Thursday, April 2, 2015

WazHack 1.3 Open Beta is here!

The wait is over - the WazHack 1.3 Open Beta is now available on Steam!
Follow the action on the WazHack Steam forum.

I won't spoil things here by going into detail of all the stuff that's new - I'll leave you to explore, as there are lots of new features, new details, and a couple of entirely new game mechanics!

On the purely technical side of things, this version is ported to an updated graphics engine version (Unity 5). The big benefit from that on PC is that Cloth physics, last seen in version 1.0, has finally been brought back - hair and cloth effects are now active (can be turned off in Options/Graphics/Softbodies if they cause any problems).

To access the beta, right click on "WazHack" in your Steam games list, choose "Properties", then go to the "BETAS" tab and choose "1.3beta1". The game will update and you'll have it!

The beta is a good time to report any minor inconsistencies you stumble across - when you do X because you thought Y, but nothing happened. Some of these can be done fairly easily, whereas after the beta I tend to just fix actual bugs. At least one of the game mechanics still definitely needs some balancing, but feel free to comment on anything - positively or negatively.

Please report bugs and other issues here and/or via the menu option. I will be posting frequent updates to the build as bugs are fixed. If I need to break savefile compatibility and you load a character, you'll get a notice to switch to the previous beta (same process). You cannot load savefiles from version 1.2 (you'll need to go back to the Default release to finish those).

Betas for the web demo and other platforms will commence later in the process.
I hope you enjoy the free update, and thanks for your support over the last year of the Steam release!