Hello everyone! It's been a while since our last update. We've been working hard to fix some underlying code design issues on our end and I'm happy to say that we've made large strides. Most of these strides will be invisible to players (which is a good thing), but there are some QOL improvements we think people will enjoy as well.

To explain the large delay, over time, we had accumulated a large amount of code debt up until our last update and the rent came due, resulting in large amounts of code cleanup being needed to ensure that development remained consistent and stable. Code debt is a result of poor coding design decisions that, while they may work, make the code more difficult to maintain than necessary. A few of these poor decisions aren't usually a big deal, but lots of them over lifetime of a project can add up and make fixing bugs or adding features a huge chore, and making us less confident about our changes. The last thing we wanted was to push updates to you which broke things that worked, or claim we fixed things that we didn't, and this was rapidly becoming more and more likely. We've spent the last 7 months paying back our dues, and the result is a game that should be much easier to debug and improve over time.

Major Improvements:

Lengthy explanation aside, I did mention that there are some other improvements. PVP matches should remain stable, and we believe starting and finishing a match should be relatively painless, perhaps less so than before. As we stated, many of the improvements we've made should not be readily apparent to players, but will very much ease development.

Added to this list, we have also given you the ability to, finally, see what your opponent's cards are targeting! This can be done by hovering your mouse over a card that is in the pending position (the top left, or the top right, near the corresponding player's title bar). When doing this, the lane or the character that card will apply to will be highlighted red. You should no longer need to guess who or what a played card will affect before it happens.

We've also enhanced card inspecting. This happens when right clicking on a card, which causes the card you clicked to center and enlarge on the screen in clear view, allowing you to easily read its description and stats, or just admire the art! Previously, you could not do this for pending cards, but now you should be able to do it for nearly every front-facing card, or character, you encounter in the game. We are aware that leader characters who have a flipped state cannot have their flipped side inspected unless they are currently flipped, and we'll also be fixing that in the future.

Remaining Issues:

You will still encounter issues after a match finishes, or if you attempt to start another match after just having left one. This will be most noticeable when finishing a match and attempting to return to the main menu, as you may see our crash screen and be forced to close the game. If you manage to make it to the main menu after participating in a match, you may soon discover problems afterward with your next game, or even joining a lobby. We recommend restarting the game completely after a match to prevent from having to encounter one of these frustrating crashes. This can be done by simply clicking the Exit Game button at the main menu. These types of critical issues will be our top priority for the next update.

Miss-clicking characters or lanes is still an issue. As before, this is due to how cursor collision is being managed. Because of how closely the shape of the collision area matches each character, you may accidentally click a lane instead of a character, the lane behind them, or even another character behind them. We understand how annoying this is, and it's also high on our list of things that need to be fixed.

Final Words

That's it for the big stuff. As always, we really appreciate your support and we hope those of you trying this update out will enjoy the small improvements we have made, but the vast majority of this update's work is behind the scenes. We hope updates will become much more frequent from now on, so please keep a lookout for future updates! Please check out our Discord server to chat and give us feedback! You may also navigate to Steam's own Discussions forum in the Skirmish Community Hub on the Steam app. We'd love to hear from you!

Click here to check out our Discord server

Full Change Log:

• Card target visibility added by placing your cursor over a pending card.

• Pending cards can now be focused.

• Camera now zooms in and out smoothly, rather than stepping.

• Music transitions properly now.

• Better discard pile stability.

• Fixed an issue where characters would become unresponsive to declaring skirmishes or redeploying.

• Fixed an issue where cards that are being inspected will remain stuck there until certain events placed them back where they belong.

• Steam avatars for players now properly load.

• Scroll messages will no longer get stuck on your screen longer than intended.

• Large refactor of the networking code to enhance stability.

• Many more minor changes too numerous and, frankly, too hard to keep track of to post here!