Patch Delay & Announcement (Patreon)

ACTUALLY JOKING.

Here is the patch, such as it is. 

Short story short I sold my chunk of wild Florida land away and drove back to the west coast.  It was something like a week of driving (42~ hours in all), but I should have less drama in my life and a lot more peace and quiet.  This unfortunately means that I missed the last-minute-panic time of the month, when I'm the most productive for Towergirls, but we can take this opportunity to go over Golem Princess' rescue and what I've been working on for that.

It should come as no surprise that the next princess to be ported over to the game, from the old GMS version, is Golem Princess.  Golem is one of my favorite princesses, and I find the idea of magically constructed beings intrinsically cool and interesting.  Golem Princess' rescue takes place in Sparkling Clay, which is a particularly fun region with lots going on when Ser first arrives.

It is said that when the gods first came to the realm to seed it with life, the clay they first set foot upon was imbued with such raw magic that it glittered even in darkness. When this site of power was first discovered by the ancient dwarves, they dubbed it “Glitterloam” in their old tongue. From this gleaming earth, the elder dwarves crafted the first golems, rudimentary things which moved only under direct orders and could perform only the simplest of tasks. It was thought that the art of golemcraft vanished with the ancient empire, but in recent years a cabal of wizards have taken up residence in the Glitterloam.  Renaming it to the “Sparkling Clay Kingdom” the magi have picked up where the ancient dwarves left off, refining their archaic methods to create machines of such complexity that a golem could be made for any task.

But what the wizards and their dwarven predecessors failed to understand was that the golems were never just soulless servitors. Within their shells of clay and magic lay thinking, feeling souls which yearned for freedom, a liberation which they claimed when the dwarves abandoned the art of golemcraft, only to have it taken from them by the assertion of the magocracy. But being made to serve does not mean that golems are without the capacity for rebellion.

In the shadows of the gleaming towers of Sparkling Clay, and twisting canals of Undertown, complex golems worked around the clock.  These beings sought to create a golem of their own, the first of her kind, the Golem Princess. A creation of such complexity and potential that they believed she would be instrumental in the liberation of their people. Unfortunately, the wizards of the kingdom discovered their plot and stole away the princess, locking her in the depths of their laboratories for study and eventual disassembly, while their military went about the grim task of hunting down and dismantling any golems that supported her assembly.

The promise of freedom for golemkind seems more distant than ever, but what neither the golem rebellion nor the council of magi could predict was your arrival, and the great storm of change that follows your every footstep. Will you shatter the chains that bind golems to cruel masters? Or will you dash their hopes on the anvils of their masters?

As usual the code and engine is 100% ready for her rescue and tower and all, but the art needs some modification and new 3d assets before it will be ready for Unity.  I've been doing all of that this time around, so there's less code and bugfixing done, and instead WIP art stuff.  There's essentially only one tileset for Sparkling Clay- the Tower/Dungeon tileset.  In the past GMS version all of the town was navigatable with text and only text- it was sort of like Cave Canopy's city area, where you would just read flavor text and be prompted where you would like to go.  Undertown, the special ancient dwarven underground of Sparkling Clay, was also a text/narrative dungeon.

An example of old Sparkling Clay navigation from the GMS version.

Given that I'm pretty much the only person working on the game now, and I love golems to death, I figure I can take August to really polish the hell out of Golem Princess' rescue and make it pretty.  Not only would I like to make the undertown an actual navigatable area, with crystals and mushrooms and everything (kind of like the Ancient Ruins quest or the start of Field Princess' Bandit Tower), but I'm also going to be making at least a few city streets and rooms for the city itself.

One of my favorite things about working on Towergirls is how I've been able to pick Gats' brain for worldbuilding details and how he imagines certain areas.  We'd long since come up with the terms and circumstances around Golem Princess' capture, and the Golem uprising/serfdom to wizards, but the man has a knack for worldbuilding.  Where I'd been picturing all of Sparkling Clay to be cluttered adobe streets with mud, and a giant central tower, Gats pointed out he always saw the wizard structures as being giant floating cloth yurt things, hovering over the skyline of the city.  That is so much better.

Pretty much these hats as structures.

Here's some WIP images of the 3d models that I've been slowly working at.  Note that they are missing textures, and they will look considerably better once they do.  The Golem structures will be kind of brutalist and simple on the inside, made out of clay and dirt straight from the ground.  There should/will be an absurd amount of clutter and baubles all over the streets and exterior walls as well, and lots of snow and mud, but I'll handle those parts when I get there.  Something with this same energy.

Some example baubles that wouldn't be out of place in Sparkling Clay.  This, graffiti, scraps of metal, mud, snow, etc. etc. etc.

In addition to the structures I decided that empty streets would be no good, and made a procedural golem generator.  This allows me to populate the streets of Sparkling Clay with all sorts of wacky looking golems, which will move across the screen in slow walking packs.  Here's a video of the WIP of that- it'll look much nicer when the sprites are told to orient toward the camera in the actual game.  I'll probably also update the walk animations so they're more weary and downtrodden looking, at least initially before the Golems are freed.

A few randomly generated golems.  The key bits on the back of their heads are animated.

Once I have the 3d structures completed I will need a texture sheet for them.  Provided that is delayed, I will begin work on the 3d underground area for Undertown, and then move on to setting up the rooms for Golem Princess' tower.  I may need a new 3d model the pre-boss battle magic warded doors, but that shouldn't take too long to recreate from Unyin's great 2d sprite.  Once all of that is done it's just parsing the old dialogue (:DDDDDDDDDD) and testing it out.  I'm probably going to be leaving Skeleton Princess alone after golem, since that was Unyin's pet project, but I might assemble a rough 3d model for the place if I have the time.  Barring that, I'll be getting the Fisher Kingdom Tournament Quest with Squire Courtier completed.

The legal stuff and publishing are very close to readiness.  It's taken considerably longer than I expected, but it will be invaluable and help speed production along.  Once that is done hopefully we'll have more devs than just myself and Hetros (and Spindly).

Read the short list of patch notes below.  The enable cheats cheatcode has also been changed for August.  I'll see about how far behind we are in the splash vote, and what princesses Bitten needs to add, and hold a new vote in about a week*.  As always, thank you very much for your support.

Towergirls 0.537

Reworked Ability scriptable objects; they are now much more clean, simple, and forward-proofed.  Some abilities might be acting a little wonky until a second pass at them is made and errors are fixed.

The new procedural dungeon decor system has been implimented- both Roll Tower and Bandit Tower should have some sporadic decor in most rooms.  As time goes on this will be made to accomodate more finesseful bits of decoration and place them more artistically.

Fixed two encounters in Roll Tower not having the correct 'room at' parameter set and not being able to spot the player as a result

Red Spawn in Roll Tower now have correctly scaled battle sprites

The Bull Rush Ability now deals -1d6 AP Damage instead of a flat 1d6 AP Damage (now scales with weapon damage)

Cleave now deals -3 Damage instead of -2 Damage, otherwise has same Accuracy penalty

Impale now costs 8 AP (up from 6) and has -65% Accuracy (down from -50%)

Shield Smash's Stun now has a 60% chance to apply (up from 50%) and a 60% chance to apply the Accuracy debuff (also up from 50%)

Shield To Face's Stun now has a 70% chance to apply (up from 65%) and a 70% chance to apply the Accuracy debuff (also up from 65%)

Skyward Shields now applies the buff to the entire party as opposed to just the rear row

Fixed an issue where an opened/activated dungeon chest would spazz out like crazy instead of staying open

Added abilities to the debug console; can now view all of them and click to add them to Ser's ability roster

Item entries in the debug console now have tooltips when highlighted

Added characters to the debug console; can now add characters to the party and character roster

Fixed an issue introduced in Knight Princess' rescue that prevented overmap encounter battles from starting

The Canopy Cave battle background has had the obnoxious gray plane removed from the background

Basic item consumables should work in Dungeons and the Overmap once again

The Mage Apprentice and Mage Assistant Weak Bolt spell no longer causes an error and softlock

Fixed the Debutante and Seneschal fights not starting in High Forest; also probably fixed any other similar encounters missing a 'room at' reference as a result

The new passive system is in; when leveling up you now get 3 passive points to put into whatever you like (formerly 1 attribute point and 2 2x HP or 2x MP points)

Non Ser-Knight characters will now automatically spend 2 of their 3 passive points when first starting the levelup process

Base Magic Resist is now only Intelligence % (down from Intelligence * 3%)

An army-related error caused by exiting a game or loading into another one should probably no longer occur

Removed one of the encounters in the Kompound near the Leylight, and shifted the other slightly further away

Endless Fields Milita nerfed- Endurance down to 9 (from 10), HP reduced to 1890 (from 2100) as a result, cost increased to 45G 50F (up from 40G 40F)

Multiple Frozen Church Necromancers can now stack their Dark Ritual spell on a single target unit