Beta 8.1.0 - Mod Support!

Happy Holidays, Billies!

The main focus of this update is mod support. In order to add this, I had to reengineer a pretty big chunk of the game. I'm not sure why I thought it would take any less time than it did, but, as these things go, of course it did not! I've hopefully eradicated most of the remaining bugs, but I'm sure there are still some strays. I'll be keeping an eye out of those.

So how does modding work? Well, now most of the attributes for units, weapons, buildings, and factions can be edited in plain text. If you want to edit any of those for the core game, jump to the game's install folder (eg C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\There Will Be Ink) and then into the appropriately named folders. To avoid changes being overwritten, copy any files you want to change over to the folders of the same name in your local app data folder (%localappdata%\ThereWillBeInk\). There will also be a _template.* file in each of those to explain what all the fields mean, so you can get adding your own Units/Weapons/etc. Art(.png) and sound(.ogg) assets go in the "Assets" subfolder at those locations, and samples can be found in the game's install folder.

What is handy about this system is that anything dropped into those folders will be automatically plugged into the Map Editor, Quick Battle, and Campaign Generator. It is probably possible to break the game in a few ways by modding, so please let me know (on Discord, email, telegram, etc) if you run into any issues or see any bugs. I'll be keeping an eye out as well. There are plans to improve and expand the modding system over time, but there you have it to start.

Outside of that there have been some other smaller changes and several fixes. Check out the change log below for more info.

Also, Jolly Edition is live right now until the end of the month. Cheerio!

New Features & Content

• Mod support!
  • All of the game's units, weapons, buildings, and factions are now loaded from text
  • User-created assets can be added using text files, images, and sounds
  • New, modular system is plugged into main game, Map Editor, Quick Battle, and Campaign Generator

Changes & Enhancements

• Mission tags now properly display icons for units for both sides, and only those units in the mission
• Slightly reduced aim error of Assault rifle
• Reduced Assault rifle stamina cost per shot
• Various other tweaks to units and weapons
• CamGen: Top tier units appear slightly sooner in campaign
• Weapons can be set to spawn units on firing (Modding only)
• Paratroopers now default to lowest tier unit of a faction (eg Alt drops Alt Rifle as paratroopers)
• Reduced Engineer spawn time
• Jolly Edition (JE): Adjusted snowballs to be more visible on new-style snow levels
• JE: Sunny & Cloudy weather now have snow on ground but no snow falling
• JE: Restored lightning in Stormy weather
• JE: Rivers are not frozen except in Snowy weather
• JE: Tanks now shoot snowballs
• CamGen: Tanks are no longer official units of Base & Alt factions (need to be reworked)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where units in some main campaign (TWBI) missions were of the wrong faction
• Fixed bug where wind wasn't properly affecting bullets sometimes
• Fixed bug where incapacitated units could be called as backup
• Fixed bug where bosses would not target buildings
• Fixed bug where StickMan boss could move indefinitely if no target found
• Fixed crash bug if a unit was set to have no weapon
• Fixed bug where weapon's out-of-ammo sprite was only displaying during reloading (but not while right out of ammo)
• Fixed issue where victory check wasn't properly calculating plane cargo type
• JE: Fixed issue where glitter did not pause when game was paused
• JE: Fixed issue where ocean was not being treated like water in sea battles
• Fixed minor typo