AVWW Beta 0.930 "Bugfixes Are Always Better When They Involve Ponies" Released!

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Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/04/avww-beta-0930-bugfixes-are-always.html

This one is 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.

The biggest news with this one is incredibly-better gamepad support.  You can customize your analog noise filtering sensitivity and everything, and map up to 8 different axes if you have some sort of crazy flight control stick that you want to play the game with (hey, we're not here to judge).  There's still more to do on the controls front to make the keyboard-only action and gamepad-only action a bit smoother, but we're getting quite close with those.

Beyond that there are really a lot of fixes here, especially for multiplayer.  More to come tomorrow on those as well, but it's excellent progress towards as spot-free a 1.0 as we can get.  Regarding the title of this release, there is a driver issue with some ATI cards where you literally get better vastly performance by playing My Little Ponies videos in the background while playing AVWW.  I'm not joking.  Hopefully this version will let the affected folks fix that issue without the involvement of cute ponies.

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.

[Coppermantis]

I....I just....I just don't...I don't even...I mean, that may be the silliest thing I've ever heard. Yay for bugfixes though.

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That was my reaction, and the reaction of the other indies I showed that thread to.

[Coppermantis]

I am noticing an improvement in performance though. It may be a conincidence, but hey. Also, the changes to how the inventory bar works with mouse caught me off guard. I was about to post a question when I found out that the scroll wheel now changes it. I missed it in all the release notes.

Oh, also: I loaded my old world and all my inventory was gone, leaving me with the default kit of stuff. What happened to it?

[keith.lamothe]

I....I just....I just don't...I don't even...I mean, that may be the silliest thing I've ever heard.

Yea, it's one of those "just what kind of universe is this?" situations.

[Wanderer]

I am noticing an improvement in performance though. It may be a conincidence, but hey. Also, the changes to how the inventory bar works with mouse caught me off guard. I was about to post a question when I found out that the scroll wheel now changes it. I missed it in all the release notes.

Oooooh, THATS PRETTY.  WOOT WOOT!  I like the new roller-wheel usage.  A request, can it be a setting to have it jump 2 boxes at a time?  Yes, I know, I'm asking for a lot, but you didn't just drop 30 platforms (out of ~3100) trying to fire a spell... XD  Either that or just have it... wait, nevermind, that'll drive keyboard players nuts.  Yeah, 2 at a time would be great if you could.

If not, I'll live, this is niiiice.  Just gotta get used to it.

Lights... miniaturize... splash back.... Oh I could work with this.



Oh, yeah, in case anyone's not checking the server thread, Wandering Nomads is on .930 now.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I just read that thread....umm....yeah....I think if I played two videos of my little pony plus AVWW, my GTX 460 would shutdown, giving me a "I'm on Strike" notice.       (Heck, I'm waiting for my CPU to say that one of these days, I abuse it too much X_X)

That said, that is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard of.  And I hear people swear by ATI too...what the heck...

Liking the fixings

King

[arcee]

It's been forever since I played AVVW (0.520-0.530?) - wanted it to get more polished/stable, and not burn myself out on it too early.  But as release approaches, I'm watching the site more (and updating my copy, partly to have an excuse to hear the music).  I think this version will get me to play some, as better gamepad and mousewheel support is a huge plus - I never did find a control scheme with any input method in the past that didn't feel awkward in one way or another.  Thanks for all your hard work, and I hope this is a successful release.

(I made AVVW a Christmas gift for a bunch of friends too, didn't expect the release to be this delayed.  oh well, can't win 'em all)

[MouldyK]

I will be trying the Xbox Controller out for a while now to see if it is a replacement for K+M Controls.

But so far, I have found out that the Left and Right Triggers on the Xbox Controller are not individual buttons, but the Z-Axis, so i've got spell 1 and 2 sorted out now.

I can see how some spells are not useful though with the controller, like Platforms, but i'll see how it goes.

[TechSY730]

Just a very minor thing, but

In response to comments about the battlefield missions being incredibly too easy, we've now reduced your minion's health to 1/5th their former value. If this is too far in the other direction, please let us know. But those of us who have been through balancing of AI War with us know that we find the quickest way to perfect balance is to "bubble sort" with large changes that get progressively tighter on the ideal target. Starting with small incremental changes when something is already way off just makes the whole process take longer, because each change is harder to judge on its own.

    Thanks to Toll, silverhound, Blahness, kingisaaclinksr, and Terraziel for reporting.

What you were describing sounds more like binary search than bubblesort.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10269.0.html