Towergirls Unity 0.530

Edit: The game is once again too large to append to these posts as an attachment.  Get the build from this download link.

This version marks the addition of Field Princess' rescue, although Bandit Tower still needs decor and a final art pass.  Instead of going through the extremely tedious effort of finishing Enchanted Tower's decor, and decorating Bandit Tower, I've instead focused on slightly revamping the battle system.

Our battle system that we carried over from GMS has been feeling more and more of a drag and kind of bland to me.  It might have been smarter to go for more platformy action combat with a sidescroller in the beginning, or to add in some sort of rock-paper-scissors engagement, or anything of the sort.  With me being the only person working on the game what I can do is limited, but I've decided to convert our current battle system into an Active Time Battle combat system.  Action timers for each character will fill out in real-time, and once full, you are able to assign an action for that character to perform.  I experimented a little with this in the past in the form of turn-timers (only so much time to choose an action), but hopefully this is more of a step in the right direction.  In the future I might add in more minor RTE's to combat, maybe for pulling off abilities, but this is what we have for the time being.  If you encounter any errors with this battle revamp please be sure to report them so it can be fixed.

Along with the ATB battle conversion, I also took the time to relax and made an overmap encounter room for the Midnight Mansion area.  While there are very few overworld events that might occur in that region it was fun to make the trees/art assets for that and get the fog working.  For similar reasons, in the next patch, I might go ahead and make an overmap encounter room for Bloodlit Woods, too. 

If I can get over the burnout, in January I will be trying to finish off the kingdom management systems (more war/faction AI, finishing trading and alliances, policy events, setting princesses to minister territories or your kingdom, etc.).  In addition to that I'll also start on 3d art assets for Frozen Church OR Sparkling Clay.  I spoke with Gats a while ago about how he imagined Sparkling Clay's capital might look, and I'm excited about trying to recreate some of it in the game.  We'll see when we get there.

For now, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy New Years.  Thank you all for the continued support- it makes a huge difference.  Good news still pending.  Enable cheatcodes cheat changed for January.

Towergirls 0.530

Added an overmap encounter room for the Midnight Mansion area because I could

The default Ser light can now be disabled in specific dungeons

Dungeon doorways can now change dungeon lighting when activated

Animated item chests have been added into the game

Item chests and enemies have been added back into Bandit Tower

Lighting and skybox states are now saved and loaded if they are changed from the default in a dungeon

Characters can now be pacifists; they will not participate in battles but grant the party a passive bonus

Items can now be set to be removed from the inventory when returning to the Overmap

New item; Endless Fields Loaf- restores 7 HP and is removed from the Inventory when exiting a dungeon

Field Princess has been statted up and has a new, shiny BBOS entry.  While you won't be able to adventure with Field Princess any time soon they have been set to be the first Pacifist character.  When entering a hostile dungeon, and Field Princess is in the party, Ser will be given the Blessed buff and 5 Endless Field Loaves.

Enemy encounters can now be assigned a buff to apply to the enemies on initialization

Fixed a bug where a party member using Pommel Strike / weapon with a missing reference could instantly kill the targeted enemy

Goddamn leylights should no longer have their goddamn 'actiavted' components turn on when returning from battle irregardless of their activation status

Peasant Princess, now known as Field Princess, is once again rescuable

Dungeons can now be set to disable saving while within it

Fixed an oversight where occasionally the last NPC present in a dungeon or scene could not be located and targeted with NPC dialogue functions

Added a new dialogue function to pan the dungeon camera from its current position to another

Fixed an error that could occur in the Main Menu siege battle when watched for long enough

Incorrect dialogue will no longer play when the game state is transitioning and you bash Space and Enter at very hihg speeds; going to the next dialogue is now paused when the game state is transitioning

Added back in the reward cutscene for rescuing Field Princess in Endless Fields

Field Princess is once again rescuable!  Bandit Tower is missing a lot of decor, but the rescue quest itself is completable.

Towergirls: the Game now uses an Action Time Battle system for battles!  Charaters will be able to act once every six seconds, although each point of Finesse past 10 will increase the recharge rate by 2.5%.  Smaller weapons will refund some of the recharge when used to attack.  Hopefully this will make for more engaging battles.

Initiative is now ((Finesse - 10) * 3) instead of (Awareness * 2).  Instead of battle order, each point of Initiative will now increase the starting Action Timer of the character by 1%.

Sprinting no longer consumes Action Points and is free as a result

Press The Attack now only has a 70% chance to apply a stack

Lighter weapons will refund some Action Timer when used to attack and heavier weapons will have a penalty and put it into the negatives.  Other two handed weapon penalties (I.e. Finesse, Awareness, Initiative, Accuracy) have slightly been reduced as a result.  This bonus will range from -0s at the greatest, and +1s at the worst, corresponding to a +15% or -15% modification to effective DPS.

Added back in the Knife/Dagger attack animation

Being stunned will now remove the Defending status

Fixed an oversight where Ser's defending graphic would appear below the character sprites

Spells can now require a certain amount of time to cast, even after the order is being performed.  Taking damage during this time has a chance of interupting the spellcasting and wasting the spell.  The chance to resist spell interuption, when taking damage while casting, is equal to (100% - (Percent HP Lost * 4%)).

Removed the 'battle timer' option in the options menu; instead there is now a Slider to modify how quickly meters fill up in battle.  Can range from 75% to 125% speed.

Changed attack/spell message descriptions in the output log, in battle, to more clearly denote what is being rolled and when

Boss health has been boosted by about 33-50% across the board

Battle tutorial popup and movement popup has been updated for the new battle system