Greetings, tactics fans! This month has been focused on adding content and improving balance, with loads of bug fixes thrown in for good measure.
First, as promised, I made headway on the palace intrigue plotline:
- the daytime town menu now reveals an option to Investigate if you've accepted Manbir Raksha's request to look into the conspiracy.
- finished the game's first two interrogation scenes, fleshing out the contours of the central "whodunnit"! (In future updates, these will form the basis for plot battles to gather clues that can confirm or deny the accounts you've gathered.)
I also made good on my intention to add multiple new hand-crafted battles and random events to the game. I'm quite pleased with this bunch:
- new random event (including a battle with multiple potential outcomes): Save the Travelers.
- new random event and battle: Recruitment Duel.
- new random event and battle: Golem Attack.
- re-created the third and fourth chital events (which had mysteriously disappeared from the game at some point following the release of version 0.2.10 in July--no idea how).
We have new daytime options in Kalkerapur:
- new daytime option: Infirmary! This lets you spend a time point and some money to drop characters off at the infirmary, where they will receive treatment for their wounds. This accelerates recovery times and--if playing on Challenging difficulty--guarantees a successful recovery for characters at risk of dying.
- replaced the "Labor" daytime option with a Jobs Board! Labor will still appear as an option on the Jobs Board each day, but additional ways to make extra money may present themselves from time to time...
- new job type available: working as caravan guards! You pick 2-4 characters to accompany a caravan and help allied green units fend off a bandit attack in a proc gen defense battle.
New balance changes, including several that make the morale-management side of the game much easier:
- gatherings now increase group morale by 3, a whopping 50% increase in efficacy.
- no one choosing to clean camp on a night when it is already clean no longer guarantees that the camp will become dirty! Instead, there is now a 50% chance that your characters will have picked up after themselves, leaving the camp clean. (If no one cleans after the camp becomes dirty, though, that's still a guaranteed morale loss.)
- shadowlings and golems are now recruitable upon reaching Monkey League regardless of which events you've had.
- reduced the Psy damage multiplier on each of the big four elemental AOE attacks by 20% for balance reasons.
- increased the maximum range on Grapple Pull to 3.
- it is now cheaper to train a character's Health and Energy.
- reduced the base levels of enemies in the arena leagues a bit.
- reduced base character salaries in Challenging and Brutal difficulties.
- the league qualifier matches now give more money.
- the arena championship match now gives much more money.
We have a wide variety of miscellaneous goodies and improvements:
- new achievement added for becoming champions of the arena.
- new secret achievement added.
- improved right-click behavior in battle! Right-clicking on objects now mirrors the behavior of bridges: if there are move tiles or attack tiles present onscreen, right-clicking them is now treated as a "cancel move or attack" command rather than a command to call up the object's character screen.
- another right-click behavior improvement: when right-clicking a space with both an object and an item sack, the game would show now shows the item sack's character screen instead of the object's.
- created a tutorial pop-up a week before the first payday which assesses the player's financial position and offers guidance based on how far off from making payroll they are. (Players with payroll costs greater than 3000 aura will be warned that their team is expensive for this point in the game, and will be notified that they might want to dismiss a character to stabilize their finances.)
- incorporated a sweet new music track into the game: Incredible Danger.
- greatly increased the likelihood of friends and lovers choosing one another as partners for activities during Free Rein in camp. (Before, all characters had an equal likelihood of selecting any other character regardless of their relationship.)
- Disciplined characters no longer lose morale when ordered to participate in group practice; instead, they gain morale.
- close friends and lovers now have a stronger negative reaction when characters they like are dismissed from the team.
- increased the chance of a narrated Talk event instead of particularized dialogue from 25% to 40%.
- wrote some new narrated Talk events.
- added a new Sensitive Talk event with two variants.
- wrote about 25 personality-specific variants on the Rest camp activity narration.
- wrote a few new Heal combat bark variations.
- cleaned up some of the more awkward "like" dialogue and excluded the one generic line from being selected if personality-specific variants were available.
- wrote new dialogue variants for character reactions to winning the championship based upon personality.
- reduced the number of personality traits characters are generated with from 2 to 1 to avoid tonal dissonance in character lines and reduce overlapping traits on larger teams. (Plus, having 2 personality traits per character wasn't increasing depth of characterization as much as I'd hoped.)
- added a few new attributes for proc gen equipment.
- added "click to continue" text to the camp activity narration interface, as I noticed some new players were getting stuck waiting for things to auto-advance there.
- villager NPCs now have voice set data appropriate to their age and gender.
And what would an update be without bug fixes galore? Here they are:
- spriggats now retain their sprites when reclassing to psy users instead of inexplicably turning into humans.
- fixed: promoted characters who reclassed to a new base class would learn most or all of the new class's skills upon leveling up just once, as if every level they had gained up to that point was in that class. The game now tracks the character's level at the moment of their last promotion, resets their current-class level to zero upon changing to a new class, and uses this current-class level for skill progression purposes going forward.
- AI fix: the positive "move again" score modifier was being applied to Bow and Lance attacks against allied characters, which in some circumstances could result in the AI viewing friendly fire as a good move.
- AI fix: when there was no good move to make other than staying still and using an item, the game would simply skip the character's turn. Now, as long as the item use is sufficiently helpful, the game will instead have the character stay put and use the item.
- fixed: Immobilized characters were able to use Move skills (like Leap or Swim).
- fixed: one-shot sound effects (most notably the battle victory fanfare) were abruptly cutting off upon transitioning to a new scene. The game now fades them out instead.
- fixed: a range error could occur when the game selected no special condition for an arena map.
- fixed: the level-up description for a skill gaining a new status effect was misformatted.
- fixed: frame alignment on the Sword animation for Swordmasters and Blade Dancers was erratic.
- fixed: surrendering in (or simply losing) qualifier matches after reaching Monkey League would result in the game failing to reset to the correct battle, resulting in the arena no longer letting the player progress.
- fixed: the game was not resetting the "total battles won" variable when advancing to Snow Leopard or Tiger leagues, resulting in enemies being overleveled.
- fixed: recruitment broke when asked to generate pre-promoted characters due to a faulty detection mechanism for level ranges in class data.
- fixed: in the recruitment interface, the tooltip for equipment masteries could show up behind the skill buttons if a character was generated with enough skills.
- fixed: the player's team name was not appearing in the new turn box for the Treasure Thicket battle.
- fixed: the Idol's health was not scaled appropriately for Defend the Idol maps in Snow Leopard League or Tiger League.
- fixed: the spirit's portrait could disappear after naming in the Apparition 2 event.
- fixed: self-focus skills (such as Soul Suck and Transfer) were inappropriately affecting maximum energy, not just current energy. This was caused by changes in the code allowing skills that send a character's energy into the negatives to deal rollover damage.
- fixed: a range error occurred when triggering dialogue in the Battle with Bandits 1 event.
- fixed: a variable needed to trigger the Battle with Bandits 2 event (and thereby unlock steel equipment in the shop) was not being set in the Introduction scene, preventing the event from ever occurring.
- fixed: auto-looting was not turned on for either of the merchant-based bandit battle events.
- fixed: user scores for downloadable campaigns were incorrectly scaled, leading to them appearing at 1/5th the value they should have.
- fixed: healers would sometimes say their heal bark even when only healing themselves.
- fixed: gamepad "click to continue" text would show up in the dialogue window when in the shop even if no gamepad was connected.
- fixed: in rare circumstances, the actions queue could remain uncleared when changing scenes, leading to the game refusing to process actions in the next scene under the belief that it was already in the middle of processing script actions.
- fixed: in the event the game's custom integer value for the days passed ever got out of sync with actual days passed in game, it could lead to the game failing to recognize victories in league matches as proper league match victories for purposes of advancing the player through the league.
- fixed a typo in Snow Leopard League arena dialogue prior to the Tiger League Qualifier.
- fixed: the report screen was not hiding the dialogue menu as intended when the ShowReport script action was used in battle.
- fixed: clicking units in the deployment menu was not making a sound.
- fixed: ignoring the summons from Manbir the day after the festival and then undertaking a 1-time-unit activity would result in the messenger approaching the player a second time upon returning to town for their second activity.
- fixed: you could keep throwing the switch in the Tiger League Qualifier to keep spawning explosive charges.
- fixed: reclassed characters could still sometimes end up learning duplicates of known skills.
- fixed: promoted characters could retrain to the base version of their current class at the trainer.
- fixed: it was possible for spirits to be generated with personality-based camp activities (e.g. volunteering, praying, worrying, nursing grudges...)
- fixed: one of the "like" dialogue lines for imaginative characters inappropriately referenced hobbies instead of material things.
- fixed: in some circumstances, non-golem, non-spirit proc gen characters could be spawned with a salary of zero (e.g. from the GenerateUnique script action).
- fixed: the randomly chosen socioeconomic class of proc gen characters could override the inventory quality parameter in the GenerateUnique script action.
- fixed: the graphic for steel mail was missing.
- fixed: choosing to proceed with a custom menu button selection in the face of a pop-up warning would not close the pop-up menu if proceeding meant moving to another custom menu.
- fixed: when a premade unit has a class name not corresponding to any class in Classes.xml (such as "Villager"), they would show up with the class "NOT FOUND." Instead, the game now provides them with an empty class that has the provided name.
- fixed: in rare circumstances, an attack sequence could end with a pending counterattack left unexecuted, only to suddenly execute the counterattack later on when another character tried to use a skill. The game now performs a separate check for any such attacks before ending a sequence of attacks and counterattacks.
- fixed: the names of game's villager sprite sets were misformatted.
- fixed: Sita's current portrait data was not in-game for some reason, leading to her eye placement looking messed up.
- fixed: Prince Ajit's portrait data was using an outdated name.
- fixed: religious characters unable to find a temple in the evening were gaining 1 morale instead of losing 1 morale.
- fixed: the side quest to restore steel items to the shop was not triggering due to a missing variable in the game's introductory scene.
- fixed: players were not receiving the "Tutored" achievement upon completing all in-game combat tutorials unless playing with a gamepad.
- fixed: due to a typo, players were not receiving the "Get decked" achievement upon acquiring a deck of Psy Clash cards.
- fixed: the game would throw a range error if a zero-length string was passed as the parameter for the SetNextScene or NewScene script actions.
- fixed: calling the SetValByEvent script action without its optional fourth parameter would produce a range error.
- fixed in 0.4.0a: a null error caused by implementation of a new localization system in the game's info bar.
- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game was hitting a range error due to a scripting mistake in the Strikebreaker event.
- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game was not accounting for skills like Sprint and Engine Boost when calculating where enemies could reach for purposes of determining unit placement in proc gen maps.
- fixed in version 0.4.0b: characters who were reclassed to a base class post-promotion would promote again upon gaining a level in their new base class.
- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game could silently reject available promotion options without logging a reason.
And finally, we have a variety of improvements for the campaign creation suite:
- proc gen item attributes are now moddable! Edit these via the new ItemAttributes.xml file the game creates when you make a new custom campaign.
- proc gen battles now accept premade character types, not just proc gen characters. (Just use a loadID in place of the character class, with a : in place of the /.)
- proc gen battles now accept destructible object assignments to particular armies.
- the game now supports designated "spawn regions" for deployment spaces, groups of characters, and groups of objects within proc gen battles, forcing each to spawn within certain defined areas of the map. (Spawn regions are defined the same way as custom areas are.) This makes proc gen defend maps much more doable.
- proc gen battles can now account for a third, allied army when determining unit positioning (a necessity for making proc gen three-army battles that aren't just free-for-alls viable).
- custom integer values can now be used in place of victory aura, victory morale, and defeat morale effects for battles.
- custom strings can now be used as the loadID for unit spawns in battle.
- custom menus now support hidden buttons: buttons that are defined but not shown to the player unless unhidden via a script action!
- the "hidden" property of custom menu buttons may now be edited within the cut scene editor.
- the cut scene editor now supports an unlimited number of gray-outs and warnings for each custom menu button (with each delimited by |s).
- new script action: ShowMenuButton. Shows a hidden button within a custom menu. One parameter: button name.
- new script action: HideMenuButton. Hides a visible button within a custom menu. One parameter: button name.
- new stats supported by Stat script actions: Health % Left and Energy % Left. These return a number between 0 and 100 reflecting the percentage of a character's health or energy that remains.
- improved documentation for the generate inventory parameter for the GenerateUnit, GenerateUnique, and GenerateUniqueFromNPC script actions.
- new optional parameter for GenerateUnique and GenerateUniqueFromNPC script actions: Force Personality. This forces the character to be generated with one particular personality type that you specify.
- new special character supported in dialogue: -BASECLASS-. Like -CLASS-, but it gets swapped to the base version of the character's current class instead.
- new special characters: -CLASSID- and -CLASSID2-. These refer to class loadIDs, whereas the old -CLASS- and -CLASS2- special characters now refer to localized class names.
- added -CLASS2- documentation to the campaign editor's in-game reference.
- the XML saving class in the campaign editor now gives specific feedback on the error when an xml file fails to save.
- added parameter count checks and error logging to a bunch more script actions.
- fixed: predictive text results for the music input field in the map editor had gotten misaligned at some point.
- fixed: the Regenerating sprite was missing from the campaign creator's TextSprite documentation.
Phew! That was a whole lot of stuff: but there's actually even more going on behind the scenes. I'm currently in talks to get more funding to improve some of the visuals, get some new assets, get this game an actual marketing budget of some kind, get localization, ports to other platforms, etc. There are no guarantees, but I've got my fingers crossed.
There may be a bit of a blip in terms of how much content I get done for next month's update, as I'm moving houses in the next couple of weeks. Regardless, I'll be aiming to get the first couple of palace intrigue battles done, get a third proc gen job type in place for the jobs board, and more. We'll see how it all shakes out. Until next month!
Yours in tactics,
Craig