AVWW Beta 0.931 "Sometimes One Pony Isn't Enough" Released!

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Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/04/avww-beta-0931-sometimes-one-pony-isnt.html

This one is, again, all about the fixes and polish -- in keeping with our agenda for the next week.  We'll be back to content updates next week, once we hit 1.0.

This one is really all over the place in terms of what it addresses.  Battlefield missions have some teeth again.  Continents now get harder as you go, up through continent 5, to counterbalance your own growth in power through enchants.  Multiplayer has seen a ton of fixes and updates and is looking mighty clean unless you tell us otherwise.

NPCs are easier to find in buildings now.  The nova/fireball cursor thing is a lot more subtle by default now, but you can also adjust its size depending on your preferences.  We took another go at the "My Little Ponies" fix, since the first one didn't do the job.  Those one-high sections in basements and attics, which were so commonly trapping people to their frustration, are now a thing of the past.

And then lots of other minor miscellaneous polish that plows through a lot of our list of what players were most wanting fixed.  Still plenty more to do tomorrow and Thursday before hopefully hitting a final 1.0 build for Friday morning, but we're getting there!

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.

[Castruccio]

Sadly, the ponies still seem to be needed even after this lastest patch.  The other fixes are great though!  Maybe this framerate thing won't be a widespread issue.  The card probably isn't that common, and the newer mobile cards seem like they're much better all the way around.

[keith.lamothe]

I wonder if this is just some odd cross-promotional deal between ATI and Hasbro.  The sort of deal that happens when an ATI marketing guy loses a bet.

[Wanderer]

Wandering Nomads has been brought up to date.

[Toll]

Made a run at a battlefield mission, and... yeah, it's definitely got more teeth, heh. Perhaps a bit too much this time; for most of the mission, I was all alone out there; the little guys got completely slaughtered with one-hit kills (the Clockwork Probes literally rolling over them and crushing them was fun to watch), although the big ones did stand up to a few hits. The whole mission took me from 500 health to 200 health though, which is bad in a mission without any health drops (aside from the mission base, but if I went back there the enemies would've walked all over the ally NPCs). They could probably do with a bit more health; perhaps x3 on the little guys and x2 on the big guys?

[Penumbra]

I love the mouse cursor. Easy on the eyes, but so much better than just "larger." The little bit of motion really attracts the eyes, and I haven't lost it once since it was added!

[Professor Paul1290]

I just did successfuly run through a battlefield mission on my second try. I was on Tier 5 and had Tier 4 spells with me and I'm playing with "Skilled" combat difficulty on. This was in a region that didn't have a windstorm.

They're definitely still doable, but it took quite a while this time.

In order to get the ally robots to the front line I'd have to bunch them up first before letting them go, and it usually took about a minute or two to accumulate a group sizable enough to "push forward" for a significant distance.
On the other hand, I did notice that the enemies seemed to spawn in "waves" and that it worked better if I timed releasing the ally robots with the gaps between the "waves".

My first try didn't go well at all as my base got crushed almost right away. I simply couldn't put out enough damage even using the appropriate spells to stop them all. The ally robots were just getting slaughtered out of the spawn so there was hardly any additional firepower coming from there.

I can see this being far too difficult if there had been a windstorm, though that might not be a bad thing necessarily.


I think doubling the health of the ally robots would put them closer to where they need to be.

[Terraziel]

In previous versions of the game (basically since forever, it seems), the "mana cost per second" of stuff like shields was being shown incorrectly on the interface. But int he past it was subtle enough of a wrongness to not really jump out at people, because mana recharge was pretty slow. However, in the latest version it was reporting that shields were costing 17 mana per second when it was really 125 mana per second. That's, uh, not a small difference. Fixed.
Thanks to Wanderer for reporting.

I feel the need to point out that I did have a mantis about the mana cost per second issues up about a month ago. The second issue from said mantis still stands though, which is that the effects of mana cost decrease enchants aren't reflected in the interface (obviously only for mana cost per second).

On the battleground missions, as I noted in one of the mantis topics, the variation made by difficulty is going to make balancing them all but impossible, for example what Professor Paul1290 just described is a pretty fair description of playing battlegrounds on The Chosen One in the PRIOR version.

EDIT: Just as an FYI, Wind shelter missions are still possible even on The Chosen One, I have simply acquired a reason to switch to a high health character (Shadow bats do about 250 damage a hit, though that might be from storm dash)

[TechSY730]

Input keybinds:

    Removed the "Use Highlighted Ability" 1-10 keybinds because of numerous recent bug reports from players who were confused by their intended use, and because the original use cases that inspired this addition no longer appear to be relevant. Basically a ton has changed about the game and how to control it; if you used these and still need them, please let us know exactly what it is you were using them for so we can come up with a better solution.
    Hid and reset-to-default the "Use Mouse Ability" 1-7 keybinds because binding them to anything except the seven mouse button "keys" just leads to intractable confusion. Again, if you needed what these did, please tell us exactly what you were using them for so we can come up with a better solution.
    Removed the "Use Mouse Ability" 8-10 keybinds because Unity doesn't support detecting more than seven mouse buttons anyway.

Well, I have one reason I used this. Thanks to my touchpad, I want movement directed aiming for all my abilities, except for the "placing" abilities (platform, crate, glyph transfer, etc). For those, I want to be able to have the "aim where mouse is at" behavior, because otherwise I would be stuck with my platforms right next to me, instead of anywhere like mouse aiming for those gives.
For that, I bound use highlighted ability to the mouse button, which when I did that, for whatever reason, sidestepped the movement aiming I set and just used mouse aiming on the highlighted ability when I clicked. Maybe an oversight, but a very handy oversight.

So, now how can I place crates, platforms, etc using mouse aiming without changing how spells fired from pressing a key are aimed?

[x4000]

Input keybinds:

    Removed the "Use Highlighted Ability" 1-10 keybinds because of numerous recent bug reports from players who were confused by their intended use, and because the original use cases that inspired this addition no longer appear to be relevant. Basically a ton has changed about the game and how to control it; if you used these and still need them, please let us know exactly what it is you were using them for so we can come up with a better solution.
    Hid and reset-to-default the "Use Mouse Ability" 1-7 keybinds because binding them to anything except the seven mouse button "keys" just leads to intractable confusion. Again, if you needed what these did, please tell us exactly what you were using them for so we can come up with a better solution.
    Removed the "Use Mouse Ability" 8-10 keybinds because Unity doesn't support detecting more than seven mouse buttons anyway.

Well, I have one reason I used this. Thanks to my touchpad, I want movement directed aiming for all my abilities, except for the "placing" abilities (platform, crate, glyph transfer, etc). For those, I want to be able to have the "aim where mouse is at" behavior, because otherwise I would be stuck with my platforms right next to me, instead of anywhere like mouse aiming for those gives.
For that, I bound use highlighted ability to the mouse button, which when I did that, for whatever reason, sidestepped the movement aiming I set and just used mouse aiming on the highlighted ability when I clicked. Maybe an oversight, but a very handy oversight.

So, now how can I place crates, platforms, etc using mouse aiming without changing how spells fired from pressing a key are aimed?

For this specific case, I recommend putting the crates in slot 9 or 10 or similar.  Then change your mouse offset to be over there on 9.  Then to place crates or platforms, just move the mouse and right or left click.  For the rest just use keyboard controls.

[Bluddy]

I posted a Mantis about this. I think this is a common request (for keyboard users, of which I don't know how many there are). The best solution I've thought of so far is to have quick placement if you just hit the key, or mouse placement if you hold it down for a second.

EDIT: I just got Chris's response. That actually makes a lot of sense... maybe that should be the default for keyboard mode, though it'll still trip up many people who won't place the crate/platform in those 2 slots.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10276.0.html