Tidalis:0.413 Beta Release

Notes From The Producer: May 19, 2010

The main new feature here is water mode, which is by far the more complex modes we've had to implement. We've been talking about this since practically the start of Tidalis, and internally code has been being shuffled about for it for months, but we finally bit the bullet and actually implemented this thing.

There may be a few kinks in the physics that still need to be sorted out, but overall this is feeling really clean and it's really fun to play. The bubble block was always intended to be primarily for this mode, so it's nice that it now has more of a purpose! The new water fish and water balloon blocks are also only for this mode or puzzle mode, so you won't see them in the normal item selection palette in the custom game window.

There have been some other changes, such as to the adventure map and to the music tracks of Volcano and Foothills (check those out! so cool). We've also implemented yet more behind-the-scenes work for the networking, so that's getting closer and closer. Exciting release!

--Christopher M. Park

New & Updated Art/Music/Sound

• The Foothills music theme has been revamped to use an electric piano for a more unique sound.

• The Volcano music theme has been revamped in general for a more unique and theme-appropriate sound.

Gameplay Additions

• New Water game mode.
  • Water fills the bottom of the well, and rises row-by-row as you pop water balloons that are scattered around. Popping water fish causes the water level to recede. Bubbles form at the bottom of the well and float upwards in the columns, forcing other blocks upwards and potentially causing you to lose if the water level is too high. Certain other types of blocks (such as ice and tinder) also float.

• New Water Fish special block.
  • Complete a chain next to the water fish, and it will pop. When it pops, it first sucks in a row of water, reducing the water level by one row.

• New Water Balloon special block.
  • Complete a chain next to the water balloon, and it will pop. Causes the water level to go upwards by one row when it pops.

Gameplay Updates

• When bubble or water fish blocks would normally fall into the well, they instead now rise up from the bottom of the well, displacing other blocks upwards.

Misc

• Adventure map scrolling-to-the-right now limited to 600 pixels to the right of the right-most revealed normal node (or 40 pixels to the right of the right-most revealed hidden node). An obscuring fog is shown to the right of the revealed area until you get to the end of the game.

• Added "Main Menu" button at the top of the screen for most game modes; switches to "Resume" when on the main menu, and brings you back where you were.

• The way that special block "effects upon dying" are handled has now been changed so that those effects are more likely to happen when blocks are cleared via nontraditional means (like using Can 'O Beans on them).

• Various existing blocks now interact with water in various ways:
  • Fire blocks turn charred when hitting water.
  • Ice, Tinder, and Bubbles now float in water.

• The frequency of water-mode-specific special blocks in water mode, and of stone blocks in sun & moon mode, now varies with the action difficulty slider. The previous constants are now what is used for difficulty 5, and the challenge goes up and down from there.

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug in theme editor and adventure editor where dragging sprites/nodes wasn't releasing when the user released the left mouse button.

• Previously, going to the settings menu, making some changes, then clicking on key-bindings to open that sub-menu, and then clicking "back" to return to the settings menu would undo the changes; fixed to not re-initialize the settings menu in that case.

• Fixed bug where when loading an adventure either to play or in the editor, scrolling, and then loading the adventure again in some other way would not reset the scrolling offset; fixed to always reset the offset to zero (scrolled all the way to the left) when loading an adventure.

• Fixed several bugs relating to Eater and Pit Monster eating behaviors and collision.

Internal Programming Notes

• The Lidgren Network library is now integrated into this game (and we will keep using it for AI War), as it is more feature-rich compared to the Unity built-in networking (at least how it is exposed).

Tidalis