Hello everyone!
More and more of you are playing Fortune Avenue and that's really great! Especially since you're giving me such relevant feedback!
As a result, I've worked really hard to deliver as much content as possible so you can enjoy Fortune Avenue to the fullest!
Visual and Ergonomic Improvements
There has been quite a bit of work on this. In fact, I've changed the colors of the buttons on the main screen and added icons to better distinguish between online and offline game modes. So when you play in offline mode, Fortune Avenue's colors change to become more orange. Meanwhile, when you play online, the beautiful yellow remains until you launch the game. At that point, the background will turn purple. I've implemented small color codes so that at a glance you can see what state the lobby is in. It was quite simple to do, but it was necessary.
Still on the interface side, when you arrive on the game board and let's say one of your colleagues is taking longer than expected to load their game. Then Fortune Avenue will display a panel explaining that everything is fine, and that the game will start as soon as everyone is connected. Once again, it was simple to do, but necessary.
And the last two interface changes concern gameplay readability. First, you'll notice very quickly that the scenery and surroundings of the board are less bright. This allows you to focus on what really matters, the flow of the game. But additionally, when you hover your mouse, or cursor if you're playing with a controller, over a player's username, all properties belonging to that player will be highlighted on the board. It's super convenient for knowing at a glance what's happening on the board!
Lobby System Improvements
In Fortune Avenue, when you want to play alone, you have the option to play against bots. And these bots are quite strong. Each bot has a personality. So you might see one bot buy back a property, while another bot won't. This is due to the bots' aggressiveness parameter. And I took a certain pleasure in modulating this aggressiveness so that the bots don't all play the same way, making the games more lively.
But the bots are still very strong! Too strong perhaps for some? So I listened to you, and now you can adjust the difficulty of the bots. There are only two difficulty modes. The difficult mode, which is the current mode. And the easy mode. In easy mode, bots don't organize World Cups. They never buy back hotels, and they never build 5-star hotels. When they take a plane, they make somewhat questionable choices. I had the bots play against each other, and the difficult bots absolutely destroy the easy bots.
Rest assured, if you find yourself disconnected from a game, a difficult bot will take your place. Just to cover for you until you reconnect.
So, this is a major update, as it modifies the interface, but also allows you to create more enjoyable games.
Thank you for your time,
And I wish you great games!
Xavier aka Binogure