I'm currently feeling really sick and I could feel it coming on while finishing up the update but I desperately wanted it out so people could enjoy playing the game during the weekend, so I hope you'll have a great time with the update and I will do what I can to fix things whenever I can find the energy for it!

Thank you so much for your support and once I'm no longer feeling under the weather I will share a dev log with you all where I will tell you more about what we've been working on! ❤️

Cheers,

Tinon

Mindless

The concept of 'Mindless' has been introduced to the game, which describes a character who either has zero mind or or max lust. Some spells and effects, such as the innate 50% resistance to mental changes, will now use the mindless terminology, instead of the previous more wordy description. Mindless is also explained in the stat description for mind under a character's stats.

Speech Improvements

With the addition of text formatting and the ability for speech impediments to affect text in private messages, I thought now was a good time to give the speech impediments extra love! All speech impediments have had their pipeline improved

Bimbo

Bimbos will no longer sound inherently stupid, but when they are, they are more likely to conflate names and mundane words with similar-sounding words of a sexual variety. Bimbos will now add "totally" and discourse markers such as "um" and "like" more logically; they are so smart now! Bimbos will now use more contractions and be forced to giggle on occasion. Bimbos will now give themselves nicknames, which will replace their name whenever they speak it. A nickname is often a diminutive or feminine variant. If the bimbo is male, they must have sissification enabled for them to give themselves a feminine-sounding nickname. If the bimbo is stupid, they are more likely to give themselves a slutty nickname.

Animal sounds

Animal sounds will now be inserted a lot less randomly and instead be placed between phrases and sentences to be less disruptive to the sentence structure (it also sounds more cute that way!) Dogs and cats are more likely to make an inquisitive animal sound at the end of a question. Full animal voices have also been improved to make them better reflect the original sentence. The nekomimi cat variant is now much better at recognizing potential words to change the sound of and now ignores words that could end up sounding worryingly close to the N-word.

Stupify

Each other speech impediment now has an internal pipeline for stupifying a character's sentences, instead of the message being stupified after being passed through another speech impediment. This allows each speech impediment to control the order in which sentences and words are stupified in different ways to better fit each unique case. Stupid characters will now sound simpler and are more likely to mispronounce words, considering commonly mispronounced words and misspelled words that imply a phonetic misunderstanding. Being sufficiently dumb and mindless can now cause a character to only be able to address themselves in the third person!

Stupify now follows a logarithmic increase instead of a linear increase, meaning smaller decreases in intellect will have a more substantial impact in the beginning. Other speech impediments follow a linear increase because their status effect follows a linear increase, but since getting lower intelligence has a substantial diminishing, the speech impediment now adjusts for this.

Struggle Free

Inanimate characters with a permanent form that isn't sealed are now able to struggle free from their owner! When your inanimate form becomes permanent, the option to give in is replaced with an option to escape your owner, but you won't be able to do so until your owner has been inactive for a week, and being sealed will also prevent your character from escaping. When an inanimate character escapes their owner, they will leave behind a Sealed Enchantment with any accessory decoration, color, and magical properties, similar to if they turned back, but they will keep their inanimate base appearance and be returned to the global item pool. This feature has limited uses for now, but I'm sure at least a few players out there will be happy to continue their inanimate adventure on a character that is currently stuck on an inactive owner. In the future, there will also be a means to gain immunity from being sealed, which will allow players to give in with a smaller risk of getting stuck, forever.

Advanced Item Tooltips

Items now have advanced tooltips that show additional details about an item and its magical properties, including the min and maximum range of enchantments, their tier, and the explicit type(s) of an item. Advanced tooltips can be displayed by holding down the Ctrl key, but can also be enabled by default from the game's settings. Search results on the market and profiles also support advanced item tooltips.

Text Formatting

Formatting support has been added for character bios, private messages, scenario details, and local chat! You can read about the supported syntax from the formatting guide at https://battlemageroyal.com/formatting.php The guide itself is written using text formatting similar to that of a character bio, and you can click on the pencil icon to see and alter the text used for the guide.

Not all syntaxes are allowed for everyone, and except for local chat, which has very limited formatting support, each place you can use text formatting has a link to a guide listing the specific syntax it supports. While writing text, any valid formatting syntax will also cause the text to change so you can preview its effects. This will also let you know if a particular syntax is supported in a given place, as the text will appear as normal if it isn't supported.

As an example, embedded images are only allowed in bios, while links are only allowed in bios and private messages. Syntax such as ** and () are allowed everywhere, and there's even a new "", which allows you to style text in the color of your character's nature, similar to **, and when used in a private message, the text inside the quotes will be formatted similar to spoken text in the local say channel.

In addition, undo support has also been improved for these input fields.

Increased Character Limits

With the introduction of text formatting, the character limit for bios has also been increased so players can style and organize their bios using formatting without it cutting into their previous word limit! The character limit for bios has been increased to 8000 (up from 3000), and the character limit for roleplay scenario details has received a similar increase to 8000 characters (up from 1000).

Spell List

Added icons for spells. These icons are usually related to any status effect the spell can apply, and not all spells have icons yet. Improved spell tooltips and added spell icon, damage, and cost to spell tooltips. The list no longer scrolls to the top when the details setting is changed, and will instead attempt to display the same entries after the layout has changed.

Notifications

Notifications have had their appearance updated and been changed from a frame-based system to a time-based system. This means notifications that are triggered while the game isn't being rendered won't appear all at once when you return to the game. Invitation notifications have also been improved, and will now stay around for the full duration the invitation is valid, which has been increased to 20 seconds (up from 10 seconds). Notifications will also no longer move around when other notifications appear, making it less dicey to attempt and click a notification while another notification might appear.

Private Messages

Inbox messages are now cached by the server for each player, which means results will be kept for some time or until changes are made to your inbox, usually by receiving or deleting a message. The result is a much faster inbox after the initial load-time, allowing players with many ongoing chats to navigate their messages much faster since they won't have to wait for their inbox to load each time they return to it.

Save Character Notes

Players are now able to save notes to recent characters. The previous recent tab in the social menu has been replaced with a characters tab, which has a list of recently met characters and saved notes. Previously, you could only add notes to friends, and being able to add notes to characters will make it easier for players to track roleplay progress without being friends. When you add a note to a character, it will be bookmarked to the saved notes list. Removing the note will remove the character from the list, but you can set an empty note for a character without losing the bookmark. Players can have a maximum of 1000 saved characters.

1.0.3 Prepatch is now LIVE!

Hi everyone!

The latest update is now LIVE, introducing text formatting to the game together with many other GUI and quality-of-life improvements!

Graphical User Interface

The GUI has received a massive overhaul and the most substantial upgrade since the game's initial release. The purpose has been to give the game a more mature and distinct identity, where many generic icons and symbols have been replaced with custom ones, such as the new buffer icon that resembles the moon phase cycle.

Menu tabs have been made more compact and now take up much less of the screen with a slightly translucent black backdrop that allows more of the game behind to be seen. Similarly, the vignette has been removed to show more of the background and the private messages tab that used to take up the whole screen now takes up much less of it. The private messages tab also no longer closes other menu tabs and is instead displayed on top of other menus. You are now also able to open other menus while browsing private messages, which will cause it to appear on top of the menu, and you can click between menus to bring the one you use to the front.

The loot container has also been made a lot more compact and is now small enough that it can fit between menus on the left and right, allowing you to see your inventory, equipment, and an item you can pick up at the same time For now, the only GUI element that resembles the old design is the calendar in the top-left, which will be replaced with the PvE overhaul. For now, we still need it for the turn-timer that will be removed with the PvE overhaul.

The GUI overhaul also comes with many quality-of-life improvements and general improvements to the functionality of GUI elements.

Sort Inventory

It is now possible to sort items in your inventory. By default, items are sorted left-to-right, but sorting items multiple times will swap between sorting the items left-to-right, and top-to-bottom, allowing you to choose whichever works best for you.

The sorting algorithm considers the size, type, and name to try and find the most optimal order of items, and will automatically combine stackable items.

Items placed in your heirloom container; the one with the yellow border at the bottom of the inventory tab will be ignored during the sort, which makes it ideal for placing items you don't want to be sorted.

You can also sort items in your stash tabs, and I have added an option to lock a tab, which prevents it from being accidentally sorted.

Search Inventory

It is now possible to search items in your inventory and stash by their name, type, color, magical properties, and more. You can even search for an inanimate player by its name.

Deposit Items

A button for quickly depositing items from your inventory into your stash has been added to the inventory tab.

Stackable items will be combined and placed into any existing stack where possible, and in the future, you will also be able to assign specific stash tabs for certain types of items, like talismans or dyes.

Items placed in your heirloom container won't be deposited, which makes it ideal for placing items you want to keep with you at all times.

Open Market

A button for opening the market has been added to stash tabs, to make it more convenient to access the market from your stash.

Equipment

Items can now be equipped and unequipped using Ctrl-click, similar to moving items between containers.