Mar 28, 2019

Major Update - Faction Heroes & AI Upgrades (0.10.5)

Fort Triumph - Fort Triumph

Greetings, Warriors!

Development continues apace, and we've worked in quite a few features from our waiting list in the past month. Heading the list is a MAJOR upgrade to tactical AI, enabling it to calculate ability and spell usage and relative value - this is naturally still a work in progress but we're seeing some amazing initial results.

We're also heading faction heroes, including some sexy troll and goblin heroes with unique bonuses. Can't wait to see which of them you will like playing with the most!

As always, please share as much feedback as you can with us either through in-game bug reports, suggestions on our Steam forums or by chatting with us over at Discord.

Faction Heroes

In our continued effort to make factions interesting and relevant for different playstyles, we've finally added some non-human heroes, namely Troll and Goblin faction heroes. Each faction will also have a unique faction-wide ability present in all units and heroes.

Added goblin and troll heroes.
Each faction now has a unique passive ability present in all units and heroes.
Heroes from different factions have different health.
Faction heroes can be recruited in the town of that faction and only there.
Your starting heroes will change to reflect your chosen faction.
Tutorial can currently only be played when picking the Human faction.

Tactical AI & Abilities

A major step forward, our tactical AI can now evaluate ability effects when considering what to do. This allows it to "understand" a wider range of abilities, and use them better than before.

To name a few examples, the enemy will no longer slow already slowed units. Your foes will use AoE spells much better and maximize their effect, while avoiding hitting their allies with these effects and other explosions. We can give a ton more examples, but it would be best if you just hopped in and see if you notice the change yourself - let us know!

AI & Behavior

Improved ranged AI range positioning and AoE calculation.
Reduced AI aggressiveness so it will avoid taking greatly disadvantageous battles.
Added party size limits for AI based on difficulty.
Goblin Bomber now maintains distance in a smarter way, only approaching if it can close the distance completely.

Balance

Tweaked hero XP requirements based on feedback and testing.
Reduced XP bonus from universities from 25/50% to 20/40%.
Ballista attacks no longer ignores cover.
Iterated some building descriptions for clarity.
Increased the speed of Mages and Paladins by 1.
Reduced the speed of Savages by 1.
Increased the speed of Skeleton Militias by 1.
Removed 'Telekinesis Summer Camp' upgrade from human town, this is now the faction unique passive.
Added the Kindergarten upgrade to human faction.
Increased Charge cooldown by 1.
Lowered slightly the amount of units enemy factions starts with, especially in higher difficulties, to limit super early aggression.
Slightly increased party speed and also increased movement point cost on roads.
Reduced base accuracy of Quickshot from 80 to 70.
Refractive Skin now also applies to heroes.

Visuals & Art

Added new portraits for faction heroes and fixed how they are shown in town UI.
Improved color customization quality, but there are fewer colors to choose from.
Updated the world-map icons of Peasants & Spitting spiders with new art.
Decreased the size of House Spiders' world-map icons so they'd fit the grid.
Fresh and improved art for many ability icons and status effect icons.
New hammer icon for the Hammer Strike and Bash abilities, which used to be represented by a sword.
Improved visual effect for Knockback Arrow.
Damaged trees will now display a fallen leaves visual effect.
New visual effect for the Stomp ability.

Bug Fixes & Minor Changes

Added controller support for town UI.
Renamed Short Range Telekinesis to Faraway Lift.
Frightened enemies will now try to run away in a straighter line than before, effectively opening up more distance in many cases.
Fixed Bloodlust, it will not not stop working as it did in some cases with Insatiable Bloodlust, and will correctly apply the dodge stance bonus with the dodge stance upgrade.
Taunt will now properly affect ALL enemies who can attack the Paladin.
Improved Dodge Stance indication and fixed bugs occuring when more than one stack of dodge stance is gained in combat.
Status Amplifier will no longer sometimes change statuses that have no turn limit to last just one turn.
Fog will no longer cancel out the Refractive Skin upgrade.
Taunt will now properly prevent enemies in range from using self-cast abilities such as Brace or Overwatch.
Slowed units with a speed of 2 or less will no longer be able to leap three tiles for 1AP like unslowed units can.
Grapplehooks and Knockback arrow attacks with the directional upgrade which miss their target will now push the object they are hitting instead.
Stun protection and Brace indications fixed, especially with Status Amplifier upgrade.
Paladin running animation when entering combat fixed.
Fixed an issue causing some Visual Effects to cast shadows.
Fixed bug hanging the controller cursor in place when switching between parties.
With controllers, the invalid tile mouse hover marker will appear as it should.
Fixed an issue with targeting units standing on bridge tiles.
The controller cursor will no longer sometimes jump to the corner of the map in tactical battles.
The exploit for stacking heroes in towns is fixed.
Changed kick not to have height limitation (similar to other melee attacks).

Thank you for playing our game and sharing your thoughts, we're looking forward to announcing some big news in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned!

Onwards!

Mar 28, 2019

Beta 73

Streets of Rogue - Madguy

This update brings another bunch of new bug fixes, plus -- FINALLY -- Shapeshifter and Werewolf special abilities are available to custom characters!

Some exciting news, Streets of Rogue has finally entered certification for the different consoles! Things seem to be going pretty well so far, and if this keeps up, I might have an actual 1.0 release date for you soon. I hope. Actually, I should probably just keep my mouth shut :p

For more info on the current state of development, check out my "What’s Being Worked On" post on the forums, which has been updated recently.

This update’s Fortnight Discussion: The "No Limits" mutator, which will roll back a lot of the balance changes I’ve made over Early Access that were meant to combat exploits and grinding, for people who want to partake in those sort of activities.

Beta 73

Graphics

Adjusted hundreds of light sources to look better in “medium” lighting setting
Fix for dead body disappearing if Shapeshifter is killed and respawns
Fix for Crusher appearing beneath walls when fully outstretched
Fix for Saw Blade tracks not appearing properly
Fix for face near health bar sometimes having incorrect eyes
Fix for people not having dizzy stars if they lose invisibility while dizzy
Fix for invisible players not having dizzy stars
Fix for other cases where dizzy stars would not appear

UI / Controls

Fix for orange quest markers for client Big Quests appearing on host when playing as Thief
Fix for credits list speed increasing while the player is chatting in multiplayer and presses spacebar or e
Fix for character sheet instruction text going out of boundaries in certain languages
Fix for text spacing issue in certain languages on lower-right corner instruction text in character creation
Fix for Randomize Appearance on character creation being triggered when player pressed Start
Fix for Special Ability display on interface flashing white sometimes when switching abilities
Fix for missions screen closing on host when client completes a mission
Added option to show a list of players in a multiplayer game with the R3/RT button chat menu
Fix for quest notification animations occasionally showing text in incorrect color
Fix for incorrect class being selected on Character Select after possessing certain classes and suiciding
Fix for player’s debt not displaying accurately when transitioning between levels

Playfield Objects

Fail-safe for cases where a player’s interaction with an object was not cleaned up properly
Fix for players sometimes getting the option to knock on doors etc. when behind the door
Closing outside doors does not produce a noise
Failsafe for cases where part of Crusher could remain after it was destroyed
Fix for Turrets being able to shoot at people who were not in view of the nearby Security Camera
Fix for player not triggering ground-based obstacles when jumping and landing on them
Vampire Refrigerators no longer have food and drinks in them, only money
Fix for multiplayer client's Sell-O-Matic payouts not counting toward payout total on host
Fixed cases where Clone Machine could allow multiplayer client to clone too many items

Items

Player cannot pick up items from behind bars, fences, lasers, and barbed wire
Fix for Police Baton being placed amongst guns in the weapon scroller

Status Effects / Traits / Special Abilities

Possess special ability is available to custom characters
Werewolf Transformation special ability is available to custom characters
Chaaaarge ability synergizes with Secret Vandalizer
Hacker is capable of blowing up any Door Detonator through hacking
Fix for cases where player would get a trait that would normally be cancelled out by one of their current traits when using Augmentation Booth to get a random trait
Fix for player being able to hit ghosts with Ghost Gibber when they have a trait such as No In-Fighting and the ghost is aligned
Characters with Zombiism who also have The Law are not considered Guilty
Fix for NPC Assassins being able to cloak themselves after becoming zombified
Fix for Former Slave being called Slave after being depossessed
Fix for cases where Withdrawal could appear at the same time as Feelin’ Alright in multiplayer games

Combat

Fix for rare cases where Hologram could take damage
Fix for holograms having collision for a single frame after being spawned
Fix for occasional issue destroying fires from multiplayer client
Guns may not be fired more than 10 times per second
Fix for rare cases where dead NPCs could crush shrunken players
Fix for blind spot in collision at the beginning of lunge attacks
Fix for certain cases where bullets could be shot through walls with Shotgun

Ending

Fix for potential weirdness if a multiplayer client triggered the ending on a slow connection
Fix for fires not disappearing, fire hydrants not ceasing to spill water, etc. during ending

Mutators

In Low Health for All mode, player loses only 10 health instead of 20 when giving blood
Fix for player not losing the game if time runs out in Time Limit mutators while they are teleporting or falling into a hole

Level Generation

Fix for movie theater bathroom being considered an "off limits" area
Water Pumps will not appear near lakes that are already poisoned

Artificial Intelligence

Player cannot interact with NPCs who are Dizzy or Electrocuted
NPCs will not become Hostile toward invisible player if affected by status effect projectile
Fix for Firefighters aiming at position where fire started after the fire's position changed
Fix for NPCs getting annoyed at the player when the player is invisible and throws objects at them
Fix for cases where NPCs would not be scared of the player after the player possessed a Zombie
Fix for cases where NPCs would not be scared of the player after the player transformed into a Werewolf
Werewolf NPCs cannot be scared by other Werewolf NPCs
Fix for NPCs getting hostile toward other NPCs for closing a door
Fix for cases where shrunken NPCs don't run away from you
Failsafe for cases where NPCs would not follow the player when the player is meant to rescue them for a quest

Text

Fix for Spanish words in instruction text for Character Select having inappropriate dashes
Fix for incorrect looking Russian characters that say "No."
Fixed some typos in translations

Performance

Bunch of small-to-mid-level improvements

Multiplayer

Fix for NPCs not having collision when the multiplayer client has exited the level and is spectating other players

Saved Games

Fix for multiplayer host saved game file size increasing every level

Internal

Lots of work on console-specific stuff

Mar 28, 2019

Update! Huge World Map, Constructing Outposts, Quests and more! v12

Tactics: Age of Affliction - Tankor Smash

New update this week, and it's a huge one! Make sure to jump into the Discord and get to know what other people think, and join the free beta to help grow the game!

This update is focused on clarifying more of the many systems in the game. Magnolia is not nearly finished but already there's so much to do that it's all too easy to get overwhelmed right out of the gate, so adding the Quests log helps orient you towards what you're supposed to be doing next.

Next up, it seems like I'll be working on saving and loading, so you don't lose all your current progress when you shut the game down which will be a lot of fun. Might even have music and some art too! Here's a preview of some of the character portraits we're going to have

Be sure to join the Discord for all the latest news on Magnolia, and to let me know what you think!

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Changelog for Mar 28th 2019 v12

Highlights: World Map, Outposts, Quests and more!

World Map and Outposts:
- Over a dozen Locations in the world now.
- Construct an Outpost on three Locations and you'll expand your Domain
- Outposts cost Resources that your Ensembles must be carrying in their packmule. Careful not to die on the way!
- Move resources from the Storage into the packmule while your Ensembles are in the city via ItineraryOverview
- We're planning for more enemy variety as you explore new locations too!
Features:
- New Itinerary Entry type, Construct Outpost
- New World Map that reveals as you conquer and construct Outposts
  - Drag mouse or scroll mousewheel to move map
- Many new Locations to discover
  - All Locations have proper non-final names instead of 'The Forest'
- New Quest system to help guide you to your next goal
- New Resource screen to move resources to and from your Ensemble's packmule
- New tooltips to explain some of the subleties of the game
  - Tooltips for AllEnsembleOverview, ItineraryOverview, InBattle, PreBattle and CityOverview screens
- New Tactic Action, Do Nothing, to allow your units to skip a turn
- Ensemble images on World Map are clickable to jump directly to their overview
Fixes:
- Fix needing to travel if you spend two consective entries at the same Location
- Fix crash if you embark on an Excursion without any entries planned
- Fix hovering over invisble widgets
- Can no longer embark if you have no entries planned for that Ensemble's Excursion
Tweaks:
- New description of the Capital city, Jorvik
- Clearer explanation of why you can't equip a unit in the PreBattle screen
- Fade in the overlay when opening a modal
- Better logging for crashes
- Use 'Packmule' instead of 'PackMule'
- Changelog cuts off after 5000 character instead of showing all 15000+ characters. Can always view full changelog in Magnolia root directory