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:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

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:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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:

These builds were a long time coming because I had to re-do the entire inside of the game in preparation for spectation and replays, which aren’t quite done yet, but are getting closer.  However, I put in a bunch of really important bug fixes, the cool looking “menu party”, the oft-requested “back button” on the game setup screens, and Practice Mode is now handled properly so it can be used for bug repros much more reliably.  Also, you can see some nascent spectation action developing with the addition of hitting <tab> to switch between Spy and Sniper views in Practice Mode.

Oh, and of course:

Santalanterns! Inspiration courtesy of zerotka, as per usual with our holiday Easter Eggs!

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. If you really want to see that, here is your link.

I spent yesterday cutting a trailer to show off the fancy new characters and level:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That video spends a bunch of time ogling the new characters in their environment so you can get a feel for the quality of the models and animations in the game. I’m really happy with how they’re looking, and they’re going to get even better looking in the future: you can still see animation pops, interpenetration, and various oddnesses, and the lighting model is not even close to final, especially on the environment. Still, it’s a huge step! Poor Security Agent Damon…

I think I’m at the wrong party. Where did these people get mouths, eyelids, and fingers?

As you can see in the video, I put the new artwork in alongside the old art in a new map named Modern. The old art is going to be around for a long time because it’s where all the tuning and balancing effort has gone over the years, so you fans of nostalgia will have plenty of quality time with it. 

Modern, the new art level! Don’t expect much, gameplay-wise yet, but it’s pretty!

The new art isn’t very playable yet, since we only have the five characters so far, and only a subset of all the animations even for those. John is working away furiously on getting statues and books and drinks and briefcases and everything else supported by the new folks, and then he’ll move on to do the next batch of characters. It will be a while before the new art is tournament worthy.

I don’t want to spend much time on the gameplay for the new art until we have a critical mass of characters to make it a real competition-worthy level, but I did realize people would want to play on the new map with the new art because it’s shiny, so I made a few gameplay modifications and spent a bit of effort getting it working as a game. First, I added the option to only enable a single mission on the map, so you can do “Known 1″ or “Any 1 of 3″ game types. Since there are only five characters, it turns this map into a bit of a Balcony-lite, which is fun. Second, based on playtesting it on stream the other night, I made the Ambassador unknown to the Sniper. So, combining these, you can do “Known 1 Bug Ambassador”, where the Spy tries to get away with bugging when the Sniper knows he or she is going to do it, but the Sniper doesn’t know which character is the Ambassador! 

It’s a little silly, but it’s fun and it actually elucidated a few interesting things for me about the design going forward, including how nice the game looks from the Sniper viewpoint without the triangles on people’s heads, and also how interesting it is to try to deduce characters from their behavior. The Ambassador has a “personal space violation” mechanic that triggers if somebody stands too close, and watching for that kind of behavior is very much in line with the design aesthetics I’m going for with SpyParty. You can even pretend you’re the Ambassador by bailing out when somebody stands too close to you for too long!

I’ll write more about this change later, but the impetus for doubling up the statues at the front of Veranda was a series of player-designed and requested game modes. First, people have been playing “Known 3 Soft Tells” on Ballroom lately. The Spy always chooses Contact Double Agent,¹ Inspect Statues, and Seduce Target. The Sniper knows these are the three missions, which is usually a camping deathtrap, but you can’t really camp “soft tell missions”, and so the mode is fairly balanced, and has a great feel, still well within the aesthetics of the game, but with a distinctly different flavor. Of course, this led to more experimentation, and the question became whether it was possible on Veranda, the map that’s really hard for the Sniper. Well, after adding “Known 3″ as an available game mode, it turns out “Known 3 Hard Tells” works on Veranda, since it’s such a big and busy map, but the soft tells version didn’t work because all the statues were far apart, so you had to inspect them one at a time, and NPCs rarely visit the status three times on Veranda. The soft tells version was harder than the hard tells version on the easiest map for Spies?! Game design is confusing. Anyway, I doubled up the statues and we’ll see how that changes the balance of the map. It’s one of the least-played maps, mostly because it’s such a big time and attention investment, and so I think this will breathe some life into it, for a while, at least.

I also managed to stream the release of this build, which I’m going to try to make a regular thing. I went through the bug fixes, and then played the always-awesome kate for a bunch of games of “k3 soft” and “k3 hard” on the new Veranda, and had a blast and a pretty big audience considering it was 2am PDT. I’ve uploaded the video to the SpyParty YouTube Channel, and here it is (the games start at 18:23):

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are a few things I’ll fix next time I do this, and please post a comment below if you have additional things you think I should do:

• mic farther from mouth!
• don’t bother going through the old build’s bugs, it’s not incredibly interesting, it takes forever, and OBS does a horrible epilepsy inducing flicker (at 14:40) during restart
• get TeamSpeak and whatnot set up before I start streaming :/

Here are the official release notes:

• double up front statues in veranda, yikes!
• push modal message background farther back in the hopes of making text visible
• try to fix more lobby list scroll bugs by clearing selected client
• finally (?) fix the lobby state sort
• don’t set last keyboard time on repeats, so now menus work with keys down for teamspeak
• mask spy/normal keys for HL/LL if typing chat string
• flirt % in seduction HUD
• display number of required inspects in mission name
• added –nosound command line for debugging directsound issues…better to use –mute if you just don’t want sounds
• true up lobby details and /who so awayis last (for easy /who -> ctrl-c action)

1. aka. “Banana Bread”

I’ll do a post with numbers from the open beta launch sometime next week, but it’s going great, and I’m super happy and relieved. I was really worried about the community, and all the new players are blending into the community really well, and it all feels very healthy. Phew!

This build was almost exclusively bugs and minor features for supporting lobby rooms with lots of people in them. Most of these were discovered as the result of the human load test we did right before opening the beta. The main problem was that with lots of people in the lobby, you couldn’t really mouse-over somebody to reliably invite them into a game, so I struggled with how to solve this until somebody in the lobby said, “hey, there’s a problem because the player under my mouse keeps changing”, which pointed me to a reasonable and obvious solution: keep the player under your mouse fixed, even if they’re moving around in the sort order (due to other players joining or leaving, or due to them changing state). This is slightly weird, because it means you can get into a state where the lobby has scrolled such that there’s a blank space above or below, but it works pretty well.

Edge behavior for fixed-point mouse selection.

I created a new “release notes” tag, so you’ll be able to find all of the posts about new builds. I’m also going to start “streaming the release notes”, meaning I’m going to start up a live stream on the SpyParty twitch.tv channel, and walk through the changes in the build on video. Then I can put that up on the SpyParty YouTube  channel for later view. The idea here is to capture a bit of the coolness of a well-edited video of changes, like the Overgrowth folks do, but without spending the time editing the video. It’ll be rough, but it will keep me from triggering my perfectionism neurons and fiddling forever with the clip. So, hopefully it’ll be a good comprimise. I wanted to do a stream for this build, but it was 2:30am when I finished it, so I couldn’t pull it off. Luckily, drawnonward and canadianbacon were streaming when I was working on it, and they convinced me to add 3 Known Missions on Veranda for craziness. You can see that video here, it’s pretty close to the kind of release notes streaming I’m going to do…casual, chatting in TeamSpeak, but previewing the features in real time.¹

Here are all the changes for version 0.1.2758.0:

• k3 enabled on veranda…k3 hard tells anyone?
• true up the triangles and the text in selected but not necessarily enabled missions
• better /who /stats formatting
• /help take command for single line help
• shrink lobby a bit more to avoid red text and make /away visible
• fix 00:00 event time bugs in pending mission state
• stop accidentally filtering suspected da cast events
• make lobby details a tiny bit more compact…user /stats username for full stats
• practice mode on lobby escape menu
• invites beep on whisper settings or chat settings
• make –console –logstderr dump log to console window for debugging startup problems
• better /who stats, idle, away on own line for copy
• /statsroom /whoroom /wr
• sort by column in lobby by clicking on the column titles
• sort /who clients correctly, by current lobby sort
• new fixed-point list ui for list stability, the player under your mouse will stay under your mouse, even as they change state, it’s weird, but will avoid misclicks
• fix bug with not setting changed number on destroys
• don’t output warning if can keep current completion string
• fix whisper (lobby) bug
• correct single-line chat paging with room masking…goes back in time in all rooms simultaneously, which is slightly weird
• beeps respect room mask too
• allow tab room changes in lobby settings and room chooser
• make lobby say messages room based, so can be masked
• only change chat usernames for completion if clients join/leave
• clients stick around exiting if leave lobby, and leaving room for 2 seconds
• sort lobby list by state with invites and exits in prev state, playing by timestamp

Those are just the raw notes I post in the private beta forums,² so they might not mean much if you’re not a player. The way to solve that problem is obviously to become a player!

Up next, a couple super-minor fixes to this build, and then a brand new mission! I haven’t added a mission in a long time, so this will really change things. I’ll talk more about that in another post, but I’m hoping to have it stood up this week.

1. And, watching it myself from his point-of-view I just found a couple bugs with the update system!
2. …which I might make publicly read-only some day, they’re such a wealth of information about the game!

This build, v0.1.2487.0, was supposed to be a quicky, but it snowballed bigtime.  Here are the release notes from the private beta forums:

Uh, this was supposed to be a quick update.

• add idle timestamp to invite confirmation if player is idle
• s/In Lobby/In Room/ in lobby status
• auto-idle state in lobby after 5 minutes of no input to SpyParty
• display away message when playing
• tiebreaker for both players hitting spy or sniper at the same time in match menu – kind of a hack
• wait a bit after putting down briefcase
• couriers never stand on a pad to pick up or put down briefcase
• ambassador won’t put down briefcase unless it can be picked up without standing on a pad
• display game type and level on match results screen
• Happy Valentine’s Day (belated due to a cold) – thank zerotka for the awesome idea!
• pointier convo arrow
• reenable previous talker arrow
• add concept of “important” NPCs (like green statue swapper)
• sort important NPCs higher/lower than unknown cast
• put a grey bar on them in the portraits on result screen
• play microfilm failure animation if bailing on action test
• drink events for accept, reject, offer, waiter giving up
• okay/good/bad -> white/green/red in mission preview text
• much more visible sniper crosshairs
• try harder to find a spot if you’re forced to go to pedestal
• delay forcing swapper until outside min radius and then random timer
• finally solved the mystery of the floor pad rotations, old click-to-move ui vestige, thanks kcmmmmm!
• round event for cast member picking up pending statue
• handle room name escapes before eating whitespace
• ignore escape until endgame results synced to avoid lobby kicks and disabled Spy/Sniper menu items
• setting to not print /help on lobby entry
• allow big lobby font, allow ellipsis in settings and lobby escape menu
• Damon at least looks at the corpse, for god’s sake
• arrow ui for conversation talking turns
• version number in screenshot name
• toby offers drink and waits until accept or refuse
• break up too-long chat lines correctly with wrapping
• settings in lobby escape menu uses new lobby layout
• small timestamp font, only do time, not date (clipboard still gets full date)
• sync up /time format
• block actions while putting down or handing off briefcase
• allow Toby to go more places and offer more drinks (like the back side of Balcony, which he basically was afraid to visit)
• new walking bug tuning, midpoint, tighter radii, etc
• display autolock animation times correctly in spy disk
• move ambassador personal space radius in a bit so not as jumpy
• bulge cy2 pillar out a bit more, but NPCs really hug it, better practice this or get shot by r7
• whiter whites for your username
• fix bug if spawn at convo center you’re going to
• if you’re finishing convo because you’re lonely, and somebody shows up, go back to listening
• retry look areas if your spot is taken
• clear the customer’s queue so don’t take drinks long after waiter leaves
• make veranda front a little wider for pathing sanity
• walking people count as violating ambassador’s personal space, so spy can’t twitch
• version check content package to avoid weird bugs
• fix lobby chat crash bug
• draw cast bars with quads, size properly
• sort known-to-sniper cast members low, unknown (like seduction target, no-suspected double agents) high
• splash screen works on wineskin (non-transparent)
• expand results screen portraits on mouseover now that we have a mouse on that screen
• fix results display for multiple consecutive time-adds
• only push round events if playing
• push round event on shift-m add time
• flicker ambassador ui during leaving, not go to red (ST color)
• grey outlines in results, not yellow

So, the briefcase/floor-pad thing is kinda huge. Having to actively reject Toby is kinda huge. New green swap is big. I don’t even remember what else. Yikes.

Chris