Greetings, tactics fans! It is as I foretold: over this past month, I moved and had to spend a bunch of time both prepping for that and then, post-move, unpacking and setting things back up. But I'm back and I have some cool new stuff for you all!
I also have some big news--the final release date! Make sure to read to the end on this one. But first, let's go over all the new stuff now in the game:
Big improvement number one: characters can now have unexpected, preexisting relationships with your other characters straight out of recruitment!
- each newly recruited character now has a chance to know one of your other characters from back before they were recruited: as a childhood friend, as an old flame, or as an old rival. The chance of this happening starts out very low but gradually increases as the days pass in-game.
- characters are now generated with specialized lines for when they recognize a character from before the start of the game--both positive and negative--and lines responding to those recognition lines.
- characters who have a prior relationship are now given memories of having met years before the start of the game that they can potentially reference when reminiscing.
- when characters who have a prior relationship are recruited, a tag is now added so that one will try to talk to the other when they are in camp together.
- added both positive and negative recognition lines and recognition response lines to the custom dialogue page of the custom character creator.
Big improvement number two: there is now an in-game glossary!
- the glossary contains a whopping 234 entries discussing lore about the game setting; providing details about all of the world regions, cities, and towns that your characters can come from; discussing all of the world religions your characters can practice; talking about how Psy works; detailing every Psy Clash card; describing the game's variety of elements, stats, and status effects; and more!
- the bottom of every glossary entry contains clickable links to other, related glossary entries, making it much easier to learn about related subjects (and creating its own little TV Tropes-esque research rabbithole).
- the glossary tracks what topics you've navigated to since opening it, and has an unlimited "back" function so you can retrace your steps.
- some glossary entries start out hidden and unlock as you investigate the core conspiracy and meet unique and plot-relevant NPCs.
- the glossary can be accessed and browsed from the main menu at any time during non-combat scenes (including during the middle of character dialogue).
In response to complaints (well, okay, one complaint, but that's good enough given the sample size), I made further changes to render the mid-to-late-game economy even more lenient:
- increased the monetary prize for winning the league qualifiers. The Monkey League Qualifier now awards 1900 aura instead of 1600; the Gharial League Qualifier now awards 2300 aura instead of 1900; the Snow Leopard League Qualifier now awards 2800 aura instead of 2250; and the Tiger League Qualifier now awards 3400 aura instead of 2600.
- doubled the number of coins held by the chest in the dissident's den battle.
- added 100 coins to one of the chests in the witness protection battle.
- doubled the number of coins held by the Silent Strangler in the summer palace escape fight.
- added extra loot to the chests in the smuggler's den battle.
- whenever the game generates a day log following a victory or loss in the arena, it now includes a note stating exactly how much aura you received as a reward for the fight. This creates a record you can reference to help plan out how much money you can expect to earn in the arena in the future.
- day logs now record how much aura you earn when you hire out characters as laborers; how much aura you earn when you participate in a card tournament; how much aura you're paid when you hire characters out as explorers; and also how much aura you earn when you hire out characters as guards (and how much extra aura they earn if and when they succeed in defending the caravan). This, too, should help with budgeting!
- new loading screen tip added: "Be careful not to overspend; you'll need money saved up in case things go wrong!"
- and in case all that wasn't enough, a new difficulty level has been added: Tactics Only. A blend of Brutal and Relaxed, this difficulty setting cranks the tactical challenge of the game's battles up to the maximum while simultaneously setting salaries and prices for food, training, and items to levels so low that they need hardly ever be considered. Now, you might ask: "Wouldn't setting prices so low ultimately end up trivializing the tactical challenge as well due to the player simply having way too much money to outfit and train their characters?" To this, I say: yeah, probably. Tactics Only difficulty is intended for veteran SRPG players who want a tactical challenge but just can't be bothered with things like budgeting (or, you know, pressing the "Custom Difficulty" button). If you intend to actually pay attention to the economic side of the game and manage your budget, then Challenging, Challenging +, and Brutal are still right there, waiting for you!
I made a couple of changes and additions to make the new Machinist advanced class for Engineers more appealing and tactically interesting:
- new Machinist skill: Recharge. This restores a golem's energy and grants it Alert status for 1 round.
- boosted the health-restoring power of the Machinist's Tune Up (it now restores health equal to the Engineer's Strength rather than just 50% of the Engineer's Strength).
I also took some time to go back through all the Secret lines (which I hadn't touched in probably two years or more) to make sure they all still make sense given the way that characters have developed in the intervening time:
- sad character Secret lines will now trigger the sad info response variant line instead of the default response.
- wrote a new Secret line for Narcissistic characters.
- reassigned one of the Secret lines for Narcissistic characters to Blunt characters instead, as it better fit that personality archetype.
- polished up the wording of a handful of character Secret lines.
Next, we have a variety of other, miscellaneous changes and improvements:
- during one-on-ones in camp, you can now order characters to undertake special camp activities tied to their distinctive talents! Hunting for food, treating the wounded, lecturing, repairing weapons...as long as the character knows how to do it, they can be ordered to do it (with the sole exception of group morale-boosting activities such as joking, singing, and telling stories--these are off limits for obvious balance-preservation reasons.)
- Together in Battle now supports anime hair colors for custom character portraits: blue, light blue, green, purple, pink, and bright red. (To be clear, the game will never use these colors for proc gen units, but you can now select them for your OCs--or Legally Distinct Fire Emblem Character Look-alikes--if you desire.)
- commissioned a lovely new animated puddle graphic, incorporated it into the game.
- when in the reserve supplies screen during start-of-battle deployment, the game now marks the characters who've been chosen for deployment with a little star on their portraits.
- reduced the size of the character inventory window within the Reserve Supplies screen so it no longer obscures the fourth row of reserve supplies when open, then adjusted the layering and positioning of item tooltips to accommodate the layout change.
- prettied up the design of battlefield grid squares for when grid squares are turned on in the game settings.
- human characters from Dese now have last names generated from a completely separate pool of words better suited to their home region. The game can now generate well over 1,000 distinct Desan last names.
- created a new, unique "electrical blast" sound effect specifically for Mind Shock; the game now plays this when using the Mind Shock skill instead of just reusing the Mind Blast sound effect.
- when a fan requests that you not use one or more skills during an arena match, the game no longer counts automatic usage of those skills via counterattacks against you.
- reworded the blurb in the caravaneer's guild to remove any ambiguity about whether the characters you send out will have to fight. (Spoiler: they will.)
- the cave explorer job type no longer appears on the jobs board until the player has advanced to Monkey League.
- updated the "not enough characters" warnings for caravan guard and cave explorer jobs in the jobs board so they now pop up if there aren't enough characters available for the specific job type. (Previously, they only popped up if no characters at all were available in the roster.)
- wrote new Defeat lines for Awkward, Arrogant, Blunt, Cheerful, Depressive, Empirical, Friendly, Imaginative, Kind, Narcissistic, Natural Leader, and Serious characters (bringing all of them up to at least 3 variant Defeat lines to choose from).
- made it so that if a Religious character can possibly get a Defeat line customized to their particular religious tradition, they will always be generated with that instead of a more generic line.
- spriggats are now more likely to be generated as Dualists.
- new miscellaneous like added to the game: pies.
- characters who get certain variants of the Fantasize camp activity now increase the likelihood that they (or anyone else in camp with a crush) will ask another character out on a date.
- if a character with the Old Flame relationship label asks out the other character with the corresponding Old Flame label, they'll now get special dialogue acknowledging their prior romance.
- the game now displays the name of the current team when in the battle menu during a multiplayer fight.
- if the info bar is showing when the victory/defeat box appears at the conclusion of combat, it will now automatically fade out.
We have bug fixes, too!
- AI fix: the game could play the "Held!" message and sound effect for a unit repeatedly during its army's turn, applying the Immobilized status effect anew each time.
- fixed: OnCharDeath dialogue set to trigger upon the death of any characters in the player's army could also be triggered by the destruction of any player-created object, leading to potentially absurd consequences such as losing the duel in the Duel random event battle because the enemy wandered into your snare trap.
- fixed: the MVP code responsible for accounting for ties on various post-fight award metrics was missing a check to exclude scores of 0, which could in some instances cause a character with an internal battle stat of 0 to get an MVP award for it if a second character had that same battle stat also set at 0 and no one else had a higher value for it.
- fixed: if you clicked the victory box to skip the MVP award animations, the awards would not snap to their correct final locations.
- fixed: it was possible for dialogue boxes to pop up even after they initiated a change of scene and the screen began fading to black.
- fixed: deployment of multiple different armies on the same map was not functioning properly.
- fixed: the game's default nicknaming conversation had a coding error--it assigned the nickname within the wrong unit, ensuring that the character theoretically bestowing the nickname never actually used it.
- fixed: characters could be generated with apples as the miscellaneous thing that they like even if they had the Fruit Allergy physical trait.
- fixed: one of the Secret lines for Blunt characters referenced the person who raised them, and yet could be chosen even if the character had in fact been raised in an orphanage or grew up alone on the streets. (It also presented a uniformly negative picture of that person regardless of how the character actually felt about the NPC who raised them.)
- fixed: characters who were once bakers could get a Secret line about hating the taste of baked goods even if cookies, cakes, or pies were chosen as their miscellaneous thing that they like (leading to inconsistencies with the positive results of picking the thing they like in the Ally Gift event).
- fixed: characters could get a miscellaneous Secret line about how they despise picked flowers even if a type of flower was chosen as their miscellaneous thing that they like (leading to inconsistencies with their positive reaction to receiving picked flowers in the Ally Gift event).
- fixed: you could generate unwanted log files simply by typing the letter 'L' into an input field during dialogue.
- fixed: the game would not play turned off for AI-controlled teams during multiplayer battles.
- fixed: if the save game function was called multiple times during a cutscene, it would produce a duplicate of every character to save.
- fixed: the settings menu was cut off by the top and bottom of the screen for players with super-widescreen monitors, preventing them from switching to a properly supported resolution in-game.
- fixed: the generate inventory parameter for the GenerateUnit and GenerateUnique script actions was not being read.
- fixed: level music could only be set to a custom string as part of a PlayMusic script action, not just as part of the normal level parameters.
- fixed: surrendering did not work correctly in a multiplayer context.
And of course, we have new goodies for the campaign creation suite:
- the game now generates a new placeholder glossary for editing whenever you create a new custom campaign. This glossary will be specific to your campaign!
- a new type of free-standing light is now supported in the map editor: Directional Light! Unlike the existing Point Light, these point in a clear direction, making them handy for simulating light coming through windows, doorways, and other openings to the outside.
- new sound effect available in the campaign creation suite: Mind Shock.
- new skill graphics available in the campaign creation suite: Tune Up, Recharge, Point Light Btn, and Directional Light Btn.
- new text sprite supported: Book.
- new script action: ClearRoster. Clears all characters from a single specified roster.
- new script action: CustomCharsToRoster. The game will load all of the player's custom characters and add them to the specified roster, where they can be accessed and used just as any other character might be. One parameter: roster number.
- new script action: CampActivitiesToList. Two parameters: character name and list name.
- two new script actions: CapitalizeString and DecapitalizeString. These alter an existing string variable so that the first character in the string is capitalized, or so every character in the string becomes lower case, respectively.
- new script action: UnlockGlossaryTopic. Unlocks a previously locked glossary entry so that it will appear in the player's glossary going forward. One parameter: Topic ID.
- new script action: SupplementGlossaryTopic. Allows the description in a glossary topic to be dynamically supplemented with additional information mid-playthrough. Two parameters: Topic ID and Supplemental Description.
- new script actions: IfRelationshipLabelGoTo and IfRelationshipLabelRun. These let you produce special dialogue or effects based on whether characters share a special type of relationship. The same as every other kind of If action, but the relevant parameters to check are Character 1, Character 2, and the relationship label to check for (concerning what label character 1 has for character 2, not vice versa).
- new optional parameter for the AddReply script action: Add at Position. This lets you pick a spot in which to insert the reply. (Without this, new replies created via AddReply always get added onto the end of the existing options.)
- if the branch parameter for AddReply is left blank and the Conv ID parameter is also blank, the game will now default to adding the reply to whatever the current branch of the current conversation is.
- created a new dialogue trigger specifically for the destruction of non-character units: OnObjDeath. Used when you want something to happen upon the destruction of an object, not a character.
- the OnSkillUsed dialogue trigger now has an additional, optional parameter: exclude counterattacks. If set to true, this causes the game to ignore skill usage for purposes of the trigger if the skill was not used actively by the player, but rather was used automatically as part of a counterattack.
- the game now supports custom campaigns starting out on a scene not named Introduction.
- the engine now supports custom variable values for the roster assigned to each army in a battle.
- custom integer values can now be pulled directly from custom lists in many more places in the engine.
- previously, the game's prohibitions against opening menus applied even when every single army on the field was AI-controlled, preventing the player from opening the main menu and exiting the fight, changing settings, reviewing the objectives, etc. Now, during a fight with 100% AI-controlled armies, you can now hit the Escape key to open the main menu and the game will pause while you mess around in there.
- Similarly, during a fight with 100% AI-controlled armies, you can now right-click characters to open their character screens and the game will pause while you look around.
And that's that! You might have noticed that a few of the fixes listed above seem to concern multiplayer. A multiplayer mode is not actually included in this update, buuuuut let's just say that I've been working on some other things which didn't make it into this update...
This is going to be the last monthly update until Together in Battle's version 1.0 release--that way, I can focus single-mindedly on getting all of the end-game content done and polished without having to keep temporarily walling things off for interim releases. But speaking of that big version 1.0 release...
✨ I'm pleased to announce the official, final release date for Together in Battle: May 6th, 2025! ✨
Please go ahead and mark your calendars, folks; me and my whopping zero-dollar marketing budget are definitely going to need your help to get the word out. 😅
Until then, I'm always around listening to feedback and suggestions! Find the Sinister Design website here and the Sinister Design Discord right here. I hope to hear from you!
Yours in tactics,
Craig