1.0.4 Prepatch is now LIVE!

Hi everyone,

The latest update is now LIVE! There was an issue with backers not being able to link their game and Patreon account following the update, which has since been fixed, so anyone who may have had problems linking their accounts today or yesterday should now be able to do so again!

Tutorial Improvements

Game hints have been added to the game, which will appear as players progress in the game and help players better understand what they can do in the game and how. There are more than 20 hints already, and they can easily be disabled. Players can also reset hints from settings, which will allow already-seen hints to be shown again. Hints have been introduced to make it easier to introduce new players and expand the game's tutorial as development progresses. In the future, the prologue scene will have a much stronger emphasis on introducing players to the game's story and universe, while relying on hints to introduce the player to the game's mechanics.

Action bars

Action bars have been added to the game so players can cast their favorite spells and use items without constantly having to open their spellbook or inventory. There are two types of action bars: standard and floating. Standard action bars appear within the game screen, while floating action bars appear outside the game screen. For players with extra black space surrounding their game screen, either due to a particularly tall or wide screen, floating action bars can be used to make use of the space not otherwise occupied by the game. Floating action bars also come with the option to oversize them, which can be useful on small screens and mobile devices. To place a spell or item in your action bars, you simply have to drag them to an action bar.

Selfcast

Spells dragged to your action bars from the spell list targeting your own character will have an explicit selfcast modifier, which means the spell will always attempt to be cast on yourself. Otherwise, spells will attempt to target your opponent before your own character.

Macros

Players can now write custom macros for the game. Some spells don't yet have their own distinct icon, and you can instead use a macro to select a custom image or name for the spell that you see fit. Macros also allow you to combine messages with spells, prepare spells with predefined input, and use conditions and modifiers to alter the target or spell of a macro. Clicking an item or spell using the Left Mouse Button while pressing the Shift key will insert the item or spell in the macro. If the macro ends on a blank line, it will also write the standard command for casting the spell or using the item.

You can read more about macros from the guide at: https://battlemageroyal.com/macros.php

Text Formatting

Link items and spells in chat and profile

Players can now link items in local chat, private messages, and on their profiles! Players can link spells and items in-game by clicking them using the Left Mouse Button while holding down the Shift key, or by pressing an input field while holding the spell or item. This will create a link that can also be pasted into profiles to display the item. Spells cannot be linked in profiles. Formatting text for item links created using in-game input is already prepared for use with profiles and you generally don't need to understand how they work unless you are trying to link to an item that isn't owned by your account.

You can read more about linking items and spells from the text formatting guide at: https://battlemageroyal.com/formatting.php

Other changes to text formatting

Character bios can now be previewed before being submitted or accepted.

Added a new table attribute: 'fillavailable', which fills available width without distributing width equally between columns.

Added support for vertical alignment of text formatting tables.

Added "em", "me", and "e" as aliases for "emote" to text formatting.

Added "o" as an alias for "ooc" to text formatting.

The image size attribute can now be set as a reference for profile text formatting.

Fixed an issue with header style inside a details element for text formatting.

Fixed a rare issue that caused text formatting syntax to move around unpredictably.

Fixed some issues with text formatting and input fields for Firefox.

Extra inventory space for confirmed users

Players can now confirm their account to receive an additional 3 item slots for their heirloom container. Any player who has a confirmed account will receive the extra item slots immediately. Players will continue to be able to have an anonymous account, but having a confirmed account is important for preventing account and game progress loss. I'm happy to grant all players an additional 3 item slots, and I believe a time when the extra space becomes useful is a good time to consider securing your account.

Solo Mode

The game now has a solo mode that allows players to play the game without the risk of encountering other players, whether animate or inanimate. Avoiding encounters has also been changed to avoid any encounters while changing location, specifically.

Character Specific Settings

Players can now set character-specific settings for content filters, roleplaying, and solo mode, allowing players to better customize their game experience between different characters.

Emote Commands

Added support for emote commands that are recognized by the game. Emotes include kneel, stand, giggle, moan, bounce, dance, drool, shake, shimmy, smile, and smirk, among many others! For the full list, please type /emotes in-game

Combat Changes

Added persistent delta values for body, mind, lust, and effect timers

Previously, characters would remain online until they had recovered from all damage taken and all timers had finished, since neither was saved to permanent memory. Characters can now be removed as soon as the character is out of combat, and damage taken and timers can be resumed on login. This allows me to introduce much longer timers without characters potentially staying online for hours.

Ailment Triggers

How ailments, like diseases, are triggered has been revised, and no longer considers your body health. Each ailment has an internal cooldown of 60 seconds, and when you spend an action, a random ailment not currently on cooldown will be triggered.

Nameplates

Nameplates can now be displayed for characters in the scene. You can control when and for whom nameplates are displayed from settings. Nameplates allow players easier access to the names of their opponents and can also be clicked to collapse status effect icons. When a player is inanimate, nameplates are used to divide status effects into those for you and your owner, so inanimate players can properly see timers and effects for themselves and that of their owner, separately.

Other changes to combat

All characters now know how to attack.

Players now automatically kneel when defeated.

Quadruped can happen earlier while kneeling.

Action cooldown is now reset after a spell fails.

OTHER CHANGES

Added flirt vocal action.

An explicit status effect for when your character sounds dumb is now displayed to minimize confusion when your character starts writing words weirdly.

Chastity devices and strap-ons can now be worn in any equipment slot.

It is now possible for characters with a penis in chastity to wear a strap-on.

Crafting is now blocked while dazed or inanimate.

Deleting a selected private chat from your inbox will now delete the entire thread.

Added support for canceling status effects, such as having your eyes closed, by clicking on the status effect.

Added a setting for controlling how ignored players are sorted.

Added support for items that cannot be traded, or can only be traded once (not currently used by any items available on the live server)

Added additional protection against players spamming messages in the chat.

Adjusted the duration server- and vocal messages are displayed so longer messages are displayed for a longer duration.

Adjusted UI colors slightly.

Increased minimum game screen size to improve sampling size for mobile screens.

General improvements to how scale and viewport are controlled for the game.

Greatly reduced cross-server traffic and improved compression of server messages.

The character limit for looking for roleplay scenarios has been made more accurate.

Moved the cancel and list buttons further apart for looking for roleplay scenarios, to reduce the chance of players miss-clicking either when attempting to click the other.

Made a centralized system for handling whether a character is blocked from performing certain actions.

The message for when an item was sold on the market now holds more accurate details for sold items that used to be a student.

Made status effect processing more robust against failed cross-server calls.

Overhauled how skills are handled by the game server.

Reordered hotkey settings.

Improved friend list layout.

Improved how third-person speech impediment is processed on the server

Improved how number confusion is processed for dumb characters.

Improved how the deposit tab is selected for sellers when items are sold, so the market is more likely to pick the most appropriate tab for placing crowns.

Improved tooltip placement.

Improved spell search.

Improved rendering of status effect icons and countdown for status effects.

Improved item rendering and handling of missing item images after they failed to load.

Improved how the client tracks materials for spellcasting.

Improved how unstack input is displayed.

Improved item position tracking in client, which should lead to fewer issues with the client and server going out of sync.

Improved how dragging is tracked for touch and small devices.

Improved security against attacks meant to slow down the game server.

Optimized how crafting options are processed on the server before being sent to the client.

Optimized status effect processing and timers.

Optimized loading of vendor data on the server.

Optimized how input is handled for controls.

Optimized numerous server operations, in particular those related to inspecting offline characters.

ERROR FIXES

Fixed a rare issue where two players leaving at the exact same time could result in both player starting to leave without either leaving immediately.

Fixed an issue where clicking between menus could cause scroll positions to be reset.

Fixed an issue where material cache in the client wasn't updated correctly, resulting in materials not being found.

Fixed an issue with "aren't" sometimes becoming "aren't not" for speech impediments

Fixed an issue with punctuations sometimes being removed for speech impediments.

Fixed an issue where discarding an item directly from the stash would cause the item to not be discarded correctly.

Fixed an issue where status effects with a timer would stay dark and at 0.0 time remaining after the timer ran out.

Fixed an issue with word-break in profile revisions and history.

Fixed an issue where becoming feminine could incorrectly say you become muscular.

Fixed an issue with the Nekomimi speech algorithm sometimes processing single-word messages incorrectly.

Fixed an issue where encounter-related effects were not reset properly when someone joined your location.

Fixed an issue where the username color of the previous player inspected would be shown for the next player inspected, if they new player didn't have their own username color.

Fixed an issue with leaving messages being broadcasted by inanimate players.

Fixed an issue with searching spells by tag only finding matches for the spell's first tag.

Fixed an issue where increased bio length for backers sometimes weren't being registered properly by the server.

Fixed an issue where becoming feminine could incorrectly say you become more muscular.

Fixed an issue where special actions wouldn't update properly after reloading the game.

Fixed an issue where failure to restore a login session could cause the browser to forget the session credentials.

Fixed an issue where a spell that was already targeting the caster could rebound.

Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be unable to edit friend notes.

Fixed an issue where equipment would become stuck after a player attempted and failed to remove it.

Fixed an issue with body status sometimes not loading properly during a scenario.

Fixed an issue where Stoke Lust was able to glance and miss on selfcast.

Fixed an issue where some cached information would be cleared too often, resulting in some heavy processes running too frequently.

Fixed a rare issue where it was possible for a character to find their own inanimate form.

Fixed a rare issue where a character would sometimes continue to spectate their owner after turning back.

Fixed an issue where writing in caps could cause emote inserts to not be processed properly

Fixed a rare stuck error.

Fixed an issue where mobile players would be unable to scroll lists, like the spell and friend lists.

Fixed some other touch and mobile device issues and inconsistencies.

Fixed an issue where inanimate players did not properly spectate their owner after being bought.

Fixed an issue where inanimate players continue to spectate their previous owner after being discarded.

Fixed an issue where dyed items with a dark outline would sometimes cause a transparent black square to appear behind them.

Fixed an issue where the character status would not be shown immediately after reloading for a character with more than zero lust.

Fixed an issue where empty chat messages would sometimes be received by other players.

Fixed an issue where the height slider would sometimes be slightly off, which could cause the set height to be off by one.

Fixed an issue where the preview of items being conjured wouldn't always use the worn variant of an item's appearance if one was available.

Fixed an issue where dragging an item from the workbench item container sometimes wouldn't remove the item from the container.

Fixed an issue where the floating input field would stay around after its trigger had disappeared, say, unstack for an item in your inventory after closing it.

Fixed numerous issues with number confusion in spoken text caused by a character being dumb. 

The changes to the server structure were a success, and I'm now in a much better position to execute the game's release on Steam and itch.io! Between fixing bugs in the latest release, I plan on getting started on the new launcher for the game that will be used on itch.io, Steam, and the game's front page in the future, and I plan to start the initial testing of rigging in Live2D!

Thank you so much for your support, and you'll hear more about my progress on the game in next month's dev log! ❤️

Cheers,

Tinon