AVWW Beta 0.520, "Shields Up!" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/10/avww-beta-0520-shields-up-released.html

This one is packed to the gills with good stuff.  First off, the boring: boss stats have really been rejiggered again so that the difficulty isn't overblown like it has been the last couple of releases.  That's super important, but not that exciting.  There's also some changes to the amount of health you get depending on the Action Difficulty you choose, which aids in making the difficulties feel more different than before.

The first of the exciting new things in this release is four new shield spells that you can cast.  Right now they are identical except in visual effect, but each is tied to the elements of fire, air, water, and earth -- four of the six elements used by the game (light and entropy being the other two).  Later releases will include the last two elements of shields, and will also be including elemental damage and elemental resistance in general -- suddenly these "same thing except different element" spells will start making a lot more sense.

The shield spells in general fill a much-needed niche, in that they allow you to have a button that you can "block" with, compared to always having to jump out of the way of incoming projectiles.  I'll be curious what folks think of the MP cost on these -- it might be on the high side at the moment, but I wanted to strike a middle ground between having shields you can block with and not having it be something to spam the usage of.

Also coming soon will be some element-less shield scrolls that will let you put a longer-term shield on yourself that simply has a certain amount of damage it can absorb before disappearing (the "certain amount of damage blocked only" is also true of these shield spells, but they still disappear after 1.5 seconds).

Next thing is a new "Warp To Origin Settlement" button in the escape menu while you are on the world map.  This button lets you move back to the 0,0 position regardless of your position on the world map.  It's possible to get trapped on the other side of vortexes that pop up, so this provides a means for you to get back on the correct side of things without having to suicide your character.

Lastly, but definitely not least, the way in which the world map is created and and explored is now 100% redone.  It's now faster, gives more interesting results, gives a more consistent difficulty curve especially at the start, and doesn't require you to "walk the perimeter" every time your civ level goes up.  There are dozens and dozens of individual changes with this one alone, so really I suggest giving the release notes a look if you want all the details.

There should be another release later tonight, I expect.  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.

[eRe4s3r]

Wow this one is really massive in terms of changes that matter ;p Good to see we now get guaranteed seeding of  *all* important terrain too ;p

Speaking of changes though  Any plans on extending the particle system to include the sprite define and full opacity control (i assume fade is supposed to do this for spells, but it doesn't seem to work how i expect it (ie. 0.5 = 50% opacity) as well as the ability to define new particle/sprite emitters/effectors so that we don't have to replace existing spell effectors when changing effects (not sure what you call them ,p)

The opacity control particularly would allow for much more realistic smoke.

Also one other "wish it was there" feature would be the ability to control stretch of particles simply by extending the variables one the scale parameters (now its x, x ,x ,x ,x .. it could be x|y , x|y, x|y , x|y, x|y ) that way "jets" could be simulated much better.

And finally, the ability to define an actual "on-death" effect per spell (same as the spell effectors, just a.. ehm, spell-death effector?) so that a spell hitting a wall or sizzling out can have defined effects.

Anyway.. realize its a lot i am asking there, and i don't expect it instantly or anything (and i will make a Mantis post should that be wanted) its just that with these things the spell FX system would be pretty much "feature complete" as i see it. And if you start adding new spells it'd maybe be nice to have those things at least in place.

Though, i wonder how creating new spell effects and adding new sprites would work with the ctrl+f4 feature, i imagine that being an issue that would probably prevent easy integration.. (might even require its own xml file thats just referenced from particles xml via a tag,p)

[Dizzard]

Sounds interesting, better go read the notes.

I was lucky with the pylons in that I was trapped right next to one of my settlements so I could destroy them. Would have sucked if I had been elsewhere though.

Yes I did notice my world tended to split off to the right/upwards and mostly ignored going left/downwards.

[x4000]

Yeah, I was thinking of you with the early terrain, thought you'd like that.

At the moment, no near-term plans to extend the particle stuff much -- the opacity control is already there in the form of the fade, as you mentioned.  It supports fading in from a value, at a certain speed, and then fading back out, to a certain value, at a different speed.

"Also one other "wish it was there" feature would be the ability to control stretch of particles simply by extending the variables one the scale parameters (now its x, x ,x ,x ,x .. it could be x|y , x|y, x|y , x|y, x|y ) that way "jets" could be simulated much better."

That one particularly would really require a complete rejiggering of the whole particle system, in a way that I don't think would be helpful.

"And finally, the ability to define an actual "on-death" effect per spell (same as the spell effectors, just a.. ehm, spell-death effector?) so that a spell hitting a wall or sizzling out can have defined effects."

This is actually already there -- just make a new particle effect definition, but give it no perframe="1" definition.  Instead put ondeath="1" (or 4, or 10, or whatever number you need it to do).  A number of spells, including fireball and energy pulse, use this.

"as well as the ability to define new particle/sprite emitters/effectors so that we don't have to replace existing spell effectors when changing effects (not sure what you call them ,p)"

This one I could probably whip up pretty quickly, actually.  Will look at that.

[x4000]

"as well as the ability to define new particle/sprite emitters/effectors so that we don't have to replace existing spell effectors when changing effects (not sure what you call them ,p)"

This one I could probably whip up pretty quickly, actually.  Will look at that.

Looked at this a bit, and it would be a couple of hours to do, so out of scope for the really short term.  But I've added it to mantis so that I don't forget: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4676

It's definitely doable, I just have to find the time a few weeks or a month from now.

[zebramatt]

Voted up.

[c4sc4]

I have a question about a new feature in 0.521, I figured I just ask here.

So I like the idea behind these changes:

    * Any character with 100+ cold resistance is now immune to slowing frost -- so snowsuits can be used to get protection from ice bat's slowing effect, for instance.

    * Any character with 100+ heat resistance is now immune to being set on fire -- so the heatsuit is useful against fire bats or the dragon breath, for instance.

But I think I've only ever encountered ice bats in cold regions where I already need to wear a snowsuit to survive. It seems like you may never really run into the ice bat slowing frost anymore. I do suppose this effect may be added later to other monsters though.

[x4000]

This is true... though the ice bats also can be rampaging monsters that you have to deal with elsewhere.  I think I'll make them indoors monsters or underground monsters in some other scenarios where normally you'd not have your suit, too.

[c4sc4]

My favorite part about the world map changes is that now my oceans don't have huge holes in them.

Also, I found a region type I don't remember being mentioned before, some red forest, I forget the name. I imagine it is unlocked at level 60. EDIT: Deciduous Forest

[x4000]

Yep, level 60 it is.

[Hyfrydle]

Not too sure what the shields have added for the length of time they last I don't have time to bother with them in the heat of battle. What about some kind of mana drain that increases with the length of time the shields active and also a max number of points the shield can protect from before it disappears?

[x4000]

The shields are meant to be an active block action, like raising your shield in a lot of zelda games -- basically, it's a timing thing.  There will be other shields that use other mechanics coming up, but they'll have other drawbacks.  In the heat of battle, it's expected you'd have a specific shield as one of your primary two or three bindings, and thus be able to intersperse popping shields up as well as firing off attacks.

Granted, we don't expect everyone to be that dextrous -- hence the other options.  But that's what these specific shields are for, and these specific ones do require that dexterity to be used with any effectiveness.

[Hyfrydle]

My problem is only two buttons on my mouse so one is for ranged attacks and one for melee so this only leaves the keyboard and I'm not quick enough to get to the 3 key. I will keep trying and look forward to other defensive measures.

[x4000]

You can also add a second binding for your 3 keyboard key; one that is closer.  So it could be something like Ctrl and 3, or whatever else you want.  F or R might work, too.  That way you've got access that feels convenient to you, while still also being able to hit the literal number keys.  Each keybinding can go to two keyboard keys.

[Hyfrydle]

Thanks I'll give it a try and see how it goes.