New Weekly Release: v0.160!

Hi everyone, hope you had a nice holiday. I took a much-needed break from releasing a new build last week and just focused on adding content, fixing bugs and trying to finish up the polish for our upcoming Steam release.

I've also been working on the store page and a new trailer, as well as talking with artists, voice actors and reading up on best practices for publication. It's so close to being finished that I'm starting to go full stress mode over every last tiny little detail.

Anyway, another long set of patch notes with a lot of nice new features. Happy New Year, and I hope you enjoy.

- Nym

Version 0.160 - 1-8-2021 

• A fishing guide has been added to the fishing journal, and the basics are displayed when the Fishing Rod is first acquired
• The Quest Journal is now bound to the “J” key (old saves must reset controls to default before the change will take effect)
• The shortcut to call the Skill Point allocation screen is now “K”
• The keyboard controls overlay that appears on startup can now be accessed in-game, and is also updated to reflect the journal and advancement shortcuts
• Fishing has received some bug-fixes, improvements, and tweaks to Lures
  • Mercy’s fishing sprite now differs slightly based on rod type
  • A special new fishing rod can be crafted by upgrading Gertrude’s forge
  • Declining to fish while riding Orus no longer dismounts
  • Dismounting Orus to fish now properly flags the “dismounted” variable so the screen will no longer fade out while trying to re-mount in an unacceptable area
  • Lures and Bait now have colored options in the choice menu, and can also be used simultaneously
  • Lures have been changed; now instead of being a flat Luck multiplier, Luck is multiplied based on the initial fishing check. This is to prevent high-luck characters from over-fishing essence while still ensuring Luck applies to fishing success rate
  • Some of the wait commands have been removed from fishing, reducing the down time
  • The fishing success sound effect has been changed from a bell to a gentler chime
  • Items were made easier to fish, down to 10 inputs from 13
• Added an additional short sequence to the “keep fighting” ending route
• “Trance” has been removed. It never worked correctly to begin with, and never quite lived up to the ideas for implementation that I had for it, so I’ve cut it in preparation for 1.0
• Added missing glasses to a couple of Agatha’s portraits
• Added new pieces of Mercy’s backstory hidden around Shiveworth
• Added a little more evidence of something hidden at the Carvannah aqueducts entrance
• Added a new recruitable character & bathhouse suite
• The 2nd floor of the bath house is now accessible after a certain point even if Liis was not recruited--it is merely empty
• The empty “Advancement” menu has been removed from the skills category, a carry-over from the old Skill Point distribution system that no longer did anything
• The “Equip Skills” command has been changed to “Prepare,” since skills is its own command and spells can also be equipped
• The “Skills” command in the main menu has been changed to “Abilities,” since skills and spells are separate. The Skills submenu has been changed to “Weapon Skills” for clarity
• The “Item” menu option has been changed to “inventory”
• The timed attack cursor has been modified from a plain white line to a colored diamond
• Full-length busts are now shown in combat for characters who have them instead of only the small face portraits
• Fixed a tile overlay issue
• Fixed some pixel errors and flickering on Mercy & Orus’s injured battler sprites
• The timed attack result is now all caps for better spacing, and the result parameters have been adjusted slightly to allow for “perfect” results
• The timed attack target points have been adjusted slightly to to better match the visuals
• Fixed an issue preventing dialogue from appearing during the fight with Corrine
• Fixed some typos
• Fixed an issue where a colon appeared after Mercy’s name in a couple of encounters
• Encountering 2 vox silvae at once now correctly counts both enemies’ deaths towards the full tally
• The minimum ATB and HP bar lengths have been reduced to mitigate instances where a bar could overlap another enemy’s sprite
• Fixed an issue where Fukuro wasn’t properly loading into the fight against the Grey Lions
• Interacting with the bird in the Aster Canyon while riding Orus now properly dismounts so she isn’t speed-walking after the scene
• Added some additional effects to the final canyon sequence
• The background sound effect now properly fades during the scene transfer from the canyon
• Fixed some text runoff
• Adjusted some lighting for better performance
• Fixed a lighting issue in the cove throne room
• Adjusted some parallel processes for better performance
• Adjusted some of the ending narratives for better quality and continuity
• Attempted to fix possible crashes caused by some systems being slower to reference images that are flickering on and off
• Fixed a broken color code in a journal entry
• Fixed the formatting on the scene when inspecting the looted crab hide
• Fixed an issue where Fishmaster Luca could reference being in Witchdale when in Mar’Liore or Emerald Flats
• Changed the contents of a couple of different chests
• Swagger is now correctly removed at the end of a battle