Himeko Sutori News

Today we uploaded a couple patches that made the following changes:

• Fixed the Craft button in the crafting menu. It did not have the correct font set up, so its text displayed something like ▍▍▍▍. Now the text displays correctly.
  
• Partly fixed the gate that allows you to exit from Sunrise Outpost in the Shadowlands. Previously the gate did not open at all. Now one side of the gate opens. We will fix this more thoroughly very soon.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause your character to become stuck after the battle leading into the Tomb of the Weeping God.
  
• Set up and saved battlefield and world-map connections between hexes. Previously the game did this at run-time, which took a few seconds. Now battle maps and world maps should load slightly faster.
  
• Localized the recipe window.
  
• Fixed sprite sheets for male illusionist armor, which had some pixels crossing the edge into the rear kneeling frame.
  

We'll try to share the details of these small daily patches more regularly in the future.

Hi everyone! Once again, you've probably noticed all of the patches over the last week or two. We've added a lot to the game. And since most of the changes are at the end of the game, we don't want to give away too much. But we would just like to let you know what we've been working on, and what you can expect over the next few months and beyond.

To start off, here's what we added/changed over the last month or so:

• Fixed bug that kept enemies in place if you entered a mine or dungeon, then retreated.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented movement through gate at the Winter Palace.
  
• Fixed the misbehaving menu button that only appears while playing in Japanese.
  
• Changed level-up process so that the cards keep drawing automatically so long as you have draws remaining, instead of clicking "draw card" each time. This makes the level-up process faster and simpler.
  
• Changed location of campaign list to make it work with the localization system.
  
• Increased drop rates of several crafting materials, specifically the Jear rune.
  
• Fixed localization of shop dressing room, which had retained English in several places.
  
• Fixed the Icy Reach Altar level unloading. It used to remain loaded after leaving the area, and the player would return to it when loading a saved game.
  
• Added new quest stages and new journal entries leading into the end of the game.
  
• Added a rubble variation to the exterior of Candle Keep, shown when you return after the betrayal event.
• Added the Empire's Graveyard battle map, with cutscene. This is a castle defense battle that advances the plot.
• Added the Tomb of the Weeping God, with some cutscenes, where you encounter the final enemy.
• Added the final battle.
  
• Added another tier and more variation of demon and dragon enemies.
  
• Added some unique new music and visual effects to make the final battle stand out.
  

Beyond that, our two biggest items of news are first, that thanks to the efforts of lantastic79, Himeko Sutori's Japanese localization has caught up to the English. I would like to thank lantastic79 for all of his tremendous work making this game available to a new audience.

And second, I am very happy to announce that the game is playable from start to finish, all the way from the tutorial to the final battle. There is still lots that we need to add, but this is a major milestone. Going forward, these are the things that we still need to add to the game before we consider it truly finished:

• More scripted events, like dialog and enemy forms, during the final battle.
  
• Epilogue, showing what happens to the world and characters after the final battle.
  
• NPCs in the late-game towns, which are currently empty.
  
• More lore and dialog to give context to the story and its conflicts.
  
• Kickstarter backer rewards, including a memorial and named characters.
  
• Mac version of the game.
  
• Highest-tier weapons, which currently require new unique sprite sheets.
  
• New giant enemies (or allies), including balrogs, ancient mechanicals, and hydras, plus more weapon and armor variations for other large enemies currently in the game, such as the ogre and dragon.
  
• Magical crafted items from the mid-tier on.
  
• A protection ability that allows your heavily armored knights and paladins to take hits in place of weaker characters.
  
• Less suicidal AI that will pull back injured lances to recover.
  
• Locations to capture on the battlefield, giving several possible bonuses.
  

I think once I have completed those, I'll call the game finished. Early Access will come to an end and I'll announce version 1.0 of Himeko Sutori. That's still several months of work, but at least I have a finite list of tasks to work on.

After that, I have a long list of requests that you have made. I will eventually have to move on to something else, but for as long as I'm able, I'd like to work on all of the great suggestions you've made.

So that's where we're at and that's where we're going. Thank you everyone for all of your help playing and testing Himeko Sutori so far. I'll be back with more updates for you soon.

Hi everyone! You might have noticed a lot of big patches over the last week or so. We've been adding a lot of late-game content and the game is playable well into the final act where we are now setting up the final confrontation.

If you really want to know the details of what we've added since our last post, here it is. Beware: there are major spoilers in here. If you don't want spoilers, don't move the mouse, and just trust that the several hundred megabytes of patches this week really did add to the late game.

• This isn't a spoiler: We added more detail to the exterior headquarters of Candle and Sword. Just about everything else past this is a spoiler.
  
• Hidden necromancy altar at the Icy Reach with some dialog about why it might be there.
• Cutscene and dialogues inside Candle Keep, where you confront Dean-Militant Morgan Innman, the head of Candle and Sword and learn who the real enemy is and what he has planned.
• Cutscene where your party members and other allies betray you. New particle effects for falling rocks.
• Time gate where you learn that there might be a way to do more than just watch the past replay.
• NPCs and dialog at Candle Outpost in the Shadowlands where you can replenish your army and also learn about the divisions among the Scholars of Candle and Sword.
• Story battle against Tanu in the Shadowlands.
• Shadowland armies invade your world. You'll be given a side quest to defeat some of them.
• Story battle against Kalakanda when you return to Candle and Sword.
• More high-level characters with powerful equipment integrated into enemy armies.
  
• New high-level recruitable characters. We'll start integrating some of them into earlier troop vendors. When you find them, we'd like your feedback about their cost and game balance.
  

And that brings us to the point where you'll be able to progress to the game's final area and head into the final battle. We still have lots of detail and content--such as NPCs, books, lore, crafting recipes, and quests--that we need to add throughout the mid and late game. And we also need to add Kickstarter backer content. So there's still lots we need to do, but the main quest itself is almost done. We'll tell you more when we have news to share, which hopefully will be soon.

Hi everyone! As you've probably noticed, we've been uploading patches on most days but neglecting the patch notes to tell you what we've changed. So here we are with a long-overdue update to tell you what's new in Himeko Sutori.

For about the last month we've been focusing on the story, setting up all the background necessary to drive home the plot twist going into the final act.


We needed to show more of the conflict's collateral damage. The idea behind some of the new cutscenes is to make the heroes more sympathetic and to add more emotional investment in stopping Candle and Sword.
[Edit: Steam's announcement editor may not be loading the image correctly. This is the intended image: https://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/JacobEncounter.jpg]


Short cutscenes reveal more information about the world, giving context to the plot twist and the final confrontation.
[Edit: https://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ShadowlandsRuins.jpg]


New information reveals that events from throughout the world's history culminate in your struggle.
[Edit: https://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Inscription.jpg]


The significance of past events will be made clear in the end.
[Edit: https://himekosutori.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/DesertTimeGate.jpg]


We made some changes to a major story battle, adding tougher enemies and a gate to assault. This battle features some important dialog that reframes some of the game's earlier events. The battle really wasn't working as we had hoped though, and we decided to tweak the AI, which now plays much more defensively when given walls and towers.

And in addition to all those changes, we also fixed and improved a lot that isn't quite as obvious:

• Target selection during battle is now much more random, especially during ranged attacks. This spreads damage out more randomly among party members, making it harder to lose a single character to the bad luck of being targeted a few times in a row.
  
• Normals on the pyramid materials were wrong, causing the gaps between to appear higher than the bricks. We fixed the normals so now the pyramids look right.
  
• Some earlier changes had stopped status effects from display properly. They were not playing, and not getting deleted, possibly contributing to performance issues and crashes. We fixed status effect popups and also stagger them slightly in an effort to not overwhelm the Flash player's memory allocation limits. The status effects popups now get cleared from memory when they're finished, which should improve performance and stability.
  
• Fixed several instances where materials were not responding to time-of-day lighting changes, mostly in the Northern Shores area.
  
• Fixed the condition for going through Misfortune Gate. Previously, the condition could not be met and there was no way to return to the Ittihad after the lava arch battle.
  
• Fixed the timing of autosaves, which were broken in several places when the save occurred between state changes, such as the transition from a town map to the world map.
  
• After the attack on Sunrise Falls some of the dialog was spoken by the wrong character.
  
• We previously changed the scale of hit point bars in combat, but did not modify the hit point bars of castle gates and other obstacles, causing them to look very thin and stretched. We updated obstacle hit point bars to match character hit point bars.
  
• Asterisks in the Change Class menu were meant to indicate which character classes had level-up cards waiting. A bug was causing the asterisks to appear if you leveled-up a mastered class that had no cards remaining. We have fixed that so that the asterisk does not appear unless the class really does have cards available.
  
• Localization was taking a long time because dialog and character names originally set in the editor needed to be copied by hand into localization files. We created scripts to copy information from the game files into config files that are much easier to work with. This allowed us to prepare all of the dialog and character names for localization and will simplify the localization of future additions to the game.
  

As you can see we've been very busy fixing and adding to the game. We're making steady progress now toward finishing the main quest. We'll continue uploading new patches as we finish new content and we hope to have the end of the main quest finished soon.

Hey everyone! Here are some of the latest changes to Himeko Sutori. The biggest changes are the addition of two characters who are essential to the plot. If your saved game is past these points, then I recommend you start a new game, or try to revisit these locations, or run these console commands:

• In the desert map at Pyramid Gate, you will meet Wigglesworth, who is studying the ancient pharaonic civilization. If you have already gone through that gate, then you should either revisit it or run the console command "ce SpawnWigglesworth".
  
• On the other side of Pyramid Gate, in the Shadowlands, you will meet Malika, an acolyte at the House of Life. If you have already started the quest that begins there, Trouble at the House of Life, then you should run the console command "ce SpawnMalika".
  

We felt that these characters were necessary to provide exposition on some of the lore that will become relevant later in the game. We are going to tie it all together in the end.

We also added the next stages to the main quest. We opened up one of the world gates, allowing a shortcut back to an area where there's more to do now, including a pretty major battle.

...I was going to try posting a screenshot there, but Steam isn't cooperating with me right now. Let's see if I can embed an external image...

Nope. That's not working either. You'll just have to click the link yourself if you want to see the new battle map.

And I think we finally fixed the crash during combat that seems especially common when Illusionists are involved. I know I've said that before, but I think we really got it this time.

And besides that, here are some of the other changes and fixes from the last week or so.

• Fixed several materials that were not responding to change of game time. These materials included the banners that mark some landmarks on the world map.
  
• Enemy army defending South Point Crossing had too many clerics. Now it has more melee characters and fewer healers.
  
• Added blocking volumes around Elismuir to prevent players and chickens from falling off the cliff. More blocking volumes at Anvil Gate and House of Life that you visit in connection with Trouble at the House of Life so you can no longer wander off into the background.
  
• Rearranged some UI elements that were blocking the level-up and deal-cards buttons. Those buttons should now be easier and more intuitive to click, without dead spots on them.
  
• Typing in the character sheets notes after some transitions would activate the next/previous character. That should now be fixed.
  
• Combat reactions that applied a status effect on self displayed both the reaction and the status at the same time, making both hard to read. There is now a slight delay between them.
  
• Fixed garbled text in Japanese when approaching interactive objects.
  
• Fixed some dialogues that were not starting immediately after going through a world gate.
  
• Some camera transitions in Al-Hajar were not activating because the touch events could only be activated once. Touch events should now activate camera transitions regardless of how many times you pass through the area.
  
• Fixed minor misspellings.
  

And we are getting back to work on localization and on finishing the main quest. With all the pieces in place now, providing necessary context to the world's lore, we can get back to moving the plot along.