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| Thread: [Advice needed] - Would this indie turn-based strategy be fun for HOMM fans? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · NEXT» |
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 03:21 PM |
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Edited by dtishin at 15:32, 18 Jun 2020.
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Compact HOMM plus rumours minus army stacks and castles?
Hi all,
Your expert opinion is invaluable.
A year ago I started crafting a compact HOMM II - inspired game as a solo project. It's not a clone, as several key features/mechanics are different (see details below). The scope is much smaller too (I don't have Jon Van Caneghem's team). But it has some things in common, too (again, see details below).
The main question is, Would you play such a game? Why / Why not?
TL;DR: You can get an idea of the game from the [url=https://youtu.be/QzpEeWjRxmg]50-sec. alpha trailer[/url]. If you want to dig deeper into the game's basic mechanics, you can check the [url=https://youtu.be/4ModLCoSM6A]How to Play video[/url]. And if you want to give it a go, the current public build (Windows) is always in this [url=https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Vou63-tatnzZKFyB3oq0SESykXdO2oDQ]Google Drive folder[/url]. Or I can give you a Steam key for the closed beta build (just ping me in the comments).
I hope this post doesn't violate the forum guidelines. I'm not selling anything (the game is not finished) but your advice could help make Fireside Hero a pleasant experience for yourself and other TBS players.
Without further ado:
You play a tavern proprietor who buys and sells rumours, as well as hires and commands heroes. The surrounding lands are threatened by evil, and you have 20 days to defeat 5 legendary monsters, otherwise, all the villages and castles will be raized, and your tavern will close forever. The tricky part is, you don't know the exact whereabouts of the monster, and you need to buy and analyse information from tavern visitors. After you make an educated guess, you place a map marker and investigate it with a hero. If you guessed correctly, combat starts. A new legendary monster appears on the day following the victory - and so on, until you defeat all the monsters (or until you run out of time / get into the debtors' prison). In a similar way, you locate artifacts and pick them by your heroes.
Similarities with HOMM:
- Turn-based adventure mode, turn-based combat.
- Hero classes with different level-up profiles.
- 2D map made of square tiles.
- Terrain types that influence hero movement cost.
- Interactive locations (give a temporary boost to a parameter, add gold, etc)
- Artifacts and map locations with micro-stories.
- Ability to trade items between heroes.
- Monsters borrowed from myth and folklore (Minotaur, Medusa, Hydra, Cerberus and such).
- Distinct sound ambience for different terrain types (sea, desert, swamp, etc.)
- Consumables for battle (these are herbs in Fireside Hero and spells/scrolls in HOMM)
Major differences from HOMM:
- The whole map fits on the screen.
- No management / build-up of castles / towns.
- No active enemy avatars who move on the map. Instead, you have the legendary monsters (hidden until found by the player), secondary monsters (visible on the map as caves or abandoned mines), and perils (temporary area effects - plagues, droughts, peasant uprisings etc. - visible on the map after buying the rumour about them. These do a stat check and give a penalty/boost to the visiting hero).
- No army stacks, no recruiting. The focus is instead on developing your heroes. You can say that the hero's health roughly corresponds to the total HP of the army in HOMM.
- Combat is loosely based on rock-paper-scissors principles. The combatants secretly commit their moves, after which the combat round is resolved. There are 3 attack types - prowess (sword), charm (harp) and knowledge (book). Prowess beats Knowledge, Knowledge beats Charm, Charm beats Prowess. If two same attack types clash, the upper hand wins, dealing the remainder of damage. The combatants can also Wait (restores 1 point of a random attack type), Guard (reduces damage from the enemy attack by 1 in current round), use Herb (boosts certain parameters) or Flee (this is a separate mini-game where you basically roll dice and try to retreat with different possible outcomes).
- More significant role of procedural generation - e. g. types, locations and stats of the monsters, names and stats of the heroes, artifact types and locations.
- Rumour mechanics. You buy and sell information to figure out location of key map objects, as well as to get insights into monsters' combat behaviour.
Having read the above and having watched the trailer / how to play: Would you play such a game? Why / Why not?
Thanks for your time!
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 04:30 PM |
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Edited by monere at 18:54, 18 Jun 2020.
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watched both videos and downloading the game as I type this. Gonna play the snow out of it cause I like how it looks.
EDIT: played for an hour or so and then... it crashed 
I was just moving over a tile marked as potential artifact when the game crashed (if that's of any help to you) and was so immersed into the game. And there is no autosave either. I'm starting a new game (this time on hard cause I got the hang of it), but if it crashes again I'll probably not play again for a while.
You should really implement an Autosave function after each day at the very least. It's much needed. Still, the game is good, it keeps you interested
EDIT 2: not gonna play this again. After 1 more hour of playing and when I was almost finished with the hydra the combat button disappeared from my screen and all buttons (flee, items, etc.) became unusable. Fought the hydra for like 15 minutes straight and was lucky twice in the beginning when it missed 2 7-damage hits on my 9 HPs hero (should have killed her in those 2 hits), and then I somehow managed to reduce its HPs from 19 to 2 - even though it healed twice - and then, when I was about to give it the final blow both its icon and the icon of the combat button have simply disappeared off my screen, leaving me frustrated and pissed off. Even tried to take a screenshot so I can prove this to you, but when I pasted the screenshot into Paint somehow the combat screen didn't get screenshot, only the adventure map did even though the combat screen was still active in the game. Not gonna play this - otherwise good - game until you fix this maddening bugs and add an autosave to the game. Hope you understand my frustration and view this criticism as a step forward in improving the game rather than a negative feedback
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 06:58 PM |
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monere said:
watched both videos and downloading the game as I type this. Gonna play the snow out of it cause I like how it looks.
EDIT: played for an hour or so and then... it crashed
I was just moving over a tile marked as potential artifact when the game crashed (if that's of any help to you) and was so immersed into the game. And there is no autosave either. I'm starting a new game (this time on hard cause I got the hang of it), but if it crashed again I'll probably not play again for a while.
You should really implement an Autosave function after each day at the very least. It's much needed. Still, the game is good, it keeps you interested
Thanks a lot of your feedback, glad you liked the concept!
You're dead right about a save / autosave system. Looks like I need to prioritise this task.
Sorry for the runtime crash, I'm trying to reproduce it but no luck so far.
Do you remember exactly at which step below did the game crash?
The typical workflow is: a) click a tile twice to place artifact marker, b) move a hero next to the marker, c) hover the pointer over the marker to change pointer animation to a spyglass, d) click on the marker to reveal the artifact (if it was there) or show a "missed" notification, e) move your hero onto the artifact tile to display the artifact story, f) close artifact story to add the item to your inventory (if there are free slots) or show the "inventory full" notification and leave the artifact on the ground. Unless you possess the Astrolabe, you shouldn't be able to "move" over a tile with an artifact marker, as the "move" pointer animation immediately changes to "spyglass". Didn't that happen?
Also do you remember in which tile did you place the marker?
Thanks a lot!
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 07:44 PM |
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monere said:
After 1 more hour of playing and when I was almost finished with the hydra the combat button disappeared from my screen and all buttons (flee, items, etc.) became unusable. Fought the hydra for like 15 minutes straight and was lucky twice in the beginning when it missed 2 7-damage hits on my 9 HPs hero (should have killed her in those 2 hits), and then I somehow managed to reduce its HPs from 19 to 2 - even though it healed twice - and then, when I was about to give it the final blow both its icon and the icon of the combat button have simply disappeared off my screen, leaving me frustrated and pissed off.
Thanks a lot for reporting this bug! I'm really sorry it happened, the point wasn't to frustrate you, of course - I only have two testers, and they haven't come across this particular issue.
Could you help me fix it? I would use additional information:
1) Did you play on Easy or Hard difficulty?
2) Did the Hydra picture "fade out" or got "erased" (like when a monster dies)?
3) Did the bug happen after you committed your attack type and press the "resolve combat round" button?
4) Did the Hydra commit a move before disappearing? I.e. did the question mark turn into an attack type / hourglass / shield icon?
5) Did the attack buttons (sword, harp, book) change their animation from "buttons" to black shapes?
6) Did the "Items" and "Flee" buttons disappear from screen altogether or remained but became unclickable?
7) Did the "Rest" combat outcome button appear?
Thanks again for your help.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 07:50 PM |
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ugh, wish I could help you but I don't remember cause I've started 3 games so far (or 4?? I don't remember) and each one of them has given me an error of some kind.
What I can say for sure, however, is that after posting the last edit of the previous message I started a new game and I encountered the same problem: the hydra's avatar simply disappears from the combat screen along with the combat button whenever it has few HPs left, and when it disappears ALL of the buttons in the game stop working (yes, the game menu buttons as well).
The first time when the hydra phucked up the game it had 1 HP left, and the 2nd time it had 2 HPs left. And I don't think that this bug is triggered by the "flee" action of the AI because the hydra had already fled once in my last game and then I attacked it again and this time instead of dying or acting or whatever it was supposed to do it simply vanished from the battle like a pu55y wizard and took all of my commands along with it, leaving me frustrated again and this time knowing 100% that I won't be playing the game again until you fix all of these bugs. I mean, what's the point in playing if I can never go past the 2nd monster in the campaign (which is always the hydra)
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 07:55 PM |
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dtishin said:
Thanks a lot for reporting this bug! I'm really sorry it happened, the point wasn't to frustrate you, of course - I only have two testers, and they haven't come across this particular issue.
Could you help me fix it? I would use additional information:
1) Did you play on Easy or Hard difficulty?
2) Did the Hydra picture "fade out" or got "erased" (like when a monster dies)?
3) Did the bug happen after you committed your attack type and press the "resolve combat round" button?
4) Did the Hydra commit a move before disappearing? I.e. did the question mark turn into an attack type / hourglass / shield icon?
5) Did the attack buttons (sword, harp, book) change their animation from "buttons" to black shapes?
6) Did the "Items" and "Flee" buttons disappear from screen altogether or remained but became unclickable?
7) Did the "Rest" combat outcome button appear?
Thanks again for your help.
No problem. I'll try to help (it also might be my Windows 7 system, I don't know...)
Anyway...
1) the hydra bugged happened on easy difficulty
2) faded out
3) in the 2nd playthough it happened when the hydra's turn to act came (in the 1st playthrough I don't remember)
4) I don't think. All I remember is that I have clicked on the combat button and then, when the hydra had to act, it simply disappeared from the combat screen and the buttons stopped working... all of them (including the game menu buttons which didn't even appear anymore)
5) I think they did
6) the buttons remained, but didn't do anything when pressed
7) nope
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 08:55 PM |
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Edited by monere at 21:04, 18 Jun 2020.
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something else... even though I have PRECISELY located the monster after 3-4 clues when I got there... surprise, no monster in that tile! I lost 100 gold (on hard difficulty this time), got put in jail, the inn closed and game ended abruptly. Like, wtf? Do the monsters (also artifacts) change positions each day or is my game really bugged?
EDIT: another started game, another crash. This time hard difficulty, mark a spot as artifact (which coincidentally was immediately to my right), clicked on that spot and the message that says "another shattered dream... bids poop... you lost -100 gold..." (something along those lines) appeared and then the game crashed immediately. The only thing I was allowed to do at that point was to click on the "close" button of that message and then the application quit
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 09:25 PM |
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monere said:
something else... even though I have PRECISELY located the monster after 3-4 clues when I got there... surprise, no monster in that tile! I lost 100 gold (on hard difficulty this time), got put in jail, the inn closed and game ended abruptly. Like, wtf? Do the monsters (also artifacts) change positions each day or is my game really bugged?
No, neither monsters nor artifacts change their positions, and for the whole period of development there has never been a bug like that from a couple dozen players. Typically there's simply another tile that fits the description but goes unnoticed. I myself get caught on this once in a while. If you tell me which tile you marked and what rumours you had at the time, I could show you that other tile.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 09:27 PM |
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monere said:
EDIT: another started game, another crash. This time hard difficulty, mark a spot as artifact (which coincidentally was immediately to my right), clicked on that spot and the message that says "another shattered dream... bids poop... you lost -100 gold..." (something along those lines) appeared and then the game crashed immediately. The only thing I was allowed to do at that point was to click on the "close" button of that message and then the application quit
Goes in line with the previous artifact-related bug you had mentioned. I'm investigating the two bugs (unfinishing combats + the artifact crash) right now.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 09:31 PM |
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dtishin said:
...If you tell me which tile you marked and what rumours you had at the time, I could show you that other tile.
How can I do that? When I press "Print Screen" and then paste the screenshot into Paint so I can save it as image the combat screen simply disappears from the screenshot. Do you have a solution?
Also, you are moving fast. I tried to start another game cause the combat is really addictive, albeit a bit predictive because regardless of the difficulty the AI always attacks with its Charm "weapon" first, so I usually counter that with the Knowledge "weapon".
So anyway, I tried to start a new game but I got prompted to download the new version (which I am doing right now). Once it's finished I start a few new games and see if I can get past that hydra on easy difficulty or if I encounter the crashes on hard difficulty. But this probably means another hour or so of gameplay until I find out if the fixes work. No matter if it works or not I'll come back and post the results 
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 09:39 PM |
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monere said:
dtishin said:
...If you tell me which tile you marked and what rumours you had at the time, I could show you that other tile.
How can I do that? When I press "Print Screen" and then paste the screenshot into Paint so I can save it as image the combat screen simply disappears from the screenshot. Do you have a solution?
Also, you are moving fast. I tried to start another game cause the combat is really addictive, albeit a bit predictive because regardless of the difficulty the AI always attacks with its Charm "weapon" first, so I usually counter that with the Knowledge "weapon".
So anyway, I tried to start a new game but I got prompted to download the new version (which I am doing right now). Once it's finished I start a few new games and see if I can get past that hydra on easy difficulty or if I encounter the crashes on hard difficulty. But this probably means another hour or so of gameplay until I find out if the fixes work. No matter if it works or not I'll come back and post the results
Please give it a rest for a while if you can.
I just now pinned the issue with never-ending combat, and it's NOT in the version 1.0.8. I'll issue a patch soon and let you know.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 10:04 PM |
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how long of a rest? Because I already encountered something else that doesn't make sense to me (or maybe I'm unable to understand English, which is not totally impossible  )
Look at the image below. According to those rumours the artifact should be at the top right of my hero (in the sandy spot with a starfish on the beach). And yet, there is no structure immediately south to that tile (last rumour on my list says that the artifact is "immediately north of a structure")
Again, unless I'm not good at reading english (and I'm not being sarcastic, sometimes I do 5uck at it), the rumours are contradictory / misleading. Can you please explain where the artifact is according to those rumours? Cause I'm really puzzled.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 10:14 PM |
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Again, according to the first set of rumours that I've purchased the hydra should be on the spot marked on the map (see the right bottom corner of the map in the first picture of this post)
And then, after I ended turn and purchased another batch of rumours the hideout of the hydra is totally different according to the new rumours (see image 2 in this post). According to the new set of rumours the hydra should be in a house, but there is no house on the tile where I have first marked the hydra to be.
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 10:29 PM |
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Edited by monere at 22:39, 18 Jun 2020.
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aaand... the hydra is not where I've marked it on the map
No idea what to do now...
Wait! Disregard all of the gibberish I have posted. Apparently I don't know which one is left and which one is right. The hydra is where it was supposed to be all along (in that lighthouse thingy).
Sorry, dude. Sometimes I am THAT blind lol.
Gonna fight it and see if it vanishes again. Will keep you updated
EDIT: it worked! 
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 10:47 PM |
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monere said:
Look at the image below. According to those rumours the artifact should be at the top right of my hero (in the sandy spot with a starfish on the beach). And yet, there is no structure immediately south to that tile (last rumour on my list says that the artifact is "immediately north of a structure")
Actually, there are two spots where the artifact can be - the tile on far right in the top corner (with a seashell), or the tile on far right on top of the cave (with a crab in it).
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 10:52 PM |
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dtishin said:
Actually, there are two spots where the artifact can be - the tile on far right in the top corner (with a seashell), or the tile on far right on top of the cave (with a crab in it).
Yeah, I've figured it out eventually (I got the east / west directions wrong)
Anyway, it happened again. This time I was fighting a vampire and it, too, vanished. See image below:
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 10:56 PM |
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monere said:
it worked!
Please don't be too happy; as I said, the bug with never-ending combat was not fixed in build 1.0.8. You merely got lucky and the monster didn't run on an odd turn (i.e. when it commits a move before you do).
I'm uploading version 1.0.9 now. This one fixes the never-ending combat bug plus a bug with thieves not stealing the artifact even if you sell them enough clues.
I haven't managed to reproduce the artifact bug so far, so 1.0.9 doesn't have the fix for that one.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 11:02 PM |
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ok. I'll wait for a different version. Although, I might start new games every now and then cause I like defeating monsters. You should really do something about the combat system because it's very predictable (all of the monsters start the combat with the charm option first, and it's easy to counter them by using knowledge).
Also, most of the time they do use Defend after they run out of hits, so whenever this happens I know it whether or not the interface displays the AI's action, and I immediately use Wait. You might want to randomize the combat sequences that the AI takes a bit more
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dtishin
Hired Hero
www.firesidehero.com
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posted June 18, 2020 11:08 PM |
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Edited by dtishin at 23:10, 18 Jun 2020.
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Just in case you're interested in why the bug was happening:
Every time after resolving a combat round, the game checks if each of the avatars (hero and monster) have completed their health animations (damage, missed hit etc). Only if the number of completed animations equals 2, the logic proceeds to the next stage (e.g. displaying the combat outcome button). Previously this counter was only reset to zero when control was given to the player. This didn't take into account cases where the monster made its move after the previous round was completed but before player got control. I.e. cases of odd combat rounds (but excluding the first round) on Easy difficulty. And in those cases the counter got increased to 4 and the logic got stuck.
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Can you find and defeat 5 legendary monsters in 20 days?
Test your skills in Fireside Hero, a compact turn-based strategy with a twist!
www.firesidehero.com
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted June 18, 2020 11:17 PM |
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I don't know what to do with this information cause I'm not a coder, but the guys on this forum will probably know what to do with it, so thumbsup for sharing 
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