Since kickoff less than a week ago, teams have worked hard analyzing ideas for how to play the game. We at DBS have also been working hard as we have been perusing your comments and questions about our game. We are doing our best to improve our game and its distribution, and we appreciate all of the feedback we have received so far that has helped improve our game.
Looking back, it appears the majority of the issues we have been facing have been with teams who are unable to download and install the game. In response to this, we are moving the download server, and we are offering an all in one installer. With this installation method, teams will download a zip folder that contains all of the game’s installation files. Teams will unzip the download and then run the Setup.exe to install the game. We still advise teams to be connected to the internet when installing so that the installer can download any other prerequisites needed to run the game. These should help streamline the downloading process and reduce the number of errors when installing. For the hundreds of teams that have already downloaded and installed the game, the update will be detected automatically. All you have to do is start up the game and it will inform you that the update is available. Only the files changed since the last version will be downloaded, so it should be a very quick update.
We have fixed several bugs and added a few features with this update as well. Typing capital P’s and Q’s has been fixed you can now use the Caps Lock when typing on the login screen of the game. Per request, full screen is enabled. When the game is first installed, the game will default to full screen. You can toggle full screen by pressing escape on the keyboard or start on the controller once you have logged in as a guest or as a team. Once the pause menu is showing, click on the full screen check box to change the state. The changes, as it explains on the menu, will go into effect the next time you open the game. The music and sound can now be turned on and off independently.
The next part of the update concerns fixing scoring bugs. These resulted as a miscommunication between FIRST and us during the game’s development. Three balanced robots on your alliance’s bridge are now worth 40 points, and autonomous scoring is now +3 instead of x2.
Next, we have fixed a number of issues with the game crashing unexpectedly. The game no longer crashes when the window loses focus. This means you can be playing the game in full screen and then alt-tab to switch programs and then return to the game without issues. Note: When the game loses focus in windowed mode (not full screen), and then focus is returned to the game, the game window will begin to “twitch” periodically. This is a Microsoft XNA issue that has yet to be resolved and there is nothing we can do at the moment to fix the problem. Again, this is not a problem when playing in full screen.
We have made some adjustments to how we digitally sign the software. Hopefully, this will make the difference for those who are having issues with Norton Antivirus thinking that the game is harmful. As a reminder to anyone still having these issues after the update goes live, you can also manually add Catalyst 2012 to Norton’s trusted software list and this should also solve the problem. Please let us know if you are still having antivirus issues with running the game and we will continue to find a solution.
These effects will go into effect later tonight! We appreciate all of your feedback thus far as we have been working hard to provide a useful tool for teams to use.
-Chris Zeigler
