MoonWard v1.0.30 Patch Notes!

Slaveyko Slaveykov
3 days ago
4 min read

Hello! I'm Mr. Slate and here you can find the patch notes for v.1.0.30 of the android version of MoonWard and its Demo! This is the latest and as of today current MoonWard patch version for both iOS and Android.

If you'd like to support me, please consider joining my Patreon for frequent updates.

I used this release to bring some stability and quality of life improvements as well as catching up on technical debt! You should be aware - there is no new content and no new assets, this is purely a utility patch. That being said...

Let's get to the MoonWard v1.0.30 Patch Notes!

Major improvements to enemy AI when using ranged weapons.

That is when the player is using ranged weapons, not the enemies. I'll introduce more ubiquitous enemy use of ranged weapons in a future update, most likely the next expansion, being announced next week!

With that disclaimer out of the way. During play-testing since v1.0.26 I noticed some AI struggled dealing with ranged spam - you could essentially stun-lock using some moves. I tracked this to a fault in a core functionality of the AI scripts. This is one of the bigger changes introduced in this patch code-wise. I had to fix the scripting parser and expand it to include custom strings used as extra instructions. This was always intended but I must have forgotten to implement it! Oops.

Regardless, what this means now is that I have much finer control over enemy behaviour in combat. Unfortunately I haven't been able to update ALL behaviours (there are dozens) but I will touch on most in the next patch. Some of the main things this can fix is situations where the AI heals at close to or full health and uses buffs when the buff is already active.

Improved loot tables.

This was mostly a back-end improvement to give me more control over loot tables. Initially I only I broke down the valuables category into more sub-categories to allow me to have more distinct groups of items. But then I also updated some loot tables with more interesting or specific loot.

Taxation story event now has a second stage.

If you've played MoonWard, you know there is a map screen event where you get a little cut-out of the newspaper telling you the Empire isn't doing great and is increasing taxes significantly. This event was moved earlier into the game to county Kragnak. Further to that, now there is a follow up to this event later in the game. No spoilers, but the Empire is doing worse than you'd think.

Dialogue decisions can now directly change brawl difficulty.

I finally did it! I finally added an event to my global scripting system to add auras to upcoming fights! It means I can now affect the difficulty of a fight based on the dialogue choices you make in the narrative beforehand! Currently this only manifests as adding some soldiers to a specific boss fight, but I can get creative with this and it's exciting!

This was the second largest coding improvement of this patch. I meant to include this all the way in July 25 but just couldn't find the time! I'm glad it's finally in!

Slightly buffed the starting equipment of some classes.

I'm gonna be honest - I'm not so sure this should have gone on the list anymore - the buffs are tiny and it's mostly to shields and armour so unlikely for anyone to notice. Oh well.

Actually, since I already have the spot - I also significantly buffed ranged weapons damage. Now this should have been in the list and I forgot about. I realised some time ago that ranged items were underpowered relative to their attack durations. I've slowly been creeping them up in power and they kept feeling underwhelming, but last week I just doubled their damage to test what would happen and yeah they finally felt more useful in a fight. To offset this I lowered the amount of times you could attack with them a bit - the numbers were too high anyway. Hopefully this buff makes them more useful to you guys!

Ranged attacks can now be cancelled like all other moves.

Continuing with ranged weapons - I didn't realise their attacks weren't cancellable. That was an oversight. I want all moves to be cancellable in the light blue stage. You can now cancel ranged attacks with other moves while in the light blue stage of the attack.

Significantly increased the wind-up time of ambush attacks.

This has been bugging me for a while. I never meant for these attacks to be a guaranteed damage - they were always meant to be dodge-able. So I finally caved and close to doubled their travel time. This makes them much more predictable and easier to plan for or react to.

Additionally, I made the icons smaller. I found I was missing dodges because the icon was touching the centre but technically hadn't finished its travel. Making them smaller I found that was much less of an issue. I'll look into other ways to help solve this problem in the future but I'm happy with this solution for now.

Changed XP colour to light blue.

Luan is blue, luanar and crystals are blue - it just made thematic sense to tie experience with blue.

Fixed bugs & typos.

I'm not going into the massive list of fixes but there were a few dozen. Nothing game-breaking, though some denied access to content and others broke story continuity.

I need to sit down and play-test the game for a whole work day more often. Apart from bugs I also found a bunch of small annoying things that were a 5 minute fix.