Here's the autosave.ini file: http://pastebin.com/JyHFtT2H


I've been able to re-create the crash consistently: simply after having both players scan a location and then starting combat, one player can set their drop point, it counts down to 0 and then crashes the moment the count-down hits 0.

I screen captured my first play attempt - You can see how confused I was, basically randomly scanning, clicking skip, etc., as well as the crash at the end:


Obviously I'm a noob, and haven't read up much about how the campaign mode should work, but a blind play-test like this should give a pretty clear idea how a brand new player would see it.


Some basic suggestions that would make what's going on clearer and more user friendly:

• Make money and player name display on separate lines, and don't ever hide either.

• Clearly display when it is a player's turn.
  • Say so using the player's color at the top of the screen in small, but clearly visible letters.
  • Have the player's 'corner' highlighted clearly. Perhaps do so by temporarily enlarging their stats.

• Remove unecessary clicks and buttons.
  • When it says 'DAY ONE' clicking anywhere or waiting 5 seconds should do what clicking 'start' does now. Remove the 'start' button completely.
  • Right now you can repeatedly scan the same drop site. It will even play the same side-sweeping animation again (but without revealing anything again). This should not be possible; just wastes time and is aggravating since you cannot skip it.

• Explain things clearer.
  • For example, I have no idea what 'Expedition Budget' is for. is this how much you take into battle? if so why can I set it even on normal scans? very strange.
  • As mentioned above, not being able to see the players' budgets except at rare times makes it more confusing to understand what different things do.

• Just a possible suggestion, but maybe use the term 'team' instead of 'player'.
  • For example say "Red Team Turn". This will allow for multiple players per team, though control might be odd then. not sure, but something to consider.

First, good to see Data actually on the forums again.

Second...there is ZERO publicity about this update. If I wasn't randomly browsing the forum, I would've had no idea. I think quite a few people, especially some disappointed Humble Indie Bundle buyers, would be really interested in this. Get the word out somehow, as this is a pretty significant update.

So far, the game is running smoother and hasn't crashed unless I've run it at high-resolution and tried to do something ridiculously complex (Multi-dropship troop deployments by both players at once have done it a few times for me).

AI is far improved, and they're deadly. I would almost argue that AIs with Sniper Rifles are too lethal as they are right now, plinking you with 100% accuracy in no time if you can't kill them first. And I about crapped myself when I saw an AI with a Gatling Gun in a bunker take apart an entire attack force...

As a plus, they no longer seem to randomly leave their positions (No more jumping off of bunkers and such when they're in a prime firing position!). However, after prolonged combat, they seem to sort of "Tire out" and will start ignoring enemies. Dunno why they do this, but as someone above me posted, it happened in Maginot Mission.



I'll have to play more to give more input, but so far, it's looking good and looking like actual progress. A few more updates like this and I won't consider it the weakest game of my Indie Bundle anymore.

Has anybody else experienced inconsistent mouse behavior with this build? The cursor only moves when the mouse is moved at a high enough speed and does not respond otherwise. It makes even starting a new game an excercise in frustration.

Everyone else seems to be having performance increases with B25, but for me it's become worse. With all the previous builds the game has played just fine for me, only going very slowly when spamming bombs or crabs, which was to be expected.
However, now the game goes terribly slowly when there are many actors - particularly on Dummy Assault and a few minutes in to a skirmish game (With or without mods btw). It might be the improved AI, but I don't know.

Otherwise, this build has given CC much more playability for my brother and I. The gold dig AI makes it possible for us to focus more on the fighting, and the other general 'clean-up' means there are less exercises in frustration. Much appreciated!

Just a few other problems:
- Saving a campaign game in 800x600 and then opening it in 1400x900 meant the start turn menu was offscreen
- The campaign in general isn't pacy enough and it's too easy to rush an opponent's brain before they can move it to a safer place in their base
- Rockets upon landing rapidly open and close their doors
- The Autocannon seems to instantly kill most Dummies
- When a keyboard only player opens his pie menu, it stops a board + mouse player's sharpaim
- Sometimes when playing multiplayer as P1 with board + mouse, I've noticed my jump key has moments when it just won't work. Not sure of the cause

You are supposed to add funds to the scanning, so you can get a bunker there. There's a huge bar above it and you ignore it.

Moderator note: Please don't quote large amounts of text.

I don't think anyone else is getting this, and if so I'm not at least.
Perhaps your mouse is dying, or your sensitivity is too low.

For some twisted reason mouse acceleration is enabled in fullscreen regardless of system settings. Try playing in windowed mode, it might help.

I think it's about time for explosions to stop damaging terrain by spraying bullets everywhere and start using calculated waves to make craters. Would look much better for larger bombs.

Sounds absolutely right when you say it, but I guess it's, like, less easy to implement. I agree though, if something like that is possible it would be really welcome a change, and I guess it might even be less processor-intensive for very dense explosions.

please don't quote huge chunks of text.... retain the first line of any relevant text if you need it to avoid confusion, and replace the rest with '...'


My point is simply that it's not intuitive the way it is structured now.

You allocate this amount during the -scanning- phase. Not the attack phase. (For me this is unintuitive.) However when you are scanning the planet your visible funds always run out to 0 (I'm aware the allocated amount isn't visible then, but as a new player wouldn't it make sense if you -allocate- an amount during a certain phase for a planet that it would then be visible when during that same phase you go to the planet.)

An important thing to keep in mind is that users will feel less confused if you provide them with consistent information, such as always keeping the amount each player has visible. I know now that mousing over the player name will display the amount, but a new player will not know that, and may not know that for a long time.

Although once you look into it enough, the current setup is usable, it should be instantly understandable and intuitive for any new user.

It's not obvious you can interact with the slider, it initially just looks like it shows you the budget that is available (I thought that the game automatically decided the amount or something). Admittedly it took me until the second day to realize this and I did the same thing as Johannes, scanning the maps with no funds.. Though randomly clicking next/mashing buttons... seriously Johannes? Just take some time to analyse the problem and usually you can see what's wrong, this applies to pretty much any scenario in life, you can clearly tell that by the second day you are just wasting money if you skip to the next day and that you are doing it wrong. (you know what they say about doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result...)

Really there just needs to be a first time flag/hint messages that you can turn off, it seems like it would be simple enough to program since Data has made the menu and GUI stuff modular.

I won't argue over any of that, but I'll say this: please do not give “lessons” to anyone (and I'm not talking to you specifically). This is so likely to turn into something uncivil and the like.

I'm putting lessons in between quotes because I can't find the exact term for that.

Heh, fair enough, I was being quite silly there, and thought it amusing that you could continually skip days without doing anything. Most normal players probably wouldn't do it like that.

I can get a bit carried away when writing up something like that and most of what I say isn't nearly as big of a deal as I make it out to be; I apologize for my OCD-nature there. Please take it with a hefty grain of salt.

fix'd

Again, great feedback.. making a graphical user interface work at all is surprisingly hard enough, not to mention also making it intuitive and immediately understandable to an uninitiated user! The one in there now is definitely a work in progress, and your feedback helps a lot in identifying the worst problem areas.

I have realized that the scanning is super boring and clumsy right now, and that's the first thing that will be fixed as far as the metagame GUI goes.. probably turned into a one-button-press operation that will just reveal the upper air layer upon your team's next visit to the place. Also yes we're aware that the saving/loading of the scanned areas is not working the way it should atm, will fix also.

Teams and players are very important distinctions, since multiple players can be on the same team (!).. I toyed with he idea of letting a whole team have a collective shared set of funds in the metagame (they already do in each battle), but I it seemed clearer to have each player do his turn on his own instead of fighting over a single cursor.

Will investigate that crash and keep at it.. the metagame will be getting a lot of love in the coming ~10 months.

I'm getting this sporadically too.

Metagame is looking cool. Looking forward to the AI opponents.

The new "brain needs clear path to orbit" is too restrictive (especially for the static brain case) and needs to be smarter about doors and stuff.

Jetpacks feel too weak on a lot of the actors, and it's still super annoying how they destroy the terrain by walking on it.

Dropships that are tumbling around on the ground often warp sideways. I think I've seen this with human actors too, maybe when they collide with each other?

I'm disappointed that there's still no (optional) keyboard shortcuts for reloading etc. Radial menus are great but there's so many keys going unused.

edit: also, massive kudos for the Twitter SVN thing. That 100% addresses all of my past complaints about the lack of a development log (even if the commit messages get cut off sometimes).