New Build

This week's build focuses on AI upgrades, some balance tweaks and 2 added difficulty settings. The size on disk also went from 3.5GB to 1.5GB, after a big update to our assets system. Here are the highlights of the build:

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).
• AI: Many improvements and fixes!
• Difficulty Settings: Adding 2 new Difficulty Settings to better control AI item usage and enemy spawning passives and counters.
• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

Full notes are listed at the end of this post.

Fell Seal's Music:

Our composer, Jan Morgenstern, has been working on preparing the OST for the game. We're still not there yet, as there's still a few tracks missing, but it's getting there and sounding great. :) Check out this link for more details on the OST, including some free tracks!

Progress Report:

We finally finished our dialogues early this week! They should be final at this point, barring any problems. The localization process has just begun it and they should be ready within about a month. You can expect to see a lot of added languages early next year! This week, we've worked mostly on our Xbox One build. Most of the work is done, save for the achievements. Next will be the PS4 build and preparing for December's big content update. As soon as the console builds are taken care of, we'll start splitting our focus between creating the rest of the encounters and on a slew of UI/Balance updates that we've been preparing from all the great feedback we've been receiving. Again,a big "thank you" to everyone for the feedback and suggestions. It's going to help us tremendously getting it done right! On the art side, our maps are almost finished by now and our final tally should be 52 maps. Currently, we're working on finalizing our special classes spells and have started work on our next "summon" style spell. Here's a preview for it:

Change log:

12/07/2018 - Version 0.5.3

New Content and Features:

• Build Size: Very significantly shrunk the build size (3.5GB to 1.5GB).

Balance:

• Fellblade:
  • Bleed Slice: Removing Bleed Slice and replacing it with Chaos Slice. Chaos Slice does damage and inflicts the target with a random debuff.
  • Miasma: Will now require a "center target" to propagate debuffs, otherwise it will only do damage. Center target won't have its debuff removed from the attack (such as sleep/charm).
• Templar: Rapturous Chant will now remove all debuffs.
• Ranger: Evasion Up value lowered to 15%.
• Duelist: Reducing damage from elemental Flourishes to 1.55x (was 1.7x) and adding a small chance (25%) of a debuff tied to the element.
• Bulldrake: Increasing the damage of Somniloquy a fair amount.
• AI:
  • Abilities: Enemies will now be generated without missing abilities at higher level (there was a small chance before they wouldn't know all abilities if a skilltree had many abilities on 1 tier).
  • Levels: Enemies will now have a min/max level variance cap. Enemies spawn within roughly plus or minus 10% of the army's average level. This means that at very high levels, the level difference can start being very big. Now it's bounded to +/- 5, roughly.
  • Random Enemies: Enemies with a random job/subjob have a restriction on how many "healing" job/subjob will be generated so there aren't too many healers. Updated what is considered a "healer" to be more accurate (this should result in more healers than before on random maps, in general, since many jobs are now considered "partial healers" only).
  • Hybrid: Hybrid enemies will now spawn with better passives in general.
  • Items: Bypassing the odds of "not using an item even if we need it" for enemies if they couldn't take any action that turn.
  • Self-Panacea: Enemies will have much better chances of removing debuffs on themselves if they didn't take an action during the turn.
  • MP Granting: Improving the logic around giving MP to allies/self to be much better.
  • Accessories: Enemies won't spawn with duplicate Rings and Boots anymore, unless specifically meant to.
  • Smarts: Making the AI smarter with killing blows and with MP shield, so they won't be as likely to waste big attacks that would have the same effect as a smaller attack.
  • Counters: Enemies will be smarter about not triggering counters needlessly.
  • Revives: AI should be more likely to use Revive spells or items in general.
• Difficulty Settings:
  • Enemies Passives/Counter: Adding a setting to control the chance of enemies not having a passive/counter.
  • Enemies Use Items: Renaming old settings to "Enemies Have Items". It controls the amount of items the enemies have.
  • Enemies Use Items: Adding a new setting to control how likely enemies are to using items.
  • Beginner: Updating preset to allow enemies to have items, but to use them at a Low chance.
  • Enemies Gear: Default setting will now have 25% per empty slot of having an accessory (more is 50%).
  • Enemies Gear: Will now affect monsters as well (was only humans before).
• Gear:
  • Green Beret: Now gives +20HP (down from +25HP).
  • Enhancer: Increasing MND bonus slightly.
  • Energy Scythe: Reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
  • Energy Mace: Reducing MND bonus a bit.
  • Heavy Staff: Increasing ATK a lot and reducing MND bonus a fair amount.
  • Soul Armor: Changing resistance from -50 Holy to -25 Holy.
  • Brand Swords: Adding 50% resistance to their element.
  • Rapiers: Lowering their attack a bit, as their table had a problem that shifted some values upwards.

UI:

• Performance: Made a change to the asset loading system to make it a little bit faster.
• Tutorials: Updating some tutorials to be clearer.
• Menu: Changing character with L/R in the main menu would act differently if a character was selected or not. This now behaves the same always.
• Debuffs: If a character already has a debuff, the listed % to inflict it will now be shown as 0% (you can't reapply a status that's already on).

Bug Fixes:

• AI: Fixing a bug that would make any Enemy with "Smart Casting" fail at casting spells.
• Descriptions: Fixed an issue with some rare descriptions not showing an icon correctly in the text.
• Name Input: Changing it so canceling out will not pick a random name anymore.
• Leak: Fixing a memory leak when using custom portraits.
• Gelligh City: Fixing some weird layering issues when in the water with floating units.
• Counter Pounce: Fixing an issue with enemies sometimes jumping in an occupied location if the player casted an AoE over multiple Pounce-Counter characters.
• Modding: Fixing a crash when trying to spawn a "hybrid" enemy without specifying their job manually.
• NPCs: Fixing a bug where very high level enemies could spawn without a counter or passives.
• Maps: Fixing a bug where some maps wouldn't load their correct background after running the Halloween event (until the next restart of the game).
• Steal GP: Fixing an issue that might have caused it to be used more often than it should.
• Sleep: The Sleep debuff will not be reapplied to targets that already have it anymore (if a target had sleep and you did damage+sleep to it, it would wake up then get reslept at times).
• Berserk: Units with Berserk won't ignore the nearest target if that target has "Evade Melee" anymore.
• Focus: Fixing a bug where Focus would get "used up" by "Debuff counters".
• Thespeiros: Preventing all "non-swimming" units from spawning with Flippers to ensure they remain "non-swimming".
• AI: Fixing a bug that made the AI ignore Def Down/ Res Down items usage.