Magical Diary: Wolf Hall News

The new version 1.0.31 of Magical Diary: Wolf Hall is currently available for testing on the beta branch.

Mostly this is minor fixes and dungeon improvements (notably, handling of Cloak so you can sneak around better) and one minor plot adjustment. As always, we welcome any feedback and suggestions, so if you have the time or were about to replay anyway, try switching over to the beta version and see how things work for you.

To access the beta, right-click (or equivalent) the game in your steam library and select Properties, then Betas. From here you can choose the beta version from the dropdown. Your install should update - you'll see 1.0.31 on the title screen if it's got it right.

If no errors are reported this will probably move into the main branch next week.



PLOT:

* William's birthday presents on his path are no longer from both you and
Donald if you did not actually make a deal with Donald.

DUNGEON:

* Should no longer be able to talk to monsters when silenced.
* Should now get the Lucky branch on exam3 if we blundered around in the dark
but managed to avoid falling down a dark hole.
* Spellcards now have the caster passed to them when we're in party mode, so
the PC's charm will no longer reduce the displayed cost of partymembers
casting spells. Crush spellcard now displays correct damage for Donald
instead of for the PC when he's casting it.
* Silenced mana burn fields no longer make noise.
* Solo Nain Rouge now drawn offset when he reaches the group.
* Sealing a carving in exam2 when it's already got something on top of it
no longer reports it moving into the down position.
* Talking to the sparkle should now fully lock the dungeon UI.
* Monsters no longer plan to attack things they can't see. This means Bladen
Beasts will now go into your cell if tracking your scent.
* Monsters should now be reported as planning to stalk some prey if they
have no queued action but the preferred potential action would be to sniff
and follow (so when the Bladen Beast follows you into a cell but can't
attack because you're cloaked, it won't complain that it can't figure out
what its plan is.)
* Foresight should now report "isn't planning to do anything" instead of a
bug. Fixes a bug where a Bladen Beast has no particular plans if you
decloak in front of it.

TECHNICAL:

+ steam.rpy: only notify once if an error occurs initializing
SteamRemoteStorage when checking fileinfo. This should fix the bug where
the load/save screen no longer responds to buttons being clicked, but still
responds to hover, if SteamRemoteStorage didn't work.
* No longer require value deindirection when the scrubber is just
creating a new empty Python dict. Fixes a crash loading saves with
__warningregistry__ (which gets set by certain SDL errors.)
* http_get_progress() now uses a binary string, should fix encoding errors
trying to download GPG.

POLISH:

* Saining codex entry should now unlock on William's path.
* Extra word removed from detect charm lesson.
* Extra 'the' removed from the vote for me speech when rebutting Minnie.
* Serenade diary entry should no longer name Kyo if you don't know his name.
(He will be 'some guy' if you know Minnie's name, 'a guy' if you don't
know he was singing to Minnie.)
* Now note joining the nature club properly in the diary.
* More sliding dialog box fixes
* Diagnosis' default string for health conditions now has a period at the
end.

Nominations are open now for this year's Steam Game Awards, and we'd love to be nominated in the Story-Rich Game category. We hope you remember all those hours spent collecting dates for the May Day Ball fondly!

(Also, the Autumn Sale is on, so now is a good time to pick up this or any other Hanako Games titles.)

But I promised you a wicked demon...



(Artist: Pepper-n-Bento)

Enjoy, and stay safe!

Visit the Steam store page for either Magical Diary: Wolf Hall or Magical Diary: Horse Hall and select the 'Magical Diary Collection BUNDLE' offer - you can buy both games together or, if you already own one, you can pick up the other at a discount.

The game has been updated to a new version, which fixes a number of small bugs and adds some new spell responses as well as a new solution for exam 2. The most obvious is a fix for the Blind spell, which was not wearing off correctly at the end of its duration previously.

For more information on all the changes visit the changelog thread here.

Please post feedback and bug reports on the discussion forums so Spiky can see them! (Comments after announcements are harder to search for.)

If you DO encounter problems, please let us know right away so we can look into them! Instructions for switching back to an older version if necessary are posted in the forum thread.

Thanks, and hope you're enjoying the Summer Sale! (This game, along with the rest of our catalog, can be found on discount in our collection:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2671/Hanako_Games_Collection/

We've just put out another patch on the main branch (so it should be updating by default for players). This includes a lot of bugfixes, typoes, and a few new lines of dialog, but the major difference that people are likely to notice is the removal of the "Dismiss" button from the dungeon textbox.

To give a vague technical explanation, the 'Dismiss' button was designed to hide the textbox immediately, including if you'd rolled way back in the text to look at previous events, where the 'Next' button was designed to move forward to the next line of text/code. This meant that it was possible to Dismiss the textbox even if there was new feedback text you hadn't read yet (because it was on the next page!) and also that Dismissing the textbox would not immediately trigger the next event. Since the 'Dismiss' button was so convenient, most people clicked it all the time - missing some text and ending up with dungeon screens that looked 'stuck' briefly until they clicked a second time to trigger what was actually supposed to happen Next.

Basically, using Next instead should lead to a smoother dungeon gameplay experience for everyone, but it may be briefly confusing for current players because the button you're used to clicking on isn't there anymore. Click Next!

This may be adjusted further as we see how it plays out.

For more information on what's been added to the game recently, check out the Changelog thread on the discussion forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/4052614347228391098/

Please let us know if you run into any difficulties. You can always check what version of the game you're currently running by looking at the lower left-hand corner of the game title screen.