Lars,
anything on those “big” news you were planning on telling us about?
Dev Log
Look at the blog, it have been announced several days agos.
— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"
Look at the blog, it have been announced several days agos.
— End quote
What are you referring to? the blog only has a post about the idea of free extended content. i dont think i saw anything regarding any news.
— Begin quote from "Shinigami"
What are you referring to? the blog only has a post about the idea of free extended content. i dont think i saw anything regarding any news.
— End quote
Isn’t that exactly the announcement he was refering to ?
— Begin quote from "Ohlmann"
— Begin quote from "Shinigami"
What are you referring to? the blog only has a post about the idea of free extended content. i dont think i saw anything regarding any news.
— End quote
Isn’t that exactly the announcement he was refering to ?
— End quote
Considering how he mentioned that he needs somebody important to get back to him about it, I guess this ain’t the big thing. There is nothing super crazy awesome about that idea, it’s just something that could possibly work and is worth a try.
Hey guys!
Yeah, for the record: the FreeLC idea, although it is something we’d like to do in the future, is not the big announcement. I just signed the first bit of paperwork with “the people” re:TheBigAnnouncement, and hopefully should get the second bit of paperwork back soon, which will let me finally make the huge friggin’ announcement once and for all. It’s taken way longer than I expected to be able to tell everyone about this. It’s big news tho! Sorry I’m such a tease.
Anyways, I’ve got a fresh build here. This is not quite the release candidate, but it’s very close. I’ve not been able to address the latest bugs like I wanted to because I’ve had my hands full integrating all the last minute art that’s been coming my way. Without further ado, here’s a changelog:
-New Hand art
-New Eztli art
-integrate town/shopping screens
-Integrate hand
Eztli (final boss)
-Center stuff up when he teleports
-Center visually on square
-Center zone to his square as a perfect 40x40 box
-Add ice mage summon
-Arrow height rangers spread shot horz
-unazra sprite
-Rafts for sidequest 2
-Replace tentacles
-Replace eztli's city
-integrate save slot screen
-integrate overworld screen
-integrate party screen
-Fix hermit descriptions
-Fix hermit backgrounds
-Add hermit cutscenes
-Remove "quest" replace with "battle"
-Water enemy reaches Land at very end of maze = Crash
-integrate buttons
James has inserted some new writing here and there and Anthony has been tweaking levels/balance/etc.
So, we’ve now got new interface stuff and other new art pretty much everywhere. I have a few things still missing which I will drop in soon. We have new portrait sprites for the characters, but I haven’t swapped out the generic ones yet so expect some visual glitching there (the offsets are wrong). We have new UI, a new sprite for the final boss, as well as the hand and pretty much everything else. The hermit towns now have descriptions, and associated cut scenes - but you’ll only see those on a fresh NG+ playthrough, because I just added the triggers.
I still have a little bit of art integration to do, but 99% of it is done. Feel free to point out any areas where something looks neglected or missed.
NOTE: The hermit cutscenes will NOT show up in a NG+ playthrough save that you’ve been playing since we started testing, UNLESS you visit a hermit for the first time in that save, OR if you hack your save game to reset the plot tags for the hermit plotlines in the “progress_plus” portion of your save xml to look like this:
Anyways, I have some bugs I need to attend to and various other things. I’m sure I’ve also just introduced new bugs and visual glitches in lots of places. Anthony tells me that we are almost done with bonus battles, but we’re not quite there yet. 2 of them are as of yet unfinished, but the rest should be more or less ready to go. He’ll continue working on those as he has time (his work at Kong has him at Casual Connect so he’s been very busy), but they might still be in progress by the time I leave for my trip. Everything else should be ready, though.
The new build is 0.9.45, uploading for windows now. I will release mac/win/linux builds tomorrow and also try and see if I can get some demo builds ready so we can start testing those too. I expect RC1 might be ready Saturday? Sunday, I’m gone. If the final levels aren’t ready, it won’t be a true release candidate, but it will still be good enough to show to journalists/reviewers as a preview copy, and for Anthony to work on while I’m gone, and we’ll get it out the door soon after I come back.
Ta for the update. A bit of bad news, the bugzilla list grew a little. Bugs 443, 435/7, 433/4, 429 and 428 fall in “not just polish” category. Namely the crashes when resummoning defenders are very irritating - I just almost defeated the hand with level 20 party on Extreme when it happenned last time…
We’ll roll with the punches. In a little bit I’ll jump back on tonight and try to sort some of these bugs out. If they just popped up, it’s likely I just introduced them which hopefully means they’ll be quick fixes.
Okay, everyone. Version 0.9.46 is here.
I’ve got the last batch of new art in, and my best guess at a fix for the big scary crash bug. Anthony has put some more time into the bonus battles from the looks of it, and I’ve been trying to fix things here and there.
I’m not sure if we’ll get RC1 totally done before I leave, but we’ll be pretty dang close. Either way, I’ll send out a call to all our dormant testers and ask you guys to kindly hammer on this while I’m gone. Anthony will be around a bit to staff the fort while I’m gone, and he can pinch hit for me in most areas, but I’ll likely have to do any missing art tasks and heavy-duty bug solving when I get back.
My goal now is to get this into proper shape for Anthony to send it to journalists and reviewers. That means no blocker or major bugs, but anything that doesn’t totally smash the experience, or only shows up rarely, or only in NG+, isn’t something we’ll be too worried about for the sake of sending preview copies.
Change log:
-Fixed Quad tree bugs
-Added convenience feature: clicking 20 pixels or less over a defender’s tile will select them if nothing is in the above tile. (So you can click on their “heads.”)
-Fix bug with Crystal bug spell (happened when lightning skill > 9)
-Second draft menu scrolls
-Cash out early button for endless bonus battles (auto-kills Azra, should let you leave with any achievements you’ve earned).
-Bonus battle tile tweaks
-Tweaking position and size of various things all over
Let me know what you find out! Thanks for helping us so much 
Windows version is uploading right now. Compiling Mac as we speak. Won’t have the demo versions ready today, probably not by this weekend either - I think we’ll just face reality and handle that mess when I get back.
I hope the crash bug is gone - I’ve had two quite long battles (the last two) with plenty of defender repositioning, speed changes and all manners of activity - and while the game was at times a bit sluggish when placing defenders, it hasn’t crashed…
Awesome. I have to admit I haven’t been paying much attention, but I’ve checked this regularly, and it sounds like you’re making great progress. Also, when’s the big announcement coming out?
This will probably be my last post for a while.
At any rate, Linux builds are now up. Wasn’t able to get compatibility mode builds uploaded, sorry. This makes all the mac/win/linux versions current to 0.9.46.
While I’m gone, send any email to leveluplabs@gmail.com - Anthony will be checking that account, and keep in mind since I’m the only full-time worker (Anthony has a full time job besides working on Defender’s Quest) response times might be a little longer in my absence.
Do post feedback, thoughts, etc, both here and in the other forum sections, please put any bugs in the bugzilla database, etc, etc, and I’ll check in as I get back. Also, don’t send any PM’s to my “larsiusprime” forum account because 1) I won’t be able to check in while I’m gone 2) My mailbox will fill up and I’m not sure if the forum will delete the overflow.
Thanks for helping, everyone! If you have any questions PM Anthony or better yet, email leveluplabs@gmail.com
What happened to your ‘big announcement’ on Monday earlier this month? 
You can’t just leave us hanging about that.
He’s been left hanging, too; he said someone didn’t get back to him.
Yup, we’re waiting on confirmation. This is where I hope I’m just paranoid, but I’m glad we didn’t jump the gun. I avoid counting my chickens all in one basket. 
Considering that you guys started talking about this after my topic where I got a bunch of advice for you with regards to Steam and getting in contact with Edmund, and now you’re talking about paperwork and “the people”, I’m going to be very happy if the news is what I think it is.
— Begin quote from "Hollow"
Considering that you guys started talking about this after my topic where I got a bunch of advice for you with regards to Steam and getting in contact with Edmund, and now you’re talking about paperwork and “the people”, I’m going to be very happy if the news is what I think it is.
— End quote
No offense, but i actually hope you are wrong about that. if the big news is that they are selling the game on steam etc. then ill feel like that is anti climatic. this wouldnt affect those of us that already bought the game over at kong. im hoping that the news is something like a new secret feature or something that we can all enjoy. although, with all the talk about paperwork its likely that im the one thats wrong.
nonetheless, if the news is that they got to sell the game in steam etc, id still be happy for the developers as that would mean higher revenues for them.
It being sold on Steam is very, very good news if it is the case since it means a lot more revenue for them, which in turn means potentially more FreeLC or money for sequels / other games. =)
— Begin quote from "Hollow"
It being sold on Steam is very, very good news if it is the case since it means a lot more revenue for them, which in turn means potentially more FreeLC or money for sequels / other games. =)
— End quote
But is it a big announcement ? I mean, it may be a lot of work for them, but most independant game go here without much problems.
Hey guys, I’m back!
So, I’ve got some high priority bugs to fix which I’m working on as we speak. Anthony’s got most of his stuff squared away, so now it’s just tying up these loose ends and smashing all the critical bugs.
Stuff I’ve fixed so far:
-Battles with infinite waves were applying the end-of-loop level-up at the very beginning. Now it’s fixed.
-Fixed some pathfinding issues in bonus battles
-Fixed glitch in NG+ mode that made the super-cultist never appear in the “right hand” battle
-Added ability to reduce particle amounts, and turn on “AOE hilighting”
This last one lets you customize AOE attack visuals - you can turn the particles down to nothing, and optionally make it show a little transparent shape where the AOE attack is. So, if you want no particles and just a lit-up shape to indicate the AOE attack is active, you can do that, or if you want 100% particles and no shape (the default), you can have that, or you can turn them both on, and everything in between. Mostly this is to give people control over the game performance as AOE attacks tend to slow things down at 4x speed when you’ve got everybody summoned and the map is clogged with monsters.
This is basically a failsafe option because I suspect we have a memory leak in the battle mode. Everything should get cleaned up after a battle, but during a battle the memory footprint goes pretty high as it basically doesn’t clear anything out, and keeps everything ever spawned in memory so it can be recycled later. So, while I work on figuring out the root problem, this should let people at least treat the symptoms in the meantime, and it’s a good option anyway.
I’m working on all the other stuff as I get to it. Will keep you posted.