Many of us were hoping to get this update out before attracting too much attention. That didn’t happen. O_O
This update is centered on polish, featuring various UI upgrades and a plethora of bug fixes making the game feel far smoother than it’s ever been. Also, the almighty Genesis Board! More on that soon…
Last week we previewed this unreleased version during a Twitch stream, featuring Game Director, Chris Clay and Game Designer, Petrify. You’ll find a highlight video here.
But since you’re already here, let’s do a little recap on what this update is going to bring to you, the player :)
New Features
- Player selected game boards
You voted for it and here it is! As part of the Genesis Rewards promotion, we introduced the prospect of an evolving board (complete with imposing dragon!) that alters its appearance based on player collection level.
From today, players who qualify for the Genesis board will have the ability to select it in the game dashboard before entering a match. This applies from Initiate (i.e.100 unique Genesis cards in your collection) all the way up to Demigod.
You can watch a clip of the Initiate board in action from the recent live stream here.
- In-match reconnect after dropout
We’ve seen it before. You’re dominating your opponent, outwitting them at every turn and you’re about to put down the finishing blow when suddenly…*game disconnected*
We feel your pain and that’s why the game team has implemented a feature so when the internet drops for a short period of time the client will now properly reconnect to the match. We expect this to reduce the number of matches that freeze due to short drops in internet connectivity (that can most often happen with WiFi disturbances).
- Overlapping creature death
In an effort to further speed up the removal process, creature death will now overlap leading to much faster resolution of board wipes and fights where multiple creatures die.
Game UI Updates
- Regen and Burn now display the specific power of the effect on the creature as the icon cycles through
- The void now shows the number of cards in the void when you mouse-over
- The chain now properly syncs up with the targeting reticule and has been narrowed down to reduce obscuring information on board
- Cards remain full size when dragged from the hand out towards the board
Game Flow Updates
We've made a number of small changes to the way the game handles animations to remove unnecessarily long waits for some actions. This should significantly reduce the amount of time a game takes to complete.
- Bag of Tricks no longer plays VFX on the God portrait when played, stays visible longer, and moves on to the next action faster. The black poof effect after playing Bag of Tricks has been removed to speed up the sequence as well.
- An overall update to Bag of Tricks visuals is in the works.
- The "Creature entering the battlefield" animation has been changed to just slam down rather than travel up and then down speeding up the playing of creatures.
- The VFX for Shadow, Gold, and Diamond Creatures now fade away properly and more quickly.
- Changing Leech to no longer be able to heal your god over 30 health.
Bug Fixes
A whopping 133 bugs were fixed in 0.18. Here's just a few of the major fixes!
General Issues:
- Memory Edit Cheating - Addressed a situation where it was possible for players to cheat by editing game memory. All accounts of those who used this exploit have been banned permanently.
- "Your opponent conceded" pop-up can no longer appear on-screen after match end.
- Cards in Void are hard to read - We've removed the distortion and glow overlay effects from cards in the void, which makes them much easier to read.
Card Issues:
- Creatures with Ability - Targeting a creature with an Ability with a spell then immediately activating the Ability can no longer cause the game to lock up.
- Creatures with Regen - Creatures with Regen no longer gain additional stacks of Regen when returned to hand then played again.
- Sand Scorpion - Fixed an issue that could cause the game to lock up if the player's void is empty when played.
- Umber Arrow - Fixed an issue that could cause the game to lock up if a creature is stolen, moved to the hand, and re-played all in the same turn.
- Targeted cards - Fixed an issue that could allow the player to target a creature which was already scheduled to be destroyed by a queued effect.
- Relics - Fixed an issue that could cause the game to lock up if the player attacks with a Relic with a large backlog of queued actions and immediately before their turn timer runs out.
- Discovery - Fixed an issue that caused spells taken from the opponent's void with Discovery to be blocked by Ward on friendly creatures.
- Empire's Footman - Fixed an issue that could cause creatures in void to not be counted.
- Pick One - Fixed an issue that could cause the opponent god, rather than an opponent creature, to be incorrectly targeted by Pick One cards.
Audio Issues:
- End turn SFX now plays correctly when your turn timer expires.
Known Issues
These are not all known issues, but are some key known issues we want players to be aware of.
- If the player plays a card with Delve or Pick One functionality immediately after choosing that card as the target of a discard effect, but before the card is actually discarded, that player will no longer be able to perform any actions. So don't try playing any cards you've already discarded!
- The End Turn button will sometimes have a delay between being clicked and animating, it was changed to be server authoritative with this update to fix other issues resulting in this bug.
- If a player is still on the Victory/Defeat screen 10 seconds after a match end an error dialog will appear from the game server shutting down. All game data will be correctly preserved.
- Double Dealer does not always shuffle two cards in, we're seeing this about 30% of the time and are keeping the card live to collect more data in search of a repro.
- Hallowed Keeper's Roar effect is currently not working
- Creatures summoned by other cards at the "end of the turn" can be targeted by Exoscout at the end of the turn even if other creatures have been played that turn.
Mac OSX Issues:
- OSX may require several permissions from the user upon starting their first game.
- Users on the latest OSX Catalina 10.15 may have issues opening the client. To circumvent this security check you can hold 'control' while launching the client, then select 'OK' in the displayed pop-up.
- Some board graphics may display incorrectly on Macs with Intel graphics.
- Some VFX may display incorrectly on Macs.
Thanks for reading!
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