MMC v0.5.1 "Alpha Phase 3+ Begins!" (10/13/2021)

[Mini Militia Classic Alpha Force]

v0.5.1 "Alpha Phase 3+ Begins!" [10/13/2021]

FINALLY! The alpha phase that would never end! We're already heavily working on the next phase, but we will return to support this version as the bug reports pour in.

Here's a run down of what's new (and improved... but you tell us):

Server side management of weapons & items (includes flags and health packs) is here. Item management is happening on server side logic. It is a HUGE change. Things with pickups and drops might feel a little different now. Clients will no longer do this client side. Server side logic 'reform' is part of the wider campaign to re-engineer our game to be more server authoritarian and move away from our peer to peer roots. 

This cuts down on bugs stemming from client to client inconsistencies, greatly reduces cheat capability, and makes sure the game can managed by server side logic (it will be a key component of our game mode framework when that finally comes online) BUT with almost everything in computer science game dev choices...  there is a tradeoff (there almost always is...), we're gonna likely see some weird situations here and there. BUT we think it won't be too bad. It will NOT be friendly to people with heavy lag... but we'll see what happens.

Bugs you may see from the item management change:

- It is possible to have an empty hand (no weapon), especially when the server decides a weapon belongs somewhere else (e.g., when weapons are picked up at the same time because only one player will get the item) this will mostly be seen when a CTF flag is capped. We don't know what the empty hand means right now. Its something we will develop over time (backhand melee special? jk! or am I???)

- It is possible to appear at zero health until your client is updated by the server. A future update will make this clearer. The server decides when you are dead.

- Custom maps and mods will be broken. The last release broke spawning for custom maps. This release will break your sniper lobbies, weapon rain, and anything that would change the map drops. I'm sorry, because there is some legit, non-cheating fun happening in the custom games space. It won't stay broken forever and I vow to make it as temporary as possible. We are many weeks out from a possible solution and having the time to implement a fix but we will eventually have custom TMX in the game again.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed "No Damage" glitch (for the reason that MOST people were affected by it.)

- Fixed "Wrong Map Loading" glitch (we think, we still can't repeat this in house, but we see the problem.)

- Fixed a crash that occurred when the lobby list was found empty (but was expected to not be empty... yet)

Game Adjustments:

- Adjusted weapon spawning to be more consistent (~60 second cycles once spawned/dropped) this will clean up weapons, be more like late v3 spawning behaviors (this got messed up with the addition of CTF flags, but we've rooted out the issues therein.)

- Added adjustable zoom per weapon (long press on scope button to show and dismiss the button IN GAME)

- Dropped Quick Play battle coin allowed maximum to 5k (down from 10k)

- Reduced pushback from weapon damage by 15%

- Changed the Battle Point value selector for custom game config so that it will cycle to the max allowed like the time button

- Added version info to the Alpha watermark to aid in troubleshooting screenshots and videos
- Stopped this months scheduled season and ended it today. We will start a new one once we have most folks updated ~Oct 15 (we hope)

One last thing...

We missed bringing this up in the last email. v0.4.2 expanded the device support for older devices. We were able to drop Android OS minimum support to v4.0 (down from v4.4) though anything below v4.4 may crash a lot. Testing feedback will tell us how that is working. These Android versions are so old that Google doesn't support them in the Play Store anymore and you will need to get creative to install MMClassic on your device. That is a problem we will have to solve eventually.

Ok let me wrap this up so we can get to smashing the refresh on the Google Play and TestFlight app store apps.

As always report those findings, ideas, and issues to testingfeedback [at] appsomniacs [dot] com (turn that into an actual email.)

Thanks for helping us test all these parts and pieces as we start to combine them into their final forms.