Hey gang! As part of the ongoing development of Together in Battle, the Telepath Tactics Liberated engine has received a slew of AI improvements, bug fixes, and campaign creator improvements!
First, let's run through the AI buffs:
- the AI now actively avoids wandering through non-player-created fire and traps.
- AI-controlled characters who walk into pressure triggers and traps that do not freeze or stun them will now continue their turns afterwards if able.
- the AI now inherently values any move that results in a character moving off of a damage-dealing space, even if the move provides no other benefit. (Previously, the only mechanism for this was triggered by the game detecting a character submerged in water or lava.)
- reduced the weighting that the AI gives to ally-buffing moves by 80%.
- fixed: the AI was not evaluating energy-draining skills correctly, checking the energy lost against total health instead of energy.
- fixed: the AI was treating energy-draining skills as effective against inanimate objects.
Next, we have a balance tweak and lots of bug fixes:
- increased the energy cost of Fury and Stimulate from 5 to 6 and reduced the duration of Strengthened and Lucid from 4 rounds to 3.
- fixed: clicking on an Immobilized character would not show the character's attack range.
- fixed: Shield skills that didn't affect health or impart a status effect wouldn't grant experience unless the target was missing health.
- fixed: OnTurn and BeforeTurn dialogue had stopped being repeatable.
- fixed: level-ups and promotions produced by items used via a character screen from within reserve supplies menu would not "stick."
- fixed: the mentalist headband portrait accessory was misaligned on one of the male human head variants.
- fixed a range error produced when enemies applied a status effect under fog of war and were then revealed (manifesting primarily as fog tiles no longer being removed).
- fixed: cosmetic bridge connections spawning below ground level on solid terrain could override the space's ordinary elevation with a lower one.
- fixed: in situations where the AI evaluated potential knockback moves that would collide the target against a damaging object (e.g. a spiked barricade), the game would actually queue up the object's counterattack.
- fixed: the CombineLists script action did not work properly when combining more than two lists at once.
- fixed: the PICKFROMLIST{} special character would never pick the last entry in the list.
- fixed: in some circumstances, the game would remove script actions queued after a Wait action in dialogue initiated via a LoadConv action.
- fixed: the game's "check ahead for conversation-ending script actions within called scripts" functionality was not interacting correctly with conditional Run-type actions (e.g. IfValRun, IfStringRun, etc.)
- fixed in 1.0.48a: 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 in 1.0.48a: campfire objects now lay flat.
- fixed in 1.0.48a: smoke from non-flat-lying objects (such as braziers and stoves) was no longer emitting at the correct angle.
- fixed in 1.0.48b: the "AI-controlled characters who walk into pressure triggers and traps that do not freeze or stun them will now continue their turns afterwards if able" change introduced a bug wherein in larger battles (i.e. those with more than 8 characters in the enemy army), if the first enemy to go wandered into a pressure trigger, it would cause the game to freeze.
And finally, we have some goodies specifically benefiting campaign creators:
- new skills supported: Fire Breath 3, Frost Breath 3, Dark Breath 3, and Light Breath 3. These all deal damage in a cone pattern.
- the map editor now supports loading and saving a discrete defeatScene attribute for battles, allowing you to easily set a next scene dependent on the player's defeat without using conditions.
- new script action: SetDefeatScene. Sets the defeatScene attribute to a different scene for the current battle.
- new script action: PairToList. Winnows down an existing list of characters to two who meet distinct, specified sets of attribute requirements, then send their names to a new list.
- new script action: WeaponBreakageRules. Changes the rules governing weapon breakage game-wide. If Rule Type is set to Destroy, broken weapons will disappear; if Rule Type is set to Reform, broken weapons will remain but will lose all stat benefits, status effects, tags, etc., will have a sell value of 0, and will impose Strength -4, but will allow the character to keep using weapon-dependent skills.
- 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.
- updated in-game documentation to more clearly explain what each level of the AIHandicap script action does.
That's all for this month, folks. I hope you enjoy the improvements!
Tactically yours,
Craig