The big change this time around is the addition of pets. Characters with a Wildcraft skill of 5 or greater can now call an animal companion. Each character can only have one companion active at a time, but there is currently no limit to how many you can have in the FieldHQ. You can also dismiss animal companions if you find that your FieldHQ is starting to look like a zoo. This addition paves the way for robots and other sorts of beasties, which will come in a future release.

I've also overhauled the way map scrolling works. You can now use the WASD keys to scroll the map, and you can also turn off mouse scrolling in the config menu. In addition, all keys are now configurable by editing the config.cfg file. Someday I will add an in-game key customizer, but like robotics today is not that day. See the game manual for more information.

Speaking of the game manual, it's been updated with info about the new combat interface (introduced over the last few releases) and now has a complete section on character creation. Do you wonder what each of the stats does? Want to know what the skills are used for? Wonder no more! All questions are answered in the manual. And if you have any more questions, please let me know so I can include the answers in the next release.

Two new mecha from previous GearHead games have been added: Aegis Overlord's elite commando unit the Luna II and the Solar Navy's basic trooper the Puma.

Lots of bugs have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who reported problems.

Here's the complete list of changes:

• Fixed error in Kerberos dungeon

• Fixed error in Challenge.deactivate method

• Added Puma and Luna II mecha

• Most keyboard actions now use is_key_for_action method, may be changed in config.cfg

• Added a bunch more monsters

• Characters with Wildcraft >= 5 can call animal companions

• Added mouse_scroll_at_map_edges config option

• Fixed a bug in the PartlyUrbanGenerator

• WASD may now be used to scroll the map

• Default combat hotkeys changed to 1,2,3,4,5

• Refactored the map viewer to deal with tile-based focus and wrapping maps

• Pets will attempt to follow their trainer during exploration

• Added pets_can_die, directly_control_pets config options

• Changed restore to restore_all in Bear Bastard's Mecha Camp and Winter Mocha

• Text input widget now uses TextInput event

• Lancemates bring their pets with them when they join/leave the party

• Characters can have one pet