*NOW LIVE (6/21/2019)!

*Discuss the new changes on Discord @ https://discord.gg/tol

The new whisper changes allow the Mastermind to actually place their Birds on someone before people can whisper. Currently, everyone can just whisper the King in the first second of the day with no downside - and without the MM being able to place down birds.

The original Allies ability was not very fun, limiting claimspace even more so than any other ability in the game. A vast amount of people even believe that the Princess flirt is unfun, and Allies the same - but worse. Giving the King a guarding ability gives a reason to communicate with the King, while making him unable to guard the same target twice in a row makes it so that the King actually has to plan guards, instead of just blindly guarding the Prince every night.

Mystic whispers turn the game into a 1-3 player game. It’s very unfun and a ton of people seem to dislike “Whisper King Meta” (WKM). However, with a very low chance of being able to read into the whispers (Illusionist still has it) and a way lower chance that the person getting the info is evil, it should be more fun.

I’ve left a trail of hints, but to officially say it: Like promised before, our success goes back into the game for upgrades! That said, we’re revamping our graphics: All of our 3d gfx. Over time, we’ve revamped our UI (I love our current UI! Google some early-launch screenshots and prepare to laugh). We also mini-upgraded our models, which was a decent upgrade, but also very minor. This time, however, we’re going all out. Oh, yes: Thanks to our growing playerbase and recent, successful promos, we were able to expand with a new Technical 3D artist (dev + 3d artist hybrid), “Vini” – hop in Discord and say “hi” to him! We’re making great progress and will let you know when we’re closer. When will you see these new gfx? Perhaps sooner than you think! We’re aiming for the end of the year, but that’s just a wild guess.

I took over non-scalable code (code that does not follow standard techniques, such as the lacking of comments, irregular naming conventions or non-modular code) that requires an “Xblade revamp” so that fixes/changes/balance take 1 hour per change instead of 1 week per change: Code should be very readable and modular. As I plan to dev Throne of Lies for a long time, what I’m looking at is unacceptable and frustrating to work with: It sucks for everyone. So, apologies for the recent patches that were a bit boring (but necessary)-- I will take responsibility that, as a manager, I should have reviewed this code over time – but it worked, so it was just assumed standard until I dove in and realized, gah…

About the Guide/Class Cards/Tutorial/etc: Similar to earlier patches, I’m not just revamping the code left to me, I’m also vastly improving upon it. Last major patch, I added sfx as I caught up on the ability system, added some deathnote improvements after catching up on that code, etc – in this case, I’m thinking scalability (future-proofing the game): Currently, every change, I have to manually sync it in 3+ different places, which is why you often see a desync between class cards and actual abilities. It also isn’t very clear how abilities were shifted and made code very difficult to read. Now, it’s literally drag and drop for classes and the abilities they have. If I want a Butler to Assassinate, I simply remove an ability slot and drag in the Assassinate “card” into it. Boom! That easy. The hardest part is done – now I need to sync it in-game with the abilities/notifications for the next patch.

Localization: I know this isn’t an exciting feature to native English speakers, but remember that our success directly equals higher-budget improvements - In this sense, it is exciting for all! It’s been dragging for over a year, now, when we first started working on localization. I kept running into walls, dynamic strings (text that changes) took ages to implement, and had to add “localization keys” (marriage between a word and text) to over 3000 textboxes… then, the localization, itself (a 30,000 line json file): We finally have enough for an alpha. We’re not done, yet, but at least those foreign to English can learn in their own language (with a nifty toggle between English and their language, when playing in public games where English is required). We’ll later add optional separate queues for their own languages, once we get things in order. Currently, only traditional Chinese is available. Once the template is set, it’ll be easier to support more languages.

Scene fading: Ooh, ahh… it’s more than just scene fading. That was just an extra bonus and not the main focus, by far (although nice). It’s all about “async/additive” scene loading. Before this, everything was sync (1, wait, 2, wait, 3) instead of async (1 + 2 + 3 at the same time): This means faster, more-efficient loading with scalability. Additive means we can load more than 1 scene at the same time, meaning there’s always a “buffer” scene, meaning buttery smooth loading (sort of like YouTube buffering to ensure smooth playback). This also means we can break scenes, later, into smaller ones and load them in/out async: This is how games with seamless worlds do it! You preload the next area “before” you get there, then load it in async/additively. It seems like there’s no loading times, but it just loads with a buffer in the background. Well, we’re doing that, now, too! We’ll improve upon it later. This will help us later, especially, when the new gfx is added (as it’ll use more juice, so optimization is important).

More Balance: When? Well, I think it’s almost time to form that balance panel I wanted to form. We’ll be choosing from veteran players with at least 500 hours with minimal warnings/bans, a history of being nice to new players (so their focus is on both new and old players), and a participating member of our Discord community. Some folks that represent the community. We’ll then transparently discuss how to shift the meta of the game in a positive way and implement such changes. I’ll have the power to veto, so it’s ultimately my decision on what goes in/out, but the panel will greatly help represent what the greater community desires. The interest of new players is also important, too, since our plan is to GROW! So with new players, we need to make sure they also benefit from balance changes and meta shifts. Meanwhile, I’ll work on some class fixes and finish “Xbladeifying” the code revamps to ensure things are easier to fix as we talk balance. Also, I still need to fix class bugs (that will indirectly affect balance), as this happens. Please don’t ask to join the balance panel – We’ll find YOU

Tutorial upgrade: When? Currently, we just scaled it and sync’d it. This patch focused on better wording of abilities/class descriptions in the class cards (that’ll sync to in-game notifications and ability hovers later): To spend minimal time on it (for now), I’m going to just reword things significantly better next patch. I’ll also add something about moderation to ensure all players are treated well.

Quality over quantity: I’m still revamping tons of code in order to properly scale, now that we’re getting bigger – the game is also significantly larger scope than it was when we launched in 2017. Instead of tons of small patches, the new norm is going to be heavily-tested, high-quality patches. Rushing doesn’t help anyone if we have to revert it 3 times. I’m eventually going to make a status BOT in our Discord to alert when there’s an outage, and the exact cause – our servers aren’t the most stable in the world, but they do its job. Mostly ;D but when they don’t, we’ll be able to know ASAP.