Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

-- the AI will now attack destructible objects to clear a path to targets who would otherwise be within immediate move-and-attack range. (Among other things, this makes the Zash and Red battle much more interesting if you go for the chest!)

[CraigStern]

-- the AI will now consider more alternative routes to a target when testing out path-clearing moves. (See e.g. the swordsman in the bottom-right here.)

-- added facial expressions to Zash's combat dialogue.

-- improved the look of bottom-row chasm tiles.

-- fixed: if an AI character got themselves killed during their turn, the AI move following it would not take into account that character's death (e.g. assuming that that character's space was still blocked).

-- fixed: stopping all sound loops via a global StopLoops action would not clear the "active loops" reference list, resulting in those loops remaining saved as the active loops for mid-battle saves going forward into the game.

-- fixed: there was a missing background on one of the dozens of tooltips in the character screen.

[CraigStern]

More work on recreating Telepath Tactics in the new TiB engine!

-- began recreating the Rescuing Meridian battle along with the cut scene leading into it.

-- fixed some facial expressions in the Silithis and Ambuur Sang cut scene

-- fixed: the Silithis and Ambuur Sang cut scene no longer leads an "end of demo" scene.

[CraigStern]

-- implemented the AddTagToArmy action; it behaves exactly like AddTag, but it takes an army number as its first parameter instead of a character name. Whatever tag you want to add, with its attendant parameters, becomes the remaining parameters of the script action. That tag gets added to every unit in the specified army. (You can achieve the same thing now with ForLoop and AddTag, of course, but AddTagToArmy is just plain faster and easier.)

-- AI tweak: improved scoring for path-clearing moves to exponentially weight the relative damage the character can do to an object, thus preventing the AI from attacking objects it'll take many turns to break (e.g. using swords or bows on boulders) unless there are really no better moves available.

-- fixed: the space selector could appear and move around onscreen in dialogue during a MoveCam action.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed the pivot point on the crossbowman Bayonet animations.

-- fixed the alignment of arrow and crossbow projectiles during Bowman and Crossbowman attack animations.

[CraigStern]

-- when you knock a unit into another unit, it now animates the knocked-back unit going into (and then rebounding out of) the adjacent space to visually represent the collision.

-- the game now detects knockback into a space with elevation too great to move into as knockback into a wall, and adds collision damage appropriately.

-- the game now recognizes -ANY- as a valid input for the first parameter in the OnReachingArea dialogue trigger. This causes dialogue to trigger no matter where the character moves, thereby effectively replacing the old OnMoveCompleted dialogue trigger.

-- implemented script ID support for use as character names in all remaining dialogue triggers.

-- fixed: the game wasn't checking for unfinished forced movement as part of a combat sequence after running dialogue triggered mid-sequence, resulting in certain things (like impact sounds for characters pushed into water) not always playing when they were supposed to.

-- fixed: if you triggered the first pyrokineticist in the Rescuing Meridian battle, it wouldn't remove passive behavior from the surrounding units.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed: the game was playing a clicking sound twice in succession when switching pages in the campaign editor scene testing menu.

[CraigStern]

-- when a computer-controlled character's Passive tag is removed during the AI's turn, the game will now check to see if it previously skipped over that character due to having no short-range moves available for it. If it did, the AI will recalculate that character's move without the Passive tag limiting it to only short-range moves.

[CraigStern]

-- added text pop-ups accompanying the use of stat-altering items in battle.

-- tightened up the timing on inter-unit collisions with knockback attacks.

-- improved the timing on kinetic knockback skills.

-- fixed a null error that could occur in cut scenes.

[CraigStern]

-- created sound effects for using bandages, swallowing pills, drinking liquids, using a whet stone, and using keys.

-- added a sound attribute to items. The attribute designates a sound effect to play when the item is used, and without having to rely on the runsScript attribute.

-- increased the effect of a negative physical growth trait on the affected stat; it now imposes a growth ceiling of 2 instead of 3.

-- adjusted positioning of physical trait buttons in recruitment interface.

-- fixed: the game wasn't correctly repopulating the personal equipment and sellable properties of items upon reloading a saved game.

-- fixed typos in a couple of the "like" lines for pessimistic characters.

[CraigStern]

-- updated Unity to the latest version.

-- spent a few hours squashing bugs resulting from the update.

-- updated the engine to use Unity's new Universal Render Pipeline.

[CraigStern]

-- switched over the game from gamma to linear color space for more accurate colors, lighting, and post-processing.

-- wrote a new world position UV shader in Shader Graph to handle terrain tiling in the universal render pipeline.

-- wrote a new variant shader for liquid terrain that animates the liquid slowly sloshing back and forth.

[CraigStern]

-- new tag: StopsCounters. One parameter: Skill Name. This makes it so enemies cannot counterattack the tagged character when the character uses the specified skill (or skills which depend upon it).

-- increased the likelihood of proc gen weapons and armor having attributes.

-- new proc gen weapon attribute: Blinding. An even stronger version of Brilliant, it boosts Dodge by 15%.

-- new proc gen weapon attribute: Staggering. Boosts damage at the cost of reflexes and energy even more than Heavy does, and also prevents enemy counterattacks.

-- new proc gen armor attribute: Camouflaged. Causes the unit to be valued 10% less by the AI when choosing targets.

-- new proc gen armor attribute: Aquatic. Causes the unit to gain 100% resistance to Drowning damage.

[CraigStern]

-- trees and foliage now visibly sway in the wind during battle.

[CraigStern]

-- updated liquid shaders for in-game lava; lava now glows in a fashion that reflects its visual appearance.