Big update this week.

Hero's Hour v 1.4 comes with a lot of new features

• 17 new spells
• +9 adventure map spells
• Mage's Guild rework
• 17 new hero skills
• 3 new units
• All new battle and overworld music by composer Lautaro Ariño
• Combat sounds (work in progress)
• Player selection UI improvements
• Unit rebalance
• Heroes now respawn once dead

That's it for now, see you next update!

- ThingOnItsOwn

...

Yeah, I'm just kidding. Let's talk about stuff. Where to start?

Let's talk about the overarching development. Introduce Lau and stuff like that.

I've been working with Lau for the last couple of months planning out and implementing infrastructure for upgrading the part of Hero's Hour which needed an update the most: Sound and Music.

You see Lau portrayed above as the sound goblin, or as he might say it, lydnisse. Rather how I would say it. Because I don't know how Swedish people speak. However, I now know how Swedish people do music: Really really well. The new music he's done for the game is quite amazing.

But we're not just talking about music here. He's gone all out and wants to reshape the full sonic landscape. And a humongous task in this case is to design COMBAT SOUNDS. Hero's Hour has quite a special row of challenges here, since there's 200+ units each of which would use their own attack and death sounds, plus various miscellany. 

For the same reason, while this update basically sports a full MUSIC replacement, the combat sounds are only 50% there, if even that. But we're working on it. By which I mean, he is. That's amazing. For once I don't need to do everything myself, and it's been a joy to work with someone with both ambition, diligence, and with more than enough artistic vision to make this a special ludoauditive experience.

The above is the GUI we've been using to develop all the sounds for units. It's super sophisticated, allowing modulating one-to-several sound files, layered, and even with inheritance. Developing this felt quite crazy, but I think it's all worth it in the end. But then again, I have been so lucky to not have to actually fill out and design all those effects.

New spells! 17 new combat spells to be exact. All of them have new effects never before seen, though some of them do then re-use those effects. Still, there's a lot of new and sorta crazy effects and synergies. These include lingering AOE effects

NEW WATER SPELLS:

• Rain of Frogs & Frog Torrent: Select an area of the battlefield. Frogs will fall from the skies, attacking enemies
• Gigantism & Army of Giants: Affects friendly units. Makes them into giants
• Beam of Frost: Deals damage to all enemies in a line cast from your hero. This spell cannot be used if your hero is dead

NEW FIRE SPELLS:

• Sunbeam: Deals damage to all enemies in a line cast from your hero. This spell cannot be used if your hero is dead
• Chaos: Affects enemy units. Scatters them around the battefield and makes them confused
• Comet Strikes: Select an area of the battlefield. Comets will strike, damaging friend and foe alike

NEW EARTH SPELLS:

• Corpse Explosion: Affects corpses, making them explode, dealing damage to any enemies close by
• Transform: Affects enemies, turning them into random units weaker than the original for the rest of the battle
• Evolve: Affects friendly units, turning them into random units stronger than the original for the rest of the battle
• Hex: Affects enemies, turning them into frogs. When a frog dies, the original unit is restored
• Second Life: Affects corpses, summoning ghosts of the dead units

NEW AIR SPELLS:

• Rain of Arrows & Siege Rain: Select an area of the battlefield. A rain of arrows will fall, damaging all units there
• Duplicate: Affects friendly units. Creates copies of these units (with less health and damage)

Additionally, the old spell Disguise has been reworked:

• Disguise: Affects friendly units. Creates copies of these units that deal just a little damage but still have most of the health

This means Disguise is no longer a bad spell. Yay. It's only been 9 months.

Next big change is Adventure Map spells as well as a new design for the Mage's Guild buildings. The old system had a strange system where each faction had an ordered list of spell elements and would almost only give spells of the primary and secondary element. They would have Mages' Guild for early game spells, and then Shrine of X and Temple of X (i.e. Shrine of Water and Temple of Air) to give late-game spells. Well, neither of the latter buildings were good or interesting. This rework changes that.

Now, each level will not only unlock three new combat spells, but will also unlock a special Adventure Map spell. These spells cannot be used in combat, but can be cast once a week per hero out on the adventure map. Their effects are pretty useful.  The most powerful spells are gated behind the Archmage Tribunal and a level 15 requirement. Still, this will make spell-casting a lot more interesting and versatile.

The spells are detailed above. You may notice that each faction now has a spell element they focus on when it comes to their adventure map spells. Thus the different factions have different adventure map spell paths.

Additionally, each building also gives a boost to any visiting hero - though this is a one-time boost per hero, and not per town.

Lots of new skills. Wasn't planning to add anywhere near this amount of skills. Honestly, the number is absurd. But most of the ideas are pretty unique, and sometimes it just gets easier to add content when you do a bunch in a row.

• Tactics
  Increases amount of creatures the hero can field on the battlefield at any one time, 
•  Creation
  After combat, the hero will create some elemental creatures for their army. Amount depends on mana spent during combat, 
•  Champion
  Increases the health and damage of elite creatures in hero's army (creatures with power 9+), 
•  Dragonking
  Gives the hero dragonblood points whenever they gain experience points. Once enough has been collected, it is exchanged for a Red Dragon, 
•  Potency
  Increases the mana-cost and effectiveness of all spells. Significantly increases health and damage of units using magical attacks in hero's army, 
•  Legion
  Increases the health of all creatures by +5 and damage of all creatures by +1 (especially useful with basic creatures)., 
•  Toxicology
  Makes poisonous blobs fall from the sky early in combat. Enemies hit will become poisoned, taking damage for the rest of combat, 
•  Midas Touch
  When the hero attacks, they have a chance to turn enemies into golden statues, instantly killing them and adding gold to the hero's coffers, 
•  Elementalism
  Summons elementals throughout combat. Type depends on the current terrain, 
•  Bloodlust
  Whenever creatures in hero's army dies, the attack of nearby allied creatures increases, 
•  Swarming
  Creates phantom duplicates of some of the creatures in hero's army. Chance is lower for more powerful creatures, 
•  Bloodwarping
  After combat, allows the hero to transform some of their basic creatures into elite creatures. Amount depends on number of enemies killed and especially amount of own units lost, 
•  Oligarchy
  Increases the health and damage of all creatures, but decreases the amount of creatures that can be fielded on the battlefield at any one time, 
•  Destruction
  Whenever creatures in hero's army die, they have a chance of casting a destructive spell, 
•  Recalcitrance
  Whenever creatures in hero's army die, they may leave a vengeful spirit which will continue fighting for them, 
•  Mastery
  Recruits <UNITNAME> for this hero's army over time, or <UPGRUNITNAME> if your hero already has any in their army. <UNITNAME> and <UPGRUNITNAME> have more health and deal more damage., 
•  Hex
  Turns some enemy creatures into frogs at start of combat. When the frogs are killed, the original units come back

There's some "systems" in the design of these new skills. Like Bloodwarping and Creation both being new diplodemomancy skills working sorta like diplomacy, demonology or necromancy. Recalcitrance and Destruction are both designed around giving benefits for losing units, inspired by the Earthen hero skills. Oligarchy gives fewer units in battle while Tactics and Swarming gives more units. Mastery and Dragonking give more units over time. Etc. etc.

I keep going about the idea of adding "Perks", which would be sort of like skills, but one-offs instead of multi-rank. I also keep going about the idea of gating certain skills behind other skills. Several of the newly added skills are actually ideas for perks now turned into skills.

I'm still playing around with the idea of changing the level-up system for a skill tree system. But I think I've gone and abandoned the idea of perks now.

Finally, we also get a new player selection screen which is more graphically pleasing. As if I'd do new UI to be more pleasing.

Really the reason is that now with there being 10!! different factions, it's about impossible for a newcomer to get an idea of the different factions. This new UI alleviates that and looks super cool to boot.

Right, and finally, there's also some new units. The Hillkeeper (previously "Dwarf") and Mountainguard from the Wild faction have been turned into neutral units, their slots replaced with wolves. This is due to the new Earthen faction making it a bit odd to just have a couple of random dwarves in the Wild roster. And finally, a new small elemental unit mainly accessed via Creation skill.

Next up is campaign stuff, then polish, then v2 release, aka. steam release. For the next while, you'll be seeing things like LORE and WORLDBUILDING. Let's see what happens.

I've been shooting for a September release, and it's not completely out of the question that this will happen. But it might be a 1st of October thing, or maybe even mid October thing. I'm working at the pace that's best for my health and for the completion of the game.

I hope to see you around on twitter, in the discord, or in the itch comments.

- ThingOnItsOwn out!