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Heralds of Chaos is now open to all beta testers!

Fair warning: you are going to run into bugs. biggrin

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THIS THREAD. Every time we update the game (which will be a lot) we'll add a message to this topic.

For this weekend we're only focusing on the basic starter game. There is substantially more functionality (deck editing, a store, and leveling up of cards) that we will be rolling out in the next few days.

Also, at the very first, you'll be playing with only the starter cards -- there are substantially more units available that you'll soon have access to.

Confidentiality

Open beta (i.e., when the game is available to everyone) will be next month. For now, please discuss the game only in this forum and/or privately with other people that you know are in the beta test.

How to play

To play, go to the following location:

http://www.gaiaonline.com/fbapps/nimbus

(note that this URL will change in the future)

Only people that have access to this forum can get into the game.

There are several ways you can play:

- Play a Random Person -- puts you in the queue for PvP. If there is anyone else in the queue, it will match you up and you'll play against them.
- Play a Friend -- will give you a link that you can IM / PM / whatever to another person, and they'll be put into your game. This mode of play does not grant you essence, however.
- Play the Computer -- four different levels, from Easy to Nightmare.

Known Bugs

- there are some known problems with flash 11.3 and scrolling the map. If clicking-and-dragging does not move the map around for you, update your flash.
- the "Play Now" button at the end of the Tutorial does not work properly. Click "Skip" instead.
- you may get graphical glitches and/or get stuck. Usually you can recover from these by simply reloading the game -- it will put you back in your original state.
- if you run into extremely slow performance, please let us know your ISP / bandwidth / computer configuration, and tell us what was slow. We've noticed that Chrome seems to run flash slower than other browsers, so you might try another browser if you're using Chrome. (Update: some users are reporting extreme lag, we are trying to track it down). (Update update: made some changes to the server that should improve performance for some people).
- there is a bug where once in a while a PvP battle will appear to play automatically. If you run into this, give us the game ID so we can look at the logs.
- reload is your friend, if you run into problems. By this we mean that you should reload the web page -- the game will load back in and bring you back to your previous state. (If you have to reload, of course we're going to fix it, but it can get you going again if you get into a strange game state).

Notes on the game

(These were frequent questions from SCAS)

Attunement:
- Mana wells are how you get mana to summon other units
- A captured region generates 2 mana
- Attuners harvest mana. A captured mana well generates 10 mana BUT you only get the extra mana if there is an attuner in that region during the round
- Any unit can capture a portal
- You can summon to any portal you currently hold

Essence:
- Essence is essentially experience points. You get them from finishing battles and games.
- Essence is what you'll use later to a) buy stuff from the store, and b) level up units.
- In the victory screen, "base essence" is just the amount of essence before any other modifications.

Reporting Bugs

NEW! 9/21: If you're in a game, you can go to /fbapps/nimbus/reportbug and report a bug using that form. That will record your user ID, your current game, and the description / title that you enter. This is the easiest way to get us a bug.

Old way:
When you play a game, you will see a "gid=nnnnn" in the URL -- this is the game ID. We're keeping all the games from the weekend, so if you run into a problem, just let us know (for example) "my battle in round 5 of game ID 554554 was wonky," and we can look at the logs.

For the weekend, we interested in making sure the new user experience and PvE basically work. Go ahead and bring up anything, though -- we'll have people monitoring the thread over the weekend.

It's possible that you've a) wedged your game so bad that you can't even quit out of it, or b) we've asked you to get into a particular state (i.e., units turn into little red dots). To clear out of a game but to leave it around so we can look at it, go to:

http://www.gaiaonline.com/fbapps/nimbus/forfeit

Bug Threads

We've started a number of bug threads:

Client Bugs
Unit / Spell Bugs
Game Balancing Issues
Tutorial / Trailer / Game Guide Issues

More Information

A basic game guide can be found here.

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New backend pushed @ 12:30 PM

- Weakened the starter decks a bit. This won't affect anyone that's already picked a faction.
- Fixed some issues on the back end

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New backend pushed @ 2:21 PM:

If you want to report a bug while you're in a game, just go to

www.gaiaonline.com/fbapps/nimbus/reportbug

... and enter a title / description. This will record your user ID, your game ID, and the current game state, making it easy for us to take a look at the game later.

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New backend, client pushed @ 12:03 PM:

- fixed a number of cards
- multi-level undo (user request)
- extended time for PvP matchmaking (user request)
- various tweaks

Many more changes coming soon -- we're hard at work on lag issues, since a fair number of people seem to be running into that.

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New client pushed @ 3:37 PM:

- fixes some assets that were causing problems during battle

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New client pushed 5:00 PM:

- more tweaks for FPS drops

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Hey -- as a small token of our appreciation, we're going to daily gold grants for our beta testers. I just ran some scripts to do a back grant for previous games, and we'll be granting daily from now on. (When the site goes to all of beta, we'll have something where you can choose to convert essence into gold -- we haven't decided on the conversion rate yet).

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New client, backend push @ 3:30pm.

- slimmed down interface. Note that there's few really interesting suggestions in the forum that we are still considering.
- many tweaks to try and reduce memory usage and up performance. We're still not happy with it.

Known bugs:

- battle indicators still overlap when you have many battles (you can at least tab around the controls, but that's only a workaround for now)
- gap appearing between action buttons and cards in hand
- lag after battle resolves
- "Share a Link" may spontaneously pop up when entering the game. Just close the dialog, it's a known issue.

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New client pushed @ 10:06am.

- more UI tweaks to make the game easier to understand
- performance improvements
- bonus card now granted at end of game

Another push later today to enable the deck editor.

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New client pushed at 5:00pm

- performance improvements
- some additional UI
- backend fixes.

Deck editor is enabled, but it's glitchy. Use at your own risk (but you can't lose cards with it, so don't worry about messing up your inventory).

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Client push @ 2:20PM today.

- performance improvements
- some deck editor fixes

So! Much! To! Do!

More pushes coming.

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Client push coming shortly.

- store
- deck editor fixes
- many performance improvements
- unit reskins
- fixed some unit bugs

We're also going to a) announcing HoC soon, and b) metering some additional people in VERY SLOWLY. So, hopefully, the PvP queue will have more people in it. We're still very intent on improving and changing the game based on your suggestions -- the feedback has been awesome so far.

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Inventory reset coming.

Sorry! Sorry! But:

- granting some essence to everyone for being in the first waves of beta
- store will be enabled, so you can get cards faster.

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Game being shut down @ 6:00 P.M. for some backend changes and inventory reset.

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Shifting around forum threads for better organization.

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