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v0.455.376

I played through the Kovit campaign (up until the weapon depot battle), and I'm pretty sure it wasn't collecting the item bags after combat ended.  The reason for this is that I manually collected 125 money, and that's all I had when meeting Mad Aziz (sp?).

v 0.455.376

In a battle at Stonebridge, I was moving one of my units (an Archer), then hitting the button to undo it, then moving him, fairly rapidly.  For some reason, I could move through one of my allies (Crossbow, who had not acted yet), and I ended my  move on the same space as the ally.

I think this happened after the archer shot but had move left over, but I'm not 100% sure.  It didn't occur to me that it was odd to move through friendly units until after everything was done.

Once the Archer was on top of the other unit, only the Archer showed up if I clicked there.  (I had not chosen to end its action, but it had attacked and was out of move.)  I had another unit Shove, and that moved the archer such that the other unit could act.

Sorry for no screenshot; I copied some text afterwards without thinking and thus lost it from the Copy & Paste.

I reckon you're aware of it, but I've noticed a couple things about how enemy AI interacts with item.

It still seems that, if an enemy gets to an item bag, grabs it, and uses an item, they then stop moving even if it makes sense to keep moving.
If an enemy can attack one of its enemies, it will not grab a bag (unless it is stepping on it when in position to strike its foe)*.  I've seen enemy units walk over item bags without picking them up to get to and attack a foe.
*I think I saw one pick up a bag right before attacking, but I'm not 100% sure.

Also, I saw a unit attack my Spiked Barricade when it could have attacked my Swordsman.  And sometimes I think I've seen psi-casters walk up to units that can counter-attack and use Mind Blast when they could have used their ranged attack (though I'm not 100% sure as did not double-check their Energy.)  It seems they took the counter-attack damage for no reason.

On an unrelated note, I like that the AI is now taking facing into consideration.  That part looks nice and solid.
I also noticed, or think this is what I saw, that the an AI-controlled unit will not attack someone whose counter-attack will kill it.  That's a nice touch.

That problem did go away.  I'm now on 0.455.376.

Two odd bugs.
1. With my Spearman, I targeted one of my allies with his spear attack.  When the warning about hitting an ally came up, I choose to not attack the ally, but afterward clicking the 'cancel' button to cancel the attack wouldn't work either.  I selected an enemy to continue the battle.

2. At the end of the battle, just the spearman was left.  He moved and killed the last enemy, but it stayed his turn.  When I clicked on him, the 'cannot act after attacking' text came up.  If I choose 'end turn' from the menu, nothing happened.  Also, if I clicked 'Surrender', nothing happened.  Had to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out.

Edit: in another fight, the battle ended normally when I won.  Maybe it had to do with just having one character left on the map?

After a new turn started, I just had a swordsman Pull a spearman (who just took the 20 damage from lava) out of lava, and the spearman had 0 move.

Is that intentional or a bug?
I thought move went to 0 after swimming, but maybe it was supposed to be if you start in lava (or, I assume, water.)

v 0.455.374

Sometimes, if an enemy unit moves, the game freezes.  Hitting F1 + Resume lets it unfreeze, but the enemy doesn't act.  I have to choose an enemy and move it.  (No choice to use actions.)  Sometimes the AI takes over at that point, another time I had to move a couple enemy units.  This seems to happen only when lizardmen or stone golems act (I haven't seen all unit types to know it doesn't happen with others, but this bug only seems to trigger when one of those moves.  The stone golems moved, but the game froze before they turns gray.  The lizardman turned gray before the game froze.)

Unlike past times an error like this came up, enemy units I moved would move if they had move left over.  Also, the bug never occurred past the first round the enemy AI acted (whether it was player 1 or 2.)  I tested this in Donut Tower and the Tavern (one human vs one AI).

All destructible objects are like this; their facing is always None. See the Spiked Barricade for an example of an object that can damage characters.

Is it possible under the current system to have a unit that can take actions and has a facing of None?

Is it possible to make a unit that has no 'facing' or is facing all directions?  I have the idea for a 'cannot be flanked' character, like a Beholder from D&D, or a creature that is just a sphere of energy and perceives at 360 degrees.

I could see something complicated like having an item created (like a Create skill that creates 'Beholder') and have a script run whenever that object is on the map, damaging nearby enemies... or something like that...  It could be destroyed, but wouldn't be flankable because it's an object, not a unit.  But that's not ideal.

I've noticed (at least sometimes; not sure if consistently) that when I kill an enemy or drop an item, it appears on a square next to the former holder of the item, not on the square the person was/is on.

Is this intentional?  It is kind of realistic that the item could be dropped nearby, but it makes more sense to me to just drop it where they were/are.  (I may be a version behind on downloading the latest installer, by the way.)

I think I would prefer if the Hover power (granted by using the... sorry; forgot the item name, but the long-named thing that looks like a propeller-backpack.  Steamthropter?) did not use your action for the round.  Since it only lasts 1 round (or at least only has lasted 1 round for me), it seems fair to be able to move while flying and use an ability.
I accept if you feel it should use your action, though.

If you are flying due to it but end your turn on lava/water, would and should you take damage at the start of the round?  (I don't know whether the system removes current status effects first or if it checks whether you are flying and thus to damage you first.)

v0.455.368 (new download)

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it's something interesting with building bridges.  I was curious what would happen if I connected two bridges starting from different elevations.

In Donut Tower, I started making a bridge from the top of the tower downward.  (There were two enemy units in the two middle parts of the water at the time, where bridges are currently in the screenshot.  (The enemies were not there when I made bridges.)  As a note, I was able to hit the one that was where the item bag is with a Wrench from the bridge tile north of it.  Not sure if that matters or not.)

Anyway, I built the bridge by going down, as shown by the yellow arrow from the top down.  Then, I created a bridge from the bottom of the map, as shown by the second yellow arrow pointing up.  But I cannot move onto that bridge from the bottom.

v0.455.367

Two things.
Counter-attacks: it seems that if I miss on hitting someone (they Dodge), the person I was trying to hit does not counterattack.  I attacked a Lizardman (first attack against it that round), it Dodged, but it did not counterattack.
Also, and I forget if I mentioned this before, but if a Spiked Barricade is destroyed, it does not get to damage the person who destroyed it.  Seems like it should.
(It is correct that a Bowman cannot counterattack when hit by someone in the square next to them due to his attack being 2+ spaces, right?)

Pushing bug: the screenshot isn't the best.
The Pyro was originally where the Skia now is.  I pushed it down to where the red circle is.  A Frost Spriggat was there at the time.  The Pyro got moved to the side and landed where the green circle is.  He did not fall to the water below.
(I don't recall if either took damage or was stunned from the fall or collision.)
On his turn, he moved as the green arrow shows and proceeded to attack.

Also, I think there was some glitch going on with his Energy that let him use the expensive power (Pyro Hail?) twice in a row without using items, but I saw Focus Pills in his inventory, so maybe I just missed his grabbing the item bag or using the item.

Another example of the above: the stone golem did one of its attacks (didn't catch which) and every unit was damaged which I circled.  The ground that is unoccupied had damage numbers appear, but I didn't check to see if it was actually hit.
(I would have just modified the above, but I couldn't seem to upload a picture when editing a former post.)

Also, unrelated: that golem stuck in the moving animation stayed in that moving animation, even after the turn ended.  Also, it happened again that a couple units, upon moving out of lava, left an afterimage.  The afterimage vanished when a new turn began.

Thirdly, and perhaps not a bug: a few tiles 'died' due to the Burning status, including the one the Bowman who is in the lava was on.  When his tile died due to burning, he suffers no ill effects; i.e., he didn't take the 20 fire damage from lava until the next turn began.

Edit: both were on v0.455.367

Edit 2: Happened again on Donut Tower, but with an extra find.  An enemy Stone Golem punched a charge my Engineer had made.  Damaged the charge, but also damaged the two or three units past the charge (like in 'another example.jpg'). 
Also, when I had my unit destroy the charge on the next round, it did 20 damage to the units around it and 100 to the ground (which I assume is normal), but then the game froze.  The unit that destroyed it (a Spearman) was still glowing like he was active.  I hit F1 then Resume, and could still move the Spearman, but if I tried to use an item it said I could not because I already attacked... so something about that let me move after attacking to destroy the charge.

Really odd bug.  Just downloaded and installed new version.

On a local match, an enemy Spirit used Transfer on a Bowman.  Then, another enemy Spirit also used Transfer.  Not sure if any actually transferred, but it killed the Bowman, the screen shook, and several others had damage numbers appear on them.  The 'killing' Spirit did not get damaged, but 2 other Spirits on the map took 1 damage and a Stone Golem took 7.

I guess transferring to a person with full Energy causes a glitch?  Not sure why they were using it on a Bowman in the first place, either.

In the attached, I circled where I think the killed Bowman was as well as the injured Spirits.  I have the injured Stone Golem's HP showing.  (The others were not hurt, but I'm not sure if they were showing on the screen when the Bowman died.  It was around the middle of the enemy's turn.)

Edit: to clarify, no other units got injured.  None of my were on the screen when the Spirit transferred, though.  I'm not sure if uninjured enemy units were or weren't on the screen.

Edit 2: later, an enemy Swordsman used sword on one of my unit, and it also damaged one of the enemy units and an item bag (the number appeared on it, but nothing happened to the bag.)  Screen shook again.

I wish engineers gained experience for making barricades or bridges...very easy to abuse healers to level so don't see why not let those who wish to grind engineers suffer >.>

Craig, I know from earlier posts that you don't like easy grinding, but I still think this is a good idea.  It's hard to level up Engineers to keep them comparable with the rest of the party when all they get xp for is their weak attack.  I could see them getting less xp than healers do, if you want to limit the grinding, though personally I like the option of grinding levels.

Likewise, I thought maybe a small amount of xp should be given to Mentalist who use their movement-based psi abilities.  It's usually tactically unwise to send a Mentalist in to do their close-range attack.  It would also make sense to me that you get xp for pushing enemies into hazards, like water or lava; when I can, I prefer to eliminate foes that way, but as I understand it, that costs me valuable xp.  Maybe a section of code that, when you push or pull an enemy, calculates the damage the enemy's new location would cause on the enemy's turn (and if it would be fatal) and awards the appropriate xp to the pusher/puller?  (I can see abuse of that idea by pushing someone into lava via Kinetic Gust, getting the xp for killing them, then pulling them out with a Swordsman or Lizardman or such, so you can repeat it next round.)

Would it be possible to add an 'gain xp' variable to actions, to enable an action to give a set xp?  As I understand it--and I might be wrong--the game engine itself 'knows' to give xp for attacking enemies, killing enemies, and healing, and otherwise you don't get xp for actions.  I understand if you don't plan on using such a variable in your core game, but I could see modders liking it.
(On that note, do you get xp if you fight an allied unit in a campaign, such as in a 2-vs-1 battle?  For healing allies?)

Edit: added idea of push/pull giving xp