Caravan (Scenario 2) preview images!

Eirikr's been at it in the scenario editor :)

Early WIP, but neat :)

Tutorial Test Phase 2

It's time for another phase of tutorial testing! The feedback from the LAN has been integrated, and some other mechanic tweaks are now in play. I'm going to send out email to quite a few people who haven't played the tutorial yet to get some feedback, and we'll see how it goes from there. :)

Here's some of the changes.

• Overall Game Updates
• Maneuvers have more reliable cooldowns and behaviors. Hold, Reform, and other instant maneuvers instantly start their cooldowns, so should be available sooner and more consistently. Movement based maneuvers now have a delay after first contact before stopping, so the final contacts should be more reliable.
• Retreat is revamped a bit. Retreat grants a short burst of speed when initiated, same as before. But now, if you redirect retreat, you get another burst of speed at the cost of morale.
• Movement and animation has been seriously updated; Unit legs should be more under control. Units should move much much more smoothly than before. Units shouldn't wiggle as they go back and forth along the hex grid. Units will do some extra animating when running fast, and the locomotors have been largely rebuilt. Unit knockbacks are animated much smoother as well.
• Application Updates
• Asset downloads are now retrieved from S3 instead of the universe directly. This took some magic but should pay off. In the end this means faster asset downloads with less impact to running zones, and more reliable fetching.
• Main menu minor updates: When you have no commanders yet, the 'New commander' menu is skipped. Also, when you create a zone, you now enter a new menu mode, and automatically join when it goes live.
• Tutorial Updates
• Many paths have been shut down to prohibit Joey from breaking everything.
• Many sections of the tutorial are now done in cinematic mode to prevent the user from bypassing sections while talky talk is happening.
• All dialogue is slowed down substantially, and the player can now hit spacebar to skip most dialogues. Space will also skip the big dialogs, but only a few seconds after they show up.
• Retreat section partial rebuild. The Glacial elemental's abilities have been slightly changed.
• The final section now introduces Morale (and HP) and Special attacks. Also the raised platform is destroyed when claiming the Legacy.
• The 3 learnable terrain manipulation skills are more reliable and less crashy, not that anyone used them :)
• Known Tutorial Flaws
• Animation for the swordsman dance at the beginning has messed up timing. Shieldman knockback is a little desynced too.
• Hold section spawns still don't QUITE do what I want them too, but it works better than before.
• Retreat still weird but let's get some feedback on that.
• Final fight still a total and complete chaotic mess; but I don't mind that really.
• Doesn't create permanent commander when complete, yet.