Dev Log

[CraigStern]

More marketing work.

-- created five new achievements.

-- integrated the Steam API into the game!

-- added in calls from the game to Steam to grant players Steam achievements via a new script action call. (I'm not making this script action public, since it won't do anything if I haven't manually added an achievement on the Steam backend.)

-- all 17 achievements are now hooked into Steam's system via the above methods, letting players officially earn them all as long as they trigger the necessary in-game conditions. :)

-- updated the description for Blinding Cloak to state the duration of the effect.

--  fixed: the campaign would sometimes refuse to proceed past the Emma and Sabrina 1 cut scene.

[CraigStern]

-- upped the maximum AI handicap to 6, which now causes the AI to forgo defensive rotation at the end of moves (ordinarily undertaken to avoid getting backstabbed).

-- the AI handicap for Observer and Recruit difficulties is now 6.

-- added in a tutorial about busting open chests and grabbing sacks to Rescuing Meridian.

-- added in a reticle around the switch during the tutorial about unlocking doors with switches in Rescuing Meridian.

-- created a new achievement for taking down Gulch during Rescuing Meridian; one for slaying Gulch before the moon appears in Moonless Hunt; one for forcing Ebon Raban to withdraw while crossing Coria Bridge; and one for Meridian and Harynx both being there to have their heart-to-heart chat in Coria. This brings the total achievements in the game to 21.

-- fixed: the achievement graphics for Unnecessary Roughness and Buying Peace did not display the correct army colors.

-- fixed: the game was skipping over the first villager when getting proc gen recruits.

-- fixed: the game wasn't counting Louise as gone for purposes of villagers showing up if she left voluntarily due to Madeleine dying.

-- fixed: there was a 1 in 6 chance of bandits saying "Placeholder" instead of their attack dialogue during Moonless Hunt.

[CraigStern]

-- save slots now reflect the difficulty level of the saved game.

-- added a tutorial on energy recovery to the Battle with Gunther.

-- the enemy layout in Out of Food Battle now responds to the chosen difficulty level somewhat; easier on Observer and Recruit, tougher on Tactician.

-- fixed: the stat impacts of certain status effects--Clouded, Clarity, and Frozen--were not getting reversed upon the status effect ending.

-- fixed: Lakshmi's TargetValue tag from Caravan Battle wasn't getting removed upon recruitment.

-- fixed: unit tags with a skill-specific property (e.g. the ModSkill and RangeBonus tags) that left the skill property blank would not get applied to any skill rather than being applied to every skill. This caused items like Binoculars (which applies a RangeBonus tag to all skills) to not function.

[CraigStern]

-- set up automatic cloud saving through Steam, making your saved games accessible regardless of which device you play on.

-- blocked off the west passage in the upper mezzanine in the bandit fortress to make it clear you can't go that way.

-- fixed: in the bandit fortress, clicking to move-and-talk to someone and then using Escape to advance through the dialogue would result in the game behaving as if you were in the middle of drag-panning the camera around as soon as dialogue ended.

-- fixed: saying "No thanks" to Stranch Bellows would send the player to the wrong dialogue branch.

-- fixed: if you didn't have Scarlet recruited and alive during the Meeting Teresa and Phoebe cut scene, it would not display Sabrina's portrait.

-- fixed tooltip alignment in the promotion screen.

-- fixed: opening a cut scene in the cut scene editor without a valid maptype attribute would produce a null error.

-- fixed: the tooltips on number pickers for the left column of stats in the character creator were layered incorrectly, and the text within the number pickers was formatted incorrectly.

[CraigStern]

-- campaign descriptions now appear when mousing over campaigns in the New Game menu.

-- fixed: the campaign-specific version of Classes.xml used the outdated name "Melt" for the Defrost skill, resulting in Rebecca Flare gaining a blank skill upon promotion.

-- fixed: the game was not resetting portrait proportions within tiles and buttons after a large portrait was displayed there, resulting in the shrunken scale applying to whatever other portraits were created there. (Most noticeable in deployment tiles when deploying Harynx or Lord Dakarai and then placing someone else in the tile.)

[CraigStern]

-- there is now a unit attribute letting the game know whether an object is a trap.

-- the move path generator algorithm can now recognize when a path will send you over one of your own army's traps.

-- when you are about to walk into one of your own taps, the game now provides you with a pop-up warning.

-- refactored some of the game's (incredibly messy) movement code to make it less of a pain in the butt for me when I want to make changes to it.

-- fixed: Zash and Red would not reliably hack through the bush to reach the player if the player went for the chest in the east.

-- fixed: campaign descriptions were not loading correctly in the campaign editor.

-- fixed: the campaign editor was not saving changed campaign descriptions unless the campaign name also changed.

[CraigStern]

Recorded a new, nearly-hour-long video intro to creating campaigns in the campaign creation suite!

-- updated the Generate Character screen in the character creator with an option to input a particular level or level range.

-- updated health values for more classes in the Classes file for the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign to make proc gen characters' health totals more consistent with those of premade units.

-- created an alternate character attributes file for the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign that removed a lot of the stat and growth effects of various personality traits and life skills to keep proc gen characters balanced in the context of that campaign.

-- updated the default campaign template files to reflect character attributes and class values more consistent with the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- fixed: Burning characters would burn for 3 turns instead of 2 if Burning status was applied during an enemy turn.

-- fixed: changes to the movement code necessary to get the pop-up warning about walking into your own traps had broken the MoveUnit and MoveUnitBy script actions. Those are now back to working as intended!

-- fixed: margins for text boxes within the number picker UI object had gotten severely out of whack.

-- fixed: portrait data for human male head 5, hair 3 was incorrect.

-- fixed: the correct portrait data for various unique portraits was split between campaigns. It is now unified.

[CraigStern]

More time spent on marketing stuff.

-- added a basic in-game scripting reference in with descriptions and parameters for more than a dozen different categories of game data (actions, replies, triggers, tags, etc.)!

-- fixed: the game wasn't saving the setting when a player left the game on windowed mode, resulting in it always launching fullscreen (and reverting to fullscreen on returning to the title screen).

-- fixed: text labels within the skill editor had become unaligned somehow.

[CraigStern]

-- finished up the in-game reference! :D

-- the reference is now accessible from a 'Guide" button in every single editor of the campaign creation suite.

-- updated the scripting in Battle with Archos so that the flanks become aggressive if you move straight north across the water at the start of the battle.

-- fixed: it was possible for the shop interface to duplicate a key in the dictionary of sale prices in the Sell tab, causing an error that would prevent any items from populating the interface.

[CraigStern]

More marketing work; lots of scheduling tweets and lots of emails sent! On the game front:

-- playing on Observer difficulty, all allies recruited up through the end of the bandit fortress sequence are now given a permanent +50% to Slash and Pierce resistance, helping ensure that extremely inexperienced players don't end up with just Emma and Sabrina cleaning up battles all the time.

-- fixed: when running SetStat on an undeployed character in battle, the game would not edit that character's stats.

-- fixed: mousing over the preview button in the skill editor before inputting a minimum or maximum range for the skill would produce a null error.

-- fixed: clicking New Scene in the Cut Scene editor did not fully clear previous dialogue and scripts due to a function that would pull them right back out of the dialogue editor afterwards.

-- fixed: the tooltips describing current selected AI profiles on mouseover within the armies editor had ceased working.

[CraigStern]

Secured a voice actor and wrote a script for the Telepath Tactics Liberated launch trailer! Directed voice-over performances.

On the game front:

-- the guide now remembers the sequence of page numbers it was on for each topic, and returns to the correct page when hitting the back button.

-- the back button now hides when at the root level of the guide.

-- the page picker in the guide now hides when there is not more than a single page of entries.

-- the TextSprite entries in the guide now actually display each sprite to the user.

-- added a list of supported portrait facial expressions, with descriptions of each, to the guide under Expressions.

-- added an 'X' button to the guide that closes it without having to toggle it off in the menu bar.

-- fixed: the campaign description input box in the campaign editor was set to "single line."

[CraigStern]

Messaged Steam support re: issues with AutoCloud Saves.

-- finished getting gamepad support working with the shop interface!

-- fixed: using the mouse on the title screen even after selecting a gamepad for input could result in Unity's automated navigation overriding the game's intended gamepad navigation system.

-- fixed some cursor alignment issues in gamepad mode.

-- fixed: in gamepad mode, OnTurn dialogue would switch the gamepad cursor focus over to the dialogue interface before clicking the turn box switched it to the battlefield, effectively preventing the player from ever clearing or interacting with the dialogue.

-- fixed: in gamepad mode, ending OnTurn dialogue would not switch the gamepad cursor focus over to the battlefield in many circumstances.

-- fixed: in gamepad mode, the game would not clear dummy attack tiles from the battlefield when moving between multiple successive skill buttons.

[CraigStern]

-- worked on gamepad controls support during character deployment.

-- you can now upload custom campaigns to Steam Workshop from directly within the campaign editor! The game will automatically check if you've previously uploaded the campaign to Steam. If you have, it'll update your campaign on Steam Workshop; and if not, it'll create it there as a new campaign. :)

-- uploaded basic multiplayer to Steam Workshop as a test (but also, I'm probably gonna just leave it up there for anyone who wants it).

-- items can now be given a loadID independent of their names to allow for easier localization.

[CraigStern]

-- boosted camera-follow speed on gamepad selector movement to better keep up with the selector on bigger moves.

-- the game now correctly auto-places the selector when using push/pull skills on allies in gamepad mode.

-- the game now locks selector movement to the available attack tiles when a skill has been selected with the gamepad, a la Shining Force.

-- got it so that when the game uploads a campaign to Steam Workshop, it now includes as a preview file whatever Thumbnail.jpg happens to be within the campaign's root folder.

-- custom campaigns now create a default Thumbnail.jpg in their root folders upon creation.

[CraigStern]

-- did more work on gamepad support for the reserve supplies screen.

-- added a button to the New Game menu that takes you to Steam Workshop and gives you instructions for installing a new campaign.