Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

-- wrote new arguments between characters with the Natural Leader and Pessimistic personality traits.

-- finally fixed that annoying graphical bug where 2D particles would oftentimes lose their glow effect midway through animating.

[CraigStern]

-- commissioned unique qualifier opponent sprites.

-- added gamepad support for the new unit selector UI in the dialogue menu.

-- prettied up the mouseover tooltips for the -ShowUnits- reply interface in the dialogue menu.

-- fixed: the game would default the gamepad cursor to the dialogue box on branches with multiple replies.

-- fixed: you could select the dialogue box itself with the gamepad cursor on branches with a -ShowUnits- reply or with multiple regular replies.

-- fixed: tooltips for physical attributes in the character screen were not displaying correctly in gamepad mode.

[CraigStern]

-- toned down the magnitude of default screen shake for some of the heavier attacks.

-- added a new setting to the Settings screen that lets you halve the strength of the game's screen shake effects or turn them off entirely.

-- fixed: a character receiving damage and healing (or Shield damage) from multiple sources simultaneously would cause the game to lock up. (For instance: a character with both Burning and Regenerating status effects active at once.)

[CraigStern]

Announced the release date today, and spent a considerable amount of time emailing outlets and updating defunct entries on my press mailing list. As for the game:

-- added support for a new dialogue trigger type: OnPanCam. It triggers dialogue as soon as the player pans the battlefield camera using the mouse or keyboard then releases the relevant mouse button/key. Optional parameter: turn number.

-- the text overlay reminding the player how to pan the camera is now removed upon panning the camera in Battle at the Overgrown Garden.

-- added a note to the town menu explaining that whatever option you choose, it will take up the day.

-- boosted the spread of sparkle particle effects on the army button upon recruiting a new character in recruitment so it's harder to miss.

-- boosted the spread of sparkle particle effects on the supplies button upon acquiring a new item in the shop interface so it's harder to miss.

-- reduced the speed of the "spending money" animation in the info bar so it's more satisfying and harder to miss.

-- boosted the glow of coins in the "coin fountain" effect when spending money to offset the effect of the fix below.

-- fixed: shader settings for different 2D particles were transferring between particles, leading to inconsistent and incorrect emissive lighting on particles.

[CraigStern]

Did more PR stuff today, pushed a TTL update. In addition:

-- fixed a graphical glitch involving the left- and right-facing visual effect animations for Light Breath and Light Breath 2.

-- created sprites for the A, B, X, and Y gamepad buttons; integrated them into the engine as text sprites.

-- the game now uses "Press (A)" instead of "Click" for continue prompts in the dialogue menu and cut scene narration box.

[CraigStern]

-- scripted alternative tutorial text for players who are using gamepads in the Qualifier, Overgrown Garden, and Dry Mounds battles.

[CraigStern]

Took a few days to check out what IS did with Fire Emblem Engage. Overall, not impressed.

-- successfully switched the cut scene backgrounds over to an asset bundle streaming system. This sort of thing is supposed to reduce build times, and can theoretically help with memory management on more resource-limited systems.

I investigated doing this same thing with the game's character portrait assets, but apparently Unity asset bundles break if any files have the same filenames even if they're in different directories. This would make this a huge pain the butt to implement.

[CraigStern]

-- camp activities that create items can now produce procedurally generated items with specific materials and at a specific quality level.

-- added a project to the Sew camp activity that can produce a leather vest upon conclusion.

-- created a new "make weapon" project type that blacksmith characters can partake in, wherein they'll rent slace in a smithy and create a new weapon for you over time.

-- new special characters supported: Momdad and Momdad2.

-- went through and combined family background variants using gender-variable pronoun special characters to make it easier to create personality-based variants of those lines.

-- added support for campaign-specific CharAttributes and CharNames XML files.

[CraigStern]

-- wrote new arguments between characters with the Friendly and Introvert personality traits.

-- wrote new arguments between characters with the Disciplined and Depressive personality traits.

[CraigStern]

-- wrote attack barks and victory barks for artist characters.

-- the AI will now equip weapons, armor, and other items if AI characters (a) have something equippable in their inventories and (b) they have the relevant equipment slot unused.

-- the game can now distinguish between weapon-based skills and non-weapon-based skills, and will now prevent characters from counterattacking with weapon-based skills while subject to the Disarmed status effect even if they don't have a weapon explicitly in their inventory.

-- created a Disarmed icon; the game now displays the Disarmed status effect for the rest of the turn when an enemy is disarmed.

-- changed the Disarm skill's element from Mental to Slash, increased the base chance of success to 100%, changed the cost to 4, made it end the turn, and added it to the Swordsman skill progression.

-- new skill: Disarming Strike. Deals basic sword damage with a 60% chance to disarm the target; can be used once per turn and doesn't end the turn, but it costs 6 energy. Now learned by characters upon promoting to Blade Dancer.

-- the spirit's Possess skill now causes the user to become Hidden until their next turn.

-- fixed: the game would strip Hidden status from attackers at the conclusion of an attack even if the skill they attacked with was the thing that gave them Hidden status to begin with.

-- fixed: the -ATTACKER- special character was inappropriately referencing the attack target instead of the attacker when used in skill scripts.

-- the skill target is now treated as the triggering character and the user of the skill is now the secondary character in skill scripts.

[CraigStern]

-- created a new event where a character asks for time off to return home and retrieve a powerful named weapon that's been passed down through their family for generations.

-- new script action: GenerateItemName. Causes the game to randomly generate a (hopefully) cool-sounding name for a unique weapon, then sets custom string _UniqueItemName with the name generated.

-- greatly improved documentation for the CreateUniqueItem script action.

-- fixed: a typo in the logic for CreateUniqueItem was causing it to disregard mandatory tags.

-- fixed: the reverse match method in CullListByList was not working properly.

[CraigStern]

-- added a DefeatScene condition to the arena battles so losing an arena fight in roguelike mode doesn't immediately end the run.

-- improved the recruitment and shop tutorials; each is now nicer-looking, spread across two pages, and provides more relevant information.

-- the game now remembers if you've completed the shop and recruitment tutorials and won't show them again on subsequent runs.

-- the game now remembers if you've completed the combat tutorials, and acknowledges that in the qualifier battle before asking if you want a refresher.

-- improved the look of the game's rain particles in battle.

-- fixed: it was sometimes possible to see the "corners" of the weather particle emitter box in battle under certain conditions.

[CraigStern]

-- refactored some of the character generation code so that the region of the world a character comes from is chosen before anything else, allowing it to factor into the remaining aspects of character generation.

-- the character generator can now take a character's native region into account when generating their name.

-- created a list of human first names specific to the region of Dese.

-- characters from Dese are now generated with Dese-specific names.

[CraigStern]

-- players can now open and inspect the current month's calendar manually when in Kalkerapur or Camp.

-- new script actions: ShowCalendarButton and HideCalendarButton, which can be used to toggle visibility on a button the player can use to examine the calendar during cut scenes.

[CraigStern]

-- added gamepad controls for the options menu and settings screen in cut scenes.

-- added gamepad controls for the calendar.

-- fixed: in cut scenes, gamepad focus would not be restored to custom menus when backing out of other gamepad menus.

-- made the options, army overview, and calendar buttons selectable with the gamepad when in a custom menu.

-- fixed: the game treated invisible custom menu elements as selectable with the gamepad cursor.

-- created a dedicated button graphic for the Calendar menu. Added it to the assets list for use in custom campaigns.

-- fixed the timing of portrait animations in the Argument event.

-- prettied up the 2D heart particles.

-- added a couple of extra preferred expletives that are specific to kind and cheerful characters.