Valley 2 Beta .804 "The Angst Of A 360 In Search Of Its Control Node" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/02/valley-2-beta-804-angst-of-360-in.html

This one has a title that's a bit of an in-joke to some old AI War stuff.  At any rate, it's primarily referencing that the gamepad defaults are now a lot better thanks to the tireless work of community contributor Pepisolo.  What a big relief!

There are also a number of more cleanup/clarity type of things on both the adventure side, helping to make things as balanced and interesting as possible.  The late-game balance for the adventure side actually has seen a much more extreme change that should bring it more inline in difficulty with what people would expect.  And farms have been nerfed pretty hard on the strategic side, helping to bring more balance to the food situation.

There's a little bit of sound effect work in here, and I had planned on doing more, but frankly I'm out of energy for the day.  It's been more than a month since I've had a day off, so I'm going to take a few hours off and come back recharged for tomorrow.  The 1.0 release is only a week from tomorrow, so it's great to see this all coming together so well at this point!

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  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 the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!

[MouldyK]

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

[Pepisolo]

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

Seems to be working for me. Are you sure the game is updated Mouldy? My steam version wasn't, so I had to run the update tool. You probably have updated, though, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

[madcow]

By the way, when's the official 1.0 release target?

[Pepisolo]

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

My brother confirmed this problem. Maybe there is a different steam or updater tool version? Mine seems to be working correctly, possibly because I run the updater... dunno. Oh well, I'm sure it'll get sorted soon, whatever it is.

[Panopticon]

Other than discovering that I can kill Sphinxes with Clinging Nettles everything is working great in my opinion. I'm getting quite happy with where everything is going in Valley 2.

Pushing back Demonaica's emergence from the lair is a nice thing and having the player deal with monsters on the strategic overworld is pretty cool stuff. It does a lot to make this feel like an escalating conflict. It make sense thematically too that the evil Overlord would send minions to at least test and probe his enemy before annihilation. So now I can have a phase where I can hold territory, build up some strength and explore a bit. Very cool. I think distinct phases of play in strategy games are a good thing.

I love love love all the HUD changes and work on the UI that's occurring in general. Ammo costs being listed are especially nice. Character management having its own category in the pause menu is nice and should help eliminate some confusion about perks and feats. In the category of general polish I have to say that all of the art and audio getting to a sweet state.

I really like what you did with Water Punch, it feels a lot more useful now and the new sound effect is sweet. I think if there was a button to lock a character in place the melee spells would get a little more popular. Trying to pull of a melee on a diagonal is risky and frustrating because you'll often blunder into the enemy or shot trying to pull the move off. I can think of two things that may help on this front. One is a key to lock the player in place. I think the Walk function could easily be replaced by this. That way a player could position themselves, lock into place and then feel free to throw punches or whatever without the fear of suddenly sprinting into danger. The other way would be to just make punches and touches to have a larger area of effect, negating the need to aim them diagonally. Then the player could melee with more confidence as they could hit stuff that would normally get past a straight punch by attacking directly ahead or above them. I'm not sure if you want to dive into that sort of thing right now though. Just some thoughts I had while playing. Like I said I love what you've done with it recently, it's a lot more fun to use now. I'd love to see them become even more useful for defensive fighting. I was having a lot of fun fighting the Fire Mummies with it and they don't even have the melee requirement.

[Pepisolo]

Seems to be coming together nicely. Not sure about those regular text popups every 12 seconds for the windstorms, though. I'd prefer just a one-time proper text interjection saying "hey my projectiles can be blown around... interesting". You really only need to send the message once for the player to get what's going on I think. Popups saying the same thing every 12 seconds are a bit annoying.

[Mick]

Seems to be coming together nicely. Not sure about those regular text popups every 12 seconds for the windstorms, though. I'd prefer just a one-time proper text interjection saying "hey my projectiles can be blown around... interesting". You really only need to send the message once for the player to get what's going on I think. Popups saying the same thing every 12 seconds are a bit annoying.

I disagree, I find there are already too many text interjections as there are. I hate how I get a new one every time I pick up a piece of equipment. They are great for tutorial, but text interjections really break the flow.

[Mick]

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

I seem to be having the same issue. The drop down list for defaults appears to be empty.

[x4000]

By the way, when's the official 1.0 release target?

It's coming out on the 18th, as noted in the OP (though not in as clear of terms).

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

My brother confirmed this problem. Maybe there is a different steam or updater tool version? Mine seems to be working correctly, possibly because I run the updater... dunno. Oh well, I'm sure it'll get sorted soon, whatever it is.

I've fixed that now!  The steam version was not updating the saved input binding sets because I had a filter in my import script that was mistakenly omitting it.  Running the updater from Arcen would not have that problem, hence the difference as you suspected.  The steam version should now do an update with 3.2KB of data, and then the dropdown list of defaults will have all the stuff it should.

Thanks for the report folks!

[x4000]

Thanks for all the kind words, Panopticon, and the thoughts on melee.  I have some ideas that you and Ashnal have inspired that I think might help make these even better.

[Mick]

By the way, when's the official 1.0 release target?

It's coming out on the 18th, as noted in the OP (though not in as clear of terms).

Either I am baffled or there is a problem, but either way I went in controls and tried selecting a default configuration and it didn't work.

My brother confirmed this problem. Maybe there is a different steam or updater tool version? Mine seems to be working correctly, possibly because I run the updater... dunno. Oh well, I'm sure it'll get sorted soon, whatever it is.

I've fixed that now!  The steam version was not updating the saved input binding sets because I had a filter in my import script that was mistakenly omitting it.  Running the updater from Arcen would not have that problem, hence the difference as you suspected.  The steam version should now do an update with 3.2KB of data, and then the dropdown list of defaults will have all the stuff it should.

Thanks for the report folks!

Looks like it worked. Thank you!

[x4000]

Awesome!

[Pepisolo]

I disagree, I find there are already too many text interjections as there are. I hate how I get a new one every time I pick up a piece of equipment. They are great for tutorial, but text interjections really break the flow.

Just to clarify, I meant a one-time text interjection at the very start of the game during the tutorial period, not a text interjection every time you were to encounter a windstorm.

[Billick]

One thing I'm running into is that deep gates can be activated before you know that they are there.  In this screenshot, I had purified a tile next to a windmill, which happened to be 3 tiles away from a deep gate.  I'm guessing this isn't intended because they don't seem to be balanced around being able to activate them without knowing where they are.  This ended up resulting in a lost game, as I got overwhelmed with monsters out of the gate.  I nearly closed it off, but I rolled 5 damage arriving on the gate after taking 4 damage killing the monster that had just spawned on it.