AVWW Beta 0.568 "The Sky That Fell" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/02/avww-beta-0568-sky-that-fell-released.html

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.

[Nyamsas]

Already posted in Mantis, but just giving a heads up so people don't accidentally lose their characters:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=5554
You can easily get 60% fall damage just by falling down the first acid water pit in the tutorial.

That aside, this update is all I've been waiting for! Finally can find the materials to upgrade my spells! The other minor changes are also excellent. Great job!

[Tagek]

Awww I was so hoping for the guardian powers etc to be released today!
Oh well, at least I'll have something to look forward to.

[x4000]

New one, to fix that bug in particular! http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9757.0.html

[Hyfrydle]

Is the rare commodity on tier 2 and 3 missions random? All my missions in my current world are offering Welkin Gel and I desperately need Charred Amber so annoying. Also need Coral for any spell using Welkin Gel and theres no Ocean Shallows on my continent.

Just under 40 EP's to tier 3 enemies and only one tier 2 spell so far this is going to be hard.

[TerraSleet]

This game literally gets better every day! I picked a good time to return to this game I love the new notifications and health bar!

[x4000]

Is the rare commodity on tier 2 and 3 missions random? All my missions in my current world are offering Welkin Gel and I desperately need Charred Amber so annoying. Also need Coral for any spell using Welkin Gel and theres no Ocean Shallows on my continent.

Just under 40 EP's to tier 3 enemies and only one tier 2 spell so far this is going to be hard.

It's quasi-random.  Depending on the region the mission appears in, it's random between the rare commodities that can appear in that region type.  Charred Amber has a zero percent chance outside of really specific regions, unfortunately.

The answer to your question about what to do, in the way we have this planned, relies on either of two features that aren't in place yet in the build you have:
1. Using NPC guardian powers to scout for resource missions in the region types that are likely to bear charred amber for you.
2. Or, alternatively, exploring a lot in the region types in question to find secret missions that would be quite a bit more likely to give you charred amber as well.

Neither of which are in place yet, but my hope is that by Friday, if not sometime tomorrow, they will be.  Both are big features, and pretty central to the game experience really playing out in a satisfying way.  It's not just an oversight, I promise!  We're just not done yet.

This game literally gets better every day! I picked a good time to return to this game I love the new notifications and health bar!

Thanks a lot!  Glad you like them.

[TerraSleet]

Is the rare commodity on tier 2 and 3 missions random? All my missions in my current world are offering Welkin Gel and I desperately need Charred Amber so annoying. Also need Coral for any spell using Welkin Gel and theres no Ocean Shallows on my continent.

Just under 40 EP's to tier 3 enemies and only one tier 2 spell so far this is going to be hard.

It's quasi-random.  Depending on the region the mission appears in, it's random between the rare commodities that can appear in that region type.  Charred Amber has a zero percent chance outside of really specific regions, unfortunately.

The answer to your question about what to do, in the way we have this planned, relies on either of two features that aren't in place yet in the build you have:
1. Using NPC guardian powers to scout for resource missions in the region types that are likely to bear charred amber for you.
2. Or, alternatively, exploring a lot in the region types in question to find secret missions that would be quite a bit more likely to give you charred amber as well.

Neither of which are in place yet, but my hope is that by Friday, if not sometime tomorrow, they will be.  Both are big features, and pretty central to the game experience really playing out in a satisfying way.  It's not just an oversight, I promise!  We're just not done yet.

This game literally gets better every day! I picked a good time to return to this game I love the new notifications and health bar!

Thanks a lot!  Glad you like them.

When citybuilding is back in do you plan on having the settlement use rare resources for certain buildings/upgrades? I think that'd be a good idea since you only need a relatively small amount of each resource to get your spells up to T5.
In other news I just killed a Lieutenant, yay.

[x4000]

Congrats on the lieutenant!  And in terms of the buildings, those cost just guardian powers, which in their own way are just as rare as rare commodities (if not a bit more so).  The citybuilding aspects are really very different than they were in the past, and now have more in common with a card game (in some respects) than with sim city.

[Hyfrydle]

Is the rare commodity on tier 2 and 3 missions random? All my missions in my current world are offering Welkin Gel and I desperately need Charred Amber so annoying. Also need Coral for any spell using Welkin Gel and theres no Ocean Shallows on my continent.

Just under 40 EP's to tier 3 enemies and only one tier 2 spell so far this is going to be hard.

It's quasi-random.  Depending on the region the mission appears in, it's random between the rare commodities that can appear in that region type.  Charred Amber has a zero percent chance outside of really specific regions, unfortunately.

The answer to your question about what to do, in the way we have this planned, relies on either of two features that aren't in place yet in the build you have:
1. Using NPC guardian powers to scout for resource missions in the region types that are likely to bear charred amber for you.
2. Or, alternatively, exploring a lot in the region types in question to find secret missions that would be quite a bit more likely to give you charred amber as well.

Neither of which are in place yet, but my hope is that by Friday, if not sometime tomorrow, they will be.  Both are big features, and pretty central to the game experience really playing out in a satisfying way.  It's not just an oversight, I promise!  We're just not done yet.

All sounding good glad I'll have some way to get myself moving again. Just a quick point the info in the reference section doesn't mention that charred amber is only available in certain regions, this is also true for other rare commodities. It just states received as a reward for tier 2 and above missions.

Looking forward to the next update it sounds as if it will add alot more choice in the way people play the game. I shall watch out for the update.

[x4000]

Thanks, that's a good point on the tooltips for those.