.929 out.

[x4000]

Release notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Bionic_Dues_Alpha_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.929

Restart steam to force and update if it doesn't automatically do it.

Okay, lots of polish and a few other things:

1. Two new bots!  But don't get too excited, they are basically recolors that are also hybrids of existing bots.  However, they fill some important niches in the "special seeding" bot roster, so hence their additon.

2. Steamworks for linux now fully works, so you can see your achievements properly logged to steam from every platform now, not just windows and osx.  All of the achievements are also on steam now, by the way.

3. A fix for that bug that made the AI bots really stupid in long hallways (and a few other circumstances) in the prior version.

4. Lots of nice-to-have polish.  We're really running down extremely low toward the end of what we're going to be doing pre-1.0, which is really exciting to see.  There really is a ton of good stuff in this new version, but there's nothing else that is so singularly important that it's worth a call out.

[mrhanman]

The excitement is mounting!  Excellent job so far! 

Excited and anxious, sure, but do you guys feel sad toward the end of a project like this?  Sort of like you're seeing your kid off to college?

[keith.lamothe]

The excitement is mounting!  Excellent job so far! 

Excited and anxious, sure, but do you guys feel sad toward the end of a project like this?  Sort of like you're seeing your kid off to college?

I guess if the kid in question were a demented, murderous, yet curiously hilarious, robot with laser beams, sure

Nah, it feels great.  And if it sells at all well we certainly won't be letting it go long without more development

[Misery]

Hmm.... the only problem I have with the current version of the game is it's speed:  Turns are *very* slow if there's any bots whatsoever roaming and onscreen.   

The GaffeBots are by far the worst offenders here (ok, mostly the only offenders);  these guys can blow the pacing of a mission completely merely by existing, since their random movements mean they never actually come at you, yet keep moving nonetheless.    And yeah, I know I can zoom in, but I've found that that's usually suicide on Expert. It becomes very, very easy for enemies that have even low-ish to mid range to get the drop on you that way.   There's also the bizarre fact that GaffeBots have been in literally every single mission I've done so far.   ALL of them, no exceptions.   And there's no real way to just pop the local GaffeBots to speed things up so I can continue moving, because there's at least one or two in every section of the levels, and defeating them usually means either chasing them around (too risky) or standing in one spot hitting the spacebar over and over and over.  Or wasting valuable Sniper ammo.

With most other types of bots, the slowdown during combat with them isnt really an issue, because they're being constantly aggressive, and I'm going to want to be careful about my movements as it is.   But those Gaffe ones can make merely walking down a hall into a total slog.


On another note, the RazorBot change makes them much more of a threat, heh.   I'll hear some explosions from somewhere and then an army of bots will start flooding into the currently explored areas.  This can definitely be trouble.   So that was a good one.   Except when they set off GaffeBots and my Science Exo reveals them from a zillion tiles away.  I did have one set off a SkyBot at one point.  Things got.... interesting.... from there.   Battles can become a good deal tougher when 20 DumBots start flooding the area from who knows where.

And one suggestion:  Increase the virus cost of the "special" bots, as they're way too easy to knock out right now since they have costs of like 6 or 7.   I'm thinking these guys should have costs similar to the DoomBot.


Other than GaffeBots being a pain in the rear, things go well so far.  And the pricing changes in the shop do indeed make a difference.  Overall, I'm thinking most parts of the game will be fairly well balanced by the time it releases.  Not really running into bugs.   Oh, and having enemies be capable of movement during stealth was another good idea.   Good ideas all over the place with these last few patches!

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, on the slowdown-due-to-animating-so-many-bot-moves thing, perhaps we could add a keybind (default unbound, maybe) that makes all enemy moves do the trigger-instantly logic?  Enemy shots would still animate fully, I'd think.

[Misery]

Well, the good thing is, it's mostly the "random movement" bots that cause this simply because they can stick around the longest due to a lack of aggression.   Fights with other bots usually dont take that many turns one way or another, so it's not really as noticable with them, because you're focused on defeating them.  I dunno that it needs any special options implemented to deal with it, mostly I just thought I'd bring it up, as it's bound to annoy at least some players.


EDIT:  Ok, no, there IS one more thing that's worse than the random movement bots:  Skybots.   If one of them is allowed to generate alot of dumbots.... often by something happening out of sensor range (and they keep activating like that, and I cant figure out WHY).... it can cause the worst slowdown of all once a bunch of them are moving at once.  It's bad enough that usually my solution is to reload the save and restart the mission until it stops giving me Skybots.   It wasnt a problem before, not as much anyway, when these guys werent activating well out of sensor range.  As it is, in my last attempt at a mission, I had 2 of the things fire up at once, both where I couldnt see them, and there were ALOT of things roaming around in sensor range shortly afterwards.  Each turn takes absurdly long in this case.


Oh, and one other thing I'd wanted to mention:  The missions that give computer parts, these seem to give hardly any loot whatsoever.  No chests to go after, which I assume is because of the way that type of area generates.  They end up being the worst of the "specific loot" missions, and could possibly use a change.  I generally end up ignoring them and just getting computer items from the store instead (provided it generates them, which so far it hasnt; I've seen only one hacking item all game).   Kept meaning to mention this, kept forgetting....  EDIT:  Hm, these also seem to take REALLY long.  Too many things moving at once again, due to the level layout. 

That keybind thing might be a good idea after all.  Since I hadnt really been doing that specific mission type much, hadnt quite realized it was that bad about the slowdown thing.


YET ANOTHER EDIT:  Of COURSE after I mentioned not finding hacker parts, the next mission I did, which wasnt a "specific loot type" one, immediately spat like 4 of them at me.   This game, it can be very devious sometimes.

[x4000]

* SkyBots now only spawn DumBots when they are within your vision range, not within sensor range or elsewhere.

[keith.lamothe]

@Misery: I added it for 0.930 but didn't add it to the release notes because we were still discussing it internally, so it's a bit of an undocumented change... but there's now a "Skip Movement Animations" or something like that key-bind in the Edit Controls window that you could assign to Control or whatever.  Then when the game's chugging just press that button and it will warp all moving bots to their destinations

Naturally it drops back out of warp when something shoots or whatever.  Wouldn't want you to not see your own grisly demise, after all.

[x4000]

In a lot of respects this is kind of like "skip unit animations" in something like Civilization, where a lot of things happening in a turn can take a while just because of animation, not calculation.