The Turning Sky Update

The Turning Sky Update: day and night, weather, the legion, new places to spend an evening, and sharper art

Hello, rulers!

The last update made the kingdom easier to read. This one puts a sky over it. A day now turns from dawn to night, weather comes and goes, and both touch the fight a little. Around that: four new monsters that march as a line, six new buildings, spells any hero can learn, a sound for every blow, and every unit drawn again at twice the detail.

This is the complete list of what changed since the last announcement.

Day and night

• A day turns — dawn, day, dusk and night, 24 minutes of game time a day. The map is lit by the hour: warm at dawn and dusk, moonlit blue at night. The interface, health bars and markers are never dimmed.
• The town lights up — at night the windows of the castle and of every finished building glow.
• The top bar tells the time — the day, its part and the weather, with a tooltip that says what comes next and when.
• Night shortens sight — heroes and buildings see up to 15% less far in the dead of night. Near the castle and the kingdom's buildings the windows are lit and the night takes nothing. An archer never sees less far than it can shoot.
• Monsters keep hours — skeletons, zombies, sand wraiths, dark cultists, giant spiders and giant rats are sluggish by day; goblins and their archers, orc brutes, bandits, harpies and the legion's foot are sluggish by night. Out of its hours a monster loses up to 15% of its turns and sees up to a quarter less far. Trolls, wolves, slimes, the dragon and the siege beast keep no hours.
• Heroes weigh the dark — a bounty out in an unlit night counts a little more warily when a hero decides whether to take it. Nobody stops work because the sun went down.

Weather

• Six kinds — clear, overcast, rain, mist, wind and thunderstorm, each lasting 3 to 6 minutes and coming in over half a minute. A map's climate is read from its ground: a desert has no long rain, a fen is seldom clear.
• The forecast is always right — the next weather is settled when the current one begins, so what the tooltip says is what comes.
• Rain and thunderstorms — anyone walking off the roads, hero or monster, is held up to one turn in ten. Roads are dry going.
• Mist — heroes and buildings see up to 15% less far. Mist and night together take a quarter at the most.
• Wind — arrows, bolts and javelins lose up to 10% of their damage (5% in a thunderstorm). Spells are not blown about, and no shot is made to miss.
• Carriers sit out the worst — a tax collector at home and a caravan about to leave wait for the first minute of a thunderstorm, and a storm cloud rises over them while they do.
• Seen and heard — rain falls, mist lies over the map, wind shows as streaks and a storm flashes now and then, with rain, wind and thunder to hear. With reduce motion on nothing flashes or blows and the rain is thinner.
• Old events come first — in a sandstorm the weather slows nobody and weakens no shot further; in a dense fog it shortens no sight. The two are never added together.
• Details name the cause — a hero's and a shop's panel say what the sky does where they stand, and a thunderstorm or a mist that begins is a line in the log.
• A new map layer — Climate and weather draws the border of each weather zone the kingdom has charted and names its climate and weather.

Where the sky is on

• Every mission and challenge of the demo and every chapter of the tutorial now has a turning day and weather. The second and third missions of the expedition begin at the hour the one before ended at.
• In free play, Day and night and Weather are ticked separately when a game is started, with a day of 12, 24 or 48 minutes.
• The sky is saved with the game. A save from before this update keeps its fixed day and clear sky.

The legion

• Four new monsters that fight as a line and its siege, all in the demo:
• Pikeman — its blow holds the hero it lands on back for a moment.
• Shieldbearer — now and then raises a shield over itself and the monsters beside it.
• Sapper — lays a charge that is marked on the ground before it goes off, and never goes off if the sapper falls first. It hits buildings three times as hard.
• Siege Beast — slow, hard to bring down, and hits buildings four times as hard.
• Ordinary monsters have skills — some now cast, and some leave a status with their blows.

Combat

• Stand and strike — a unit with its target in reach stands where it is and fights. Only one that is fleeing, or closing in, moves.
• Shots are seen — every projectile is in the air for at least three ticks before it lands, even at arm's length.
• Monsters are quicker — every monster walks 30% faster than before.
• Every blow that lands is heard — a hero's blade, a monster's blow, a blow on a wall, an arrow striking home and a spell bursting on its target each have a sound of their own. Only fights in view are heard, and nothing sounds when a bow is let go: a shot is heard where it lands.
• A hero steps out of every warned hazard over it, not only the first.

New buildings

• Tavern — heroes spend an evening off here for 12 gold and hit 25% harder for 60 seconds after.
• Bathhouse — 10 gold for 30% of a hero's health back, with poison, slowness and weakness washed off.
• Arena — 25 gold for 30 experience, and 1 renown for the kingdom. Needs a castle of level 2.
• Spell Institute — spells are researched here, and a hero of level 3 or more, of any class, comes to learn each one it has the mind and the gold for. Needs a castle of level 2. It can be raised twice: Haste and Mending at level 1, Warding at level 2, Spark at level 3, and it has a look of its own at each level.
• Frost Tower — slows the monsters within 8 tiles for 8 seconds, every 6 seconds. It harms none.
• Beacon — sees 30 tiles, and a defend or a warning flag within 12 tiles of it draws heroes more readily.
• Cleansing Altar — washes poison, slowness and weakness off the heroes within 7 tiles, every 8 seconds.
• Every build button says what its own building does.

Heroes

• Faith — heroes have a need for faith, met by an offering at a Temple: 8 gold for a blessing, a shield worth 15% of their health for 120 seconds.
• Drill at the War Hall — heroes pay to drill there on an evening off.
• Three more skills — the guard, the thief and the builder each have a skill of their own.

The demo

• The demo's kingdom may take any of the eight castle paths.
• Free play offers every map size.

Art

• Twice the detail — every unit is rendered a second time at double the size with finer gear: rivets, hems, straps, trims. On a machine with the memory for it the game uses those; Unit Detail in the settings chooses.
• New ground — every ground texture is rendered from a model at a higher resolution and laid without a seam.
• No more clipping — hats through hair, robes through legs, capes through the ground, a shield through the hand that carries it, a door under a roof's eaves, a harpy's wings off its back and the orc chief's standard through its helm are all put right.
• Every structure is drawn a fifth larger than its footprint.

Performance and loading

• Lists of maps and campaigns, Workshop subscriptions, thumbnails and an editor's project are read behind a progress bar, off the interface: the window no longer stops while they load.
• Monster movement, the units the map paints and several per-tick lookups moved into the game's C core.
• The sprite atlas is laid on several textures when one does not hold it, so the finer art fits on any graphics card.

For creators

• A level's own sky — a campaign level can ask for day and night, weather, its starting hour, the day's length, its climate, and whether an expedition brings its hour. The campaign editor's level form has the fields; up to four climate zones are written in the level's file.
• Triggers — two new conditions (a part of the day, a weather over a zone) and one new action (hold a weather for a time). The weather that was coming still comes afterwards.
• A published map keeps its Workshop identity with the map.
• A built-in definition copied into a project no longer carries the game's own notes.
• The Workshop window names things in the player's language, sizes itself, shows a bar while it lists, and says what to do when Steam is offline.

Fixes

• A headset connected during play no longer leaves the game silent: the game follows a change of the output device.
• Starting a sound no longer freezes the game for a moment.
• Campaign transitions, restoring a save and shutting the engine down were put right.
• A castle moved in the map editor is drawn where it now stands.
• The licences of the libraries the game is built on are shown from the main menu.

New update video

There is a film of this update, a minute and a half long, in English and in Traditional Chinese: the four parts of a day, the four weathers, what rain, night and wind each do, the legion at the wall, and every new building with what it is for.

Thank you for playing the demo and for every report. If the night is too dark, the rain too loud or a storm too mean, please tell us in the discussions!