Together in Battle Dev Log

[CraigStern]

- new attribute type supported for UnitsToList: Spoke. Narrows down by characters who've spoken a particular type of generated dialogue in the past (Greeting, Like, Hobby, Background Where, Background What, Background Family, Nickname, Secret, etc.)

- characters can now only be the subject of an Ally Gift event if they've spoken about their miscellaneous like at some point in the past.

- cleaned up the character screen layout a bit; equipment masteries are now located right above the inventory box, skills have been moved into the top-right, and physical traits now sit just below skills.

[CraigStern]

Temporarily turned off the new custom character dialogue and relationships screen features in order to push a version 0.9.10a hotfix, as one of the changes in version 0.9.10 evidently broke the "confirm leaving the shop" button. Beyond that:

- added gamepad support for the new Relationships window.

- fixed: when in deployment and playing with gamepad, it was not possible to open a character's details screen with the Y button.

- fixed: the gamepad cursor was not aligned correctly to the physical trait buttons in the character details screen.

- fixed: the gamepad cursor was not aligned correctly to the item buttons in the character details screen.

[CraigStern]

- fixed for version 0.9.10b: the mid-battle Give function had broken.

- fixed for version 0.9.10b: item sacks had become impassable.

[CraigStern]

- created a rough draft of the Dese Palace Floor texture.

- there is now a chance for character friendships to increase when they practice together.

- wrote a new ally-defeat response line specifically for Hot-tempered characters.

- fixed a small timing issue where the victory screen waited too long to show the aura won.

[CraigStern]

- fixed in version 0.9.10c: traps had broken again due to me once again accidentally overwriting the file that contains their scripts. (Sigh.)

[CraigStern]

- new random event: Shipping.

- fixed: the code for pulling a character's nickname during dialogue inappropriately reversed the roles of the two speakers.

- fixed: adding a character nickname during dialogue would not update the character's nickname for purposes of the remainder of that dialogue tree.

- fixed: in Psy Clash, if the AI opponent was left with only Focus in their deck, they could end up in an infinite loop of just playing Focus over and over again. The game now counts how many times an AI player has played the same card in any given turn and will rule it out as a possibility after playing it 5 times.

- fixed: due to a change in the Psy Clash code, it had become possible to fill up your lanes with minions, then repeatedly click a minion card in your hand possessing an "on played" effect (such as a gasul) to receive the effect over and over without ever actually clicking a minion to replace.

- updated in-game documentation to discuss the effect of character nicknames on special characters like -NAME- and -CHAR2-.

[CraigStern]

- finished getting the Dese Palace tile and fill tile working for the final battles.

- increased the size of the particle effects in Psy Clash to make hits feel more satisfying.

- minions in Psy Clash now have distinct sound effects for when their attacks land (i.e. they no longer all sound like they're attacking with swords).

- minions in Psy Clash no longer produce an attack sound effect during combat exchanges if they have a power of 0.

- in Psy Clash, if the AI player plays the same card multiple times in a row, the messages now fade out in between each to make it clearer that there are multiple instances of the card being played.

- fixed: in Psy Clash, the Gasul sprite would not show up when the AI played the Gasul card.

- fixed: in Psy Clash, a discrepancy between two different algorithms the AI used to evaluate moves could, in rare circumstances, cause the AI to get caught in an endless loop of thinking it had a valid move with a card and then rejecting that move, ad infinitum.

[CraigStern]

- added Greeting (up to 3), Greeting Response (up to 3), and Secret (just 1) lines to the custom character dialogue customization screen.

- simplified the game's collision damage formula and exposed it in a new early-game tutorial. Before, base collision damage was the skill's inherent damage plus the attacker's base Strength or base Psy, to a maximum of  33% of the target's max health and with a minimum damage of 6. This, then, would be multiplied by the number of spaces the unit was prevented from moving by the collision. Now, collision damage is much more straightforward: the base damage simply the attacker's base Strength or base Psy (with a minimum of 6); this damage is now increased by 50% for each space of movement prevented beyond the first.

For example: a stone golem with base Strength of 10 will now deal 10 damage using Shove on someone against the edge of the map; 15 using Toss; 20 using Throw; or 25 using Hurl. (Previously, those amounts could have been capped by the target's maximum health, and would have increased much more dramatically with each extra space of knockback. Against a target with 24 maximum health, for instance, Shove would have had its damage capped at 8, Toss would have done 16, Throw would have done 24, and Hurl would have done 32--but against a target with 30 maximum health, they would have done 10, 20, 30, and 40 damage respectively.)

- when playing with gamepad, if you select a healing skill, the game now goes out of its way to position the selector on a tile containing an ally who's actually been damaged.

- when playing with gamepad, if the game automatically selects a skill to target an enemy multiple spaces away, the game now auto-adjusts the camera to try to keep both the target and the selected character visible onscreen.

- fixed: when playing with gamepad, the behavior to automatically select a skill if an enemy was in skill range after moving a character could sometimes fail if multiple enemies were within the skill's range in theory but not all of them were actually targetable in practice.

- fixed: when playing with gamepad, in some scenarios, the game could throw a null error when searching for targets in range after moving a character.

- fixed: when playing with gamepad, there was an error in the scripting for the tutorial dialogue tree teaching auto-move-and-attack preventing the player from exiting the dialogue tree.

[CraigStern]

- created a new Engineer skill: Tune Up. Heals the target golem and grants it +25% Strength for one turn. Only affects golems.

- new advanced class for engineers: Machinist! Machinists learn Tune Up, which they can use to support golem allies.

- skills that only affect targets with specific attributes are now supported.

- new sound effects: Hammering Fast and Ratcheting.

- new skill button graphic: Tune Up.

[CraigStern]

Changes for version 1.0:

- created a new town menu option to bring the investigation to a close; this will appear as an option once the player has uncovered a certain amount of evidence.

- created a new, unique sound effect specifically for Mind Shock; the game now plays this when using the Mind Shock skill instead of reusing the Mind Blast sound effect (as it had previously done).

- new Machinist skill: Recharge. Restores a golem's energy and grants it Alert status for 1 round.

- boosted the health-restoring power of Tune Up (it now restores health equal to the Engineer's Strength rather than just 50% of the Engineer's Strength).

- new sound effect available in the campaign creation suite: Mind Shock.

- new skill graphics available in the campaign creation suite: Tune Up and Recharge.

[CraigStern]

Finally took some time yesterday to go back through the Secret lines (which I hadn't touched in probably two years or more) to make sure they all still make sense given the way characters have developed in the intervening time.

- reassigned one of the Secret lines for Narcissistic characters to Blunt characters instead, as it better fit that personality archetype.

- wrote a new Secret line for Narcissistic characters.

- fixed: one of the Secret lines for Blunt characters referenced the person who raised them, and yet could be chosen even if the character had in fact been raised in an orphanage or grew up alone on the streets. It also presented a uniformly negative picture of that person regardless of how the character actually felt about the NPC who raised them.

- new miscellaneous like added to the game: pies.

- fixed: characters who were once bakers could get a Secret line about hating the taste of baked goods even if cookies, cakes, or pies were chosen as their miscellaneous thing that they like (leading to inconsistencies with the positive results of picking the thing they like in the Ally Gift event).

- fixed: characters could get a miscellaneous Secret line about how they despise picked flowers even if a type of flower was chosen as their miscellaneous thing that they like (leading to inconsistencies with the positive results of picking the thing they like in the Ally Gift event).

- fixed: characters could be generated with apples as the miscellaneous thing that they like even if they had the Fruit Allergy physical trait.

- sad character Secret lines will now trigger the sad info response variant line instead of the default response.

- polished up the wording of a handful of character Secret lines.

- wrote new Defeat lines for Awkward, Arrogant, Blunt, Cheerful, Depressive, Empirical, Friendly, Imaginative, Kind, Narcissistic, Natural Leader, and Serious characters (bringing all of them up to at least 3 variant Defeat lines to choose from).

- made it so that if a Religious character can possibly get a Defeat line customized to their particular religious tradition, they will always be generated with that instead of a more generic line.

[CraigStern]

- human characters from Dese now pull from a separate pool of words better suited to the region when their last names are generated.

[CraigStern]

- greatly expanded the number of possible Desan last names the game can generate (now up to well over 1,000 possible combinations).