AVWW Beta 0.552, "Parallax And The End Of The World" Released!

[x4000]

http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/12/avww-beta-0552-parallax-and-end-of.html

This one includes a number of new things, including various balance and bugfix items that players noted from the prior version.  The changes to fire touch and the way that the class-based spell cooldowns work should be particularly welcome.  And the reference info and other in-game text is now up to date with all the recent changes from our powercoding period, too.

Parallax Backdrops
The most striking thing about this release visually is no doubt the new parallax backgrounds.  This provides a welcome sense of depth, as well as really visually differentiating the outdoor areas to a degree not seen prior to now.  Making some of the forest-y areas really feel heavily forested has been a struggle ever since the switch of the game to side view, but the parallax backgrounds really let us nail that and more.

End Of The World (Well, Continent)
Mechanically speaking, the biggest change in this version is the addition of the Overlord's threat against the continent.  Every period that passes (ie, every mission that you do) brings the continent one step closer to destruction.  In a few releases, when missions are the only source of EXP beyond the overlord and lieutenants themselves, this will really come together into some interesting choices.

Each continent is essentially a cage match between you and the overlord, and the average completion time that we're expecting per continent is around the 13 hour mark once we finish with getting the missions where we want them -- in other words, about the same average as a campaign in AI War.  Some people will obviously be faster or slower, and there's no particular time limit.

The destruction of the continent comes after a certain number of periods, but you can take your time as much as you want, and think as long as you need, between each mission you choose to undertake.  The impending continental destruction is very analogous to the AI progress in AI War, drawing a lot of parallels in terms of the sort of choices it presents to the player.

If you don't find that sort of thing fun, you can turn the strategic difficulty down to 1 or 2.  If you want it to be harder than the default, you can crank it up to 4 or (god forbid) 5.  Playing on strategic difficulty 5 means that you need to be prepared to take out the overlord while being barely the same level as him, or even being lower-level than him if you're doing any secret missions or dealing with any threat.  That's... really rough.

We may have to add some more difficulty gradations in there for the strategic side, but we'll decide that later once we're getting testing feedback on a fully-implemented mission system.  Right now this is still sort of the extended preview.

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.

[TechSY730]

Yay, you finally managed to get the overlords to get off their lazy butts and actually do something "evilish".

With this, I think I will start my new world now.

[Coppermantis]

Awesome. Just destroyed my first overlord, so now to take down the second one. Finally they get to live up to their legend.

[Penumbra]

If the evil overlord succeeds, all players on that continent are warped away to a new continent (with the same base level) and the old continent and everything on it are completely annihilated.

I love the idea of an overlord "winning" and I feel it makes the stakes real. It's late, but I feel compelled to play....
I haven't tried losing yet, but does this line mean the whole continent just disappears from your world altogether, as if nothing ever happened?  Or does "annihilated" leave it there as a wasteland, testament to your failures to protect the world.

[KDR_11k]

I think the "game lost" state should probably be something more organic, not just an instant boom-and-you-lose. After all even if the AIP hits 2000 the AI doesn't simply press a button and your homebase explodes, it just throws armies at you that you cannot possibly win against so you know you lost to superior force, not just an arbitrary time limit expiring (and depending on your skill and preparation the end may come at completely different AIPs).

Also the AIP had the other nice effect that the difficulty of the game increases as you go along (the inverse of the RPG model where the game usually gets easier the more you progress).

Is this current end-of-the-continent system just a placeholder for something more interesting or is that currently intended as the full solution?

Also since time only advances when you succeed at a mission is there any reason whatsoever you'd let the destruction happen? After all the only good option at that time is to fight the overlord, doing any missions is a waste of time. You may end up abandoning a hopeless continent (though since continents have separate timers and your civ level is shared between them couldn't you just go elsewhere, up your level and come back to wipe the floor with the lord?) but I don't see a reason going into any mission if you're on the last turn.

[Baleyg]

I am strongly recommending that you back up your worlds before updating to this version of the Beta, and lightly recommending you don't update at all.  There is a load bug in this version.  It seems to be triggered by saving the game any time after entering a settlement.

[Dizzard]

Don't know if I should download it now after what baleyg said....but I want to see the parallax backgrounds. :S

KDR has a point about the overlords though, what do they actually "do" that causes the destruction of the continent? It would probably (since I haven't tried the update yet) be more satisfying if you actually saw the results of your negligence.

Like still having a few mission time pieces left while the continent is in the midst of an apocalypse, when the overlord begins destroying the continent (settlements being swarmed by monsters, regions sinking into the sea, wind shelters being torn down) you have a couple of mission slots left to try and save people (or you could always save the material things instead)....but ultimately you'll have to make tough decisions about who to save or what to save. (you won't have enough mission slots given to you to save everything)

I haven't played it yet so I can't really judge, but it appears to me like it would be more satisfying to have to struggle against the overlord rather than just being warped away. He's just become so powerful and his forces so mighty that you can no longer defeat him....all you can do is just try to desperately save whatever you can in the tiny amount of time given to you. The continent goes into a state of crisis and the missions available during that time reflect that.

[superking]

how about, instead of the continent combusting, it becomes a fortress of evil that launches invasions on your other continents and needs to be re-invaded with a big group of NPCS

[x4000]

Hey guys, a new version 0.553 is out with the fix to the loading issue: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AVWW_-_Beta_Series_2_Release_Notes#Beta_0.553

Sorry about that!

[x4000]

In terms of the whole "continent combusts" thing, we might well do other things with that, but not until well after 1.0.  For now the evil overlords will have various plots to destroy the continent, and you must defeat them first.  In terms of the mechanics of it disappearing, right now it just sinks into the sea and is gone.  Later we might do something else, but right now that's not really the focus, either.  The AI War ending is still pretty lame, but that's because all our energies have been into making the struggle itself memorable.

In terms of doing something more organic -- definitely that's not what we want to do.  It needs to be very black and white, more or less like AI Progress.  I guess you could argue that AI Progress is a bit more organic than this, but then again that's realtime while this is turn-based (well, period-based).  So knowing the exact number of periods is really important in order for you to actually be able to plan ahead, etc.  The rest of the macrogame and missions are going to be balanced around this concept of continental destruction (like everything is balanced around AIP in AI War), so it's something really central and not something we could belatedly change later on any more than we could remove AIP.

It's true that we're not locked into this path yet, as we just put it in place, but it's a model that we know and that ties together all our other plans really well, and I'm not keen to go off on some new tangent and redesign everything.  Again, recall that the overall missions that you choose, etc, are meant to be a loose form of turn based strategy game, so having, you know... turns... is important.   And given that there's an interplay between your choices and how much time things take, etc, there's really not something where you should be able to just grind turns indefinitely, etc -- which this mechanic prevents, among other things.  We might do something else in the future, but at the moment the focus is on the player and their journey to save the continent, with a lesser focus on back and forth with the overlord themselves in that interim.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm certainly willing to expand the idea of "overlord wins" into something a bit less abrupt, but the current implementation fulfills the core of the purpose of the feature and is sufficient for 1.0.  Whether it changes before 1.0 depends on how other parts of the game are doing, and thus what needs attention and how badly, before then.

I do like the idea of the "overlord win" sometimes being something like an enemy wizard in Master of Magic casting Armageddon/MeteorStorms/GreatCorruption/etc all at once, and at that point you've basically "lost" because the continent is in ruins but perhaps you have a few periods left to go for a "tie" by killing the overlord and saving the continent from total annihilation.  That would be a lot of fun, but isn't necessary to fulfill the purpose of the "you can actually lose, it's just not game over".

And FYI, the point of AIP ramping up challenge during the game is a good one, but this is not the only mechanic in the design Chris and I worked out that would simulate the overlord doing something.  Don't get too many wild ideas about what that will be, just saying there's more than just "at X time, boom" going on.

[mrhanman]

I'm really loving all the changes, gentlemen.  It feels like a totally new game.  One with more direction.  It still doesn't hold your hand, but it at least it points you toward a goal.  I already died a few times trying to learn the new mechanics, but I really like not having to worry about health and mana pickups.  I can't wait to see what variety you add with the mission system.

Oh, I haven't heard anything about the achievement system since it was removed.  Is it still going to be implemented at some point?  There was a time I hated achievements, but - if they aren't unreasonable - they can add a lot to a game.

[Toll]

First of all, I do love the idea that Overlords eventually destroy the continent (especially since there's a way to turn it off for those that don't want that pressure). I hope there'll be an explanation as to why they'd want to do that though, since I've never really understood the whole "Bad guy wants to destroy the universe" bit; why would he want to destroy himself along with everyone else? At least a word or two of their motivation would go a long way, although that is, of course, something that can easily wait until 1.0.

[mrhanman]

Nihilism needs no explanation 

[keith.lamothe]

First of all, I do love the idea that Overlords eventually destroy the continent (especially since there's a way to turn it off for those that don't want that pressure). I hope there'll be an explanation as to why they'd want to do that though, since I've never really understood the whole "Bad guy wants to destroy the universe" bit; why would he want to destroy himself along with everyone else? At least a word or two of their motivation would go a long way, although that is, of course, something that can easily wait until 1.0.

Maybe they didn't read the fine print on the World Domination Device?  Or crossed the wires?  Or one of the minions stumbled into the wrong lever?  Never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to malice and incompetence

But yes, I want them to be more nuanced than that, and at some point being able to have "overlord wins" sometimes mean that the continent stays around in some form as overlord-owned-territory would be great, it's just pretty far out of scope for now.

Though, another thing would be simply giving more explanation to what it means for the continent to be "destroyed", right now it's just literal: it's gone from your disk, it's gone from the game, it's gone, it blew up.  But thematically it's more appropriate to say that the vortex finally swallowed it completely, or something like that.

For now we just wanted the game to threaten you (unless you crank down the strategic difficulty), and now it does so