As some may recall, back in August we decided that v1.2 was going to be a much bigger project than originally believed and thus would be released in parts.

Those parts included (but were not limited to):

• Replays
• New AI options
• In-lobby stats
• Balance tweaks
• Modding
• Various bug fixes

Since then, the replays have been added, there’s been various balance tweaks, various bug fixes and today the in-lobby stats have been added.

That still leaves quite a bit of work left to be done before we’re ready to call it v1.2 – and that’s not including the two Demigods in development.  Modding still needs to be finished, the modding SDK is still in the works, there’s some balance and bug fixes that have been requested. Gas Powered Games is working on all of them and then some.

We have internally a beta with the new demigods but they are works in progress.  GPG is hard at work perfecting them.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to show the new Demigod in-game overlay with the stats.  Developed by Stardock, the Demigod in-game overay is designed to let us extend the in-game experience without having to change the actual game itself. To do this, I asked the WindowBlinds team to find a way to inject what would become the overlay into the game and then skin it so that it visually was compatible with Demigod. It’s not actually part of Demigod but looks like it.

Then, I asked my lead engine developer on Elemental to work with the Impulse team to get data about each player and display it inside Demigod as if it were part of the game natively.  The result is pretty cool I think and something that I think can be used on future games.

The overlay for gamers…

As a gamer, the overlay has some pretty significant benefits. 

First, you can make far more balanced teams online because you can see the winning percentages and number of games played. 

Second, you can tell what % of games a person completes. We make no judgment over why someone leaves a game early, only what % of the time it happens.

Third, you can see how familiar the players are with other players – how many of their recent games  have been played with other people in the game. This is a big deal since many players get frustrated to be randomly put together on one team and be facing 2 or 3 guys who are up on ventrillo as a pre-made team.

And last, you can read notes you  make on the player. You can enter notes about a player by clicking either on their profile on the Demigod forums OR going to the pantheon.  I make notes by going to the pantheon, finding my games and then making notes from there.

Screenshots:

If you click on the player info area in the lobby you will see this window come up.

If you click on the info button, you can see the stats on that player as well as how familiar they are with the other players and any notes you might have made.

From the Pantheon, you can look for yourself and games you’ve played and make notes on players for future reference.

The last tab on a player is where you can enter notes that you can then view in game for future reference.

We hope you guys like this update as much as we enjoyed making it.  I don’t have ETAs on the next updates yet but I am in regular contact with Gas Powered Games and new builds come into our internal QA process every few days.

Have fun!