Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

-- you can now navigate the recruitment interface using a gamepad.

-- the mouse cursor is now locked and invisible when in gamepad control mode.

-- fixed: the game was sometimes ending up with the last menu element in a menu selected in gamepad mode when said element was disabled.

[CraigStern]

-- more work on gamepad navigation of the recruitment interface today, primarily focused on getting navigation behaviors consistent with what I would expect. Made good (but annoyingly slow) progress.

[CraigStern]

-- further improved gamepad navigation behaviors through menu elements laid out non-linearly in 2D space.

-- finished up the recruitment interface--you can now navigate around and inspect all of the character stats, skills, and inventory items for each recruit before hiring.

-- you can now navigate to the settings screen on the title screen, and can navigate the settings screen itself and change settings, using the gamepad.

-- the gamepad can now be used to skip the game's intro movie.

-- began work on gamepad controls for battle.

[CraigStern]

-- received new, painterly interface art from Franklin Chan that better matches the aesthetic of the cut scene backgrounds. Spent all day incorporating it into the game's battle interface.

[CraigStern]

-- got revisions to new interface art; still integrating.

-- fixed: the game would display fake cursors on interface elements even when not in gamepad control mode.

[CraigStern]

Submitted a build of Together in Battle to indiecade! As my last acts prior to doing so:

-- continuing to integrate new interface assets into the game; all of the main game menus, tooltips, cursors, etc. are now converted to the painterly interface art.

-- got the main campaign editor screen converted over to the new interface art, along with the the item editor, skill editor, and dialogue tree editor.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed a wide variety of bugs and small graphical glitches that I don't feel like individually documenting here.

[CraigStern]

-- spent the past few days modeling, texturing, and animating cloth banners in Blender, then importing them into the game. They now appear on the new turn box, and in my opinion, they look pretty fantastic. :)

-- fixed a silly little bug where the hourglass cursor would inappropriately change back to the default cursor early on in AI army turns.

[CraigStern]

-- created alternate colors of the new turn box banners for each possible army color; the game now selects the animated cloth banner of the color matching the army whose turn it is.

-- created animated cloth banners for the victory screen with alternate colors for the victorious army.

-- improved the look of the victory screen victory fireworks.

-- you can no longer create an ice bridge in a space where a character is currently swimming.

-- doubled the strength of qualifier opponents in the Qualifier when playing on challenging difficulty.

-- the player now starts off with 5 bandages already in reserve supplies when playing on relaxed difficulty.

-- reduced the ringleader's strength in the "save grandpa" battle when playing on relaxed difficulty.

-- fixed: the "save grandpa" battle wasn't using death rules appropriate to the chosen difficulty level.

-- fixed: the character screen inventory sub-window was obscuring character physical attributes.

-- fixed: the sub-menus for each item button in the character screen inventory sub-window was missing its background image.

-- fixed: the shop tutorial had become misaligned.

-- fixed: terrain inspector could appear below victory screen.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed: the global lighting in each level was affecting the appearance of the 3D animated banners on the turn and victory UI elements.

-- fixed: particles in the bespoke 2D particle engine weren't retaining their z axis position, resulting in issues when used in canvases set to World Space mode.

[CraigStern]

-- increased grandpa's health in the "save grandpa" battle when playing on relaxed difficulty.

-- wrote a new set of greeting responses for imaginative characters.

-- created a separate boolean variable to track whether a game demo is an online demo or a convention demo, then switched on/off various behaviors as appropriate to the setting.

-- fixed: there wasn't a yellow hue variant for the turn box and victory banners.

-- fixed: the friendly greeting approach lines described the character smiling, but the portrait did not actually smile.

[CraigStern]

-- added some code to the procedural character generator to prevent the game from randomly generating more than a few recruits of the same class in the recruitment interface at any one time, ensuring the player always has a good variety of classes to choose from.

-- tweaked unit placement in Battle at the Oasis for Brutal difficulty and for the online demo.

-- wrote new approach line variations and info response line variations for proc gen character dialogue.

[CraigStern]

-- updated the map editor with all the new interface art!

-- finally, definitively fixed the issue where unit tooltips could show up partially offscreen in battle. (I hope.)

-- fixed a spot in the AI code where a divide-by-zero error could occur, freezing the game.

-- fixed: the victory banners would sometimes appear momentarily when loading a mid-battle save.

-- fixed: mid-battle saves did not capture the currently playing sound loop, resulting in the sound loop's absence upon reloading mid-battle.

[CraigStern]

-- you can now make only one mid-battle save per round. (Previously, you could fill up as many slots with copies of the current round's save as you wanted before proceeding, which opened the door to opportunities to cheese the game's RNG.)

-- new script action: WaitForDialogueEnd. This is a timing action that pauses the execution of all subsequent actions until the current dialogue text has finished animating onscreen.

-- placed WaitForDialogueEnd before animated status bars and pop-up text actions in camp activity dialogue; this should make it much easier for players reading the dialogue to catch the effects of the conversation.

-- added a new, optional integer "spawn delay" parameter to the PortraitParticles script action.

-- added to the camp activity narration for sewing to make it clear that the character's morale was increasing.

-- darkened the grayed-out tint on shop equipment no one can use a bit more to make it more easily distinguishable at a glance.

-- fixed: the scene transitions in the demo weren't adjusted to account for the extra battle I'd thrown in.

-- fixed: the end-of-demo scene was still displaying the (local to the machine) email sign-up form from PAX.

-- fixed: if the last AI-controlled enemy died of environmental hazard or status effect damage before their move processing had completed, the game would stall forever as it waited to finished processing moves for that now-nonexistent character.

-- fixed a null error that was accidentally introduced by an earlier code tweak.

[CraigStern]

-- updated the character creator and the cut scene editor with all the new interface art! That's the last part of the game that needed the new UI art implemented.

-- made the Awkward personality trait mutually exclusive with Narcissistic due to wild inconsistency in outwardly expressed character self-image in the dialogue associated with each.

-- placed WaitForDialogueEnd before animated status bars and pop-up text actions in random event dialogue.

-- added confirmation windows to the shop and recruitment interface when the player selects the Exit button, warning them that if they leave they won't see those characters or items again.

-- added a dedicated Exit button to the Reserve Supplies screen.

-- fixed a typo in the card games hobby "like" dialogue text.

-- fixed: a null error could result when using a one-use item that was still marked "new" within a character's inventory as the game tried to mark the item no-longer-new after it was removed from the inventory.

-- fixed: GoTo-type actions would not remove themselves from the action queue until after going to a new branch, which would clear the actions queue and repopulate it with other actions. Since the original actions no longer existed in the queue, these new actions from the destination branches would be inappropriately removed from the actions queue instead.

-- fixed: the female spearman's shove sprite sheet was compressed, leading to failed palette swapping during the animation.