When I decided to release v8 as a beta version first, I wasn't entirely sure if that was the right call. Subsequent events showed that it was the right decision.
- Beta 1: Crashed on launch
- Beta 2: Crashed when opening the ships list
- Beta 3: Crashed when using multiple mods in combat
- Beta 4: Crashed when viewing a ship using multiple mods
As you can see, the situations in which crashes happen are getting subtler, at least. And Beta 4 worked well enough for people to start reporting a lot of other issues, which means that Beta 5 is rather more massive an update:
- Combat now waits until the victory/defeat situation has stabilized before announcing a result.
- Modules are now displayed alphabetically in the editor again.
- No longer connecting twice to multiplayer if the overlay is on and you enter the lobby via the main menu.
- You can now specify ships, buildings and landships for the player's use in mods.
- Mods screen now has better error reporting for when parsing of JSON files goes wrong.
- Moved all the images and sounds to the data folder, which both makes the game easier to understand for modders and should lead to generally smaller update downloads.
- Fixed crash when rendering ships using two mods at once.
- Multiplayer chat overlay button now blinks if there's unread messages.
- Rams are considered external modules again.
- Bigger, longer-lasting multiplayer messages.
- Uploaded ship previews are now GIFs showing both inside and outside.
- Troops no longer massacred by wheels and feet of nonmoving landships.
- Increased light armour HP by 50% to make them more competitive.
- Cancelling constructions is now correctly priced across the board: 25% of costs already spent, 100% of the rest.
- Multiline description input for uploading ships.
- Landscaping now doesn't add additional soil if there is already a stable surface.
- Command refresh now scales with time properly.
- Removed ability to rename ships in multiplayer setup because it caused network synchronization issues.
- Fixed missing flipped flamethrower.
- Flamethrower now more powerful, gatling gun less powerful, more expensive but also a bit more accurate.
- Light armours have 50% more HP to make them more competitive.
- Improved network error reporting.
Known issues that will be resolved later:
- You can't add tags to mods or uploaded ships yet.
- The multiplayer server sometimes becomes unresponsive.
As before, you can get the beta by opting in through Steam or downloading it. Please do continue reporting any issues you find.
I'm also very happy to see that the workshop integration has really struck a chord. There's now more than a hundred ships, landships and buildings in the workshop, and the first third-party mod has appeared, with more in the works.