Since the release of 1.03, I managed to put together a couple of mid-length games with SubtleSarcasm and Eric the Half-a-Bee of BSU infamy and ran head-first into a few irksome issues that were … unexpected … to put it gently. Not game-breakers (in fact, I think the in-game functionality has been vastly improved and rather like the way it is now) but in pre-game/UI setup places.

1. The patch deleted all the random-creation maps I had before install.

   I fully expected my save games to not be usable but I was more than mildly shocked when I went to load the map I’d created in the in-game Map Editor (as opposed to Galaxy Forge) and saw … nothing. It took me a bit to put together a replacement which made me mildly grumpy. You can create some elaborate random-gen maps with interesting texture with the editor and I’d been tinkering with a fair number, all reduced to murdered electrons in the wind when I installed the patch. In retrospect, I can understand why they might have been of questionable compatability (ie. the Pirate Base change), but some kind of warning they’d go pfft would have been nice.

2. Previewing the random map creation from the Multiplayer game creation and then Quit Game-ing puts you back at the Single Player Tutorial menu.

   OK, I admit, I don’t get this one at all, given it worked just fine in 1.00 and 1.02, but I’ll chalk it up to moving all the bits around with the Game Options menus. Still, it’s deucedly annoying if you’re a multi-tweak map creator like myself, as it adds a number of pokes at the mouse every time you test a change. That, my friends, is annoying. I’d even accept if it put you back in the Single Player Map Creator page for that map, but that’s not what it does.

3. There really needs to be some way to edit the window size of running Sins in a window without going to hunt down the user.settings file in %APPDATA% and editing it.

   Just an annoyance more than anything, really. I want to run it at 1600x1000 (and I do), it just required tweaking all my settings again after the patch. Not that big a deal except that particular setting is just darn annoying to find and make.

4. Been said elsewhere but probably worth noting, as much as I love the in-game font, the option to make it slightly bigger or change it needs to be built in for pure accessibility reasons.

   A simple Video Options button would do just fine there to revert it to something less stylized if desired.

Other than that, I’m pleased as punch and hope to keep poking at the actual mechanics for a long time to come. I imagine Ironclad is busy like a shaved wookie in putting together a demo for Sins that captures the feel of the game without giving everything away, and I earnestly and actively applaud their ongoing efforts.