Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.990

[x4000]

Whoas, big one right at the end: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.990

1. There are twenty new woes in this one.  For reference, there were only twenty-seven woes in the game prior to this release, and a goodly number of those were "same sort of thing, but different particulars."  So it was more like 17 or 18 unique woes previously, I forget.  And some of those were expert-only.  (And yes, we have tested all these woes individually, so there should be no nasty surprises as with the first round of god tokens stuff).

2. The catastrophic woes that you've been accustomed to in general are now only on hard mode or higher.  Those were... rough.  Great for hard mode, not great for anyone learning or kind of middling.  All-new catastrophic woes are now in place for the lower difficulties, and as a bonus they are almost all monster-themed (you know, to fit with the whole "age of monsters" thing).

3. Undo button!  The thing everyone has been waiting on for so long!

4. More useful mythological creatures in the late game!  Basically, you can upgrade them now, and they even come out pre-upgraded in the later ages.  That way they retain that "what, just one minotaur? Auugh!" feel to them throughout the game.

Beyond that it was a really long day of setting up store assets, talking to distributors, and so on.  I'm amazed that somehow there was still time to do the stuff in this version, frankly.

Still to come prior to 1.0:
- I need to integrate Nick's comic once I have the final page for that.
- The names of the alpha testers need to be put into the credits.
- Anything absolutely critical that is found overnight, or that is useful and absolutely superfast to do.
- Demo version so that we have a demo pretty much right at launch.

That's pretty well my to-do list for the morning, any things that crop up here aside.  Cheers!

[Cinth]

Sigh.  That is a whole lot of woe.  Woe is the tester.  Now if some siren doesn't sing me a song, there might be some malice come round with my mead  

[x4000]

Hahaha.  Seriously, Josh has been through all of them and they are all fully functional.  The question is how they will mess with your games; but of course, given that woes in general have a wildly varying effect, that's nothing really new.  What this should do is keep things fresh and not happening over and over again with the same thing.

I'm still interested in more woe ideas if people have them, by the way; but ideally not things that require any new art.  Or lots of complicated decision trees, for lack of a better way of putting it.  "Do this and then four turns later it remembers some data and does this other thing based on it," etc.  Again, I think of this a lot more like pulling up calamity cards in various boardgames.  It's kind of a "this thing happens now" or "this thing happens for the next while" sort of mechanic to me, unless we greatly expand it (which I don't think there's cause to do just yet).

[Cinth]

Do you remember the first two I suggested?  Granted I didn't put them where I was supposed to.  "Song of the Siren" and "Malice and Mead".

[x4000]

Do you remember the first two I suggested?  Granted I didn't put them where I was supposed to.  "Song of the Siren" and "Malice and Mead".

Yeah, both of those were super complicated.  Completely new AI in the first case, for a super specialized use.  And then the second one would require rewiring of the entire targeting system, literally.  Those fall under the category of "way harder to implement than you might expect."  Meant to respond, but you know how it's been.

[Cinth]

I know it has been hectic.

As far as the three ideas I had, a wishlist for post 1.0 stuff   One can always hope. 

Though, I would have loved to read peoples responses to the two woes.

[x4000]

I'm an "explore the low-hanging fruit" sort of guy.  Basically, if there are game systems that have not yet been fully explored, I want to explore those before adding new ones.  And when I do add new ones, I want the internals to support lots of new functionality rather than just one thing.  Aka, I rarely put in something like 5 hours for content that just does one thing; I might spend 5 hours on the underlying framework that adds ten things, for instance.

Eventually as things grow, though, the low hanging fruit gets higher and higher up the tree.  And the crazy sideways things that can be done with internal changes start coming to light more, too.  That's basically what happened with AI War in essentially the 3.0 time period and onwards.  With 1.0 to 2.0, it was all just exploring the game space more.  Then 3.0 it was getting into more stuff.  4.0 was a giant revamp.  5.0 was a big polish and yet higher fruit.  6.0 and on have just been higher and higher fruit, plus the general maintenance balance and polish and so on.  Plus of course some more revamps of subsystems here and there, but you could argue that those are split between both being higher fruit and balance/polish.

Anyhow, one step at a time.  First I'm just waiting with bated breath to see how this game does at all!

[Cinth]

Indeed. 

Serious question though.  I thought "The Master" and the middle management thing was being downplayed a bit and now we have two woes that directly address The Master.  Intended?

[x4000]

Downplayed, yeah - but not completely eliminated. Nick's comic is going to be the first thing the game pops up for new players once the fifth page is in (he's almost done with it), so some degree of that is inevitable. Also, we're still referencing the master in game descriptions, with the line "when the master calls you home." The adding back of the score and score gating has made the return of be master to a bit more prominence required. Still not in be spotlight, but you know he's there sort of thing.

[Cinth]

Just wanted to be sure.  I think those two are the first in game references I've seen (or rather, noticed).

[Cinth]

Atlas Shrugs feels underwhelming if it lands as the first woe.

And Atlas refuses to let you smite stuff afterwards (apparently smite won't work if a TC is disconnected).

[Winge]

I definitely like the Undo feature, Chris--that will prevent quite a few unnecessary savescums.  However, you might want to know about a certain side effect...

And Atlas refuses to let you smite stuff afterwards (apparently smite won't work if a TC is disconnected).

I noticed this as well; not sure if it is intentional or not.  I suppose it is the easiest way to prevent smiting off Town Centers, although it's a bit of a pain if you deploy something like Midgar's Serpent and suddenly need to smite a building for whatever reason.

[Cinth]

Escaped Giants... holy cow... and they were buffed this release \o/.  The agony, the horror!

Siegfried Is A Bast....   Yeah I said it. 

Tartarus Rising is pretty fun.

Crumble is awesome too. 

I had several other new woes in this game (frailty, Magni, Divine) but these I really noticed.  I was lucky and had Heimdall.  When the giants showed up I had to blow the horn...  All in all, this release seems to be solid (I didn't see anything major).

[mrhanman]

Atlas Shrugs

• The world is jostled, and all of the land that is just outside of the radius of each town collapses into empty space.
• Thanks to mrhanman for suggesting.

My proudest moment! 

[Mick]

I love woes. I really do, just want to preface that before making this suggestion.

I think in terms of a strategy game it is important to be avoid "oh you got the bad card, you lose" situations. And sometimes the board situation might not lend itself to handling a woe even if you do have time to prepare.

So I recommend something in the command menu, that has a high moon/sun/POINT cost that will nullify the upcoming woe from happening, giving you a bit of relief. The cost should very depending on the woe itself, but the score cost should be crushing, your master will NOT be pleased if you do this often.