As you can see, I've ditched the V1.0alphaX version numbers and moved back to a more conventional version numbering sequence. That should help keeping things a bit more orderly than they were during the last year ... and a half ...

Even though this was the longest release cycle so far, it probably should be considered a very small release. Basically, it's the things I've done "now and then" during the last good year, some polishing, some cleaning up and migrating to the most current version of Unity (2.6.1). V1.1.x will be a few more small releases which do some cleaning up and add some convenience features for the players. The plan is to switch the networking backend to Photon with V1.2.0. That will then probably justify a couple of smaller 0.0.1 releases in which I optimize the networking backend both for optimal design and performance. Finally, in the V1.3-cycle, I will move on with both the remaining Tracers (8 to 12) and the levels, up to Level 11 (that will be Levels 04-11; 01-03 are already complete). So, V1.4 will be all about the last level: Level 12. When that's done, official beta-testing will start ... and the first official real and complete multiplayer release will be Traces of Illumination V2.0.

So what are the changes between V1.0alpha9b and V1.1.0 - aside from the new version numbers? ;-)

• Make sure that game groups with only load-testers only start when someone hits play or admin starts all sessions
• Create "one game group per testclient" so that each testclient can play a complete game group with a chosen number of teams and tracers (as an alternative mode from the existing one).
• Add admin command to start playing in all game groups simultanuously (for load-tests and TOI competitions)
• Bugfix: No longer sending two messages when two Tracers crash into each other
• converted networking to "SetScope"-Features instead of using my own home-grown "send to each relevant player"-iterations (this should improve performance with high player-loads)
• fixed a bug that caused rather severe jittering especially when in cockpit mode
• fixed a bug that caused the power-up icons to be "shot up into the air" instead of falling down
• fixed a bug that caused the UI look very ugly and washed out in low-quality mode
• completely re-built levels 01, 02 and 03 with polygon-count in mind (and also made things look better and more consistent)
• optimized single player GUI to fit on smaller screen sizes (and this is also fine for higher resolutions); this was in particular important for the Dashboard Widget which uses the smallest resolution
• fixed one thing that's actually an issue with Unity: the Map appeared on bottom of screen instead of on top (Mac OS Dashboard Widget)
• improved camera for jumps: now the camera goes a little to the side even if it is locked behind the cycle when not "in the air"; however, this is only done for two seconds ...
• Made lock/unlock camera behind tracer (Y), camera scale (1-5) and map settings (turn/don’t turn (6), close, average, far distance (7-9)) persistent with player prefs – you no longer need to set your preferred camera style each time you start a play session. Thanks to Charles Hinshaw for this suggestion!
• don't show help when someone just types "?" in chat – now /? and /help will show help
• Added way to skip spawning sequence – this currently only works in single-player mode (spawning sequence is skipped by pressing space bar). Thanks to Samantha Kalman for this suggestion!
• in "Single player evaluation", most things can now be skipped by pressing space bar (level complete, game over) to allow “super-quick playing” of multiple sessions in a row. Thanks to Samantha Kalman for this suggestion!
• Made floors much less reflective – they now look more like plastic than like a plain mirror. Thanks to Jaques Ropert for this suggestion!
• a lot of "behind the scenes work" (this is not included in the current builds; it concerns mostly Level 08 and Level 12 ;-) ); the first part of Level 12 is "basically done" (well ... not quite, but it's a good start); also soundtrack for Level 11 is complete
• built with Unity 2.6.1 (I had to do quite a few fixes for that to work)
• server is now running properly in "headless mode"

Also quite noteworthy is that I now keep 3 load-tester clients up all the time which are creating 3 game groups that are permanently online: One with 19 players, another one with 10 players, and finally one with only 4 or 5 players. That should help people logging in to the server not feel lonely ;-)

Finally, I thought I should mention that you can now download the standalone versions for Mac and Windows from the homepage - but only if you're registered as beta-tester, of course (if you have registered and are not a beta-tester, yet, but would like to - just let me know; that can be fixed in almost no time) ;-)