Tidalis:0.409 Beta Release

New & Updated Levels

• Levels 44-49 now exist and are available on the adventure map.

• Level 50 has been added and is available in adventure mode.

• Level 51 is done and in adventure mode.

• Level 85 has been added, but is not in the adventure mode yet.

• Added Puzzle 2 - 7 and Puzzle 5 - 5.

• Rebalanced levels 37 and 39.

New & Updated Art/Music/Sound

• An all-new title music track has replaced the older title music track.

Programming/Gameplay Changes & Updates

• The interface for selecting special blocks in the custom game menu is now much more visually pleasing, takes up less room, and now uses icons instead of text.

• There is now an icon-based interface for choosing a game style in both the custom and quick game interfaces.

• The Quick Game window's layout has been redesigned in general to be simpler-looking and more attractive.

• Made keep-one-column-free-of-specials logic more dynamic.

• Game Styles for the current board are now displayed on the HUD (just above special objectives) in-game.

• Added settings options for assigning mouse, keyboard, gamepad 1, and gamepad 2 to the left or right boards for local two-well play (note that gamepad 1 and gamepad 2 input itself is not yet supported).

• Added Embedded Item Frequency slider and Allowed Items Toggle set to custom game menu.

New Level Editor Features

• Added explicit less-than, equal-to, and greater-than controls to the make-X-combos-of-Y-depth objective type (for the Y variable).

• Added clear-method selection for clear X blocks of Color Y and clear X blocks of Special Type Y objective types.

• Added new objective type: make all columns < | <= | = | >= | > | <> X blocks tall.

• "Clear All (Color|Special) Block" objective types converted to "< | <= | = | => | > | <> X Remaining Blocks (of Color|Special)"

• added < | <= | = | >= | > | <> operator control to "X Chains of Y Blocks", "X Combos of Y Blocks", "X Combos of Y Chains", and "X Clears of Y Simultaneous Lines" objective types (all on the Y variable; no point in doing it on the X variable)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that was causing the animation speed to run at a variable rate depending on mouse movement (thanks dumpsterKEEPER for reporting).

Internal Programming Notes

• FInts have been dropped from coordinates in favor of a system of two scales of int coordinate systems. This allows for easier-on-the-CPU math, the same level of math precision, and sets the stage for future potential changes to the AI system of the game.

• The dragging and hints system logic has been refactored to work better with multiple wells (again paving the way for some future enhancements).

• The coordinates of the mouse cursor are now immediately translated to sim coordinates, which makes it so that there are fewer coordinate system conversions needing to take place. This helps to correct a few offsetting bugs relating to the mouse cursor, as well as helping to prevent future ones.

Tidalis