Welcome, Brave heroes!

It is as great as ever to have you around our castle, we hope traveling was nice and the view was exciting. Welcome to the biggest update the game has seen so far! As requested Act II is now live! Since the skilltree was introduced, we felt like it doesn't supply enough freedom, leading to different heroes of same class turning out to be the same. So we've revamped the skill tree. On leveling up you now get to choose from a pool of abilities, including rare and cross-class skills, adding a lot of flexibility and uniqueness to each playthrough. Local multiplayer is now available, meaning you can finally use the help of your brave friends to save the kingdom. You can even play vs the AI on maps with up to 8 players. All worldmap environments are now fully procedurally generated - So big weve had to add a minimap! Crypt and Crystal Cavern tactical environments have received a major visual overhaul Go ahead, try it, we know you want to.
Due to these changes, save files from previous versions will not work in 0.14.1. Main changes:

• Act II is ready!
• Heroes now choose from a pool of abilities on level up, including rare and cross-class skills. Ability Points are now Accumulated through levels.
• Local multiplayer support which allows playing with/against multiple player/AI controller factions.
• Possibility to specify how many neutral towns would be in the map.
• All strategic maps are now fully procedurally generated, and support having much larger maps. This also includes a rework of the grasslands environment.
• Full re-work of Crystal caves tactical maps greatly improving visuals, and improving performance. The new caves contain a couple of new unique objects (for example shrines that give tactical bonuses on interaction). There's also a lot more variety in maps.

UI:

• No need to restart the game to switch between controller and keyboard/mouse. Instead the currently used input method used becomes the active one
• Clicking on the card of an already selected unit will now deselect the currently selected ability.
• Improved navigation support in menus for controller.

Visuals:

• Replaced main-menu background.
• Created a new Skirmish menu that allows more options.
• Zoom level in worldmap is now locked to a value that makes images look best.
• Replaced party flags to be consistent for player/AI factions
• Party flags now have their own signs so they'd be distinguishable.
• Added new icons for upgraded versions of abilities. Most are placeholders.

Balance:

• Reduced University's XP gain effect from 20%/40% to 10%/20%.
• Increased party steps per turn, from 14 to 18, and reduced roads cost from 75% to 66%
• Changed the required levels of many ability upgrades - Barbed Arrow, Fireball's range increase, Rain's Thunder upgrade, and more others.
• Units start with 1 trait instead of 2. In the next few updates many events that give traits to heroes will be added.
• Bow Melee Attack - The Abillity is no longer a fallback ability of the ranger but instead a separate ability that must be purchased first.
• Added new ability upgrades for many abilities: Magic Arrow, Hammer Strike, Arrow Attack, Vortex, chain Lightning and more.
• New abilities: Repulse, Prod.

Performance:

• Save format changed, decreasing save time and save file size significantly.
• Improved performance when playing in Crystal Caves and Crypt tactical maps.

Bugs:

• Fixed bug where sometimes in Crypt the UI (movement outline, units' outline) became messed up, and ability tooltips didn't disappear when they should
• Fixed bug where sometimes the game got stuck when returning to worldmap from Crypt maps
• Fixed bug with mouse clicks being registered on the currently selected UI element even when the mouse didn't hover over it.
• Fixed bug where when missing a ranged attack with no projectile (for example Holy Shackles), and hitting another object instead, the VFX was on the target and not on the object that was hit.
• Fixed bug where when selecting Kick and then a melee attack, the selected default target can still be an object (resulting in some confusion for players).
• Fixed missing text regarding how to deselect an ability.
• Fixed bug where the progress bar went backwards to zero upon returning to main menu.

Thats it for this time. As for next time The next update will contain Many new events, traits, artifacts, and abilities! Itll also include some more performance improvements and a couple of UI changes. Hope youre having as much fun as were having in creating this game for you! Please continue with your interesting feedbacks on the game, the suggestions were getting from you over at Discord & our Forums have been and are super helpful, wed love to hear more! [previewyoutube=JJ_FB9qZjfI;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2019-12-19 21:51:49 CET ] [ Original post ]