Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

-- got the scripted event where an enemy engineer places explosive charges in the Coria Bridge Battle map working!

-- added IfPathClearRun to the game. Battle only; this checks to see if the named character has a clear path to a specified set of coordinates. If so (or if Reverse Match is set to true), the specified script(s) is(are) run. Parameters: Character Name, Y Coordinate, X Coordinate, Script Name, and Reverse Match (true or false -- optional).

-- you can now designate -ANY- as the character for IfInAreaRun and IfInAreaGoTo.

-- when spawning a new unit via a script in the middle of an AI turn, the AI now adds the unit to its list of potential targets.

-- fixed: some of the code governing the operation of a TargetPreference tag in AI could lead to the game freezing.

[CraigStern]

-- updated the scripting governing timing of pop-ups and morale bars during events in Together in Battle.

-- golem portraits are now displayed 15% larger in dialogue to give a more accurate sense of scale.

-- fixed: camp dialogue was creating a duplicate of the second character's portrait on branch 1.

-- fixed: infinite loop detection wasn't accounting for the game's various Wait actions. It now resets to zero whenever a Wait-style action is executed.

[CraigStern]

-- doubled the camera zoom-in speed when an attack is initiated; cut the delay before initiating the skill animation by more than half when combat camera zoom is enabled.

-- adjusted some more of the Coria Bridge Battle scripting.

-- attack tiles for building bridges now always appear at the builder's own elevation.

-- new tag type: MoveFirst. During its turn, the AI will always move all characters tagged MoveFirst before moving its remaining characters.

-- finally finished getting the Coria Bridge Battle working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- fixed: the game would process environmental and status effect damage at the same time as triggered OnTurn dialogue.

-- fixed: the game was spawning flyers too high above water due to some holdover code I forgot to nix.

[CraigStern]

-- remade Red's portrait using the new proc gen portrait assets.

-- improved some of the scripting in the Training and Zash and Red battles.

-- fixed: the game would not re-highlight the selected character upon conclusion of a non-turn-ending attack.

-- fixed: Unity had broken a component in cut scenes that was required for the NewRoster level tag to work.

-- fixed: loading up premade characters in the character editor could produce a null error if the character had no inventory defined.

-- fixed: the game would treat combat barks as available if the character had completely blank atkBarks, vicBarks, etc. attributes contained in PreMadeUnits.xml.

[CraigStern]

-- got the Coria cut scene working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign!

-- added Photokurios sprites into the game.

-- added new parameter to MoveCam script action: Speed. (By default, this is 1.0.)

-- added sound effect when changing browsing categories in the shop interface.

-- wrote some more attack barks for Jokester characters.

-- fixed: the dialogue menu would still accept inputs while characters were moving around onscreen.

-- fixed: talk symbols produced by the AssignSpeaker action would disappear and not reappear again after scripting character movement during dialogue.

-- fixed: it would play the "clicked move tile" sound effect when doing scripted movement during dialogue.

[CraigStern]

-- got the Merchant 3 cut scene working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- finished adding Fencer and Mantis Knight sprites into the game.

-- added Bowmaster sprites into the game.

-- added Mindjacker sprites into the game.

-- barks for premade characters now support facial expressions.

-- documentation for adding facial expressions to barks added to character creator.

-- added facial expressions to every victory bark within the Telepath Tactics cast.

[CraigStern]

-- if an army has no characters available for that player to control, the game now skips directly over that army's turn without displaying the new turn box.

-- if a character is on top of an item sack, mousing over them now displays the items in the sack at the bottom of the character tooltip.

Experimented with some changes to make maps with extreme elevation differences more playable:

-- tilted the camera an extra 10 degrees closer towards an overhead view; this allows a 0-elevation space to still be visible (and selectable!) behind 3-elevation terrain. This had a bunch of really annoying knock-on effects throughout the engine that I spent hours addressing, but I seem to have gotten it all sorted out now...fingers crossed.

-- mousing over a cliff face now treats the selector as though it were over the space directly below it.

-- fixed: the idle "breathing" animation somehow got removed from the character animation controller.

-- fixed: the game was not serializing and deserializing army AI profile information correctly during mid-battle saves.

[CraigStern]

-- added army AI profiles to each of the battles currently in Together in Battle.

-- added a light animation selector to the Light Properties window in the map editor. Lights can now be designated Static, Flicker, or Pulse.

[CraigStern]

-- created separate visual effects for the level 1 and level 2 breath attacks to match their respective attacks' range.

-- fixed a ton of skill visual effects that no longer aligned correctly after the Great Camera Tilting of Two Days Ago.

-- fixed compression settings that were making a few of the visual effects look bad.

-- fixed an annoying behavior where the game would switch the active character after using a skill in Exploration Mode with multiple characters under the player's control.

-- fixed: self-move attacks (like Charge) were still delaying the self-move  by 1 additional second for combat zoom-in even though combat zoom-in had been cut by more than half, leading to incorrect timings.

-- fixed: skills affecting Max Health or Max Energy (e.g. Static Shield) did not correctly display the stat's icon in pop-up text.

-- fixed: Energy-draining attacks were rolling over into Health damage when taking Energy below 0 not just for characters, but for destructible objects as well.

-- fixed: it was possible for animating bars to produce an NaN error by starting with a scale determined through dividing by 0 when using Energy-reducing skills on targets with 0 energy.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed scripting in the Coria Dogs - Ground Floor battle in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- rewrote (and optimized) the code for determining where characters can target their attacks. In the process, fixed: ranged attacks could pass through walls under certain circumstances.

-- fixed: health bars were no longer displaying above 3D objects.

-- fixed: unit tooltips would display for units below the actions bar when mousing over the actions bar.

-- fixed: the status effect displayer for units could clip through walls behind the unit.

[CraigStern]

-- the game now pans the camera to AI characters using an item before moving.

-- fixed: the game could freeze if the computer tried to score moves for an AI-controlled character with duplicates of the same skill.

-- fixed: non-flying units in liquid were not spawning down within the liquid.

[CraigStern]

Corresponded with Georgi about the new Telepath Tactics portraits, reached out to Egle Moskaite about doing new key art for the game. Meanwhile, on the dev front:

-- fixed alignment on Sword animations for the Fencer.

-- got the Coria Dogs - Ground Floor battle fully working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

[CraigStern]

-- new script actions supported in-game: IfBlockedGoTo and IfBlockedRun. These check for the presence (or absence) of a character or impassable object blocking the specified space; if present (or Require Blockage is false), then go to a dialogue branch or run a script. Each starts with the same three parameters: Y Coordinate, X Coordinate, and Require Blockage (true or false).

-- wrote new character dialogue for the conclusion of the Coria Dogs - Basement battle.

-- got the Coria Dogs - Ground Floor battle fully working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

[CraigStern]

-- got the Coria Tavern and The Next Morning cut scenes working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- new golem module for Together in Battle: Pressure Sensor. Equips to the torso, grants the golem +2 to Counter Limit.

-- new item for all campaigns: Medicated Bandages. These restore up to 28 health and have 3 uses (versus 12 health and 2 uses for normal Bandages), but they are also more than 3 times as expensive. Intended to help counter-balance the new engine's limit on using items more than once per turn for late-game battles.

-- fixed: level-ups were triggering prior to the experience bar filling up following attacks with short animations.

-- fixed: the game wasn't deleting the 2D particle system's "reference" particle after animated experience bars cleared post-level-up.

-- fixed: the map editor would not let you place characters onto non-bridge objects while in Edit Unit mode.

-- fixed: the map editor would let units with coordinates off the edge of the map remain as part of the level, which would in turn produce a range error when loading the level in the main game.

-- fixed: the talk indicator could clip through walls when appearing on units in battle.

[CraigStern]

-- improved the scripting in the Battle with Ebon Raban in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign to make the fight more dynamic and tense. Enemy groups now coordinate to flank you; reinforcements keep the pressure up; and the main enemy force charges you much sooner. Added new treasure to various parts of the map to encourage tackling both routes at once and pushing through rather than turtling.

-- implemented the IgnoreArmy tag, made it affect AI behavior.

-- the AI now takes into account whether a target already has a status effect when scoring potential status effects granted by skills.

-- tagged Ebon Raban so he doesn't use Defensive Stance every turn.

-- got the Battle with Ebon Raban fully working in the Vengeance of Emma Strider campaign.

-- increased the camera pan speed during AI-initiated turns.

-- fixed: you couldn't reference units created by SpawnUnit actions within the same dialogue tree where they were created.

-- fixed: the game was formatting pop-up text with item usage inconsistently between player-controlled characters and AI-controlled characters.

-- fixed: a null error could occur when checking animated experience bars to see if they'd finished animating.

-- fixed: especially long skill animations could result in the game not triggering a level-up.

-- fixed: Shadow attack tooltips inaccurately listed the chance of Immobilized taking effect as 50% instead of 75%.

-- fixed: the game would sometimes initiate drag-panning upon clicking an enemy to show move-and-attack range.

-- fixed: the game would sometimes produce range errors after deleting rows or columns in the map editor.