Developer's Log

[CraigStern]

This thread is solely for me to post updates in; please post problems you are having in the bug thread.

[CraigStern]

--created two new non-flashback cut scenes in the mines

--updated the final battle with more character dialog

[CraigStern]

--added new early-game tutorial text explaining damage fall-off on ranged attacks and encouraging the player to use Sprint to get to far-off locations

--the scene leading to Harriet Glaive's showdown with Malcolm Eichan now no longer triggers if she died earlier in the game

[CraigStern]

--created a new, looping "howling wind" sound effect and added it to the game. It can be employed via the action PlayLoop/Wind

--updated one of the game's cut scenes with the wind loop

[CraigStern]

--wrote the ending to the game! :D

--the game now tracks your total score across all battles in a given campaign. (Unfortunately, I had to make some changes to the game's save code to do this, which means that old save game files will most likely become unusable once I update the game to version 0.455.552.)

--added documentation on the Defeat Army condition to the manual.

--new script action, FadePortraits – causes all portraits to fade out or fade in. Has one parameter: Number of Frames; Number of Frames tells the game how many frames to take fading the portraits in or out. There are two additional optional parameters: Delay and Mode. Delay is the number of frames to wait before beginning to fade the portraits in or out. Mode is either out or in; this specifies whether to fade the portraits out or fade them in. (By default, portraits fade out with 0 frames of delay.)

[CraigStern]

--wrote five more character death monologues; there are no longer any placeholder death monologues in the game.

[CraigStern]

--the game now loads the player's current total score for a campaign when he or she enters a new scene; you can access that score using the new special character -SCORE-

--tidied up the game's end credits a bit, fixed some overflow lines

[CraigStern]

--made some necessary changes to the fourth merchant scene, and added a fifth (and final) merchant scene right before entering the mines

--added endings for Meridian, Oliver, Medomai, Goniff, Umber, and Fera to the game's conclusion.

[CraigStern]

--implemented an optimization for the enemy AI routine: the game no longer pans over to every character before checking to see if it can go. If a character is in Passive mode and there are no targets within its max range, the game skips over it immediately, leading to drastically shorter enemy turns on maps with lots of passive enemies.

--fixed issue where Defending characters wouldn't counterattack after blocking an attack

--fixed bug where characters with Defending status would nonetheless block attacks from Blinded characters, and characters with a Dodge of 0 would never dodge attacks even if those attacks had an accuracy level below 100%

--fixed a bug in which the game had ceased letting the player grab bridges and objects in order to pan around the battlefield

--fixed a bug in which the experience gain bar would display during death monologues rather than waiting for the character to finish speaking and die first

--fixed a bug where the title screen text box would sometimes show up during the loading screen  between scenes

[CraigStern]

--created a rough map of the islands where the main campaign takes place, with key locations marked

Missions matched up to the map:

[spoiler]--the zaris is where the training mission occurs
--just west of it is the fight with Zash and Red
--the first fight with Gunther is in Adelbrae
--you find the caravan en route north from Adelbrae to the Mud Hills
--the fight with Gulch is just at the beginning of the Mud Hills in the southwest, near the edge of the forest
--the fight with Gunther is in the Mud Hills
--the fight to defend the camp happens in the forested area just south of the bandit fortress
--the bandit fortress battles occur in the bandit fortress and immediately outside the fortress's south wall
--the foraging mission and the lissit stealth mission both occur in the forest southwest of the fortress, between the Mud Hills and Coria Pass
--the battle with the five guardians occurs at the entrance to Coria Pass
--the battle atop the cliffs and the long bridge battle each occur in the Teeth, with the latter battle occurring in the westernmost part of the Teeth
--the battles with the Coria Dogs and Ebon Raban occur in Coria
--the group sails southwest from Coria, loops south of Koerdt's Key, and lands in Gilmore Bay
--the crypt that Teresa and Phoebe want to explore is on Gilmore Bay
--the battle where you find Sarn Kamina and Siripent occurs in the Wetlands, northwest of Gilmore Bay
--the battle with Archos occurs at the westernmost edge of the Wetlands as they transition into the snowy foothills leading of the mountains
--all the remaining battles occur either right outside the mines, or within the mines[/spoiler]

[CraigStern]

--I've spiffied up the map

--started working on giving bridges elevation independent of the tiles they're situated over, so as to fix weird inconsistencies on maps where bridges connect cliffs or other elevated areas across areas with much lower elevation

[CraigStern]

--bridges can now have their own elevation independent of the tile below them! To accomplish this, use the new Elev tag on a bridge object that you want to have a particular elevation. One parameter: the elevation for the bridge to adopt. This not only fixes issues with characters getting inappropriate elevation bonuses and penalties while fighting on bridges, it also fixes the long-standing issue of characters being able to swim onto bridges from water way, way, way below where the game should consider the bridge to be.

[CraigStern]

--fixed a bug in which a character that is pushed and falls down a wall, when landing on another character, could bounce onto an adjacent space that is a wall and then just stay there without falling.

[CraigStern]

--created a checkbox toggle UI element

--added a Fullscreen Mode toggle to the game's Settings menu

--changed the game's windowed mode resolution to 1280 x 720 (a Youtube-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio that will record nicely in HD)

[CraigStern]

--fixed a bug caused by yesterday's windowed resolution change, in which cut scene backgrounds were showing up noticebly offset to the right