Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
War for the Overworld
Community Spotlight - October 2018
Darkest greetings Underlord,
It’s been a long time coming but the time has finally arrived. Today we begin our community spotlights of awesome content created by the most talented members of our community. These updates can include anything, typically levels or campaigns created by you in our map editing tools but we welcome art, stories and more. Anything that WFTO has inspired you to create!
Creators/Authors who have their work highlighted will receive the coveted Golden Worker Skin to show-off to their fellow Underlords. So if you think you have something worthy of this not-so-noble prize then be sure to reach out either by dropping your map/campaign in our dedicated steam thread or contacting us directly via our Discord, Twitter or elsewhere!
Coveted by many, owned by few. The Golden Worker Skin.
Each month we’ll bring to you a selection of curated content that we know you’ll enjoy from the fanbase. So get ready to delve back into the depths as we dive right into our revivified community spotlight!
Maps & Campaigns
We’ve been rifling through the stacks of the Steam Workshop picking out the best, most interesting and fun maps to play on. There have been dozens that made our shortlist and it was truly hard to narrow it down to just a couple in this spotlight, but rest assured many of the others which did not make the cut this month will surely appear in the future! When choosing maps we’ve also looked to highlight particular custom campaigns or authors for you to look out for!
We want to ensure that you have ample content to chew through for the coming month without overloading your plate so we’ve provided an ample starting course if maps for you today, if you feel you’d like your future servings of delicious content to be larger don’t hesitate to say so in the comments!
Now without further ado behold our chosen levels, with our thoughts printed below!
You can download all of these maps as part of our workshop collection right here, or you can subscribe to them individually below! For our fans on GOG we will be uploading a copy of the spotlight to our own Brightrock Foundry tomorrow so you too can access these maps without jumping through further hoops!
It should be said that we’ve not included any of our Featured Author’s maps in the spotlight, simply because their work is so extensive that it would overload the spotlight! But you should definitely check out A Festive Scarecrow’s workshop items and discover the excellent content within for yourself.
Congratulations to all of the creators who have been highlighted today! We will be reaching out to you to deliver your Golden Worker codes tomorrow. Usually via the private forum attached to your highlighted work. If you do not receive your code then please contact us directly and we’ll be sure to sort you out!
Featured Fanart: Archon by Fallen Star Art
We’re always super excited to receive fan art of War for the Overworld. As creators and artists ourselves it is deeply heartwarming to see love shown by other talented artists for our work and to see the unique touch they bring to our beloved game. We’re only a small team with a pretty niche game so it’s always a great honour for us to see such love shown!
Evil can be adorable as well!
This excellent piece was shared on our Discord depicting what lies behind the mask of the Archon, frankly, we never imagined she could be so cute! Our fans on Discord immediately fell in love and we have too!
We offer a sincere and warm thank you to Fallen Star Art for making our day! If you’d like to see more of their awesome work then check out their Instagram and Twitter!
We’re always looking for more Fanart to showcase so if you’re aware of any that could make the cut then please drop us a line or drop it into our Discord with the Artist’s details. We award artists with the same Golden Worker skin we offer for level creators so if you’ve got a talent for art and you want to get an exclusive worker skin be sure to drop your art in!
That’s all we have for you today Underlords, but rest assured there’s plenty more to come in next months spotlight. Remember if you have levels, art, stories or anything you’d like to share then get in touch via our Discord, Twitter or Directly to us via any other means! For map creators, you can drop your levels into our Steam Thread for consideration and potential inclusion in future spotlights.
Entrusted with the darkest messages we reach out across the aether once more to bring you news from the realm of Kairos. Today we’re launching another minor patch, v2.0.6 which fixes a few problems you’ve raised about and heralds a few minor improvements specifically to the UI in menus.
We also have news on our next Stream! But before we begin we've just released a new and final version of our main trailer which we thought you might like to see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnexl2RTjNE
We want to thank all our fans who have supported us over the years. We never imagined that we'd be here in 2018 with a game that looks so very different from the one released in 2015. We couldn't have done it without you!
This stream will be our longest yet and we’ll bring back Josh, the managing director of Brightrock Games and creative lead for WFTO to play through and talk about the design in some of the Heart of Gold levels!
After that, we’ll dive into another custom level from one of our community members and finally, we’ll finish up with a special debug look into how the Skirmish AI thinks whilst playing a match and our regular Developer Q&A, remember to submit your questions via our Steam Thread!
As promised in our previous post we are unleashing Patch 2.0.5 upon the world. This update comes with a number of tweaks and improvements to the game, chiefly a set of additional Unit VO for units which were previously overly quiet. As always we've also addressed a number of bugs which you have reported to us over the past few weeks and months, including a fix for a significant issue which affected GOG users on the installer version of the game.
We thank our fans for your patience as we address your reports, although WFTO is now in maintenance mode we still take your reports seriously and encourage you to report any issues you encounter to our Userecho support site. This will allow us to triage and subsequently address issues if we can.
Don't forget that our first Community Spotlight since 2.0 released is on its way this week so keep your eyes peeled Underlord! We'll be bringing you a selection of great maps to add to your ever growing collections.
Improved animation transitions on the Kasita Theme Core
Audio Changes
New Unit Voice-Over for the following units:
Necromancer - He can raise the dead with his new lines
Beastmaster - Finally found his voice
Oculus - But how?
Units which are based on a common template (I.e. Temple Guard and Templar) will now use VO and SFX from their template unit if they did not have specific VO and SFX previously
Localisation & Community Translation
New localisation batches completed and available for Community Translations including:
UI Text, mostly related to Map Editor 2.0 features
Minion Ability Tooltip Updates
Map Editor Tooltip Updates
Mutator Tooltip updates
Updated Localisation Notes available in Batches to assist translators
Copied existing translations for Spells, Potions, Rooms, Rituals, Defences,
Constructs into their Magic Finder (Mighty Script) labels, as they are used in editing My Pet Dungeon waves.
Chinese now has consistent numbers & Latin Chars
Updates to Polish translation for intro cinematic
Revised polish subtitle timings for intro cinematic
Updated Japanese Font
Tweaks to Map Editor Artefacts panel tooltips (EN only)
UI & UX Improvements
Small improvements to Main Menu layout
Minor changes to the styling of version number on Main Menu
Miscellaneous Changes
Unit name pool adjustments
Renamed Fantastic -> Devilish in the Launcher, accessible by holding alt as the game loads
Dungeon Hearts April fools added to the Extras menu
Bug Fixes
Crashes & Showstoppers
Updated UI Middleware which should fix a rare crash at launch & improve performance
Units
Piggys should no longer become trapped in a panic state
Fixed some minor issues with the Evil Arcane worker
Defences
Blade Lotus' area indicator now more accurately represents the Blade Lotus' effective radius
Rooms
Fixed alignment issues with the Founder's theme Dungeon Core.
UI, Localisation & UX
Fixed an issue which would prevent the Skirmish menu from appearing under specific circumstances whilst playing the GOG version of the game deployed with GOG installers
Corrected an issue that caused display issues with euro characters under certain conditions
Audio buffer size for UI doubled to prevent skipping in UI videos
Warning when missing password when setting up a MP game now displays correctly
The tooltips for level and achievement progress now translate correctly
Levels & Campaigns
War for the Overworld - Level 5 - Empire area now correctly uses the "Dwarven" theme
Fixed issues where achievements were not correctly completing after loading a save game on certain Heart of Gold levels
Graphics & Visuals
Fixed a visual error with Permafrost tiles whilst using the Sanguine terrain theme
Permafrost now blends correctly with other tiles in the Snowy terrain theme
Miscellaneous
The dungeons of Kairos rest dormant, waiting for their next opportunity to strike at the innocent and hapless world above. But in their depths, the foundry fires still burn, the development imps stoke the flames and strike the anvils within, less fanatically but still unperturbed.
Today in our update we’re announcing another of our now regular developer streams with Lee and Cian as well as some details about the upcoming v2.0.5 minor patch and community spotlight.
So equip your torch and light the way into our dungeon’s depths, there’s always more to explore.
Streaming to Steam on Wednesday 26th of September
As promised we’re continuing with our Developer Streams and are planning to run these more regularly from now on. We’re very content with the format that we’ve developed allowing us to show off community content and play our existing content whilst providing insightful commentary.
The Streaming Chamber is ready to accept our tributes
In particular, we love interacting with you and answering your questions about us, development and WFTO in general!
This week we’ll be attempting a no-doubt ill-fated speedrun of a Heart of Gold level and explore more of the community’s creations. Wrapping up with our regular Q&A session where we’ll answer the questions from chat and questions left for us in our dedicated steam thread!
Community Spotlight Next Week!
We’ve mentioned it was coming and now there’s only one more week to wait! We’ve spent some time delving into the Steam Workshop searching high and low for the most exceptional, fun and downright impressive maps and campaigns.
There’s honestly so many out there that it’s difficult to pin them down into a single list and we’re sure that we’ll have quite a few to highlight in comings months as well!
And as always we welcome both creators and players to suggest maps they think would make the cut in our dedicated thread.
We’ll be releasing our first spotlight sometime during the next week, keep your eyes peeled Underlords!
Minor Patch 2.0.5 Coming Up
To wrap up we want you to know that we’re still dedicating some of our time each week to maintaining War for the Overworld. To that end, we have a minor patch releasing sometime in the near future.
Although we’re not actively developing new content moving forwards we do have a few things coming in with the patch beyond the usual fixes and improvements. Namely some new VO for a few more units and some updated localisation assets.
The Beastmaster has found his pipes at long last
Naturally, we will certainly be fixing a number of issues that you’ve reported to us as well as deliver a few improvements in a couple of places.
Last week we sat down in the latest addition to our dungeon, the Streaming Chamber, to host our very first developer Livestream since 2015. After facing down and resolving a bedevilling affair of emergent technical difficulties we’re pleased to say it was a roaring success and a brilliant opportunity to interact with our fans and have a gutturally evil, laugh together.
The Streaming Chamber stands ready to transmit our Developer’s thoughts to your home realm
You can catch a recording of the stream over on twitch if you missed it. Needless to say, we’re keen to put what we’ve learned to the test. So to that end…
Cian and Lee will once again be hosting and exploring some great User Created maps and then diving right into our latest campaign, The Under Games! Wrapping up with a session of My Pet Dungeon and Q&A.
As before we’re eager to answer your questions, both throughout the stream and from our dedicated Steam Thread. So leave us some comments, we’ll be sure to answer every question we deem appropriate or ones that tickle our fancy.
Let us know if there are any custom maps you’d like us to take a look at and also which Underlord you think we should play as in The Under Games.
Time marches ever onwards and before we knew it months had passed since our last community update. Now that our team is focussed primarily on our upcoming new project, we know you may be worried about long-term support for War for the Overworld. So to keep you in the loop it’s time to talk once more about the community initiatives that we’re planning.
So sit down at our tavern table, and listen to the relaxing sounds of the screams that echo from the neighbouring torture chamber, as we share our vision of things to come!
Streaming on Steam -Tomorrow!
First up, and perhaps a surprise as it wasn’t mentioned in our previous plans: We’re hosting a developer stream on Steam, on Tuesday 28 August (Tomorrow!) at 3:30 p.m. UK time! Mark the date Underlord and join us for an exploration into the depths of our developers’ minds.
This will be our first developer stream since our launch all the way back in 2015. So why now and why Steam only? Well we’re hoping to make our streams a regular feature moving forwards, but we need to get back on the saddle first. Back when we used to stream it was always somewhat ad hoc, with webcams and headsets pilfered from the bedroom of our Managing Director.
Bedroom Streams, featuring Josh, Scott, Pat, Lee, Sammy the Cat and approximately 50 pixels!
Now we have an office and a professional space, and with our work settling down, we’re looking to make future streams more professional as well. So we’re using Tuesday’s stream as a test and a learning experience – a way for us to develop ourselves and for you to offer feedback, ahead of us doing them more regularly and hopefully branching out to other platforms such as Twitch and Youtube as we work out the kinks.
Begone webcam microphones! Welcome to our more professional setup.
Developer Community Spotlight – We’ll play through a community-made map we’re planning to include in the upcoming spotlight (see below). You’ll get to see us explore a map we had no hand in making!
Developer Face-Off – A 1v1 between two of our developers on a Skirmish map. What game mode would you like to see? Deathmatch, King of the Underhill or Core Shards?
My Pet Dungeon Playthrough, Commentary and Q&A – We’ll play through an MPD map, talking about the design decisions we made and the journey to make MPD a reality. This is when we’ll answer all your questions from the Steam thread, and be most able to answer questions in real time.
If things go well we’ll likely use a similar format for future streams. But we’d also like to swap things up, such as including Map Editor segments, where we look at the tools and demonstrate how to use Mighty Script. This would supplement our upcoming tutorials, and give you some advanced techniques for your own maps.
That about covers everything we have to say about the stream, at least until we go live on Tuesday afternoon! But remember, we want to hear your suggestions, feedback and questions over on the Steam thread.
The Stream will be available on the Steam Store page, and when we have the broadcast account we’ll provide a link to the broadcast page!
So with that hefty news out of the way, let’s look at what else we’ve got in store.
Community Map Spotlights
Since we launched the 2.0 version of the Map Editor we’ve seen some incredible maps and campaigns, and we really want to signal boost the best ones!
We’re in the process of picking our shortlist for the first spotlight; one of these will be included in the aforementioned stream, but once we’re done we’ll be posting up the full list. As there are so many great maps out there we’d love to know what your favourites are, and if you have any nominations for our spotlights going forward.
The Golden Worker stands ready to be shipped to the best map makers.
As always, maps highlighted will not only be given the prestige of being counted amongst our favourite maps, but their creators will also receive the coveted Golden Worker skin, which is only given out to community members that participate in such events!
It’s our intention to repackage these maps into spotlight downloads, allowing one-click access for our players on and off Steam, so you can enjoy them without having to search through the Workshop.
Moving forwards we plan to do spotlights either once a month or once every two months as our time allows. We’d like to invite creators to put their work forwards directly to us if they feel it has what it takes to reach the top. And remember, if your work isn’t included in one spotlight that doesn’t mean it can’t be included in the next.
We expect our first spotlight will be live by the middle of September.
Map Editor Tutorials
We know that there’s a demand to get some additional insight into Mighty Script and how it works; to that end we’re still working on the video tutorials. We’ve planned out where we’ll be taking these and how we’ll be putting them together, so now all that’s left is to get them up.
We’re planning to release these in waves starting with the most basic tutorials and working our way up to more complex things. We’ll be supplementing them with a few examples and additional reference materials as well.
We expect the first wave of tutorials to be available towards the end of September, and we’d love to know what you’d like to see us cover.
We hope that helps give you some insight, and as always we’d love to hear your feedback.
As many of our Linux users will be aware for the past few weeks (since we deployed 2.0.1) we have been wrestling with a serious show-stopping crash issue on many different Linux configurations. During this time we have been taking information from as many affected users as possible and have deployed several attempted fixes in previous patches with varying degrees of success for different players.
Today we’re confident that we’ve finally identified the root cause, an experimental setting in the Unity rendering pipeline which was not only causing the instability on Linux but also abnormally high GPU utilisation on some setups using other operating systems.
We’re deploying the fix for this in today’s Patch 2.0.4 which should resolve the intermittent crashes you are experiencing.
Patch 2.0.4 on Windows & OS X
Because we have expedited the release of this Patch on Linux it will not be deployed today for Windows or OS X users. This is to allow us the appropriate time to QA test for these platforms but rest assured if all goes well Patch 2.0.4 will make its way to you before the end of the week.
This means for a short time Linux players will not be able to join multiplayer matches hosted by Windows or OS X users and vice versa until Patch 2.0.4 is made available on those platforms.
We want to thank all our affected Linux users for their patience and assistance over the last few weeks and we can only deeply apologise for the poor experience many of you have put up with.
We are confident this release will resolve your issues but if it does not or you wish to provide other feedback please do so in the lead User Echo ticket for this issue.
Thank you once again. Please find the full Patch Notes below!
This Patch has been deployed today for Linux as an immediate solution to critical show-stopping crashes. It is currently in testing for Windows and OS X and will be deployed later this week.
Patch Higlights
Linux Crash & High GPU Utilisation Fix
For the past few weeks since the release of Patch 2.0.1 a number of our Linux players have been affected by spontaneous and random crashes, during this time we’ve been working with our player base to identify and correct the source of the problem.
We believe that we have finally uncovered the cause for these random crashes. An experimental feature in Unity’s rendering pipeline which caused instability on some Linux configurations. Furthermore, this feature was also causing unusually high GPU utilisation on some setups using other Operating Systems.
We apologise for the poor experience for all affected users on both Linux and other platforms.
We’re eager to hear from all our fantastic Linux customers who have been providing us with information and feedback over the course of these trying weeks to confirm that this release has indeed corrected their issue. Please report back to us in the lead topic on User Echo.
Gameplay/Balance Changes
Units
Archon (Titan)
Basic Attack
Damage decreased from 400 to 350
Exterminate
Damage decreasesd from 500 to 400
Behemoth (Titan)
Recuperation (Out of combat health regeneration)
Regeneration rate increased from 0.25% to 0.45% of maximum health per second
Relentless (In combat health regeneration)
Regeneration rate increased from 0.025% to 0.045% of maximum health per second
Eternal (Titan)
Time Vortex (Slowing Aura)
Now slows enemies by 50% down from 60%
Visual Improvements
The Evil Arcane theme now has its own worker. Evil dorfs arrive!
Audio Changes
Added Additional Unit VO:
Democorn
Sentinel & Stone Knight
Rat
Highguard
Thunderling
Adjusted VO
Chunder
Miscellaneous Improvements
Updated Steamworks implementation on Steam versions of the game
Users on all platforms who were suffering from abnormally high GPU
Utilisation should no longer suffer from this issue
Bug Fixes
Crashes & Show-stoppers
As described in the highlight section a number of graphics related Linux crashes should no longer occur
Levels / Campaigns
Fixed an issue on Level 13 of the War for the Overworld campaign where Arcane Templar’s shields would appear without their texture
Another Maintenance Patch for War for the Overworld is making the rounds across the dark caverns of the Internet. But just because it's now long-term maintenance for the foreseeable future doesn't mean we can't have some fun.
Today we bring you some additional voices for units which have long wished upon a star for some lines of their own and this is just the beginning we expect there will be more to come in future patches.
As always please keep all your feedback coming via the forums and of course report any issues to us via User Echo!
Now without further a do, read on for the Release Notes!
Patch 2.0.3: "Effectively Explored Excavations"
Underlord AI Changes
Various Build Order tweaks
Audio Changes
Added Additional Unit VO:
Wizard
Inquisitor
Adjusted VO
Lord of the Land
Localisation & UI
Continued localisation work on the Mighty Script features of the Map Editor
Bug Fixes
Crashes & Gamebreakers
Updated the Coherent GT UI Middleware which may have been the cause of a recurring intermittent crash experienced by some users on Linux
If you are a linux user that was affected by regular crashes please try this latest version and report back to us if the issue was correctly fixed. Otherwise please contact us directly on our Bug Tracker
If crashes on Linux are still occuring you can find the Linux Stable Build in the betas list on Steam. This is running version 2.0.
Units
Fixed an issue with Unit Physics which was causing units to overshoot their destinations when not on screen
This was the root cause for issues where Workers were being propelled into lava and dying, units stuck in walls, units becoming trapped in Prisons and Arenas and possibly affected unit need fulfillment if the player was not watching
Ember Demons that are defused by the Infernal Urn should no longer explode and deal damage
Constructs
Losing a Mana Vault whilst at Maximum Mana should no longer cause a reduction in permanently available mana.
Visual Fixes
Fixed a visual issue with the Augrum Wall
Map Editor - Mighty Script
Math Operations should now produce the correct outputs for Decimals
Fixed an issue which prevented the “On Templates Spawn” trigger from triggering correctly
Map Editor - UI
Fixed an issue where world object coordinates would always appear as “23, 3” in the Magic Finder List
Levels / Campaigns
Fixed an Issue on Level 13 of the War for the Overworld campaign where one of the Emperor’s miscellaneous voice lines wouldn’t play
Fixed an issue where Artefacts dropped upon the “Road” in Level 2 of the Heart of Gold campaign could not be retrieved by workers
Fixed an issue where it was not possible reset The Under Games campaign progress
Fixed an issue where some VO would not play correctly when claiming an Underhill as Volta or Kasita in Level 5 of the Under Games campaign
Fixed a stack overflow that could occur on Level 3 of the Heart of Gold campaign
Fixed a number of issues with the Golden Statues displayed at the end of the Heart of Gold Campaign
Multiplayer
In-Game chat should once again show up correctly in Multiplayer Matches
UI
Fixed an issue which may have caused the Skirmish menu to not appear correctly for some users on the GOG installer versions
It's been only a week week since the release of the surprisingly massive 2.0.1 patch and the work has continued unabated. As always we've been taking feedback directly from you and have a few smaller adjustments to make alongside a handful of fixes to the issues you've helped us identify. Patch 2.0.2 is the result of this weeks work and should help stabilise the game further in the wake of our last two massive releases.
Beyond the release of this patch we don't have much news to share other than the fact that there's still a few issues we're still interested in tidying up and of course we're always happy to receive feedback or reports straight from you so please keep all your feedback coming via the forums and of course report any issues to us via User Echo!
Also if you missed our previous post, you may want to give that a read as it outlines some of the future plans for War for the Overworld. Fear not, even as we begin to shift our team across to working full-time on Project: Aftercare we plan to continue providing some support for WFTO in the coming months.
Now without further a do, read on for the Release Notes!
Patch 2.0.2 "Sufficiently Surveyed Surfaces"
Gameplay / Balance Changes
Units
Augre
Now slightly less likely to use the Foundry and slightly more likely to use the Garrison
Juggernaut
Now slightly less likely to use the Foundry and slightly more likely to use the Garrison
Priestess
Updated needs to match the Cutlist
Spirit Worker (Permanent)
Movement speed reduced by 10%
Work speed reduced by 25%
These changes do not affect Spirit Workers created by the Spirit Worker potion
Wizard
Updated needs to match the Witch Doctor
Spells
Volcanic Bridge
Mana cost reduced from 100 to 50
Underlord AI Changes
Underlord AIs can now make use of the Besiege ritual to attack enemy Dungeons
Sloth focussed AIs will now be able to make use of the Infernal Urn to transform Brimstone into Quartz
The AI can now use Hellfire potions
Added 7 New Build Orders
Adjusted a number of existing Build Orders
The Medium Difficulty AI has received a number of tweaks
Now has the ability to drop units near rally flags
The rate at which it can pick up and drop units has been reduced
The rate at which is is allowed to spend sins has been reduced
It will now be slightly more aggressive
The AI will now trigger Sentinels more intelligently
The Master AI is now able to use defence parts to heal existing defences
The AI will now make more intelligent use of Work-A-Lot potions
When using Overcharge the AI will now wait until its Mana is exhausted
before triggering the ritual
The AI is now able to more accurately predict if it needs to return its forces to defend its Dungeon Core
Further optimised the behaviour of the AI on master difficulty
AIs will now hesitate less whilst attacking and will execute their plans more aggressively if they are confident of victory
Bankrupt AIs now wait longer before selling rooms
Level / Campaign Changes
The Under Games
Underlord Shale
Beast spawn rate reduced from 666% to 444%
Defence gold & mana cost increased from 150% to 200%
Visual Improvements
New Animations
Democorn - Receive Pay
Baby Democorn - Receive Pay
Arcane Chunder - Sanctuary work
Visual Tweaks to the Foundry Floor
Improved the possession view of the Firebreather
Adjusted the viewpoint position of the Behemoth in possession
Localisation & UI
European and Chinese localisations now in game for various text edits that were done for 2.0 and 2.0.1:
Various user-interface text improvements, including tooltips and campaign map names
Pre-2.0 Skirmish maps have had their creators’ names added to the end of their descriptions
Fixed various old text style issues such as asterisks being used to show sound effects in subtitles
Lord of the Land unit subtitles (for future use in the Mighty Script Editor) have been tweaked to match chosen audio takes
New Mendechaus voice-over (for future use in the Mighty Script Editor) has had unique text keys added for each unique audio take being used
Miscellaneous Improvements
Debug logs which are generated upon game crashes are now fully GDPR compliant
Bug Fixes
Crashes & Gamebreakers
Fixed a rare issue that prevented some players from opening the Under Games if they had not completed the War for the Overworld campaign
Units
Fixed an issue that would cause units to attempt to walk out of prisons and arenas
Defences
Alchemines should now always load in with their potions after loading a save game
Visual Fixes
Units are now react to the visual height of shrine floors (such as the siege shrine) and can walk on the surface without clipping
AI Fixes
Underlord AI's will no longer ignore the last item in their build order
Fixed an issue where the Underlord AI would not use the Wisdom Juice potion on Vampires
Fixed an issue where the Underlord AI would issue an attack without removing units from it's Peaceband, meaning sometimes attacks were not correctly planned and did not meet AI expectations
Fixed an issue where Workers were not correctly receiving new tasks and thus would revert to older tasks such as nearby reinforce wall tasks over newer claim tile tasks
Fixed an issue where the Underlord AI would be unable to determine an appropriate attack vector on large maps where the enemy is well fortified and defended
Map Editor - General
The Empire Theme selector can now correctly select any theme, even if it is locked
Levels / Campaigns
Fixed an issue where the cutscene which plays after Mandalf is turned to gold in Heart of Gold level 1 could be disrupted if he was mined by workers during the cutscene, preventing the level from ending
Fixed an issue where the VFX on the objective forge on Heart of Gold level 3 would not play correctly
Capturing Pre-Placed rooms in the "Seastead II" skirmish level will now correctly allow units to work in them
Localisation
Fixed an issue where Chinese fonts were not displaying correctly on OS X
UI
Fixed an issue on the Scenario Lobby where the mutators button was not accessible if the map could not be finished
As promised in our most dark and sacred oath to you, Patch 2.0.1 has arrived in War for the Overworld, don't be fooled by the name though it's amongst our largest patches ever! Here’s what lurks within:
Expanded Mighty Script functionality
Skirmish speech for Underlord opponents
Further improvements to Underlord AI
LOTS of balance changes
Hundreds of fixes and other changes
War for the Overworld is also on sale right now as part of the Steam Summer Sale, with up to 75% discount across the base game and DLC. Grab it while the weather’s hot!
Patch 2.0.1 Now Available
Mighty Script Becomes Mightier
Mighty Script has been a hugely ambitious undertaking and has already seen incredible use with hundreds of mappers already getting to grips with the new tools on the Workshop.
We’ve been taking feedback on Mighty Script from the community on what you’d like to see implemented and there’s a handful of really cool features in the new patch as well as some improvements and optimisations to make existing scripts more powerful. Here’s a quick summary:
10 New Triggers such as detecting when a spell is cast, a unit imprisoned or when a unit is attacked
2 New conditions including checking if players have a particular success key from the custom campaign features
24 New Actions with new AI commands, Dynamic Party configuration, Dialog Boxes, Tile Flashing or unit customisation actions
Parties are now easier to setup and support additional unit configuration such as setting the speed and scale of the unit
Numbers can now be Decimals as well as Integers
Lists can now contain more types of variables and most values can accept input from variables or actions output to lists
Other flow improvements and optimisations
Various fixes
With all of these improvements Mighty Script has undergone quite a few changes but fear not your previous maps should be completely compatible and rest assured now that Patch 2.0.1 is in your hands and Mighty Script even more expansive we’re now looking to get those tutorials to you asap!
Skirmish Smack Chat
We’ve livened up Skirmish audio with speech from ALL the Underlord opponents! They will now taunt you and react to various events as the battle progresses. You’ll hear Oberon gallantly face defeat as his health dwindles; Kasita celebrate her victory by welcoming you into her treasure trove; Korvek proclaim that he is greater than the sum of his parts!
Now Mira can tell you herself that you are nothing but an earthworm to be squashed beneath her metaphysical boot
We got all the original actors back to reprise their roles, and added over 400 new lines of speech! This also includes the trio of Underlords introduced in The Under Games – Shale, Lamash, and Volta!
We hope this feature adds an extra layer of character and charm; but if you do want to turn the voices off you can do so from the Sound Options.
AI Advancements
Stefan, our artificial intelligence wizard, made huge renovations to the Underlord AI for Patch 2.0. But he hasn’t stopped there, and has continued to conjure and tinker with the goal of giving you the ultimate challenge. And judging by the feedback from our loyal Foundry tester imps, he may well have succeeded!
AI improvements include:
More entertaining gameplay, and more challenge for highly-skilled players
The AI will play the Sloth tree in the Veins of Evil much more effectively
Significant increase in the number of Aspects the AI can use and more build order variety per personality
Optimised to work with the 2.0.1 balance changes
Substantial AI performance improvements
Everything Else and Release Notes
The entire game has undergone a substantial balancing pass, along with tweaks to certain modes and levels, and fixes to a number of bugs. All can be garnered from our full release notes. Warning, it’s very long!
WFTO & Chrono.gg raise $32,905 for Totalbiscuit’s family
At the start of this month, we outlined our thoughts and feelings in the wake of John “Totalbiscuit” Bain’s tragic passing, and how his work had helped to ensure our success with War for the Overworld. In that same post, we announced our partnership with our friends at Chrono.gg to place War for the Overworld on a 24-hour sale with 100% of our proceeds going to John’s family as a small way of repaying him and honouring his memory.
We’re pleased to announce that the campaign was a huge success and together with Chrono.gg we raised a staggering $32,905 for John’s wife Genna and their son Orion. This amount was so much more than we could ever have dreamed of raising and we can only be thankful for everyone who bought the game in support of this cause.
All funds raised were donated to the John Bain Memorial GoFundMe on the 7th of June contribuuting to the $338,411 raised so far that will go towards ensuring the security of John’s family in these difficult times.
We’d like to thank all the incredible support offered by the WFTO community in helping us to honour the memory of a man who is hugely responsible for the success of this project.
Introducing our Steam Developer Page
As you may have heard Valve have recently deployed new developer and publisher profile pages for the Steam Store these new pages provide a central location to hear from your favourite developers about their latest games.
We’re pleased to be amongst the first to adopt this new development and we’d like to invite all our fans to drop by and follow us to ensure you get notified as we move into the future of Brightrock Games!
What’s Next?
As we said last time, Patch 2.0.1 is probably going to be the last content update for WFTO. However, we’ll still be listening out for your bug tickets and triaging them accordingly, so please still send them our way.
We’re still working on improvements to the Mighty Script Editor as well, and are in the process of locking down the text ready for translation. However, we’ve made the decision to only translate into French, German, and Russian for now, because these are our most active communities; since there is a large amount of text to translate, we feel this will strike a good balance between cost and benefit.
We’re also going to add new banks of speech and sound effects to certain units, to help improve the atmosphere. We’ll of course let you know when all these updates are added to the game.
We hope you enjoy Patch 2.0.1, which is free to download now!
And don’t forget the Steam Summer Sale, with huge discounts to be had across all War for the Overworld products. Bring the heat!
