This week's update includes a fancy tutorial and a ton of fixes, but more importantly it includes the long awaited Event System rework, which is to say that from now on, creating new events will take significantly less time, and will one day lead to them being fully moddable. But for now, it's baby steps.

All the events in the game, as of v23, are the same as they used to be, only they're using the new system. Here's a little capture of how they look in the new tool I've been working on:

Nothing crazy to look at, but man does it make life easier! The goal is now to start creating events with a constant regularity that'll make Dominions 5 look like easy mode!

Please continue to use the crash reporter, and make sure to allow it to include the save file and log file. It'll let me reproduce the issues a whole heck of a lot easier, since I can just jump right to where you were when the issue presented itself.

As for the non-event changes, I had some great feedback (and a pair of people recorded their gameplay with thoughts and then even went so far as to document their issues in a spreadsheet, which was amazing. Thank you for doing that!

The game is roughly a year and a half old now and still has a heck of a lot of growing to do, and I'm looking forward to seeing this bad boy grow. There's so much potential here, just imagine what sort of crazy events could happen! Maybe an evil boghag curses your hero with old age, maybe a gentile old bird gives you a trinket leading to your Ensemble finding a huge stash of resources next time they go gathering, the sky is the limit!

Anyway, I gotta get back to work, these Events aren't going to write themselves. Thank you for the support, and remember to reach out to me on Twitter @tankorsmash, or directly via email at tankorsmash@tankorsmash.com if you've got questions or ideas, or even just post them directly on the forums here!

Talk to you soon!

• Features:
  
  • Reworked how Events are implemented. This shouldn't affect your experience
    yet, but it was a massive fourth month project to implement, and should
    eventually lead to easily creating your own events once the game is 1.0
    
  • Brief tutorial that goes over the UI once the Hero is created. This
    includes the main overview screen, the Itinerary screen, the Equipment
    screen, the Armory and Packmule screens
    
  • Tutorial saves/loads progress so if you exit the game halfway through,
    you're able to pick up where you left off
• Tweaks:
  
  • Add option for tooltip delay so they can show up earlier or later
    
  • Add visual effect to the 'view battle' button to better inform you when
    there's something to watch
    
  • Reposition log buttons on the main screen to be off to the side
    
  • Add borders to unit portraits in the Chapel
    
  • Tweaked wording on failing to capture a prisoner to make it more clear
    what happened
    
  • Each game phase now has a custom tooltip over the 'advance time' button,
    rather than just one big blog of text
    
  • Can now inspect the starting heroes in the Hero Creator by right clicking,
    like you could any other unit
    
  • The building cost labels now include building names
    
  • Floating label when trying to build a new building in the capital has text
    highlighting for easier reading
    
  • Add whitespace for text box when removing a unit from the Ensemble
    
  • Animate the building info when mousing over an unbuilt building in the
    capital, and include the building's icon
    
  • Game window position persists across sessions, meaning if you move the
    screen to the right, it'll be on the right the next time it is launched
    
  • Add ultra-hidden/inaccessible match3 minigame[i.imgur.com]
    I made during quarantine for fun
    
  • In the savefile, the unit's name is now at the top, for easier
    identification
    
  • Optimize some core battle logic so battles should resolve nearly instantly
    for anyone who it wasn't before.
• Fixes:
  
  • Fix inspecting a unit during battle showing their final state (ie dead, if
    they died during the battle), rather than their state at the given instance
    in the battle replay.
    
  • Fix pressing ESC during the Hero Creator starting the game with bogus data
    
  • Fix clicking the 'loop' button sometimes not looping the Ensemble's orders
    
  • Fix Hero/Ensemble leader dying during a battle, and not being able to see
    battle results because they were instantly moved back to the Capital
    
  • Reduce texture size for slightly faster loading
    
  • Remove leading '+' character when inspecting armor
    
  • Fix Hero Creator's descriptions and stats not matching their names
    
  • Fix certain Itinerary steps not having a decision made
    
  • Fix reading name file from the disk too often
    
  • Fix crash on loading the game where your first Ensemble wasn't loading
    correctly

This is the first post-Early Access release! It's got a ton of crash fixes and a lot of integrated feedback from you guys! Don't forget that there's a free demo live that you can try out, which is actually the entire game.

You can now cast a magical ritual named Dark Promotion at the Mages Tower to revive a dead minion (non-Hero) unit and have them become the leader of their own Ensemble. There isn't currently a cost to doing so, so I recommend making a handful to really get your exploration going!

I'm still working on writing the new event system so hopefully that'll come out sooner than later now that the holidays are over. Hope you folks are enjoying the game, it's been a lot of fun working on it!

Highlights: Creating new Ensembles, quality of life improvements and a crash reporter!

• Add a new ritual that lets you revive dead minions and promote them to Hero, allowing you to create new Ensembles
  
• Add a crash reporter, so you can submit instant bug reports
  
• Can now see a unit's limb health. The fewer healthy limbs, the worse they'll do in combat
  
• Can now remove units from an Ensemble. (Note this is temporarily not limited to only while not on excursion)

• Add a glimmer effect to 'Embark' button to make it more obvious the Ensemble is resting
  
• Added the Itinerary Index (ie '#3' if its the third entry) to the world screen
  
• Replace 'On Excursion' with the actual entry name for clarity
  
• Reword 'UnsetCondition' to 'Alive' to better reflect that the Tactic applies to any target
  
• Add a button to clear the currently planned-to-cast Ritual
  
• Shrink and rephrase the empty Barracks description
  
• Use the same color for HP/FAT/MOR in the equipment screen and the world screen
  
• Change 'Send' to 'Bury in Chapel' in the Memorial so it's more clear what's happening
  
• Reword some entries in the credits
  
• Use a mono SFX effect for opening menus, rather than slightly off-center
  
• Add a visual divider between weeks in the world log
  
• Remove extraneous spaces on stat explanations when inspecting a unit

• Fix crash when viewing an ensemble without valid members
  
• Fix crash when hiring a new unit from the Pub and immediately reopening the page
  
• Fix crash on inspecting certain Itinerary Entries (travelling, returning to base etc)
  
• Fix showing the dead minion's widget at the top of the world screen
  
• Fix crash for when you hover over a second ensemble
  
• Fix surviving battle members to always having at least 1HP
  
• Fix units not always healing when resting in the Capital
  
• Add logging in several places for dealing with multiple ensembles
  
• Minor optimization of sprite backgrounds
  
• Don't show unexplored locations when you inspect an Itinerary Entry