BUNDLE FOR CHARITY

Last week, we participated in Itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and along with the help of 1,300+ other developers and creators, we were able to accumulatively raise over seven MILLION dollars for charity! While we're just a small, small fraction of the community that made that happen, I'm so proud that we could be a part of such a cool moment in the history of games. At the end of the day, games are a way for a lot of us to explore worlds and viewpoints outside of our own. The perspective that we gain through each and every interaction with people outside of our own social circles, and even in the media we consume can help make a gigantic difference in how we view the world that we share and call home.

I don't wanna ramble on or come off as preachy, so I'll just say this: If you helped support the cause because of Ephemeral Tale, thank you. If you're joining our community because of the bundle, thank you, and welcome! Regardless as to how you've come into our circle, I'm glad to have you, and hope you'll enjoy this weeks Pupdate all the same! Before we hop into this weeks Pupdate, a reminder! We have a public-facing Discord server, should you want to give easy feedback, just talk the talk, or what-have-you! You can join us anytime: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf

Ephemeral Tale 1.11.2 Changelog

• Fixed numerous cases of improper ellipsis use
• Highlighting targets in the main menu for Potions and other consumables now has a fading effect like every other menu (thanks, fmoo!)
• New implementation of “screen shake” that should feel substantially better (thanks, fmoo!)
• Jellies are no longer consumed if you attempt to eat them outside of their respective dungeons
• New & improved social buttons (thanks, Tim!)
• Changes to text rendering methods to improve performance in text-heavy scenarios (thanks, fmoo!)
• Adjusted the color palette of several item icons
• Fixed an issue where several enemies didn’t properly reward Power
• Fixed an oversight where in situations that the player received a hidden defense buff, there was no magical equivalent
• Siegfried’s Rally skill has been buffed to heal for 33% of damage done, up from 20%
• Siegfried’s Taunt skill has been buffed to lower his incoming damage taken by 20%
• Buffed Merlin, Siegfried, and Clarke’s starting statistics across the board
• Wallaboots now have a new attack meant to put emphasis on their speed
• Ariella now has slightly harder-hitting magic attacks, weaker normal attacks, and takes more physical damage
• Whenever HP or MP is added to a piece of gear, those additions will now yield twice as many points

This week has another big group of not only performance-focused changes, but QoL focused changes as well. In the past, there have been reports of a bug that I think we've squashed regarding item use in the menu, but it's been hard to tell due to another long-standing bug! At the very least, those changes should be able to inform us if we've indeed conquered the initial issue, and at the very worst improve the legibility of the menu. Additionally, we now have a new and improved screen shake implementation! This is a BIG one for me, personally. I've wanted to make this switch for some time, but haven't been able to until now. The largest difference is in how the screen shake functions: prior to this week's patch, screen shake was only on the horizontal (X) axis, and not the vertical (Y) axis. This made it feel kinda rigid, stiff, and less satisfying than it could feel. Now, it's active on both the X and Y axes, in addition to having some easing algorithmic goodness applied to it. For information on that (if you're a nerd like me), check out this great talk from Squirrel Eiserloh:

Additionally, we've got some fun buffs to Siegfried to bring him more in line with the other companions as they exist today, and a universal raise across the board for the other major companions (sorry, Jackson!). As I've mentioned in previous Pupdates, when working on something larger, I can tend to be a week or two ahead of the live version in order to ensure that I have time to test things properly before pushing them out to you guys. With that said, I wanted to let you guys know ahead of time: Major Update #4 will NOT work with existing save files of Ephemeral Tale. There are some technical reasons for this, so let's go through those, shall we?

So Ephemeral Tale was built with a huge array of possibilities in mind, and the tech behind it has proven incredibly solid to this point. The game is incredibly stable (most crashes are due to missing assets in the packaging process, and that's not even a hard crash), runs on a ton of legacy hardware (and will run even better with some of the changes coming down the pipe), and has seen incredibly massive overhauls in it's systems since launch without even batting an eye. With your help, I've managed to restructure the entire gear system, the entire save system, the core combat mechanics, and add a ton of playable content-- items, quests, NPCs, bosses, enemies, zones, just loads of great stuff. But to really take the game from where it is now to where it could be, requires adding a certain brand new element to the game that frankly, doesn't play nice with old save files. That's the Skill Tree.

Last week, we spoke for the first time about the skill tree, how I came to the conclusion it was a good fit for the game, and why I think it's the best way forward (if you haven't read that Pupdate, feel free to!) for the game to advance. The problem lies in how the engine itself initializes players and the skill tree; it's added to the player at the very beginning of the game, using a reference from within the player characters code, pointing it towards the tree. The catch is that save files use an instance of this data, or a copy. Those copies don't have this data, and so they don't update automatically when that particular data is changed (as it doesn't know to do this, as it doesn't exist in the first place). It's possible to overcome this problem alone, but there exists some other issues as well.

See, in addition to the above, one of the fundamentals of the skill tree is player choice. One of those choices is going to be given to you very early on in the game: Double Strike, or Arcane Bolt? These abilities will no longer be a standard, out-of-the-bag thing, but now earned by playing the game (granted, it's at like level 5 or something like that, so it's not very long until you get it). But existing save files already have these skills. Again, it's possible to overcome this issue, but even the solution presents its own problems (i.e., it requires EXTENSIVE testing to ensure that the method is NEVER, EVER, EVER under any circumstances, bugged or not, called on save files instantiated post-skill tree, as it would render those abilities unobtainable). It's a big risk to all save files if there exists a bug like that that escapes out into the wild.

Finally, the last issue lies in stat distribution: under the new skill tree system, stat distribution as it's known in the current version of the game won't exist. To clarify: it will be there, but it'll instead be a node that you select on the tree. You want to raise all your stats a little bit? That's 1 Skill Gem, please. Oh, you wanna raise just your Attack, but by a lot? Sure, 1 Skill Gem, please. This ensures that "gaming the system" by always packing stats into one stat doesn't rampantly destroy the gameplay experience or balance, but also addresses feedback of these choices feeling inconsequential due to their frequency. But... Scrolls of Power present a problem. See, as they exist today, they serve as level ups (but without the level going up bit). In a post-Skill Tree world, they'll reward you with Skill Gems instead, but this means that for existing save files that have gone a bit bananas on their stats? They might just run wild all over the game.

Hypothetically, that last issue is the easiest of the bunch to fix (especially considering I've already done it once): reset the character stats to their normal values, and leave nature to run its course. This would be a perfectly fine solution if it were the only issue bringing old save files over presented, or if players had only been playing for maybe a week or two-- but we're just over 5 months into our Early Access period! Some of you guys have clocked in some impressive play time, and have just completely broken the game to your whim. To throw all of that away feels disrespectful to your progress, your time, and your passion for Ephemeral Tale. To that end, when the skill tree goes live in Major Update #4, the final patch before it will go into the Previous_Build branch on Steam (I can add something similar on itch, as well) to ensure that any players that have no interest in restarting the game, don't have to.

Who knows? Maybe between now and then, I'll come up with a brilliant solution to the problem that solves every issue it presents. I did feel it best to give you guys a fair heads up, rather than just dropping it on ya. I'll be keeping an eye on our various social channels to see if there's a solution that lies somewhere in between. With that said, I've gone on for long enough this week, so I'll let you guys get back to playing the game after one last little announcement for you: 1.) there's an Ephemeral Tale demo in the works, and it will likely be the first chance you guys get to play with the new skill tree 2.) Next weeks patch will be our first minor content patch that we've had in a few weeks, involving a new quest and a new piece of equipment.

Can't wait to share more with you guys, but until then, stay safe and have fun!

-- Ryan
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