As with the last, this update makes a small change to the build tree to increase consistency by moving the Tartarean Taskmasters from sharing the Overlook to their own floor: the Pitiless Pits. This floor is similarly positioned in the tree (Lode + Portal), and some prophecies that previously relied upon the Overlook (the Pitchfork, for instance) now require the Pits instead. If you previously had the Overlook unlocked, the Pits should automatically unlock to avoid conflicts.
I have also removed all floor restrictions from non-starters. This means that the only floor "decisions" that you have to make are the five starter floors that you select. There were only a few other floors that had these restrictions, and they could feel like they were blocking off content, especially if they were fortified and routinely carried over to the next round.
There are some new audio cues for minion death, several fixes for reported bugs, and some small usability improvements. Thank you for all of your reports and suggestions over the last couple of weeks, as well as your patience with some of these fixes. Please keep them coming! ːtotfedoraː
Changelog
Additions:
Pitiless Pits (Lode + Portal)--new home for the Taskmaster
Audio cues for doomed minions, as well as their countdown timer
Changes:
Floor restrictions removed from all non-starters
Overlook has some new art
Final battle lighting has been increased
Optimized some lighting code to improve performance
Renamed Greater Grasp to Grasping Gauntlet (I was previously reserving "gauntlet" for later use, but I no longer think I'll need it, and it's more descriptive here)
Baths prophecy now only requires a 5x multiplier instead of 6x
When moved, floors make a similar sound to the elevator clacking
A little more ability info in character tooltips when dropping them on a slot
Taskmaster and Butcher have new heads and more color options
Lightened backgrounds slightly during combat
Fixes:
The Tyrant was not always participating in Sanctum fights (he will try to join the last-most unassigned slot, or kick out the last slot, if all slots are assigned)--this was causing a lot of "fire marshal" endings due to Sanctum capacity being reached
Previously discovered but incomplete prophecies were disappearing when closing the game, making it difficult to find them again in your next session
Ritual now explode more consistently when completed
Sometimes, only one hero would join a battle immediately, while their friends waited an extra round
Some ability damages were misreported when dragging characters over a slot (these tooltips also still do not take potential passives into account)
Projectile speeds should now be more consistent for different distances
2016.08.27: Vibrant Vein Redux
I am doing some floor restructuring in this update; I want to move toward all floors offering a single, unique type of minion or trap. There are only a few floors that break this rule, but changing them will also affect other floor requirements. So here's what's changed so far:
Alchemist now requires Cellar + Study and produces Mad Scientist
Laboratory now requires Alchemist + Catacombs and only produces Flesh Golem
Overlook now requires Lode + (Portal OR Dwelling); this will also change later, though (because it currently produces two different units depending upon other floors)
Vibrant Vein is no longer parallel or mutually exclusive to the Lode; it now requires Lode + Study and produces Stone Golems
If you had the Lode unlocked before, you will automatically have the now separate Vein prophecy unlocked. Many players have stated in the past that they hated having to choose between the Vein and the Lode, but mostly because the two were so similar and it was easy to choose the "wrong" one for their resource needs; I believe this change should help rectify this while also fulfilling my goal of giving every floor a unique minion (rather than both producing the Goblin Miner).
As some of you may know from the community forums, streams, or direct conversations with me, I am preparing for another big opt-in beta period to try out some major changes and additions. Before I dive into that, I want to make sure that the current standard release is in a good place. To that end, I am re-organizing some of the floor/prophecy tree for consistency, making some UI and usability improvements, and working on general stability. While I continue with these things, I am also trying out some mechanical changes that are less volatile or inter-dependent than the big stuff I have planned.
This update contains two such changes: traps can now trigger during combat and support abilities no longer take up a combat slot.
The trap change means that traps can now harm minions (although minions will not trigger the traps), and allows you to have battles on trapped floors without losing the effects of the trap. The best use of this would be to place minions who are immune to that trap (either due to damage resistances or due to defense type) on that floor. The only downside is that you may have to babysit these floors a little more than a typical floor, because new minions will not come in to supplement those who perish there.
The support change is even more significant: all support abilities are now in the "special" ability spot, and will always apply when a character is in combat, regardless of slot. Before, players had to make a trade-off between an extra attack or having a support role in their line-up, and I think the advantage of the support role wasn't always obvious compared to having an additional attack, somewhat discouraging this synergy. This is a non-trivial change, and I will need to gather more feedback on this, but I definitely think it will motivate players to build more effective bands of minions.
Because it has been over a month since the last release and there are some significant underlying changes, I am especially concerned with stability in this update; please let me know (here, in the forums, via personal message, etc.) if you experience any issues at all!
I know it's been a very slow summer for me and the game, but I am continuing to listen and work on improving it. I hope you'll all keep sharing your thoughts and suggestions on how things are going and where you'd like them to head. Thanks again for all of your support! ːtotcordialː
[Edit: I forgot to mention, originally, that the game is currently on sale for its deepest discount to date. If you have, by any chance, owned the game for less than a couple of weeks and put in less than two hours (I think these are the limits), but feel like you would still enjoy it, you can request a refund and re-purchase at the lower price. Due to some changes in my personal life, it is unlikely that future discounts will be quite this low, so now is the time to abuse the system! ːtotfedoraː]
Changelog
Additions:
Stone Golem (tough, worker construct with explosion weakness)
Separate Vein prophecy (this floor was previously tied to unlocking the Lode)
Traps now track and report kills
Changes:
Removed support slot, moving these abilities into an always-on special slot
Traps can now trigger during battles
Traps can now harm minions
Floors provide more trap information in their tooltips (damage, cooldown, and kills)
Vibrant Vein now 4 tiles tall, requires Lode + Study
Alchemist now produces Mad Scientist, requires Study + Cellar
Laboratory now only produces Flesh Golem, requires Alchemist + Catacombs
Overlook now requires Lode + (Portal OR Dwelling)
Reduced leveling-oriented prophecy goals
Trap codex damage now uses verbose tooltips--like character abilities
Abilities that boost recovery rates now have their own verbose tooltip, rather than using the default format
Merged characters now retain the old character's slot assignment (or absorb that of the mergee, if the original was unassigned)
Clicking on the "Heroes are nearing your Sanctum" message will jump to the floor where this is occurring
Minor changes and edits for epilogue and codex text
Melee attackers are now always rendered in front of defenders (because this looks better)
Fixes:
On some systems, controller polling would cause a momentary stutter every 20-30 seconds
Crash involving specific actions during the tutorial
Crash associated with merging and replacing a character assigned to a slot
Epilogue kill count was including those killed by the destruction of the previous dungeon
Inconsistency with support abilities that reduced melee or ranged damage (by slot and not by damage type)
Abilities that buffed recovery rates were not always being used
Glitch with some melee animations that caused them to end and jump back very abruptly
A couple of trap icons were being misplaced in the Codex
2016.07.19: Fixes and Clarity
I have been doing a lot of traveling this month--and that will continue for the next couple of weeks--, but I still read all of your suggestions and bug reports, and this update represents an accumulation of responses.
Now that the mechanics have settled in the wake of the last beta period, I am working to improve clarity across the board: new tutorial entries and help topics, better tooltips, and more intuitive controls. There is a small start here, and certainly more to come, but this is an area where player input is especially critical, so I would love to hear your thoughts!
There is a conspicuous lack of content in this update, and there are a couple of reasons for that: one is that I have begun working on assets for the next beta period (which will be content heavy), and the other is that I am planning to restructure some of the existing prophecies, so I am withholding a couple of things in case I need to offset a prophecy removal or two with new stuff. I wish this were a more interesting update, but I'll try to get you all some new toys soon.
Thank you for your reports, suggestions, and especially your patience this time around. I finally licked an issue with the launcher on systems with pre-existing, strictly conflicting Java installations, and while it may not have affected many people, it felt like a huge weight off my shoulders, and I'm very thankful to those players who helped test a number of experimental builds in my search to resolve this longstanding problem. Thanks everyone! ːtotfedoraː
Changelog
Additions:
More verbose descriptions for many usables (these are automatically generated)
The same improvement has been applied to tooltips for abilities and effects in the codex
Character placement tooltips also carry these longer ability descriptions
Codex help topics for each resource and anchor stones
Changes:
Minions can now be unassigned from a floor by dragging them off the dungeon (previously, this could only be done by replacing them or clicking their status icon)
There were a couple of prophecies with a "traps triggered" requirement that did not also require a trap floor to activate
Numerous minor adjustments to existing tooltip text and icons
Several small performance improvements
The game is more likely to drop resources that you are low on
The game drops fewer tiles when you are close to building a new floor (that is, if you have one queued and currently meet the resource requirements for it)--this and the above will likely require additional input and tweaking
The game avoids dropping an item if you already have a max-level version of it
The Tyrant now has one armor by default; he was always armor-based, but this should make it more apparent that he is affected by armor-related abilities and effects
The message log no longer displays a tooltip for the currently selected message when you hover over it
Many early prophecies, their goals, and their requirements were re-evaluated; many "spend resource" goals were changed to "gather"s (which are much easier early on), and some character pack dependencies were altered to make them rarer relative to floors and items (which are more important to a budding Tyrant)
Removed category icons from prophecy popup message portraits
Fixes:
Under some configurations, the launcher could crash on systems with a conflicting Java installation (game's .jar had to be loaded directly by the player, ugh!)
"If you want something done right" achievement could become perpetually un-earnable if it was first done while playing without a Steam connection
Some character ability targets/effects were wrong
Quicksilver Quaff's range buff wasn't being applied properly (damage was buffed in codex, but was not actually being used in combat)
Characters should only move up in combat if there are no damage-dealers and their current ability does not deal damage
A couple of specific and obscure combat situations could cause the game to crash
Character images in prophecy message icons were being cut off
Tooltips for dragging/dropping characters were not very consistent
Hovering over a combat slot could render a recently deceased assignee
2016.06.30: Pretty Deadly
I have barely kept up with your requests and reports over the last few weeks. It's been three and a half weeks since the last "real" update, but there have actually been several quiet updates since then (we were up to 2016.06.04i!), due to reported issues that were deemed too important to ignore. As a result, many of the things on the changelog below were introduced in the interim builds, but are listed here for completeness.
The new content this time around is a pack of dangerous heroines: Elf Sohei, Dwarf Blademaster, and a Demon Hunter (she is actually a demon, so she does benefit from demonic effects, like the Pitchfork). These are all relatively tough opponents, and they come with a banner that boosts the damage of all female characters. This is a bit of a gamble; if you use a lot of female characters (dark elves, brood sisters, witches, harpies, succubi, gorgons, or nightblades), it should be pretty powerful, because the boost affects all damage and not just one type or another, but it also affects all female heroes.
While there are a lot of fixes included below, many of these come with changes that could potentially cause new issues (there's a new version of Steamworks, a new 64-bit build, and several underlying overhauls to different bits of game logic); please let me know if you experience anything out of the ordinary, so I can get things cleaned up quickly! I continue to rely upon and appreciate all of your reports and suggestions; I cannot thank you enough for your support! ːtotcordialː
Changelog
Additions:
Pretty Deadly hero pack (requires Fighters and either Forge or Baths); Elf Sohei, Dwarf Blademaster, Demon Hunter, and Every Rose banner (+1 damage for all female characters)
There is now a separate 64-bit Windows release; previously, both were bundled together, which caused rare issues for some users
The Codex now has a brief set of history buttons for re-visiting recent pages
Gamma correction slider added to the options menu
Message icons can now shake when updated, or if important
"ControllerDisabled" introduced to ToTAdvanced options, for completely disabling controller functionality
Changes:
Updated to a more recent version of the Steamworks API and its Java wrapper
Flipped minions to the right-hand side of battles, so the slot assignment order reads 1-2-3, as expected
Removed the klaxon; I will substitute a less obnoxious sound soon, but in the mean time, there is a visual warning indicator now
Score and warning messages cannot be removed from the message log
Dynamic music is now "dynamic" in the sense that you might expect; the track changes every couple of plays; previously, this option selected a track based on which floors were built, causing most dungeons to only play a single track repeatedly
Minions may be stationed in any slot in the Sanctum again (so your Tyrant can take a back seat)
Merge information isn't displayed in the Codex if any of the details are still locked
Legacy minions are no longer awarded for hero checkpoints
Rituals can now repeat so they will never be exhausted; this generally makes them easier, as well, because simpler ones are likely to re-appear early on
Per-kill XP awards have been diminished significantly (especially for high-level kills); this affects both minions and heroes
Hid "Biped" trait, which is no longer used by any character or item effects; it now only determines which characters can wear hats, so I will be phasing it out
Fixes:
Prophecy progress wasn't always saving to the leaderboard when appropriate (but was saving to Steam stats for achievement purposes)
Skirmisher was listed as "Leader" in Codex
Two unrelated OS X crashes involving controller issues
A crash if Java's access bridge features were only partially enabled by another application
Checkpoints weren't immediately fortified upon starting a new game, so heroes wouldn't always be able to teleport in appropriately during the first wave
Completed prophecy messages weren't going away on their own
Characters would shake when healed, as though being damaged; most noticeable when matching flesh and healing all minions at once
There was an issue with Steam cloud saves being reset, due to an API wrapper change
Tyrant was still avoiding Sanctum fights sometimes
Scarecrow and Deep One fear attacks were behaving unpredictably
Heroes would occasionally walk right on through a checkpoint without awaiting the next wave
Minor adjustments to the wording and positioning of several tooltips
"Fire Marshal" ending was not triggering appropriately; criteria has been adjusted
Some controller drivers or profiles could cause controller UI elements to flicker off and on
Epilogue listed pack unlocks in the wrong order (floors should go first, followed by associated characters, etc.)
Original banner colors couldn't be restored once changed
Characters could ignore an elevator if there were lots of people waiting and another on the way; resolving this should improve the flow of characters through your dungeon
Options menu cycled banners in reverse alphabetical order
Some characters could strangely come to occupy multiple combat slots, resulting in a crazy pile-up of characters standing in the same spot, expecting to take the same turn; this required some substantial re-writes, so keep an eye out for any new, bizarre activity--thanks!
2016.06.04: Forest Forces
Courtesy of your reports and requests this week, 2016.06.04 is an accumulation of fixes and minor features alongside a new hero pack: Forest Forces, featuring a Centaur Skirmisher, Forest Spirit, and Unicorn. And a banner that removes corruption immunity from characters like the Paladin and Unicorn.
Thank you again for your continued support; the notes don't cover quite all of the stuff I've deployed over the last few days, but some items are very minor (like additional Codex entries or adjustments to certain character abilities). Please, keep the feedback coming! ːtotcordialː
Changelog
Additions:
Forest Forces hero pack (requires Trusty Steed, Druids, and either Wildwood or Snare); Centaur Skirmisher, Forest Spirit, Unicorn + Dark Horse banner
Advanced settings file (ToTAdvanced, found in your system's user folder /.prefs), allowing explicit overrides for framerate and full screen resolution--experiment at your own risk (but if you have problems, please let me know)!
Changes:
Match effect bonuses, like Flesh healing, are now capped at 5 bonuses per resource per match
Barrows prophecy no longer requires levelling skeletons
Fixes:
Reinforcements that had an additional floor pre-req (such as the Ghoul or Wight) were shown as buyable (incorrect), but unavailable with no explanation
Minions and heroes could lose their position in combat when restoring a session
Lots of level up sounds were playing when restoring a game session
Music could be superseded at start-up and fail to continue playing
Potions could heal doomed minions, placing them in a weird limbo between dead and alive
Corruption immunity wasn't applying to the Conscience
2016.05.31: Macabre Mausoleum
Tonight, more fixes and balancing (especially for larger dungeons). A lot changed during the beta period, and I am grateful for your feedback regarding the game's balance. I have heard a few say that the early game is too rough, so I will be looking at that for the next update, but this update is more for those who say the late game is too easy.
Hero checkpoints now fortify by number of floors built rather than number of floors fortified; the previous checkpoint now fortifies when a new one appears. This way, you can't avoid fortifying floors in order to prevent heroes from adding portals; this also means dungeons brought over from a previous game will begin with hero portals throughout--should be more interesting this way, but let me know what you think! Drop rates have been tweaked a bit, the XP ramp has been bumped up, and hero spawn rates have increased slightly for later waves.
In combat, minions are now always on the left and heroes are always on the right. This should help with some confusion identifying sides in the heat of battle.
There are Liches in the air! The Macabre Mausoleum hosts a suitably powerful undead/eldritch enemy with high ward defense and a big arcane damage buff--they also raise Skeleton Acolytes, the same way Necromancers raise Skeleton Warriors. The Acolytes deal arcane damage and heal undead, so this is some great stuff for undead or magic-focused dungeons.
Keep the feedback coming, and let me know what you really think! I appreciate it ːtotbaconː.
Minions should now always be associated with a particular slot when stationed, if you do not target a specific slot, a suitable one will be selected
Tweaked drop rates to vary by number of heroes in the dungeon (heroes should drop more stuff when there are fewer around)
Increased hero spawn rate for later waves
The previous hero checkpoint now fortifies when a new one is built
Level ramp is significantly steeper
Minions are always on the left side of a battle, and heroes always on the right
If a target character perishes before all opponents have taken a stab, the turn swaps to the other side instead of finishing out unnecessary moves
Fixes:
Shuffling floors would lose slot assignments for characters on that floor
Resolved a couple of issues with unused controllers while using the menu
Quaff was stacking with itself, allowing for very large ranged damage buffs
2016.05.30: Moldering Memorial
Thanks for all of your excellent feedback and bug reports this weekend, following the beta merge; the update notes below cover version 2016.05.30, as well as some of the minor interim releases I've made over the last couple of days. Lots of bug fixes and adjustments, as expected--keep the reports coming!
There's a little new content, a sort of pseudo-Memorial Day, but in name more than theme. The Moldering Memorial is a floor dedicated to the memory of past Tyrants, and it produces a single Phantom Tyrant. This unit is innately pretty weak, like your Tyrant, but it has a few interesting properties:
First, it has the Undead and Spirit traits (and Construct, if you're flying the Jolly Wrencher), so it can benefit from many effects that your Tyrant wouldn't.
Second, if you using Steam, it will pull the level of your past Tyrant and spawn at that strength--and at the strength of any Tyrants on your friends list. That is, if I ended my last run with a level 8 Tyrant, my friends can receive "Jake Huhman the Tyrant," a level 8 Phantom Tyrant. I have some other weird friends list cross-over mechanics planned out; this update is testing those waters a bit.
Third, it can merge with the Tyrant to produce a Tyrant...or rather, your Tyrant can absorb it to gain its experience. You can then order up a new Phantom and continue to harvest the XP of your friends' former Tyrants.
You may have noticed that the Tyrant can level up more easily with the beta changes, by matching loot, and leveled Tyrants can take a bit more punishment; the Phantom Tyrant offers an easier way to level up your Tyrant, if that survivability is important to you.
The new floor requires an item: the Tyrannical Tiara. This item increases the Tyrant's defense (and also the defense of the Phantom Tyrant) by one point per level (up to a bonus of +5).
Thank you again for all of your support; I am loving the feedback on all of the big beta changes, and I want to hear more so I can continue to make improvements. ːtotfedoraː
Changelog
Additions:
Moldering Memorial (Catacombs + Tiara); produces Phantom Tyrant
Tyrannical Tiara (Reliquary or Coffers); increases Tyrant defense
Changes:
All attacks now have a minimum base damage of one
Reduced Dire Delivery character appearance rates
Anchor stones now obey gravity (players were ignoring them until they had dug under them and then had difficulty removing them)
Anchor stones are destroyed at the beginning of a new game, for a cleaner starting Hoard
Reduced "level up [character type]" prophecy goal thresholds by 5
Reduced "destroy items" plot goal threshold by 1
Plot goals that involve a resource category now display the resource icon and name, in the appropriate color
Magijack no longer requires prophecy completion
Tile tooltips now describe match effects (like healing when hovering over a flesh tile)
Minion merges now combine the XP value of both characters
Fortification plots now select themselves (and expand) when they appear, unless you have just recently selected another message yourself
Fixes:
Bone match resurrections were saving the doomed minion with the highest timer instead of the lowest
Prophecy completion flags weren't always saving properly (resulting in the same prophecy being instantly "completed" again upon loading a session)
The game could fail to fully launch on OS X
Setups with more than four controllers could generate crashes
2016.05.27: Merged Beta Changes!
After five months of a split release favoring an opt-in beta branch, I am finally merging the releases, confirming all of the huge beta changes and additions that many of you have helped test and shape over those months. I am so thankful for all of your insight and reports that aided me in directing development over this time, and I look forward to working with all of you on similar major additions in the future.
But first, I want to spend the next few weeks focusing on polish and bug fixes, to ensure that the standard release has regained the stability that allowed the previous major release to stand alone for so many months. There will be other minor additions and content, too, but no huge new features for a little while. I do still have more of that planned, though =).
If you haven't been following along with the beta releases, there may be some shock when you load up this build, but almost everything about the beta changes was designed to improve the user experience, so don't be intimidated if things look a little different. To make things easier, the changelog below is a bit more on the abridged side than usual--just brass tacks.
New to this release versus the previous beta release (a week ago) is an enforced camera fixation on the Sanctum when your Tyrant is in danger (and a slight slow-motion effect), and a brief "epilogue" following your Tyrant's demise (there will probably be some more expansion upon this in the future).
I anticipate several minor follow-up releases over the next couple of days, to address any major bug reports; please report anything out of place--either on the forum, or to me directly (you are all cordially invited to send me a friend request at any time!)! Thank you again for all of the support over the beta months; I hope you all enjoy the end result as much as I do! ːtotcordialː
Changelog
New and Different Stuff:
Fresh leaderboards for high score and plots completed. These aspects of the game have changed too much, and I'm sorry for the inconvenient reset. I have kept the old leaderboards available to the community for posterity, though, and now the worst item on the list is out of the way!
The Hoard is now always visible on the left
All minions can be dragged/dropped; portraits for all characters are now over on the right
Generally lower minion and hero counts; everyone is named, and everyone feels more important and more manageable.
Combat has been overhauled to be 3v3 without position shuffling; there is less guesswork when it comes to minion placement.
Characters heal slightly after they have been targetted, at the same point where they draw fatigue.
No more "deployable" items--only usables and passives.
Items can be leveled up by collecting duplicates in subsequent playthroughs.
Early hero checkpoints now gain portals that allow heroes to teleport into your dungeon directly.
No more legacy points; instead:
All items carry over
Resource caps carry over -5 (never dropping below the base cap)
Floors are "fortified" by completing plots; fortified floors survive destruction
For each fortified floor, one of your highest ranking minions will survive destruction (the chosen minions' portraits will be marked in orange).
All minions level up by gaining experience; 10 levels.
Recently slain minions can be bought back from the dead (all experience in-tact) at an increased price
New corruption mechanic for turning heroes to your side
Removed the score multiplier
Removed casual mode
Added cloud saving support
Added controller support
Several achievement goals have been slightly adjusted
Matches grant simple resource-determined bonuses to your characters; for example, flesh matches now heal minions. Sometimes, it is now beneficial to save a match for a time when your minions will need it.
There are a couple of new Hoard elements: dirt blocks, and anchor stones. There is the potential to add a few more things in this vein down the road.
Major change to messagelog layout
Lots of UI changes and improvements
Five or six new floors and other such stuff
Plenty of other stuff that I've either forgotten to mention or felt wasn't super important.
[Beta] 2016.05.22: Controller and Cloud Support*
Tonight's update adds two of the most requested features to the beta release (you can opt in from the Betas tab in the game's Properties in your Steam Library), but *there are some caveats and areas where I'll need your help!
I'm afraid I only have access to two controllers and one OS in my workspace,so the only controllers that are definitely supported are XBox 360 and XBox One controllers, and they *may* only work on Windows. That should cover a bunch of you, but it's still awfully restrictive; fortunately, if you have access to some other controllers or OSes, you can help me add support for your controller/OS combo by using a simple controller debugging option I've included: see this thread for details!
The game is almost completely playable with a controller, minus a few advanced UI elements (floor movement, option menu sliders, and most noticeably codex navigation--it can be opened and closed, but there is no mechanism for browsing). I think there is definitely room for improvement; I am still working on adding appropriate tooltips for all elements and giving the navigation a bit more clarity, but this is something I can continue to work on while gathering feedback and building controller profiles. Please let me know your thoughts on anything and everything controller-related =).
Steam Cloud deployment is directly tied to the little icon that tells people that the game has Steam Cloud support, but because this is a beta release and not a standard release going out to everyone, I cannot tick the box to turn this completely on. There is, however, a secret checkbox that allows cloud saving to work for intrepid individuals without making it immediately available to everyone; if you are interested in helping me test cloud support, shoot me a friend request, and I can help you enable it on your end. Here, too, testing across non-Windows OSes would be greatly appreciated!
Controller support represents the last of my major objectives for this wave of beta changes. I plan to spend the next week polishing, fixing bugs, updating in-game help, adjusting some achievements, and making some other minor additions. If all goes well, I hope to push the beta changes out to the standard release by early next week.
Thanks again for all of your excellent suggestions and bug reports; everything's coming together thanks to you! ːtotcordialː
Changelog
Additions:
Controller support
Cloud saving support (prophecy progress and current game)
Controller polling debug output--can be accessed from the main menu with F2
Added a message log warning when heroes are nearing the Sanctum
Changes:
Rearranged some save data. The only noticeable thing should be that your banner settings will reset (sorry), because it is being saved differently to persist across the Cloud
Prophecies message icons now display items, heroes, or banners they unlock, if they don't unlock a floor (they previously looked very plain)
Removed Casual Mode; the "full experience" is generally cleaner than it was when Casual Mode was introduced, and the game is a bit smarter about scaling now--and continued improvement is likely
First wave timer now starts only when a floor has been built and a move has been made; legacy floors will cause the game to start with the first move, as before, but a fresh dungeon will be safe until a floor is built--this is to aid beginners
Gave plots and prophecies some new icon frames in the message log
Fixes:
Banners unlocked count was off by one
It was possible to set "negative" colors using the option sliders
[Beta] 2016.05.03: Festering Feast
I have several more fixes for the beta combat changes today. Most significantly, the weekend update introduced some buff/debuff calculation issues which should now be resolved. There was also an issue with poison potency.
I have reintroduced the Necromancer's raise dead ability as the first in a series of special properties that I'll be adding to various characters. These abilities always apply to the combatant, regardless of slot, so the Necromancer doesn't need to be playing a support role to raise a Skeleton Warrior.
Speaking of which, the Skeleton Warrior is now exclusively acquired by the Necromancer. The Bonehoard now only produces the Skeleton Archer, and it also requires the Camp. This is a significant change to the build tree, but the impact is lessened by the Barrows being altered to require the Catacombs and not the Bonehoard (so anything that requires the Barrows won't be affected by the Bonehoard change). The new Festering Feast floor will replace the Bonehoard as a Catacombs + Lair combo.
Thanks again for all of your help and ideas this week! ːtotcordialː
Extreme healing (heals 4 hearts at the end of a turn)
Healing support abilities can now improve
Support for additional "Special" character rules, starting with the Necromancer's raise dead ability
Changes:
Non-trait-specific healing support abilities have been bumped down to Quick Healing, rather than Rapid (but they can now level up to Rapid and even Extreme)
Minor changes to several other character abilities
Bonehoard now requires Catacombs + Camp (and not Lair)
Barrows now requires Catacombs + Grotto/Warrens (and not Bonehoard)
Bonehoard produces Skeleton Archer
Skeleton Warrior unlocks with the Nexus and Necromancer
Skeleton Warrior counts as a corrupted character, so raised dead share the same cap as corrupted characters (currently 5)
Gave upgraded Brood Sisters a new carapace to help distinguish them from lower level ones
Hovering over a floor now highlights all of the slots currently in use
The game will scroll to the top of the floors list on new game, much as it does with the character list
Quicksilver Quaff no longer requires prophecy fulfillment to unlock
Fixes:
Many buffs/debuffs from various abilities, items, and banners were being processed incorrectly, due to the recent change in how some abilities are shared across multiple slots
Poison calculation was off, making it very difficult to actually kill something with poison
Character portraits were not always reflecting the correct ability in use
Corrected some character and floor art inconsistencies
Firm defenses would display as firm armor on the battle HUD, even when it was representing firm agility or ward
