I recently updated the default version of the game to the latest build. Almost immedietly, some problems that I thought had been taken care of began rearing their ugly head again.
My first instinct was to look at my code again, but it occurred to me that maybe I was doing something wrong in the way I had uploaded the game to Steam, and the new version was getting mixed up with the older versions.
I asked about it on the Steamworks Developers Forum, and a helpful soul at Valve had this to say:
"Builds are distinct, though there is the possibility that Steam might not have cleaned up some files properly. Ask your players to opt out of beta and reinstall the game, while checking whether there are any files left behind after uninstall."
So, if you are trying out the current default version (updated last week) you may want to try this.
There should be two files that remain behind after uninstalling the game "settings.cfg" and "controls.cfg" (if you changed any of the key-bindings). Also there would be one or more folders with the name of your game(s). Let me know if there are any other files included. If there are, I would recommend deleting them, as they should not be there.
Also, as a best practice, it might be good to delete all the files and start a new game. I hate to do that to you guys, and you're welcome to ignore this and keep playing your existing game, but my focus has to be on making a stable version of the game ready for full release, and unfortunately that may not always be backwards compatible with previous versions of the game.
Thanks for your patience!
As for what is happening now, I am working on the next beta version, it will have a number of new features and it will be designated 4.0. This indicates that it will not be backwards compatible with the 3.x versions of the game. However, once 4.0 is ready, I plan to stop adding new features, and to focus only on fixing errors and streamlining gameplay in order to be ready for the full release in May. It's only a couple of months, and there's quite a lot to do, so the more feedback I hear fro players, the better my chances of reaching this goal! Thanks again!