After releasing 1.0.1, and with 1.0.2 probably a week or two away still, I’m already making plans for the first ‘big’ update to SH.

Thing is, I’m not entirely certain what that will end up being, so I’m going to let you guys help me decide.

Dedicated Servers

Would be released as both a Windows and Linux binary, hopefully. This would help combat self-hosted games behind a router without forwarded ports. Could also allow for such things as scripted gamemodes later down the line. Would take a medium amount of time.

Linux Client

Simple enough – a Linux build of the game client. I’ve attempted this earlier, but it was a wee bit too hard for me on the outset. As such, doing the dedicated server first might prove useful in giving experience. This wouldn’t require all too major changes to the codebase itself.

Mac Client

And for those of you who have been asking, I’d love to do a Mac client, but here’s the problem: I’ve no Mac to compile and test it on! Otherwise, the time investment should be about as much as for a Linux client.

Friends System

Having a friends list, possibly with a messaging system. Friends list itself isn’t that hard and would only take a moderate time to implement, but messaging system would require pretty much a complete rewrite of most of the client<->master communication code and drastically increase bandwidth requirements, which I’m not all too keen on.

NAT Punchthrough

Since you’re probably going “what?” – NAT punchthrough would attempt to open a connection to a server behind a router without the need for port forwarding. Would not work with all router configurations, however, but the definite majority. Again, possible complete rewrite of server<->master communication code.

New Weapons

Ak-74:s! The Burning Seal! Ruger 77! This could take anywhere from a moderate time to very long to implement depending on how complex the weapons are.

Post your opinions either as comments here or in the News section in the forums for more in-depth discussion!

This is mainly a bugfix and balance release after some of the more horrible bugs discovered in 1.0. :)

The new release can be downloaded from the downloads page.

Introducing Seasons

This release introduces the concept of “Seasons” in regards to the highscore lists. Due to a few very much game-breaking bugs in v1.0, all current highscores have been archived as Season 1, and all highscores rankings are started anew. This is in order to keep the game fair for everybody regardless of which version they started out in, and also to keep the competitive aspect of the ladders fresh.

The end of a Season will hopefully be announced ahead of time in the future if it is mid-version, but all new versions that contain major changes to the way score is calculated or the gameplay itself will result in the start of a new Season.

General Changes

• Added classic TSH hud as an option
• Added option to use the player color for sniper lines
• Fixed turtles getting stuck in their shells after a player has left the game
• Scoreboard will now immediately disappear as soon as the scoreboard key is released
• Fixed shotgun shell being ejected too soon
• Switch weapon key now behaves the same way as in TSH; hitting it during cooldown will switch the weapon as soon as it is able to
• “First Blood” sound effect removed
• Chat and HUD text are now in bold for increased readability
• Ready countdown timer will now begin from 3 if the game being hosted is singleplayer
• Fixed enemies walking outside the map boundaries with 4 players
• List of servers now sorts itself by ping
• Fixed game being passworded indefinitely after restarting if passworded once
• Fixed loadout not saving when exiting menu with ESC
• Fixed a land mine exploit
• Fixed a bug causing certain aspects of the game score to stack between rounds
• Windows taskbar icon will now flash when a player joins the host’s game
• Fixed Punt Gun shell particle
• Number key weapon selection redone: 1-5 now correspond to the loadout weapon order, tilde (the key to the left of 1) will select the basic pistol

Gameplay Balance

• Rebalanced the Carl Gustav – it should now prove more viable in later levels (Price dropped from $9500 to $9000, splash decreased, overall damage increased)
• Fixed victim spawn rates during the level 4 boss not increasing properly (this makes level 4 harder)
• Made the level 2 boss spawn delay a bit longer
• Grenade minimum speed has been increased slightly
• Reload progress is now reset when switching weapon mid-reload
• Explosion radii penalty for 3 and 4 players has been reduced
• Increased the damage of the AWP and Shotgun against white seals
• Increased the damage of the Mac-10 against the level 4 boss
• Rebalanced the Land Mine (Old: $750, 750 damage, 1 mine/purchase, 3 second arm time, $15 combo bonus. New: $750, 220 damage, 3 mines/purchase, 2 second arm time, $20 combo bonus.)
• Fixed level 5 boss not devouring players in certain cases

Master Server

• Fixed server going unresponsive if a player leaves the game
• Fixed Big Spender achievement
• Fixed incorrect indication of players online

As a quick little heads-up, those of you having problems hosting games, please read this topic:

http://forums.sealhunter.se/index.php?topic=302.0

You also want to make sure that your firewall/anti-virus software isn’t blocking Seal Hunter’s traffic.

In other news, Seal Hunter 1.0.1 should be released sometime this week, with quite a bunch of fixes and tweaks to the gameplay balance!

Everything went better than expected, one might say.

The only real issues that popped up were an immediate one, which was due to me being a total klutz and having forgotten to clear out a few tables, which caused the master server to disconnect any and every player after they had finished a game. There’s also currently an issue related to players leaving games, which will be fixed shortly, as well as a few minor client bugs (available loadout won’t refresh, unable to ready up) that might take a little while longer to fix until I can push a fixed version.

By popular request, I’ve added a list of achievements and ranks to stats.sealhunter.se. Have fun trying to get some of them – I can be rather mean, at times!

All in all, I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of players (or rather, by the amount of time you guys have poured into this already) with more than 1,200 matches finished in less than a day, and I’m very happy to see that people seem to be enjoying the game!

‘Til next time, and happy hunting! (108,106 seals and counting.)

It’s been a long and awfully bumpy ride, with procrastination shining through the whole time, but it will hopefully all have been worth it.

Seal Hunter v1.0 has been released!

I won’t keep you held up for too long: Go grab it now, and kill some seals!

If you like it, though, spread the word. Hell, if you’re feeling crazy, you can even donate to help keep hosting costs down if you like it enough. Be sure to check out the forums and your awesome statistics, too.

Enjoy, and make the fishing industry proud!