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Is that a shark?!

March 28, 2019by checker (test주🦑)

GamePatchNote Digest

SpyParty Patch Notes — March 28, 2019

Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.

It's hard to see the Spy doing missions with a Great White Shark in the way!

The big stuff, details are below:

Brand new Aquarium venue, complete with a bulletproof shark named Kiel that really likes to hog the limelight.
Tons of work getting ready for Matchmaking, including automatic Handicapping and the all new Recommended QuickPlay Group that will dynamically adjust the game settings based on the skill levels of the players.
Venues and missions now unlock as you play so new players aren't snowed under with options where they're learning.

Aquarium

The new Aquarium venue is the second in a collection of three venues focused on "occlusion", the first being Teien, discussed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/SpyParty/announcements/detail/1721960431557729429
In Teien, the occlusion was the shoji screens showing only silhouettes of the action behind them, but in the case of Aquarium, there's a giant shark that is constantly swimming back and forth in front of the Sniper's view. Spies need to learn the shark's patterns and do missions while in shark-shadow, because otherwise the Sniper has a commanding view of the entire floorplan.

Speaking of floorplans, the in-game Dossier now has floor plans for every venue. As you can see from this one, in addition to the shark, Aquarium has a slight asymmetry to it in the statue layout:

The shark follows a set pattern that occludes the back, middle, and front mission sites and then repeats going the other direction, so timing your missions is essential. Some players are already saying Aquarium is the most strategic venue due to the timing predictability of our fishy friend.

Handicapping, Unlocks, and Recommended Mode

The shark is cool, but what really took the most development time in this update was the completely new handicapping system and the Recommended QuickPlay Group. It's always been possible to handicap games in SpyParty to compensate for a skill gap between players, but now it's automated if you're set to the Recommended group, which is important for the upcoming matchmaking system. Now, if an experienced player is in a match with a new player, the game will automatically adjust the number of missions, guests, and duration to try to make a balanced game mode. So far it's working pretty well according to the data, but it needs more testing, so please try it out. It's easy to try, just go into a match with a player with different number of wins than you (either more or fewer) and see how it feels.

You can still access the other groups but Recommended is, uh, recommended now. I'm very interested in feedback on how these handicapped modes feel to play...they could be balanced but be no fun, which would be a problem, so please let me know what you think here in the forums or in the discord (linked below).

Unlocks for Missions and Venues

SpyParty is a pretty difficult game to learn. I'm very proud of the tutorial with its full voice narration and interactive teaching puzzles, but it only tutorializes less than half of the game, and so we used to just dump players directly into the thick of things and hope they could swim. This wasn't going to work very well in the long run, so now we have an unlock system that opens up the game a bit more slowly, and gives you a chance to learn the new stuff as you go along. Missions and venues unlock slightly differently: missions unlock only if both players in a match have unlocked them to avoid surprising a player with a mission they've never seen before; venues unlock when either player in a match has unlocked them, to give players access to venues faster, and it seems like learning to play on a new venue is not as hard as learning a new mission.

As part of the unlocks system, I've increased the amount of information in the in-game Dossier and updated it. Now anytime you see a (?) icon anywhere, you can get contextualized information to learn more.

You can play with the handicapping and unlocks in Practice Mode, it's just a bit odd. In the Gameplay settings, you can set your Practice Mode number of simulated wins (meaning how experienced you are), and the handicapping level of the opponent, and see what changes about the setups. I need to figure out a slightly more clear way to do this, but it lets you experiment for now. You need to set the QuickPlay mode to Recommended to see this, and remember you can hit escape and get to the settings on the game setup screen so you can see the changes easily.

Oh, and if you're hard core and don't want any handicapping, you can go into the Gameplay settings and restrict the amount of "up handicapping" you get. This controls how much the game will try to help you out if your opponent has more experience. You can't restrict your down handicapping obviously, because that would allow you to farm less experienced players, but if both players in a match have this set to 0 the game will always give you the Standard balanced modes (while still respecting the unlock schedule).

As always, let me know if there are bugs, either here in the forums or join us on the discord for fun SpyParty chats.
Chris

v0.1.6619.0:

code
- unlocks system, list, and popup
- handicapping and recommended quickplay group
- dossier updates
  - simplified mode missions preview
  - venue floorplans and description text
  - intermediate/simplified and standard mode in special tab
  - bar purloin preview finished
  - add percent meters to match in game missions
  - more contextual (?) icons throughout
- misc fixes
  - actually use Display Name and Username correctly in lobby details
  - when taking screenshot, also put it in the clipboard because that's a nice thing to do
  - log /whoroom results in addition to chat them
  - "randomize" button to "random setup" to be more clear that it's everything
  - game setup ui keyboard/controller fixes
  - randomize which qp chosen on level change
  - shift and control and mouse drag for number spinner acceleration
  - beginner/intermediate -> simplified naming
  - joining state and packets so joinmsg and unlock popups don't happen when you're in the lobby, future away possibility
  - ui try to fix interaction layer being below a top level screen at least
  - ui slightly better edge triggering of mouse clicks for not missing button clicks at low frame rates
  - view last replay menu item kicking from lobby bug fix
  - add intermediate and standard game modes to special dossier tab
  - no briefcase in simplified fingerprint dossier preview
  - don't make info icon on unavailable qpg venues
  - don't allow matchmaking while not joined or away
content
- Aquarium
  - SHARK 🦈
- misc fixes
  - fixing the weird AO line on the left wall of ballroom
  - boots fixes so that her phone doesnt go too deep into the floor, becoming visible on the balcony of highrise
  - The president says Santa Claus doesn't exist so...
  - make new school balcony 2:30 8, this will get picked more due to better randomization, watch out!
  - kill the intermediate and standard qpgs because they're generated from the table now
  - adding floorplan venue maps to the dossier
  - abearrawr's experimental group
  - tuning preview ribbons on a bunch of venues for dossier