Everything you need to know

[Konstanty]

We have decided to start the test branch of the game. Once we think the new update is ready we will deploy it on the test branch before making it public.

Why?

We are a team of seven so we can either work on new features or test builds. Until now we tried to shield you, the players, from the most extreme bugs by testing the game extensively by ourselves. However, with each update testing is eating more and more of our time and with changes so extensive it's getting difficult to catch bugs.

If you would be so awesome to help us test the game it would make our work much easier.

How?

We added a new branch to the game, protected by a password. That way only players who frequent this forum will be able to switch to it. It will protect regular players from accidentally switching to potentially unstable build. I will post instructions in this subforum once we are ready. In order to access the branch:

1. Read the disclaimer below, ponder the consequences
2. Right click on the game in Steam library
3. Pick properties, then go to Betas tab
4. Enter the code "AbandonHopeAllYeWhoEnterHere" without the quotes and check it
5. From drop down list pick "Public Testing Branch"

After the game updates, you are good to go.

DISCLAIMER

The game builds available on this branch will be tested by us for mechanics and stability but there is a significant chance it might crash every once in a while (that's actually a good thing as every crash will send us the debug data).

Most importantly the save files will be upgraded to a new version once you switch to the test branch. THIS MEANS THERE IS NO GUARANTEE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO RETURN TO STABLE BRANCH WITH YOUR SAVES. You might lose your saved games or they might get corrupted beyond recovery.

The best chance to switch back to stable will be when the build from test branch goes live for everyone. I will post here every time this happens.

Sounds troublesome, why would I bother

If you don't feel like it, don't do it. It's probably not for you. This branch will be the cutting edge of the game, but it will be a double edged sword. Expect more bugs than on stable, expect crashes. On the other hand, you will get to test the Rogue long before players from the stable branch ;-)

Rules

Please use this subforum to report bugs encountered when playing the Test Branch. Otherwise, it will be chaos and we won't have the idea whenever the bugs are from stable or test.

[pendantry]

Love the idea of using the Rogue as a reward for helping test the game :)

Good for you, I hope this pans out for you guys. You deserve it!

[Konstanty]

More of an incentive than a reward really :D We did something similar with Mage (closed branch on forum) and it worked great, fixed a ton of bugs before public update. I hope we can have something similar on more regular basis. If even 12 people decide to test on this branch it will triple the testing we can do:-)

[Darkness]

In before crashes!

[Konstanty]

Just so you know, the test branch will go live tomorrow around this time. Might be a few hours earlier or later. That's assuming everything goes according to the plan

[pendantry]

I was going to ask you when you anticipated the launch of the test... I have two characters well on the way to the Freeplay section and I'd like to see how far they can get without the risk of these crashes you anticipate. I won't start any new ones yet though :)

[Konstanty]

Crashes won't affect the characters, the possibility of saved game corruption is rather low. But going back to stable "public" branch won't be possible without deleting saved games until the tests are over.

[pendantry]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Konstanty:

Crashes won't affect the characters, the possibility of saved game corruption is rather low. But going back to stable "public" branch won't be possible without deleting saved games until the tests are over.

Ah, that makes all the difference :) Bring it on!

[Konstanty]

The test branch is live, instructions in the post. Godspeed.

[rawWwRrr]

Great passcode, btw. Good reminder to those not expecting bugs. I may join the branch this weekend.

[Konstanty]

Ursprungligen skrivet av rawWwRrr:

Great passcode, btw. Good reminder to those not expecting bugs. I may join the branch this weekend.

Hehe, I used to teach and stuff you have to read doesn't engage the mind as much as stuff you have to type/copy and paste. My reasoning was to make a joke but a final warning at the same time :-)

[Darkness]

Is the rogue already unlocked in the beta (public_test branch)? I can't seem to be able to create her.

[Konstanty]

No, she is not. She is the next update once this goes live. All changes are in the changelog. It's a very big update (lots of changes to the backend among content stuff) and we want it to e as stable as possible before we add Rogue. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sure which bugs are Rogue specific and which were introduced with this update. There was a big update just before the Mage, this is Rogue's equivalent of that.

Version 0.85.13454+ - 28 June 2017

• Really important stuff first - Archdemons' duck can now be squeezed on the cross section screen
  
• The game has a new fancy book icon
  
• We also made changes to all tilesets and they might cause levels the player is currently on to be rerolled. This won't affect the characters or anything else
  
• In other news, big changes to cards cool down system. Positive effect on cooldown is no more. Now all cooldowns are negative (as in card cannot be used for the duration of cooldown and offers no special effects)
  
• All active Timed Effects on cards will end when hero exits the dungeon, this includes Mana Shield card
  
• We have made huge "under the hood" changes to the damage dealing system, practically rewriting it. Visually the most obvious change will be different and better looking shapes of the strike effects on monsters
  
• Fixed legendary Ice Bolt, it used to never trigger unless Fireball card was also equipped and then it would trigger all the time
  
• When monsters with golden shield are standing in flames and golden shield timer is sped up their shields will have a red tint to better communicate that fact to the player
  
• Bomb cards will now be better at targeting monsters that showed up after the card was activated
  
• Ranged cards like Throw or Cold Nova now will display their range in the dungeon when the player hovers mouse cursor over them
  
• Dialogue system has been rewritten. Now instead of a window over characters head all dialogue will be displayed in upper left corner of the screen with a neat character's head icon. That way dialogues won't interfere with clicking and we will have more opportunities for one-liners
  
• Added lots of missing sounds and made small improvements to a number of preexisting sounds
  
• Mage's staff and Warrior's sword now have elemental effects when their elemental cards (like Book of Fire or Frozen Flail)
  
• Hell tileset now has its own music theme
  
• Fireball's size now increases with card level
  
• Re-enabled Antipope's visual fight sequences when changing states, 20x more awesome now
  
• Added visual effects to Spell and Item cards on use, similar to the effect that was present on Artifact cards on proc
  
• Skeleton warriors now have more varied appearances, there are variants with missing body parts
  
• Level completed summary window now allows distribution level up points right in that window
  
• Tweaked monsters' accuracy modifiers granted by magical variants
  
• Skeleton Belt now works as a separate dodge mechanic, granting an extra 20% chance to dodge damage from skeletons
  
• Added a new type of tutorial - a small window that pops up on important events in a predefined area of the screen and goes away after a few seconds or when clicked. Right now it should appear when an usable card is equipped for the first time.
  
• Fire shockwaves no longer kill Fire Imps (this will prevent mass Imp suicide events)
  
• Balance: Charge Card cost increased
  
• Balance: Teleport Card cost and cooldown increased
  
• Balance: Legendary Teleport effect trigger chance decreased from 100% to 50%
  
• The Cook and Antipope now have custom casting effects
  
• The Cook and Antipope now have custom casting effects
  
• Arcane bolts deflected with legendary shield will now deal damage to enemies
  
• All missiles deflected by legendary shield won't trigger card effects now since they are technically not player's missiles
  
• Added poison death indicator. Now when monsters has enough poison to stacked to kill it a green skull icon will be displayed to the left of his health bar
  
• Poison now affects spiders when they stalk player on ceiling, spiders killed by poison when stalking fall to the ground and die
  
• Changed poison tutorial to reflect new poison mechanics
  
• Cards tutorial now mentions keyboard shortcuts
  
• Timed state tutorial rephrased to be more clear
  
• Rebalanced chances for card drops
  
• Polished Golem card effects
  
• Mage's missiles that fly too far and die will now fade out their light in a smoother manner
  
• Improved landing effects after monsters jump
  
• Added extra particle effects to casting monsters' staffs
  
• Tweaked NPC's nodding animations
  
• Current flexiscope depth is now indicated on the depth slider, so the players can see how much they will progress
  
• Increased font size in gossips for better readability
  
• Small visual fixes to quest bosses' intro scenes
  
• Font was changed in gossips, new one is not italic in order to increase readability
  
• Balance changes to various cards' cooldowns and costs
  
• Remedy card now protects from poison, stun and cold from level 1
  
• Equipped cards will now be marked as such in upgrade pane
  
• Added tooltip to the golden key, explaining that that mechanic is not yet implemented
  
• Newly found cards will now be properly marked as "unseen" with purple glows and as seen if equipped
  
• Item Cards' variants other than the equipped one will now show zero charges
  
• Equipped cards will now be marked with a green tick in upgrade pane
  
• Changes in Demonic Ring, among others fire now damages non-magical shields and shields are destroyed on fire monsters too
  
• Added tooltips to selected GUI controls
  
• Cold attacks now will trigger ice visual effect on hit, same effect will be displayed on every click on an icicle
  
• Arrows now have nice fade on appear to make them stop "popping" into existence in middle of skeletons' heads
  
• Cards "loosened" by charging goats won't get unequipped anymore when inventory was open and player clicked the card to fix it
  
• Unified use conditions for potion cards
  
• Slot buyout tooltips and confirmation windows now have more neatly formatted prices
  
• Adjusted visuals of monsters landing on the ground.
  
• Visual tweaks of magical monsters staffs
  
• Charge won't be stopped by enemy missiles
  
• Improved confirmation dialog text when switching Item Card's variant
  
• Avatar unlock progress bar cannot be moved with controller anymore (glitch was only visual)
  
• Fixed Charge card sometimes picking the direction of lasst clicked spot not the green marker
  
• Fixed a crash when upgrade card was clicked in upgrade pane with cauldron open
  
• Fixed a possible deadlock and improved timing in Quest Keys flight sequences
  
• Fixed incorect chances for icicles in Cold Nova cards
  
• Fixed a glitch that caused points needed for the next rang to be incorrectly calculated in Summary WIndow after finishing a flexiscope
  
• Fixed minor issues with Teleport Card's shockwave
  
• Fixed an issue where Mage would change targets when trying to right click and attack target
  
• Fixed appear and disappear visuals of Skeleton Whopper
  
• Fixed an issue where some body parts on larger monsters would disappear abruptly when monster's death animation started
  
• Fixed ghost movement bug that caused ghost to warp in and out of map under some circumstances
  
• Fixed true damage being damped to 1 instead of destroying elemental hearts as it should
  
• Fixed player not being slowed by monsters (only visual effects were applied)
  
• Fixed progress bar in the Summary Window
  
• Fixed errors in Archdemon scripts that rendered him mute
  
• Fixed line spacing in changelog window
  
• When avatar is changed in Summary Window the new one will be displayed (old one used to stuck around until the window was closed)
  
• Dungeon unfolding effect will no longer play at the same time as cutscene in order to avoid "sliding" effect
  
• Legendary Lightning and Staff of Lightning names swapped
  
• Visual fixes to some arrow types (added shadows and such)

[pendantry]

This isn't everything I need to know. How do I report crashes? Because it's just crashed :(

[Konstanty]

Make a new thread in this subforum tell us what causes the crash. Try reproducing the crash - if it crashes enough times due to the same bug (like 3 or 4 times) Steam will send us very precise crash data, so even crashing the game helps us :-)

[LadySky89]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Konstanty:

Crashes won't affect the characters, the possibility of saved game corruption is rather low. But going back to stable "public" branch won't be possible without deleting saved games until the tests are over.

This is pretty easy. ;)
I always do backups of my saves anyway. :)
If I decide to stop I can just erase everything, reinstall the game and copy/paste old backups.
But unless the test branch makes my life very hard, I won't be doing it.
My real issue lately is time and mood, this heat is very energy consuming by itself for me.. I'm bored and tired all the time.. :(