Version 0.700b

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Summary: The stable is finally updated! Tai Ming is now available in all its supposed splendor, together with a bunch of quality-of-life changes for stable users, like updated world map and damage numbers.

Update Description

For Frontline users, the only things that have changed are an added shield built from Thorn Worm parts, as well as
Kinton's arm being healed and Sizou being a bit more vague on the subject of how long Zhamla has been gone
.

Frontline users might notice that their version now also says Stable, and that's because they are currently one and the same! When new Frontline content comes out, the version will be called Frontline again.

As for DRM free Humble Builds, these will come in about a week! The reason for this is that there is no automatic updates or even update notification system on Humble, meaning if there's some major bug that slipped through, or is caused by getting all the major changes all at once, the game would have to be redownload and reinstalled. Thus, we like to treat the DRM-free version as an "extra Stable" build to save everybody potential extra headaches.

Also, for those of you who have bought the OST, it has now been updated with all the new tracks found in Tai Ming! (Though it's refusing to update for me in Steam for some reason :( )

Patch Notes

0.700b - Hotfixes
  • Silver and Gold Charge frosty friends are no longer immune to all damage
  • Shockwaves from thrown statues now damages players properly in the second zone of Tai Ming
  • Going from 500 points to 1000 points in the arena now grants both rewards in a row

0.700a - Main patch

For Stable users, it's the combined content of several patches, and the best way to get it all listed is to go into the game, view the patch notes and press TAB to aggregate them into one giant set of patch notes. There might be some spoilery stuff in there, though!

What now?

It's been a long time now since we've put our full focus on anything but the story. Me and Vilya had a short stint of it while waiting for Fred's boss animations, and this resulted in the updated World Map and the various new gameplay options (damage numbers, hp bars, etc).

This moment after Tai Ming is a good place for us to do more base game additions and balance changes. At this stage, players have finally unlocked the gold charges on their skills, and there is only one regular dungeon/temple left, so if we want to get proper testing done on the changes we make, we can't wait any longer!

Also, since core- and mechanics changes are usually most intensive on code, and least intensive on animations, it's a great opportunity for Fred to get a head start with the next set of enemies! He's already started working on the foes you'll meet in the next area.

A while ago we toyed with the idea of having the community vote for what features we should focus on before continuing on with the story. However, when we listed all the things we wanted to do, we realized we had such a large web of feature dependency that there wasn't as much room for change as we had hoped. The plan as of now is to implement these things before moving on with more story again:

Player Housing, Support Skills, Major Rebalancing of Combat Skills, Potion Rework, Arcade Mode Revamp, Quest Skipping After Multiplayer Completion, and Some Quests, Secrets and Treasure Maps

For more information on each of these, please have a look at this post from the DevBlog!

These things combined will likely take so long that when they are in the game, both we and you probably want us to get on with the story!

Oh, and we'll also poke a bit at the process of potentially porting the game to OSX and Linux with FNA, both for the obvious cross platform benefits, and also to combat a certain set of bugs within XNA and .NET that's causing trouble for some players.
 
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Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Does that mean we'll have to switch back to the beta in the Steam options, or is it just an in-game thing?

Just an in-game thing! If I get some unforeseen spare time I'll investigate if I can fetch the beta settings from the Steam client and base the version on that, but for now when the version is exactly the same, both versions will show up as Stable.
 

Own

Moderator
Well done. :D So happy to see everyone on the same page.

Testing out the thorn worm shield, though, it seems a bit on the weak side? Much less than even a single swipe of my weapon does. Even perfect guarding doesn't add much. I suppose it can be good for AFK grinding sans summons, combined with the lightning glove. :)
 

Taragon

Green Slime
can't wait to see what is coming next... especially support skills and the Arcade mode revamp. Hope that PvP don't take sooo long, I really want to battle against my friends hahah
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Talking about PvP, that command activating old PvP code sounds like good candidate for the next thing on frontline.
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Talking about PvP, that command activating old PvP code sounds like good candidate for the next thing on frontline.

I forgot to mention it but /trollpvp should now work! It's basically better than Street Fighter :chicken:
 

Elswor

Rabby
EDIT- Nevermind, I figured it out. The crash had to do with me using the /trollpvp command and the Blade of Echoes specter hitting me. Nothing to do with actually guarding it with the new shield (that works fine :D).

Seems to give me a NullReferenceException every time according to reports.

So far I've found it only affects that specific entity. It is an error brought about by a command though, everything else has been stable!
 
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Own

Moderator
Going up into the first Puzzle World room and then immediately leaving back into Tai Ming makes Tai Ming have Puzzle World's music.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Not sure if it always wasn't like this, but when you open a teleport from map, your character swings weapon as you select.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Nice big milestone there! I'm back and currently excited about checking out the new stuff and translating. Soooo looking forward towards the Support Skills. If I finally happen to find the time, I might join the club of making a big post about it, but I haven't been able to do so yet, at least not with the proper time investment it would require.

Small issue during "the checkouting": The Red Ribbon Brooch's description is irritating. Why does it explicitly say, what it increases? I can't think of any item having a direct mention of a stat in its description (not only inconsistent with Blue Ribbon Brooch). Usually there is only a hint to what an item does, so having Critical Hit damage plainly written there feels out of place.
 

Own

Moderator
So I decided to let some monkeys throw some statues at me to get better at perfect guarding shockwaves.

I noticed the shockwaves kept going through me. So I stopped blocking them and they still went through me. There's no collision or damage from statue shockwaves, at least basic ones. No clue if elites are different.
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Small issue during "the checkouting": The Red Ribbon Brooch's description is irritating. Why does it explicitly say, what it increases? I can't think of any item having a direct mention of a stat in its description (not only inconsistent with Blue Ribbon Brooch). Usually there is only a hint to what an item does, so having Critical Hit damage plainly written there feels out of place.

You might be right about that! I'll have a look at muddling it a little.

So I decided to let some monkeys throw some statues at me to get better at perfect guarding shockwaves.

I noticed the shockwaves kept going through me. So I stopped blocking them and they still went through me. There's no collision or damage from statue shockwaves, at least basic ones. No clue if elites are different.

Ooops! That's me doing the classic mistake of not setting the shockwaves to the collision layer of the statue spawning them! :chicken:

(I assume this happens in the grinding spot of Tai Ming's second zone?)
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Screen05 in FlyingTemple is still missing a -Professor Pine sign out line. I think it had three lines once, but the last one disappeared when the dates were changed.
 

Own

Moderator
Out of curiosity, was Honda an abandoned plotline? Or are we supposed to assume he's adding Monyplix's name to the town citizenry? He doesn't show up in Tai Ming 2 or 3 and it's never mentioned again what he's up to.
 

Own

Moderator
- Statues attempt to stomp on Frosty Friend, but are incapable of damaging him.
- Shadows attempt to slash Frosty Friend, but can't hurt him either.
- Actually... wait, lemme just go and check with Gundam...
- ... oh. Gold Charge Frosty is incapable of being damaged by anything.

Also, I just noticed mega-Frosty just smashes through obstacles by walking against them. Neat!
 

tainysi

Green Slime
Can we get a statement on the cursed priestess boss in multiplayer? It's a finely designed boss in 1-2 players but it's an awfully designed boss for multiplayer. Plant build/swarm/cloud (just one player doing this is enough to clog up the screen) along with 4 players running around is a shit fest and you can't see shit. You can't dodge when the screen is spammed. So then you're forced to not use summons. That's a shit design, forcing a player to play another style because of indirect "mechanics." Not only that, the part where she summons a circle and leaves one opening, four players push each other around, yet again another awful design for 3-4 players.
I've searched a bit but haven't seen the Devs address it so I'd be interested to see what the solution is.
Option to turn off visual effects for other players? No more player blocking?
 
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