Arcen Games is pleased to announce the downloadable PC/Mac title A Valley Without Wind -- our fast-paced, open world sidescroller of nearly limitless proportions -- has entered its final beta phase, with an official launch now in sight. To celebrate, a brand new trailer for the game has been released (best viewed in 1080p), along with 18 new screenshots and updated demos as well.
With the game's community heavily involved in the beta so far, the game has seen an astronomical number of changes and improvements added by our relentless programmers. Thankfully after a whirlwind of patching, the game's dust has settled, and we welcome everyone to take a look around at what the world of Environ has evolved into.
The mechanics have been streamlined, a fully fleshed-out player experience is now in place, and tons of new content has been packed in -- including a variety of new missions, spells, armor enchants, guardian powers, and more. Multiplayer has also come a long way, and players are having a blast running their own beta servers. There are a few multiplayer remaining bugs to iron out prior to 1.0, plus the need for a server browser, but it's already a satisfying experience.
Beyond all that, the game has become much more accessible to new players. A planning menu complete with handy 'supplies', 'things to do', and 'where to find stuff' sections; opt out popup tooltips; and other improvements to usability and clarity result in a newfound flow to the title. Players who are returning after a long absence are heartily encouraged to play through the game's intro mission, given how much has changed. If you'd like to know more before you play, or just have a fetish for external manuals, check out our Learning The Game section on the A Valley Without Wind Wiki.
There's still so much to come for AVWW, both prior to 1.0 and after! Our head designer Chris Park states his vision for the game going forward on his devblog:
"Our plan is to take the AI War route, and release tons of free DLC as well to do at least a couple of paid expansions. Hopefully in 2-3 years, we're still developing both AI War and AVWW -- that is the ideal scenario for me personally.”
About A Valley Without Wind
The full beta version of A Valley Without Wind is available now on PC and Mac for pre-order at a substantial discount from the game's official launch price. Customers gain instant access to the latest available build and all subsequent releases through 1.0 and beyond. The game can be purchased and downloaded directly through the developer as well as on GamersGate, Impulse, and MacGamesStore. A demo is also available, and grants full access to the game/multiplayer with the only some tier restrictions.
AVWW is currently in beta and as such is constantly in development. It continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with new content and improvements added nearly every weekday as it progresses toward official launch in late March. Follow the game and its updates/discussions on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. To get more involved with how AVWW evolves in any and/or all of its aspects, or to find populated multiplayer servers, be sure to stop by our forums.
About Arcen Games
Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic. Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is a platinum sponsor.
AI War's third and largest expansion Light of the Spire marked Arcen's first release of 2011, and now the company has shifted its focus and excitement to the development of A Valley Without Wind. Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles. For all the latest news, media coverage, and some of our other musings, follow us on our developer and individual game pages on Facebook or on Twitter: @ArcenGames.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.900 "Smooth As Butter " (Patch Only, So Far) Released!
At last we come to it. This one is the very last release of beta phase 2, and marks the start of beta phase 3 for the game. This version includes only some bugfixes and balance tweaks, as well as a change that really will help performance during battles quite a bit (stopping stuttering from background loading that was supposed to be pre-cached).
To reiterate from the last release's post, here's what our focus is going to shift toward for the next 3ish weeks until we hit 1.0 for the game:
- Enchant containers working better.
- Add hand-crafted touches into procedural exteriors and undergrounds.
- Walking monster interactions with cliffs to be better.
- Integration of mysteries-to-be-solved into the game (replacing what were memory crystals once).
- Multiplayer server listing and admin controls.
- More enchant-items and enchant-effects.
- More spells.
- More enemies, bosses, and environmental threats.
- More guardian powers, including ones for NPC skill level 4 and 5.
- More mission activities.
- A few more traps and other supplies to find in stash rooms.
More to come soon, including updated installers and more. 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.
To reiterate from the last release's post, here's what our focus is going to shift toward for the next 3ish weeks until we hit 1.0 for the game:
- Enchant containers working better.
- Add hand-crafted touches into procedural exteriors and undergrounds.
- Walking monster interactions with cliffs to be better.
- Integration of mysteries-to-be-solved into the game (replacing what were memory crystals once).
- Multiplayer server listing and admin controls.
- More enchant-items and enchant-effects.
- More spells.
- More enemies, bosses, and environmental threats.
- More guardian powers, including ones for NPC skill level 4 and 5.
- More mission activities.
- A few more traps and other supplies to find in stash rooms.
More to come soon, including updated installers and more. 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.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.586 "Sheer Cliffs" Released!
This one is the second and final release of today, and it might be the final release for beta phase 2. All of the features and fixes that we had wanted to get in place before moving into beta phase 3 are now in place and ready to go... but the catch is that some of these have not been tested as extensively as we would like, just yet.
In the interest of not handing a build with a bunch of regressions in it to the press and a wider audience of players, we're going to give this one another 12 hours or so in the hands of our core playerbase before we do a press push. I still haven't had time to build the installers and finish getting the website updates from Josh and Erik propagated anyhow, and it's late and I'm exhausted, so pushing this out a few more hours works for me.
But this is basically beta phase 3, aside from any bugs you might find! Assuming this release turns out to be as clean as we hope, here's what our focus is going to shift toward for the next 3ish weeks until we hit 1.0 for the game:
- Enchant containers working better.
- Add hand-crafted touches into procedural exteriors and undergrounds.
- Walking monster interactions with cliffs to be better.
- Integration of mysteries-to-be-solved into the game (replacing what were memory crystals once).
- Multiplayer server listing and admin controls.
- More enchant-items and enchant-effects.
- More spells.
- More enemies, bosses, and environmental threats.
- More guardian powers, including ones for NPC skill level 4 and 5.
- More mission activities.
- A few more traps and other supplies to find in stash rooms.
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.
In the interest of not handing a build with a bunch of regressions in it to the press and a wider audience of players, we're going to give this one another 12 hours or so in the hands of our core playerbase before we do a press push. I still haven't had time to build the installers and finish getting the website updates from Josh and Erik propagated anyhow, and it's late and I'm exhausted, so pushing this out a few more hours works for me.
But this is basically beta phase 3, aside from any bugs you might find! Assuming this release turns out to be as clean as we hope, here's what our focus is going to shift toward for the next 3ish weeks until we hit 1.0 for the game:
- Enchant containers working better.
- Add hand-crafted touches into procedural exteriors and undergrounds.
- Walking monster interactions with cliffs to be better.
- Integration of mysteries-to-be-solved into the game (replacing what were memory crystals once).
- Multiplayer server listing and admin controls.
- More enchant-items and enchant-effects.
- More spells.
- More enemies, bosses, and environmental threats.
- More guardian powers, including ones for NPC skill level 4 and 5.
- More mission activities.
- A few more traps and other supplies to find in stash rooms.
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 0.585 "Go With The Flow" Released!
This one is a relatively small release, but it fixes a few bugs and it greatly eases the game flow for when new players encounter the world map for the first time (after the intro mission). There are still a few last things we are working on in terms of both that early game flow and things that the planning menu tells you, but other than that -- barring any more bugs people find -- we're headed for beta phase 3 tonight!
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 0.584 "Supply Train Map " Released!
This one has a lot fewer bugfixes than the last few days, which is a great sign that we're really nearing beta phase 3 -- in fact, we hope for the next release, to come out tomorrow, to be the last release from beta phase 2.
This release is mostly focused on polish, clarity, and the planning menu. The minimap has gotten a minor visual upgrade, there are some tweaks to the intro mission, and there are a number of opt-out messages that pop up to explain new game mechanics as those mechanics arrive. More of that sort of thing coming tomorrow; my wife got a lot of those written, and I just haven't had time to actually code them into the game today.
The planning menu itself is also really coming along, although there's still more to do in terms of having it make good recommendations about things to do given your current situation. But 98% or more of the encyclopedia-type content is now in place, and the same is true of the "where to find stuff" section. The "things to do" section currently only has recommendations about
A hugely important addition to the planning menu has been the cataloging of "supplies" like suits, acid gills, wood platforms, and the like. This lets you know the best place to find these sorts of things (some of which, like the acid gills, is just a very low-chance luck of the draw, which isn't much help). But for things like transmogrify-into-bat scrolls, and transfer glyph scrolls, there are places that you can reliably go to get a bunch of those, and I bet most people didn't figure that out (I'd forgotten about it, myself, and I coded it in).
Tomorrow we aim to get a last bit of polish and bugfixing in, to get the last bits of the planning menu and the opt-out popups in, and then it's going to be time to do new installer builds and a major press push starting tomorrow night. Then we're into beta phase 3, and the focus shifts to more enemies, more spells, more missions, and so on -- multiplayer server browser, too! And of course more polish and fixes, but honestly at this point it seems like we're done the lion's share of that in advance (though that's a neverending job).
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.
This release is mostly focused on polish, clarity, and the planning menu. The minimap has gotten a minor visual upgrade, there are some tweaks to the intro mission, and there are a number of opt-out messages that pop up to explain new game mechanics as those mechanics arrive. More of that sort of thing coming tomorrow; my wife got a lot of those written, and I just haven't had time to actually code them into the game today.
The planning menu itself is also really coming along, although there's still more to do in terms of having it make good recommendations about things to do given your current situation. But 98% or more of the encyclopedia-type content is now in place, and the same is true of the "where to find stuff" section. The "things to do" section currently only has recommendations about
A hugely important addition to the planning menu has been the cataloging of "supplies" like suits, acid gills, wood platforms, and the like. This lets you know the best place to find these sorts of things (some of which, like the acid gills, is just a very low-chance luck of the draw, which isn't much help). But for things like transmogrify-into-bat scrolls, and transfer glyph scrolls, there are places that you can reliably go to get a bunch of those, and I bet most people didn't figure that out (I'd forgotten about it, myself, and I coded it in).
Tomorrow we aim to get a last bit of polish and bugfixing in, to get the last bits of the planning menu and the opt-out popups in, and then it's going to be time to do new installer builds and a major press push starting tomorrow night. Then we're into beta phase 3, and the focus shifts to more enemies, more spells, more missions, and so on -- multiplayer server browser, too! And of course more polish and fixes, but honestly at this point it seems like we're done the lion's share of that in advance (though that's a neverending job).
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.
Monday, February 27, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.583 "The Elusive Lumbermancer" Released!
This one is another one focused on usability and clarity. It also fixes a number of bugs, improves the graphics of a few areas, adds a sixth difficulty level, and adds the ability to start on the second continent for expert players.
Professions And Guardian Power Shortages Resolved
One of the big changes in this version is to make the first four settlement structures automatically appear in your first settlement of the game -- that gives you a little bit less to worry about when you're new to the game, or when you're just trying to get your budding civilization off the ground even if you know what you're doing. Settlements beyond the first still start as empty, so we haven't really simplified the game, we've just made a more natural complexity/difficulty progression -- always a good goal.
As part of this shift, we've also made the ability to find NPCs of key professions a lot less random -- some players were having to search for ages and ages for lumbermancers, for instance, because the random number generator was being too unkind to them. We've thus changed things around to keep that aspect of gameplay more streamlined as well, when it comes to NPCs rescued via secret missions (as opposed to guardian powers).
All in all? A lot of even advanced players who were having trouble getting to the point of being able to use guardian powers should now be able to enjoy them (and thus the game) on a new level. And by the time they hit their next continent, they'll be amply prepared for filling up that empty settlement from the start.
More Planning Menu Work, But More To Come
The planning menu is quickly becoming the go-to source for pretty much all of the longer-term direction in the game. It now has been organized into four major categories: status of your continent, things you should do, where to find stuff you want, and an encyclopedia.
Moving a lot of the more detailed (and useful, but overwhelming) references into the encyclopedia really is the best of both worlds. It means that the information is still there in the game when you need it, but most people don't feel inclined to read encyclopedias cover to cover when they first see them; it's generally understood that those are as-needed references by nature, but helps to keep players from getting overwhelmed by that level of detail.
In terms of the Things To Do and Where To Find Stuff sections, those are still just budding and only have a little bit of information in them. My personal largest focus tomorrow is going to be on getting those fleshed out more, and my wife is helping out a lot with making sure that all of the macro game mechanics are being properly explained by well-timed popups when they are introduced.
It's been quite a challenge to figure out the post-intro-mission tutorial-type teaching of the player, but I think what we're settling on is really good: it retains player freedom while at the same time providing guidance, which is what some longtime players of AI War (RCIX comes to mind) always seemed to want more of.
We considered doing something more linear with the missions and such at the start of the game, but ultimately discarded that idea because it makes the player wait too long to "get to the good part," while at the same time sending the wrong message about the amount of freedom in this game (aka, that you have immense amounts of freedom).
Letting players retain that freedom, while giving them very well defined goals that would prevent them from simply wandering around aimlessly, has thus become our focus. My wife and I have been working on building that up based on the framework that Josh has put together over the last week or so, and I think that's coming along well.
Hopefully the bulk of that will be finished tomorrow, so that we can hit our goal of entering beta phase 3 on Tuesday. But if not, we're only a day or two off either way. And meanwhile, Erik and his buddy Kevin have come up with what I can conclusively say is our strongest trailer yet for any of our games. It's really cool, and we'll be unveiling that alongside 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.
Professions And Guardian Power Shortages Resolved
One of the big changes in this version is to make the first four settlement structures automatically appear in your first settlement of the game -- that gives you a little bit less to worry about when you're new to the game, or when you're just trying to get your budding civilization off the ground even if you know what you're doing. Settlements beyond the first still start as empty, so we haven't really simplified the game, we've just made a more natural complexity/difficulty progression -- always a good goal.
As part of this shift, we've also made the ability to find NPCs of key professions a lot less random -- some players were having to search for ages and ages for lumbermancers, for instance, because the random number generator was being too unkind to them. We've thus changed things around to keep that aspect of gameplay more streamlined as well, when it comes to NPCs rescued via secret missions (as opposed to guardian powers).
All in all? A lot of even advanced players who were having trouble getting to the point of being able to use guardian powers should now be able to enjoy them (and thus the game) on a new level. And by the time they hit their next continent, they'll be amply prepared for filling up that empty settlement from the start.
More Planning Menu Work, But More To Come
The planning menu is quickly becoming the go-to source for pretty much all of the longer-term direction in the game. It now has been organized into four major categories: status of your continent, things you should do, where to find stuff you want, and an encyclopedia.
Moving a lot of the more detailed (and useful, but overwhelming) references into the encyclopedia really is the best of both worlds. It means that the information is still there in the game when you need it, but most people don't feel inclined to read encyclopedias cover to cover when they first see them; it's generally understood that those are as-needed references by nature, but helps to keep players from getting overwhelmed by that level of detail.
In terms of the Things To Do and Where To Find Stuff sections, those are still just budding and only have a little bit of information in them. My personal largest focus tomorrow is going to be on getting those fleshed out more, and my wife is helping out a lot with making sure that all of the macro game mechanics are being properly explained by well-timed popups when they are introduced.
It's been quite a challenge to figure out the post-intro-mission tutorial-type teaching of the player, but I think what we're settling on is really good: it retains player freedom while at the same time providing guidance, which is what some longtime players of AI War (RCIX comes to mind) always seemed to want more of.
We considered doing something more linear with the missions and such at the start of the game, but ultimately discarded that idea because it makes the player wait too long to "get to the good part," while at the same time sending the wrong message about the amount of freedom in this game (aka, that you have immense amounts of freedom).
Letting players retain that freedom, while giving them very well defined goals that would prevent them from simply wandering around aimlessly, has thus become our focus. My wife and I have been working on building that up based on the framework that Josh has put together over the last week or so, and I think that's coming along well.
Hopefully the bulk of that will be finished tomorrow, so that we can hit our goal of entering beta phase 3 on Tuesday. But if not, we're only a day or two off either way. And meanwhile, Erik and his buddy Kevin have come up with what I can conclusively say is our strongest trailer yet for any of our games. It's really cool, and we'll be unveiling that alongside 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.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.582 "Still Paddling The Old Knew " Released!
This one fixes a variety of bugs and regressions, and in general focuses on polish.
Ocean Travel
However, it also introduces a new guardian power -- create buoy -- and new ocean travel mechanics in general. You no longer get sucked into ocean tiles, but you also can't go into "turbulent" waters. And you now travel the oceans in a canoe, rather than mysteriously walking on water on the world map. Except for deep oceans, of course, which are still traveled by ship.
The world map mechanics for the oceans are now working very well and are probably final for 1.0 -- the kludgy aspects of them have been ironed out, and they now pose barriers that you can overcome via strategically-placed lines of buoys.
The actual ocean exploration itself has had a couple of improvements, but is still very glitchy in a lot of areas. Haven't had time to get to those just yet.
Crafting Screens
The crafting screens no longer have those giant tooltips that are always in your way, and instead require you to click the item in question to see that information. That does add a small extra step, but there's another major benefit: you can now hover over material costs and get the material tooltips right in this popup window, rather than having to back out to the planning window. This sort of cross-referencing is something some of our older crafting screens had, and something that players have been very vocal about wanting.
Terminology Shift For Crafting Materials
Move over "commodities and rare commodities." There are now three categories: building materials, common ingredients, and arcane ingredients. Hopefully this breakdown will be a lot more clear to folks in general, and it also sounds cooler. Thanks to a lot of folks for weighing in on the names of these.
To my recollection, Keith and I never could figure out a good name for "commodities," but felt that was the best of what we'd been tossing around, and then it just kind of stayed ever since. And then I completely forgot about even wanting to change it, and got quite used to the name. But it was definitely due for a change!
Some Tutorial-Type Popups Added
The first time you enter a windstorm region, or whenever your continent tier increases, it pops up some messages now to make sure that you know what's going on. It explains the mechanics a bit, and even talks about things like monster migrations -- concepts that are otherwise not documented anywhere inside the game itself.
For the ones like windstorms, there's a "don't bug me about this again" checkbox. For ones like the continent tier increase, it doesn't provide an opt-out simply because it is otherwise easy for you to miss that the tier has increased even if you know what the increase means.
These popups help with isolated "what the heck is this new thing" moments, but they still don't address the "okay, I'm done with the intro mission, now what?" and "how the heck do I use guardian powers?" issues. We've got plans for those also, but they are more complex, and are something I'll be working on this weekend.
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.
Ocean Travel
However, it also introduces a new guardian power -- create buoy -- and new ocean travel mechanics in general. You no longer get sucked into ocean tiles, but you also can't go into "turbulent" waters. And you now travel the oceans in a canoe, rather than mysteriously walking on water on the world map. Except for deep oceans, of course, which are still traveled by ship.
The world map mechanics for the oceans are now working very well and are probably final for 1.0 -- the kludgy aspects of them have been ironed out, and they now pose barriers that you can overcome via strategically-placed lines of buoys.
The actual ocean exploration itself has had a couple of improvements, but is still very glitchy in a lot of areas. Haven't had time to get to those just yet.
Crafting Screens
The crafting screens no longer have those giant tooltips that are always in your way, and instead require you to click the item in question to see that information. That does add a small extra step, but there's another major benefit: you can now hover over material costs and get the material tooltips right in this popup window, rather than having to back out to the planning window. This sort of cross-referencing is something some of our older crafting screens had, and something that players have been very vocal about wanting.
Terminology Shift For Crafting Materials
Move over "commodities and rare commodities." There are now three categories: building materials, common ingredients, and arcane ingredients. Hopefully this breakdown will be a lot more clear to folks in general, and it also sounds cooler. Thanks to a lot of folks for weighing in on the names of these.
To my recollection, Keith and I never could figure out a good name for "commodities," but felt that was the best of what we'd been tossing around, and then it just kind of stayed ever since. And then I completely forgot about even wanting to change it, and got quite used to the name. But it was definitely due for a change!
Some Tutorial-Type Popups Added
The first time you enter a windstorm region, or whenever your continent tier increases, it pops up some messages now to make sure that you know what's going on. It explains the mechanics a bit, and even talks about things like monster migrations -- concepts that are otherwise not documented anywhere inside the game itself.
For the ones like windstorms, there's a "don't bug me about this again" checkbox. For ones like the continent tier increase, it doesn't provide an opt-out simply because it is otherwise easy for you to miss that the tier has increased even if you know what the increase means.
These popups help with isolated "what the heck is this new thing" moments, but they still don't address the "okay, I'm done with the intro mission, now what?" and "how the heck do I use guardian powers?" issues. We've got plans for those also, but they are more complex, and are something I'll be working on this weekend.
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 24, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.581 "Oh, Carp!" Released!
This one is primarily a bugfix/balance/polish release, but there's some really good stuff in there in that regard. Among them are some fixes to some unfortunate regressions in the past version (which were due to the scope of the changes of that version).
Also as a part of this version are three new enemy types (carp, blue whales, and black whales), all of which are specific to the oceans and ocean shallows. You'll now no longer see any other forms of monsters in the oceans at the moment, although we'll be adding more ocean life in the future. These guys will make you wish for the amoebas, though, if you can believe it.
Some of the boss fights in the oceans and ocean shallows may actually be un-winnably hard now, I'm not sure. That's something we'll have to tweak some, in particular for the ocean shallows. There are still a number of definitely-broken things about these two region types, such as the surface boss chunks and even how you move between surface chunks, and how secret missions (fail to) spawn in the ocean tiles, etc. Those are things on our very-short-term hit list to deal with.
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.
Also as a part of this version are three new enemy types (carp, blue whales, and black whales), all of which are specific to the oceans and ocean shallows. You'll now no longer see any other forms of monsters in the oceans at the moment, although we'll be adding more ocean life in the future. These guys will make you wish for the amoebas, though, if you can believe it.
Some of the boss fights in the oceans and ocean shallows may actually be un-winnably hard now, I'm not sure. That's something we'll have to tweak some, in particular for the ocean shallows. There are still a number of definitely-broken things about these two region types, such as the surface boss chunks and even how you move between surface chunks, and how secret missions (fail to) spawn in the ocean tiles, etc. Those are things on our very-short-term hit list to deal with.
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 23, 2012
AI War Beta 5.027, "SuperTerminal Overload," Released!
This one has a variety of balance tweaks, the most substantial of which is to prevent certain kinds of exploits with super-terminals. Warbird and Beam starships also got a heck of a lot more awesome, and mapgen is no longer quite so unkind with where it is able to put Dyson Sphere planets.
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.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.580 "Volcanic Gangs" Released!
This one is another big one -- three days in the making, it ought to be! Despite the fact that I lost about half of Monday to my motherboard frying. But that's another story.
There are an unusually high number of random tweaks and fixes and balance improvements in this one -- too many to remotely begin to list, really. That's going to be one of the main foci for the next half week or so, as we polish the game up for beta phase 3 (which is going to be about more content and yet more polish).
One big group of changes in this version is interface clarity and usability. There's a lot of specific improvements noted in the release notes, but this is just the first batch of this kind of improvements. Over the next couple of days, we'll be doing even more of that.
There are also a few places where mechanics themselves were streamlined, and advanced functionality was put into enchants (great for advanced players) instead of being a baseline feature that new players would have to grapple with, etc.
New Stuff For Co-Op
There's a new Healing Touch spell that you can use to transfer some of your life energy to an ally, which is helpful in rescue NPC missions as well as in co-op.
There's also a major improvement to co-op in the form of individual spell unlocks per player. So if you want fire stuff and I want earth stuff, we can now specialize without both having to unlock both.
And of course there's a few multiplayer bugfixes, as per typical for recently.
Jumping And Movement Changes
There's a whole bunch of changes relating to the mechanics of jumping and moving around. Powersliding as a base ability is out, for instance (too easy to shoot yourself in the metaphorical foot with that), but there's now an enchant that gives that ability for those players who want it.
The "inherent double jump" that you could previously get by walking off a cliff without jumping, and then "air jumping" after that, is also now gone. That was really handy, and a lot of advanced players made use of it (myself included), but it was a bit counter-intuitive and made certain things too easy.
But as a counter-balance to that change, we added new enchants for not only true double-jump, but also triple-jump abilities. And these can still be used in concert with the ride the lightning spell, meaning that you can effectively get a quadruple jump if that's how you want to customize your character.
Then there's a whole bunch of changes to how the world map movement works (now it's smooth), and how heatsuits function (they're a lot more restricted in terms of what enchant effects they allow you to use, which was always the idea because they're our way of preserving hardcore platforming segments in lava areas).
Underwater Exploration Improvements
There are a few key improvements here, but lots more is coming soon. It's better at the moment, but still not at all what we ultimately want it to be for 1.0 or even for beta phase 3.
Like with the jumping and movement changes, I'm trying to go ahead and get these changes done now so that any bugs that crop up related to them have time to be fixed before we hit beta phase 3 early next week. Last thing we want to be doing is core mechanics changes right before putting the game in front of a wider audience of press and players!
Two New Mission Types
These new mission types are really different in nature. One is basically a mosh pit of bosses that normally you don't see combined together; that's interesting enough on its own, and makes some nice variety instead of boss towers.
The other one is our first hardcore platforming challenge, a lava escape sequence. Lava is rising shockingly fast, and you've got to get to the top and hit the switch before it catches you and fries you. And if it catches you at all, you're pretty much dead right there.
The lava escape breaks a lot of our usual rules for the game (no deaths from twitch mistakes, etc), but that's actually the point of the few missions we'll have along these lines -- we've promised these kinds of optional hardcore platforming challenges from the start, we think they're fun, and you don't lose anything if you don't play them. More details in the release notes if you want more on the rationale there.
More to come soon, mostly in the form of polish, bugfixes, and clarity enhancements for the next couple of days in particular. 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.
There are an unusually high number of random tweaks and fixes and balance improvements in this one -- too many to remotely begin to list, really. That's going to be one of the main foci for the next half week or so, as we polish the game up for beta phase 3 (which is going to be about more content and yet more polish).
One big group of changes in this version is interface clarity and usability. There's a lot of specific improvements noted in the release notes, but this is just the first batch of this kind of improvements. Over the next couple of days, we'll be doing even more of that.
There are also a few places where mechanics themselves were streamlined, and advanced functionality was put into enchants (great for advanced players) instead of being a baseline feature that new players would have to grapple with, etc.
New Stuff For Co-Op
There's a new Healing Touch spell that you can use to transfer some of your life energy to an ally, which is helpful in rescue NPC missions as well as in co-op.
There's also a major improvement to co-op in the form of individual spell unlocks per player. So if you want fire stuff and I want earth stuff, we can now specialize without both having to unlock both.
And of course there's a few multiplayer bugfixes, as per typical for recently.
Jumping And Movement Changes
There's a whole bunch of changes relating to the mechanics of jumping and moving around. Powersliding as a base ability is out, for instance (too easy to shoot yourself in the metaphorical foot with that), but there's now an enchant that gives that ability for those players who want it.
The "inherent double jump" that you could previously get by walking off a cliff without jumping, and then "air jumping" after that, is also now gone. That was really handy, and a lot of advanced players made use of it (myself included), but it was a bit counter-intuitive and made certain things too easy.
But as a counter-balance to that change, we added new enchants for not only true double-jump, but also triple-jump abilities. And these can still be used in concert with the ride the lightning spell, meaning that you can effectively get a quadruple jump if that's how you want to customize your character.
Then there's a whole bunch of changes to how the world map movement works (now it's smooth), and how heatsuits function (they're a lot more restricted in terms of what enchant effects they allow you to use, which was always the idea because they're our way of preserving hardcore platforming segments in lava areas).
Underwater Exploration Improvements
There are a few key improvements here, but lots more is coming soon. It's better at the moment, but still not at all what we ultimately want it to be for 1.0 or even for beta phase 3.
Like with the jumping and movement changes, I'm trying to go ahead and get these changes done now so that any bugs that crop up related to them have time to be fixed before we hit beta phase 3 early next week. Last thing we want to be doing is core mechanics changes right before putting the game in front of a wider audience of press and players!
Two New Mission Types
These new mission types are really different in nature. One is basically a mosh pit of bosses that normally you don't see combined together; that's interesting enough on its own, and makes some nice variety instead of boss towers.
The other one is our first hardcore platforming challenge, a lava escape sequence. Lava is rising shockingly fast, and you've got to get to the top and hit the switch before it catches you and fries you. And if it catches you at all, you're pretty much dead right there.
The lava escape breaks a lot of our usual rules for the game (no deaths from twitch mistakes, etc), but that's actually the point of the few missions we'll have along these lines -- we've promised these kinds of optional hardcore platforming challenges from the start, we think they're fun, and you don't lose anything if you don't play them. More details in the release notes if you want more on the rationale there.
More to come soon, mostly in the form of polish, bugfixes, and clarity enhancements for the next couple of days in particular. 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.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Daily Deal: AI War Products 66% Off On Steam
Following yesterday's price reductions, a well-timed Daily Deal has appeared on Steam for AI War and the Alien Bundle. Both are 66% off their recently lowered price, so if you're looking for some deep space strategy on the very cheap make sure you make your move before tomorrow at 10 AM PST.
The discounts are as follows:
The discounts are as follows:
- AI War: Alien Bundle -- $5.77
- AI War: Fleet Command (Base Game) -- $3.39
New Low Prices For AI War & Tidalis
Our releases have been significantly reduced in price on Steam, including the (currently) all-inclusive AI War Alien Bundle! From here forward you'll find our products at the following prices:
- AI War Alien Bundle -- $16.99
- AI War Base Game -- $9.99
- AI War: The Zenith Remnant -- $4.99
- AI War: Children of Neinzul -- $1.99
- AI War: Light of the Spire -- $4.99
- Tidalis -- $4.99
Note: We'll be adjusting our prices on our own store and all other channels that carry our titles, but it may take up to a week to get them all worked out. Thanks in advance for your patience!
Sunday, February 19, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.579 "Secret Daring Rescues" Released!
This one is The Release that a lot of players have been waiting for. Where to even begin with this one...
Secret Missions
You can read about these in even greater depth in the release notes, but the general idea is that as you explore around the world you find missions that you can do if you wish. They come with a lesser reward than the world map missions, but they also don't raise Civilization Progress (CP) which is useful in its own right.
And if the random number generator on the world map isn't being kind to you... well, this is another way to circumvent that.
NPC Rescue Missions
Rather than just getting NPCs as a random reward from world map missions, you now have to actually go in and rescue NPCs from dangerous situations and escort them to safety. These turned out to be really fun, at least in our opinion.
NPC rescue missions are found as secret missions underground or in buildings, or you can use the Seek Survivors guardian power to spawn a whole bunch of rescue missions on the world map. But otherwise there's no way to get NPCs on the world map missions -- this being a great example of the game requiring both freeform exploration and world map missions in order to really succeed.
Put Up That Wind Shelter Yourself!
Same with the NPCs just having been rewards for random missions on the world map in the past, that really wasn't very satisfying. It was just a placeholder!
Now the only way to put up a wind shelter is via a guardian power that spawns one of these new kinds of missions, so in order to push back the wind the guardian powers are something you need to cultivate. And where you place the wind shelters has some strategy to it, since you get to choose and since there are so many fewer of them you can put down.
The mission itself is also really fun, and also much faster to complete than the other missions. It's more or less a gauntlet you have to run through some interesting outside chunks.
Stealthy Assassinations
The third new mission type has you sneaking through either a cave or a building, looking for a hidden miniboss that is unusually weakened (just takes a few shots to kill). However, there are very few lights, and even your own light sources provide only weak illumination. And to make matters worse, the guard enemies that roam around are really powerful and will do enormous damage to you!
But on the bright side, the guards are practically blind until you damage them. So stealth is the order of the day, as you explore to find where that boss is so that you can put an end to him...
New Spell: Healing TouchTransfer a bit of your health to another character (player or NPC). Very handy for co-op and for the NPC rescue missions. Going along with this, the health drops from enemies now work much better in both contexts, too (pursuing better targets, rather than just whoever is closest).
Beta Phase 3 Approaches
This release marks the last of the really major game-wide new mechanics that we're adding prior to 1.0 (that new mechanic being secret missions). From here on out it's polish, lots more missions and enemies and spells and such, and then smaller features that impact only a part of the game.
For instance, we still need to get the mysteries-to-solve in place, but that's not something that has a wider effect on the balance and flow of the game. It is, in effect, just an optional subsystem that adds variety and interest.
This is a really an exciting time period, because that means we can really start cranking out the missions and things like that. If you like these, we have lots more cool ones in store in just the next couple of days alone!
More to come soon, more along the line of missions next time. 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.
Secret Missions
You can read about these in even greater depth in the release notes, but the general idea is that as you explore around the world you find missions that you can do if you wish. They come with a lesser reward than the world map missions, but they also don't raise Civilization Progress (CP) which is useful in its own right.
And if the random number generator on the world map isn't being kind to you... well, this is another way to circumvent that.
NPC Rescue Missions
Rather than just getting NPCs as a random reward from world map missions, you now have to actually go in and rescue NPCs from dangerous situations and escort them to safety. These turned out to be really fun, at least in our opinion.
NPC rescue missions are found as secret missions underground or in buildings, or you can use the Seek Survivors guardian power to spawn a whole bunch of rescue missions on the world map. But otherwise there's no way to get NPCs on the world map missions -- this being a great example of the game requiring both freeform exploration and world map missions in order to really succeed.
Put Up That Wind Shelter Yourself!
Same with the NPCs just having been rewards for random missions on the world map in the past, that really wasn't very satisfying. It was just a placeholder!
Now the only way to put up a wind shelter is via a guardian power that spawns one of these new kinds of missions, so in order to push back the wind the guardian powers are something you need to cultivate. And where you place the wind shelters has some strategy to it, since you get to choose and since there are so many fewer of them you can put down.
The mission itself is also really fun, and also much faster to complete than the other missions. It's more or less a gauntlet you have to run through some interesting outside chunks.
Stealthy Assassinations
The third new mission type has you sneaking through either a cave or a building, looking for a hidden miniboss that is unusually weakened (just takes a few shots to kill). However, there are very few lights, and even your own light sources provide only weak illumination. And to make matters worse, the guard enemies that roam around are really powerful and will do enormous damage to you!
But on the bright side, the guards are practically blind until you damage them. So stealth is the order of the day, as you explore to find where that boss is so that you can put an end to him...
New Spell: Healing TouchTransfer a bit of your health to another character (player or NPC). Very handy for co-op and for the NPC rescue missions. Going along with this, the health drops from enemies now work much better in both contexts, too (pursuing better targets, rather than just whoever is closest).
Beta Phase 3 Approaches
This release marks the last of the really major game-wide new mechanics that we're adding prior to 1.0 (that new mechanic being secret missions). From here on out it's polish, lots more missions and enemies and spells and such, and then smaller features that impact only a part of the game.
For instance, we still need to get the mysteries-to-solve in place, but that's not something that has a wider effect on the balance and flow of the game. It is, in effect, just an optional subsystem that adds variety and interest.
This is a really an exciting time period, because that means we can really start cranking out the missions and things like that. If you like these, we have lots more cool ones in store in just the next couple of days alone!
More to come soon, more along the line of missions next time. 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 16, 2012
AVWW Beta 0.578 "Battlefield Glow" Released!
This one is mostly just a maintenance release with a bunch of polish and bugfixes. However, as part of that we've also decreased initial load times, decreased RAM usage, and changed how the glows work when characters and enemies are casting spells.
Also, battlefield missions have gotten a substantial upgrade in that they are now wider, include enemy towers that you have to work through in order to be able to damage the enemy base, and have a more randomized component in the form of the elements of said towers.
More to come soon, more along the line of missions next time. 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.
Also, battlefield missions have gotten a substantial upgrade in that they are now wider, include enemy towers that you have to work through in order to be able to damage the enemy base, and have a more randomized component in the form of the elements of said towers.
More to come soon, more along the line of missions next time. 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 15, 2012
AI War Beta 5.026, "Pay Attention, Exos!" Released!
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.
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.
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.