Happy Holidays everyone! 🎄
We hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season so far and finishing the year off right! Before the year ends, we have some updates to bring to you all based on the feedback we’ve been receiving, as well as to show off some things that we showcased in our monthly AMA that we held last week. If you missed our AMA, make sure you read to the end to see what all you missed and how you join our next one. Now let’s just jump straight into all of it!


We have heard your feedback about the portraits! And we will continue hearing your feedback and making adjustments as necessary. Firstly, let’s take a look at the progression of the beloved Aaron.



As you can see, his original portraits were a bit more of the rugged pixel art style that we turned a bit more HD for the original E3 trailer. We then progressed to the concept art we showed off to yall a couple of months ago. We took in all of the feedback that you all gave us and made some adjustments to the HD version and added in some new facial expressions.

Here you can see how the original portrait looks in game versus the new one


Before


After

We also did this sort of process with our community mechanical engineer (and Santa lookalike 👀), Jimbob.




Before


After

Overall, the previous portraits for these characters just weren't exactly doing the job that we needed them to, so they needed a bit of upgrading so we would be able to include more facial expressions as well as general readability. The designs you see above are still in progress and not final designs, so we will definitely still be taking in criticism.


We’ve been working on updating the interiors of the landers! Not quite like our portrait upgrades, so don’t fret! We would still love to hear yalls thoughts though!



We’ve updated the lighting a bit to give it a more cozy feeling inside, as well as adding in some various objects around the space to give a more lived in feel.



In other interior design updates, while we haven’t updated the lighting in Linny's cabin just yet, we have finished up the interior.






As per our monthly tradition, we did an AMA with our game director, Emmanuel Floret, in our community Discord. This month, we had the special treat of having our art director, Johan Balan, joining us as well. While we had a smaller turn out due to the holidays, we were still able to show off a lot of awesome news stuff for everyone, including a lot of the above work and talking through any questions or thoughts that they had.



Q: While fishing, can you catch trash?
A: No, no trash, but you will be able to catch other things.

Q: Is there going to be a vendor to sell mine items?
A: You have a merchant dedicated to prospecting to buy upgrades. The vendor also supplies the suit which you need to survive.

Q: Since there’s a drone for fishing, will there be a drone to help me care for the animals?
A: Awesome suggestions as we did not think about that. The barn is basically what will take care of animals. For maintenance and petting, we will think about it. Since we already will have drones for crops, it is not that far of a bridge.

Q: Can the drones be named?
A: We have not planned for that at the moment. As we grow the universe and worldbuilding, we plan to slowly introduce different world-based brandings/logos so we aren’t sure if we will be able to rename drones. #lorebuilding

We don’t have a date just yet for our next monthly AMA, but definitely join our Discord to keep in the know for when we do schedule it!
Thank you all for your continued support and patience as we continue working towards EA next year.

In the fifth chapter of the ballad, you will have to add an illustration

to receive one of twelve powerful bonuses.

A new Megadwarfs mode has been added!

Megadwarfs mode replaces regular dwarf mode.
Megadwarfs are very good at making jelly.
Reach the bronze league to unlock it.

Additions and improvements:

• Fixed a bug with the Dragon eye that made it impossible to use the
  bonus after a concert or burning ballad.
  
• Soup spice images no longer stick out of the button.
  
• If you have a large number of spices, the description can be scrolled.
  
• Now, when you open the achievement menu through a notification,
  you are taken directly to the achievement.
  
• Achievements are divided into two screens - 'Achievements by zones' and 'Other achievements'.
  
• In the quests menu, added the ability to see a total list of multipliers for all completed quests.
  
• Made a scroll for the Hall of Fame.
  
• Changed the algorithm for playing sound when quickly obtaining several levels of the ballad.
  
• Desert worms shoot more accurately.
  
• In the additional options you can choose a new look for your cursor.

.faster walking speed
.ne ui started
.music and hitmarkers

Hey there, tactics fans! I'm back with another update adding a bit of extra graphical polish, fixing a few bugs, and even including a few presents for people making their own campaigns. (It is that time of year, after all!)

Here is what's new in version 1.0.43:

-- a massively improved water and lava shader. Liquid terrain now undulates!



-- the level-up screen is now animated, with stat changes and new skills appearing sequentially instead of just being there all at once when the screen opens. (Clicking will skip the sequence and display everything all at once.) Each change is accompanied with a new sound effect and some nifty particle effects!

-- fixed: the game camera was cropping out important information when zoomed in to combat exchanges occurring on the bottom row of the battlefield.

-- fixed: rotating a unit while an attack tile for a self-use skill with an asymmetrical AOE pattern (like Hold) would result in the character rotating but the AOE pattern not rotating to match.

-- fixed: the game was determining facing incorrectly for AI-controlled characters using 0-range skills with asymmetrical AOE patterns (e.g. Hold).

-- fixed: the game would sometimes initiate babble speech for the first branch of tutorial or event text even though no "speaker" character existed.

-- fixed: when reloading a mid-battle save with holds active on the field, the holds would be placed but would not be visible to the player.

-- updated the end credits with additional sound effect credits.

-- new in 1.0.43a: the game now displays new masteries upon level-up in the same progressive fashion as new stats and skills.

-- fixed in 1.0.43a: there was a typo in some of Umber Gnawbone's dialogue in the Coria Dogs Basement fight.

-- fixed in 1.0.43a: the game was displaying new masteries and new stat values in the level-up screen prior to the animation, undermining the effect of the change.


We also have miscellaneous goodies for campaign creators, including a bunch of fixes specifically with respect to proc gen maps:

-- improved the visuals for Twirl: added a character animation, improved the skill timing, and made the swapping occur visually (rather than via an instantaneous teleportation a la Juxtapose).

-- new script action: SwapUnitPositions. This causes two named characters to visually swap positions on the battlefield as described above for Twirl.

-- new parameter added to SpawnFloatingText and SpawnFloatingTextAt script actions: word wrap. Set to false to force pop-up text to remain single-line.

-- improved the backup routines for placing faraway enemy units in proc gen battles so they're less likely to end up being placed completely at random.

-- fixed: there could sometimes be range errors when setting distance values in proc gen maps.

-- fixed: the game would sometimes fail to overwrite the scene display name upon loading a proc gen map, leading to it not generating a random name for the map.

-- fixed: the game wasn't correctly applying phase, particle, and impact sound properties to spaces in proc gen maps.

-- fixed: the game was not saving and reapplying the map seed for proc gen maps to mid-battle saves correctly.

-- fixed: the "random drop" spawn algorithm wasn't playing nice with proc gen maps, resulting in units placed via the GenerateUnit and GenerateUnique script actions with coordinates of -1, -1 sometimes not spawning at all.

-- fixed: the ItemDrop script action wasn't functioning properly on proc gen maps.

-- fixed: the game was keeping the map seed for a proc gen battle in memory after beating that battle, meaning that any subsequent return to that proc gen map would reproduce the same battle from the saved seed.


That's all we've got for this update--all the other work I've been doing this month is secret work on Together in Battle. As always, thanks for your support! And if you haven't left a review yet, please consider dropping one: positive reviews help a lot.


Yours in tactics,

Craig

Alpha 0.0.2a

Minor Update
Restart the game and steam to pick it up!

Started Some updates of the alpha

. faster player movement
. added some game music and hit marker sounds
. started updating the Game UI
. small discription at the start to help new players on how to play the game

Hi all,
Today I have pushed all of the changes from the beta branch to the default stable branch. If you played on beta than you are probably familiar with most of them, but if not you can learn about what has changed from this post.
Please be invited to join Lost Flame's discord server at https://discord.gg/cq4YkS946F


You will finally have a reason to visit him. Brokbrog can eat any kind of item and in some cases he will spit something out afterwards. For example, if you feed him any 2 rings he will probably spit out a new random ring. There are few combinations right now with more to come.

Some of the bosses will drop their essence which will allow you to craft some items at Hythe. Those items are always the same. The goal is to have all bosses give essence and have their respective items that you can craft. The items are quite specific in what they do, so there won't be clear "always need to craft it" candidates.

Now you can give items to bottle knight! He will wield any weapon you give him, and wear any armor (or jewelry) that you give him. He will also use any items that you give to him. This creates an additional layer of item combinations and synergies between yourself and the bottle knight. As a consequence his base armor and resists were slightly reduced.
Another change is that the bottle knight will pick up some items by himself if he thinks they are better than what he has - however you can always ask him to give them back.

• Grand Executioner level and fight slight rework
  
• Calven Duning fight slight rework
  
• some enemies will pick up items
  
• all summoned monsters will grant you exp when killing enemies
  
• removed Infested Tunnel level (Hungry Caverns now connect directly to Abysm)
  
• monsters summoned by scrolls of summon monsters will usually be friendly and will fight for you
  
• scroll of teleport is usable when webbed now

• added new option in the in-game menu for changing zoom/scale of the display
  
• alt-tab will not force the game to revert to windowed mode
  
• all rings, amulets and wands will have icon in the inventory - similiar to potions and scrolls - so that is easier to recognize them in the inventory
  
• improved the visibility of item counts in inventory for stackable items
  
• you can enable/disable chat sounds in in-game menu
  
• you can enable/disable borderless mode in in-game menu
  
• some clean up in text messages
  
• added status icon and text notification when fighting unarmed
  
• the game will load it's data differently, so launching your first game should no longer take as long
  
• added the possibility to rebind the chat key (via options.config file)
  
• improved the visibility of which item is currently selected in inventory
  
• added the visual indication of items' enchant level when in inventory (let me know if it makes the UI messy/too convoluted)
  
• you can press shift+space to hide/show ui (e.g. if messages cover the area too much)
  
• killing istimid gargoyles will give a notification in chat
  
• changed how the results of the ladder mode are displayed
  
• added status and text notification when fighting unarmed

• slightly more drops on easy and normal difficulty on early levels
  
• slightly more drops in early levels and slightly less drops later
  
• bottle knight will last much longer before disappearing and he can also follow you between areas
  
• butchered convicts will now explode also on death
  
• significantly reduced the amount of gold you get from sacks
  
• charred behemoths now deal much more damage with their melee attacks
  
• some other small balance changes that I didn't note down

• new special type of potions - grant you permanent buffs, at a cost
  
• ~30 new items
  
• added 3 new achievements (crafting an item, getting an item from brokbrog, defeating Arnet, the Honest)
  
• added a little more variety to Dismal Lowlife's den

• bug fix for some messages in tutorial not disappearing
  
• fixed duplicating item glitch when having 2 stacks with the same cursed/uncursed/blessed status
  
• axe attack - swap places will move you even if you kill enemy
  
• added some missing sound effects
  
• fixed a bug when sometimes inventory would open with menu and the player would not be able to close the inventory.
  
• fixed rune of leech crashing the game
  
• blighted Spikeshield now works properly and grants weapons the on-hit bonus
  
• player does no longer move when typing in chat and movement is bound to hjkl
  
• fixed game crashing when using cursed wand of fires
  
• improved error handling in general - even in case of errors the game is more likely to handle it without crashing
  
• fixed some issues with giving/taking cursed items to/from bottle knight
  
• added some missing sounds
  
• fixed Moonsword not increasing the lifesteal strength with enchants
  
• added missing status icons and descriptions
  
• fixed a small bug when displaying to hit bonus for weapons

If you encounter any bugs, or unexpected behaviour don't hesitate to ping me!
Cheers,
Bartek