Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

- worked on Prince Ajit's interrogation dialogue.

- shadowlings and golems are now recruitable upon reaching Monkey League regardless of which events you've had.

[CraigStern]

- fixed: surrendering in (or simply losing) qualifier matches after reaching Monkey League would result in the game failing to reset to the correct battle, resulting in the arena no longer letting the player progress.

- fixed: the game was not resetting the "total battles won" variable when advancing to Snow Leopard or Tiger leagues, resulting in enemies being overleveled.

- fixed: in the event the game's custom integer value for the days passed ever got out of sync with the actual days passed in game, it could lead to the game failing to recognize victories in league matches as proper league match victories for purposes of advancing the player through the league.

[CraigStern]

- created a new side quest event and battle: Save the Travelers.

- fixed: when there is no good move other than staying still and using an item, the game would simply skip the character's turn instead of marking down a move where they used the item.

- when a premade unit has a class name not corresponding to any class in Classes.xml (such as "Villager"), the game now provides them with an empty class that has the provided name.

- fixed: in rare circumstances, an attack sequence could end with a pending counterattack left unexecuted. The game now performs a separate check for any such attacks before ending a sequence of attacks and counterattacks.

- fixed: the names of game's villager sprite sets were misformatted.

- fixed: predictive text results for the music input field in the map editor had gotten misaligned at some point.

[CraigStern]

- finished Prince Ajit's interrogation dialogue.

- fixed: Prince Ajit's portrait data was using an outdated name.

- added voice set data to the villager NPCs.

[CraigStern]

Pushed the version 0.4.0 update!

[CraigStern]

Time for working on the game is limited at the moment as I have to prepare to move to a new apartment. However, I'm making improvements here and there as I can. Today's:

- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game was not accounting for skills like Sprint and Engine Boost when calculating where enemies could reach for purposes of determining unit placement in proc gen maps.

- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game was hitting a range error due to a scripting mistake in the Strikebreaker event.

- fixed in version 0.4.0b: characters who were reclassed to a base class post-promotion would promote again upon gaining a level in their new base class.

- fixed in version 0.4.0b: the game could silently reject available promotion options without logging a reason.

[CraigStern]

- the AI now values the Enthralled status effect differently depending on the total level of the target, with higher-level targets deemed more valuable than lower-level targets.

- the AI now values Slowed status less. (Previously, it scored it identically to Immobilized.)

- refactored a bit of hacky AI code tracking whether the current AI-controlled unit had taken certain actions yet this turn and replaced it with a list that tracks this data for every character tied to their IDs.

- fixed: if an AI-controlled character used a consumable item, thereby destroying it, and then tried to move into a trap, if the game prevented the move from completing, it would queue up another move that could involve using the now-depleted item a second time, thereby producing a null error.

- fixed: the chests in the arena championship battle were empty.

- fixed a couple of typos: one in the level-up screen, and one in the arena pre-fighter area when at three wins in Tiger League.

[CraigStern]

As predicted, moving and setting up the new home have been eating up a lot of time I'd otherwise be spending on development, but things are finally starting to calm down a wee bit, so I was able to crank out some improvements today:

- when using repair kits (or any other consumable whose only function is to alter properties of equipment), the game now checks to confirm that a valid item is actually equipped before letting you use the item.

- when using repair kits, the game now checks to confirm that the equipped weapon is actually missing uses before letting you use the kit.

- jobs other than laboring no longer appear as options in the jobs board until the player has beaten at least two arena battles.

- fixed: the game was using an incorrectly formatted parameter to reset the days passed in memory when starting a new campaign.

- fixed: the AI mode tracker logic was causing infinite loops when a character used a non-turn-ending skill and then queued up another move with a different skill.

- fixed: due to an error in logic when deserializing character rosters, the game would inappropriately reinsert the first-recruited character into the default team roster when the entire team had been sent away on a guard mission. This, in turn, allowed the player to undertake inappropriate daytime actions (such as visiting the arena when no one remained to field).

[CraigStern]

- fixed: the unit spawning algorithm for caravan defense battles was inappropriately counting caravan guard groups toward the group number for enemy groups, resulting in enemies consistently clustering near the edges of the map.

[CraigStern]

- the food buttons in the shop now display the amounts of food each represents.

[CraigStern]

- fixed: the Edit Branch window in the dialogue editor was effectively maxing out at 6 actions due to failure to offer the player an option to turn to page 2 upon hitting that number of actions.

[CraigStern]

- fixed: when placing multiple characters onto the same space in the map editor, the Undo function would sometimes remove the wrong character from that space.

[CraigStern]

- gave the player more breathing room after completing a league qualifier; the first league match in the new league is now scheduled for 5-7 days out (instead of 2-4 days out).

- winning a league qualifier now boosts team morale by 3 instead of 2.

- made paying bonuses to characters more cost-effective in terms of morale gain relative to money spent.

- increased pay from league battles.

- when hiring out team members as guards, pay now scales with how many in-game days have passed.

- team leaders in arena fights now have a single, randomly chosen line of dialogue when they first attack the player.

- greatly increased the generosity of Ishita Svaamee's buy-out offers to make the choice harder.

- added localization to the scene transition screen ("Saving game").

- fixed localization setup for bonus proficiency text upon level-up.

- fixed a typo in equipment masteries introduced by adding localization support to the recruitment screen.

- fixed: the "Blocked!" pop-up from blocking an attack with Defensive Stance was missing localization support.

- fixed: a typo in the class data for kineticists was causing them to generate with wildly off-kilter stat growths.

- fixed: using one's last time point for the day in Training would kick the player back to Kalkerapur with full time points.

- fixed: characters sent to recover at the infirmary were sometimes returning to camp one day earlier than intended.

- fixed: sending a character to recover at the infirmary was not removing them from the list of characters you could leave at the infirmary during that visit, making it possible to pay to leave the same character multiple times.

- fixed: the introductory voice-over narration would start to play twice at the beginning of the Introduction scene, making it sound like it had aggressive reverb for the first few words.

- fixed: pure knockback attacks like Kinetic Gust and Shove were not triggering OnCharAttacked dialogue when used against enemies.

- fixed: characters would not counterattack after blocking an incoming attack with Defensive Stance.

- fixed: the AI was valuing any kind of straight stat buff as though it were healing, leading to characters using skills like Douse on injured allies in lieu of better moves.

- fixed: siblings and cousins of characters with region-specific names could have names not belonging to that same region.

- fixed: summoning the console when in the middle of dialogue would not feed the console the dialogue context, potentially causing it to throw an error when using dialogue navigation actions like GoTo.

[CraigStern]

- the game now always produces at least one healer during the initial recruitment for a run.

- once the player is scheduled for the Monkey League Qualifier, the game now grants access to the team overview and calendar buttons in the arena entrance area.

- reduced the commonality of practice weapons and rusty swords as drops in the arena.

- increased the rate of enemy level scaling in caravan guard battles somewhat, as well as overall enemy aggressiveness.

- increased the rate of enemy level scaling in the merchant-related bandit battles.

- increased the rate of enemy level scaling in the Save Grandpa fight, but also scaled up grandpa's health over time.

- increased the commonality of events where a character asks for a raise.

- moved the first possible day for the golem attack event back by six days.

- added a couple of greeting response lines for religious characters.

- fixed: the game displaying only half the actual pay from caravan guard battles.

- fixed: using Mind Control on an enemy could produce a null error.

- fixed: returning to camp after an evening event battle could trigger a second event.

- fixed: skipping the event-selection process upon returning to camp after a scene-changing evening event would cause the game not to show the army overview, calendar, or card deck buttons.

- fixed: upon returning to camp after a scene-changing evening event, the game would count down the days until training, working, and infirmary-bound units returned for a second time, resulting in those units returning one day earlier than scheduled.

- fixed: completing either of the merchant-related bandit battles would send the player to the calendar screen instead of returning them to camp.

- fixed: declining the recruitment duel would leave the player without enough time to throw a gathering.

- fixed: the AI was incorrectly predicting the knockback destination for pull skills, leading it to sometimes use skills like Pull under circumstances where doing so made little sense.

[CraigStern]

- the likelihood of receiving the letter in Nihal's bandit quest now increases with every passing day.

- improved the scripting in the battle in Nihal's bandit quest and wrote some new mid-battle dialogue.

- created a new skill button graphic for Twirl distinct from the skill button graphic for Trade.

- fixed: if the framerate dipped at the start of knockback or swap skills, the character(s) could appear to teleport onto their target squares.