Beta 2D is the last of the Beta 2 builds which were designed to test connectivity.  Over the weekend we spent a lot of time working on the connectivity server – the “magical” feature that Demigod makes use of to make connectivity a lot better and easier than what has been seen in typical RTS.

The release of Beta 2D showed a killer bug in the Impulse Reactor back end that caused it to just fail in setting up connections after a couple hours.  That got fixed (we hope) on Sunday night. We’ll know more soon.

That leads us to dealing with the remaining biggest challenge with regards to connectivity: The peer connectivity.  Right now, it only takes ONE person who can’t be connected to in a given game to cause the infinite “connecting” dialog to come up.

We have to do two things still:

1) We need to improve this substantially.  Beta 2D increases the likelyhood of success to around 80% (needs to be 99% by ship date).  Ironically, my work machine is one of the machines that can’t easily be connected to when it’s hosting.

2) We need a better way to eject players who can’t connect so they don’t hold up everyone else.

But at this point, we’re at a stage where we can start debugging that and move to Beta 3 which has the tournament code and we can really get into the balance part of the game.

We’ve learned a lot from this beta.  One of the things we’ve learned is that we really need to do a better job conditioning beta testers that the Demigod betas are just that – BETAS. They aren’t marketing experiments.  We’ve had lots of posts complaining that the game is (wait for it) “buggy”.  Or comparing the game’s balance or features to some shipping game.

Having shipped the “Strategy Game of the Year” for the past 2 consecutive years (GalCiv II and Sins of a Solar Empire) I would hope that we would get cut some slack that we know something of what we’re doing but then again, it is the Internet.

Here’s an interesting factoid that Sins of a Solar Empire players can tell you:

The economic model in Sins of a Solar Empire didn’t get its final version until GAMMA (that’s after the betas).  Before Gamma 3, asteroids and such ran out of resources (metal and crystal) eventually.  Imagine how different Sins of a Solar Empire would be. There also wasn’t an “unfair” difficulty level in Sins until the gammas.

With Beta 3, we get to start finally getting into the actual balance and game play a lot more.  Obviously, the game isn’t going to radically change in terms of scope. It’s not going to become a first person shooter.

So here are a few things that we’re looking at as a sample:

MY  personal opinions:

• Currencies should increase gold income by a % not a raw amount.
  • Currency I: Increases gold income by 20%
    • Cost increased to $2000
  • Currency II: Increases gold income by 40%
    • Cost increases to $4000
  • Currency III: Increases gold income by 60%
    • Cost increased to $6000
• Experience I
  • Experience I: increases XP generation by 10%
  • Experience II: increase XP generation by 20%
  • Add: Experience III at level 5: Increases XP generation by 30%
    • Cost $2400
  • Experience IV at level 6: Increases XP generation by 40%
• Graveyard
  • Graveyard I moved to war rank 1. Lowers Death Penalty by 10%. Cost 600
  • Graveyard II moved to war rank 3. Lowers death penalty by 20%. Cost 1800
  • Graveyard III. Lowers death penalty by 40%.
• Priests moved to war rank 3.
• Angels should be moved to war rank 10, made a lot tougher, should only be 1 of them.
• Catapultasuri should be moved to war rank 5. Should only be 2 of them but tougher (more HP).
• Giants should be moved to war rank 7.

• Requested new item: Totem of Cancelation: (replaces totem of revelation if necessary)
  • Cost: 200
  • Wipes out any mines or similar things in an area when placed.
• Requested new item: Scroll of Health
  • Cost: 1000
  • Casting time: INSTANT
  • Restores 1000 health
• Restorative scroll should eliminate Regulus tracking device
• Requested new item: Gauntlets of Demolition
• Requested new item: Scroll of Demolition
  • Does 2000 damage to a structure
  • Cost $2000
• Requested new item: Scroll of Invincibility
  • Unit is invincible for 3 seconds
  • Instant cast time
  • Cost: 200
• Eliminate:
  • Combat health potion
  • Combat mana potion
  • Rejuvenation Elixir (the cheap one)
• Armor: Need to be careful about how much armor we give players so that they don’t become invincible.

Demigods

Assassins

• The rook moves far too fast by default. He’s a walking castle! Super tough but super slow.

Generals

• Fewer minions that are a lot tougher.
• 1^st level minions can only have 2 of with you.
• 2^nd level minions can only have 4 of them with you.
• 3^rd level minions can have 4 of them with you.
• Generals should do less damage in battle. (the Oak, for instance, starts out doing like 150 damage per second).

Misc.

• Edge scroll should be on by default
• Multplayer is set to a threshold of 200ms. Can we increase this to 350ms?
• Is the game clock a real clock or one based on performance?
• Still need a fancier progress bar displayed when taking a flag
• Amount spent in upgrades should be displayed in the final game score
• # of upgrades paid for should be displayed in the in-game score screen
• Damage done by the general’s minions is not displayed
• The voice acting on Regulus could use some work. The original Regulus voice was much better.
• War score and war rank need to be synched up so that war rank is simply war score / 1000.

Those are just my personal thoughts.  The next step is that we talk it over and decide what makes the most sense to do.