Hello everyone!
It's been a while we didn't really give news over here. I'm here to fix that! Bear with me, it'll be a bit long but I think that's important.
So! First of all, ThingOnItsOwn wrote a message he wanted to post here, but due to some Steam Forum's witchery, he wasn't able. But here is the message he wanted to post :
"Hi all! I don't think I've formally introduced myself. I don't much come around these strange steam parts. Usually I hang out over on the HH discord server, but I'll do my best to show my head here now and then when there's stuff to tell.
And there *IS* stuff to tell, in fact. The rumours of my demise are vastly exaggerated.
Throughout the last three weekends, I've been working on three different things:
- Modding improvements
- The 12th faction
- The v2.0.6 and v2.0.7 updates
But in this strange land of post-release development, time has become a relative substance, so the things I am working on now might actually be things related to events in the future. As such, the three points above each relate to their own point of time.
Right after releasing the game, I made several major patches, which we rushed through QA. This ended up backfiring when I accidentally released an update that reliably corrupted any save file from previous versions when loaded in the new version. I managed to fix this issue within 24 hours of the update, or something like that. But it still made me realise that with such a large playerbase, I have to be more careful.
Being careful and patient does not gel with my personality. But I'll have to make an attempt at prudence.
Thus, the v2.0.7 patch is not being pushed to all of you just yet. It is, instead, currently an opt-in beta. I'll be posting the patch notes in a separate announcements so you can see what awaits in the 2.0.7 update. It's a lot of good stuff. Monitor support, modding improvements, bug fixes and MANY balance changes.
The beta branch for v2.0.7 is named beta_for_next_minor_update. This branch will continuously be used to test updates before they go live. If you experience crashes while playing a beta branch, please tell us what version you were playing as the crash happened.
As the name might suggest, I am also planning to get a beta_for_next_major_update up at some point when we get closer to the v2.1 update. The v2.1 update, planned for late April, will add in a new faction, with all usual madness that a new faction entails. That's:
- 26 new units
- 8 new unit abilities
- 2 new hero skills
- 5 new faction unique mechanics
It'll be a doozy. And it'll be a free update. To thank you all for the great launch experience and for bearing with me as I try to get everything together to make the game shine as best it can.
The last cool thing I want to share is that I took some time this weekend to implement some custom scripting for Hero's Hour, which will - when it's finished - allow modders to add skills, abilities, spells and other mechanics to the game.
It's still far from fully finished - the Discord modders, whom I gave a preview of the implementation, are varyingly growing grey hair or pulling that grey hair out - but when it's finally ready, it'll be the greatest update to Hero's Hour modding since the faction mods were implemented for Christmas. I'm expecting it in some sort of less limited release in May.
Okay, I think that's it for now. Hope you all are safe whenever this reaches you. Have a good one!
- ThingOnItsOwn"
Soooo let me summarize !
There is, right now, a beta branch with version 2.0.7a on it. We did not deliver it right away, cause there is a lot of things that's been changed/fixed, patchnote coming shortly after this post. The game is huge, wide, and actually I, as a QA, cannot really ensure how stable it is. So remember, if you chose to opt in this branch, that it might not be stable. To access it, simply right click on your game in your library, go to properties, beta tab, and you should be able to chose "beta_for_next_minor_update" branch. It'll update your game, and there you go!
To revert it, you can simply go back to the default branch and it'll update your game back to the stable version
I know a lot of you are willing to help, given the different bug reports we have here, in steam reviews, on discord, in mail.. And that's something I had trouble keeping under control. So if you're asking yourself, when having a bug, "Well tell me Thomas, where and how do I report it?"
Well let me give you a quick process that'd help both ThingOnItsOwn and I for reporting/finding cause/resolving :
- First of all, tell us which version you're on. Even more since there's now this open beta branch, it is important that we know this
- A quick description of what you were doing when the bug occured
- If you had a crash, please copy the text in the window that appears when the game crashed
- If possible, send your game files as a .zip file. They are located in this folder : C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Hero_s_Hour. You can send the full Hero's hour folder. Appdata is an hidden folder, you might have to make windows show hidden folders to you
- And lastly, depending on the issue you're having, if you've got a screenshot of what's happening, that'd be perfect!
"Alright, we now what we can do.. But where do we report it?"
Well there are 2 solutions that'd be the best for us :
- Directly in the Bug reports section on the Discord : And ThingOnItsOwn is more active over there, as he says himself!. Here's an invitation link : https://discord.gg/AHVr5r3PPY
- You can also send everything to Goblinz's support mail : [email protected]
The fact that the reports would be mainly focused on just 2 different places would help me a lot!
Alright, now for the last part of this message : We indeed talked about a 2.1 major update!
Before release, it'll also be on a beta branch, but this time it'll be a closed beta.
How do you join this closed beta?
Well keep in touch, we'll post messages in different places. We'll grant access by mail!
Just to precise, to be sure : If you've already suscribed to Hero's Hour newsletter, you will still have to register to get a mail with the access to the future closed beta branch
We do this to be sure that Newsletter and granting access to the closed beta are two separate things (so we won't spam with news mailboxes of people that just want the code for the closed beta)
Keep an eye on Steam forums and Discord to be aware when we open this closed beta!
Alright, that's it for me, thanks for taking some of your time to read all this!
Cheers,
Thomas