Update - 0.72.0.0 (@Experimental Branch)

Summary

Bloody hell, this patch turned into another long haul — six months in the making. But as I mentioned in my devlogs, so have my toddlers been playing Pokémon with all viruses and bacterias, “Gotta catch’em all!” and their summer-vacation. So I haven't been able to work for even half of this time.

Things just kept escalating like a domino effect. It all started when I decided to add more abilities. I realized the game had poor support for that — especially the super-ugly talent system I’d built before (yeah, not proud of that one!). But there were also features I really wanted: casting times, abilities with multiple effects, stacking status effects, in other word, more complex abilities.

The real troublemaker was how badly things played with object-oriented inheritance. So I scrapped that and built a much simpler, component-based spell system — sooo much easier to work with.

Oh and finally a heads up, as I have changed so much in multiple places, so there is a higher chance something is broken that I haven’t noticed, e.g. I added a new camera (it determines what you see in the game) that supports much more visual-effects for a tool I’m using (camera,shake, jiggling interface, etc.), but Flash also manipulates the old camera to do its movement, which I easily could have missed. So this patch might have added more bugs that need to be treated :).

Upcoming changes

My plan is to release patches every 2–4 weeks, aiming for every two. Each update will at least add one new feature, like an ability or unit. I know I’ve said this before, but the last patch required big reworks to support more advanced abilities and smarter enemies.

- I never thought it would be so extensive, so my new plan is now:

If I need to add something complex, I’ll work on it alongside the regular updates with new content / fixes. This will be a little bit more time-consuming by juggling tasks, but I definitely think it is worth it, as it will solve this kind of delay in the future. This plan will hold at least until the end of the year, after which I’ll have less time to dedicate as I’ll need to go back full time with work.

That said and as mentioned before, I won’t stop updating this game, not until it reaches version 1.0, no matter how long it takes.

Heads up

I made a lot of changes, so there’s a higher chance of unnoticed bugs. For example, I added a new camera system with more visual effects (shake, jiggling interface, etc.), but Flash still used the old camera for movement, a more “unrelated”/remote thing which I easily could have missed.

TLDR

• Fixes across the board, more noticeable are unit-AI not doing weird stuff

• Introduction to new “code-systems” so I as the developer can much easier (& faster) add new abilities, units/buildings with smarter AI and more playable classes

• Added a new ability in Fire Mastery — A mastery that is the first one that stands out as something different.

• Reworked how “Poison” works

• A step in making enemies sub-faction be more different from each other (much more to come)

Otherwise you could just read the headers of things at top to see if you want to delve more into details.

Patch to Experimental Branch

Oh and a reminder, all these changes are for the experimental-branch, so it may contain “extreme” testing, rather then small balance-changes, to much faster see if the change is on the right way, minor patching