.912 now out.

[x4000]

Release notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Bionic_Dues_Alpha_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.912

Restart steam to get it quick if you don't want to wait for the update.

This one is a real good one, particularly in the realm of the part picker.  Keith really has outdone himself making that vastly more usable and friendly.  My favorite is the sort/filter dropdown by far, that thing is awesome.

I also burned a lot of hours today looking into one nasty group of bugs with some crashes and performance issues, and I think I rooted them all out.  I wanted to do more than that, but so it goes; at least those are, knock on wood, gone.

Stealth and regen window have also been rebalanced/reworked to make that work better, and there are a number of other bugfixes and balance tweaks.  And the controls are organized better and include some new options, you should check it out if you like that sort of extra keybindings stuff.

Enjoy!

[Winge]

Wow.  That's quite a bit to chew on.

No more Explosive Rune shenanigans for me


Edit:  I really like the sorting and filtering mechanic.  One more useful change would be to put a  "No" symbol over the current part when you mouse over it.  That would make it a bit more clear that clicking that icon removes the part.

[chemical_art]

Ah crap so now i have been suckered into balance change. that is always my gateway

[Rekka]

Indeed that's a good one. Can't wait to get home tonight to test all these.

[Misery]

A good update so far.  The new interface stuff is pretty good.

Not many bugs to report this time.  Found some more goofy stat stuff, but I put that in the stat balance thread.  There is the issue of the HideBot, which is here:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=12516  It's not a bug, but moreso a balance/design sort of thing.  The only enemy (that I'm aware of) that seems to have an issue of this kind.

Continuing through Expert, it's going pretty well.  Enemies now scale nicely, so the game retains a high difficulty.  On Expert you really need to be maxing out your stats with the best parts as much as possible to keep up with them, so that's pretty good.  Even the weaker foes can become a threat now. Lots of equipment and tactical choices to make here.   Though I havent actually died much except for a few occaisions of blowing up one of my own guys, generally the Brawler dissolving himself again.  Havent actually lost any missions, though I came close once due to doing something rather stupid.

[x4000]

Very nice!  Do you feel like it's still a bit too easy, then, since you aren't dying enough?  Perhaps we need a new "Misery" mode right at the top, eh?

[Teal_Blue]

Just some notes on playing .0912 and wanted to confirm these were issues and not just my old save game in the new version not lining up properly kinds of things.

But when in a save from 0911, though it might be originally older, because i have saved over it several times as i have gone on to new missions. But the problem is some of the 'events', such as hacking computer terminals, which have proved both beneficial and also sometimes a pain, are not showing what the effect is or was in the 'ever present message log window'

You may take that as a criticism of both the non-viewable message and of the 'ever-present-i-wish-it-would-go-away-but-it-never-does-message-log-window'

Also the temporary 'brown-out' (that is what it looks like) of the stealth module, i understand is only for the remainder of the 'turn', but honestly it is confusing. I restarted the level twice before i figured out they weren't gone for good for some unknown reason, once i thought i got damaged in battle, but that wasn't it.

Suggestion is leave the window 'lit' as long as there is points in it. And don't change the color until the points are used up.

Also on the city map, there are pop-up tooltips that are frustrating to get around, the major one is the choose mission or upgrade on the sidebar to your left tooltip. i have to move my mouse almost all over the map to get the tooltip to go away, sometimes clicking the map itself, only to have it reappear when i move my cursor down toward the yellow hostage mission again. This gets very frustrating when on the city map.

Those tooltips need a two or three second popup/fadeout, or have them appear at the top of the menu rather than the bottom, or something please. I am hating the popup almost as much as the 'ever-persistent-message-log that covers windows and maps and whatever else is in the right hand corner of the screen-window'.

I have mentioned it twice already in my posts and now a third time and no one has responded.

Thank you for listening and for responding, I appreciate it.

Thank you again, sincerely,
-Teal

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13892.0.html


Bear in mind that there is far too much feedback for us to respond to it all, and in general anything not in mantis is still something Josh is going through and having to parse out to see if it needs to go into mantis or not.  For myself I am mostly staying out of the raw feedback, as there is just no way for me to actually keep coding and still get through that; so I'm working on the things that get bubbled up to my attention from Josh, for the most part.

[Misery]

.....bah!

I'd made another post here in this topic earlier about the difficulty, but couldnt tell if it had posted fully.... it would appear that bloody Comcast did, in fact, eat it.   I really hate them.


EDIT:  Orrrrrrrr, you moved it to a seperate topic and I didn't notice.

.....well, I'll just blame Comcast for something else instead then, so that it all works out evenly.

[keith.lamothe]

Blaming Comcast sounds like a safe bet, either way.

[madcow]

So within the last few patches each turn has gotten incredibly laggy for me. It seems to be especially when I'm shooting at/blowing up a bot. I get a frame of the bullet midway to the target for a second, then a frame of the explosion for a second. It's both jumpy (not smooth) and feels on the slow side.  I'm not sure what all I can provide that would help you reproduce it though.

[keith.lamothe]

So within the last few patches each turn has gotten incredibly laggy for me. It seems to be especially when I'm shooting at/blowing up a bot. I get a frame of the bullet midway to the target for a second, then a frame of the explosion for a second. It's both jumpy (not smooth) and feels on the slow side.  I'm not sure what all I can provide that would help you reproduce it though.

A save where you can:

1) Load the game
2) Click "wait", or right click some enemy to shoot, or whatever simple action
3) Observe lag

If you can provide that it will help very much

[Teal_Blue]

please excuse me for my outburst earlier, i think i was in a mood, i try not to write things when i am in one of those because then i have to just go back and apologize for being such an idiot. I know you guys all have your hands very full and you are doing a wonderful job, the game looks and plays great! Anyway, i don't have the popups or the message log window covering other things issues in mantis yet, but i will. Thanks for not yelling back at me, and i promise i will try to do better. Its just i'm rather spoiled and sometimes my feeling of entitlement gets the better of me. Ignoring my rants is probably best.

Thanks and take care,
-Teal

[madcow]

So within the last few patches each turn has gotten incredibly laggy for me. It seems to be especially when I'm shooting at/blowing up a bot. I get a frame of the bullet midway to the target for a second, then a frame of the explosion for a second. It's both jumpy (not smooth) and feels on the slow side.  I'm not sure what all I can provide that would help you reproduce it though.

A save where you can:

1) Load the game
2) Click "wait", or right click some enemy to shoot, or whatever simple action
3) Observe lag

If you can provide that it will help very much

Of course, I can't even reproduce it myself. So umm, if I do I'll mantis it with a save file.

[keith.lamothe]

Even just a general "play this save for a while, I usually get a laggy turn in under a minute" would be helpful.  I'd just gotten the impression that it was happening to you every turn