Arcen Games

General Category => A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 => AVWW Technical Support => : Pattoe February 22, 2013, 05:47:36 PM

: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 22, 2013, 05:47:36 PM
Hey guys.

I reached level 9, which is when the tower will allow me to go to the next stage, so I went there and sure it let me past, I battled the boss, killed it... went to go get my tier 4 mage spells... nothing... just got sent back to the atrium eventually... I went through it 4 or 5 times and same result every time.

Weird thing happened too, when i fought the boss I made her run away, then when i ran to find her i went to the next room as she didn't show up anywhere in the current room, couldn't find her so I went back into her room and she magically reappeared, but still had the damage from when i had fought her last.

Have I ran into a bug, and if so, can it be remedied? Would suck to have to restart my game because of that, was really getting into it after 6 hours.

Great game, by the way Arcen, really loving the keyboard only controls. Makes the positional spells much more satisfying to use effectively.

Thanks for reading!
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 22, 2013, 05:56:01 PM
In terms of the boss, by the time you reach her room you're going to the left at that point -- the path has doubled back on itself.  So make sure and keep going to the left, and you'll be able to finish her off and get to the tier 4 mage classes.  When you exit the room as it is, it sounds like you're going to the right and then going all the way back through rooms you had already been in, which is why you wind back up at the atrium.

Hope that helps!
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 22, 2013, 06:04:01 PM
I know what you're saying but I am going left. I defeat her and then I go to the left and end up in a big downward room with levels of destroyable blocks (Kind of like the old AVWW boss rooms) and at the bottom there's a pit of water which i needed the water dash ability to get past, then I got to a room with big holes with lava at the bottom, then there's a room with shallow lava pits and then a room with a floor of spikes where you have to take the upper route to get past (or walk through the spikes), then eventually (after going left long enough) I end up on the first floor of the tower, near the ventilation shaft, but I never went through a ventilation shaft to get there.
I'm wondering if by leaving the boss room without killing the boss I somehow managed to skip the spawning of the alter thing that gives me the higher tier of spells.

Would it help if I were to send you my save files (or world?) so you can check out what happened?

I did check my mage spells list to see if I had unlocked the next tier and didn't realise it but I didn't find it there either.

Thanks for the fast reply x4000, you've given me the same awesome support in the past and it's what makes Arcen my favourite developer (2nd being CdProjekt Red)
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 22, 2013, 06:06:07 PM
There's definitely no way to miss the room if you get to it, and the boss kill doesn't affect the spawning.  However, you can't leave the room the boss is in in the correct direction if she's still alive, so you must be going out the wrong door one way or the other.  I would think.  One way or another, there's a wrong turn being taken there somewhere.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 22, 2013, 06:14:21 PM
Weird. I even tried taking several different paths through each room (as some have lower and upper paths) and I never spotted anything substantial on the other paths, no other doorways to go through, from my experience there's always just one door on the right, one door on the left (Or bottom/top for the tall rooms) and a ventilation shaft which will either move you back to the atrium or to the furthest shaft you've discovered if it's the atrium shaft. Could there be 2 doors on the left and I'm choosing the wrong one?

Feels like something weird is happening since the tier 2 and tier 3 alters were easy to find, I didn't have to explore any more than usual, just go from right to left and I happened upon them.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 22, 2013, 06:17:06 PM
Generally speaking there is just one door on the left and right, yeah.  Though I think if there was a more general problem someone else would have mentioned it, to be honest.  You can upload it and we'll see if Josh has time to look at it; right now I'm pretty tapped out on time.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 22, 2013, 06:25:19 PM
I can definitely understand you're busy! :)

I'll try to upload my world.

I was looking for others who had the problem too. I'd rather it be my stupidity than a bug to be honest.

I'll look back through it too, maybe one of the doors has a ventilation shaft behind it which I'm using instead of the door?

When should the tier up be, by the way, is it usually in the room after the boss?

Thanks for your help man :)

(World is attached, I believe)
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 22, 2013, 06:37:01 PM
Aha! I found the skill! I had to go down from the ventilation shaft which it was taking me to, then it took me into a maze like room (which I'd never seen before), and then I had to go right, into an outside room, back inside through a right hand door again, fight another boss, go right again and then the tier 4 was there... Very odd having to fight a boss then go backwards and fight another boss to get the tier 4... is that normal?

Also, originally when I was going left after killed the first boss, I'd never seen any of those rooms before... seems like there was a whole new section of the tower created which just went back to the start which wasn't the original path i'd taken.

Thanks for your help x4000

Don't know what could cause what happened to me though, does it sound normal to you at all? (The world save from my last post was before I'd found my tier 4 skills but after i'd killed the first boss)
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 22, 2013, 08:33:56 PM
Oh, sorry!  Yeah, the ventilation shafts always lead you back to the entrance, and then lead you back to the farthest part of the keep you've been to -- it's a fast-travel system, basically.  Glad you figured it out!

Regarding the boss room... that is odd indeed, I'm not sure what would cause that.  I'll have Josh take a look at it and we'll see what we can see.

Thanks!
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 10:07:10 AM
I knew all about the quick travel mechanic for when I went for my tier 3 spells, but this time I had to travel backwards from the ventilation shaft, which was counter-intuitive...

Basically the first time I went throught he ventilation shaft I continued going up the tower and met a boss, killed her, continued going from right to left as to not backtrack, and there was no treasure room, after going that way a few times to make sure I didn't miss anything... I decided to travel down the tower from the ventilation shaft (from where I'd came) but instead of entering a room I'd already been, which is what I had expected, I entered a completely new chain of rooms which led me to another boss and finally the tier 4 spells.

I can do some pretty silly things, as all of us can, but this time I do think something very odd happened as I had to fight 2 bosses and one of the paths led back to the start of the tower (Even though I never used a vent shaft to get back, just normal doors, and it wasn't the way I'd come).

But saying all that, I don't think this is a problem with the game itself as I'm the only person who has mentioned the issue... Probably just some weird things happening within my computer which may have led to the world creation going a bit screwy. Probably not worth you guys investing much time into investigating unless you start getting a lot more people experiencing similar problems.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 23, 2013, 12:37:43 PM
Cheers -- I really appreciate all the extra info, and we'll indeed probably sit on this one until we get a second case.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Oralordos February 23, 2013, 01:46:00 PM
I know normally one of the paths for the overlords keep between bosses has you going down in one of the vertical shafts instead of up. I usually tried to keep it in mind when I needed to do that one so that I did not go the wrong way.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 05:49:46 PM
I know it's important to include a lot of information when talking about stuff like this since even what seems like it's completely unconnected could be affecting the issue.

The reason I want to help you guys is because you're a great developer. You're honest and very consumer friendly so I respect you a lot. Your development philosophy, when it comes to both developing a game and also providing customer service is definitely something that should be encouraged.

Although I do try to not become a "fanboy" who would completely overlook a problem because I'm fond of you. I've not really realised anything buggy or weird with AVWW2 except for in this post, though, which is awesome.

Although, a borderless windowed option would be awesome so I could play in full screen but be able to tab out to my second monitor without it all minimising.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: keith.lamothe February 23, 2013, 06:02:10 PM
Although, a borderless windowed option would be awesome so I could play in full screen but be able to tab out to my second monitor without it all minimising.
Yea, we'd love borderless-windowed as an option too, but the Unity engine doesn't support it.  We hope it will one day!
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 07:16:55 PM
Although, a borderless windowed option would be awesome so I could play in full screen but be able to tab out to my second monitor without it all minimising.
Yea, we'd love borderless-windowed as an option too, but the Unity engine doesn't support it.  We hope it will one day!

Oh! That's why! I always wonder why some games offer it as an option and others don't.

Just did a quick search and apparently borderless support for the unity engine came with version 3.4, but that was quite a while ago, it could have been removed since then or you could simply be using a different version?

(Actually managed to find a post from x4000 on one forum when I was searching for answers to the borderless issue, I guess great minds think alike :P )
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: keith.lamothe February 23, 2013, 07:43:11 PM
Just did a quick search and apparently borderless support for the unity engine came with version 3.4, but that was quite a while ago, it could have been removed since then or you could simply be using a different version?
Iirc we were not able to update to that version due to bugs introduced that broke our sound handling.  We haven't been able to updated to 4.x because of weirdly (and inconsistently, across various machines) long load-times when loading png files at runtime.

Anyway, from what I'm able to tell you can run a 3.4 (or later) unity-generated standalone with the -popupwindow argument and that will generate a borderless window.  But this only works on windows, not mac.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 07:47:17 PM
Ah, I see! It's actually really interesting to learn what goes on behind the scenes in game development.

Could a borderless windowed option become available in AVWW2 if a stable version of unity is released which supports it on both windows and mac? If so, let's hope it comes out soon! :P

From what I've seen, a lot of developers are asking the development team of unity to come up with a solution.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 23, 2013, 08:11:40 PM
The sound crashing issue on 3.4 was something I worked around by changing our sound handling to a kid the issue. However, the unity editor is extremely crash prone in 3.4 to 3.5, and I didn't know what other problems there might be -- there were some reports of deadlocks on client machines because of the multithreaded rendering they added, so we opted to stay on the rock solid 3.3.

We have since bought version 4.0, but as Keith said the asset loading is mysteriously slow on some but not all machines. As in, 30 seconds to load valley 2 instead of 2-4. I never saw that on either of my machines, but Keith and josh both did. I've not had time to stop and send a bug report, and when I tried to make a super simple game that did nothing but load some small assets, it did not exhibit the problem. So it's clearly some really odd mix of issues, which is the worst kind to actually find. For the time being, since 3.3 is so solid and we actually have to get products out rather than helping unity fix bugs (that, in our past experience submitting 4 bugs, never were addressed anyhow), it's been a low priority for us. If I knew they would fix it that would be different, but they never addressed the other four bugs in two years. Sigh.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 09:05:51 PM
Sounds like you really need to get them to step up their game, or at least someone does. You're a paying customer and they should be striving to offer you the services you desire and need. Their product should be fit for purpose, afterall, that's the law (In the U.K. at least).

But I know how busy game developers are too, it must be easy for engine developers to ignore them or give them meaningless lip service.

I do hope you get the issues sorted and Unity gets it's act together.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 23, 2013, 09:25:12 PM
Well, they are quite excellent, really, and I don't meant to paint them in a bad light. But the job they are up against is incredibly complex, and unfortunately the way we use their engine is on he outskirts of what their normal use cases are. They have paid support options where we could get them to look at things more directly, but last time we tried that -- again 2 years ago -- we got no response at all. That was odd, but their sales staff assures me that was a strange unusual outlier event. I haven't tested again since to see, so they might well be right.

The main point for me is that their 3.3 version is so incredibly stable and good that I just haven't had sufficient reason yet to push the issue with them. At some point that will change, and I look forward to getting the new features at that time. But in the meantime hose remain nice to have features where the juice isn't worth he squeeze; and if it's not worth it to me, I can see why it's not worth it to them, you know?

I wish things were different there, and I get frustrated with them sometimes, but I also understand he realities of their business. All told, they're doing phenomenally at something that is incredibly difficult (all those crazy numbers of platforms with that many features? Goodness.)
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 23, 2013, 09:38:45 PM
That's a great way of looking at it actually!

A lot of the time it's easy to get so annoyed at a small number of things that you forget about all of the awesome things available to you. I see it's not only playing games where that's the issue but also developing games.

I can relate to it entirely though, because when I think "Ah, it sucks that I can't have AVWW2 borderless windowed" I also think "but it's such an awesome game in so many ways, it doesn't matter!"

I'd rather play AVWW2 in windowed and enjoy my time then play another game that has the option but isn't as enjoyable.


The Unity engine is cool, though, I've liked the few games I've played on the engine, but now as more and more "Core games" (Not sure what other wording to use) are coming to the engine, such as Dungeon Land and Rochard. I hope that unity will have the ability to continue to reach the needs of the developers.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 23, 2013, 09:57:04 PM
Cheers! More big boys using the engine can only be a good thing, in my opinion -- the more money that gets pumped toward unity, the better it will be.

By the way, sorry for the crazy typos in my last post. Posted from my phone...
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 24, 2013, 01:10:50 AM
[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Hey x4000, I want to ask something else, thought I'd ask here to save creating a new topic and spamming :P

I just finished the game (I think).

I killed the overlord, demonicai (Sp?), and the elder told me to get to his remains to here the truth so I did...

His remains did fall into a really deep pit of lava so I swum down into it, reaching the remains with under a heart of health left... and then I got a cut scene with the elder talking to me. but it did look very odd... I'll attach a screenshot.

Anyway, I read all that, that it was a very cool dialogue and experience... and I was expecting maybe credits to roll? But I was put into the game and I think some text appeared but I immediately died due to being submerged in a burning hot bath of lava (It was good for my pores, I'm sure!). So I revived and ended up back in my little place with the training dummy tree and whatnot... Went to the world map and the strategic advisor still tells me to beware of the (now dead) demonicai and I'm not really sure what's happening now...

Did I mess up the ending?
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 24, 2013, 07:43:49 AM
Nab, you're okay -- the credits roll at the start of the game, not the end. The dying while in that cutscene thing is a known bug, but it doesn't affect anything. At this point it lets you keep playing in case you want to kill the other henchmen except Elder.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Cham February 24, 2013, 01:01:35 PM
As for the doors, you could probably reduce confusion by specifying which way doors lead in the bottom left corner tooltip.  ie "Leads further in" or something.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 24, 2013, 07:46:03 PM
Ah I see, thanks for the reply x4000.

Loved the game and I will definitely be playing it through more times, different difficulty settings and whatnot and maybe mods depending on what  the community makes for it.

However, the ending seemed a bit... underwhelming? I'm not sure if I missed anything because I died immediately after the cutscene but:

The cutscene seemed weird, the small pictures off to the side seemed like they should have been full pictures of the characters which the elder was talking about, especially since most of the screen was just black, and after the cut scene there was no information on why the game simply continued.

Perhaps a little "Congratulations! You have defeated the overlord, you can continue to fight if you want!" (Something along those lines) and credits rolling would help to make the ending feel a bit... epic.

I do definitely love how the elder gave a lot more context to the characters which added nicely to what you found out about them through levelling up. (I especially enjoyed the fallen paladin's storyline).

I'm not sure what to suggest but something more grandiose, maybe a more embellished credits with rolling scenes of the different areas you've been through (You've got an awesome aesthetic, showing all the different environments and enemies through the cutscene would be an awesome way to show the player what they've been through to get to the end.) You could add some quotes from the development team to it too?

It might seem to be a lot of work to go through for something at the end of the game which maybe not all of your customers will experience but the ending credits are something which will encourage players to think "Wow, that was AWESOME! I've definitely got to tell my friends about this now!"

You've also got some awesome soundtracks in this game for the different environments aswell, those could be used really well in an ending sequence alongside the aesthetics.

I guess to sum up my points, I thought the ending was very blunt and sudden, and left me thinking "Did I finish this?".
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 24, 2013, 07:48:58 PM
In terms of the images being cut off to the side, that seems to be something based on large screen resolutions, and is on my list to look into.
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: Pattoe February 24, 2013, 08:43:43 PM
In terms of the images being cut off to the side, that seems to be something based on large screen resolutions, and is on my list to look into.

ah okie! I knew it looked a bit odd!

If it helps, I have two monitors (1920x1080 and 1440x900) and I run the game in 1920x1080 windowed mode, using a nvidia GeForce GTX 460 with up to date drivers.

If you want any more info feel free to ask. :)
: Re: No tier 4 mage class
: x4000 February 24, 2013, 09:57:39 PM
Awesome, thanks. I have the same size dual monitors as you actually, but I've been running windowed mode smaller lately to test to make sure small screens see it ok. Probably why that slipped past.