New build for the demo and playtest versions of the game! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.548_High_Visibility
Demo And Playtest
The demo is going to be up for another few weeks, basically until the end of June. So if you haven't had time to finish it yet and you would like to, there's time.
If you want to be a part of the playtest after that, then be sure to swing by our discord: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1248015123382276217
The New Build
This build includes a number of very handy features.
First of all, lots of visibility things relating to your units and other small enemy units. If they are behind a building or similar obstruction, you now see a colored outline based on their relationship to you. If you hold Ctrl, the game now highlights them all for you in a very high-visibility way. If you want that on all the time, there is a new High Visibility option in the Accessibility section of the Game tab of the Settings menu. In that mode, holding Ctrl toggles the high-visibility display off for a moment.
Next up, vehicles and mechs now properly say "crew of" rather than "squad of" to clarify what they are counting in terms of units inside their group.
Finally, a couple of rifles have been rebalanced, and made Nickelbot-exclusive. This gives the Nickelbots a much more defined role from early in the game, and also prevents some kind of crazy situations with bulk squads with some of the rifles.
The Last Week
It's been almost a week since the last build, which was not how I had intended to handle things. However, I've been talking to people on discord and Steam, listening to feedback, taking notes, and also filling out various parts of the wiki.
A lot of people have gotten into the game in a really enthusiastic manner, which is wonderful to see. But the learning curve is not quite what I would prefer, and a few other elements are long-term confusing as well. So I've been formulating plans for those things, in consultation with testers and the demo players.
The Next Weeks
Overall, my goal is to start smashing through a ton of the feedback that I've accumulated from the past week, and get things more where I want them to be. Then we'll see what further feedback folks have on tutorial difficulty and the like.
After what will hopefully be only one week of this initial push (but we'll see how it goes), I'm going to transition over to finishing up the rest of chapter one. There will be some new features added to the demo version, and while the demo version remains up, we'll have parity between the playtest version and demo version.
Expect to see much more frequent builds coming again, now that I've done the "measure twice" part of things.
Thank you again to everyone who has been giving feedback, as well as all the kind words!