So a lot of questions have been floating around about Alpha 9 due date, what people can expect from the update, when is more content going to become available for Under the Ocean, when will the new 3d build be released, and the short answer is "We don't know - though around the end of the year is the goal", now let me explain why.
After spending a few solid weeks playing around with view changes (and tinkering with gameplay changes in general), it has become pretty clear that the 2d game is lacking mechanically, it does everything except platforming weaker, which would be fine if the game was going to be finished as a straight platforming game, but we have wanted to add depth for some time to make things such as combat, exploration and more importantly, multiplayer have a bit more interesting.
So we have decided on a view! Now this isn't going to everyone's cup of tea and we know this, all we ask is you try it and keep an open mind before you ask for a refund! I will post screenshots as soon as they are available in this thread, but keep in mind, all the artwork will be restarted from scratch so they will be appearing slower than usual. The best example I have is double dragon though it will be a little more top down rather than more side-on :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...screenshot.png
So what are the gameplay changes from alpha 8? Well the answer is lots, and we are discovering more as we go, but here is what we would like to add/change in order of importance (I will give a brief overview until each is fully fleshed out):
SAME SCREEN & ONLINE MULTIPLAYER
This is where the current build really shines, we have local multiplayer working with the characters sharing the same screen and it is really shaping up nicely, we would like to redo some of major mechanics to be a little more co-operation focused, more on that soon.
CONTROLLER SUPPORT
We will be changing up how the mouse controls works in this build also, and introducing controller support so you can have more than one person playing at any given computer screen (we are thinking around 4 is a nice upper limit)
DEPTH BASED COMBAT & CLEANING UP THE AI
So with the extra depth gives us extra room to do more interesting combat, and as such combat will become more of a focus in this update, with good combat comes interesting enemy AI (which was more than lacking in alpha
. So enemies will pathfind toward you and have more than just "charge on the ground" type movements, we will be doing our best to incorporate co-op mechanics onto the enemies also, such as enemies that pin characters (much like the L4D hunter) or enemies that require teamwork to kill.
SIMPLIFYING THE UI
The UI will undergo a bit of an overhaul so it works with multiple players, one of the major things people expressed dis-interest in is the free-form movement inside the inventory boxes, we will most likely move to a gridded system to fix that. The other major thing is the UI will have to work well with a controller, so adding support for that will also be important. It is going to look and act quite different from the inventory in Alpha 8 currently.
FARMING
We will be putting some effort into going over the plant/herb/fruit/veg growing mechanics from Alpha 2 and reimplementing them with a much easier to use mechanic, as well as allowing players to collect neutral creatures into a pen for easy food later in the game or to pet them (in a later update).
CHANGING UP THE WATER MOVEMENT
In addition to adding water pools, we will be changing up how ocean movement works, this has been long overdue but we have been waiting for the right time to do it, in addition to pools of water and the ocean, a major new feature will be running water (creeks and bigger rivers) that act as shortcuts through certain segments though often dangerous as well (Waterfalls!)
More to come as we discover it, but hopefully you will think these changes are worth the wait, we will do our best to get this done as soon as possible but because it is such a big change across the entire game, we feel it is safer to polish this update so all of the above is playable together rather than releasing several broken builds each few weeks.
If you have any suggestions, as usual hit me up on @Farmergnome or post something here!