Tidalis:0.902 Beta Release

New & Updated Levels

• Adventure levels 88-99, and 106 have been added. Levels 81, 83, 87, and 93 have been updated.
  • Adventure level 7 has been updated to now include a tip about the important new handicaps that can make the game easier or harder than default.

• Adventure cutscene 78 has been added.

New & Updated Art/Music/Sound

• The following themes have had visual updates: Fishing Village, Fishing Village Night.

Misc

• Networking changes:
  • Network games are now kept closer to being "in time" with one another. The game makes efforts to keep each game within 512ms of one another, which makes the game vulnerable to lag spikes, but which also removes a lot of potential exploits and a lot of potential confusion with games getting several seconds out of sync in the past.
    • This may need to be tuned some more during testing to get the optimum smoothness of gameplay, but this is an excellent start.
  • Pause/unpause was already properly syncing across the network in past versions, but now it also properly syncs the display and hiding of menus on the remote machine.
  • The "Network Player Name" is now just the name of the "left player" from the players screen, rather than being a separate setting. It can still be updated through the Network interface, though.
  • It is now only possible to be either a host or a client with the network in this game, never both. It now shuts off the server when becoming a client, and vice-versa, as needed, to avoid issues.
  • A message is now shown when the connection to either a remote client or a remote host has been lost.
    • In general, the disconnection process is a lot more robust now, and drops clients to the multiplayer menu, etc.
  • The "players" button at the bottom of the screen is now properly self-altering during network play.
    • Other small updates have also been made to this screen.
  • There is now a confirmation popup when disconnecting from another player across the network.
  • Chat messages are now fully implemented and actually get sent across the network.
    • Just hit Enter to send a chat message at any time when in the menu system (not during gameplay).
  • It is no longer possible for players to edit their network settings while connected across the network.
  • Game Overs (wins and losses) are now properly synced over the network.
  • The error message shown when an error happens during networking no longer always claims to be a desync. It now identifies whether it was a desync or a general error in the message.
    • Errors of this sort also now tell the player where the error logs may be found.

• The master server list has had some server-side updates and moved locations.
  • The first successful tests of the master server list to facilitate a game start have been made.

• The visual styling of the Confirm dialog has been updated to be the "darkness" style of window, and that window has also been updated to use our new "interrupt window" logic, which automatically preserves the state of any windows underneath it unless clicking OK or Cancel specifically is set to do otherwise.
  • The visual styling of the general Popup dialog has also been updated to match.

• There is now a new game over screen tooltip that tells about handicaps as an option for making the game easier or harder.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that was causing cutscene voices not to play the second time through if the same cutscene was viewed consecutively without closing the cutscene index history list.

• Fixed a desync bug with FF and UFF use during network play.

• Previously, uv animation was not able to work with the keyframe scripting. Fixed.

• Previously, uv animation was not able to work with the base sprite rotations. Fixed.

• Fixed several bugs with the cutscene index display, one of which was relating to the Plushies cutscene being shown and others of which were relating to positioning and the topmost item being cut off from display.

• Fixed a bug that often caused the first item in a scrollable area to be cut off.

• Previously, sometimes the Revive buttons were showing up outside of puzzle modes. Fixed.

• In the last version or two, the before-level screen was popping up after the Revive button was used. Fixed.

Internal Programming Notes

Tidalis