Skyward Collapse 1.403-1.404 Beta "Serif" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/07/skyward-collapse-1403-beta-serif.html

If you've not yet read about the general changes in the 1.4 beta line, now is a good time to do so. It's expected that we'll stay in beta for the 1.4 line until the week of July 29th, when we'll do an official release called 1.5.  A lot is different here, so we want to make sure and give this time to mature before we put this out to everyone.

This one is the first release in a couple of weeks, which is uncharacteristic for us.  Firstly, people seem pretty happy with the last beta version, so there were surprisingly few bug reports or requests for changes.

Given that, I've been putting most of my efforts into a combination of the upcoming Nihon no Mura expansion for Skyward, as well as our upcoming tactical roguelike Bionic Dues.  Last week was also kind of a wash, too, because I had two unrelated deaths in the family and thus was hardly at work at all thanks to the funerals and related family events.

Anyway, about this new version: I think this is going to be a very exciting one!  The visual look of it is vastly better thanks mainly to the new font, but also due to some other smaller additions.  There are also two new difficulty modes, which should provide the experience that a number of players are looking for (either something between the old Medium and Hard, or something greater than the old Expert, respectively).

There are also a couple of really key balance changes in here.  Lumber is no longer so incredibly scarce, and the Ally Camps no longer are something you can exploit (at least not in the same way; let us know if you think of something new).

This is probably the last release for a couple of weeks, unless something significant comes up today or tomorrow.  I'm going to be unavailable this Friday and next week (boy this month is not good on that front).  The week that I get back, the Nihon expansion will come out into beta.  The 2.0 version of the game, plus that expansion, will officially release probably in the week of August 19th.

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.  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.

[Misery]

Aha, finally the problem with the wood is undone.   That had been driving me up the wall; I had stopped playing and was waiting for the inevitable "fix the blasted wood" patch      That should make a big difference.

Interesting changes with the difficulty settings, too.


More feedback later tonight after I've had a go at it.

[x4000]

Sounds good.

[Mick]

I haven't played this for a while, but I do remember being a bit frustrated with wood.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Yeah, wood is a lot better in this patch. Loving the new animations and the new font. Overall, feels like a much better game. =)

[Misery]

This is a good patch.   The wood problem is gone, and I like the special effects you added in, those are really nice.   The change to the ally camps seems to have been a good idea as well.

I've been able to experiment more with alot of the new mechanics and changes in the beta versions, and those are coming along as well.   The new trade system is great and has a ton of uses... so much better than the old one. The Build Up action is very useful.  Costs overall for some things seem harder to get now;  in particular in my current game moon/sun stones are being tough to get.  Though, some of that may be from the fact that I had to spam so much wood for like 25 turns or so, but we'll see how that ends up.  Human unit differentiation is working out pretty well also.

I've only noticed one new bug here, which is this:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11979  where Sapper units are invisible due to a missing file.


Though, one other bug that I'm quite familiar with now has reared it's ugly head again, which is the one where units are jumping over other units that arent allied siege types.  This time when it happened, it was a red human unit jumping diagonally over a blue one to grab a ruin tile, and then leaping back to the spot he started in.   This bug seems difficult to reproduce with saves, unfortunately.   But it's definitely still there.    It's here on Mantis:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11894

[x4000]

Awesome, glad to hear it!  I've just released a fix for the Sappers thing, because those are an expansion unit that should not have been showing up at all.  Oops!

Very glad to hear all the other things; not much to add from my end.  If the moonstone and sunstone stuff is off, or if wood really still seems to be too scarce, then do let me know for further tweaks.

Version 1.404 is now out with the fix to the sappers!

[Engelbrekt]

Onna-Bugeisha also shows up, with no image naturally. Potentially other japanese-sounding units aswell?

[x4000]

Onna-Bugeisha also shows up, with no image naturally. Potentially other japanese-sounding units aswell?

Yep!  All of those should be fixed in 1.404, although it won't remove existing copies that were already there from 1.403.  Thanks!

[Engelbrekt]

Yep!  All of those should be fixed in 1.404, although it won't remove existing copies that were already there from 1.403.  Thanks!

Ah, my bad. Makes sense. Thanks and amazing work.

[x4000]

No worries, and thanks very much!

[mrhanman]

I'm just now getting back to this game, and I'm loving all the changes!  The new font is fantastic!

[Misery]

Ok, so, after some more time with the game, I'm finding this to be the most balanced version of the game yet, and also by far the most difficult.  Playing on Expert/Expert/Hard currently, I think it is. 5 turns away from the Age of Gods in my current game.

For once, resources havent gotten completely out of control despite it being later in the game and each side having like 5 or 6 towns.  Some god tokens though could use some cost changes (like everything Njord does) to be a bit more pricey.   Rock is by far the easiest thing to get.  I've hardly built many of these on either side, and I havent upgraded any of them, but neither side has run into a lack-of-rocks problem at all.  Clay can also be a little easy to get, I had about 1000 of it at one point on the Greek side, with 5 clay buildings in one town that hadnt been upgraded.   Horses are tough to get... I'm not sure that they should be changed though, since some of the things they're used for are very powerful.  It does make the Prodromos very hard to use though.  They might be harder to get than diamonds right now.   Hard to tell.

Ally camps can be a big threat now that they wont attack bandits; I've got one, just ONE, Greek camp that's gone uncontested for a number of turns, and it's mere existence is looking like it might end the game by obliterating the Norse due to making this constant swarm of siege towers, most of which have ended up with multiple ruins boosts.   Had one red town lose half of it's buildings in one turn to one of those things.

Bandits are more of a proper threat now, whereas before they could often cause a simple stalemate between the two sides, sorta being an anti-threat.  Seems less of a problem now.   Particularly once the bandit myth units show up, some of those are downright nasty.   This part of the game is coming along very well. 

Scoring seems a bit tougher now, I didn't hit the score gates with extreme excess like before.  The second score gate, I think I hit with only about 9 or 10 turns left in that age (40 turns per age).

Really liking the currency system in particular, there's lots of great stuff with this.  The soul system also is very good, though more difficult to use, at least with my playstyle anyway.


Not much in the way of bugs, aside from the occaisional invisible bizarro bandit unit and the constant presence of the "jump" bug.

[x4000]

Awesome to hear, indeed!

Changes from this:

* Some resource-producer balance:
** Ranches now produce 1 horse per turn rather than 0.5 horses per turn.
** Clay pits now produce 7 clay per turn rather than 10.
** Rock quarries now produce 4 rock per turn rather than 5.

* A couple of god token balance changes:
** Njord's Coins have had their costs increased from 1 moonstone to 5 sunstone.
** Njord's Reginnaglar has had its cost increased from 2 moonstone to 2 sunstone.

I understand you thought that horses were okay, but there will be more units requiring horses with other factions, so having them be that extreme really isn't the idea.  Whereas having clay be quite that plentiful also really was not the idea.

Glad to hear that scoring seems okay -- I was considering bumping up the score gates from just looking at the changes on paper, but clearly that would have been a disastrous idea!

That jumping-over-units thing I will try to find and fix once I have the new expansion fully coded and in beta (I'll be bug-hunting at that point anyhow).  I did fix some longstanding bugs that I found this week, so one of them may have been related to the jumping-over thing.

On that note, I am going to try to have a first version of the beta for Nihon out today, or tomorrow at the latest.  It won't be feature-complete by any stretch, but it has enough at this point to be very interesting to play with.  And since the 2.0 release needs to be 3 to 4 weeks from now, I need to go ahead and get this into beta so that people other than Josh and I can actually start looking at it and giving thoughts!

[nas1m]

Awesome to hear, indeed!

Changes from this:

* Some resource-producer balance:
** Ranches now produce 1 horse per turn rather than 0.5 horses per turn.
** Clay pits now produce 7 clay per turn rather than 10.
** Rock quarries now produce 4 rock per turn rather than 5.

* A couple of god token balance changes:
** Njord's Coins have had their costs increased from 1 moonstone to 5 sunstone.
** Njord's Reginnaglar has had its cost increased from 2 moonstone to 2 sunstone.

I understand you thought that horses were okay, but there will be more units requiring horses with other factions, so having them be that extreme really isn't the idea.  Whereas having clay be quite that plentiful also really was not the idea.

Glad to hear that scoring seems okay -- I was considering bumping up the score gates from just looking at the changes on paper, but clearly that would have been a disastrous idea!

That jumping-over-units thing I will try to find and fix once I have the new expansion fully coded and in beta (I'll be bug-hunting at that point anyhow).  I did fix some longstanding bugs that I found this week, so one of them may have been related to the jumping-over thing.

On that note, I am going to try to have a first version of the beta for Nihon out today, or tomorrow at the latest.  It won't be feature-complete by any stretch, but it has enough at this point to be very interesting to play with.  And since the 2.0 release needs to be 3 to 4 weeks from now, I need to go ahead and get this into beta so that people other than Josh and I can actually start looking at it and giving thoughts!

Nice bunch of changes that.
And beta so soon - awesome!

I am really looking forward to it .