Hey everybody, Talberon here! Big announcements today! A big patch with a whole bunch of new features! While I continue to work away on the Campaign, I wanted to share a bunch of quality of life changes, bugfixes and a new name! Super Sol Standard will henceforth be named Superstar Strategy! This name better conveys what kind of game Superstar Strategy is; it’s right on the tin, and it’s easier to say and spell, to boot! (Sol? Soul? Sole?)

To commemorate this new identity, check out the hot new trailer showing off all the new art and UI design, as well as the rebrand:

Superstar Strategy Demo v0.20.2 Patch Notes

New Features

• New Unit Preview Screen
  • When selecting a unit and pressing the Unit Preview button, a new screen showing the unit’s skills (or NPC behaviours), status effects, inventory and tips now appears instead of opening the Unit Codex.
  • This is now universal for all units and also replaces the old preview pane for NPC units.

• Added new archery target sprites for the Academy Tutorial map.
  
• Added save file migrations that allow synchronizing changes made to save file structure, including adding new Achievements, etc.
  
• Added “Primary Skill” and “Command Skill” labels to default and command actions in the Action Menu
  
• New window border style added.
  
• Added unit tips to the Unit Codex in the Help menu.
  

Reworks + Polish

• Game name changed to Superstar Strategy
  • Associated Art, application name and logos update to reflect the new name.

• Reworked Tutorial
  • Includes new screenshots that reflect the visual enhancements made to the game
  • Changed the characters to be more consistent with the new Campaign plot
  • Cleaned up many tutorial descriptions to be more succinct.
  • Added additional tutorials to cover missing concepts from the original, such as Status Effects and a detailed HUD breakdown.
  • Reduced Orc HP at the start to speed up the earlier part of the tutorial so it doesn’t drag on.
  • Reorganized the map to reflect the difference in mobility between the Champion and Cavalier for pacing’s sake.

• Main Menu redesigned to use rotary style menus and incorporates new logo
  
• Launchpad entities are now animated to draw more attention to them.
  
• The BLK icon and associated BLK-related skills have been updated to be more visually distinct from AMR. The old icon was a shade of silver and purple that could be mistaken for a different stat, so now they have more colour and shape divergence.
  • Paladin Stun Icon Updated to show a boot to invoke the MV debuff aspect of the skill

• Updated the Snooze and Wake HUD icons.
  
• Added icons to Game Over menu options
  
• Added/updated all status effect descriptions to use markup for icons and colour-coding
  
• Added icons for AI Routines
  
• Renamed “Natural Personality” to “Passive Personality”
  
• Renamed map Condition “Unacceptable Losses” to “None Shall Fall”
  
• Renamed Save File. Added save file migration so that data isn’t lost from the old save file.
  
• Dash Boots item no longer buffs MV like the other items, but instead provides a one-use Boost action.
  
• Updated Hill and Booster tiles
  
• Turn Start banner now colour-codes and shows icon for the active faction.
  
• Reduced size of weapon scrolling background on several screens.
  
• Map toasts have been removed and replaced with HUD-layer notifications for better legibility.
  
• In-Game Manual images updated.
  

Quality of Life Changes

• When starting a player turn, the cursor will highlight the unit with the most missing combined health (AMR+HP) to encourage saving at-risk units.
• Startup time reduced on launch slightly by introducing multithreading for loading the Achievement Context which was a heavy processing piece.
• Removed the background pane in the Entity Context HUD element to provide more room for the actual map
• Recruitable units now have a new badge on their unit hover card and their preview screen.
• Universalized the text outlines so that they are consistent across the UI.
• Reworded the achievements for completing objectives. Added a save file migration to update existing save files.
• Moved Are You Sure menu for Main Menu option in Game Over screen to be in the same position as the original menu.
• Lower HUD elements are now hidden while the Unit Preview menu is open.
• Reduced duration of “Remaining Units Will Wait” notification pause.
• Sped up the hold-to-confirm duration.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where one of the Pugilist death animations was incorrect.
• Delegated AI turn processing to another thread to reduce visible frame hitching between AI turns.
• Fixed camera being “stuck” to the last combat’s position if a game was lost during combat on an NPC’s turn.
• Fixed left-side unit pane not changing to the hovered unit during the Map Survey in the post-game.
• Fixed a bug where if multiple factions had NPCs, one unit deciding to wait would show “Remaining Units will wait” even though other factions had units with viable actions.
• Fixed one of the generated names in the Cleric name pool that was two names stuck together.
• Added missing curse tile on the Castle PVP map to fix the map symmetry.
• Fixed Assassinate objective causing a player to win on the A Game of Crowns map if they defeated the Necromancer. Assassinate should not be achieved if defeating an NPC.
• Fixed the right side unit pane not appearing during the Action Menu and Targeting phases.
• Touched up Lancer Portraits
• Touched up Pugilist Portraits
• Fixed Siege of Salem objectives that were reverted accidentally.

Misc

• Added game version number to log file on startup to make bug investigations easier.
• Updated EULA language.
  • Added email address to EULA.

• Added logging to NPC decision making to assist debugging.
  

For updates on game development progress and to join the community, consider following me on Twitter and joining the Talberon Games Discord Server. Don’t forget to Wishlist the game on Steam if you haven’t already!