Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

Now that I've announced the game and its identity is no longer a secret, I'll be continuing the old developer's log here! (Wow, has it really been more than three and a half years since I started that thing?! Sheesh!)

We'll start modestly:

-- fixed: inventory buttons would inappropriately display in the recruitment screen when a recruit had nothing in their inventory.

[CraigStern]

-- created a new visual effect for when character relationships improve! :)

-- changed some log commands that were inappropriately labeling normal outcomes as errors.

-- increased the deployment barks each procedurally generated character has from 2 to 3.

-- fixed: Unity was rounding 0.5 down to 0 instead of up to 1, which is apparently because Mathf.RoundToInt() just uses C#'s default rounding, which was designed for banks and not for games.

[CraigStern]

-- added some extra UI sound effects that were missing for the army overview and reserve supplies screens.

-- improved the "relationship improving" visual effect; added a sound effect accompanying it.

[CraigStern]

-- new script action: PortraitParticles. Lets you spawn 2D particle effects around a character's face in their portrait. Two parameters: portrait reference name, and particles preset name.

-- continued to improve the "relationship improving" visual effects.

-- added subtle blob shadows below 2D characters and objects.

-- fixed: the swordsman's Shove animation sprite sheet was being compressed inappropriately, leading to it not being palette swapped as intended.

-- fixed: the promotion process would throw a null error when undergone by characters without a Starting Skills stat (i.e. most premade, non-generated units).

-- fixed: save file slots would allow long campaign names to overflow into subsequent lines.

[CraigStern]

-- created a new camp activity, Restaurant, in which one or more characters heads into town and spends the evening trying out a new restaurant.

-- added the restaurant activity as a potential outcome to the evening event where a character asks another character out on a date; wrote new dialogue variants for the event.

-- added "relationship improving" visual effects to the variants in all random scripted events where character relationships improve.

-- the game now keeps the existing talk symbol between lines of dialogue where the speaker doesn't change.

-- fixed: the talk symbol would continue to pulse over talking characters even as the dialogue interface disappeared while they moved from a MoveUnit action.

-- fixed: purely narrated, dialogue-free camp activities were not affecting character familiarity, friendship, or romance values.

[CraigStern]

-- when displaying a dialogue branch with multiple replies, the replies are now hidden until the text finishes animating (or you click to skip the animation), at which point they visibly fade in over a fraction of a second. (It looks much, much nicer this way, and doesn't block the entire scene from the outset.)

-- new script action: SetNPCAttribute. Lets you change the value for an attribute belonging to a character's NPC (for instance, changing associated feeling from angry to happy, or alive from true to false). Parameters: (1) Character Name, (2) NPC Name, (3) Attribute Type, and (4) New Value.

-- new script action: AddNPC. Lets you add a new NPC to a character. Parameters: Character Name, NPC First Name, NPC Last Name, NPC Nickname, Relation, Species, Gender (Male Female or None), Alive (true or false), Location, and Associated Feeling.

-- broke the test settings interface out from the campaign editor into its own module so that instances of it can be placed within the map editor and cut scene editor for faster testing of scenes.

[CraigStern]

-- you can now test scenes directly from the cut scene editor and map editor.

-- when you return from testing a scene, you return to the editor you hit Test in and the scene you were working on is automatically reloaded.

[CraigStern]

Sketched out plans for procedural battle generation that builds upon the existing proc gen terrain, player spawns, and randomized enemy spawn code. Drafted up a contract for a programmer to come in and help work on that while I focus on the...everything else.

-- fixed: running a GiveItem action directed at the reserve supplies for the current roster while the shop interface is open in a cut scene would cause the item to never show up in the reserve supplies.

-- fixed: loading a cut scene that calls UnitsToList in the cut scene editor could make the game throw a null error.

-- fixed: a particular snow-water transition tile was incorrectly rotated.

-- fixed: the options screen was calling the wrong function to return to the options screen from within cut scenes.

-- fixed: changes to the dialogue and script editor from a few weeks ago apparently did not populate to the instance within the cut scene editor, causing it to throw null errors when creating new dialogue or scripts.

[CraigStern]

-- adjusted the sound effect timing on Wrench, Mind Blast, and most axe-based attacks to more closely match up with their animations.

-- added in some missing interface sound effects.

-- fixed: the spearman's Spear attack animation wasn't getting palette swapped due to incorrect compression settings on the sprite sheet.

-- fixed: compression settings on the Mind Blast animation were causing visual artifacts to appear during the animation.

-- fixed: it was possible for skills granted to characters by life background, personality, or physical traits with placement intended for early on in the skill progression to supplant starting skills, resulting in characters not having access to crucial abilities at level 1.

-- fixed: music tracks that began playing while the game's global music volume was set to 0 would not become louder when going into the options menu and increasing the global music volume.

-- fixed: the "done typing" reply wasn't fading in on dialogue branches with text input enabled.

[CraigStern]

Hired the aforementioned programmer; worked on getting the game set up for Unity Collaborate so that said programmer can work on code alongside me.

-- Create skills now create whatever they're creating with timing appropriate to the Build animation.

-- improved a few character barks.

-- improved the "familiarity/friendship up" sound effects, as well as the "mantis gallop" sound effect.

-- fixed: the game was double-counting starting skills granted to characters by life background, personality, or physical traits, resulting in those characters knowing more skills at level 1 than they should have.

-- fixed: dialogue speech bubbles would sometimes fail to appear when they should.

-- fixed: Create and Move attacks weren't queuing up sound or visual effects.

[CraigStern]

-- condensed the sprite sheets for Cryo Cross, Dark Vortex and Light Bomb for performance reasons.

-- added visual effects for Cryo Cross, Dark Vortex and Light Bomb into the game.

-- added a height offset parameter to visual effects to adjust the positioning of certain attack VFX which were not displaying in the correct spot.

-- updated the SpawnVisualEffect and SpawnVisualEffectAt script actions with the new parameter.

-- fixed: VFX for Mind Blast spawning too high, Mind Shield spawning too high, and the various stages of each elemental Blast skill spawning either too low or too high.

-- fixed: AOE skills whose last targeted space was empty would register as not hitting anyone for purposes of visual or sound effects, and they would not play any.

-- fixed: the Cryo Cross AOE was misconfigured so that it struck the user as well.

-- fixed: it was possible to click "through" the actions bar in battle.

[CraigStern]

-- created a "breathing" idle animation via squash-and-stretch, automatically applied to characters while they are in the Rest state.

-- gave the Mentalist a new Energy-draining skill: Nauseate. Less powerful than the Spirit's Drain skill, but it has range comparable to Terror and Dazzle, and can cause Slowed and Sick. Speaking of which...

-- the status effect Sick can now be caused by skills; it lasts 3 rounds and does the same thing as when it is placed via AddMood (that is, it doubles the energy cost of skills and causes resting to not restore energy).

-- created the Nauseate icon.

-- buffed the Spirit's Drain skill by giving it free targeting and doubling its ability to cause Clouded.

-- added Slowed, Weakened, Clouded, and Sick to the status effects that destructible objects are immune to.

-- the properties of status effects can now be altered on an ad hoc basis by appending |Length:x, |Power:x, and |Chance:x to the status effect name (where x is the new value to use for the status effect's length in rounds, power, or chance out of 100 to take effect). For example:

Code Select Expand

Strengthened|Length:1

This will apply the Strengthened status effect and cause it to last for only a single round (instead of its default length of 4 rounds).

-- the SpawnFloatingText script action is now supported in cut scenes, where it spawns pop-up text over the named character portrait.

-- the game now explicitly states via pop-up text when camp activities and events alter character familiarity, friendship, or romance.

-- new supported pop-up text color: pink.

-- when skills affect stats other than health or energy, the game now explicitly lists the affected stat after the number in the "damage" pop-up.

[CraigStern]

-- new skill: Defiant Stance. The unit ends their turn but gets +25% Strength until their next turn (effectively buffing up the power of all their counterattacks).

-- every class that automatically got Preemptive Stance in its skill progression now has a 50/50 chance of getting either Preemptive Stance or Defiant Stance.

-- Dazzle now has a base 100% chance of causing Blinded; Nauseate now has a base 75% chance of causing Sick.

-- the skill editor now lets you copy the sound and visual effects from one of the game's default skills.

-- added support for tabbing between fields to the skill editor.

-- added support for tabbing between fields to the item editor.

-- improved the look of familiarity, friendship, and romance pop-up text.

-- 2D particles can now be set to change color over their lifetime.

-- created and implemented a new "hearts dropping and dying" visual effect for when inter-character friendship or romance values drop due to a camp activity or event.

[CraigStern]

-- cleaned up the "Sinister Design" intro sound and improved the "Breaking" sound effect.

-- there is now a sound effect accompanying the "hearts dropping and dying" visual effect when inter-character friendship or romance values drop.

-- new skill: Quick Shot. A half-damage bow attack with slightly reduced range that lets the user keep moving and use another skill afterwards. Bowmen now have a 50/50 chance to learn this in place of Split Shot 2 late in their skill progression.

-- rewrote the way the skill tooltip displays "damage to energy" for skills that affect energy. Instead of just displaying the energy icon in the damage slot, the game now maintains the damage icon and adds the energy icon as well after the number.

-- cleaned up a few of the procedural character dialogue lines.

-- fixed: the text next to the range icon on skill tooltips would sometimes get cut off on some displays.

[CraigStern]

Ran a playtest last night to catch bugs and play experience issues before PAX, and today is devoted to fixing as many of them as humanly possible!

-- added a "whiff" sound effect to accompany a dodged attack.

-- added a sound effect to triggering snare traps.

-- applied new pop-up text and "dying heart" particle effects to narrated camp activities as well (in addition to dialogue and random camp events).

-- slowed down pop-up text in cut scenes and just generally improved the presentation of "relationship up" visual indicators.

-- sped up the blinking status effect indicator in battle.

-- halved the delay on displaying "Click to continue" in dialogue and narration boxes.

-- reduced the length of character sickness from random events.

-- renamed the skill Melt to Defrost to make it clear that it's not an offensive skill.

-- the game now changes the text that says "Salary" to "Price" in the recruitment screen when inspecting golems and spirits (who don't have ongoing payroll expenses).

-- adjusted the size of the salary text box to keep text sizing consistent for salaries over 999.

-- updated the mouseover description for the Arena to make it clear that it no longer necessarily boosts team morale.

-- added the "talking" indicator to all of the arena manager's cut scene dialogue.

-- upped the opacity of redded-out buttons in the item expandable options to 100%.

-- fixed a few typos.

-- fixed: due to a misformatted script action, it was sometimes possible to make a character bunk with themselves during a particular camp event.

-- fixed: the event music from plot event 1 would keep playing after it ended.

-- fixed: the game would try to generate bio details and NPCs for spirits and golems, and then throw errors when it couldn't generate golem family members.

-- fixed: drop shadows would display incorrectly on low graphics settings.

-- fixed: the camera would jump when moving the cursor over the Actions Bar while click-and-dragging terrain.

-- fixed: when an attack was canceled from the window warning about attacking an ally or healing an enemy, the character would lose the attack cost in energy as if they'd gone through with it.

-- fixed: load save game slot 4 was directing to slot 0 for some reason.

-- fixed: the game was announcing the same status effect twice via pop-up text under certain circumstances.

-- fixed: the game was sometimes leaving bar spawners in place after a combat exchange, resulting in static health bars appearing (and remaining) in inappropriate locations after moving a unit who had just been in that exchange.

-- fixed: changes to the game's "round float to int" code resulted in negative numbers being rounded incorrectly, causing various scripted events to not escape properly when necessary preconditions were not met.

-- fixed: Mechanic portrait inappropriately remained onscreen when recruiting golems in camp event.

-- fixed: one frame of each elemental Blast attack was misaligned.

-- fixed: when a character reacted to a friend falling in battle, the reaction line would delivered by the attacking enemy unit instead of the friend.