V1.5 OMEN - QoL and Balance Fixes

[Story Mode Progress] - Story Mode is well on it's way to completion. Though it was intended for this patch, I am waiting on several assets and further testing before it is ready for a live release. Look out for this new mode in another major update at the end of the month... Until then, get your skills up in Quickmatch and Multiplayer! It will truly be a challenge for even the most experienced and cunning players.

[Maps] - All Maps have been rebuilt after a quality pass and feature various new Map Objects and other improvements. - All Maps now have unique Environmental FX and Lighting. - Abilities affecting a character will also affect objects on the tile they are on. For example, this may cause grass to ignite if hit by fire, further hurting the target Character. Beware.

[UI] - Various QoL improvements. - When assigning Movement actions, the Party Stats' Action Bars should more accurately represent the time it takes to complete a given Ability or Movement Action.

[Camera] - Opening the Character Menu no longer snaps the Camera to the selected Character, instead defaulting to the tile the User has Targeted. - Stadium Camera has been improved and all Map view angles have been restored.

[Audio] - More diverse Audio Emotes and Ability SFX for most Characters have been added. - Look forward to further updates as we will continue to expand our Musical and Vocal talents in the upcoming Story Mode release update.

[Abilities] - Mace: Added knockback. - Chain Lightning: Fixed broken chains if a hit character was killed. - Lightning Bolt: Strikes happen faster. - Static: Range increased by 1. - Fire Storm: Increased Effect Area by 1. - Meteor deforms affected tiles less. - All Arrows/Crossbolts are now colored based on the Ability. - Knockback from Bash and other Force carrying abilities will cause damage if the hit Character runs into something solid. If that something is another Character, each will take damage! - Various: Rendering adjustments and visual changes both subtle and drastic have been made to several Abilities to get them in line with the Rendering optimizations mentioned below.

[AI] - AI that choose an attack that targets Map Tiles should more effectively choose the tile based on the targeted Enemy's position. - Exhausted Characters will try to run away and those Melee Characters with Seek and Destroy will use it to create a chance defend themselves from pursuing Enemies | Support Characters like Apprentice Mages will prepare a Magic Arrow for their defense after retreating. - Characters should now leave Map Tiles if they are Dangerous, like Lava Tiles or when any Ability FX that can Damage the Character are present.

[Pathfinding] - Many improvements were made to ensure Characters do their best to get where they need to be and without walking over already claimed Map Tiles.

[Rendering/Lighting] - Materials and the rendering pipeline got an optimization/performance pass. - Added an option to disable shadows, which defaults to Off. This should help performance for weaker hardware. If you want all the eye candy, turn this option back On. - Lots of Coroutines used for various Animations were removed and replaced with more performant and deterministic code.

[Various Bug Fixes/Performance Improvements] - Excessive Raycasts were causing a significant slowdown that has been fixed. - Iterating over all Tile Highlights instead of active ones has fixed a major slowdown. - Slowdowns caused by the Ability FX destruction routine have been fixed. - A major slowdown when the player was selecting abilities has been fixed. - Several slowdowns from excess Garbage Collection have been eliminated. - Many Tutorial/Story Mode UI Fixes/Speedups. - Fixed a bug preventing the Player from interacting with their Party if their mouse was over a Character or Stats Bar at the start of a new Input Phase until the Player moved the mouse away from the Character or Stats Bar. - FX for Spin Attack now spawns as intended. - Opportunity Speed Abilities like Stand Your Ground and Seek and Destroy were defaulting to a 60 frame delay instead of 1 frame as intended. This has been fixed. - Dominate now spawns the correct Attached FX on the Target, instead of the Stun FX. - The Elements of Light and Life now have a proper UI Icon and Heal All was given a new UI Icon as well. - Various Character and Ability descriptions that were inaccurate or incomplete have been updated. [Known Issues] - Online we still encounter the Sync Demon from time to time but I am working hard to limit the frequency of these issues to that of cosmic ray bit flipping events and this release should be our most reliable yet. Internal Sync testing has been really promising. I will continue to look into this and patch any issues as soon as I find them. Despite this, please keep playing Online with Friends as the Server Logs of the Matches are invaluable in my hunt for the Demon. - Active Time Frame Durations are are dynamically set to match ~30fps for the simulation regardless of the actual framerate, but you may still experience slowdowns on weaker hardware as there is a lot going on in each simulation step, especially in Survival Matches or Matches with a high number of spawned Characters. It appears we are largely render bound moving forward with this release, so be sure to try disabling Shadows and Real-time Lighting if you have performance issues.