New/changed features

• Increased maximum length of player name from 15 to 50. (Name will be truncated back to 15 on v1.2.1 servers.)
• Font size of chat text and battle messages reduced by 20%.

Bugs fixed (all editions)

• Fixed: Numlock capability was permanently disabled regardless of actual numlock state after a window focus change (alt-tab out and then in).
• Fixed: When someone in a multiplayer server obtained one of the “kill X enemy ships” achievements, everyone else in the server would too, even observers.
• Fixed: Typing a ^ character as the first character in a textbox would crash the game.
• Attempted to handle some networking errors more gracefully
• Accessing the Options screen during a multiplayer game would crash under certain circumstances.
• Observers joining multiplayer games could cause the server to forget that players had ended their turn, and hence not progress to the next round (until the turn timer expired).

Bugs fixed (Steam edition)

• Significantly reduced achievement progress spam
• Fixed dodgy game timer (was displaying additional hours when set to upwards of 6 minutes).
• Fixed: The game would crash under certain circumstances when Steam was in offline mode.

Steam customers will receive the update automatically. All other customers are encouraged to upgrade for free.

Late-breaking release note: The Steam edition mistakenly still reports itself to be v1.2.1. If you think you haven’t received the update, try restarting your Steam client and running the game again.

Those of you who use it will be happy to hear that Mayhem Intergalactic is also now available on Steam, the leading digital distribution service for PC. It’s also 50% off, for one week only, so get it while it’s hot and Steamy!

Despite the fact that this release is numbered 1.2.1 rather than 1.3, it constitutes a sizeable update on top of version 1.2. This version features the new achievements feature, and also includes a wealth of bug fixes and usability enhancements:

New/changed features

• Achievements! In exchange for completing certain tasks in-game, you will now receive small digital trophies to commemorate those achievements. (Details…)
• In timed games, a clock of time remaining is now shown.
• Minor improvements to text rendering.
• Widescreen rendering improvements to in-game background, ship sending dialogs, and help bubbles.
• Players now have the ability to surrender in multiplayer games.
• The game waits and attempts to retry for a short period of time after receiving “Could not bind to port” errors when attempting to host a multiplayer game.
• Some network errors now quit the game when the loading/connecting screens are displayed.
• Saved games are now deselected when you type in the saved game name box, to avoid accidentally overwriting old saved games. So that you can prevent your saved game list from getting cluttered, however, there is now also a ‘Delete’ button.
• Note that v1.2.1 clients are not able to participate in multiplayer with older clients, so everyone is encouraged to upgrade promptly. However, be aware that your old savefiles will no longer work once you upgrade.

Bugs fixed

• Fixed: When building up a very large convoy (over 4 million ships), the number of ships in the convoy could “wrap around” to 0, causing the loss of 4 million ships. Now, convoy sizes are capped and cannot grow past ~4 million, which is still imperfect but definitely an improvement. (Fix prompted by Danial B.)
• Fixed: View drags with the right mouse button were also counted as clicks with the right mouse button, which could cause “send ships” dialogs to pop up a lot when you didn’t want them to. Now, the game makes an attempt to differentiate drags from clicks to preven this. View drags with the middle mouse button were not affected. (Reported by Danial B.)
• Fixed: Music sometimes wouldn’t restart properly when restarting a game.
• Fixed: Could click through the background fade of the Options screen when in-game.
• Fixed: Saved games didn’t remember whether the game was a Quick Start game or not.
• Fixed: Moving the slider on the “set rally point” dialog could cause a crash under certain circumstances.
• Fixed: Selecting items on lists now works more reliably when lists are scrolled.
• Fixed: A few rare network errors are now caught and displayed instead of snowballing.
• Fixed: When a multiplayer game ended and returned to the lobby / setup screen, the chat box would closes and any text in it was erased. This was a usability annoyance. (Reported by Danial B.)
• Fixed: Modifier keys (ctrl, alt) would sometimes get “stuck on” upon task-switches, causing an inability to type. (Reported by Sinfall.)
• Fixed: Support for graphics cards which can’t handle textures larger than 1024×1024 has been reinstated.
• Fixed: The list of saved games is now sorted correctly, even when very old and very new savefiles are present together.

Owners of previous versions are encouraged to upgrade for free. New customers always receive the latest version, and the demo download has also been updated.

Enjoy!

• New feature: Rifts in the space-time continuum! A rift basically serves as a wall; you can’t move ships through it. This opens up some interesting map design possibilities. Some new maps which use rifts have been shipped with the game, and you are welcome to make your own.
• Visual improvements: Ship graphics replaced, with a different look for each colour of ship. Battles are slightly animated now, as are the lines from a convoy to its destination. Added animated exhaust plumes. New background image and title screen. In/out fades when transitioning in and out of a game. New mouse pointer!
• Selecting a planet and hovering the mouse over another will tell you the ETA for ships travelling along that route, and show you whether you can move ships there.
• You can choose ship quantities using only the mouse now. That means there’s never any need to touch the keyboard at all while playing. (Extensive keyboard controls still exist, of course.)
• Planet and convoy selection is much more forgiving; you don’t need to be at all precise with the mouse any longer.
• Miscellaneous interface improvements to make things easier to understand and use. Added some help tooltips to the in-game controls.
• Resolution selection is smarter and more considerate of aspect ratios.
• Tons of bugs fixed.

If you bought a previous version, I encourage you to upgrade for free. The demo download has been updated, and new customers always receive the latest version.

Enjoy!

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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.