It's been a full month since the last update; please accept my apologies for the delayed release, but there have been a lot of low-level changes going on, and they warrant a beta release. As usual, you can opt in to the beta by opening the game's Steam properties, and looking under the "Betas" tab. Doing so will ensure that you are always running the latest version, even when that isn't a beta version at all.
First off, all of the text has been stripped out and placed into separate resource files, to allow for localization (more on that in a moment). Savefiles have seen some formatting changes that are one step toward session saving in the future. These changes alone warrant a beta release, as there could easily by some unforeseen consequences--report anything out of the ordinary! I suspect there may be a prophecy or two that won't make the conversion, but most everything else in the old savefiles ought to be all right.
There's also one major rule change that is likely the first of many, as I attempt to streamline and re-frame some of the gameplay to focus on a smaller scale and more deliberate pace, with more emphasis on floor positioning and encounter building rather than spamming units and traps (see this thread for some other big things that could be coming).
The big change in this build: heroes "fight fair." Heroes will only engage your minions in equal or lesser numbers; the anticipated effect is that I can scale back the number of heroes in each wave and the number of minions provided by each floor, and instead work on giving each character more significance. It also means that a single minion cannot hold off as many heroes, resulting in greater dungeon penetration--in spite of the lower character count. More balancing will be required, but then, most of the changes outlined in the above thread will fall into that same boat, so expect some more beta builds over the next month or two.
If testers can help me to quickly strike a decent comfort zone in this beta, I do hope to drop a standard build sometime around Halloween, so I won't have to leave the less adventurous behind for too long.
Where is controller support? I'm afraid this feature got pushed back yet again, as I am trying to reconcile the current control scheme with all of the anticipated changes. I am still hoping to work this in soon, but I'll want to push it in a beta build, as well, to gather feedback from users with different controller types.
Localization. I have finished the supports for localization, but the actual translation has barely begun. I cannot afford professional translators, but I have registered a Tomb of Tyrants translation project, where anyone from the community can go help out! We are starting with some requested languages that share much of the Latin alphabet: French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Finally, there's now an official Facebook page and subreddit, for those who are into those things--I won't judge you =).
As always, thank you so much for your feedback, suggestions, and support; you guys are always amazing :totfedora:!
Changelog
Additions:
- Dynamic localization support (but no actual translations in-game yet)
- Windows: ToT.bat added to the game's folder; running this file will execute the game with logging enabled, so players don't have to fiddle with the command prompt any more
Changes:
- Heroes now "fight fair," only engaging minions in equal or lesser numbers
- Hero wave sizes diminished
- Most minion populations reduced by 1
- Major formatting, encryption, and handling changes to savefiles
- Much of the more mundane stat-tracking has been dropped (previously, pretty much anything you bought, saw, killed, lost, or gathered was registered somewhere--it was a little excessive)
- Rituals have been moved to the sides of the Hoard, rather than the Queue, where falling tiles could block them
- Players start with only two target rituals, and the number grows as you complete more, maxing out at 16 at once
- All rituals are now worth only +1
- Increased the number of rituals generated by the game
- View can be scrolled while scrolling over floor/character buttons, if "end" of button list has been reached
- "Equal Opportunity Emperor" achievement changed to single-session (official description change hasn't been committed, due to this only affecting the beta build at the moment)
- Lots of minor changes to various bits of text
- Several minor UI adjustments
- Some codex formatting changes
- Ghouls now have Goblinoid trait
- Some item effect values have been slightly altered (mostly improved)
- Match multiplier takes longer to fade after a move
Fixes:
- Couldn't click "new banner unlocked" message to open to the new banner's Codex page
- Casual mode didn't restrict legacies on floors and champions
- Plot/prophecy log entries were slightly wrong length
- Weird stuff could happen if you repeatedly paused while dragging a move
- Minor graphical artifacts on a couple of floors