This release contains a radical upheaval of the saved game system, and adds support for Steam Cloud. It also introduces weapons lock and engine boost mechanics, which represent significant changes to core gameplay. For a more complete list of changes, the release notes are available here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/zigfrak/announcements/detail/1387405181554376302
Because of the large scope of these changes, we're treading lightly and doing an initial opt-in release for anyone who wants to help test the waters. We'll likely be rolling out future releases in this manner as well. All players are welcome, and we're particularly interested in feedback from players with many hours logged, and/or those who have Steam Cloud enabled for Zigfrak.
To opt in, right click on Zigfrak from your library. Navigate to the "Betas" tab, and select the public test branch. The Steam client should patch the game shortly afterwards. Consider enabling Steam Cloud from the "Updates" tab while you're in there!
To help calm any fears for would-be testers, we've taken a few steps to prevent the possibility of data loss due to unforeseen bugs.
- Your old save data will be migrated to a new location and format, but will not be removed at this time. We'll add some logic to clean out the old save location in a future release.
- Backups -- We keep 'em. Under the new save system, the game creates a permanent backup of your saved game file at each promotion tier. Additionally, a backup of the previous save file is created each time the game is launched, keeping up to 10 historical snapshots (for now).
- Hopefully, we'll be able to roll forward to the new version for everyone with little or no changes, and any character progress you made while testing will persist. In the unlikely event that we need to postpone or revert these changes, your old save data will still be around, but will not reflect any progress you made while testing. Please keep this possibility in mind before deciding to opt in!
If you're testing Cloud support, please bounce between different machines to make sure everything works as expected. Keep in mind that cloud publishing occurs after the game has exited, and changes may take a minute or so to propagate.
Instructions for contacting [email protected] with your saved game data have changed for Zigfrak 1.11 or newer. The updated steps are available here:
http://forum.zigfrak.com/?p=/discussion/32/how-to-export-a-saved-game
I hope many of you will opt in. If all goes well enough, we'll set this build to be generally available soon. Please chime in with feedback on this thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/259430/discussions/3/630800445897543756/
--Alex