The Building Planner and v2.8.1

The Release of the Homestead update went really well, overall. But the size of the update does seem to have led some parts of the update to have been done a bit sloppily. So I’m quickly working on a v2.8.1 update, currently live on the public_beta branch in steam, which I hope will assuage the transitional pains to the Homestead update.

I’ve released three small updates into the public beta during the last week, and the most recent one has the rework of the building planner to look like the above. There’s a long list of fixes, including some important performance improvements on large maps, and bug fixes to critical crashes. But a large part of the v2.8.1 update will be a rework to the rework, so to say - an overhaul to the new building planner that should make it more clear and more straightforward to use.

I know the new building planner is controversial. I still hold out hope that polishing it will make people accept and maybe even enjoy it over the old system. If not, I will be looking into options for adding an advanced map setting to go back to the old system.

It might seem strange to have had an update in the works for so many months, and then all the important work fixing issues comes the week after release. My best explanation is that I do, despite signs to the contrary, listen to feedback. Apparently hearing hundreds of people criticising my work was exactly the inspiration I needed to figure out solutions. And furthermore, I’ve received a lot of help from people posting bug reports in the Hero’s Hour discord. As the game has gotten older, fewer reports come in during the long betas. Releasing the update changes that. It’s not a perfect system - but I do want to give a deep congratulations to everyone who has helped by reporting bugs in the discord since the update went live 1½ weeks ago.

Before posting the long list of fixes for the current v2.8.1 pre-release C, I do want to share another thing I’m working on.

Those of you who read the long post about the v2.8.0 update might remember that I had a series of new Rogue town units planned for the update, but those had to be delayed. There’s still an unclear timeframe on when they’ll arrive. Meanwhile, I’ve been polishing off my aseprite and working on updating the art assets for a series of Rogue Realms units which were not quite up to snuff. So, at some point, maybe in v2.8.2, maybe in v2.9, you’ll be getting both those 23 new units, as well as updated graphics for 16 Rogue Realms units.

Anyway, here’s the update notes for v2.8.1 prerelease C:

Building Planner UI changes

BP now shows buildings in horizontal rows instead of mixed rows and columns

BP now sorts buildings by their requirements more strictly

Updated icons for BP requirements

Updated frames for BP to more clearly show what can and cannot be built

Changed font of BP

Improved BP performance

Readjusted building requirements

Fixes and Changes

Fixed subroutines for drawing the overworld HUD displaying your owned towns that took a lot more performance than was reasonable, significantly slowing down the game the more towns you owned

Fixed a bug leading to the artifact duplication check to stop working after the player had picked up a treasure chest or similar dual-choice resource

Fixed memory leak related to the new upgrade feature, slowing down games as they went on, as well as prolonging save and load times

Optimised performance for large maps by reworking the secter and coastline systems

Terrain now looks more correct when quickly zooming out the game

Fixed a crash when you would quit the game straight from the main menu

Fixed a bug related to expecting more hotseat players than the actual number of players

Fixed a bug related to setting all players to hotseat, then removing a player

Fixed a bug that prevented hidden beasts to respawn on the Gold Beach or Dreamscape terrain

Fixed a bug that in some cases would prevent hidden beasts from respawning

Fixed a bug related to Unit edit mods, making them often crash

Made sure unit edit mods can edit the stats of units whose stats were changed recently

Updated the Mirrored game data unit data edit files

Fixing an exploit allowing the player to make the AI think it's dead though it's very much alive

Changed the Heirloom skill to now only give one artifact when several level-ups are queued at the same time

Chinese translations that were missing are now added

Added a subroutine to clear up unused dead heroes, such as those that were created by a bug in v2.8.0

Extending Blight Ritual specialty unit protection to the second spec unit from Split Branch unit if the hero knows Mastery

Updating Blight Ritual so when it converts units into less power than the original, the lost power is remembered and added to the next Blight Ritual proc. This is a slight buff

Fixing a bug allowing Temple of the Learned to proc several times for the same building

Fixed Cartographer not working

Fixed a rare crash during enemy spellcasting in battle

Taught the AI to not use Shadowcloning and other spells requiring the hero to be alive while the hero is dead

Fixed a bug related to Devastations owned by a recently defeated player

Fixed Aether Forge being able to offer unique spells the hero already knew

Changed the Bloodwarping/Unit_get_elite() targets for neutral Goblins, Elves, Ants, Amphibians and Dragons

Fixed an issue where converting a town would prevent some town bonuses given to visiting heroes from working

Fixed Town Founding leading towns to have too low buildings levels

Fixed a bug related to Devour Enemy, Devour Own and Devour & Digest spells crashing the game when cast on a unit about to die before the spell completed

Fixed a bug that prevented Forest Spirits from being resurrected by the Infirmary despite v2.8 being meant to specifically fix that issue

Fixed a bug that prevented Corpse Eaters and Tarantulas from being resurrected by the Hospital

Fixed a discrepancy in how Soul gain from Decay towns is calculated. Before, non-Decay units counted. Now, non-Undead units count

Added a special case to the Infirmary for Wild, considering Anima a town unit even though one cannot hire Anima in town

Fixed a bug that gave the player a random hero instead of the desired hero in case the map re-rolled during generation because of wrong generation

Changed the UI for people who play with classic skilltrees, swapping the position of the Skillset and Ledger, and giving access to the new Ledger instead of old Ledger

Fixed a bug that made the AI still use the new skillsets even when playing with classic skilltrees, even affecting what skills recruited heroes would start with

Fixed classic skilltree settings showing the wrong descriptions in the tooltip for what requirements various skills would have

Fixing an AI stall bug related to an AI hero trying to defend a town with the Caravan Stables

Fixed a bug that made the screen flash whenever an AI interacted with an adventure map building, even if they did so beneath the Fog of War

Infirmary now works for superupgrades, too (Dragonworm, Loss, Wildren)

Rolled back a bug fix that made the Tavern work inconsistently when switching heroes

Putting in a new fix to the original bug that allowed the player to get tavern heroes with too many skills

Enabling the player to use the Switch Hero feature to switch between rehiring a dead hero, or recruiting a new hero/scout

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/