This one is primarily for a single bugfix: to prevent the exo-galactic waves from getting all distracted with minutiae and wandering off after minor ships. While funny to see your ultimate enemy do this, it wasn't exactly conductive to their usual hardcore challenge.
There's also a couple of other handy fixes and tweaks in here. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the
in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.577 "Transplant Upgrade" Released!
This one has a really large amount of random polish/bugfix items in it, and the overall effect on the game is pretty notable. Things are visually and game-flow-wise smoother, and a number of the minor annoyances that people have reported have been dealt with.
Several key interfaces are also now more self-explanatory, and are also now more visually-oriented for faster navigation. Oh, and the stats of characters have been rejiggered a ton, so that they actually have more of an impact on gameplay; having a lot or a little mana, for instance, now actually creates a difference in game feel.
Upgrade Stones
The really exciting new thing in this release isn't something that we'd really planned on doing, though: vitality stones have become upgrade stones. The general idea is that now each character has a limited number of upgrades (10), but they can be spread across three categories rather than all having to go into the health category.
This is obviously a big win for character customization, which is something that people have shown a lot of interest in. But it's also a big win for the meaningfulness of permadeath: because whatever upgrades you have applied to your character all get lost on death.
There are a couple of ways to avoid this loss on permadeath:
First of all, try not to die. The death of a maturely-upgraded character should be the culmination of a lot of mistakes, not a single missed jump or what have you. So if you have a character that you care a lot about (for gameplay reasons, not thematic/emotional reasons), then take extra care.
Secondly, if you have a character you love, and you're about to go somewhere that they are not suited for (or that is just too high-risk in general), then you can use the newly-patched-up Glyph Transplant scroll to leave them at your settlement and take another NPC along as your character instead.
Doing this, you can actually build up a small stable of buffed-up NPCs that are each suited for specific kinds of tasks -- or you can just play each character until they die, and then build a new one from the ground up. Either way is valid at the average difficulty, but the point is that now you have a lot more choices (and some new ways to deal with the higher difficulties, in particular).
More to come soon. There's more stuff along the lines of this sort of cleanup/polish/training/clarity that we're working on, but we're also working on new missions. Keith has majorly upgraded battlefield missions today, although they weren't quite ready for release yet, and we're both really looking forward to implementing a bunch of the player-suggested missions (plus some more ideas of our own) very soon. 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.
Several key interfaces are also now more self-explanatory, and are also now more visually-oriented for faster navigation. Oh, and the stats of characters have been rejiggered a ton, so that they actually have more of an impact on gameplay; having a lot or a little mana, for instance, now actually creates a difference in game feel.
Upgrade Stones
The really exciting new thing in this release isn't something that we'd really planned on doing, though: vitality stones have become upgrade stones. The general idea is that now each character has a limited number of upgrades (10), but they can be spread across three categories rather than all having to go into the health category.
This is obviously a big win for character customization, which is something that people have shown a lot of interest in. But it's also a big win for the meaningfulness of permadeath: because whatever upgrades you have applied to your character all get lost on death.
There are a couple of ways to avoid this loss on permadeath:
First of all, try not to die. The death of a maturely-upgraded character should be the culmination of a lot of mistakes, not a single missed jump or what have you. So if you have a character that you care a lot about (for gameplay reasons, not thematic/emotional reasons), then take extra care.
Secondly, if you have a character you love, and you're about to go somewhere that they are not suited for (or that is just too high-risk in general), then you can use the newly-patched-up Glyph Transplant scroll to leave them at your settlement and take another NPC along as your character instead.
Doing this, you can actually build up a small stable of buffed-up NPCs that are each suited for specific kinds of tasks -- or you can just play each character until they die, and then build a new one from the ground up. Either way is valid at the average difficulty, but the point is that now you have a lot more choices (and some new ways to deal with the higher difficulties, in particular).
More to come soon. There's more stuff along the lines of this sort of cleanup/polish/training/clarity that we're working on, but we're also working on new missions. Keith has majorly upgraded battlefield missions today, although they weren't quite ready for release yet, and we're both really looking forward to implementing a bunch of the player-suggested missions (plus some more ideas of our own) very soon. 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.
A Valley Without Wind, Vol. 1 soundtrack on sale!
After a long year, the first soundtrack to our game "A Valley Without Wind, Vol. 1" is now on sale!
It's available through iTunes (search for "A Valley Without Wind" in the iTunes store).
It's also available for purchase at Band Camp: http://arcenmusic.bandcamp.com/
Or you can purchase it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/
These are remastered high quality versions of the in-game tracks. Thank you all for your continued support, it means so much to us!
It's available through iTunes (search for "A Valley Without Wind" in the iTunes store).
It's also available for purchase at Band Camp: http://arcenmusic.bandcamp.com/
Or you can purchase it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/
These are remastered high quality versions of the in-game tracks. Thank you all for your continued support, it means so much to us!
Monday, February 13, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.576 "Bug Bomb" Released!
This one is a collection of a few bugfixes, and one balance tweak. We just wanted to go ahead and get these out ASAP.
More to come soon. 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.
More to come soon. 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.
AI War Beta 5.025, "Balance Beam ," Released!
As Keith put it, "finally got around to some long-needed rebalancing" with this one.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.575 "Escape Hatch" Released!
This one is just a single bugfix to the prior version.
More to come soon. 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.
More to come soon. 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.
AVWW Beta 0.574 "Ducking And Warping With Friends" Released!
This one has more bugfixes and balance tweaks, but also three major new features. Oh, and the non-HUD parts of the GUI have been majorly upgraded once again, too.
The first is one that players have been clamoring for for a while, but which I've not been too enthused about: the ability for your character to duck, and even duck and slide with a bit of momentum. I've finally come around to the idea, though, and now that I see it in the game it is pretty cool. I'm still really more of a jump-to-avoid kind of guy, but it's nice to have options.
The next big feature is the new warp mechanics. Be sure and read the release notes about those, but the general idea is that warp potions (that you carry around) are gone, and warp stones (that you find in the wild and visit) are replacing them. In other words, this is becoming a little more traditional for the genre in terms of the warp mechanics. This has many various benefits, which are explained in depth in the release notes.
Multiplayer Graduates From Opt-In Alpha
The third major new feature is CO-OP! We've had the multiplayer in an opt-in alpha state for months now, and some servers have been getting quite a bit of use. Toll's server in particular has been the go-to destination for beta phase 2 public play, I have to say.
Please see the release notes for all the details on the co-op updates, too, but the short of it is that we finally have movement smoothing in, and so huge swathes of gameplay now perform just like you'd expect rather than jerking around. There are still some known bugs, but these are just little isolated glitches that we need to clean up, not anything to do with fundamental architecture anymore.
So that's why we're moving the co-op up to beta status, and no longer requiring people to opt in to it: now it's just a matter of squashing isolated small bugs with the multiplayer for it to be 1.0 ready. Oh, and of course some new features like a server listing and some anti-griefing admin controls are things we also want to add before 1.0. It's a real relief to have the core there and working so well, though.
It's also really refreshing to see our remaining to-do list for beta phase 2 dwindling like it is. Lots to do next week, but then we should be moving into beta phase 3. More to come soon. 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.
The first is one that players have been clamoring for for a while, but which I've not been too enthused about: the ability for your character to duck, and even duck and slide with a bit of momentum. I've finally come around to the idea, though, and now that I see it in the game it is pretty cool. I'm still really more of a jump-to-avoid kind of guy, but it's nice to have options.
The next big feature is the new warp mechanics. Be sure and read the release notes about those, but the general idea is that warp potions (that you carry around) are gone, and warp stones (that you find in the wild and visit) are replacing them. In other words, this is becoming a little more traditional for the genre in terms of the warp mechanics. This has many various benefits, which are explained in depth in the release notes.
Multiplayer Graduates From Opt-In Alpha
The third major new feature is CO-OP! We've had the multiplayer in an opt-in alpha state for months now, and some servers have been getting quite a bit of use. Toll's server in particular has been the go-to destination for beta phase 2 public play, I have to say.
Please see the release notes for all the details on the co-op updates, too, but the short of it is that we finally have movement smoothing in, and so huge swathes of gameplay now perform just like you'd expect rather than jerking around. There are still some known bugs, but these are just little isolated glitches that we need to clean up, not anything to do with fundamental architecture anymore.
So that's why we're moving the co-op up to beta status, and no longer requiring people to opt in to it: now it's just a matter of squashing isolated small bugs with the multiplayer for it to be 1.0 ready. Oh, and of course some new features like a server listing and some anti-griefing admin controls are things we also want to add before 1.0. It's a real relief to have the core there and working so well, though.
It's also really refreshing to see our remaining to-do list for beta phase 2 dwindling like it is. Lots to do next week, but then we should be moving into beta phase 3. More to come soon. 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.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.573 "Vital Signs Improving" Released!
This one is mostly a bugfix/balance release, but it includes a lot of helpful items. It also introduces three new "diluter" enchants that are helpful for getting the specific kinds of tier orbs you need. The biggest change in this version is a host of shifts to how vitality stones work: basically making them less annoying and death more meaningful.
More to come soon. 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.
More to come soon. 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.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.572 "Enchanted Gills" Released!
This one is absolutely preposterously large in terms of its affect on the overall game experience. First of all, perhaps least interestingly from a gameplay perspective, the HUD graphics have been completely overhauled. Man does it look better now!
Enchants At Last!
Finally those little blue enchant containers have a purpose again. And if you've been collecting them during the last few releases, you've not been collecting them in vain -- expect a flood of enchants as you collect enchant containers in this new version. All the stored up enchant points will be put to use getting you new and cool stuff to catch up with what you would have gotten before.
Enchants are basically like magical equipment that you can put on your body. There are three kinds of enchants: arms (of which you can equip two at once -- one for left arm, one for right), torso (of which you can equip one at once), and legs (of which you can also equip one at once).
The enchants for your arms have a lot to do with your abilities, and things like modifiers for outgoing damage, or outgoing damage buffs by element.
Enchants for your torso have some damage reduction buffs, lighting capabilities (like emit light, which has now been retired, used to do), and other special effects such as stealth (so that enemies don't see you from as far away) or acid gills (so that you can breathe underwater and not take acid damage).
The enchants for your legs are more logistical in nature, and have to do with things like increasing jump height or run speed, letting you fall slower and avoid falling damage, or letting you fall faster but avoid getting pushed around by the wind in windstorms.
Enchants always have one core focus (like incoming damage reduction, for instance), but then they typically often have other secondary effects attached to them. So for your torso you can easily get an enchant that gives off a huge amount of light but does nothing else -- that's kind of a raw deal, though. Better is something like reduction of incoming damage, plus a smaller amount of light emission. And there are various other permutations you can also find and use, especially if you don't mind using something like Ball of Light.
There's a separate inventory for enchants, accessible with the Z key, so you don't have to worry about all those enchants cluttering up your main inventory ability bars. That's pretty handy on its own!
Acid Gills
As noted above in the enchants section, you can now find various enchants that let you breathe underwater and which protect you from acid damage from the water. This means that, with one of these equipped, you can go exploring in the oceans and ocean shallows at last! This is very important so that you can actually go and get things like coral and sea essence, and even so that you can complete some of the unlocks needed to get to certain materials.
Key Balance Work
Also really important in this release is that the rare commodity unlocks and general crafting cost requirements have all been re-analyzed and tons of mistakes and logical missteps in those have been corrected. So it's now actually feasible to craft all of the appropriate spell tiers at the appropriate time during the game again, which is certainly really important to being able to play much.
Hand in hand with the crafting-related balance, is actual enemy balance. Previously, the game got linearly harder as the continent's tier went up. Enemies hit you for more damage, and your allied minions did not go up in tier during battlefield missions. Now your allied minions go up in tier right with the enemies, and your resistance to damage also goes up with the continent tier.
Oh, and the stats on enemies and on player spells have been retooled again -- the mana cost versus the spell power of spells was really out of whack in prior versions. You can read about the details of why, and what the fix was, in the release notes. But suffice it to say here, it's way better balanced now.
Enemy Progress (EP) Becomes Civilization Progress (CP)
To really understand the nature of this change, I think it's important to just go read the section devoted to explaining it in the release notes. It's a substantial change, and hard to summarize effectively.
But at the most basic level, it's reaffirming what we've always maintained: that this game is, at core, an adventure game. The strategic elements are meant to layer on top of it and provide interesting choices, not to rule the game with an iron first.
Put another way, it's switching things around so that there's a lot more carrot and a lot less stick. Players were telling us that the EP mechanic was stressing them out and that it wasn't any fun, so we've taken that feedback and come up with something that should be a lot more fun while still getting at the same basic style of game progression for player power.
Secret Missions Coming Soon, But Not In Yet
We actually didn't work on secret missions at all since the last release, because some other features in this release turned out to seem a lot more pressing. But now that these are done, secret missions and then the new warp mechanics are the very next things on our list.
More to come soon. 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.
Enchants At Last!
Finally those little blue enchant containers have a purpose again. And if you've been collecting them during the last few releases, you've not been collecting them in vain -- expect a flood of enchants as you collect enchant containers in this new version. All the stored up enchant points will be put to use getting you new and cool stuff to catch up with what you would have gotten before.
Enchants are basically like magical equipment that you can put on your body. There are three kinds of enchants: arms (of which you can equip two at once -- one for left arm, one for right), torso (of which you can equip one at once), and legs (of which you can also equip one at once).
The enchants for your arms have a lot to do with your abilities, and things like modifiers for outgoing damage, or outgoing damage buffs by element.
Enchants for your torso have some damage reduction buffs, lighting capabilities (like emit light, which has now been retired, used to do), and other special effects such as stealth (so that enemies don't see you from as far away) or acid gills (so that you can breathe underwater and not take acid damage).
The enchants for your legs are more logistical in nature, and have to do with things like increasing jump height or run speed, letting you fall slower and avoid falling damage, or letting you fall faster but avoid getting pushed around by the wind in windstorms.
Enchants always have one core focus (like incoming damage reduction, for instance), but then they typically often have other secondary effects attached to them. So for your torso you can easily get an enchant that gives off a huge amount of light but does nothing else -- that's kind of a raw deal, though. Better is something like reduction of incoming damage, plus a smaller amount of light emission. And there are various other permutations you can also find and use, especially if you don't mind using something like Ball of Light.
There's a separate inventory for enchants, accessible with the Z key, so you don't have to worry about all those enchants cluttering up your main inventory ability bars. That's pretty handy on its own!
Acid Gills
As noted above in the enchants section, you can now find various enchants that let you breathe underwater and which protect you from acid damage from the water. This means that, with one of these equipped, you can go exploring in the oceans and ocean shallows at last! This is very important so that you can actually go and get things like coral and sea essence, and even so that you can complete some of the unlocks needed to get to certain materials.
Key Balance Work
Also really important in this release is that the rare commodity unlocks and general crafting cost requirements have all been re-analyzed and tons of mistakes and logical missteps in those have been corrected. So it's now actually feasible to craft all of the appropriate spell tiers at the appropriate time during the game again, which is certainly really important to being able to play much.
Hand in hand with the crafting-related balance, is actual enemy balance. Previously, the game got linearly harder as the continent's tier went up. Enemies hit you for more damage, and your allied minions did not go up in tier during battlefield missions. Now your allied minions go up in tier right with the enemies, and your resistance to damage also goes up with the continent tier.
Oh, and the stats on enemies and on player spells have been retooled again -- the mana cost versus the spell power of spells was really out of whack in prior versions. You can read about the details of why, and what the fix was, in the release notes. But suffice it to say here, it's way better balanced now.
Enemy Progress (EP) Becomes Civilization Progress (CP)
To really understand the nature of this change, I think it's important to just go read the section devoted to explaining it in the release notes. It's a substantial change, and hard to summarize effectively.
But at the most basic level, it's reaffirming what we've always maintained: that this game is, at core, an adventure game. The strategic elements are meant to layer on top of it and provide interesting choices, not to rule the game with an iron first.
Put another way, it's switching things around so that there's a lot more carrot and a lot less stick. Players were telling us that the EP mechanic was stressing them out and that it wasn't any fun, so we've taken that feedback and come up with something that should be a lot more fun while still getting at the same basic style of game progression for player power.
Secret Missions Coming Soon, But Not In Yet
We actually didn't work on secret missions at all since the last release, because some other features in this release turned out to seem a lot more pressing. But now that these are done, secret missions and then the new warp mechanics are the very next things on our list.
More to come soon. 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.
Arcen Games Quoted in Game Developer Magazine
Chris is quoted in the opening of Soren Johnson's excellent game design article "Design success means knowing what to do with feedback." Johnson goes in depth on how taking in feedback properly from a development team, testers, and/or player community is critical toward reaching success in a game's design -- specifically touching on how important it is to develop the ability to pick out what feedback will and won't work for your design.
The piece was originally published in Game Developer Magazine and can be currently viewed online via Gamasutra.
Monday, February 6, 2012
AI War Beta 5.024, "Carrier Rules Of Engagement," Released!
This one has another big batch of fixes and tweaks, on a variety of ships and parts of the interface. Some welcome changes to the Plasma Siege Starships as well as the Spirecraft Shield Bearers, for instance, as well as Spider Turrets.
The biggest bunch of changes, however, is to the AI Carriers: how you're options work for targeting them, what happens when too many of them get destroyed on one planet at one time, and so on. Lots of player feedback really helped to shape these changes, so hopefully these are ones that work out well in practice. As always, let us know what you think!
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
The biggest bunch of changes, however, is to the AI Carriers: how you're options work for targeting them, what happens when too many of them get destroyed on one planet at one time, and so on. Lots of player feedback really helped to shape these changes, so hopefully these are ones that work out well in practice. As always, let us know what you think!
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 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 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.570/0.571 "The Guardian City" Released!
This one has a huge, huge number of miscellaneous fixes and tweaks; far too many to even try summarizing. Well, normally I would try, but it's really late and I'm incredibly tired. So I'll just point you to the link above, for most of it.
Guardian Powers And Citybuilding Structures Are In!
But the big marquee feature in this new version are the guardian powers, I will say. Most of them (37 out of 41 of them) are focused on the new citybuilding portion of the game, which is about beefing up your NPCs so that they can perform yet more powerful guardian powers for you. However, the other four let you: a) extend the life of the continent before it gets destroyed by the overlord; b) create an overlord or rescue-NPC mission anywhere you want; or c) create new rare commodity missions wherever you want.
More will come with guardian powers with time, but already these change the playing field dramatically -- suddenly you're no longer quite so at the mercy of the random number generator in terms of how you go about civilizing your continent. We're super excited to finally have those in, as they've been planned and in the works for a very long time now.
Secret Missions Are Almost Done, But Not In This One
Secret missions are the other big thing that is still lacking in terms of that sort of strategic power balance, and you'll be happy to know that the actual mechanism for secret missions are 100% done. The reason they aren't included in this release is that we didn't have any actual missions done to use them with yet!
On Monday I hope to get three or four small new mission types in place, all of which would be for secret missions only, and which would let you go about finding your own guardian powers and rare commodities through freeform exploration rather than having to use what the world map RNG hands you.
More to come soon. 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.
Guardian Powers And Citybuilding Structures Are In!
But the big marquee feature in this new version are the guardian powers, I will say. Most of them (37 out of 41 of them) are focused on the new citybuilding portion of the game, which is about beefing up your NPCs so that they can perform yet more powerful guardian powers for you. However, the other four let you: a) extend the life of the continent before it gets destroyed by the overlord; b) create an overlord or rescue-NPC mission anywhere you want; or c) create new rare commodity missions wherever you want.
More will come with guardian powers with time, but already these change the playing field dramatically -- suddenly you're no longer quite so at the mercy of the random number generator in terms of how you go about civilizing your continent. We're super excited to finally have those in, as they've been planned and in the works for a very long time now.
Secret Missions Are Almost Done, But Not In This One
Secret missions are the other big thing that is still lacking in terms of that sort of strategic power balance, and you'll be happy to know that the actual mechanism for secret missions are 100% done. The reason they aren't included in this release is that we didn't have any actual missions done to use them with yet!
On Monday I hope to get three or four small new mission types in place, all of which would be for secret missions only, and which would let you go about finding your own guardian powers and rare commodities through freeform exploration rather than having to use what the world map RNG hands you.
More to come soon. 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.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Just Press Start Podcast And Gnome's Lair Interview
Chris and I had an excellent time getting together with the gents at Just Press Start for a chat. In their latest podcast we discuss our games (specifically AVWW) give a bit about our backgrounds, and touch on various other topics.
Additionally, our friend Konstantinos Dimopoulos of Gnome's Lair has posted an interview where I talk with him about the current state of Valley, how we've reached this point, and where we hope and expect it to go now that we can see a bit of light coming from the end of the tunnel in regards to 1.0.
We're working steadily on some major items as far as providing new/updated media and info for everyone to check out. Stay tuned for that in the next week or two.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.569 "Water Cushion " Released!
This one is a very small maintenance release that fixes two bugs -- the more serious of which that falling very far in water could be death. We didn't want people to have to work around that for very long!
It also includes a great new battlefield music track for the battlefield missions, though, as a bonus.
More to come soon. 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.
It also includes a great new battlefield music track for the battlefield missions, though, as a bonus.
More to come soon. 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.
AVWW Beta 0.568 "The Sky That Fell" Released!
This one has a whole bunch of fixes and tweaks to a lot of random parts of the game, first of all. There's also quite a bit of minor polish that has been applied, which will hopefully make the experience smoother both for experienced and for new players alike.
The first big thing in this release is that falling damage is back -- but in a much tamer form than before. If you leap off a really tall building or down a giant hole, expect to take some damage. This seems in keeping with the general feel and tone of the game at this point, but it's a tame enough amount of damage that slight missteps aren't going to result in character deaths. Details can be found in the release notes, but I think that even folks who normally groan at falling damage (which I often do myself) should be pleased with how this worked out.
The really big change in this version is the skies. After much polling and discussion, we decided to get rid of the dynamic skies that were previously being provided by Unisky. It was a cool system, but tended to be too homogeneous and way too load-heavy. Such a small percentage of our players could use it, and it was holding us back from doing some things like having the amount of daylight hours vary by season, etc.
So now we're down to just one model for skies, based on what were previously called "static" skies. But I think you'll find that the new skies are anything but static -- we have animated suns and moons, we have all sorts of cloud motion, we have sunsets and sunrises with the stars coming out at night through the clouds (most of the time) and all sorts of things.
It's a vastly simpler system for generating these skies, and so you won't see the crazy roiling stuff you used to with dynamic skies, but if you look at the game as a whole -- between different time periods and regions -- the skies are actually a lot more varied and unique now than they were in the old dynamic skies system (which had a lot of unique effects, but the effects were very similar between all regions).
And best of all, this new system of animated skies should run on pretty much anything. If anyone has problems with the animation load causing their framerate to be too low, let me know and I can put in options to turn that down. But the load is low enough that that should be necessary for a very tiny minority of our players (if any) as opposed to 80% or more (based on my best estimate) being unable to run dynamic skies at a decent framerate before.
Keith has been hard at work on guardian powers and secret missions, by the way. But there are some parts that I was supposed to tend to that I didn't have time for yet, and so those aren't actually in this release. The next release should have both of those, and will hopefully be out tomorrow night at the latest.
More to come soon. 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.
The first big thing in this release is that falling damage is back -- but in a much tamer form than before. If you leap off a really tall building or down a giant hole, expect to take some damage. This seems in keeping with the general feel and tone of the game at this point, but it's a tame enough amount of damage that slight missteps aren't going to result in character deaths. Details can be found in the release notes, but I think that even folks who normally groan at falling damage (which I often do myself) should be pleased with how this worked out.
The really big change in this version is the skies. After much polling and discussion, we decided to get rid of the dynamic skies that were previously being provided by Unisky. It was a cool system, but tended to be too homogeneous and way too load-heavy. Such a small percentage of our players could use it, and it was holding us back from doing some things like having the amount of daylight hours vary by season, etc.
So now we're down to just one model for skies, based on what were previously called "static" skies. But I think you'll find that the new skies are anything but static -- we have animated suns and moons, we have all sorts of cloud motion, we have sunsets and sunrises with the stars coming out at night through the clouds (most of the time) and all sorts of things.
It's a vastly simpler system for generating these skies, and so you won't see the crazy roiling stuff you used to with dynamic skies, but if you look at the game as a whole -- between different time periods and regions -- the skies are actually a lot more varied and unique now than they were in the old dynamic skies system (which had a lot of unique effects, but the effects were very similar between all regions).
And best of all, this new system of animated skies should run on pretty much anything. If anyone has problems with the animation load causing their framerate to be too low, let me know and I can put in options to turn that down. But the load is low enough that that should be necessary for a very tiny minority of our players (if any) as opposed to 80% or more (based on my best estimate) being unable to run dynamic skies at a decent framerate before.
Keith has been hard at work on guardian powers and secret missions, by the way. But there are some parts that I was supposed to tend to that I didn't have time for yet, and so those aren't actually in this release. The next release should have both of those, and will hopefully be out tomorrow night at the latest.
More to come soon. 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.
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