Developer's Log

[CraigStern]

I've now written up most of the early game missions in detail.

Fixed an annoying bug that would cause the cancel button to show up during counterattacks for no good reason.

Also, we now have another villain portrait--say hello to Archos the Corrupt!

[CraigStern]

New stuff! New portrait, for the villain Pathos; progress on elemental blast effect animations; alternate gender sprites now all have complete rest and walk animations; work is underway on overhauling certain placeholder UI assets; and, of course, writing work continues!

[CraigStern]

Here's the current draft of the new Actions Menu graphics, still in progress. :)

[CraigStern]

Work continues on creating characters and writing out the scenes in the main campaign.

We recorded live instruments for the game's soundtrack recently; ideally, the soundtrack should be wrapped up within the next month or so.

Also:

- We now have a finished Actions Menu graphic (see below).

- We now have rest sprites for a new character class: the Bandit! ;)

[CraigStern]

I've been writing more dialog and scenarios for the campaign, including what is probably my favorite character interaction in the game so far.

Also, new character portraits! Here are Medomai, the shadowling spy; and Igor Bloodbeard, the bandit warlord. ;)

[CraigStern]

I stayed up late last night creating the first few scenes in what will be the official campaign.

In the process, I fixed a nasty bug that would cause the game to freeze in single player battles where the New Army condition was used. Work on the main campaign continues!

Oh, also, Tyvon Thomas is doing some awesome graphical effects for the game's elemental blast attacks. Check out the Cryo Blast and Pyro Blast (in-progress) below!

[CraigStern]

A new monthly update has been posted on the front page! It includes a new video, and animated gifs of the light blast and shadow blast animations. ;)

Last night, I coded in support for a third VFX spawn location: TowardTargets, which is basically used to create animated projectiles like fireballs and arrows.

While OnTargets will spawn the visual effect on every character targeted by a skill, and OnSelf will spawn the effect over the character using the skill, TowardTargets essentially blends the two: it spawns the effect on the user, then moves it toward its targets over the course of the animation.

[CraigStern]

The game now has the elemental blast attacks that are properly animated with spell effects and synced up sound effects! Not gonna lie, they look pretty awesome. :D

Oh, also, we now have the first 50 button icons in-game. Just another 75 or so to go!

[CraigStern]

As part of our efforts to renovate the game's UI, David Hammond has overhauled the game's Dialog box and Message box graphics. Pics below! :D

[CraigStern]

All of the game's various UI boxes have now been overhauled other than the new turn box. (You can see the updated victory splash below.)

The bandit sprites now have walk animations.

I've created crossbow bolt and arrow projectiles and added them as projectile animations to the bow and crossbow attacks. I've also added an explosion animation to the Explode and Powder Bolt attacks.

[CraigStern]

Fixed a bug where equipping items via the GiveItem dialog action would not result in the character undergoing associated stat changes or learning any attacks.

Fixed a bug where items granted by GiveItem would sometimes end up linked to every other item of the same type.

[CraigStern]

The game now keeps music playing continuously if you transition from one scene to another that both use the same music.

[CraigStern]

Spent more time working on the campaign's introductory sequence; I'm really pleased with how it's coming together right now! :)

Also, we now have a special new graphic for the splash screen whenever a player's turn starts--it has elements that get palette swapped to match the army color of the current player (which should make it way the heck easier for people to remember which army is which during local multiplayer).

[CraigStern]

New dialog action: RemoveGlow. This removes the selection glow from whatever character has it at that time. This is basically to keep characters who have selection glow from dialog from glowing on into the next character's turn.

[CraigStern]

The official campaign's first few scenes are now in-game! :D

We've created some swanky new custom cursors to be used in place of the default mouse cursor (see below).

I've coded in support for visual effect animations with frames of any size, not just 128 x 128. The only caveat is that the width and height of each frame must still be the same (64 x 64 is okay, 64 x 96 is not; 48 x48 is okay, 48 x 52 is not).

The bandit sprites are now being used in the single player campaign (albeit currently using a placeholder attack animation that doesn't really match the sprite).

Fixed a bug where if you moved multiple characters at the same time in dialog using the MoveChar action, the dialog box would appear as soon as the first character stopped moving (instead of waiting for all of them to finish).