Much faster Browser Load Speeds!

• We have worked hard on optimizing the loading speed, and we're now seeing around 50% faster initial load speeds. So for example, on a Chromebook (Lenovo N23) that is four years old, we went from a 5-5.5 minute loading time to 2.5-3 minutes!
• We've also improved how Tyto Online handles loading from "cacheing," or files that your browser saves from sessions. Before, we barely noticed a difference in loading time when files were already cached, but now we're seeing another 33% improvement. So for that same device... it takes under 2 minutes! This means after a first load, you should get into the game much faster when you keep coming back to play!
• Also, on our server end, we've made changes so we shouldn't get as slowed down when we have usage spikes, like happened towards the end of last school year.

We know this was the biggest barrier to smooth implementation last year, so please let us know how it goes for you! We hope you all see the same results we are in our testing. We have even more improvements to loading coming soon, including a vocabulary review loading screen so that even the wait time is useful for instruction. 🤩

Improved Assignment Reliability

• We have made changes in the game to ensure storyline assignments stay in the correct order.
• "Delete prior" function in the teacher dashboard has been optimized to handle large amounts of assignments better.
• Bug fix: Assigning the unlocking quest to students who have unlocked a sandbox by themselves will no longer trigger the tutorial to play again and cause issues.

Improved Transit Center

The transit center and teleporter user interface (UI) has been completely reworked. It now includes an icon for each location and descriptions for more frequently-used locations. The instructions for where to go have been moved inside of the window to be more noticeable. The location with current objective or available quests will be marked with a symbol to further help students navigate between maps.

Other Game Improvements

We have made a lot of UI improvements, including but not limited to:

• Options menu UI has been updated to be visually clearer. We removed the functions that don't work, and added a "Log Out" button for those who found closing the browser tab not intuitive.
• Some of the tutorials are now more streamlined and accurate. This should help students new to our game to get used to the controls more quickly.
• The Argument Builder's answer log has been updated to be more legible - hopefully students will look at it more when having difficulty!
• Punnett Square and Probability tasks' interface have been updated to include clearer instructions and to have a better layout.
• We realized that our toolbox system (allowing students to move tools around and hide tools that are not frequently used) was more confusing than helpful, so we removed it. Now, all the tools they need are always present in their assigned spot.
• As always, we have been fixing bugs being reported by users, and trying to make the Tyto experience smoother for everybody!