The full release notes:
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Tidalis_-_0.900_Beta_ReleasePAX 10Now that we've made our PAX 10 submission and it's possible that contest judges could be looking at the game at any time, we're being extra super careful about not introducing bugs or instabilities into the game, which is why the long time since the last release. The networking work is in full swing, and that caused a lot of internal changes and intermittent issues that we (hopefully) got all ironed out before this version.
NetworkingSo, what's the deal with networking? Well, it
sort of works now. As in, we haven't taken down the in-game warning not to use the networking, but if you're inclined you can connect to another player, send a board across the wire to them (even custom boards), and you can play for a few seconds. The longest I got was 34 seconds before a desync. That's okay, though, this release isn't about the networking: I just wanted to let you know that it's coming real soon, and in most respects is nearing completion. My goal is to have it polished and working really well for a release on perhaps Monday.
Static BackgroundsIs your netbook or older computer having trouble keeping up with all the fancy new art an animations that Phil has been putting into the visual themes? No worries! There is now a "use static backgrounds" option in the game settings which dramatically reduces the graphics load from the themes themselves (as in, it cuts GPU time in half even on my very nice GPU). And if the background animation just bugs you in general, you can also use it for that reason. For most computers the animations should run just fine, and we're really pleased with how much life and vibrancy they bring to the game.
Adventure UpdatesThe adventure story is now more than 2/3 implemented into the game, and we're really pleased with how it's shaping up. The adventure levels are up to level 87 now, too, which is closing in on our end goal of 114.
Finding an adventure level to be too hard or frustrating? Whenever you lose an adventure level, there is now a Skip button that appears. You can use this whenever you want, as many times as you want. Skipped levels will show up as yellow on the adventure map, so that you can go back to them later if you want. We discussed a lot of ways of handling this, but in the end we decided to just let the player do as they wish and not be beholden to any sort of "skip credits" mechanic or similar.
Art UpdatesBoy, there are a bunch of them once again. Enjoy!
New VS Modes, Co-Op-Specific ModesOur selection of VS modes is now complete, with Endurance and Freeform being added to the existing Garbage Blocks option. Lots of flexibility and fun options of there, especially with Freeform.
And now we've also implemented two out of the three co-op-only modes that we've got planned. "Sun or Moon" mode is particularly interesting, I think, but the Vaporizer mode is also cool.
New Game Style!?Yeah, we thought we were done with game styles, too. But in working on the Endurance VS mode, it quickly became obvious that the mechanic from that would make a good game style in general. So we present to you... the Speed-Up game style. It adds some speed-increases-over-time, which is a cool new option to have.
Player OptionsIf you're adding a second player for local play, you might notice that there is now a window with details for that. The handicaps and the co-op item options don't yet do anything, but those are a preview of what's coming shortly, sometime in this next week. Those will also be available for network play and (regarding the handicaps) in solo, as well.
What About Server Listings / Matchmaking?Well, we had been hoping to use the Unity Master Server for doing simple server listings while we wait for Impulse Reactor v2. Turns out, for various reasons that won't work. So now we're dropping back and evaluating both (mainly)
Smart Fox Server and (to some degree)
Photon. We'll see what shakes out, but the hope is to have something robust that we can build more functionality into over time beyond the basics, and which we can also make a part of AI War 4.0 when that comes out in a few months.
Next prerelease will be quicker to arrive than this one was, in just a few days. Enjoy!
