Greetings, tactics fans! Over this past month, I've made some further improvements to the engine, prettying up some more aspects of the game's visual presentation and adding a variety of other improvements to boot. Perhaps the biggest graphical change this patch is a fix to something that was holding back 2D particle effects: namely, shader settings for different particles were transferring between particle materials, leading to inconsistent (and sometimes glaringly incorrect) emissive lighting. This was the culprit behind victory screen fireworks abruptly not glowing anymore partway through the animation, as well as spark particles during level-ups not glowing as intended. If it moves and glows and it's part of the UI, it now looks much nicer! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41649779/3933cacdf54f41b50d98775bed49be3a7e25b493.gif[/img] Apart from that, I added a new setting to tone down (or turn off) screenshake for players who dislike that effect, made a few more balance improvements, added some further graphical flourishes, and fixed a few obscure bugs. Here's the list of changes: -- added a new setting to the Settings screen that lets you halve the strength of the game's screen shake effects (if you prefer them to be subtler) or to just turn them off entirely. -- toned down the magnitude of default screen shake for some of the heavier attacks. -- level scaling now works more aggressively in favor of characters who are behind the level curve, making it easier to train up underleveled characters. (Characters who are overleveled compared to their opponents still get a 10% penalty per point of level difference, but characters who are [i]underleveled[/i] now get a much higher 15% experience boost per level that the opponent has over them.) -- raised the cap for each instance of scaled experience to 300% of unscaled experience. (For instance: if a move would have granted the character 45 experience normally, experience scaling can now cause it to grant as much as 135 experience.) -- massively increased the power of Defiant Stance: it now gives +100% strength until the user's next turn, making it [i]much[/i] more viable as an alternative to simply attacking. -- increased the base chance of applying Frozen status with Cryo Cross from 50% to 75%, making it less dangerous (and more beneficial!) to use near large groups of enemies. -- boosted the spread of sparkle particle effects on the supplies button upon acquiring a new item in the shop interface, making it harder to miss. -- reduced the speed of the "spending money" animation in the info bar so it's more satisfying (and harder to miss). -- fixed: the game would default the gamepad cursor to the dialogue box on branches with multiple replies. -- fixed: members of army 99 (i.e. most destructible objects) with status effects, upon reloading a mid-battle save, would inappropriately step their status effects an additional time. -- fixed: a character receiving both non-Shield damage and Shield damage (typically, healing) from multiple sources simultaneously would cause the game to lock up. (For instance: at the start of the turn, a character with both Burning and Regenerating status effects active at once would make the game throw an error.) -- fixed: the level-up screen was keeping "None" onscreen as part of equipment mastery text even after first learning an equipment mastery. -- fixed: tooltips for physical attributes in the character screen were not displaying correctly when playing in gamepad mode. -- fixed: it was possible for custom list data to bleed over from a saved game when starting a new game. That covers the changes that impact the main campaign, but there are some treats here specifically for custom campaign creators as well! -- new script action: InterfaceArmyColor. Lets you change the default army color used in cut scene interface elements like the recruitment screen or the reserve supplies screen from Blue to any other supported color. -- the game now supports creating arbitrary stats for characters using the SetStat action! These won't appear in the UI, but they can be used to invisibly store integers specific to each character (e.g. enemies they've slain, days they've been on the team, etc.) These, in turn, can then be referenced by other script actions. -- now supported: a reply UI for dialogue where instead of showing text options, the game displays a list of the player's characters by portrait. Clicking a character will immediately set them as the trigger character for the dialogue going forward, then register a click on "reply 0" for dialogue tree navigation purposes. (To make use of this, use the special character [i]-ShowUnits-[/i] as the text of the first reply in the dialogue branch where you want this special reply UI to appear.) -- Run (and all IfXRun-type script actions that support passing script parameters) can now take an unlimited number of script parameters; just keep adding more name-value pairs onto the end until you're done! -- added support for passing script parameters to IfItemRun. -- added support for a new dialogue trigger type: OnPanCam. This triggers dialogue as soon as the player pans the battlefield camera using the mouse or keyboard and releases the relevant mouse button/key. One optional parameter: turn number. -- added Species to the attributes supported by the IfAttribute script actions. -- the game now processes special characters in the warning messages for custom menu buttons. -- created a new "WhistleDown" sound effect that's intended to signal a character's worsening emotional state (rather than signal a character falling down a bottomless chasm). -- new skill available to use: Trade. It's essentially Twirl, but it only works with allied characters (whereas Twirl can be used on enemies). That's all for TTL this month, folks. In other news, I just [url=https://sinisterdesign.net/together-in-battle-release-date/]announced Together in Battle's release date[/url] yesterday: it's coming to Steam April 25th, so mark your calendars. It's gonna be a doozy! 😉 Until next time... Yours in tactics, Craig