Version 1.2.0

Hello and welcome to Hopdot hard mode!

... Well, what else am I supposed to say? That is the main update.

Introducing the long-awaited Hard AI! This is the first difficulty level that does not have a hard-programmed strategy; instead, it relies on a tree-search algorithm that will be familiar to those who have worked with chess engines and the like. It seems to play in a very "trappy" style; as in, it will very often pick an innocuous-looking move, waiting for you to respond... and then it suddenly takes half of your space. :)

Let us know what you think and if you have any suggestions going forward, and have a great day!

... you're still here?

In that case, have a roadmap!

• Multiplayer support: much of the internal logic is already prepared to start talking to a server, and much of the logic of the server is done; we're currently blocked on a heat dome leaving the general area of Ontario before the server can be finished (long story, see the Discord for more information)
• "Impossible" level: the infrastructure created for the Hard difficulty should be easily expandable to the next and final level: "Impossible." There's only one problem: due to the way the current tree search is implemented, going out to even one more layer of depth exhausts all available memory. Which is understandably a bad thing. We have some TODOs written in the code for places we know are suboptimal, but my suspicion is that fixing all of those won't be enough. If you'd like to help with the effort, check the GitHub page and see if you can make a dent! We'll take any and all help we can get!
• New player configuration interface: the player config interface in the settings menu was a rush job made to get the game jam done in time. In reality, the player configuration has the capability of much more versatile setups, including up to 4-player matches with any combination of players and AIs of any mismatched difficulty. The ultimate goal would be to make a new interface that allows all of those options to be freely customized. Again, we'd be more than happy to take help on this!
• Saving data: Have you ever been bothered that Hopdot doesn't remember your favorite grid size and difficulty level? ... well, I have. I don't currently know a good cross-platform way to save information; I know that web wants to save to local storage, and Win/Mac/Lin want to save to files (in some magic location?), but I don't know where to save files on desktop or on mobile, and I'd like to try to figure out both of those before I go implement any of them... plus there might be a library that handles all of that so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. Ideally bevy would provide this. I'll talk to them.
• Mobile release: So getting an app on the Apple App Store is prohibitively expensive for a project currently not making money, but getting an app on the Google Play Store is comparatively completely fine... plus I don't even technically need to because Android just lets you sideload apps! I've been testing an Android app on my personal phone, and I have a few more things I want to polish before officially releasing that, but we should be ready to distribute an Android app in the next few weeks at the latest.

Okay, that's really all I have for today; have an amazing day, and thank you for sticking around to the end! I'll see you in the next update! (or on our shiny Discord chat...)