AVWW Beta 0.513-0514, "Previously Pernicious Particles," Released!

This one is a really big release, in a lot of respects.  It changes a huge amount of stuff about the visuals of the various particle effects, without actually doing any new graphics.  But to the average player it's really going to look like a bunch of new graphics, especially with something like the fireball, because the particle behaviors and compound effects have been updated so much that they look all-new.

We did this not just for every spell in the game, but actually every particle effect in general.  Some of them saw pretty small changes only, but for most spells and enemy attacks, the following three things have changed: 1) the spells/attacks look better; 2) they cause between 20% and 50% of the GPU load they previously did; and 3) it's much easier to tell what is going on with them -- which parts of them your character will collide with and be damaged by.

This really changes the feel of the boss battles in particular, for the better.  Thanks to all the players who have been suggesting this off and on for a while, but in particular stblr and eRe4s3r for their comments.

There have also been a number of substantial settlement management improvements and changes, among them the introduction of various activities now having shard-costs for colors other than blue shards.

The last major new feature is a new "Mouse Cursor Dynamically Moves Camera" settings option that basically adds a way for the camera to be controlled partly with the mouse.  It's pretty cool, but I don't think I'm going to be using it because at 1080p resolution it seems superfluous.  At smaller resolutions, though, this is something that can really improve your field of view and it's something that a number of players were asking for as an alternative way to control the camera.  So here it is!

And of course there were the usual array of smaller fixes and tweaks; see the release notes for details.  More coming tomorrow, including finally some new spells and enemies if at all possible.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.