Tidalis:0.415 Beta Release

Notes From The Producer: May 21, 2010

Nothing singularly noteworthy in this one, but there are a ton of refinements to the physics and other various aspects of the game. The water mode really did a number on a lot of the calculations, as I mentioned in the last release notes as well, and this release is mainly geared at cleaning that up even further, and providing some other internal optimizations. In the process we've also fixed some longstanding small gripes with hit detection and such, so all in all this has been a really positive few days for the game even outside of water mode, as the physics are really getting locked down to the point of being really airtight.

--Christopher M. Park

Gameplay Updates

• Previously, only blocks cleared via a chain would cause tiles to light up in Line Clear or Light-Up modes. Now any block that dies will do so when possible.

• Previously, the rules about when blocks would "hard fall" were a bit odd for cases outside of blocks cleared via a chain. Now it works consistently for all blocks that die, regardless of how they die.

• Streams are now allowed to pass through the top of the well. This is useful for Zen Water mode, where stacks of blocks might be pushed upwards by bubbles. Now streams can be completed with the blocks that are technically off the top of the board, which previously was not possible.

New Level Editor Features

• Added "Special Block Group Clear Count" objective type for Color Reactive, Color Blocking, etc. This allows you to say "clear 10 color reactive" blocks without caring about the actual sub-type of the blocks being cleared.

• Added "X Blocks of Special Group Y Remaining" objective.

Misc

• The game is now significantly faster to load at initial startup (almost 2X as fast).

• Added a new Sparkle weather pattern.

Bugfixes

• Auto-loss detection no longer fires if the board has special win objectives (still runs in case of special loss objectives).

• Tooltip positions have been adjusted so that they are no longer in the way of that which you are hovering over, and so that they don't interfere with your ability to click on the thing that you're hovering over.
  • Thanks to Ixiohm for reporting.

• Previously, there were a lot of problems with block-adjacency-detection based on blocks that were moving. This has been fixed so that a completely different physics model is now used for that, which avoids these issues and also allows for things like clearing a fire block that is actively falling and having it char stuff that is near it (even if that other stuff is also falling), all of which was previously not possible.

• In the last version, there were some bugs with hard-falling and wall blocks. Fixed.

• In the last version, if a block was killed while it was still forming, that could cause it to look like the graphics were hanging on that block while it finished silently forming before running the dying animation. Fixed so that now it immediately goes into the dying animation.

• In the last two versions, blocks that float (ice, tinder, bubble, etc) were able to fall below the level of the bottom of the well when there was zero water level. Fixed.

• Fixed bug where adventure saves were not immediately updated on disk when a new scene has been viewed.

• Fixed bug in cutscene index where it was displaying the wrong number of buttons in some cases.

• Fixed bug where cutscenes were often skipping the first segment.

• Fixed bug where in-game help was trying to list sun, moon, and direction-locked as special blocks. Direction-locked will be back as it needs an entry, but sun and moon are color blocks.

• In the last version, there were some bugs with how many blocks would fall to meet the "minimum row threshold" in water levels. Fixed.

Internal Programming Notes

• AdjacentTilesAll and AdjacentTilesLimited have been removed from GameBoardTile, as tile adjacency lists simply were not an accurate enough way to handle things anymore.
  • Now use FillWorkingBlocksWithLimitedAdjacentNonChainNonDying or FillWorkingBlocksWithAllAdjacentNonChainNonDying on Block instead, which is based on position instead of tile claiming.

• Hitting the F3 debug text display now shows a variable on each block with whether or not the block has claimed a tile.

Tidalis