New Bard's Tale Trilogy Patch Released - v4.28

Hi all,

We're pleased to announce that we have a MAJOR patch for the Bard's Tale Trilogy ready for release... actually it's out right now!

Here's a shiny new trailer showcasing some of these major changes!

For those of you who have been on the beta testing branch, please note that the below includes some of the features that were in the v4.07 beta release.

There are a LOT of changes to go through, so we've tried to break it down into major segments.

We hope you enjoy these additions to the game! Please let us know any problems you see.

Cheers
Linds

MAJOR FEATURES

• Full language support for French, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian. Right click on the game in your Steam library, select properties, then the Language tab, to select a different language.
  
• All outstanding cameos have been upgraded and added to the game. We've continued to use the BT1 cameos as the default for character creation, but all the relevant cameos from the other two games are there, available for selection. For example:
  
  
  
• Our new In-game Bestiary tracks the monsters (per chapter) that you’ve fought, and progressively fills in their stats and details.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1749945517
• The new In-game Manual has all the information you could ever want on how the game works, including information on the differences in Legacy Mode and how the game is different to the original releases.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1749945262
• While we were at it, we’ve also added the Original Game Maps in to the game (and we even fixed the spelling of 'Philippi').
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1749945899
• Skara Brae (BT1 version) has received a bit of a make over. Each of the statues now has its own unique model.
• New dungeon wall sets for Hiroshima, Berlin, Harkyn’s Castle, mountain and forest areas.
• Over 30 new visual effects for combat, and to improve the environments (like new night-time skies).
• Controller support for everything other than text-entry. This utilises a radial selection dialog for the various options. It works quite nicely, even if we do say so ourselves.
  

ART

• Updated the game icon.
• Improved textures for the text scroll and added animation.
• Changed path shading so paths head under gates. Each terrain blends the city entrances to the path used inside.
• Put in chapter specific frames around the 3D view and adjusted screen layouts to fit.
• Added BT2 and BT3 tavern window anims.
• Updated Tombs roof to use a skull/ground texture combo instead of grass/ground.
• Fixed gate code that was breaking the gates direction on load - this was causing the issue of when saving while facing sideways under a gate, on load it would make the gate face sideways.
• Hooked up VFX for shooting arrows in combat.
• Fixed BT3 review board final briefing to use correct cameo/portrait.
• Changed a variety of spells to have different or added SFX and VFX.
• Fix for the taverns in Ciera Brianna were using the bard window anim instead of the BT3 tavern window anim.
• Fixed BT2 Dungeon entrances transition into dungeons so it correctly fades into black.
• Made the gate backing now one sided so it is only black looking from the front.
• Cleared the apport effect on starting combat, to stop the blue light being on forever.
• Fixed Major Levitation not having the carpet effect because it wasn't a no-target spell.
• BT2 has had some adjustments to its sculpting and smoothing.
• Fixed Interdimensional teleports (BT3 Apport Locations) to fully fade to black before switching locations.

AUDIO

• Stopped the "click" sound from playing when the copyright is on screen.
• Fixed some instruments had the wrong music type set (horn of gods, shrill flute, willow flute, angels harp).
• Generic out-of-combat spell buff sounds now work.
• Changed a variety of spells to have different or added SFX and VFX.

CRASH FIXES

• Fixed crash caused by bad fix of monster group suffix letters.
• Fixed hunstman gloves type that was creating a crash when on the treasure screen in the Mountain of BT3.
• Fix for non-progression if you leave moving state during the frame and then activate a command.
• Fix for non-prog if firing off commands (like view inventory) after combat had started.
• Fix for issue with selling items - was creating an exception when highlighting an item due to internal list item indexes being incorrect after removing an item.

DESIGN CHANGES

• Adjust songs so they are no longer affected by Chapter Differences. Songs settings now resets both availability, effects and strength of the songs.
• Daggers now do 2-4 damage.
• Harmonic gem drop rate slightly reduced.
• Made the Maze Of Dread question persistent even in legacy, so you don't have to keep answering it.
• Fixed Allirias last ghost to only accept the rainbow rose. Previously it was also accepting a white rose, which allows you to skip a large part of the puzzle.
• Health drain ticks faster and takes 5% of the players health per tick (rather than fixed amount dependant on difficulty). Taking a percentage means it will balance across BT1 -> BT3 properly. Spell drain also switched to 5% of magic per tick. Drain tiles should be a bit less nerf'd now.
• Swapped path clues 1 & 7 in Destiny Stone so 7 is by the exit. Added a "there is a portal here. do you wish to enter" message before going into the snare to make it a little clearer as to which room is the "bad" one.
• Removed the bottom center door from Oscon's Fort lv3 that leads the player to the portals that they should never be able to access. After playing through the original in both Amiga and C64, we're fairly confident this was a bug in all versions of the original game as the design clearly is trying to just tease the player with those portals (but their positioning suggests they are never meant to be used). Before this fix, we were matching to both Amiga and C64.
• Moved Allirias Tomb entrance from N6,E0 to N0,E0. Patches the automap on load to clear the old stairs icon and add a new stairs icon at 0,0.
• Moved Werra battle to the south east room, where it was clearly intended, judging by the text pretty much saying its there, and the room is the only anti-apar area on the map. Loading into an existing map that has completed that task will move the journal entries to the correct location. Constructed a small room for the shield, since the text also says "it is in the next room".
• Status effects created by item magic have been changed. These now cannot be persistent (automatically downgraded to 148 min timed) and only have half-duration to normal spells. This makes items much less powerful and much more rewarding to find one.

GAMEPLAY

• Identify item special attacks for breath weapons are working now.
• Reset gold to 1200 on full reset transfer BT1->BT2 or BT2->BT3.
• Fix for identified figurines were showing bad "Use".
• Fix for using wrong character to differentiate monster groups of same monster type.
• Fixed Titan suit and Mithril suit to use the suit slot type rather than the armor type slot.
• Disarming map traps now counts towards "armless" achievement.
• Locked camera look around to only when in walking state and removed ability to lookaround when paused.
• Legacy settings now works with only empty settings.
• Removed the BT3 scarlet bard from Skara Brae in legacy songs mode.
• (??) info on objects where the range is unknown no longer shows in chapter differences mode (since you can't identify the unknown).
• Fixed BT3 map difficulty - all the run from battle difficulties would have been <very> easy in BT3, as everything was erroneously set to difficulty 1.
• Fixed the shop so it checks if you have space for wineskins before buying them.
• Fixed being able to collect multiple Harmonic Staff in legacy mode from Saradon's House.
• Fixes for town teleportation for Joystick/mouse modes.
• Identifying an item at Roscoes now contributes to popping the achievement (shopaholic)
• Allow the journal to be opened, if automap is disabled but we are in BT3 and chapter differences are enabled.
• Fixed the casino to be lit, no matter the time of day.
• Fixed healing cost in temple.
• Stopped death snare timers from being able to be activated multiple times.
• Added support for something odd (reduces detection of traps/special/secret doors to 1 square instead of 3, and adds an icon to the automap).
• Fixed issues where AntiApar to other dungeon levels was working but shouldn't be. Mainly effects BT1/BT2, because the system was written for BT2 per-tile flags.
• Disabled snare timer when in pause and restart it when we come out of pause.
• Fixed an issue where going down a portal didn't set the stairs flag, so if there was a script to go back up, like in nowhere (Tenebrosia), it would fire.
• Fixed items getting lost when changing class in individual inventory mode.

PERFORMANCE

• Unity version and compile changes to a more recent version, which also required fixes to Steam integration.
• A variety of changes to reduce memory use.
• Fixes to various audio settings, for streaming and memory use.
• Fixed mesh creation to not leak meshes.
• Fixed clouds not getting disabled when doing a transfer from BT1 -> BT2.
• Fixed creating some debug meshes in Retail builds.

UI

• Fix doppleganger UI bug - sorting the slots was updating them individually - but doppleganger update requires all other slots to be done.
• Roscoes identify items now show cost to identify each item, for identifying the “specials” of items, in non-legacy mode.
• Multiple miscellaneous spelling and grammar fixes, throughout the game.
• Fix for the flicker when drift background first appears on main menu.
• Fix for the mouse cursor not working over buttons.
• Improved rendering of all fonts.
• Made the "X" button of the stats and controller page close the pages.
• Force new games to default to Large view.
• Fixed drag-and-drop of character names for party order showing the character names offset.
• Hide mouse cursor during loading and during intros.
• Removed slash from in front of "TESTING" that shouldn't have been there, in the credits.
• Don't let escape key close a confirmation dialog, unless close button is active.
• Removed dead space at top of "heal all" character list.
• Fix for rename-character to detect when empty string was entered.
• Fix for text for party headings - was creating artefacts when small.
• Fixed the position of the top message of scrolling text.
• Fix slot numbers resizing awkwardly.
• Fix for spacing for normal heal text.
• Removed incorrect information about large view mode from tooltip.
• Stopped ESCAPE from opening pause menu during intro scene.
• Add tooltips when you arrow through options on keyboard so game is more playable on keyboard only.
• Stopped trade from appearing if there is no-one to trade to (ie. party of 1).
• Spells that are bought, now appear in a spell casters 'recent' spell filter tab, after being cast.
• Removed the (1-7) prompting for the statues for consistency.
• Fix overlapping destiny knight text in player info.
• Fix journal icon in BT3.
• Fix for that you couldn't see tooltips in legacy Options is you had toggled them off in game and returned to main menu.
• Stopped the option of equip/unequip in battle being available if there are no inventory items.
• Removed the timeout from temple messages / after heals. It just uses "Press SPACE to continue" now.
• Fix issue with large Heal All messages overlapping the PRESS SPACE TO CONTINUE.
• Fix journal legend not turning off "hint", "teleport" and "wall / secretWall" entries if none have been mapped yet.
• Teleport from sanctum to viscious plane now adds journal at destination, so you don't have to leave the tile and return to see it.
• Using joystick/keyboard to select next/prev character while viewing character profiles will now wrap top <-> bottom.
• Invisible walls now use a normal wall icon since they are not passible and knowing they are invisible is not useful when examining the map. Railings (which are visible but can be passed through) use the same icon as crumbling walls, since they function the same. Invisible walls and railings can only be discovered by walking into/through them.
• Fix for Alliria belt event to not show a blank page with "press space to continue".
• Fix bug where automap was updating during title screen.