Messages

1

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: What is this bar?

« on: February 11, 2012, 12:14:43 AM »

Probably a monster taking damage down there somewhere.

Ah, yeah.  What got me is that it seemed pinned to the lower left -- but makes sense now that you mention it.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / What is this bar?

« on: February 10, 2012, 12:32:24 PM »

I noticed this twice now (once in this old screenshot, once in the game).  I think it was counting up or down about once per second.  What is it?

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: AVWW Beta 0.572 "Enchanted Gills" Released!

« on: February 08, 2012, 08:02:36 PM »

No insta-death for me (just did a quick load test), and congrats on the update!  Looking forward to playing when I free up :-)

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: AVWW Beta 0.570/0.571 "The Guardian City" Released!

« on: February 04, 2012, 01:35:51 AM »

Just wanted to say great job -- with this update, the game is really coming together for me.  I had to force myself to stop playing, which hasn't happened in a while :-)  Thanks!

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: Is there anyone here particularly attached to dynamic skies?

« on: January 30, 2012, 03:08:24 PM »

I really like them!  I love procedurally generated things in general, so it's both eye and brain candy for me at the same time :-)

Also, over time GPUs will catch up -- unless you're having to maintain the code, I'd leave it in.  Moving it to 'opt-in' is fine.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: All the new level-less stuff is coming Monday or Tuesday, not today...

« on: January 25, 2012, 02:38:17 AM »

All that said, of course, if you have ideas that are particularly aimed at helping with the polish/refinement phase for 1.0, then that is the most helpful of all.  At this stage we are looking for basically lots of things that are small/midsize in scope at worst, but which have a big improvement in the player experience.  There's tons of that sort of thing, so there's not much incentive for us to go with larger new features until after 1.0 (and given the increase in bugs, testing, complexity, etc, there's specific disincentives at the moment).

Sounds good.  I filed a bunch just now with an eye towards the new player experience.  I think the learning curve can be bent down a bit -- you want people to make it far enough to want to buy the game.  :-)  Feel free to approve/reject as you see fit, of course.

Thanks for all the kinds words, and your ongoing support!  It really means a ton to us.

No worries, you've earned it.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: All the new level-less stuff is coming Monday or Tuesday, not today...

« on: January 24, 2012, 05:32:34 PM »

Ah, forums.  How have I missed you until now?  I really enjoyed the math test when signing up.  It was helpful to know The answer was only one digit ;-)

Re this:
We're still sort of feeling our way along, chipping away everything that doesn't look like an elephant, but I think that the 1.0 state is firming up pretty well (with a target still in March for that).  If we try to push too much into 1.0, we're going to run out of funds to keep developing this out at our current staffing levels, and I hate laying people off (having had to do it multiple times in the past).  Arcen really isn't in any danger at this point, but we can't maintain our current staffing levels more than another few months without actually coming out with a new game that is reasonably popular (as popular as AI War, or even less to some extent, would probably do -- though of course we'd like more).

What kinds of bugs/feedback are most useful to help you land this thing?  I can switch to "shipping is a feature too" mode :-).  Which in this case means more filing things that I think will help the game sell which are achievable in 6-8 weeks alongside the rest of what you need to finish up.    I definately want you guys to be successful -- both because I like your team and how you operate, and selfishly, I like to play your games :-)