News
21st March, 2008
Voting is now open for the 2008 Indie Games Contest, in which Mayhem Intergalactic is an entrant. Please vote it up if you like it!
Just to clarify, the Indie Game Contest has nothing to do with the Independent Games Festival in which Mayhem Intergalactic was a student showcase winner (fancy way of saying "finalist"). I know, confusing, isn't it? Still, I guess there's only so many ways to name a contest for indie games...
In other news, the Game Developers Conference was a blast! Also, Mayhem Intergalactic and I were on TV. I should probably set up one of those fancy blog things so I have an excuse to go on and on about it! (That's what blogs are for, right?)
15th February, 2008
Hooray! Mayhem Intergalactic v1.1 has finally been released (just in time for the GDC). This is a major upgrade, with the following improvements:
New/changed features
- MAJOR! The audio has been completely revamped, with completely new and original music and sound effects by Duncan Watt. Features dynamic in-game music that adjusts depending on the game situation.
- MAJOR! Great big graphical overhaul. (Thanks, spriteattack.com!) Check out the new screenshots!
- Better keyboard control added; press Ctrl+arrow to select a planet in the indicated direction. This is still experimental; feedback welcome.
- Mayhem Intergalactic now integrates nicely with Xfire, the gamers' IM client. (It has already been detected by Xfire for some time, but the game now supplies more useful information to the Xfire client.)
- Servers now log all chat messages, player connections/disconnections, and game starts/finishes in a log file in the user profile directory.
- Rewrote networking backend. Some networking-related features should be smoother now.
- In-game dialog boxes are now draggable.
- Custom maps (the INI files in [install directory]\data\base\maps) have some special new features, like specifying custom production values and per-factory-level bonuses for planets. Updated the large Milky Way map to showcase these.
- Note that v1.1 clients are not able to communicate with older clients, so everyone is encouraged to upgrade promptly.
Bugs fixed
- Fixed: Convoys would occasionally fail to move. This was sometimes also causing a "multiple convoys at planet" error message.
- Fixed: On some systems, the display would sometimes be continuously re-initialised in a loop after clicking OK on the Options screen (even after not changing any options). This was visible as a repeated flicker. As a consequence of this fix, the game window is no longer resizable in windowed mode (by default). Sorry!
- Fixed: Rendering issues on some graphics cards.
- Fixed: Occasional "No free channels available" error when sounds were played too fast.
- Fixed UI glitch: Could open the send ships dialog box by selecting a planet that you didn't own and right-clicking on another planet. This didn't allow you to actually send the ships, of course.
- Logs are now written to the profile directory instead of the game directory.
- Fixed: If the game was left idle on a menu screen for a long time, all the stars would eventually scroll off and disappear.
- Fixed: Text wrapping bugs after changing aspect ratio.
- Fixed: Works with the internet game list again. This was broken for older clients after the recent server move.
- Many other assorted fixes and tweaks.
Enjoy! I know I am.
As always, owners of previous versions can download their free update here. New customers will always get the latest version.
21st December, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic has just been named as a finalist in the 10th Annual Independent Games Festival Student Competition. Inventive Dingo, or a chosen representative, will be demonstrating the game on the exhibition floor of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in February. Swing by the Student Showcase at the IGF Pavillion and say hi if you're going!
6th October, 2007
Bytten has just posted a review of Mayhem Intergalactic. They gave it a silver star and a score of 79%, with a Longevity rating of 91%. Definitely not too shabby.
Thanks to Bytten's Steve Blanch for a good honest review. Now to earn that remaining 21%... Watch this space!
17th September, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic v1.0.3 has been released, with the following improvements:
New/changed features
- The Send Ships dialog box now displays how long it will take to travel to the destination.
- You can now drag your view around using the middle mouse button or right mouse button. (Suggested by 00Nugget00)
- The box that appears around selected convoys now matches the one that appears around planets.
- Added new command-line arguments:
- --connect, for immediately connecting to a specified server.
- --host, for immediately hosting a server
- --lan, for specifying that the hosted server should be advertised on the LAN instead of the internet.
Bugs fixed
- Fixed: You couldn't cancel a rally point from a planet while that planet was selected
- Fixed: The keyboard interface for setting rally points was somewhat broken
- Fixed: The "Connecting..." screen now has a cancel button.
- Fixed: The number of times you can pause the game is no longer limited in singleplayer games.
- Fixed: The Custom Game screen wasn't correctly listing the available maps.
- Miscellaneous internal improvements
15th August, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic v1.0.2 has been released, with the following improvements:
- New feature: Mayhem Intergalactic now supports dedicated servers. A dedicated server allows you to host a game without having to be logged in to the server. This will encourage people to host permanent servers, which should make it easier to find opponents online. Players who join the server can choose the game settings and decide when to start the game.
- New feature: You can now choose whether to observe or participate in a multiplayer game.
- Fixed: Disconnected but participating players were not being correctly propagated to connecting clients, causing errors.
- Fixed: Attempting to upgrade a factory which could not be upgraded caused the Upgrade button to be incorrectly greyed out. (Reported by 00Nugget00)
- Fixed: Rally points are now saved and loaded correctly. (Reported by 00Nugget00)
- Fixed: A "tried to send to dead socket" error would very occasionally occur when somebody disconnected.
- Fixed: The demo and the full version now play more nicely together when they're both installed on the same computer.
- Fixed: When using the Send Ships button, the Choose Selected button is now only visible when the selected planet is not the destination.
- Fixed: Numerous other minor interface changes and small improvements have been made.
14th July, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic v1.0.1 has been released, with the following changes since version 1.0b:
- Changed feature: When setting rally points or using the Send Ships button to send ships, you now select the destination before the amount of ships to leave/send.
- Changed feature: The "show enemy ships" feature no longer lets you see the results of other people's actions before the turn ends.
- New feature: You can now choose a favourite colour, which is used as your player colour when possible.
- New feature: Pressing PrtScrn saves a screenshot in the user's profile directory.
- Fixed: Non-English languages are now handled correctly.
- Fixed: Occasional crash on exit
- Fixed: Upgrade button now dims when the selected planet has already been upgraded this turn.
- Fixed: Send Ships button now dims when there are no ships at the selected planet to send.
- Fixed: The keyboard shortcut for the Chat button is now T instead of C, to avoid conflicts with Cancel buttons.
6th July, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic v1.0b has been released, with the following minor bugs fixed:
- Fixed: Limited multiplayer now functions in the demo as intended.
- Fixed: Stray text at edge of end-game statistics screen.
- Fixed: When the screen aspect ratio was not 4:3, letter underlines on buttons were not aligned correctly.
4th July, 2007
Mayhem Intergalactic has been officially released! Wage war on your friends and enemies in this simple yet engaging strategy game. Check it out!
