It's time! Let's play some Lancer Tactics!

Preorder backers can download the Lancer Tactics 0.1.1 alpha by logging into Backerkit and going to lancer-tactics.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards. If you haven't already, you can still pre-order and get access by picking any of the tiers here.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the demo on this itch page. Right now it's easier to keep pre-orders over on Backerkit, but at some point I'll have to do an Indiana Jones-style swap and put this new version here and move the current demo... somewhere else.

(It's PC-only for the moment; I'll be adding a mac build as soon as I can determine whether Gatekeeper is bluffing when it says it'll block running the game on other people's computers because I'm an unverified developer. Linux will come... sometime. Someday.)

We have a bug-report form here; please let us know when you find stuff that looks broken in a way other than us not having gotten around to implementing it yet!

It's wild to me how it feels like we've skipped a lot of the typical steps in game development to get here. Usually, there's a long period of tooling around with demos and mechanics to "find the fun", but these mechanics have already had essentially the world's largest paper prototyping session via the TTRPG. Once again, I'm super grateful to Massif for making Lancer available to build on!

What's new from last time?

We've been stitching things together into a playable form like wild. I'm excited to send out this email so won't spend too long getting into the details, but here's some notable changes from the changelog:

Interface

• Keep camera snapped to zoom levels that doesn't unnecessarily blur the pixel art.
• Show current charges in Limited tooltips.
• Optimized the target-picker calculation; improved the worst cases (AOE with long range) from 30FPS to the game's maximum.
• Added backer credits with a fun little pagination effect

• Added splash screen on load with the legally-mandated logos.
• Added remappable controls.

• Add "protocols" highlighted action bar.
• Added "round max" to editor & settable via triggers.
• Updated colors of the range indicators to make them less placeholder-y.
• Added "apply" button for map size to emphasize that it edits the current map.
• Large terrain brushes with modes for restricting painted blocks to certain layers.

• Mousing over either the unit or the top-of-screen chit highlights both.
• Add status icons above unit tokens. This was WAY more helpful than I expected.

• Recolored all PC mechs to be blue until we get mech-recoloring working.
• Fixed VERY cursed bug where all portrait eyes were missing in exported builds only.

Mechanics

• Knockback can't knock units uphill.
• Add "stand up from prone" action.
• Involuntary movement paths go in straight lines instead of pathing intelligently.
• Overwatching allows you to pick your precise target for AOE attacks, change variants, and cancel to pick different weapons.
• Warn if your movement would trigger overwatch.

• Fixed origin of AOE attacks from size 2+ units.
• Fix visual movement ranges for size 2+ units

• Wrecks grant hard cover.
• Add all GMS weapons (not all tags are implemented yet tho).
• Jammed actually prevents attacks/rxns.
• Added improvised attack.
• Added stabilize action; basically a choose-your-own-adventure multiple-choice quiz.

• Added smoke fx to the grenade/mine.

• Fix autopods being able to be fired like a normal weapon.
• Fix reactive code triggering on normal weapon attacks.
• Fixed AOE attacks being able to hit outside of LOS.
• Fix getting overwatched when starting jumpjet movement.
• Fix Engineering limited bonus getting applied twice.
• Fix segment knife not getting thrown 5 from Hunter II.
• Fixed NPCs moving before checking to see if they could stand up, so they never stood up.
• Autopod now only triggers on allied attacks; RAW it technically can trigger on enemies consuming lock-on, but it's super rare that you'd want to actually shoot an ally.
• Can no longer consume lock-ons on your own allies.
• Can no longer ram larger targets.
• Can now continue using protocols if you start using another action but then abort.
• Prevent stapling a pistol to a rifle on a main/aux mount to be able to overwatch with the rifle at threat 3.

I hope y'all have fun playing this! Please let me know how it goes for you. (I continue to thrive on external validation :) )

Olive