“The time has come”, Walrus said. He was not talking about the latest Illic Patch, but I am. The focus of this patch has been to improve the flow of the game as much as possible. I was fortunate to get some in depth advice from a fellow game developer which spurred the direction in the latest patch. In particular it reminded me of how painful it was for players to have to navigate to the campaign map to perform basic actions such as using crystals to level and to equip items. The other major change is the reworked user interface. I have updated the colour palette for menus and improved menus to make them easier to navigate (though that is an ongoing process). So without further ado what are the patch notes.

New features

• Can now level up in preparation phase
• Can now equip items in preparation phase
• Simplified equip process

User Interface

• Less contrast in UI to make it more readable
• Shows full unit sprites in character menus
• Darkened backgrounds in story scenes
• Added hotkeys to character menu in battles
• Added hotkeys to level up menu
• Fixed glitches where invisible UI elements would respond to input
• Fixed glitches where inactive UI would respond to input
• Fixed glitch where “show health bars” option did not remember setting
• Fixed glitch where visibility of combat panel would change if changed ability in combat
• Fixed selection glitch when swapping units into battle

Tile Display

• Fixed glitch where enemies would leave tile highlights when moving
• Fixed glitch where fast characters movement was displayed incorrectly
• Fixed glitch where arrows which display path would not update if switched between range 1 and 2 weapons
• Fixed glitch where highlights would not update when switching between range 1 and 2 weapons
• Fixed glitch where threat highlight would not update correctly when state was updated
• Fixed glitch where the last space was not used when attacking from an adjacent tile

Levels

• Added 2 levels 
• Converted some maps which were drills into normal battles
• Ensure that characters will be at level 2 for levelling map
• Improved maps tips

Characters

• Fixed glitch where Priscilla could not equip Attack Curse (even though she could in a drill)

Finally I have streamlined the map creation process, both in code and in the editor. This is a big step forward towards closing the separation of drills and normal maps - which is to say I am hoping in future to make the “tutorially” maps more interesting and integrated into the game. With the rehauled UI system and smaller more focused menus it should make it easier to focus on what is important about the game.  As always there is a lot to do and a lot I could write, but I think I need a break from Illic for a while especially after I found the bug which delayed this patch by seventeen days… (I was planning to ship this patch on the same day as my last blog entry.) Either way, we’ll see.

So until next time, I hope you enjoy the game.