✨ New Features & Gameplay
⚬ New Spell Added: Introduced the Stone Skin spell, complete with new visual effects and mechanics that trigger at the start of a player's turn.
⚬ Visual Flair: Coat of arms are now proudly displayed on player units directly on the hex map and within the attack dialog.
⚬ Map & Movement Upgrades: Enhanced hex map highlights, improved pathfinding logic, and refined movement cost calculations for better strategic planning.
⚬ More Resolutions: Added official support for 1366x800 screen resolution.
🌐 Multiplayer & Online
⚬ Smoother Matchmaking: Streamlined the workflows for creating and joining public online games, ensuring game information is properly visible in the lobby.
⚬ Version Checking: The game will now verify version compatibility when you connect to a multiplayer match to prevent sync issues.
⚬ Steam Integrations: Prepared the build for Steam Release and Playtesting, and added a --no-steam launch parameter for alternative offline play.
🛠️ Visuals, Audio & Performance
⚬ Audio Overhaul: Migrated all in-game sound effects to high-quality 16-bit WAV files and rebalanced the Temple purchase sound volume.
⚬ UI Clarity: Reworked map overlays, shadow gradients, and the Selected Unit layout to ensure the UI is clean and player resources fit perfectly on screen.
⚬ Performance Boost: Restructured the game screen and hex map rendering logic to significantly improve overall framerates and performance.
🐛 Bug Fixes
⚬ Combat & Quests: Fixed a bug where units could incorrectly move into towns with active walls, and resolved issues with the Spoils of War collection and Diversity quest processing.
⚬ Turn Processing: Prevented errors that occurred during neutral AI turn processing and local player turn starts.
⚬ General Polish: Fixed chat keyboard shortcuts, save/load screen layout errors, magic bullet animation timing, and various interface glitches.