New Year Update - Change Log
This is a list of changes in the New Year Update I just released. It covers most of the major stuff.
The update is kind of an amalgamation of small patches all rolled into a single release, but there’s some neat stuff in there. :)
Maps Features
Intro level (map 1): Added a new area to the map that adds more opportunities to use High Jump.
A note on why: Watching playthroughs of Down Ward, I saw a few people who missed or forgot about the High Jump from this intro level, which caused confusion in later levels. This is my fault, as in the tutorial there was exactly one use of High Jump and it wasn’t technically required to progress. Now multiple high jumps are (pretty much) required to complete the level. Much as I try to avoid it, it’s really easy to take the developer perspective for granted sometimes. All that said, I also just like doing high jumps, so I’m happy with the new area in that respect as well. :)
Intro level (map 1) … continued: Raised ceiling in upper area. In the “flight instruction” area, increased the height and distance of the exit pillar to prevent high jumping out. Also changed the position of the stalactite to prevent high jumping across.
Three Tier (map 3): Added a new vertical area, which allows you to go much higher up in the map.
… Also I Just noticed I renamed “High Jump” to “Spring Jump” in the intro map, (the original term I’d planned to use). :D
… … I should probably change that in the game description to avoid confusion … later …
Application Features
WebGL error screen: Added a WebGL not detected error screen. You can force this page to show with the console command “errorWebGL”.
Low FPS warning screen: Added an on-startup low FPS detection system and notification page. This should only be active when running the game in a browser. This will only trigger on the title screen (i.e. will never trigger in-game), and it just suggests trying the downloadable version or a different browser if performance becomes a problem. Pressing any key will continue on with the game normally. The warning is triggered if the over-a-few-seconds average frame rate drops below 38 fps. You can force this page to show with the console command “errorFPS”. It’s actually a little scene with game graphics. (This is mostly for Firefox, as it tends to run HTML5 applications unusually slowly, in my experience. I use Firefox as my main browser, but I use either Chrome or SR-Ware-Iron to run HTML5 games.)
Misc Game Visuals
HUD commit effect: Added a particle effect to hud feather icons, triggered when committing feathers to a ward tower.
Map Visuals
Tutorial (map 1): Added and refined visuals. Added hanging banner shadows. Added parallax background stalactites.
Three Tier (map 3): Added and refined visuals. More variation in background and foreground structures. Added some architectural details.
Tower Cavern (map 5): Fixed slight asymmetry in the center island. Added parallaxed ceiling stalactites to background.
Fortress (map 8): Added to and refined the foliage and architecture visuals.
Short shadows: Added some new graphics to help depict shorter shadows in several levels.
Gable Visuals
Flight attack anims: Added dedicated animations for up, down, and forward mid-flight attacks. Previously the animations flying and grounded attacks were the same.
Gable’s looky-loo-lookery: Refined handling of Gable’s attention. This affects how Gable’s gaze moves around through a scene, what entities or environment features she looks at, and why.
Gable may show interest in lit tower cells: [added] Gable will now watch the tower cells light up if she’s near them. Previously Gable would show interest in cells, but now she is much more likely to turn her attention to the highest lit cell, much as a player might.
Gable may look along beam: [added] Gable, if near the tower beam, will look upward with it when it lights.
Gable’s attention during airborne attacks: [fixed] Gable’s gaze when attacking in mid flight is now based directly on the actual attack direction rather than held direction keys. This fixed a bug where Gable would look up if you attacked while holding up and forwards, even though that always causes a forward attack.
Gable’s attention during attack volleys: [fixed] Gable’s gaze when focused on what she’s attacking will now predominantly track her most recent attack point. Before, Gable gave no specific attack the highest immediate interest, and so multiple attacks would cause her attention to stick to the first attack in a volley, despite there being no particular reason for her to find it more attention worthy.
Mid flight attention: [fixed] There was a bug that caused her to occasionally find everything really interesting, and so she would hardly look where she was going.
Did one of my electrons interact with that wall?: Collision’s are much less likely to draw Gable’s attention for very low closing speeds. Changed how medium to high speed ceiling collisions affect her focus.
Misc
“re” = Restart Map: Added ability to restart a map with the console command “re”. Mostly for debugging, but since it doesn’t break the game in any weird ways, that I know of, I figured I’d mention it for anyone interested.
Map run timer: [Note: This feature is embedded in the current release, but is not accessible by default. I’m including this entry for completeness.] Added a level timer system, though it’s integration into the game mechanics is not fully worked out yet. Ultimately it will likely be an unlockable play mode, as I don’t want the existence of an ever present timer ticking away to detract from the atmosphere of a normal playthrough. So while it is in the code, it is not enabled by default. Once I have a better idea of how I want to handle it, I’ll likely explain, in a subsequent news post, how to enable the prototype timer in the current release, for people to try out.
Fixes
Title Logo Lag: I’ve changed around how the title logo is displayed, such that it should not be able to lag behind the camera anymore. This solution is a hybrid of a suggestion from player “Mortimer’s Bakery”, and something terrible of my own invention.
HUD feathers: Using dedicated sprites for the HUD feather icons, to avoid the pixel distortion bug.
Un-crouch anim bug: Un-crouch animation no longer plays every time you let go of left or right while walking. It was one of those things that strangely wasn’t too noticeable, until you suddenly couldn’t un-notice it. :)
Super-fast outro bug: Fixed the “Wide view” on outro, aesthetic bug. If a player was using wide view as the ward tower completed reactivation, when the camera transitioned to the letterboxed outro shot, it would use the super-fast transition speed of the wide view shot, rather than the slower ease-in speed of the outro shot. (tl;dr Too fast, Looked weird, Now fixed.)
Pixel distortion bug: A number of textures have been redesigned at slightly different dimensions, to work around a pixel distortion bug that occurred on some screen sizes. Though the textures have been modified, Ideally the game should look almost exactly the same for players who were unaffected.
Narrow block temp fix: As not all objects displayed correctly after the texture modifications needed to fix the pixel distortion bug, (particularly some narrow objects), I added a temporary script to automatically find and replace those objects with an alternative that should always look correct. This only runs once and doesn’t have any performance hit that I noticed, but even so, before the next update I’ll go through each level and make every replacement by hand, so I can remove the script.
Thanks :)
My thanks to everyone who has played, commented, or given feedback of any kind. :)
Best wishes for the new year! :D
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