AVWW Post-Release 1.027-1.029 "Lieutenants In Freefall" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/05/avww-post-release-1027-lieutenants-in.html

This one is really cool, but I have largely run myself out of time for the day and so I'll just leave you to see the release notes on your own.  A few notes:

1. There's a new Freefall mission type.  It's all kinds of awesome (player suggestion, by the way).  However, the balance on that is preliminary at best -- by which I mean "it's way too hard at the moment."  We did not get to finish our unit testing of balance on these missions, although we did finish the other forms of testing on it.  There were simply too many other things in this release to delay it until tomorrow, though, so what you've got is an unbalanced new mission until that next release -- sorry about that.

2. One of the big killer changes in this one that meant we really needed to release tonight were a selection of balance improvements as well as a pretty major CPU usage improvement.  I decided that having these things in your hands earlier rather than later was more important than waiting until the Freefall mission was pristine.

3. The Lieutenant Towers are way way cooler and more interesting now.  And also have this new thing called Area Enchantments, along with a new kind of guardian power scroll you can use to bypass them.  Much less grindy this way.

4. In general, the balance on the traps has been particularly improved, which we know some folks were really looking forward to.

And with that, I have to run for the night.  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.

[lunarknight64]

"Spike Traps and Blade Traps:
Damage now scales by platforming difficulty:
"I Have No Desire To Be The Guy": 0.125 * the previous damage.
"I Am Afraid Of Heights": 0.25 * the previous damage.
"I Can Jump, Thank You": 0.375 * the previous damage.
"They Mistake Me For a Certain Plumber": 0.5 * the previous damage.
"I Am Not The Guy But I Am Close": 1.0 * the previous damage.
"I Am Already The Guy": 2.0 * the previous damage."

"The base damage from spike traps has been halved for every difficulty, making them not nearly so lethal as they were."

I saw this in the patch notes, could you clarify how much damage they do now?
Do they do half damage or a quarter damage now?

[topper]

My wife and I are both getting fatal errors within a few seconds of starting on the new patch both in single and multiplayer. See attached error log.

Edit: It happens when trying to open the enchant inventory, nothing shows up except the error  .

[TechSY730]

My wife and I are both getting fatal errors within a few seconds of starting on the new patch both in single and multiplayer. See attached error log.

Might be related to:

Mantis issue #8036: Lost all enchants after loading game, where the reporter also got a NullReferenceException, though admittedly one with a pretty different stack trace.

I'm gonna hold off updating until whatever this is can be fixed. Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing what the new elemental weakness/resistance spread is like.

[keith.lamothe]

Looking into it, thanks.

[x4000]

Thanks!  1.028 is now out.

* Fixed a bug in the prior version where unhandled exceptions would be thrown when you tried to view the enchants inventory.

[x4000]

1.029 is now out.

1.029 fixes two other unhandled exceptions, or at least should -- I didn't have world files, so I was working off error files without line numbers only.  I saw a few places where errors could arise if the game state was in some edge cases, though, so the preventative measures I put in there will hopefully be the solutions that were needed to fix the two bugs in question.  And with that, I'm really going to go sleep now, so hopefully things are clean until morning.  Apologies for the trouble!

[TechSY730]

Odd compulsions to try to dereference nulls aside (have not updated to 1.029 as of this post), 1.028 looks pretty nifty. I really love the diversity of elemental weakness now, now I am actually wanting to try some of my other spells, not just spam miasma whip, energy pulse, and creeping death all day long.

[x4000]

I tried out your world file in 1.029 and it seems to be functioning now, so that's good.

[TechSY730]

Just tried one of the new falling missions out. Pretty fun actually, three things though.

1. Lighting: Was it intentionally very dark? Because it was. Though, that did give an interesting dynamic, do I sacrafice my reduce damage torso enchant for my moderate emit light one? Or do I just spam light balls all the way down?
2. Camera: It would of been nice to adjust how far up or down the screen the camera was relative to me. This may be solvable by having the camera be adjustable up and down in general (there already is a way to do it for left and right)
3. Mines: I must say, it was really surreal dodging special forces guard posts on the way down. Actually, that might not be a bad idea to make them more of a factor in games.


(To anyone who doesn't get the third point, it is a reference to another of Arcen's games )

[Misery]

I just did one of the falling missions myself as well.

Doesnt seem unbalanced to me, actually.  I didn't have any real trouble with it.   I took maybe 100 damage all told?   And some of that was from SUDDEN SPAZZY STORM DASH WHEEEEEEEE as the game occaisionally likes to do (or my controller, I can never tell).   

The Niche enchants seem to help here with the fall-speed reduction.  Though I'll have to try some without and compare as well.

Very entertaining though, all about dodging things, I like.  Kudos to the one that came up with the idea.

[Misery]

Ok, I noticed one bug pretty quickly,

All types of "seeker" projectiles dont seem to actually be registering collisions with the character.   They do no damage at all and just tend to stick to the character.   Small fairies which usually pop upon contact with a shield dont do that either.   I can hit them all with projectiles just fine though.

EDIT:  Some of them are like ALMOST colliding but then bugging out, like the purple.... er..... whatever those are that the landspeeder fires, or the shots from the Gazebos, they sorta spaz out upon contact with the character and jerk off to the side, and then continue moving.

[Jerebaldo1]

I tried the freefall mission and yes it did seem disproportionately difficult; I'd say to start that they should be only half as long as they currently are. I did enjoy it though!

[Misery]

I tried the freefall mission and yes it did seem disproportionately difficult; I'd say to start that they should be only half as long as they currently are. I did enjoy it though!

Really?

I actually thought it was a little on the easy side (Hero difficulty).  Particularly with a character with high health, but even then I've yet to take more than 100 damage in one of these.

Try bringing Storm Fist with you, it can help alot there.  Other than that..... high-health character, so mistakes wont hurt so much.

[x4000]

A few notes:

1. Yeah, it gives you a moderate inner light enchant right in the lobby of the mission because it's so dark.
2. It already adjusts your view much more downwards during this mission so that you can see what's below you more easily.
3. Bear in mind that much of the difficulty here (how much traps and mines damage you, how fast you fall, etc) are all based on platforming rather than combat difficulty.  This is very much a platformer type of mode; though the monsters of course still are based around combat difficulty, so there's certainly an element of that also.