Andrew has been suprising us lately with details of certain updates being released every day in the lead-up to a development update he'll be releasing to the team sometime just after Christmas. Read on for the details so far.
Every day for the last 10 days Andrew has been giving us details about changes he's been making to the programming aspects of the game. These updates have varied from Editor changes, to Combat, and a few ease-of-use updates along the way. The following post contains details of updates 1 to 6; another post will come after Christmas with details of updates 7 to 12.
Update #1: Scene
You may have seen that lighting can be adjusted in the game to make night-time, dawn/dusk levels and adjust hue/saturation, but now lighting can be adjusted in custom levels! All of the SiA standard levels have been updated to use the same lighting slider.
Update #2: The Level Complete Seal
Its small, but its cool. That's right, once a level is completed it now carries a wax seal to show just how much you fluked it (or didn't fluke it, you know what I mean). You can see it in action on todays entry in my weekly video blog ( Click Here to see that video blog ).
Update #3: Custom Level Item Selection
This has been an obvious missing feature, and has been a long-time coming. Sitting alongside the shader slider in the custom level pause menu is now an option to select which secondary item players get. So custom levels can now finally be made featuring the latern, shield and balloon.
Update #4: Integrated Installer
The installation for Strength In Arms now has the XNA framework and .Net 3.5 built into it! If not already installed on the users computer, they will automatically do so. Now, we no longer have to give out annoying readmes telling everyone to go looking for extra files. Nosir, all you need is Win XP and the install file, and its game on - the way it should be. (Vista and Win7 support still in testing).
Update #5: Improved Lantern
Whats the point of putting a lantern in a custom level if its too darn hard to use? Number one recent complaint about Strength In Arms, by no small margin, is having to hold down the secondary item button to use the lantern. Makes it cumbersome and damn near impossible to use. Well no more. Press once to turn on, once again to turn off. Simple. And if you need that hand for survival, it will turn off and unequip automatically. Course, that leaves you in the dark. But hey, sometimes thats the price of survival.
This update also extends more broadly to a better method of dealing with weapons and items. It will ammend such inconsistencies as being able to fire your weapon without any free hands, and putting away your shield to grab a beam when you quite clearly had a free hand already. It may even pave the way, one day, for two-handed weapons.
Update #6: Multiprofile
Major updates to the profile system backend have been made recently. Its safer, its smarter, and its a hell of a lot neater. But what visible changes are there in the game?
Well, for starters, our old friend 'leave game' is back. That's right, SIA is once again capable of 'drop-in, drop-out' gameplay. But more than that, secondary players can now load a profile from their secondary player menu, so multiple characters from multiple profiles can play at the same time. As of now, all this means is your name in the HUD (There's names in the hud now too), but in future it will mean being able to play coop with your own customized character, with whatever customizations we create - color, weapons, costumes, the possibilities are endless.
So there you have it, details about some of the changes that have been made in the last week or so, various other changes are still coming, and we'll bring those to you between Christmas and the New Year. But that's all for now folks, see you next time!
