It's finally here!! :D Today, we've released Asynchronous Play! This means that you can play a game even when your opponent is not online (and vice-versa). So it'll be a lot easier to find players and to finish games. Here's some things you need to know!

• All online games now support Async... instead of Quitting, you can now "Leave" the game. This is perfectly safe, you will be able to come back at any time.
• All online games now have a "turn timeout" setting which controls how long you have to make a move. The default is 7 days, so this is typically just to prevent users from abandoning a game when they're losing. If a turn-timeout passes without the active player moving, then that player forfeits the game.
• To avoid the problem of two people having to be online at exactly the same time to start a game, you can now "Start Alone". Basically: if you "Create Game" online, then you hit "Ready" in the lobby, but nobody else is in the lobby yet, you'll have the option to "Start Alone". At that point, you'll go into the game (and you can even move, if it's your turn) even though there is no opponent. You can safely leave the game and it will still sit around waiting for someone to join it. NOTE: You can not start a Private Game alone... because you can't invite Steam players who aren't online (we're working on another way to do this eventually).
• The first time you play, you will get prompted to connect to "BlueLine Cloud". This is not a 3rd party service (we're BlueLine.. it's just the name of our game-servers). If you connect, then your data will be available to you outside of Steam (sort of anti-DRM). If you choose "No Thanks" you can connect later, but it's recommended that you do connect.

Since it's been a long time since our last release, there have also been a number of other changes:

• Our entire graphics library has been updated to use the latest version of FNA. This increases performance (better frame-rate on really old computers) and should make the game more compatible to graphics cards that have often had problems.
• GamePad support on Linux is back (it had broken).
• The list of games scrolls better
• ?? Probably a lot! We've been holding back releases since January to make sure that Async was super-stable before releasing it on Hive. We released it first on Reversi, then improved it, then released it on Khet 2.0 and improved it more.... then tested more, polished a few things, and only NOW is Hive getting it! Much has happened in the meantime. Keep an eye out for any bugs!

In the last couple of hours since we pushed this update (we run through a bunch of production tests before doing the announcement) we've ALREADY noticed more people playing online than usual. This is going to be great for the community!! Please play online often to help keep this as a great place for finding Hive opponents! If you run into any issues, please let us know... we'll be watching the Issues forum closely! Enjoy! :D - Sean & Geoff

[ 2015-05-26 19:14:26 CET ] [ Original post ]