So!

It's been a bit again. Apologies for the delay since last devlog; things have been very busy in my personal life as I prepare for a move, help my partner out while they recover from surgery, and try to finish up a bunch of contract-work-related stuffs.

But that doesn't mean I've been totally idle when it comes to TAE!

I don't have anything too "major" to update y'all with as it's been a bunch of additional features, polishes, or expansions to existing content. Befitting of a 'mini' update, imo. Here's a quick review of what's been done and what's coming next:

• [Engine] To Ash and Ember now runs on the latest dev-preview of Godot 4.3.
• [Confrontation] Cards now support multiple modes of targeting (cone, across, diagonal, all in a row, or directly hit opponent).
• [Dungeon] Entry cards are no longer interactive if the dungeon is 'clingy' and won't let you waltz out as easy as you waltzed in.
• [Dungeon] The Confrontation Manager was refactored a bit alongside an upgrade to the Dungeon Manager to let Dungeons have their own ambient tracks while retaining what track was playing before you entered the dungeon.
• [Investigators] Investigators can now be 'unlocked'. Presently, there's no way to unlock them, but there will be soon.
• [UX Polish] Swept through a bunch of the menus and whatnot to set up defaults, reorder things, and generally make things a little easier to use and work with. (for instance, it used to be you'd have to long-hold to access a location's menu even if you were on top of it; now if you're on top of a location simply tapping it will bring its menu up. that pop-up menu will also be skipped if there are no sublocations to that location)
• [Graphical Polish : Confrontations] I've totally reorganized and revisited the cards used in Confrontations -- now not only are they a bit more stylish, they're also more informative than before. I also added a transition effect when you go into a confrontation to make it less jarring/sudden. Also, you now can see when a card was hit or missed graphically.
• [Graphical Polish : Main Menu ] I revisited the main menu to make space for the game's changelog and also give it a slightly more 'mysterious' vibe.
• [ Graphical Polish: Case Updates and Locations ] I added a bit of 'juice' to location menus and the pop-up to when the state of your case changes. 
• [Bug Squashing] SO many bugs have been squashed, ranging from show-stoppers to annoying and grating 'rock in your shoes' level bugs. There's still some major ones in there, but it's a dramatically improved experience from before.

What's next?

Here's a brief preview of what I'm looking to hit up next -- and where I'll be going once they're checked off.

• Support for Opponents in a Confrontation (think of it as Yu-Gi-Oh where now you can actually hit the opponents where before you could only hit 'cards on the field')
• Support for Rounds in Confrontations (you'll know what's going to happen next turn, event-and-summon wise, thanks to the gift of Prophecy given to the Investigator)
• 'Tiered' summons which require an amount of Stamina or Willpower to be sacrificed from a number of already-summoned cards to be brought onto the field.
• 'Event' cards support in Confrontations which will allow you to do things like impose penalties or bonuses to cards on the field or directly hit them and/or 'trap' positions on the field.
• Primitive support for Opponent strategies (very simple AI support)

Once all this is done, the game should be ready for limited testing. I'll be putting out a prototype demo that folks can play -- but it'll be a delayed launch for those who aren't subscribed to my subscribestar.

Cool, but what does the game look and feel like right now?

A lot of this is 'under the hood' stuff, but I think you can still see a number of improvements that I've made in the past twenty days just looking at present footage.

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