AVWW Beta 0.906 "Of Terrain Upheavals And Server Browsers" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/avww-beta-0906-of-terrain-upheavals-and.html

This one took us a lot longer than we expected, but when you see what's in it, you'll see why.  First of all, there's a bunch of fixes in there, as per usual.  Secondly, there's a big efficiency gain with the size of the save files, which has a number of benefits (faster saves, faster transmission in multiplayer, etc).

More excitingly, we finally have a server browser on which you can advertise your servers at will, and players can see and connect to your servers.  We've also got the first batch of admin commands in place for the server, too.  See the release notes for details.

Next up there's a new spell and a handful of new seeker enchants, plus a new obstacle (sort of like an enemy), plus a new mission with three pretty hefty variants.  Next we did an absolute ton of rework on some of the internal math for the stats balance and enemy health and all that sort of thing, to make things simpler and resolve a number of bugs that folks had reported, and make it much easier for us to balance over the coming week.

Lastly, and perhaps most excitingly next to the server browser, is the changes to terrain generation.  Frankly you have to see them to really get how different it is.  A lot of the outdoor areas suddenly just feel like a whole new, and much more interesting to explore, game.

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.

[KDR_11k]

Kinda annoying that you don't have a central mission completion counter for unlocks like that...

Anyway you sure don't seem to mind tearing out a lot of logic this close to 1.0.

[KDR_11k]

Okay, so two issues with the new math already:
1. Acid water damage gets logged as 0.0, it's dealt properly and all but the damage log lists it wrong.
2. Health orbs have become extremely potent.

[tigersfan]

Kinda annoying that you don't have a central mission completion counter for unlocks like that...

Anyway you sure don't seem to mind tearing out a lot of logic this close to 1.0.

Well, a number of the logic changes have been because it was a hodge-podge of logic from several previous versions of the game all clumped together. So, Chris made it all more sensible and appropriate  to what the game is now. The end result being that bugs that were a bear to try to fix are now much simpler to find/squash.

[Terraziel]

Has anyone elses max health dropped?

My characters max health is now 705, as opposed to the 810 it used to be. It means that due to the calculation changes my base health must have changed from 162 to 141, which is pretty dubious.

[BobTheJanitor]

My health dropped as well. From 575 to 500. It also seems like I'm being hit harder (but I have no empirical evidence for that) but then the massive hp drops are making up for it.

[x4000]

There were some bugs that were inflating your health previously, I think.

The healing orbs thing... how much more potent are they seeming?  I couldn't remember what the values were in the prior version, and there was a bug in the prior version making it so that their true stats value wasn't actually being used.  I converted their true stats value over, thought it was insanely too high, and reduced it by 10x.  Evidently that wasn't enough.

Incidentally, nothing reported in this thread is actually a new bug: rather, every last thing thus far has been an old bug that was uncovered by the logic shifts.

[Terraziel]

Since the beginning of time with this game, it was possible to have the offscreen two tiles to the left and right of a chunk drop down slightly or rise up slightly compared to the actual exit. This was annoying and caused some visual goofiness at some points, and is finally fixed.

Is this referring to those irritating chunks were there is a tile high step immediately upon entering (and I'm not sure it is)?  because in the new world i just started of the 9 areas in and around my settlement it has happened 6 times.

[x4000]

Since the beginning of time with this game, it was possible to have the offscreen two tiles to the left and right of a chunk drop down slightly or rise up slightly compared to the actual exit. This was annoying and caused some visual goofiness at some points, and is finally fixed.

Is this referring to those irritating chunks were there is a tile high step immediately upon entering (and I'm not sure it is)?  because in the new world i just started of the 9 areas in and around my settlement it has happened 6 times.

No, I'm referring to ones where it's in the blackness that you can't see, not in the parts where you can see.

[KDR_11k]

The orbs dropped by one enemy gave about 8 health on Skilled difficulty, now they give about 25.

[Panopticon]

I've seen two things so far. First on a Rescue Survivor mission in Underground Caves the survivor got stuck on some terrain. Simply exiting to the main menu then reloading fixed this.

The other was some Granite had spawned floating in the air over the terrain it was supposed to be sitting on.

The new terrain generation from the last update really makes the Rescue Survivor mission more interesting in the Underground Caverns. I have to make sure and leave a bread crumb trail of lights and prepare areas that are tough to pass with platforms before I attempt the rescue now. I really like this.

[x4000]

The orbs dropped by one enemy gave about 8 health on Skilled difficulty, now they give about 25.

Okay, thanks, I've adjusted that for the next one.

I've seen two things so far. First on a Rescue Survivor mission in Underground Caves the survivor got stuck on some terrain. Simply exiting to the main menu then reloading fixed this.

The other was some Granite had spawned floating in the air over the terrain it was supposed to be sitting on.

Both of those were actually issues in the prior version before this one, and are in mantis already -- thanks.

The new terrain generation from the last update really makes the Rescue Survivor mission more interesting in the Underground Caverns. I have to make sure and leave a bread crumb trail of lights and prepare areas that are tough to pass with platforms before I attempt the rescue now. I really like this.

Actually those updates didn't affect any underground sections, but glad you like it!

[Panopticon]

That's interesting that the updates didn't affect the underground areas because previous Rescue missions in that environment were basically just long drops to the bottom. I'd then just grab the Survivor, equip my wooden platforms and teleport then I'd push my way up and out. This last one had a lot more dead ends and branches it seemed to me.

[x4000]

That's interesting that the updates didn't affect the underground areas because previous Rescue missions in that environment were basically just long drops to the bottom. I'd then just grab the Survivor, equip my wooden platforms and teleport then I'd push my way up and out. This last one had a lot more dead ends and branches it seemed to me.

Just random luck, I assure you!

[BobTheJanitor]

Has anyone else tried battleground missions this patch? Since my allies and base aren't dying in two shots any more, they seem more possible, but it also still seems like the difficulty is rather high. I've only found one of them so far; they don't like to seed for me. But from what I've seen, it seems like the towers get almost infinite range on their shots, which makes it pretty hard to complete because you're racing to bring them down before their endless barrages wipe out your base from the far end of the field.

And did the head weak spot on skelebot giants get really really teeny? I don't think I've managed to hit it once yet. I found it on a few regular skelebots. What seems to be happening is that spells are impacting the chest first so that even perfect shots to the head do nothing. It might help if spells didn't come out of my toes. Has that been reported as an issue yet? I guess I could go search, eh?