FROM THE BLOG

B909 – Balancing, Fixes, Upgrades, Optimisation

This build is mostly small things, but some of them will make a difference for modders, and most of them will make a difference for players. Small bits of polish go a long way, and all that :^)

• Chickens don’t breed infinitely
  They’re limited to 4 chickens at most in one area (and 2 eggs at most in one area) – this means you’ll have to spread your chicken coops out to breed a larger number of them. We’re going to add some way to buy new eggs to start flocks of them, but that’ll come later
• Fake Rolling Optimised
  This is particularly important for the rocks flung from the catapult, but will also make a little bit of a difference with bombs, mines, and boulders – modders that have applicable objects can use CheapFakeRolling.as instead of FakeRolling.as.
• Less Particle Spam from Catapult Rocks
  This should help a little with the lag from them as well
• Upgrade Ballista to Bomb Bolts at siege shop
  This is built on top of a way to add “fake techs” to a team.
  There might be some bugs with this, particularly with techs “persisting” between rounds, keep a look out for anything skew so it can be fixed asap. EDIT: confirmed – the tech hangs over between rounds. This will be fixed as soon as we can, probably tomorrow.
  The terrain erosion caused by Ballistae will be looked into soon too, but wasn’t able to be worked into this release.
• Can purchase bolts for Ballista at siege shop
  which is pretty important for ensuring it remains useful.
• Chat colours come from the team config files
  This is very important for modders making >2 team games – the chat colours are no longer hard coded.
• Price changes
  Particularly with arrows, some of the prices have shifted a little. Kegs are also a bit cheaper, and tunnels no longer cost gold (pending that this doesn’t lead to them being spammed mindlessly).
• Anti-Siege and Anti-Structure bomb arrows
  Bomb arrows now simply detonate on impact, with a weak explosion. However, the explosion does extra damage to structures and vehicles, so it can be used for quickly disabling catapults and blowing holes in walls or breaching doors – as well as for sapping workshops quickly. This should give archers slightly more to do after they get into the enemy base.
• Some changes to building
  Building should be more tolerant, and breaking blocks requires less exact aiming.
  Ladders are team only and have a sprite that shows it – no more breaking your own ladders by accident as knight!
  Spikes have team colour layer so they’re easier to spot and you know the team in advance.

I think that’s about it for now, though there are some other miscellaneous changes and fixes. Here’s the full changelog:

[added] bomb arrow is rocket launcher - low damage vs actor (2.5 hearts on direct hit),
    	high damage on buildings and vehicles, and explodes on impact - can be used to bomb jump!
[fixed] double hitting from bomb arrow explosion
[added] drill is much more effective against constructed blocks (heats much slower for castle and wood)
[added] ladder has team (and sprite that shows it)
[fixed] runner can jump higher off ladders than ground
[fixed] scroll of midas (thanks norill)
[modified] scroll of midas affects thick stone too
[modified] tunnel costs 100 stone 50 wood (no gold)
[modified] 3 builder hits to break ladder
[modified] block placement is more tolerant
[modified] builder aim hitting tiles is "no bullshit" - will be ported to block placement soon
[fixed] chickens breeding infinitely in one space
[added] spikes have team coloured layer so now you can tell what team they are on
[fixed] first sign in the tutorial not below the player
[added] water arrows are 20 coins, fire arrows are 30
[modified] water arrows come in stack of 2
[added] wip "fake tech" system - allows techs in rules without any research system in place
[modified] pickup radius is a bit smaller
[removed] restartmap_onlastplayer_disconnect cause it causes crashed (will return once issue is resolved)
[added] requirements support "not tech" so that you can prevent double-buying upgrades at different shops
[modified] rock spams fewer particles
[added] JTG_NewGetisburgMines map
[removed] monsteri map 2 from the cycle til it's fixed
[added] 3 new maps from community - Fellere_newValleyMap, Skinney_Crypt, Skinney_Typhoon
[added] cheaper fake rolling script for applicable objects (only rotates one sprite, does no matrix multiplication)
[added] cheaper fake rolling to boulder
[added] more expensive fake rolling script only runs on server (rotation deltas are synced anyway)
[added] chat colour is from team .cfg file
[added] team chat gets asterixes around it  * team chat *
[modified] keg is 120 coins

Max/Geti