It's A Wipe!
Happy Thanksgiving, Steam Awards, I'm Not Dead, & Other News
First off, Happy Thanksgiving! (At least to anyone celebrating it in the U.S.)
Second thing, I'm still alive and working on the new game I mentioned last annoucement. If anyone has been keeping track of the blog I mentioned
( http://kingspointcastle.com/devblog/ ) then you probably already have a decent idea of how it is progressing. I was hoping to have it ready to try out a Kickstarter next month, coinciding with the third anniversary of It's A Wipe! being on Steam. But, I think I'm going to push that back until next year. I don't want to rush it because of some arbitrary deadline. I want to it playable before trying to get funding for better polish.
Steam is also doing another round of Steam Awards. There's a ton of great games out there, but I would appreciate any nods for I.A.W! Heh, even the somewhat backhanded "Whoa, Dude!".
No real updates to It's A Wipe! in a while, since as far as I know it is working fine. I haven't heard about any bugs in over a year, though that might just be due to lack of players :unhappyraider: Just as a reminder, I did put together a utility to be able to make Player Made Raids. No one has followed up with me for assistance with making one or with a raid to post. So, I don't know if anyone else has ever used it. If anyone does have an interest in expanding the game with their own raid ideas, feel free to drop me a line if you find there's any missing functionality in the utility that you need.
That's about all I have to write about at the moment. Hopefully I'll be back with more news about the new project in a few months. I hope that everyone has a great week and enjoys the current Steam sale and thank you for taking the time to read this!
Happy 2nd Anniversary!
First off, Olly, who did the music, sound, and a lot of menu work on It's A Wipe! has his own game coming out on Steam! It is a very challenging platformer titled 'Happy Birthday, Bernard'. You can check it out here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/552330 !
Second, work has begun on a spiritual successor to I.A.W! I have started work on a more serious take on fantasy guild management. The working title for the project is Heroes of Kingspoint and I have put up a little development blog to track its progress here: http://kingspointcastle.com/devblog/ .
It is a very basic, no thrills blog at the moment. But, I will be posting weekly updates on where the state of the project stands and continue to work on this site as well. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future it will be ready for Steam!
The Future, Steam Awards, & Feedback
Sorry for the long time between announcements, but for those not reading the forums there was a little discussion about when will something new be coming out for It's A Wipe!?! The answer is eventually. I am interested in getting back to doing some more video work, but it is going to take some time to come out with something new with real substance to it. To that end, I would be interested in hearing people's feedback before I get heavily invested in the next release.
The three basic ideas I'm thinking about are: a sequel to It's A Wipe!, a more serious take on fantasy guild management, or a smaller expansion to It's A Wipe! Here's my take on the pros and cons of the different options:
It's A Wipe 2! - I'm starting with this, because it is what I'm leaning towards at the time of this posting. A sequel in my mind would allow for redoing some components of the game to try to improve them, while still keeping the general theme and letting players carry forward their guilds. I feel like the combat system could use a bit of a revamp to allow for new mechanics and a bit more player interaction. The cons would be that it would be a decent investment of both time and money to get done. The original game was done with an intentionally simple design and still took quite a while to complete. But, there is the original to use as a reference and to build upon.
A Serious Fantasy Guild Management Game - This has most of the same cons as doing a sequel, just with the added disadvantage that there would not really be any continuation of guilds from the original. However, it would allow for a change in tone that I would not be comfortable doing in a sequel. This is something that I want to do eventually, even if it is not the next project.
An It's A Wipe! Expansion - The third option would be to do additional content to the existing game. A big pro to this option is that it would likely take the least time to make. The real difficulty would be in coming up with novel fights that don't rehash existing mechanics, without really retooling the combat system. That's why I'm leaning on a sequel rather than additional content for the original. I did spend a good bit of time adding player made raids as a feature, which has not seemed to see much use from what I can tell. At least no one's uploaded anything to the Workshop or let me know that anything isn't working with it.
So, let me know your thoughts! What would you be interested in seeing? What do people think about Kickstarter funding? The original was done out of pocket, since I did not want to waste time trying to fund raise when I could be coding. Though, that might have hurt the art budget.
I also wanted to mention the Steam Awards that they are doing currently and encourage people to go vote. It does not have to be for this game, though I would appreciate it. But, go out there and give indy games some love ːveryhappyraiderː
It's A Patch! (Version 1.9.9)
Been playing It's A Wipe! again recently and found a couple minor things that could use fixing :)
Here's what is fixed in 1.9.9:
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* What Time Is It? *
- Fixed an issue with the save game date index. Apparently the engine was using some odd time calculation based off the run time since last startup. Changed it to actually be the system time.
* Get Back In Line! *
- Added a small change that after a fight ends, melee DPS will move back to the front row and Healers will move back to the front row.
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It has been a while since the last patch, as I have been mainly working on some other projects (or, playing other people's games) of late. That and I was probably a little disappointed at the lack of interest in the player made raids ːunhappyraiderː If anyone does find any other issues, please let us know so we can try to fix them! May try to do a little something new for It's a Wipe! when time permits :)
It's A Wipe! 1.9.8 1/2 - Mini-Patch!
A few bug fixes have been applied, so I thought that I would roll it up into a nice set of patch notes for anyone that doesn't read the forums :) Also, one updated button graphic! Here is what is new in 1.9.8 1/2:
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* Unintended Iron Man *
- Fixed (hopefully!) an issue where the new save file index, added in the last patch, was not building correctly for new installs causing saved games to only appear in the session that they were saved in. If you have this issue, in the %appdata%\Roaming\Independent\IAWGame\game\data folder there should be a saves.txt that you can delete. The next time you load it will rebuild this index file from the existing saved games.
* Deja Vu *
- Fixed an issue where the first fight of the Insect Temple was also the second fight :/ Some testing code that wasn't removed before posting 1.9.8.
* Free Time! *
- Fixed an issue with Too Much Free Time achievement not triggering. If you have completed this achievement it will trigger the next time that game is played and the day progresses.
* Shiny New Button *
- The Player Made Raid button has been updated to better match with the rest of the Town Menu.
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Please let us know if you do find anything else that you feel may be a bug so we can look into it! We hope that you enjoy the game!
It's A Wipe! 1.9.8 - Quality of Life Improvements
A few improvements to the game, mainly relating to save game sorting and the demo for player made raids. Here's the full list of what is new in 1.9.8:
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* Saving Time *
- Save games will now log the date and time that they are saved into a separate index. The newest saves will now be displayed at the top of the list when loading a new game. The first time the game loads after this patch it will build an initial index using the former alphabetical listing. This system was already in place when using a custom save path, though there was some clean up of the sorting routine for that system as well.
* What Time Is It? *
- Added a small display of the current combat round at the bottom of the combat screen.
* New Art! (But, not that much) *
- Some updated images for the demo player made raid, as well as added some handling for effects to display based on more keywords from flavor text.
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Please let us know if you find any issues or have any suggestions! Thanks for playing!
It's A Wipe! 1.9.7 - First Patch of 2016!
After a LOT of play testing over the New Year holiday we have made a few small corrections to issues that we found. There's also a couple minor tweaks for clarity and ease of use, mainly focused around the Log window. Here's what's new in 1.97:
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* Logs, Down & to the Right *
- Adjusted the size and position of the log window, and the button that opens it. The log button has been moved to the upper left hand corner, and the log shifted so it is visible. The button now changes to an X when the window is open, and reverts back to the scroll window icon when closed. Finally, the log window no longer overflows the bottom of the screen on 640x480 mode.
* Hard BOTS, Now Slightly Harder *
- Corrected an issue with the boss of the Insect Temple raid where one ability was not triggering properly on HBOTS mode.
* Glitter, Old & New *
- The second boss of the Insect Temple was using an animation that was a combination of the druid and cleric healing effects. When these were revamped, they were no longer so appropriate. Put back in the old graphics for this ability. Also, since this raid is not supposed to be about heavy AOE damage, changed this attack from a mass AOE to a targeted splash attack with slightly reduced damage.
* Quiet Wizards *
- Fixed two issues with Wizards not displaying text. When last hitting a monster, the combat round would end before the damage text was being output to the log. Second, when charmed they were not displaying any text for their round. Both of these should now be corrected.
* This (Probably) Changes Nothing *
- Put in some checks that the screen resolution actually changed when trying to set it to a new size. The game tends to crash when it fails, so this may not matter :/ Probably need to make game engine changes to handle this better.
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Please let us know what you think of the changes to the log. Other than that, please let us know if you find any issues or have any suggestions! Thanks for playing!
It's A Wipe! 1.9.6 - Last Patch Of The Year!
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* BOTS - Now Hard *
- A new HBOTS (Heroic/Hard Bots) has been added. Morale is disabled, but the monsters are more in line with the stats in PVP mode.
* It's An Achievement! *
- Added two new achievements. One for beating HBOTS mode and another for beating any Player Made Raid.
* Knowing Their Place *
- Made a change (correction?) to how raiders remember their row based off their role if it was changed during a fight. Healers changed to DPS should now properly stay in the front row, and DPS'ing clerics that were changed to Healers will stay in the back row.
* Only The Devs Know Anything Is Wrong*
- Fixed some issues with the second Insect Temple fight where the boss wasn't all her abilities.
* The Sound of Silence *
- Fixed an issue where charmed Wizards weren't displaying any announcement text during their turn.
* Keyboard V. Mouse *
- Fixed an issue with the New Game screen where making a game mode selection with the mouse would cause the left and right keyboard commands to stop functioning on that screen.
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As always, we hope that you enjoy the game and please let me know if you have any issues or suggestions!
New Project From IAW Project Member
It's A Wipe! - 1.9.5 - One Year Anniversary Patch
Posting this up a little earlier than the actual anniversary, but we wanted to get some of the big changes we've been working on out to everyone. The biggest item is that this patch introduces a way to make player created raid content and upload it to a Steam Workshop. It's a little rough around the edges, but we hope to refine it time goes on and we get feedback from users. There is also a new option when starting a game to have randomized raiders available.
Here's a full list of what is in this patch:
*Even More RNG!*
- When starting a new game you can select Random or Preset (classic style) raiders. Random will randomize the personalities and availability of raiders. There is still some modification for difficulty settings.
*Better... or, sometimes much worse*
- When playing with the Random raider selection, new perks and disads have been added. Disads only appear on Role-Play or harder difficulty settings.
*Not As Easy As It Looks*
- The ability to design player made raids has been introduced. There is currently 1 demo raid, but we hope that more will be added soon. A guide has been posted with directions on the community page.
*Faster!*
- The speed on slow, normal, and fast have been increased. Slow is now the old normal, normal is now the old fast, and fast is about 50% faster. The fastest game speed remains unchanged. You may need to change your speed setting the next time you load your game. If anyone find any graphical glitches on the new fast please let us know. We ended up disabling a lot of effects on the fastest speed because they didn't display correctly.
*Better Looking Healing*
- Updated the animations for cleric and druid healing.
*TLDR*
- Added some additional tool tip, mainly on the new game screen.
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We're interested in feedback on the new player created content and hope that people will be interested in making some! If you are working on content and would like some mechanic that is not currently available, please hit us up on the community forums or via e-mail (support@iawgame.com) and we'll see if we can't get it added in a new patch.
We hope that you enjoy these new changes! And, thank you for playing It's A Wipe!