Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

- new arena battle condition that can appear starting in Gharial League: Attack the Idol. The player must destroy the enemy team's idol to win, with a strict time limit in place.

- the arena battle condition where fans request the player avoid using a skill now increases to forbid two skills when in Snow Leopard League or Tiger League.

- split out the multiplier for protecting targets from the self-interested defense weight in AI profiles.

- new AI profile: Protective. The army will heavily prioritize protecting units subject to a Protect Char condition over all other considerations.

- changed the ChangeArmyAI script action so that the first parameter now asks for army number instead of army name.

- fixed: the level of thieves spawning in the arena during Snow Leopard League remained unchanged from Gharial League.

[CraigStern]

- received, incorporated new "palace front" background into the game. (It now appears instead of the temple exterior background during scenes in front of the summer palace.)

- new arena battle condition that can appear starting in Monkey League: Inspirational Leader. The opposing team has a very strong unique named character as their team leader--as long as this character is on the field, the enemy team will have maximum morale (with its attendant energy recovery, damage, and accuracy boosts) and your own team's morale will be reduced by 3. This condition will only be chosen once per league, max.

- adjusted default values to make proximity to targets needing protection more consequential in the AI's move-scoring algorithm.

- fixed: the new "maintain proximity to units that must be protected" AI weighting was not being applied to long-range AI moves (i.e. those where the character did not have a skill target immediately in range).

- fixed: destructible objects belonging to army 99 were being disregarded as targets by the AI even if an army was assigned to protect them.

- fixed a scripting error that would have frozen the game if a character undertook the Cook camp activity without a second character available to react to the food.

- fixed a scripting error that prevented individualized character morale penalties from occurring in reaction to a character's dismissal from the team.

[CraigStern]

Spruced up some old code to make an in-person convention demo for Chicago Indie Game Showcase tomorrow. :)

- wrote a new late-night random event that can occur depending on whether the player has recruited a spirit.

- the "weather" condition type for battles in Tiger League can now also produce snowstorms or fiery ash, not just rain.

- fixed: you could only set a single custom parameter in IfListHasRun actions unless the Check For Absence parameter was set to true.

- fixed: characters could start conversations with spirits beyond just the initial greeting.

- new script actions: IfTilesetGoTo and IfTilesetRun. Battle only. Checks if the map has a certain tileset, then runs the script if it does.

- camp activity narrations now support species and gender requirements for the second participating character.

- new mood types: Afraid, Angry, AnnoyedAt, and HappyAbout.

- created in-game documentation of the game's different mood types, now available in the Guide in the campaign creation suite.

[CraigStern]

Showed Together in Battle at CIGs yesterday--it's been a while since I did an in-person show, but it was super fun connecting with enthusiastic SRPG fans! Today, I created a Telepath RPG franchise page on Steam.

- increased the Perception stat for lit braziers created by engineers; they now reveal fog of war 3 tiles out instead of 2.

- fixed: you could right-click a character and open their character screen in the middle of an AI army's turn.

- fixed: there was no day log created for winning (or losing) the initial qualifier match--or the two hand-designed tutorial fights that follow it.

- fixed: a few pixels on the face of the female crossbowman sprite's downward-facing rest pose were not palette swapping.

[CraigStern]

- reduced the delay on showing each objective when auto-displaying objectives at the start of a battle significantly.

- the game no longer shows auto-displays objectives during the Qualifier tutorial map.

- new condition: Show Objectives. One boolean parameter. If set to false, the game won't auto-display the objectives for this map.

- fixed: when engaging the game's auto-move-and-attack behaviors, if the target wasn't in move-and-attack range of the top-scoring skill, the game simply wouldn't move the character or select a skill. Now, post-fix, if this happens the game goes through the selected character's other skills in descending order of effectiveness until it finds one that can reach the target, then auto-move-and-attacks with that skill.

- fixed: text set via the AddObjective script action was not being processed for special characters.

- fixed: AddSpeakerPortrait wouldn't work in branch 0 of dialogue if the speaker name was set to -FNAME- and the triggering character was assigned in branch 0's own script actions.

[CraigStern]

- the jobs board is no longer selectable from the main menu in town until Day 4 of the campaign. (This is to prevent new players from rushing off on caravan guard or cavern exploration jobs and getting absolutely wrecked before they've even finished the tutorials.)

- fixed: there was no sound assigned to play when clicking the reserve supplies button in the deployment screen.

- fixed: in the infirmary, if a character could be treated and released that same day, the narration would read "0 day" instead of "0 days" for the duration of their stay.

- fixed the spelling of the character name Soumil in the character name bank.

[CraigStern]

- received new cutscene background for the summer palace kitchen, incorporated it into the game.

- when starting a new game in a slot that already contains a saved game, the game now specifies which slot you are about to overwrite in the warning message.

- when saving mid-battle in a slot that already contains a saved game, the game now specifies which slot you are about to overwrite in the warning message.

- key words in the tutorials are now bolded to help emphasize the topic being discussed.

- fixed: if a character poisoned an enemy or set them on fire and the status effect caused the enemy to die during the AI's turn--and the death both gave the attacker a level-up and triggered their victory bark--then the AI turn would resume immediately upon closing the level-up screen even though the victory bark had not yet been dismissed.

- fixed: some status effect tooltips were using the additive effect value where the text implied it was a percentage (e.g. a tooltip for Weakened showing -2% to Strength when the effect was, in fact, -2 Strength). Numerous status effect descriptions now show both the relative percentage and the flat value of the effect. (Note: this fix will cause a few minor aspects of saved status effects to break, but nothing too serious.)

- fixed: non-human characters with the Serious personality trait could get a greeting line variant in which they distinguished between their full name and their first name despite the fact that non-human characters do not have names beyond their first names.

[CraigStern]

- received new cutscene background for the summer palace bathroom, incorporated it into the game.

- fixed: due to my failure to call the Close() method on the XMLTextReader object used to download news updates on the title screen, the game would hang when returning to the title screen from a loaded game--and, upon returning a second time, appear to freeze entirely.

[CraigStern]

- improved the equipment sorting algorithm! The game now intelligently sorts equipment, grouping them according to mastery type and then name, with armor sorted into subgroups based on the body part to which they are equipped.

- armor appearing in the shop is now auto-sorted by body part, mastery, and name.

- fixed: the pronouns and player address in certain branches of the Mustebeast Tent event were erroneously pulling the chosen bunkmate, not the character whose tent was sprayed.

- fixed: the localized battle warning pop-up messages had a missing space.

[CraigStern]

- optimization: broke out the default character sprite shader into spirit- and non-spirit variants to cut down the number of colors that need to be palette-swapped each frame.

- spirits are now created with an unearthly glow to their battle sprites, courtesy of HDR bloom effects. (This change is not retroactive to existing spirits.)

- inspirational leaders in the arena now spawn with a sizable coin pouch in their inventory; and taking them down doesn't just undo the -3 morale effect for your team, it adds an additional +2 morale across the board.

- promoted spearmen now get a buff to Trade as part of their natural skill progression, allowing them to use a skill after swapping spaces with an ally.

- fixed: Mind Shock's tooltip description incorrectly listed the base chance of stunning the target as 50% rather than the actual base chance (75%).

[CraigStern]

- events that can occur in Kalkerapur in the mornings now belong to their own separate event pool.

- new morning event that gets added to the possibility pool on day 35: BPD recruitment. You encounter men recruiting for an organization you've never heard of before...

- new recurring morning event that follows after the BPD recruitment event.

- characters now have a distinct preference for spending time with whatever single character in camp they are closest to.

- each region of origin can now impose a new weighted list of possible skin and hair colors for the portrait of proc gen characters belonging to a single specified species.

- proc gen characters native to Dese now have their portraits restricted to an appropriate range of skin and hair colors.

- the engine now supports forcing recruits or unique generated characters to be from a specified region of the world.

- fixed: the lighting effect for the heatwave event could fail to reapply when returning to town after a 1-time-point activity.

[CraigStern]

- new morning event: Intervention Reward.

- the Family Weapon event can now produce unique wrenches and claws in addition to the other weapon types.

- new item: Master Lockpicks. Like normal lockpicks, but grants +5% dodge and has unlimited uses.

- new item: Motivational Speaking For Beginners. Teaches the user the skill Motivate.

- new item: Self Defense and You. Teaches the user the skill Guard Stance.

- new item: Walking But Faster: A Primer on Sprinting. Teaches the user the skill Sprint.

- new item: Cooking: From Mediocre to Master. Teaches the user the camp activity Cook.

- new item: Bambi Must Pay: A Guide to Hunting. Teaches the user the skill Hunt.

- new item: Quiet Mind: Focus Under Stress. Doubles the user's energy replenishment when resting mid-battle.

- new item: Dive and Ditch: A Swooper's Guide. Teaches the user to keep moving after using the skill Dive.

- new items: Powerful Pyro Blasts, Concussive Cryo Blasts, Leveling Light Blasts, and Staggering Shadow Blasts. Each one gives the user +1 knockback on their respective elemental blast skill.

- the game now keeps a history of all classes a character has ever been.

- fixed: if a skill without knockback gained knockback due to a ModSkillKnockback tag, any knockback from that skill would occur half a second after the skill animation began instead of at the moment of impact with the target.

- fixed: the game wasn't taking ModSkillKnockback tags into account when showing predictions of knockback and collision damage for skills.

- fixed: when using an item that grants the users tags, the game was applying two copies of each tag instead of one.

- fixed: the game would generate item descriptions with a missing spot where the last name should go for lissit characters receiving a unique family mace.

- new item icon: Book Orange.

- added Can Attack to the game's list of accepted post-usage behaviors in documentation for the ModAfterAttack unit tag.

- clarified the difference between LearnCampActivity and AddCampActivity in the in-game scripting documentation.

[CraigStern]

- increased the frequency of BPD events if the maharaja funeral event occurs.

- created a new item graphic for Master Lockpicks; Master Lockpicks now give Reflexes +2 instead of Dodge +5.

- fixed some things with how the intervention reward event was working.

- fixed: if a particular morning plot event ("plot event 5") triggered and the player went on to spend only a single time unit, upon returning to town, the plot event would trigger again.

[CraigStern]

- new item: Shield Pray Love. Teaches the user Mind Shield.

- new item: Arrowing Around Armor. Teaches the user's Bow skills to ignore 33% of enemy armor.

- new item: Swifter Sword: Triple Strikes and More. Teaches the user to keep acting after using Double Strike.

- new item: How to Make Enemies and Influence People. Teaches the user to achieve a 100% base success rate with Mind Control.

- the engine now supports unique proc gen dialogue lines that can only be assigned once ever in a playthrough.

- fixed: it was possible to perform the summer palace investigation again after successfully escaping.

[CraigStern]

- adjusted item attribute availability for certain underwhelming weapon modifiers at the upper end of the quality range. This should help ensure that every top-quality proc gen weapon is amazing.

- wrote a unique background line for soldiers.

- wrote a unique background line for burlgars and pickpockets.

- reduced the base, unscaled experience gain from using a Shield skill on an ally from 15 to 12 to help reduce the tendency of healers to out-level other characters.

- skills with the premise of applying multiple hits (e.g. Double Strike) can now apply BonusDmg, ModSkillPower, and other similar tags multiple times per attack. Double Strike, for instance, now applies each such tag twice when the skill is used.

- fixed: the game was missing support for the name NPC attribute via the -NPC:X- special character.

- fixed: the game was missing documentation for the first name and last name NPC attributes used with the -NPC:X- special character.

- the skill editor now permits editing the number of hits assigned to a skill.