Valley 1:Beta Series 2 Release Notes

Beta 0.547

(Note: this prerelease is not available yet, we're still working on it)

• A few more rooms added in by Josh.

• All of the math behind all the character and monster stats has been replaced from the ground up. Since there are no levels of the style that we used to have (as of a couple of months ago), the complex formulae we had for these were doing nothing but making it more complex to calculate and really difficult to balance.
  • As part of this change, the stats of a lot of the monsters have really been shifted around quite a lot, as well. Generally speaking trash mobs have a lot more health and do more than the tiny damage they did before, and many of the bosses also hit for more damage now, too.
    • The net result on this may be too difficult in the short term, but we'll see. We're going for more substantial trash mobs, and there will ultimately be fewer of them as well, but right now they are still too plentiful in exteriors and undergrounds.

• There is no longer a cap on the max health, magical attack, or mana that characters can have applied to their stats. Previously it made an effort to balance those out for characters so that nothing went above a certain cap, and that led to overall more well-rounded characters. Now the characters will vary a lot more widely.

• Neutral skelebots, in exchange for their larger-than-average inherent health bump, now have a weaker-than-average magical attack.

• If you play up in region levels, be careful with this release. As part of a general rebalancing that will tie into missions and so forth in the next week, the scaling of difficulty between regions has gone up sharply.
  • An increase of one region level above your civ level is now a 100% increase in difficulty.
  • A decrease of one region level below you civ level is now a 20% reduction in difficulty.

• Monster nests no longer drop quite so many consciousness shards, and sometimes will drop health or MP now.

• Utahraptors and eagles will be in about half as much abundance as they previously were.

• Whenever players or monsters are damaged, they now flash white using a new kind of graphical blending mode that is new to our games.
  • This is actually going to be surprisingly important to balance for the game, because knockback isn't going to be balance-wise possible on a lot of enemies and yet you still need a way to tell you're damaging them.

• While we were at it, we found a small efficiency improvement to the performance of sprite drawing on the GPU. It's a really minor thing, but saves about four floating-point multiplications per pixel per sprite. So that certainly adds up, for older cards in particular.

• Background objects in the game now have quite a bit more health, making them more interesting to damage and destroy.
  • More changes to these will be coming, to make them more interactive (things exploding and actually mattering, etc). But for now this makes the seize spell actually matter again.

• The multiplayer synchronization model for monsters has been changed from "monsters can be in very different places on different clients, but monsters move like they do in singleplayer" to "monsters will be pretty close to the same place on all clients, but can jump around on a client as it gets updates on the monster's position from the server". We were informed that the latter is tolerable, while the former is not. We'll see :)

• Fixed a longstanding bug where enemies and players were dealing more damage than they were advertised to be doing, because of a math error.

• Skelebots (of all the trash mob sorts) now move much slower, but are immune to knockback.

• Regular skelebots now use a much higher enemy capacity, meaning they don't come in such large hordes (but individually they are so much stronger now).

• Enemies (like skelebots) that would previously walk super slowly when they were not pursuing a character, now walk normal speed even then.

• Skelebot sniper shots now draw a lot more efficiently, to go along with their slower movement. The enemies that use it now also telegraph for less time and fire them at a much faster rate than before.
  • The overall effect is much more shmup-y, while at the same time actually giving you vastly more time to react.

• Skelebot sniper shots also no longer knock the player back, and both they and NPC sniper shots are now piercing rather than explodey, so the shots are more threatening in multiplayer (being able to hit many players in a line rather than just one).

• Red amoeba shots also now are piercing, for multiplayer purposes in particular.

• Water esper and lightning esper shots now behave subtly differently, acting more water-y and lightning-y respectively.

• In general, the esper behavior and shot characteristics have been completely altered. They move faster, fire faster, have slower-moving shots, fire shots that move differently, and so on. They're a lot more challenging now, though at the same time actually possible to dodge when faced on an ongoing basis.

• Various exterior chunk world-gen changes, making the world less annoying to traverse, making buildings more rare and exciting in most region types, and actually faster to generate and load as well. Oh, and usually much better to fight in, which is why this was done now:
  • Grasslands chunks are now much shorter in terms of height, so that there is no longer so much land above for amoebas and such to randomly get lost in (or for players to go hiding from said amoebas, as the case may be).
  • Settlement chunks are now narrower and shorter, making them less annoying to traverse if you need to pass them, and so that they have less sky area for things like amoebas to get lost in if they attack the settlement.
  • Ice age (regular and thawing) exterior chunks are now narrower, more mountainous, more likely to have surface tunnels, and less likely to have buildings.
  • Forest areas (both time periods) are now vastly shorter, but still just as wide. This makes for way fewer monsters in these chunks, and not remotely so much vertical traversal, while still having a very different feel to them from many other areas in the game.
  • Small abandoned town areas are now both narrower and shorter, making them a lot more focused and causing there not to be so exhaustingly many buildings. This also actually accentuates their unique feel in terms of having a town on top and surface tunnels under them, in most chunks, too.

Beta 0.546

(Released December 5th, 2011)

• Fixed one of the network settings loca strings having a "(Pre-2.0)" leftover from AI War.
  • Thanks to Toll for the report.

• Suppressed a developer-info message that was popping up when someone built a wind shelter.
  • Thanks to Dizzard for the report.

• Now when a player transitions to a different chunk in the same region as you, your dungeon map will update to show their new location even if that was the first time any player had entered that chunk (it will now also drop the not-yet-visited "black line" indicator). Before you had to make a transition yourself before your map would update.

• Now when a player transitions to a different dungeon in the same region as you, your region map will update to show their new location even if that was the first time any player had entered that chunk. Before you had to make a transition yourself before your map would update.

• Now if a server does not receive any messages at all from a player account for 30 seconds (this should only be possible if you've actually killed or suspended the client process) the server will drop the connection for that account and thus make sure that you can always log back in to that account no matter how you disconnected after a not-too-long period of time.

• Fixed a rather... strange code typo (the programmer doesn't _think_ he consumed any alcohol during that phase of the development...) that was causing quit-game on the client to not properly disconnect from the server.
  • Thanks to Toll and others for the report.

• The server display now shows the number of players connected and their usernames and player-account-IDs (not their customer ID, just a unique-within-a-world sequence number for that account).

• Player customer ID's are no longer sent by the server to anyone, they're only sent from each client to the server, since they're only used for identifying (together with username) which player account to connect a client to.
  • Thanks to Toll for the suggestion.

• The message the client shows when it has been refused login because that account is already connected is now a bit clearer and is now displayed much more prominently.

• The server now does a version check on a connecting client; if the client version doesn't match the server version, the login is refused (with a prominent message on the client). Otherwise, hilarity would ensue.

• Fixed several multiplayer-safety issues with item-swapping and item-dropping.
  • Note: the new implementation is pretty paranoid and will just not execute a swap or drop operation where the server doesn't see the same item and quantity in the target slot(s) as the client told it to expect, so if you run into a situation where a disagreement like that happens it may prevent you from using swap or drop until you disconnect or reconnect. Please let us know if this happens, and we can try to find the root cause behind that.
  • Thanks to leb0fh for the report.

• Fixed a bug where the server was generally content to not make any noise but had some kind of link to the Elemental Plane of Doordom and whenever a door was opened or closed anywhere in the entire world it would make a sound on the server.
  • Also fixed a related bug where the server would play the level-up sound, unable to contain its excitement.
  • Thanks to Toll for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where if a player was on the character-select screen and another player entered the character-select screen the first player's list of options would disappear and they would be unable to do anything (other than close the program externally).
  • Thanks to Hearteater for the report.

• Fixed a bug where viewing the strategy-map or settlement-management screens on a settlement with no npcs at all would cause null exceptions.
  • Thanks to Hyfrydle for the report.

Beta 0.545

(Released December 2nd, 2011)

• Re-implemented the OpenChatPopup KeyBind so it's ready for use when MP is available, and bound it to T by default.
  • Ingame_DoLookAhead used to default to T, now defaults to G.

• All regions are now considered scouted automatically (no more need to get your NPCs to do that for you).
  • This is a tiny first step into some other major changes that are coming.

• First multiplayer public alpha!
  • Very important multiplayer details here

Beta 0.544

(Released November 29th, 2011)

• Fixed a bug wherein many of the abilities in player ability bars from past versions of the game were improperly offset. The downside of this fix is that any new abilities that were picked up during 0.543 will be similarly wrong. Whatever you do, don't use any of the "pink box" abilities, as many of them will suicide your character. Just dump those out of your inventory somewhere discreet in your world. Sorry about the goof!
  • Thanks to Coppermantis, Ixiohm, and Zeliox5 for reporting.

Beta 0.543

(Released November 28th, 2011)

• Desert Burrowers have been renamed to Dust Storms, to prevent player brain implosion when the dust storm goes off of ledges.

• Fixed the bug in recent versions that was causing the dungeon/region maps to flicker in some cases. This was actually a two-part bug. One part has been there for a really long time, since alpha at least, and was a very minor performance drain in general. The other part was a multiplayer-related change that brought out the actual flickering in the last version. Both are now fixed.
  • Thanks to Aeronic and TNSe for reporting.

• Enemies, and objects like ventilation ducts, were still sometimes seeding in the interior windows inside buildings. Fixed.
  • Thanks to TNSe, Toll, and JMAnderson for reporting.

• Fixed an issue from the prior version where warp potions were not properly being gifted to players from the Ilari (only 0 potions would ever be gifted).
  • Thanks to TNSe and Coppermantis for reporting.

• Fixed a regression where once again when you warped to the same chunk you were already in it would give you a black screen and wouldn't warp you to the edge of the chunk if it was an exit chunk.

• Previously, the game would often take off a suit a player was wearing, or un-transform them if they were a bat, when they leveled up or when a savegame was loaded. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Dizzard, wyvern83, TNSe, and TechSY730 for reporting.

• Fixed a somewhat hilarious bug from the last version where, amidst the many changes to the AI behavior logic, the health/mana drops from enemies were accidentally given part of the vengeful ghost AI and thus were sometimes healing players and sometimes attacking them!
  • Thanks to Baleyg for reporting.

• Windstorms now have a much more notable effect on the adventure gameplay:
  • Players, monsters, and ranged projectiles are now blown by the wind during windstorm events, making it easier to move in the direction of the wind and harder to move upwind.
  • Players that are not moving now hunker down in their animation rather than standing there.
  • The effect is much stronger on enemies or players that are in the air instead of being on the ground, making jumping extra tricky.
  • Monsters that normally would walk/fly more slowly when not chasing a player now always move at full speed.
  • Thanks to Armanant for suggesting.

Beta 0.542

(Released November 21st, 2011)

• Fixed a bug causing errors to pop up in the intro mission and other Ice Age areas.
  • Thanks to Aeronic and Smiling_Spectre for this one.

• Added an Atrium courtesy of Dizzard.

• Added a bossroom from Coppermantis.

• Loads and loads of multiplayer progress. Our two-players-one-server tests are getting increasingly lower bug counts, so that's a great sign that we should be hitting the public opt-in multiplayer alpha sometime soon. Hopefully this week or next!

• Previously, the game was accidentally showing -X% Resistance for monsters that were resistant to an element. Now it shows X% Resistance, which is actually correct.
  • Thanks to SNAFU for reporting.

• Plum trees can now be found in the "grasslands with tree clumps" areas along with walnut trees.

• Plum trees no longer have an incredibly-too-short hitbox.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor for reporting.

• Several room maps of various types added by Josh.

• Added some randomization to the angles that are fired from both the giant (red and blue) amoeba bosses.
  • Thanks to tbogue for suggesting.

• The new AI behavior system has now been integrated, and advanced players will start seeing some of the effects of this pretty much immediately. More still needs to be done to make some of the new higher-level enemies feel even more unique, but bosses now shift between different behavior modes as they move around, making them a lot more threatening and interesting.
  • Details of the new AI behavior system here and even moreso here

• Skelebot Giants now randomize whether they chase you or not starting at level 5, and will chase you more and more of the time as the civ level goes up.

• Espers and amobeas now have a melee attack if you jump right into them.

• Some of the PNGs used by the game have now been packed with PNGOutWin, reducing their size by between 10% and 40%. This lets us use less bandwidth when giving you the files, and makes them load the equivalent amount faster off disk during gameplay, too.

• A new underground boss battle theme by Pablo is now used about half the time in underground boss fights, instead of the general boss music.

• The color of the text for boss and vengeful ghost names are now a bit of a different color to make them more easily recognized if there are a lot of names being shown at once.

• When a monster has multiple attack patterns (not like the amoebas -- literal different spells being used), the monster's name now shows what attack pattern they are currently in so that players aren't having to guess blindly.

• A new Skelebot Overlord enemy type now uses attack patterns from some of the other bosses, plus a new attack that is unique to it. More will be done with other unique attacks, but for now that certainly makes this boss unique enough and really dangerous.
  • The Skelebot Giants only come up to the shoulder of these new skelebot overlords!
  • Any new overlords that are created will all be Skelebot Overlords for now, and as more overlord enemy types are added new overlords will choose randomly between them (while also obeying any level-gating rules).
  • Any pre-existing overlords will remain whatever stat-upgraded-microboss types that they already were.

• A new Skelebot Centurion also uses attack patterns from several different enemies, as well as having tougher stats and a more imposing visage. These replace both regular skelebots and skelebot snipers past a certain point in the level gating.
  • This enemy is the first foray into multi-attack non-boss enemies, but there will be more! And this one will likely get some new level-gated abilities, too, for that matter!

• When players are taking heat or cold damage from the ambient environment, it now shows a burst of flames or cold whenever they do. This makes it a lot more obvious that the player is taking damage and why.

• Stashes no longer ever include coffers, as those were confusing if the player was already over the limit, as well as being possible to exploit those.

Beta 0.541

(Released November 9th, 2011)

• Several interior room maps added by Josh.
  • One overlord boss room added by @B0FH.

• More furniture added in contemporary areas mostly.

• Fixed an issue with enemy speeds getting a bit wonky in some cases when they were not actively pursuing you.

• Added a new monster into the game -- we won't spoil what this one is, but there's a number of new AI features/behaviors associated with it. Look for it in lava flats if you want to find it quickly.

• Drastically reworked the internals of how enemies decide to start and stop chasing you.
  • Previously it was an overly-simple range check, where they'd pursue you when you were in range and stop pursuing you when you went out of that range. If they were damaged, that range was extended quite a bit in most cases, and if they were a microboss or miniboss they'd chase you pretty much anywhere in the level.
  • Now it's a lot more realistic-feeling. Enemies that are already chasing you will keep chasing you for longer, even if they aren't damaged, before giving up. This actually varies by enemy, so some are more persistent in hunting you down than others are.
  • The range at which enemies would even pay attention to you was too short in a few cases, such as with the espers: they would start firing at you only when they got right in their face, making them easier than they really should have been. They and a couple of other enemies are no longer so myopic.

• Completely rewrote the logic of when enemies decide to fire on you, how they line up their shots (in the case of specific-range stuff like circle of fire), and how they handle the choices to pursue or flee, while firing or not firing.
  • Right now there are 16 different general flavors of AI behavior in the game, and this is the start of some work that will let us make each one more subtle and interesting, and even later start doing things like having enemies switch between AI behaviors based on the context of what is going on.
  • We'd originally thought we would keep the AI in this game pretty simple, along what you tend to see in a Metroidvania game's basic enemies. But that's only so interesting for bosses in particular, and frankly for a lot of the smaller enemies as well. Turns out we just can't keep away from adding progressively cooler AI in our games!

• Fixed a longstanding bug with flying enemy movement in short-height interiors, where they were just flying along the floor for the most part.

• Insect orb has been nerfed severely.
  • Note that these are per-projectile damages, and there are a dozens of projectiles all at once (though now it's down to 36 projectiles instead of 96 of them).

• Some enemies now get new AI behaviors swapped in as they level up.
  • Level 5+ icicle leapers will now chase you.
  • Level 20+ skelebot giants now will chase you also.
  • Level 30+ amoebas of all sorts (giant and otherwise) now will kite you. Not sure how well this will work, but it seems worth a shot.
  • Level 50+ bats of all sorts start pathfinding after you rather than just doing simple homing.
  • Level 60+ fairies start pathfinding after you, too, rather than just floating around. The big fairies, we mean -- the little ones always pathfind for you.
  • Level 15+ desert burrowers start chasing you from quite a distance away.
  • Level 50+ eagles start acting like eagle divers.

• Previously, if you moused over the empty inventory right at the start of the game before picking up even your first item, the game would throw exceptions. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Aeronic for reporting.

• Added a new Plasma Bolt spell.
  • It's basically like fireball except smaller, slower at first and then faster, light elemental instead of fire elemental, and slightly weaker, cheaper, and quicker to fire.
  • Crafted with Opal + Walnut + Quartz.
  • Thanks to KDR_11k for suggesting.

• As always, lots more multiplayer progress. First recent test with a two clients on different machines, both playing on the same server. General success was had, but there's still more to do. Getting closer, though!

Previous Release Notes

AVWW - Beta Series 1 Release Notes