Naga Queen is excited about the new build!
My initial plan for this release was to get right back into content updates. I got started with a nice bit of planning for the content update, and then remade the text editor in the new engine so I’d actually be able to get story text back into the game.
Unfortunately, mid-development, I started to realize just how broken the old Flash version is after hearing more and more bug reports for it. There’s a lot of subtle, game breaking bugs in it (like in the dino chapter where depending on which Flash runtime engine you use, Hanako will give you inaccurate directions and make the chapter unbeatable).
The new web version is much more stable and fixes those problems, and it’s the version of the game I strongly recommend people to use for that reason. One big thing that will help with more people using the new version is getting save/load ported over so you won’t have to rely on Flash to access save files.
So, here’s the new updates in this build:
Save/Load
The main feature of r41.5 is reintroducing save/load — a (perhaps) surprisingly large task given how everything ties into the save/load system. The new save/load system also includes new save file slots for subscribers, for a total of 20 slots. More slots support has been frequently requested, so hopefully comes in handy!
The system should be backwards compatible with old save files from previous Flash versions of the game. Under the hood, the format is pretty different, although as much as 10x more space-efficient versus the old method.
If you have an old save file that won’t load, or a new one that doesn’t seem to save/load correctly, please report it as a bug and attach your save file. (Remember, you don’t even need to register a separate account on the bug tracker, it uses your existing one 🙂 If the fields on the bug report confuse you, most of them you can leave blank.)
Wyvern TF
In order to prevent the game getting into a weird state with save/load, I also went ahead and ported the TF part of the Wyvern DLC. Note that it doesn’t include the monster part of that since that was implemented as a mod, and modding hasn’t been implemented yet. Even without, this is still a quite fun TF to play. Until that content comes online, the second easiest way to get knocked up as a Wyvern is to find the Octomaid in the debug rooms.
Login System
Also to support save/load, the login system has been added in the new engine. This mostly is needed for players using the demo without starting logged in, who then decide they’d like to login mid-game so as to save their progress.
In that case, you’d see the new login screen:
Text Editor
The text editor is an important tool that I use to get text into the game and tested. The first part of this release was spent getting this up and running so that I’d be able to eventually get game content added again.
Unlike the old Flash engine where the tool was limited to myself, the parse tester part of this tool can now be used by modders directly to test out your strings… though that may not be overly useful until modding itself is implemented again. Still, you can check it out by pressing ` if you want to.
Misc
- Support for much longer text on-screen (this involved writing a packet splitting system; fixes #83).
- Self-test mode – now as part of automated builds, the game will self-test on a small collection of save files to flag potential issues. This helped find a bunch of potential save/load errors before this build got released. In future, I’d like to expand this to more areas of automated testing.
- UI Windowing system to support the Text Editor.
- When in water, don’t assume slugs are grinding against the floor since there may not be a floor. (Have them grind against themselves instead :3)
- Frogs can now breathe underwater, and won’t produce visible slime when either in water or underwater (Fixes #67).
- Added a quick search bar to the bug tracker header to quickly find issues.
- Fixed bug where frog TF player description is missing player eyes description.
This build is now released in both full version and demo variants.
Fan Art Contest Reminder
Don’t forget there is a fan art contest going on now. We’ve already had one lovely entry (thank you!), but we have three prizes to give out!
UPDATE – Hotfix
41.51 fixes a bug in this version that caused frogs to respawn in ch7 — thanks for the report!