Another week, another update. I wasn't really planning for there to be any headline features this week, just some all-around polish, but, well, things never turn out like you plan for.

FEATURES

• Local multiplayer (hotseat)
• Teams
  • Play side-by-side with AI or with your hotseat friend
  • Challenge yourself with several AI teaming against you
• 5 new rare units for Demonology: Ash Demon, Ashen Giant, Hellgoat, Firestinger and Firefly
• AI now has access to using adventure buildings, demonology, diplomacy, necromancy
• AI now casts spells in autobattles to take less casualties
• Save file optimisation
• Graph comparing strength of different factions

Hotseat multiplayer has been a feature that I kept pushing out because I thought it was way too complicated to handle. I believed I would have to do at least a minor change to *every single script dealing with difference between the player and AI*. Thing is, the game operates with a common variable named owner, used for armies, heroes, mines, towns, etc. And a lot of places in code, the value owner=0 is assumed to mean that it is the player that is controlling the object.

Then I realised I had been thinking about it wrong all along. Instead of changing all the code dealing with owner, I could instead just change the owner variable. And thus hotseat was implemented in 2 hours, with some extra hours spent dealing with bugs and a few systems that had to be rewritten (fog of war and the arcane spire).

Here we are! Hotseat.

And once hotseat was in, well, it was obvious that teams would have to be added to the game too. And by obvious, I mean that a person from the community said so and I smacked my head, sighed deeply and did it since they were very very correct.

The main feature of this update was actually supposed to be looking at the AI and making it stronger - not just by having it cheat, but by removing some of its disadvantages.

Earlier, AI wasn't able to interact with map buildings like the Sphinx or Temple of Nature. Now it can! Yay. It can also use diplomacy, demonology, necromancy and cast spells during auto-combat.

Hopefully this will make the AI challenging once again. To gain extra data on this, I also added this neat graph to the victory screen, which I hope will give me some extra info on when during the game the player gets ahead. It's also neat and I've wanted it forever.

IMPORTANT: Hero's Hour v0995 is NOT save file compatible. Opening it will delete all earlier save files. Also save files are now much smaller.

Bunch of other changes, like larger battles taking place on larger battlefields. Oh, and new units!

CHANGES

• Necromancy, Soul Beacon, Bane/Curse, Throne of the Dead now all give only upgraded units
• Necromancy has been updated to give the new rare undead units
• Demonology has been changed to give more diverse outcomes, to give new rare demonic units, and for the XP cost to depend on amount of units offered instead of a flat percentage of XP gained
• New demons:
  • Ash Demon defensive creatures that teleport, have wide attacks and turn into fireflies on death
  • Firestinger basic flying creatures that are protected from projectiles and charge into battle
  • Hellgoat advanced creatures that charge into battle, attract attackers and turn into fireflies on death
  • Ashen Giant defensive elite creatures which strike all enemies around themselves and turn into fireflies on death
  • Firefly basic flying creatures that attack by exploding themselves
• Diplomacy now triggers after all battles even at basic rank. Its outcome has been altered. It will now prefer giving units you already have in your army
• Temple of Nature now gives beasts instead of Wild units
• Diplomacy, Necromancy and Demonology are no longer mutually exclusive
• Start of Day Clock now writes “Start of Week X” on the first day of each week
• Reserves now draw with their units more spread out
• Increased the power difference required for neutral armies to flee
• Fog of war will no longer cover the borders of the battlefield
• Large battles now take place on larger battlefields
• AI, autobattle and challenge rating now better estimates the army value of towns, esp. towns with reinforcements
• AI now loses fewer units from auto-combat against foes significantly weaker than themselves
• First Aid tent now does batch healing, starting at 3 units per go, +1 per Engineering skill level
• Increased rate of units that can be resurrected by First Aid tent
• Base hero sight range has been increased by 1 tile in all directions
• Reworked Arcane Spire system to work for all players
• When opening this version for the first time, all earlier saves are deleted, freeing up space on your computer
• Delete the file “DELETE THIS TO MAKE PROGRAM CLEAN UP” in Saves folder to make the program destroy all saves next time it is opened
• Neutral Armies now have their turn after all players
• AI is slightly less interested in conquering towns
• Locked faction can now be selected when picking a map in Free version, but will display a symbol to show that they’re locked
• Hovering over the Upgrade unit button now shows the price of upgrading all units

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that made artifacts swap/not swap with current equipped artifacts at the wrong times
• Fixed a bug that made towns not have the right starting build level when starting at Town/City starting development
• Guardposts now show the correct colour flag when captured
• Fixed a bug that broke First Aid tents when having a high skill level of Engineering
• Fixed a bug that made AI unable to upgrade their units
• Fixed a bug that might stop the Arcane Spire from working when Haste was chosen as the Arcane Spire spell
• Fixed a bug that would merge upgraded and unupgraded units when upgrading stacks and not being able to afford to upgrade all of them
• Fixed a bug crashing the game if a mine was sending minecarts to an object that disappeared (e.g. a nomad that is defeated)

That's it for this week. As always, if you find a bug - crash or otherwise - please get in contact at thingonitsown@gmail.com, at twitter, or in Discord. Also join us at Discord to shoot the breeze, learn new strategies, meet people, harangue me. It's all good.

I think I have an announcement of a release date soon! In a way, I have gone over the deadline I originally talked about when discussing release. On the other hand, I sorta did reach all the milestones I wanted for v1 release some weeks ago, and am now just resting on the laurels and adding other fun features like hotseat.

That's it for now!

- ThingOnItsOwn out!