PC Steam
Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Tactical, Adventure, IndieNodrog's Fortress
V1.5 OMEN - QoL and Balance Fixes
- Story Mode is well on it's way to completion. Though it was intended for this patch, I am waiting on several assets and further testing before it is ready for a live release. Look out for this new mode in another major update at the end of the month... Until then, get your skills up in Quickmatch and Multiplayer! It will truly be a challenge for even the most experienced and cunning players.
[Maps]
- All Maps have been rebuilt after a quality pass and feature various new Map Objects and other improvements.
- All Maps now have unique Environmental FX and Lighting.
- Abilities affecting a character will also affect objects on the tile they are on. For example, this may cause grass to ignite if hit by fire, further hurting the target Character. Beware.
[UI]
- Various QoL improvements.
- When assigning Movement actions, the Party Stats' Action Bars should more accurately represent the time it takes to complete a given Ability or Movement Action.
[Camera]
- Opening the Character Menu no longer snaps the Camera to the selected Character, instead defaulting to the tile the User has Targeted.
- Stadium Camera has been improved and all Map view angles have been restored.
[Audio]
- More diverse Audio Emotes and Ability SFX for most Characters have been added.
- Look forward to further updates as we will continue to expand our Musical and Vocal talents in the upcoming Story Mode release update.
[Abilities]
- Mace: Added knockback.
- Chain Lightning: Fixed broken chains if a hit character was killed.
- Lightning Bolt: Strikes happen faster.
- Static: Range increased by 1.
- Fire Storm: Increased Effect Area by 1.
- Meteor deforms affected tiles less.
- All Arrows/Crossbolts are now colored based on the Ability.
- Knockback from Bash and other Force carrying abilities will cause damage if the hit Character runs into something solid. If that something is another Character, each will take damage!
- Various: Rendering adjustments and visual changes both subtle and drastic have been made to several Abilities to get them in line with the Rendering optimizations mentioned below.
[AI]
- AI that choose an attack that targets Map Tiles should more effectively choose the tile based on the targeted Enemy's position.
- Exhausted Characters will try to run away and those Melee Characters with Seek and Destroy will use it to create a chance defend themselves from pursuing Enemies | Support Characters like Apprentice Mages will prepare a Magic Arrow for their defense after retreating.
- Characters should now leave Map Tiles if they are Dangerous, like Lava Tiles or when any Ability FX that can Damage the Character are present.
[Pathfinding]
- Many improvements were made to ensure Characters do their best to get where they need to be and without walking over already claimed Map Tiles.
[Rendering/Lighting]
- Materials and the rendering pipeline got an optimization/performance pass.
- Added an option to disable shadows, which defaults to Off. This should help performance for weaker hardware. If you want all the eye candy, turn this option back On.
- Lots of Coroutines used for various Animations were removed and replaced with more performant and deterministic code.
[Various Bug Fixes/Performance Improvements]
- Excessive Raycasts were causing a significant slowdown that has been fixed.
- Iterating over all Tile Highlights instead of active ones has fixed a major slowdown.
- Slowdowns caused by the Ability FX destruction routine have been fixed.
- A major slowdown when the player was selecting abilities has been fixed.
- Several slowdowns from excess Garbage Collection have been eliminated.
- Many Tutorial/Story Mode UI Fixes/Speedups.
- Fixed a bug preventing the Player from interacting with their Party if their mouse was over a Character or Stats Bar at the start of a new Input Phase until the Player moved the mouse away from the Character or Stats Bar.
- FX for Spin Attack now spawns as intended.
- Opportunity Speed Abilities like Stand Your Ground and Seek and Destroy were defaulting to a 60 frame delay instead of 1 frame as intended. This has been fixed.
- Dominate now spawns the correct Attached FX on the Target, instead of the Stun FX.
- The Elements of Light and Life now have a proper UI Icon and Heal All was given a new UI Icon as well.
- Various Character and Ability descriptions that were inaccurate or incomplete have been updated.
[Known Issues]
- Online we still encounter the Sync Demon from time to time but I am working hard to limit the frequency of these issues to that of cosmic ray bit flipping events and this release should be our most reliable yet. Internal Sync testing has been really promising. I will continue to look into this and patch any issues as soon as I find them. Despite this, please keep playing Online with Friends as the Server Logs of the Matches are invaluable in my hunt for the Demon.
- Active Time Frame Durations are are dynamically set to match ~30fps for the simulation regardless of the actual framerate, but you may still experience slowdowns on weaker hardware as there is a lot going on in each simulation step, especially in Survival Matches or Matches with a high number of spawned Characters. It appears we are largely render bound moving forward with this release, so be sure to try disabling Shadows and Real-time Lighting if you have performance issues.
V1.25 HOTFIX
HOTFIX
- Fixed a Null Ref error that popped up in the Round Start phase of the Round when a Character died on a Map Tile with Map Objects on it in the previous round.
V1.25 Map Refactor and Bug Fixes
- A strange bug where Unity suddenly refused to load Map files, specifically the Story Maps, lead me to refactor how I save Maps. Map data has been migrated to Scriptable Objects and the new Save/Load system should be rock solid. Several enhancements have been added to implement custom environmental data as well. This also paves another tile on the way to Player created Maps. Eventually we will unleash this for local games, and if possible, allow the transfer of Maps between Players to share Online through Steam's file sharing API.
- Map Tiles that hurt Characters should now reliably deliver their damage if a Character happens onto one.
- Acid type Map Tiles have been added for future Map releases. More Map Tile types will be added when Player created Maps are implemented.
UI
- Available movement is now properly displayed as moves are assigned/executed in highlighted ranges, on the Stats Bars, and on the Move Button in the Character Menu.
Pathfinding
- LoS tests created a bug where targets of a Character outside their movement range would not be approached. This should be fixed.
- In general a lot of the pathfinding code was rewritten for this patch. This should minimize or eliminate Characters sliding out of position among other issues.
Auras
- Auras were applying their effects twice to characters in the Aura when a Round began. This has been fixed.
Animation
- Characters should not walk in place if they can't complete their movement, or are waiting for other Characters to move out of the way.
Story Mode
- Fixed a bug preventing the Confirm Party Button on the Story Match Setup Screen from working in builds.
Server
- Server data had to be reset. This will affect Rankings. This was necessary as certain data structures are no longer valid with some of the new improvements. This will not be done again unless something terrible happens.
V1.2 A Minor QoL Update
- Active Time should evolve at a slightly slower pace. This is intended to help the player see all the action and is not affected by framerate.
UI
- Chosen formations are now shown in the tutorial and story mode match setup, the same as the Quickmatch and Online Match Setup UI displays it.
- Tutorial and Story Mode UI has gotten some updates to prepare for all the Story Mode functionality.
- Minor adjustments to various elements.
- Hold down the Left and Right Mouse Buttons to show Line Of Sight to all other tiles!
Maps
- Line of sight data is now baked into the maps. I have been able to re-implement Unity's Physics Raycasts to do the work now that we are baking these values, giving us very accurate results.
- Ravine and other maps have had some minor alterations to get them up to the standards of the current Map building pipeline.
- More Map Objects have been added to the game to flesh out the world a bit and spruce things up.
Story Mode Progress
- The maps have been created and we are testing the scenarios for bugs, balance, and difficulty. Expect this mode to be out by Christmas!
V1.16 Tutorial HOTFIX
- Tutorial Mode had a camera related error at the end of the Match and the Player needed to forcefully quit the Application!
- Characters were not properly animating during Story events, like the Tutorial dialogues. This has been fixed :)
- Skeletons SHOULD no longer Slice themselves if using Auto Commands with no available enemies.
V1.15 MEGAFIX Patch
- Skeletons and Armored Skeletons are now immune to Auto-Life as intended! We will miss the game breaking glory this oversight brought...
- Late game Survival's Difficulty has been slightly increased. Turn the pressure up!
Misc. Changes
- The music at the end of a Match has been updated to play a new track: "The Bad Ass". I hope it amps you up for the next Match!
- There was a Massive Performance Gain from a small rework of the Team Color code. This was old code that was needlessly calculating Team colors when requested instead of just grabbing them from a list.
Bug Fixes
- The Soundtrack should now behave as expected. This should prevent the game freezes that we experienced on the latest Stream, likely caused by competing Coroutines haphazardly created at various game events. Now just one properly managed Coroutine controls the Jukebox.
- Meteor now reliably hits targets and causes general mayhem, restoring the Elemental Sorceress to her maximum power.
- Certain Trees were not creating the correct destroyed states. All Trees and their various states should now have their destruction states properly set.
- Local Survival Matches would not allow adding teams if there were no Player Teams present. Additionally, there was a Null-Ref. bug created if Teams were removed out of the order they were added when the Match began. Silly developer!
- Earthwave and other Map Tile manipulating Abilities were improperly displacing sunken Map Tiles like Water on their completion.
- Potential tiles for abilities like Teleport that can reach any tile in range should now be highlighted correctly.
- Dead Characters should now be properly highlighted depending on the Raise/Raise Undead Ability is being assigned.
- Post Stream testing revealed a Lightning Bolt edge case that resulted in a Null-Ref. error and a Round Timer freeze. This has been fixed :)
- The graph on the Match Results UI could be dragged left and right, potentially causing confusion and/or formatting errors. This functionality has been removed.
- All Leaderboards Online now show the correct data!
- Your Total Score is now properly stored in your Steam Stats. We will be showing this soon on a UI Panel near you!
- Achievements were being recorded but did not pop up in the Steam overlay. A few edits were made to address this, but more testing is needed to confirm this worked. Let me know if you see the popups, especially at the end of Rounds and Matches! Thanks!
!!!Sync Demon Update!!!
- Our recent Stream tests have gone really well, with no recent appearances of the Sync Demon thanks to the V1.11 Sync Fixes. Though promising, and potentially an indication we have largely left the Sync Demon behind us, I will be ever vigilant and continue to squash any more edge cases that pop up. Thank you for your patience as we continue to strengthen the Fortress.
[Special Announcement]
- Your many requests for a Mac version have been heard! The game has been maturing nicely and it's time to expand the Realm again. Though potentially still a couple weeks away, work has officially begun for Mac and I will be testing builds internally until I am satisfied with their stability. Multiplayer between platforms is supported by default, and I can't wait to bring more players into the Fortress. Keep an eye out for more info on the upcoming Mac release SOON!
V1.11 Stream HOTFIX
- "3" not appearing or audible in the Round Countdown sequence.
- Auto-Life caused a Null-Reference in the Revive code, expecting a Death Tile to have been set when it was skipped.
V1.1 Sync Demon Hunting and More
- Sync Demon occurrences are now correctly added to your PVP Rank.
- Packet sizes were too large in some games, resulting in them not arriving from the server. This would seemingly pause Matches at the end of a Round.
- Player Statuses throughout the round are now properly formatted.
- Summon Achievements were not being recorded. This has been fixed :)
Sync Demon Hunting
- I have encountered significant Sync improvements during internal testing...
- The Particles of Ability FX no longer determine how long they take to be fully deactivated and returned to their pools with a Coroutine. I had thought this was fine, but it could be yet another source of desync.
- A floating point calculation was found in the AI code that averaged Team health, which could have resulted in primarily support classes picking different outcomes when the result was very close to the threshold. This sparked a search for more potential floating point math in the AI code, but no other instances were found directly.
- Several changes were made to ensure the life cycle of all FX are addressed exactly the same, no longer relying on any Coroutines in their destruction code.
- Additional changes were added to the Character Animator that may have helped Sync as well.
- Despite the progress described in the above statements, I will remain ever vigilant in my hunt for the Sync Demon.
V1.095 Various Fixes
- Steam Leaderboards should now display in the correct order and filled with all player stats. Also, negative Rank is no longer possible. If your losses exceed your wins, nothing is added for your wins. If the reverse is true, your Rank is boosted by how many more wins than losses you have.
- Multi-kill Achievements were not firing! This should be fixed.
- Tutorial text has been updated with more accurate/updated information.
- The Match Results screen was initializing twice at the end of the Tutorial. This is now fixed.
V1.091 Stream Bugs Hotfix
- [Fixed, temporary] Teams were spawned with incorrect Formation positions on Ravine, as that Map's spawn position markers are offset from those of other maps by one. This is an error specific to this Map and how it those markers were placed at the time it was made. A hotfix has been made to address Ravine's spawn positioning directly. This map may need to be rebuilt or otherwise refactored to fix this to work like other maps do. Expect any final changes to Ravine to appear the next major patch.
- [Fixed] Dominate could insert the dominated Character into the Archmage's team slot if they came from a Team with a lower Team Entry position. This resulted from how the function that gets a Team's Character list works, filtering them out from an "all characters" list that each is added to when they are spawned. This also made one unable to control their team since that particular validation code checks if the first character in a team is a living Archmage. If they aren't it must mean they are down (ideally).
- [Progress] We encountered a sync error in Survival Online. Another pass was made to see where the game could be generating non deterministic actions. Several small adjustments were made, but I remain ever vigilant for more opportunities to confront the Sync Demon. Anonymous sync data is stored on the server, so if you also encounter the Demon, rest assured your defeat was not in vain and I review all de-sync logs.
Thank you all for your time and patience as we push forward to strengthen the Fortress!