Greetings!
Yesterday we got Beta 3B out the door. We still have a lot of work to do on stability. At the start of Beta 3, we were running about 50 engineering hours ahead of schedule. As we head into Beta 4, we’re approximately on schedule now (tactical battles have been more problematic than anticipated).
We’ve gotten a ton of data from the beta community both in terms of crash reports, general glitches, game suggestions, memory problems, etc.
As for me, I live in the AI.
I live in the land of temptation (see above screenshot).
When coding AI, things don’t look as pretty for me as they do for you guys. For me, basic mode is my mode (Beta 1 mode) since it lets me focus on just the core game.
Having magical spells adds a whole new dimension to AI coding. It’s a real challenge to know when the right time to cast a spell is. So that’s what I’ve been working on today.
Meanwhile…
The tactical team has been working on some of the cheese that slipped through (bows and spells being over-powered). I had one of my AI players train archers and it quickly walked over all the other AI players without a problem which demonstrated a real problem with how bows and spells were working. The beta community confirmed the problem as well and so that was something that got zapped today.
UI UI UI
We’re not happy with the UI in general. Luckily, it’s fairly trivial for us to make changes. So expect to see some changes in this area before release.
Tech Tree balancing
There’s going to be quite a few new technologies in the Adventure, Magic, and Diplomacy technology trees. We want to make these areas more exciting and have a more definitive impact on the game (or specifically a FUN impact on a given game).
Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Back to the AI.