Greetings, tactics fans--it's time for another update! I've spent this past month writing new battles and events, plus making a variety of improvements.
The biggest change this month is that you can now fight the Tiger League Qualifier, play through Tiger League itself, and make it all the way to the arena championship! So let's start with changes to the arena:
- added the Tiger League Qualifier battle into the game.
- created Tiger League itself.
- the arena plotline is now playable all the way through to right before the championship match!
- enemy levels in arena fights now scale up 17% slower than before.
- expanded the pool of possible enemy team names in the arena.
My second area of focus this past month was adding new events to the game, of which I managed a little more than half a dozen. Here are all the changes on that front:
- created a third chital event as well as a recurring fourth chital event. Without spoiling too much, it is now possible to actually tame the chital.
- created a new evening event: Treasure Hunt.
- created a new late-night event: Nightmare.
- created a new late-night event: Late Night Idea.
- new event: Ishita Svaamee makes a second visit to the player's camp (unlocked by progressing through the arena leagues).
- created a new, special event that occurs the morning of the championship fight.
- when a character receives a letter from a sibling, cousin, mother, or father, the game now remembers this--it then becomes possible to get an event where that character gets visited by the family member who wrote to them.
- created an initial Sibling Visit event, with variants based on the kind of relationship the characters have (and potentially, the player's choices).
- characters created via the GenerateUniqueFromNPC action who are related to the originating character by blood now determine their own relevant NPCs and biographical details based on the originating character, ensuring that their backgrounds are consistent. Both they and the originating character start with a mutual 20 familiarity, ensuring they won't engage in any basic "getting to know you" dialogue in camp.
- added a new argument type that can occur with sensitive characters.
- added weapon repair kits to the item sale random event.
- fixed some scripting errors in a couple of events.
And what would an update be without miscellaneous improvements and fixes? The biggest of these is an improvement to the calendar screen--you can now flip back and forth between months once you've progressed past Unimensis.
Here's the full list of miscellaneous changes:
- the calendar screen has been improved! There are now buttons to flip back to previous months and review the events that occurred. The name of the displayed month is now always visible at the top of the calendar screen.
- wrote new, alternate dialogue for recruitment attempts during the Monkey League Qualifier battle when initiated by golems or spirits.
- wrote new dismissal response monologue variants for characters with the Arrogant personality trait.
- dismissing a character no longer reduces morale for other characters who have a negative friendship value with the dismissed unit.
- new camp activity: Fury, possible when a character is angry at someone else in camp.
- there is now a 1-in-3 chance that a high-level engineer will learn Place Snare Trap. (The other 2 possibilities remain either +1 range to Place Caltrops or gaining a Wrench counterattack.)
- buffed the Architect and Demolitionist promoted classes for the Engineer. They now each get improved versions of certain skills which let them keep using other skills afterwards (for the Architect, Build Wooden Barricade and Build Spiked Barricade; for the Demolitionist, Place Charges).
- hand-made battles featuring enemy reinforcements now scale based on how many days have passed in the game.
- generic Blackguards and promoted cavaliers without equipped weapons are now generated with natural access to Throw Knife and Halberd, respectively.
- added new music track to the game: Drawing Blades.
- integrated a new version of the Festival of the Ascendant Lights track into the game featuring a traditional Indian vocalist.
- Dacoit Cutters and Dacoit Slashers now gain a melee counterattack upon reaching level 5.
- being defeated in any of the battles where thieves or bandits try to rob the player now results in the player losing half their aura.
- sentinels, pikemen, and swordmasters are now more likely to be generated with more armor and/or shields.
- when proc gen maps are created with multiple hazard terrain types, the game will now select a hazard terrain type at random from those listed.
- when Damage or Drain is affected by a SetStat action in a cut scene, the game now automatically looks for the character's portrait and--if it finds it--animates the character's health/energy bar.
- when the GiveExp action is used in a cut scene, the game now automatically looks for the character's portrait and--if it finds it--animates the character's experience bar.
- characters now lose the ability to use books of power upon promoting, preventing the player from wasting them.
- AI improvement: the AI now distinguishes between Levitating characters and characters who have an ordinary, permanent move type of Flying for purposes of determining which spaces are safe to move to. (Without this, the AI would sometimes move Levitating characters over lava or chasms only for them to drop in at the start of the next turn.)
- when removing a character from the active roster by reference to their name or loadID, the game now automatically checks for duplicates and removes those as well if found. (For reasons not yet discovered, duplicates can sneak onto the roster; before this fix, they could cause characters to stick around even after being removed from the roster.)
- fixed: the last-used windowed/fullscreen setting was not being saved as part of game settings.
- campfire objects now lay flat.
- fixed: smoke from non-flat-lying objects (such as braziers and stoves) was no longer emitting at the correct angle.
- fixed: characters who were ordered to do something via a one-on-one could nonetheless be dragged into another character's partnered activity, precluding them from doing the thing they were ordered to do.
- fixed: I accidentally left the chance of small talk set to 100% after testing, thereby preventing most post-greeting character dialogue from spawning.
- increased the chance of a talk event producing small talk to 25% from 10%.
- fixed: a change to the AI in the last patch resulted in the AI freezing when, in large battles (>8 characters in the enemy army), the first character to move wandered into a trap or other pressure trigger.
- fixed: automatic inventory generation for generic proc gen enemies placed via the map editor was not working.
- fixed: the game was missing data for straight street edge tiles where the street was elevated above surrounding terrain.
- fixed: the game wasn't replacing script IDs with the names of unique characters in script actions within battle when the relevant characters were not already saved from a previous scene.
- fixed: the tooltip for the "view calendar" button in town had a typo.
- fixed: a LoadConv call to dialogue that either does not exist or which had been removed due to being already used and non-repeatable would lock up the game. The game now simply ends the current dialogue when this happens.
- fixed chital portrait scaling.
- fixed a scripting error that was preventing characters from getting speech bubbles and babble during chital events.
- fixed: in some circumstances, the game would remove script actions queued after a Wait action in dialogue initiated via a LoadConv action.
- fixed: it was still possible to accidentally skip nighttime camp events by clicking the background at the exact wrong moment.
- fixed: the game would spawn characters with zero (or negative!) health during the thief attack battle as if they were able to fight.
- fixed: the game wasn't compensating for promoted generic characters in a weapon-dependent class generated without an equipped weapon by boosting strength or granting their default weapon skill.
- fixed: when a character without a specific counterattack gained 1 or greater Counter Limit, the game could select a skill which did no damage but did impose a status effect (e.g. Throw Voice) as the character's counterattack.
-fixed: if you hired out everyone on your team and then returned to the docks for a second time in the same day, the game would effectively lock up.
- fixed: custom difficulty dialogue still referred to manual saving as "save scum mode."
- fixed for 0.2.10a: the game was spawning Heroes in recruitment.
- fixed for 0.2.10b: the variable tracking the day of the championship bout was not being set at the start of the game, causing the day-of-championship event to trigger on day 0 when starting a new game.
- fixed for 0.2.10c: losing a league match in Snow Leopard or Tiger Leagues could result in the game getting stuck in the Arena scene.
- fixed for 0.2.10c: repair kits (or any other item that alters the properties of character equipment) would be permanently stripped of their ability to alter other items upon transitioning scenes if kept in the reserve supplies.
- fixed for 0.2.10c: classes with multiple species-based sprite overrides were not registering sprite overrides for all species, resulting in shadowling psy users appearing with human sprites.
- fixed for 0.2.10d: a scripting error in the letter event could result in the game throwing a range error.
- fixed for 0.2.10d: the sidestab and backstab bonuses from gap-seeking weapons were only being applied to base weapon skills, not to advanced skills for that weapon.
- fixed for 0.2.10d: the AI could reapply Immobilized status to characters subject to a Hold multiple times when calculating moves.
- for 0.2.10e: fixed a freeze during AI damage calculations.
And finally, we have improvements for campaign creators:
- new script action: ConsumeFood. Automatically reduces current food by the current roster of characters's collective appetite without initiating camp activities. (Food will not go below zero, nor will a hunger event be automatically triggered.)
- added a new optional boolean parameter to the LevelUpArmy script action: Affect Reinforcements. If set to true, the level-up effect will be applied prospectively to characters of the chosen army who haven't spawned yet.
- the LevelUp script action now works in cut scenes.
- new stat supported in GetValByStat: True Level. Returns the character's current level combined with any hidden, pre-promotion levels.
- added documentation for read-only stats True Level, Health Left, and Energy Left to the in-game reference.
- finished implementing the GenerateUniqueFromNPC action in cut scenes.
- new class attribute: defaultWeaponSkills. This is used to tell the game that it should grant a Strength bonus and one or more natural weapon skills to generic units of that class if they are created without an equipped weapon in their inventory.
Phew! That about covers it for this month. Next month, I'll be shooting to finish up the arena championship plot line; add a new variant or two to arena matches; create yet more random events; and paint some new nose variants for human portraits.
Until next time!
--Craig