Words are cheap, so I'll just show you a video.
Zoom is now smooth, works with the mousewheel, and tapping middle mouse resets zoom level.
If it looks at all jerky that's down to my recording software.




The video is recorded at 800 x 600, you can see how much more playable the game is now at this resolution, you can actually see the battlefield!

So in 0.9.12 we've included an announcer, this feature is pretty much done. The announcer basically displays messages at the top of the screen based on events in the game. Making witty comments when hogs drown, explode, and so on.

Well that's all well and good, but it's a bit.. old fashioned? I was wondering how we could make this feature more interesting and more fun.. and came up with this idea..



Basically, rather than text annoucements at the top of the screen, we have this guy! He floats around near the clouds, being pushed around in the wind, and he makes comments using the speech bubble system on events in the game...

Not only that, but if you really dislike a comment he makes.. well.. you can blow him up :)

Here's a full mockup here:

Click me!!!

Graphic isn't finished, but what do you think of the idea?

Once again I'm updating graphics and giving the game a little bit of an extra polished look.
This time round is high res backgrounds!
A number of themes are getting very pretty high res images as part of the backdrop, carefully blurred and darkened so they don't confuse the foreground.

Ignore the random lines through the water/some of the background, that's just a small bug with zooming right now. Nothing to worry about

Images a go go!
Click for full size

Nature Theme
City Theme
Island Theme

Here's a mockup of what the new life bars will look like in 0.9.12
A lot of you have been asking for flags and an easier way to identify which teams belong to which players, this accomplishes both!

Thoughts?