AVWW Beta 0.521, "Storm Dash," Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/10/avww-beta-0521-storm-dash-released.html

This one is surprisingly large for being our second release of the day. 

First up is a new spellgem, called "Storm Dash."  You can use this to increase your movement speed by 500% briefly, but you'll also take twice as much damage while you do so.  This is particularly great for the overland segments if you have a lot of overland travel to do in one go -- especially if the monsters are lower-level than you.  It's really a big convenience, I find, and the visual effect is also pretty cool; traveling along the sloped ground reminds me somewhat of the old Sonic games, which is kind of neat (though unintentional).

The next big thing in this one is "stashes."  Especially with the removal of the profession books, most of the buildings in the game -- keeps, outposts, and towers aside -- have been rather low-value exploration targets. Sure, you could get some dust, and some healing and MP-restoration potions, but you can get those things other ways.  And those are only so exciting.

The stashes are basically rooms that are left over from during the cataclysm, when people who are... ahem... no longer with us, were trying to stock up and save themselves.  The people are gone (providing some clue as to where all the consciousness shards came from), but the supply caches remain for you to plunder.  You can find potions in large quantities (x10, usually), making it so that a visit one or two stashes replaces a much longer trek through many rooms.  You can find wooden platforms and other objects, and even spell scrolls.  Eventually there will even be some treasures you can only find through rooms like this.

Next up is a new pair of keybindings: Use Best Available Healing (default bound to Y) and Use Best Available Magic Restoration (default bound to U).  They do what you'd expect, and that's a function some players have been asking for since last week.

There are a goodly array of other smaller changes and tweaks in there, too, now.  You can now use Ride The Lighting via double-jump even if it's not directly on your ability bar.  Heatsuits and snowsuits provide some new protections.  Balls of light are cheaper in MP costs now.  There are vastly fewer of the really large maze rooms in overlord/lieutenant strongholds.  Real (and animated) vortex icons on the world map.  Among other fixes.

This is likely our last release until Monday, unless something comes up and we have a bit of extra time.  It's been a productive week, and I think next week will be even better -- I've been somewhat ill all this week and a bit of last week, but finally that seemed to come to an end today.  Anyway -- 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.

[c4sc4]

Storm dash is fun.

I kind of don't like the vortex icon though, I don't like how it goes away, it makes it kind of hard to just look at the screen and see where the vortexes are. I think it would be better if it was always on the screen, maybe shrinking and expanding in size instead of disappearing for a second.

[x4000]

Glad you like storm dash.

For the vortex icon, I made it disappear briefly every bit so that you can see what is under it. Otherwise stuff gets completely obscured. My feeling is that it's unlikely people would need to frequently go right near a lot of vortexes to where seeing the line super clearly all the time is that critical -- I figures equally important is knowing what's under the line, to help with longer-term planning. Hence the in and out.

[c4sc4]

Storm dash definitely makes getting to the pylons sooo much easier.

Well even if on spaces with vortexes there was some maybe a small purple icon on it that stays there all the time would be nice just so When I'm looking at the map, I have something to focus on when trying to see where all the vortexes are, right now I tend to lose, in my mind, which spaces have the vertexes when the icons disappear.

Side effect of the map gen change, at level 43 I just found a few level 232 regions. I can't imagine the death that awaits me there.

EDIT: Rhino, physical attack: 24,900,000

[wyvern83]

How will  the new stashes be seeded on existing worlds?  Am I going to have to double check buildings I've already explored?

[Baleyg]

Storm Dash + Bat Form = Best Thing Ever?  I'd say it's pretty close.

[Hyfrydle]

Just installed the new patch and the stash rooms make exploring buildings much more useful. So far I've found a stash in all the buildings I've visited and have 63 health potions and 12 mana potions. Health potions seem to be dropping more than mana maybe this needs a bit of tweaking. I'm level 6 in a level 7 area.

Actually with a bit more playtime the extra health came in very handy as I was reaching the next tier and my spells were starting to weaken.

[Dizzard]

Are there supposed to be pylon barriers where there weren't ones before in this new update? Before this new update I was able to reach a settlement but since I installed this it's completely surrounded by the barriers. (and before that I had already removed the barriers surrounding that area.

and worse still I don't see any pylons in the nearby area.

[Hyfrydle]

I haven't seen any pylons on my current game since patch 0.520.

[Spejs]

Double-jump and dash, that works in the air as well... Will I see combo-attacks and finishing moves in the future?

[zebramatt]

This release is massive. Totally shifted the way I organise my inventory!

[x4000]

Storm dash definitely makes getting to the pylons sooo much easier.

Yeah, that was one of the key reasons I did it today versus later.

Well even if on spaces with vortexes there was some maybe a small purple icon on it that stays there all the time would be nice just so When I'm looking at the map, I have something to focus on when trying to see where all the vortexes are, right now I tend to lose, in my mind, which spaces have the vertexes when the icons disappear.

Possible -- that adds to the GPU load, of course.  But if it's something that really seems to be a problem for folks then I can look at it, of course.

Side effect of the map gen change, at level 43 I just found a few level 232 regions. I can't imagine the death that awaits me there.

EDIT: Rhino, physical attack: 24,900,000

And I'm sure they move at a blistering rate, too.  Yeah, your world in particular is way bloated, heh.

How will  the new stashes be seeded on existing worlds?  Am I going to have to double check buildings I've already explored?

As with any change to how buildings seed (or anything else), it will affect only parts of the world you've never been to before.  In the case of buildings, that means any building you've never entered (red doors on minimap). You could have walked past the building a million times, but now it has stashes and other new stuff in there.

Storm Dash + Bat Form = Best Thing Ever?  I'd say it's pretty close.

Oooh, that does sound like fun!  Will have to try that out, I hadn't thought of it.

Just installed the new patch and the stash rooms make exploring buildings much more useful. So far I've found a stash in all the buildings I've visited and have 63 health potions and 12 mana potions. Health potions seem to be dropping more than mana maybe this needs a bit of tweaking. I'm level 6 in a level 7 area.

Actually with a bit more playtime the extra health came in very handy as I was reaching the next tier and my spells were starting to weaken.

Yeah, health potions have always been more common because players tend to burn through them a lot faster, it seems -- there was a thread on here complaining about the lack of health potions just recently, actually, while saying they had plenty of MP.

Are there supposed to be pylon barriers where there weren't ones before in this new update? Before this new update I was able to reach a settlement but since I installed this it's completely surrounded by the barriers. (and before that I had already removed the barriers surrounding that area.

and worse still I don't see any pylons in the nearby area.

No, those should not have changed; that's possibly a bug.  Unless the last version you played was TWO versions ago, not one -- in which case yes, they changed to prevent some various issues people were reporting.  I'm guessing that's what happened.  In terms of the pylons, look for them on the road tiles -- they tend to blend in right now, but longer-term I'm going to replace the pylon graphics entirely.

Oh -- or unless you leveled up.  If you level up and new terrain appears, then new pylons can absolutely cut through places that were previously accessible.  That's part of why we added the "Warp Back To 0,0" button in the escape menu on the world map.  It's the overlord's minions at work, basically, putting up new obstacles as you explore further.

I haven't seen any pylons on my current game since patch 0.520.

Pylons don't appear until something like 12 or 13 tiles away from the 0,0 point.  So you pretty much have to get into the 10s or 20s or levels before you see many of them these days.  We didn't really want the pylons to be affecting new players, as there's enough complexity for the new player already.  But as you play more, they add a really cool element -- we're trying in general to make a nice progression of gameplay elements everywhere we can.

Double-jump and dash, that works in the air as well... Will I see combo-attacks and finishing moves in the future?

I don't know about finishing moves, but various combo attacks are something I'd love to get into doing, for sure.

This release is massive. Totally shifted the way I organise my inventory!

[Spejs]

Will there be a proper air dash? Which moves you strait horizontal, not just boosting your speed? Or maybe upgrade for RTL, which allows to choose 5 directions to move instead of current 3.

[c4sc4]

Well even if on spaces with vortexes there was some maybe a small purple icon on it that stays there all the time would be nice just so When I'm looking at the map, I have something to focus on when trying to see where all the vortexes are, right now I tend to lose, in my mind, which spaces have the vertexes when the icons disappear.

Possible -- that adds to the GPU load, of course.  But if it's something that really seems to be a problem for folks then I can look at it, of course.

Would it be possible to make the region level numbers purple when they have a vortex on them? I could see how maybe people wouldn't like that because it would cover up the other region number coloring but if you can't actually enter the region those colors aren't very important.

[c4sc4]

Sorry but I'm going to double post here.

Are there supposed to be pylon barriers where there weren't ones before in this new update? Before this new update I was able to reach a settlement but since I installed this it's completely surrounded by the barriers. (and before that I had already removed the barriers surrounding that area.

and worse still I don't see any pylons in the nearby area.

No, those should not have changed; that's possibly a bug.  Unless the last version you played was TWO versions ago, not one -- in which case yes, they changed to prevent some various issues people were reporting.  I'm guessing that's what happened.  In terms of the pylons, look for them on the road tiles -- they tend to blend in right now, but longer-term I'm going to replace the pylon graphics entirely.

Oh -- or unless you leveled up.  If you level up and new terrain appears, then new pylons can absolutely cut through places that were previously accessible.  That's part of why we added the "Warp Back To 0,0" button in the escape menu on the world map.  It's the overlord's minions at work, basically, putting up new obstacles as you explore further.

I just had something strange happen to me with the pylons. I was playing with 0.521 installed last night and cleared out some pylons to get to a settlement. When I loaded up my world today, the settlement is completely surrounded by vortexes now. Looking at how the map is right now, the only way I could have gotten to that settlement is by going through a bunch of ocean tiles but I have never visited those tiles. Here's a screenshot of this. 

And I have not leveled up recently.

EDIT: I figured it out! So if you destroy a pylon and then exit the game, when you reload the world, there is an invisible pylon where the pylon you just destroyed is.