The new map, Gallery, is out in the latest build! The design goal for this map was to make it long and narrow with a lot of dynamic occlusion caused by the partygoers.

Obey local ordinances!

It seemed to work pretty well, we played it during the release notes stream, where I did two different “birthday games”, the first set with scientist for his 5k birthday, and then smash10101 for his 1k birthday.

I made a few subtle behavior changes for this new map:

• I made paintings more attractive on this map, and to do that I had to slightly change their probabilities on Ballroom. I think it won’t be noticeable, but we’ll see.
• Due to restrictive local ordinances, open containers of alcohol cannot be consumed or served on the sidewalk. Some people flout these ordinances, but most partygoers are responsible citizens.
• The conversations are a little less crowded now. People will still stand close to each other, but they won’t all jam into a tiny conversation circle, so you have to be a little more aware of how the NPCs behave around crowded conversations. I had to be careful with this code so I didn’t break the delicate balance of Balcony, but I think I was successful. I’m sure the beta players will tell me if I screwed it up!

Also in this build, I worked around a bug in Wineskin so MacOS beta testers should have their replays directories updated properly now.  

If you’re a beta tester already, come try out the new map, it’ll be there after you auto-update. If you’re not, what are you waiting for?

Here’s the video, and if you want notification of videos like this, you can subscribe to the SpyParty YouTube channel:

I must face facts:  I am not very good at sending out update emails to the SpyParty beta testers.  When you sign up for the Early-Access Beta, you get put on the private “beta announcement” mailing list, which is where I’m supposed to send, well, announcements about the beta.  However, the last mail I sent to that list was June 3rd, 2013, about load testing while the beta was still closed!  I mean, there’s obviously such a thing as too much email, but one email per year is probably not it.  I post in the private beta forums every day, and obviously I’m active here on the blog and on twitter and facebook, but everybody has a different way they like to get information so neglecting the mailing list is kinda dumb of me.  Apparently I didn’t send mail about the new character art, or the new environment art, or the Panopticon level, or the Purloin Guest List mission, or any of that yummy stuff.

So, naturally, given my competence in this area, I’m going to start yet another mailing list!  Hmm, I need a cute name for it…right now I’m just calling it the SpyParty News.

This new one doesn’t require you to be in the beta to subscribe, so if you’re holding off on joining the beta, but still want email updates on SpyParty, this is the list for you.  You can see the place to enter your email address over there on the right side at the top of the sidebar.   Oh, too far to move your eyes?  Okay, here you go:

Enter your email to get SpyParty News!

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There’s more!  I’m also going to start actually sending to these mailing lists a little bit more frequently.  I’m going to shoot for one mail a month to this newsletter list and see if I can stick to that.  Baby steps.  Making indie games requires wearing a lot of different hats, and time management is not my strong suit, but hopefully I can handle sending out a mail every month talking about what cool stuff I worked on for the game.  I think the mails to this newsletter list will be different from the mails to the beta announcement list, since the former is mostly for people who aren’t in the beta, while the latter can be more specific about build numbers and have links to the beta forum threads and whatnot in it.  If you’re already in the beta, feel free to subscribe to the newsletter to receive more of my inspiring prose, but don’t feel like you must to avoid missing things if you actively check the forums and follow SpyParty on the social interwebs.

The other thing I’m going to do is add the 25k people who signed up for the closed beta but that haven’t joined yet, and who I haven’t emailed since the beta opened.  These people expressed interest in the game, but  if they don’t check the social media outlets or the blog manually, I’ve completely neglected to let them know what’s happening with SpyParty.  I’m constantly seeing comments and tweets from people who don’t even know the beta is open and are pleasantly surprised to find it is; as I said in a GDC talk a couple years back:  No One Knows About Your Game.

Gallery

And if you made it this far, here’s a teaser image from the new map I’m working on, called Gallery, that should be out soon, maybe tonight if everything goes smoothly.  The idea behind Gallery is to recreate one of those SOHO art gallery spaces, long and narrow, and the Sniper can only see in the end, so there’ll be a bunch of character-based-occlusion.  It should be pretty different from the existing maps, which is in line with my goal of exploring the space of maps and missions.

Hopefully Toby won’t serve drinks out on the sidewalk. Going to have to add that to his AI.

Didn’t like the dumpster? Fine, have a restaurant YOU CAN NEVER VISIT.

What, are you saying my 30+ minute rambles about the new In-Game Replays System are too long? Fine, be that way. Well, zerotka‘s got you covered. He created a short and punchy trailer for using replays on the SpyParty YouTube channel to figure out why you got highlit1 and shot, check it out:

What’s that you say? You want another half-hour ramble by me showing off some major (and some minor) new replays features? Okay, well, we’ve got that too:

1. highlighted? [↩]

I expected the community to do cool stuff with replays, but this was even better than I expected!

The other day, kcmmmmm grabbed a set of replays from a match played between drawnonward and smash10101, and went through them on his stream, analyzing the games, remarking on good and bad plays, getting into the minds of the players, and saying what he would have done in various situations.  I learned a ton from this; it was incredibly educational to hear how an elite player sizes up a situation and prioritizes and makes decisions.  He talks about opening theory, planning your “banana bread” and responding to it as Sniper, and highlight and lowlight strategy, and tons of stuff, so I’m posting it here for everybody to enjoy.

He works through about 10 games in an hour and a half or so.  If you don’t have time for it all, start at 32:15 and watch that game for a few minutes, there’s some great analysis of the various moves in that one (but really, they’re all great!).

This was cool enough that I added an “analysis” category to the blog, with the expectation that we’ll get more of these!

I just released build v0.1.3240.0 to the beta, which has some minor bug fixes, but also In-Game Replays, the coolest thing since the new art went in!

I am incredibly excited about the potential for replays!  I can’t use enough exclamation points!!!

Update:  zerotka made a cool trailer showing them off:

I wrote about replays a bit, but seeing them in action is way cooler.  As usual, I streamed the release notes on the SpyParty twitch channel, but I cleaned up the video and put it on the YouTube channel.  It’s about 35 minutes long, and shows off some of the cool aspects of replays, and then I answer some interview questions from the beta testers until Comcast decided it was time for the stream to end:

I think replays are going to really help people take their play even deeper than before.  Even in the few games I’ve played with it in the wild, it’s made me think about how things I did as a Spy looked from the Sniper side, and how better to protect my Spy actions.  I used to think replays were going to help the Sniper more, since you could study Spy moves, but now I’m not so sure…it’s really useful to be able to see your mistakes from the Sniper’s perspective, so you can learn to blend into the crowd more effectively.

And, now that the “hard part” is done, onward to Spectation and the Replays Database!

Oh, I put this note up after editing this stream: