Greetings, tactics fans! It may be hard to believe, but I launched Together in Battle to version 1.0 exactly one year ago today.
To celebrate the game's one year anniversary outside of Early Access, I put together a little "laurels" trailer cramming together some of my favorite clips from reviews so far (these are obviously edited to keep it under 5 minutes--make sure to watch the full reviews, they're great! 1 2 3 4 5 6)
In the months since, I've pushed regular free updates with balance improvements, loads of UI improvements, AI improvements, new save game logic, New Game Plus, Multiplayer Arena mode, new items, new promotions, a new weapon type, new dialogue, expanded character portrait options, custom character sharing, campaign editor improvements, and--of course--one gazillion bug fixes.
It feels good to sit back and see how far the game has come, but I'm not done yet. I also want to announce a contest--specifically:
A Custom Character Showcase!
For the rest of the month, I'm running a Custom Character Showcase Contest!
The way it works is simple: between now and June 6th, export a character you created in Together in Battle's custom character creator, copy the text...
...and paste that text into a new post in this thread along with your character's name. That's all you have to do!
After the first week of June, I'll select the most clever, creative, interesting, and/or funny submissions and showcase them in a Youtube video.
Here are a few things that will make me more likely to showcase your character:
made in-game: your character was created using the custom character creator.
usability: your character's class, traits, and growths feasibly work together (e.g. they're not a golem with all their points put into Psy, a shadowling with all their points put into Strength, etc.)
writing: you took the time to write custom dialogue for your character.
cohesiveness: your character's name, traits, class, portrait, growths, and dialogue all present a coherent picture of who they are as a person.
depth: your character has more to them than just a single gag or personality trait.
taste: your character isn't wildly out of place in this game's world--or if they are, they at least have some dialogue addressing it. (If you submit Isekai'd Guy Fieri, for instance, then I want to hear his backstory about what brought him so very far away from Flavortown!)
There is no limit to how many characters you can submit, so feel free to post as many as you like. I'm excited to see your creations! 😃
Now, how about a free anniversary update?
That's right: there's another free update, too! As replayable and packed with variety as Together in Battle already is, I figured I could do a bit more to cement its place in the pantheon of SRPGs You Can Always Keep Coming Back To. This update has some meat to it, so I'm jumping the version number up from 1.1.01 to 1.1.10.
We'll start with the biggest new change:
new level-up mechanic for Roguelike Mode: Choose Advancements! As of this moment, when you start a new game in roguelike mode, any time a character levels up and is due to gain a skill, equipment mastery, or stat proficiency, instead of the game having them just learn that thing, you now instead get to pick one of three:
Truth be told, I've long disliked how "pick one of three things over and over" has become the new design shorthand for "roguelike"--but I have to admit, this does help TIB's own roguelike mode feel like a more distinct experience from manual save mode (as opposed to being, essentially, "base game but more punishing").
It does come at the cost of erasing part of the natural variation between characters, since you can choose to simply have all characters of a given class learn all of the same class skills--but all in all, I think it's a plus. (Note: unless you vibe with the trial-and-error mindset of more traditional roguelikes, I still recommend beating the game in manual save mode first. Roguelike mode is no joke!)Because of the new Choose Advancements level-up logic, when you choose to play in roguelike mode, the game no longer adds the Skill Advice camp event to the random events "deck."
UI improvement: building upon the last update's flashing damage preview, whenever an attack (or counterattack) can deal enough damage to bring its target to zero health, the heart symbol next to the health preview bar is now replaced with a skull. Here, for example, is the game warning us that attacking this spearman with a mind blast would end quite badly:
new arena condition: Miasma Creep! If this condition appears, skiakineticists will track your characters throughout the arena and create corrosive pools of miasma on one (or more) of the spaces they occupied two rounds prior. This forces you to plan your route around the battlefield and stay on the move! In case you missed the update where Miasma Pools were introduced, these deal 9 Shadow damage, have a chance to impart the Slowed status effect, and impose decreased dodge and decreased physical defenses for characters currently on the space; definitely not ideal to stand in. This arena condition can occur starting in Monkey League, and becomes more severe in its implementation as the leagues advance.
there is a new special encounter that can randomly occur in the depths of explorable caverns! I could say more, but I think it's best to leave it as a fun surprise. 🙂
new skill: Skiakineticists can now learn Create Miasma Pool! Energy Cost 7, Range 5: creates a miasma pool on the target space. A skiakineticist will now either learn Create Miasma Pool or Terror as part of their class progression, but not both.
new skill: Axefighters can now learn Throw Axe 2! Energy Cost 5, range 2-3: flings a throwing axe much harder, with +20 accuracy and increased maximum range. An axefighter will now learn either Armor Rend or Throw Axe 2 as part of their class progression, but not both. (Axefighters now always learn Shove 2; previously, this was a 50-50 with Armor Rend.)
a small buff for the Marauder class: they now learn to counterattack with throwing axes in addition to their other improvements. In combination with the change above, this is intended to help give certain axefighters a viable niche as throwing axe specialists.
new rare item: Training Voucher. Training Vouchers can be presented to the trainer for a single free training of your choice! Note that this works with paradigm training (i.e. multi-classing), not just stat training. My hope is that this will help encourage more use of the trainer--and specifically, more experimentation with multi-classed characters.
In both the Gharial League Qualifier and the Blacksmith Rescue mission, an enemy now carries a Training Voucher that they will drop when defeated. The character in the Recruitment Duel random event now always carries a Training Voucher; the reward for saving three of the travelers in the Save the Travelers random event is now a Training Voucher instead of a Novice Battle Primer (making it useful throughout the whole game, not just the beginning stages); one of the rewards you can get from the Birthday Boy event is now a Training Voucher instead of an Intermediate Battle Primer (same consideration as with Save the Travelers); Agarwal's shop now has a 1% chance of having a Training Voucher in stock on any given visit; after saving the traveling merchant's caravan wagon, his one-time reward shop now contains a guaranteed Training Voucher; and Training Vouchers can now appear as rare loot in battles and cavern exploration missions.
UI improvement: the game now accommodates long custom character dialogue! When a character's line is too long to fit in the dialogue box, the game now automatically detects this and makes it so that rather than advancing to the next dialogue branch, clicking the dialogue box instead advances to the next part of the current dialogue branch. In short: your custom characters from far-off, undiscovered lands can now tell their complicated backstories at the length that such unusual circumstances require!
achievement added: Superlative Sleuth. To get this one, you must gather every relevant piece of evidence and present the strongest possible case against the character behind the maharaja conspiracy within a single playthrough. (I haven't seen any streamer or reviewer do this just yet, so it's open season!)
new camp activity: Haunt. What it is, you ask? See if you can discover it for yourself! 😉
the game now supports camp activities that can only occur between characters who have a specific special relationship label (i.e. not the kind that occurs just through growing familiarity or changing friendship and romance values).
UI improvement for gamepads: implemented the new 2d grid menu navigation logic for character inventories within the reserve supplies screen, fixing situations where the game's arbitrary 2D gamepad element navigation logic failed in that submenu.
UI improvement: reworked the pixel art icon for the "day log" button that appears on the calendar screen. Not a big deal; it just looks nicer now.
moddable main campaign updated! The moddable version of the main campaign has been updated with all of the tweaks, adjustments, and additions of the past few months.
multiplayer balance tweak: adjusted the commonality of certain items dropping during Multiplayer Arena when random item drops are turned on; money and Psy Clash cards no longer drop in Multiplayer Arena at all.
fixed: specifically when playing with gamepad controls, the damage preview bar was getting removed before it could appear while targeting attacks.
fixed: sometimes, the level-up screen could produce an inappropriately long delay before displaying the leveling character's new skills or non-skill, non-stat improvements.
fixed: selecting "Skip Daytime Phase" in the main menu in town after characters had been sent out on caravan guard or cavern exploration jobs would result in the scenes where those jobs played out getting skipped as well.
fixed: character tooltips were no longer showing up when mousing over units already on the battlefield during deployment.
fixed: mousing off a unit while keeping the cursor over the edge of the space they're standing on would keep the space selector in place and keep their unit tooltip onscreen, but would remove the character's health bar from view.
fixed: on the level-up screen, newly learned skills were visible before their turn came to get highlighted. (They now start off invisible and appear when the particle effects poof over them.)
fixed: money and food text could slightly overflow the intended area of the info bar if the player really stocked up.
fixed: when opening the reserve supplies screen, the screen now force-resets the flag to mark whether the player is dragging an item to false, preventing ghost item images from following the cursor if there was an error that prevented the game from recognizing the end of item dragging previously.
fixed: Hot-Tempered and Vindictive characters could sometimes receive a Recognition Response line in place of a normal Recognition line, preventing their dialogue partner from responding.
fixed: on rare occasions, recruiting a character who knew another character from prior to their recruitment could result in a null error.
fixed: in certain "what" background dialogue where a character was raised by both mom and dad (or both grandma and grandpa) but had a bad relationship with just one of them, it was possible to get incorrect pluralization of pronouns in dialogue.
gamepad improvement in version 1.1.10a: the right joystick now lets you pan freely around the battlefield during deployment.
fixed in version 1.1.10a: under some circumstances, the game could attempt to set the facing of a character who had already been removed from the battlefield, throwing a null error.
fixed in version 1.1.10a: under rare circumstances, the Treasure map event could be chosen without a character available to fill the role of finder.
fixed in version 1.1.10a: the speed with which damage previews and counterattack indicators flashed in combat was locked to the framerate, which could lead to these elements flashing much too quickly on faster PCs.
fixed in version 1.1.10a: if two or more characters counterattacked a single enemy attack during an AI turn and they leveled up simultaneously from the resulting experience gain, only one of the level-ups would actually get displayed in the ensuing level-up window onscreen.
fixed in version 1.1.10a: it was possible to make the victory box go partly offscreen by scrolling the mouse wheel and changing camera zoom at the conclusion of a battle. (Manual camera zoom is now locked off when the victory box is onscreen.)
fixed in version 1.1.10b: there was a second null error lurking in the same spot as the last one.
fixed in version 1.1.10b: when playing with gamepad, the gamepad lost focus when returning to camp late.
fixed in version 1.1.10b: when playing in roguelike mode with gamepad, leveling up in camp would fail to shift gamepad focus to the skill chooser box.
fixed in version 1.1.10b: when playing in roguelike mode, a duplicate skill could sometimes end up getting selected to appear in the skill chooser box.
fixed in version 1.1.10b: when playing in roguelike mode, skill range data wasn't getting supplied to the tooltips for skill buttons in the roguelike mode's skill chooser box.
fixed in version 1.1.10b: certain unusual 16:10 and 21:9 display ratios were not getting detected by the game.
gamepad UI improvement in version 1.1.10c: the shoulder buttons can now be used to change pages of the reserve supplies screen whenever no character inventory or character screen is open.
gamepad UI improvement in version 1.1.10c: the X and Y buttons can now be used to automatically sort items in the reserve supplies screen without the need to navigate to the Sort button.
in version 1.1.10c: additional unusual 16:10 display ratio resolutions will now be successfully detected by the game.
fixed in version 1.1.10c: when playing with gamepad, after using an item within the reserve supplies UI and seeing the character screen pop up, backing out of the character screen would send gamepad focus to the item's now-invisible Use/Give/Store submenu instead of to the character's inventory submenu, making it appear as though the gamepad cursor no longer existed.
fixed in version 1.1.10c: under rare circumstances, an AI-controlled character running into caltrops could fail to receive a recalculation of its moves, which could in turn cause the game to hang.
fixed in version 1.1.10c: under rare circumstances, the game could determine an AI-controlled character's moves, and then, in the fraction of a second before executing those moves, the character could be removed from the AI army list, resulting in a range error.
fixed in version 1.1.10c: if an AI-controlled character tried to move through both a pressure trigger and a hold in one go, the game would trigger both even if one prevented the character from reaching the other.
UI improvement in version 1.1.10d: when making a custom character, the custom dialogue screen now displays a little "plus" symbol in the corner of the button for every type of dialogue for which the character has a line. As you write lines, plus symbols will appear. (Any lines you leave blank will later get a generated stand-in line based on your character's personality.)
gamepad UI improvement in version 1.1.10d: the shoulder buttons now change the page of the army overview screen (in case you've somehow managed to acquire more than 18 characters).
gamepad UI improvement in version 1.1.10d: reverted the Y button to its previous function in the reserve supplies screen so you can inspect characters there. (X remains a shortcut for Sort.)
fixed in version 1.1.10d: the game was not handling tags (which usually take the form of skill modifications and improvements) correctly in roguelike mode, displaying a blank white box instead of the appropriate tag and failing to apply them when chosen.
related to the above, the game can now detect class-related tags in a character's skill progression that are missing parameters and fix them on the fly.
fixed in version 1.1.10d: Throw Net had begun using the "end turn" after-attack behavior instead of the intended "use once" after-attack behavior.
fixed in version 1.1.10d: on some displays, 16:9 resolutions could sometime apparently return a false positive for a 16:10 display ratio. The game now checks a list of known 16:9 resolutions that will cause it to automatically bypass alternate display ratio checks.
fixed in version 1.1.10d: one of the old lissit names I removed from the game evidently found its way back into the CharNames.xml file.
fixed in version 1.1.10e: if the player encountered a random event with a corresponding battle and they did not deploy a character involved in the event, due to some changes to the code in a recent optimization pass, the game would throw a null error upon trying to find that character on the battlefield.
fixed in version 1.1.10e: the game will no longer let you finish deployment in the Treasure Map event battle without the unit who buys the map.
fixed in version 1.1.10f: changes to the level-up logic necessary to support the "Choose Advancements" behavior in roguelike mode were causing the game to throw a null error any time it procedurally generated a character who began with a stat proficiency at level 1 (something that can randomly happen with lissit). This was causing recruitment to occasionally freeze when generating characters.
fixed in version 1.1.10f: on rare occasions, the AI could get softlocked after one of its characters became subject to a Hold.
We have a few improvements for campaign creators as well:
new script action: ChooseOnLevelUp. This lets you turn on (or turn off) the new "Choose Advancements" mode for character level-ups in your own custom campaigns. It has one parameter: true or false.
new custom variable type supported: Coordinates. Each instance of custom coordinates is a bundled set of three integers: y, x, and elev (i.e. elevation).
new script action: SetCoords. This lets you set (or reset) a set of custom coordinates by hand. Four parameters: variable name, y, x, and elevation (optional).
new script action: SetCoordsByUnit. This lets you set (or reset) a set of custom coordinates by reference to a unit on the battlefield. Two parameters: variable name and unit name.
new special character: COORDS{Name,Property}. This lets you insert custom coordinate data into dialogue or (more likely) a script. Name is the name of the custom coordinate, and Property is the coordinate value to be used: y, x, or elev.
new attribute supported in UnitsToList (battle only): Space Phase. This can be solid, liquid, or void.
when running IfItem actions in a cutscene, supplying a number for the first parameter will now cause the game to check all characters in the roster of that number instead of looking for each character's most recent army number.
new optional parameter for the IfItem actions: Check Reserve Supplies, true or false. If Check Reserve Supplies is set to true, the game will treat the item as found if it's in the army or roster's reserve supplies.
when using the RemoveItem action on a roster's reserve supplies in a cutscene, if the item is not found in that roster's reserve supplies, the game will now then look for it in the inventories of the characters in that roster and remove the first one found.
new skill images: Create Miasma Pool, Throw Axe 2.
Additionally, I commissioned a higher-resolution rework of all the game's icons for use in buttons for the new Choose Ability leveling mode. New skill images using these: Health Proficiency, Energy Proficiency, Strength Proficiency, Psy Proficiency, Accuracy Proficiency, Dodge Proficiency, Counterattack Proficiency, Reflexes Proficiency, Perception Proficiency, Speed Proficiency, Slash Res. Proficiency, Pierce Res. Proficiency, Crush Res. Proficiency, Mental Res. Proficiency, Heat Res. Proficiency, Cold Res. Proficiency, Shadow Res. Proficiency, Light Res. Proficiency, Drowning Res. Proficiency, and Poison Res. Proficiency.
new condition added in version 1.1.10e: Force Deployment. Two parameters: army number and character name. If the named character is in the roster during deployment, they will become mandatory to deploy even if they are not subject to a "Protect Char" condition.
What's next?
I believe I've settled on the concept for my next game! I've even begun writing out the design document for it. I'd love to tell you what it is, or that it's gonna be ready in a year or something like that, but let's be real: I like to take my time. I've never been a "pump out a game every year or two" kind of developer (much to the chagrin of my bank account). Maybe I'll learn to be less fastidious at some point.
While I work through my perfectionism in therapy, why not try another run of Together in Battle? Experience the new stuff, tell me how you like it. As always, I want to hear your feedback. (And don't forget to submit your custom character(s) for the contest!)
Until next time, friends!
Tactically yours,
Craig