Tidalis:0.417 Beta Release

Notes From The Producer: May 23, 2010

Not a whole lot to say about this one -- basically it's an internal revamp of a lot of parts of the HUD, and the result is something that looks better at all resolutions and is able to function with larger resolutions than had previously been intended. The effect for most players who play on standard resolutions is probably very small, although the button placement should be better for everyone; the effect for those who have been waiting on their specific resolution being supported should be pretty enormous.

--Christopher M. Park

New & Updated Art/Music/Sound

• The game now supports any resolution with a width >= 800 and a height >= 600. In resolutions with a width greater than 1280 and/or a height greater than 768, letterboxing will be used on the sides and/or the top, as needed. This will allow for players to play in the native resolution of their monitor with letterboxing as needed, to keep from having any pixel blurring.

Gameplay Updates

• The max possible wind speed in wind mode (and the speed with the wind burst item) has been increased 3x from what it was before.
  • Thanks to Ixiohm for suggesting it be more notable of an effect.

• It is now longer possible to replace special blocks or blocks that are part of a chain via the "place block of type" items.
  • This fixes a couple of exploits and general undesirable behavior.
  • Thanks to Ixiohm for reporting this exploit.

Misc

• The game mode selection area in the custom game screen is now two rows high instead of just one, which is needed now that there are more than 12 game modes.

• Cutscenes are always now shown in an 800x600 view that is centered on the screen with letterboxing. This gives a slight cinematic look, but mainly it lets us ensure that the scene makes visual sense at any resolution.

• The Help button has moved to the top of the screen rather than the bottom, with the other buttons.

• The buttons at the top of the screen have had some size adjustments, and now automatically slide around as needed based on which are visible and which are not (to keep things as compact as possible.

• The Pause button has been removed, as it had the same function as the menu/resume button, which was more clear (most players were seeming to miss the pause button entirely).

• The "Next Level / Back To Adventure Map / Next Tutorial" button has been moved to the very bottom right of the screen.

• The tutorial text window now has a default minimum size that keeps it from getting too tiny.

• The game board now scales down visually if it has to based on there not being enough vertical space. This is useful so that the tutorial text can be shown properly without having to shrink the game board just to accommodate the smallest screen resolutions.

• The restart button is now available in all game modes, including the adventure mode levels.

Bugfixes

• Fixed several bugs relating to hud text positioning that could cause the hud text to go off the screen on very small monitors.
  • Thanks to jkefka for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in recent versions that was causing the level editor to now allow dragging across blocks to change their arrows until the level had been reloaded in the editor.

Internal Programming Notes

• The Width and Height properties on Game.Instance have been split into ActualWidth/Height and EffectiveWidth/Height on GameDisplay.Instance in order to allow for letterboxing in any chosen resolution.
  • The EffectiveTop/Left on GameDisplay.Instance is for use with the mouse cursor on non-GUI elements, and otherwise just sets some properties on the UnityRenderer to do global offsetting.
  • The variables on the Screen object were already not supposed to be used for various reasons except in GameSettings and once in AbstractArcenWindow, but now this really should not be used.

Tidalis