The episode editor in its current state is... quirky.

This guide aims to help readers navigate that quirkiness by providing workarounds to some of the common issues encountered by players.

Please note that this is written under the assumption that you've played through the entire game. There may be some story spoilers in the tips section.

It's possible that much of this guide will become obsolete when the editor is eventually patched... Hopefully someday soon! :)

For basic instructions on how to use the editor, see its official documentation here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1301218944

This section covers some common roadblocks you may encounter when creating an episode.



After clicking the button to generate a Steam Workshop page for your episode, clicking the Upload button appears to do nothing. Your steam workshop page exists, but is empty.

Cause
A required image file is missing

Workaround

It's necessary to manually create an image and re-upload.

• 1. Locate the folder where custom episodes are saved. For windows, this should default to \AppData\LocalLow\Behold Studios\Chroma Squad\MyCustomEpisodes
  
• 2. Find your episode's app ID: the file will be named like this: 1234567.Json
  
• 3. Create a JPG image with file size 512x512
  
• 4. Put your image in the same folder as your episode.
  
• 5. Rename the image to screenshot_{ApId}.JPG. So, if your episode name were 1234567, your image file would be named screenshot_1234567.JPG
  
• 6. Exit out of the Chroma Squad episode editor if you had it open.
  
• 7. Reopen the editor, select your episode, and upload again.

When you click 'Rec' to preview your episode, a message displays stating 'Please wait while we prepare the stage,' but the loading never stops.

Cause
This one seems to be a kind of crash. The exact cause is tricky to pin down.

Workaround

• If the game is hanging up and you can't continue, you might need to to force-close the game and restart your computer.
  
• Check for any red exclamation marks above your actions. (These appear if your action refers to a character that has been despawned.) You can resolve these by re-adding the character on which the lines depend.
  
• Check your preparation before your combat scenes. Remove and re-add the spawns/despawns and the combat.

Normally, an episode is updated as 'visible only to me' to allow you time to prepare it before making it available to others. But in this situation, you don't see the dropdown menu to update visibility at all.

Cause

This actually means your episode didn't upload properly. (If you check its filesize, it should say 0MB.)

When you click the 'Upload' button, if you don't see a comment about connecting to SteamWorks, that means it didn't work.

Workaround

• See the 'required image is missing' section above.
  
• Check if your episode runs when you click 'Rec' in the editor. If it crashes, it won't upload. Removing and re-adding actions related to spawns and despawns can often resolve that.

After a fight, the boss is left on the screen, motionless, but actions cannot be assigned to it.

Cause
The boss is no longer considered to be spawned, even though it's still on screen.

Workaround

The boss actually still 'exists' for a single action directly after the fight. You can assign one final line of dialogue to the character.

If you instead use your one action to 'explode boss' (under the Story menu), the boss will be removed from the screen. You can then spawn the boss again and have it talk. (You actually don't need to even use the revive action for this. It's already available to spawn again.)

It can be a little bit awkward to have the boss explode and then teleport, but you can handwave it with dialogue.


Sometimes your episode is duplicated. If this happens, you'll see two episodes with the exact same name and details.

Cause

If you change the minimum season requirement and then save, the game will hang and get stuck saving. If you force-close, it will quit while saving, which generates a copy of your episode.

Workaround

• To get rid of the duplicate, go to the folder where your Chroma Squad episodes are saved. (By default on windows this is \AppData\LocalLow\Behold Studios\Chroma Squad\MyCustomEpisodes) Find the episode with 'temp' in its name. Delete it.
  
• To prevent this from happening, if you change the minimum season requirement for your episode, click 'Rec' once before saving. Then the episode will save normally.

Minion dialogue is always randomly assigned.

If you have an extended conversation with minions, try to write their dialogue so that the speaker is interchangeable. Don't write a line that assumes the same speaker as the previous line or any direct responses that sound awkward if one minion ends up speaking all of them.

Examples:

Minion 1: Let's get them!
Minion 2: I agree.

This would get kinda awkward if the same minion speaks both lines. It's a little less awkward if you write something where the relationship between the statements is ambiguous.

Minion 1: Let's get them!
Minion 2: It's a good day to die.


The minimum season you set controls how far players will be in the story when they play your episode.

If you want to refer back to events in the story, you'll need to set your minimum season to be the season after those events. Otherwise, players may encounter the episode out of sequence and either not know what's going on or have the story spoiled for them.

In the first two seasons, the story focuses on filming a sentai series... So even the fact that the monsters are real is a bit of a spoiler.


In tabletop gaming, there's a concept called 'The Action Economy.'

Basically, the more actions you're taking per turn in comparison to your opponent, the more likely you are to win. So, if the player has 2 characters and there are 7 enemies, they're much more likely to struggle than if the numbers are closer to even.

Minions are pretty weak, but numbers matter. On higher difficulties, players may find themselves in an unwinnable state where the enemies can wipe them out in a single turn.

The disappointing boss

If the player has all five characters and there's only one boss, even if it does a lot of damage, the player can use all of the tools and actions of those characters to control the boss's movement and overwhelm them. A lonely boss is pretty soon a dead boss.

On the plus side, this can allow you to use boss characters from later in the game in earlier chapters so long as they are not accompanied by too many other enemies. The fight will feel really hard, but the player has the tools to make it happen.

The Endless Fight

Bosses that spawn minions are more difficult for players to handle. Use them cautiously if your episode has a low minimum season.

A simple encounter between a couple player characters and a single boss can easily get out of control if that boss summons more minions than the player can remove per round.

Testing Considerations

When testing your episodes, keep in mind that players may be running harder difficulties and they may attempt your episode early in the minimum season set, so it can be useful to test with a save file from around that point in the game to get a rough sense of if your episode is challenging or completely impossible at that point in the game.

If it's too tough, you can tone it down, move it back a season, or include a description warning players that the episode is hard, so they need to git gud if they want to play it.