Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

- finished implementing the virtual keyboard! The game now fully supports gamepad. :)

- you can now edit the properties of different materials used in procedurally generating weapons and armor in a custom campaign! When creating a new custom campaign, the game now saves a copy of Materials.xml, which you can manually edit to alter the effect of different equipment being made of Steel instead of Bronze, Boiled Leather instead of Leather, etc.

- fixed: the gamepad navigator code could sometimes fail to enable navigation to some of the reply buttons in dialogue branches with multiple responses once the reply options finished fading in.

[CraigStern]

- in the shop, when mousing over equipment, the game now clues you in to the reasons why each character who wants that piece of equipment wants it.

- removed the log and one of the bushes from Battle at the Overgrown Garden to make movement around the map a bit less restrictive.

- fixed: the Poltergeist promotion for the Spirit effectively nerfed Juxtapose by changing it from an after-attack behavior of Use Once to Can Move.

- fixed: narrowing down a tag by its parameters for RemoveTag was only working in cut scenes, not battles.

- fixed: when talking to Caravan Guards in a caravan battle, the game referred to them as Explorers.

[CraigStern]

Gave artist feedback.

- received new portrait clothing usable with the ChangeClothing script action, integrated it into the game: VillagerDese and RoyalGuard.

- received now town crier portrait, integrated it into the corresponding cut scene.

- supplemented the visual effect for Create Ice.

- created new button graphic: Accessories.

- began working on a new feature to customize clothing visible in a unit's portrait in the character creator.

- fixed: choosing a particular set of particle effects did nothing for Create skills.

- fixed: month switching in the calendar had become broken during a past update.

[CraigStern]

- wrote another variant for narration during rainstorms.

- improved auto-move-and-attack behavior: the game now heavily favors skills that do not require the character to move further to use. If the target is already in a skill's range when this function is used, the character should generally stay in place.

[CraigStern]

- received, integrated new portrait clothing for human characters: Villager, VillagerDese2, Merchant, MerchantDese, and Slave.

- fixed: triggering an on-death attack for a destructible object (such as Explode) would not grant experience to the character who destroyed the object and triggered the attack.

- fixed: stairs were having their elevation commands applied twice in battle and exploration scenes, causing them to float above the ground in some cases.

- fixed: AI-controlled characters would not open a closed door during their move onto the door's space if that space happened to be the last space in their move.

[CraigStern]

- finished writing the funeral cut scene.

- artistic characters with a crush on another character can now sketch drawings of their crush at night.

- received new sprites of Dese civilians, used them to replace the placeholder sprites used in Save the Travelers.

- added some visual feedback to key presses in the virtual keyboard (the pressed key now darkens for a tenth of a second when pressed).

[CraigStern]

Worked on the update post, recorded gifs of Create Fire and Create Ice.

- added a tutorial for free exploration sections to the free-roaming portion of the Cavern Exploration job.

- added support for tracking whether the player has completed the exploration tutorial.

- added documentation for script actions used to check whether players have completed certain in-game tutorials.

- fixed palette swapping for the new portrait clothing assets.

- polished up the funeral cut scene scripting and dialogue.

[CraigStern]

Changes for version 0.6.01:

- further improved the shop explanation for why characters want equipment: when the reason a character wants something is stat-related, the game now lists as many as 3 stats it'll improve (not just 1), making it possible to compare benefits from upgraded armor at a glance.

- received sunset and nighttime variants of the new Riverbank cutscene background; added them into the game.

- updated AssetNames.xml to make the most recent batch of cutscene backgrounds selectable in the cut scene editor.

[CraigStern]

- created ability, casting, hurt, and shove animations for Praetor Nero.

- created ability, axe, hurt, shield bash, and shove animations for Manbir Raksha.

- when a character first gets a crush on another character, their activity that evening will now always be to fantasize.

- wrote a new event: A Nice Bath.

- new mood type: Embarrassed. Narrates that a character feels embarrassed.

- new mood type: EmbarrassedAbout. Narrates that a character feels embarrassed about their interaction with a specified second character.

- fixed: height was set incorrectly for the promoted shadowling cast animation.

- fixed: camp activities like Fantasize were still plucking the characters being thought about out of the activity order for free rein.

[CraigStern]

- refactored the code for determining nighttime character activities to avoid unwanted behaviors when multiple characters have activities that reference (but do not include) a second character.

- created new item graphic: Book White.

- new item: Anatomical Treatise. Permanently boosts the user's Accuracy stat by 5.

- created new item graphic: Spring Shoes.

- new item: Spring Shoes. Grants Jump. Limited to 3 uses.

- new skill: Jump. Same as Leap, but has an after-attack behavior of Can Move instead of being unlimited.

- new sound effect: Boing.

- camp activities can now affect the health of everyone present in camp.

- revised the doctor's Treat Wounds activity so that it serves a purpose when not playing on Challenging or Challenging+ difficulty. In addition to its existing effect of curing 1 wound level for wounded characters, it now also restores 15% of missing health for all non-wounded characters in camp.

[CraigStern]

- wrote a new event: Clown For A Day.

- created new item graphic: Pouch.

- created new skill button graphic: Pocket Sand.

- created new sound effect: PoofCloud.

- new item: Pocket Sand. Grants Pocket Sand. Limited to 1 use.

- new skill: Pocket Sand. Has a 75% chance to cause Blinded for 2 rounds.

- fixed: there were a few lines of code I had been using for testing that turned almost every character Sensitive...lines which I forgot to turn off afterwards.

[CraigStern]

Last night, I ended up pushing the next update early due to the Sensitive personality trait bug. Today, I spruced up the Together in Battle Steam store page, adapting in-game UI graphics to create nicer section headers.

Changes for version 0.6.01a:

- fixed: it was possible for characters chosen for the events A Crush or A Nice Bath to become romantically interested in characters they were already had a crush on (or were romantically involved with).

- fixed: the in-game documentation for SocialUnitsToList was missing the last parameter (amount).

[CraigStern]

- fixed: some of the scripting for Battle in the Dissident's Den was not working as intended.

- IfGoneGoTo and IfGoneRun can now find objects by their load ID.

[CraigStern]

Changes for version 0.6.10:

- new battlefield object: Puddle. Drops dodge and cold resistance while slightly raising heat resistance.

- added a chance of Pocket Sand appearing for sale in the shop.

- added a chance of Anatomical Treatise appearing for sale in the wandering merchant's shop after completing his quests.

- increased the effect of Anatomical Treatise from +5 accuracy to +10 accuracy.

- refactored some of the game's movement code to make it a bit less painful to change.

- fixed: the game made the "weapon breaking" noise when non-weapon equipment (such as Pocket Sand, Snare Kit or a Satchel Charge) went to zero uses.

[CraigStern]

- further refactored aspects of the game's movement code to make adding to (and changing things in) character movement easier.

- new trigger type added to the game: Move Over! These behave like Pressure triggers, except that they don't interrupt unit movement or clear the undo stack upon triggering. As such, they are intended purely for small, non-mechanics-related effects (particle effects, audio cues, etc.) when walking over certain spaces.

- new 3D particle effect supported: WaterSmall. A small splash for moving through shallow water (as opposed to the preexisting big splash used when falling into deep water).

- new sound effect added to the game: Water Splash Light. A much lighter splash sound than the existing Water Splash.

- puddles now visibly and audibly splash when characters walk through them.

- new optional parameter added to the PlaySound script action: pitch range. Accepts a range of positive decimal values, where 1.0 is the sound's normal pitch, values below 1.0 deepen the pitch, and values above 1.0 raise the pitch. If the parameter is used, the game will randomly choose a pitch value from within the supplied range when playing the sound effect.

- in battles with a rain weather effect, the game will now progressively spawn puddles randomly around the battlefield. The harder it rains, the more frequently puddles will appear.

- wrote a little tutorial blurb about rain and puddles in Battle at the Dry Mounds.