects to trigger in response to healing.
  
• Modding: Updated game loading order so that all base game feats load first, and only afterwards mod loading starts. This will generally make things more stable and will allow the game to determine what feats come from what mod or base game, but it may have unintended consequence. Please report if you see a mod crash on load.
  
• Modding: You can now create and draw custom modal dialogs by creating a subclass of ModalRequest. See ConfirmationRequest and ChooseAmongButtonsRequest for inspiration.
  
• Modding: Creature.TranslateTo now also updates the creature's position visually.
  

Bugfixes:

• Classes (Cleric): Athletic rush now allows you to Leap, Stride or do neither, not just Stride.
  
• Classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger): Improved description of attack of opportunity/hunted prey.
  
• Classes (Kineticist), monsters (Fire Mephit): Hail of Splinters and the fire mephit's breath weapon now deal persistent damage based on the result of the basic save.
  
• Classes (Kineticist): Extract Elements can now be used against non-elementals such as the gargoyle.
  
• Classes (Magus): Fixed that the Laughing Shadow magus received 2 focus points instead of 1.
  
• Classes (Ranger, Druid): Fixed that animal companions maintained grapple if you didn't activate them during your turn.
  
• Monsters: Frightful Presence now doesn't extend through solid barriers like walls.
  
• Rules (Tumble Through): Tumble Through shouldn't end invisibility or count as a hostile action.
  
• Rules (combat maneuvers): Combat maneuvers didn't apply the agile trait from weapons used to make them.
  
• Rules (once-per-day abilities): Fixed that you could use some once-per-day abilities multiple times per day, such as Avenge in Glory.
  
• Rules (regeneration): When an attack of the appropriate damage type to shut off regeneration would deal the killing blow, it should deal the killing blow, not reduce the creature to 1 HP.
  
• Rules (stealth): Fixed that you could view the location of an undetected creature by hovering over it or clicking on it in the initiative order.
  
• Text: Fixed typos, improved style.
  

Other:

Fixes a regression where starting with 2.58, enemy creatures took the player's item bonus to AC into account when determining who to attack. This was not an intended change in the enemy AI and is now reverted.

Non-mindless enemies will continue to take circumstance and status bonuses and penalties into account, e.g. by prioritizing prone or frightened targets, but they will no longer go out of their way to always ignore frontline fighters.