Another week, another upda... Wait. That's not what this is.

Well, it is an update. I have three pages of patch notes to share. Some substantial new features too, even. But the biggest focus is:

Getting the game ready to release. And let me tell you, making a game is a very different beast than trying to finish things up for a release. All the loose ends, the "I'll get to that later". It's a bit of a mess. But I've spent a lot of time now, and with the knowledge that v1 won't be perfect (or the end of new content) makes me feel better. Hero's Hour v1 is coming. And then I can finally start adding stuff to the game again.

20th of June is the goal. It might get pushed out. More likely, it'll be in the middle of some sort of new stuff being developed. That's fine. Anything left behind can be picked up in v1.01 or even v1.1. Because release will not mean the end of development.

There'll be some structural changes. The game will rise in price (though for the first week at least, it will be on sale for the current price). Oh, and the 8th faction will become playable. That'll be pretty exciting. It's been sitting around, ready to be unpacked. But that's not new, per se.

What is the v1 update containing, then? What makes the difference between v0x and suddenly doing v1x releases?

I don't know. In my confused fugues, I have stumbled on the idea that it means polish. And what is polish? Well, it's stuff done on the game that's not features. It's something like the above, a new main menu layout.

You'll see the same in the feature notes. Stuff that was missing, things that were left generic and unimproved since early on in development. Things that make the game less not good.

FEATURES

• Better pathfinding that will minimize amount of battles on path, instead of either having zero or all
• Hero’s Hour should now work correctly with all screen resolutions
• Neutral unit  stacks now respawn on the map over time, bringing new treasures and artifacts
  
• Battle HUD improved
• Skill reworks for Offense, Armorer, Resistance (now Warding) and Archery
• Treants with Rangers in their branches, Rangers and Swamp Arrows shooting rains of arrows
• Hotseat PvP battles where both players control battle
• Enclave town music theme - now all towns have unique music themes
• AI are now able to use faction mechanic buildings
• AI are now able to buy balistas, first aid tents and artifacts at the artificer
• Combat results animation
• Main Menu screen overhaul
• Lexicon expanded
• Credits screen

One big feature that's not on the list above is the new languages being worked on. I hope to either at v1 release or soon after having French, Polish and Russian as supported languages. If you've played the Spanish version of the game, you'll also see a whole slew of new places where English text is correctly replaced with Spanish.

This is mostly thanks to the excellent community member Empischon, who has spent a lot of time adding polish to the language pipeline. Of all heroes, he is the biggest. For the current v1 prerelease, French and Russian are unavailable, but Polish is in. Wow! A new language! Also thanks to Empi for that.

Okay, this next list of all the changes is incredibly long. Thus I will split it up somewhere midway with a neat picture that is also an announcement (just ganging up on announcements today, are we?).

CHANGES

• Edge-scrolling has been changed, now active in a smaller area, but also active above UI elements
• Mines spawning without neutrals guarding them no longer create resources in front of them
• AI now makes sure to place units hired in a town directly on their heroes, instead of the hero having to pick them up
• Also makes sure to instantly upgrade units
• Critical hits by right-side units now show white numbers
• Gargoyles are now small again
• Offense rework: Damage bonus now scales as units take damage
• Armorer rework: Health bonus decreased, but now gives chance for units to spawn with Projectile Protection or regular Protection
• Resistance has been renamed Warding, and the knockback resistance has been replaced with a -5 spellpower to spells cast by enemy heroes
• Whenever a town changes owners, it’s one week town conversion cooldown is reset
• Destroy Undead now also affects rare undead units
• Spells can now be selected with 1-9 number keys, ordered left to right
• Opening the Hero Info or Town Management windows while they’re already open now closes them. Hotkeys for towns and heroes can now open up the UI
• Shift+Enter now ends turn
• Hero movement speed can be adjusted in the options
• Treants now spawn with Rangers using the tree as a turret
• Decay heroes will no longer be guaranteed to be offered Basic Necromancy (they still have a high chance of learning it)
• Spells cast by units are less powerful
• Units with splash projectiles now inflict less knockback
• Amount of units given status effect from damaging spells has been reduced, especially for lower rank units
• AI reinforcements from dwellings now spawn as caravans and are more intelligent
• AI is now able to interact with obelisks and find buried treasure

AND BEFORE THE SECOND HALF OF THE CHANGES LIST, a small announcement

Hero's Hour is coming to Steam! Woo! It won't come to Steam quite as soon as v1 will reach itch.io, but the steam page will be up soon and waiting for you to collect wish-lists and recommend to your friends etc. There'll probably be a content patch and then another polish patch before the steam launch.

So far, I've promised that people who've bought the game here can get free steam keys. I guess I'll keep to that for now, but post release, this might change.

MORE CHANGES

• Sulphur cost of Efreets and Arch Demons has been reduced. Gold cost has been increased to match
• Sulphur cost of the Infernal Gate upgrades has been reduced from 10+5x to 6+4x
• If a player has several Infernal Gates, they will all be upgraded to the level of the strongest Infernal Gate
• The Infernal Gate is now accessible earlier in the town tech tree
• Warding has been made weaker and will never make units 100% invulnerable
• Symbols in battle are now less obtrusively large, especially visible in large battles
• Elementals summoned through the Wild Elemental Gate have had their cost reduced from 200 gold to 100 gold per elemental
• Forest Sprites no longer cast spells
• Decreased the amount of Anima given by high levels of Retribution
• Training Grounds will no longer upgrade into units from the same set of mutually exclusive dwellings
• Gold cost of diplomacy discount from higher ranks reduced
• Diplomacy gives slightly fewer units
• Units given by demonology are now less random
• Demonology gives slightly more units
• Cost of units gained through demonology has been increased
• Amount of units given by necromancy has been reduced slightly
• Cost of units given by necromancy has been increased greatly
• Power bonus of spells from the Arcane Spire has been reduced from +50% to +20%
• Arcane Spire spell choice scales with the development of the town - the rates of Major and Ultimate spells has been reduced to higher levels of development
• Combat results now shows your full army without miniatures
• Mousing over an army on the minimap will now show full army without miniatures
• Nomads are no longer more expensive if you’ve hired a hero the same week
• Healing spells are now much more powerful
• Building foundations have been improved
• Units are better at avoiding obstacles on the battlefield
• Paths now get recalculated at the start of day
• Easy difficulty is now easier and Hard difficulty is harder
• Easy AI now gains fewer units each week
• Castles now consider any hero in the three spots below their gate to be visiting the town, even if they haven’t triggered the interaction
• Hero’s stats are now shown when they level up
• Each rank-up of Sorcery gives slightly less cooldown decrease

Just a funny picture of one of the pathfinding algorithms I did not end up keeping. To bring us into the infinite list of bugs fixed.

BUG FIXES

• Holes in walls will now be plugged
• Fixed a bug that made the AI believe they should defend their towns from neutral armies
• Made AI calculations not stutter as much
• Spire spells will now always show at first spot in your spellbook
• Fixed a bug that could cause mana to desync during battle, leading to unlimited spellcasting, but a great mana deficit post battle
• Red trees that help seperate territories no longer become walk-through-able after saving and reloading
• Fixed a bug related to guardposts that could crash the game in very specific circumstances
• Fixed a bug making the enemy player see your combat results in hotseat mode
• Fixed a bug that made a conquered guardpost switch allegiance before combat in hotseat mode
• Fixed a bug that made the first aid tent skip resurrecting some tier 1 units
• Heroes that are tired once more have this written across their movement bar - now also writing for how many days they are tired
• Fixed a bug that prevented the right music to be played in Duels
• Fixed a bug that made the Elemental Gate not replenish for Wild
• Fixed a bug relating to leveling a skill way too high
• Fixed a bug relating to having heroes of a very high level, making them not show up in the UI
• Fixed a bug that made the spellbook become stuck to the top of the screen when alt-tabbing during battle
• Fixed a bug that made either all or no units from a stack be resurrectable by the first-aid tent
• Fixed a bug that made AI attacking a hotseat player skip combat
• Fixed a bug that made some hotseat battles show up with wrong colours
• Casualty numbers after fleeing a battle no longer look wrong
• Fixed a bug that made units on the battlefield walk into obstacles during a siege if there was a hole in the wall on the other side of the obstacle
• Fixed a potential crash bug related to attacking guardposts
• Fixed a rare load bug that would spawn a wall of red trees across the overworld map
• Various fixes for the Tutorial map
• Fixed various bugs related to the Arcane Spire
• Fixed a bug that could make warmachines so cheap they gave you money to buy with high enough levels of engineering

Strange thing happened during the development of this update. The AI crossed over the edge to actually being difficult. Too difficult even. This is quite an exciting time, and though I have already made the Easy AI much easier, I am quite content that Hero's Hour is once more a difficult game to master.

That's all for now! 

Oh, and also two small celebrations. First, Hero's Hour was featured in the Canard PC print gaming magazine, the June issue. This is very exciting, and also very confusing since I can't speak French. But I ordered a magazine and can't wait to receive it. Also! Hero's Hour has reached 10,000 downloads on itch io! That's amazing, and much more than I had ever expected when I started out. Beyond that, thank you to everyone who has had fun with the game, and to those who have reached out and with whom I have had fun. Much love <3

I hope to write to you again this coming Sunday, finally reaching the vaunted v1 release.

ThingOnItsOwn says g'night.