AVWW Beta 0.919 "But I LIKE Referencing Nulls" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/avww-beta-0919-but-i-like-referencing.html

This one is our third release of the day, which is never a good sign.

Two releases can be good or bad: yay we had a batch of content and stuff leftover from prior days that we released mid-day, and then yay we did even more and released that at the end of the day; or yay we released a new version, and then oops we released a followup to fix something in the version we just released.

Three releases... there's no way there's not an oops in at least one of those three releases.  Today has been a day with two oops-fixing releases out of three, although two out of the three releases also had new content of significance.

Sigh.  It's been one of those days, I guess; hopefully tomorrow will go substantially more smoothly!  But things seem to be in good enough shape for now, and so I'm heading for some sleep.

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]

Aww, first they stopped you dividing by zero and now they stop you from dereferencing nulls. Why won't computers let us have our fun.

 

More seriously looks good. I especially like the how platforms and crates "grow to fit" now. Should help me get out of the one tile high hole I gotta jump up into, because I foolishly fell down it.

Also, don't feel bad about these releases. I've been working on a bug at work, and every change I made seemed to break something else because I didn't consider a case. This has been happening for the last several major commits. 
I think I got it to a stable state now.

[x4000]

Yep, I don't feel too bad about it -- this is just kind of how software development works.  But it is exhausting and something I'm ready to have behind me with this game.  I feel your pain, anyhow, brother!

[Penumbra]

I love the names of the new Draconites. Remind me of the Wee Free Men from Pratchett.  They are very strong and a nice change from the robots. Their loping run is a really cool looking animation, kind of has that "wolverine" vibe that someone was asking for on the forums about  a month ago. The fact that their standing position is stolen right from Bela Lugosi is just awesome.

I swapped out a bunch of my +damage enchants for -mana costs and have made them a nice alternative to some of my more well balanced characters. Still have a much shorter casting duration, but the damage makes up for it. My combat strategy has changed considerably to much more hit and run tactics.

I really don't want to say this next part, because I am having so much fun with it, but... not being heavy like the skelebots, they are the goto characters for the lava flats.    Not being able to wear an advanced heat suit for lava mobility, or even a regular one for the 90% resistance makes me fearful to bring them into a Lava Escape mission. Maybe that balances it out?

[KDR_11k]

Hm, a lightweight heat resistant character does sound like it would hurt the "harder platforming" challenge of the lava flats.

[silverhound]

Till it falls into a lava pool and turns into a crispy version of itself.


mmm... roast draconite 

[KDR_11k]

BTW, feel free to reference nulls. It's dereferencing them that's the problem. There's no pot o' gold at the end of the null pointer.

[Penumbra]

BTW, feel free to reference nulls. It's dereferencing them that's the problem. There's no pot o' gold at the end of the null pointer.

Man, referencing Nulls is even tougher than dereferencing them!

[keith.lamothe]

Stupid picky runtime.  I'll have it know I keep lots of important stuff at address 0!

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10158.0.html

[x4000]

Been tied up all day with the memory leak, so just getting back to some of this stuff.

I love the names of the new Draconites. Remind me of the Wee Free Men from Pratchett.  They are very strong and a nice change from the robots. Their loping run is a really cool looking animation, kind of has that "wolverine" vibe that someone was asking for on the forums about  a month ago. The fact that their standing position is stolen right from Bela Lugosi is just awesome.

Thanks!  Glad you like them.  The first names were all inspired by Thog from Order of the Stick.  And the last names... I'm not sure what, but various funny fantasy books from my youth.  Their standing position is just a stock pose from Daz 3D; I'm not familiar with Bela Lugosi, but glad you like.

I swapped out a bunch of my +damage enchants for -mana costs and have made them a nice alternative to some of my more well balanced characters. Still have a much shorter casting duration, but the damage makes up for it. My combat strategy has changed considerably to much more hit and run tactics.

I think that makes for a pretty interesting new character style, too.

I really don't want to say this next part, because I am having so much fun with it, but... not being heavy like the skelebots, they are the goto characters for the lava flats.    Not being able to wear an advanced heat suit for lava mobility, or even a regular one for the 90% resistance makes me fearful to bring them into a Lava Escape mission. Maybe that balances it out?

Hm, a lightweight heat resistant character does sound like it would hurt the "harder platforming" challenge of the lava flats.

Hmm... yeah, they do need to be heavy, don't they...

[Penumbra]

I'm not familiar with Bela Lugosi

Actor famous for playing Dracula in the 30s. He was also in Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. When I say "in" I mean kinda, he passed away before it started filming and Ed Wood spliced in some footage from before. When he got the "actor" (chiropractor) Tom Mason to fill in for Lugosi, Mason was forced to keep his cape pulled over his face so you couldn't see him. That's the pose I was referring to, in a very roundabout way.

Hmm... yeah, they do need to be heavy, don't they...

I have no idea what, but could we come up with a different limitation? Half jump height, maybe?

[x4000]

Ah, thanks for the clarification!

I could do half-height jumps for the draconites, actually, if people prefer that; it's a one-line of code thing.  It seems to me that would be more annoying, but perhaps it would be more unique and thus more interesting.  That would make double and triple jumps (or RTL or jump-height improvers) kind of vital for these.

[Penumbra]

Whoops, my text went into the reply there, didn't it    Just to make them different. Heck, you might just give them an innate double jump that doesn't stack with enchants. But that might be confusing.

I'm going in circles. But having them not just be palette swapped skelebots would be cool.

[x4000]

They already aren't a palette swap: their movement is much slower rather than being faster, their size is different (which can matter), and their general stats are wildly different.  Skelebots have really puny attacks but huge amounts of health, whereas draconites have huge attacks but very little mana.  But yeah, making them more differentiated is always good.