Patch Notes: Field fixes, the town watch and town talk - foe health bars, HUD boxes, townspeople and travellers in walls and water, guards round the clock who know you and protect the town, townspeople who talk to each other

The town watch

• The watch now keeps the town day and night. Three eight-hour shifts (from 06:00, 14:00 and 22:00) and a day off, so there are guards on the streets at night too.
• Patrols walk in pairs, side by side, around their own district of the town. In larger towns a watchman stands at each gate, facing the road.
• Off duty, a watchman wears his own clothes and is an ordinary townsperson. He changes at home, never in front of you. Larger towns keep a larger watch.
• A watchman on duty now greets you by your standing with the law of the region: by name if you are honoured, politely if you are respected, with a curt word for a common citizen, a warning if the law has its eye on you, and a reminder that the watch knows your face if you are a known criminal.
• A first minor offence in a region (picking a pocket, trying a locked door, trespassing or sleeping in the street) now draws a "Hold!" warning instead of an arrest. It still costs you standing with the law, and the next one in that region brings the arrest. Serious crimes and known criminals get no warning.
• A monster that gets into town can now attack townspeople, not just you: it goes for whoever is nearest, and one blow kills a townsperson. Archers, spellcasters and human enemies still leave townspeople alone.
• The watch now comes to defend townspeople a monster is attacking, just as it does when a monster attacks you.
• Townspeople run from a monster that comes close, along the street rather than through walls, and keep their distance until it has gone. While frightened they don't stop for you, greet you or chat.
• The watch no longer shouts "Halt!" over and over. When it comes for you, the first watchman calls out at once; after that only one of them calls, at most once every 15 seconds, and nobody calls while a window is open.
• All of this is in the living world (the enhanced skin with the living world switched on). Classic play keeps Daggerfall's own watch and townspeople.

Townspeople talk to each other

• Townspeople who stop to talk now turn to face each other instead of all facing you. Someone who stops for you still turns to you.
• A group waits until everyone has walked over before anyone speaks. Then they take turns, with pauses between exchanges, and you hear them only while the whole group is there, standing together.
• People keep the same company for about two minutes before moving on (it used to change every 40 seconds), and each square keeps its own rhythm. The town no longer falls silent all at once and then has ten people talking in the same moment.
• Much less repetition. The common trades, mornings, days, evenings and nights all have more to say, and nobody starts the same conversation twice in a row. Morning greetings are heard only in the morning, and talk of other places names real towns on the town's roads.
• Indoors, people at a table start talking as soon as they sit down together. Someone who joins waits for the current exchange to end, and the group stays seated while they talk.
• A stranger who said nothing as you walked past now speaks when you stop in front of them.
• All of this is in the living world (the enhanced skin with the living world switched on).

Fixed

• Paying your fine no longer counts as killing the watchman who walked away: his household no longer turns against you, and he goes back to his rounds.
• A townsperson the watch turns into a guard keeps who they are, and returns to their day when the guard walks away. A watchman killed by a monster is mourned by the town instead of being counted against you.
• Two crimes at the same moment no longer bring more guards than the limit, or turn the same townsperson into a guard twice.
• Online, another player's watch no longer shows the same watchman twice (with the updated server).
• In the biggest cities the watch now reaches its post by the start of its shift and stays to the end of it.
• The large dark see-through box that hung under an enemy's health bar is gone. A foe at rest now shows only its thin wind-up track (the strip that fills amber as it winds up a blow), as it was meant to.
• With the diamond quick-slot style, the status-effect icons that move beside the diamond (on a phone held sideways, or with the chat open) no longer sit on a dark box.
• An empty spell quick-slot no longer leaves a gap under it that pushed the quick block up.
• At sea, an empty fire-barrel battery no longer stretches the gun rose on the ship plate.
• Townspeople no longer stand inside building walls or out over the harbour water. Wherever they stop to chat or wait is now open street, spread around the spot rather than bunched against a wall, and when they move between those places they go round corners instead of through them.
• Townspeople no longer walk on the spot, running into whatever is in front of them, while the game works out their next route (this happened mostly in big cities). They now stand still, then set off from where they are.
• Travellers on the roads no longer camp for the night, fight, or leave their fallen out in the sea where a road runs along the coast. Caught on a wet stretch at dusk, a party walks on to the first dry ground and camps there, and picks up its journey from that camp in the morning. Where no dry ground lies ahead on its road, it walks on to the town it was heading for.

What's Changed

• Field fixes + audit + the town watch and town talk: the black box under a foe's health bar (POISE-BOX) and three more HUD boxes (HUD-CLASS); townspeople in walls, over the water and walking on the spot (LW-STAND); road parties camped in the sea (LW-DRY); one Halt (HALT-ONE), the watch's own bugs (WATCH-FIX), the watch round the clock (WATCH-DAY); townspeople face and talk to each other (LW-TALK); the watch knows you (WATCH-KNOWS); the watch protects the town's people (WATCH-PROTECTS) by @Lattymoy in #630

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.6510...app-v0.1.6527