A Giant Problem News

The game is getting cleaner, tighter, and better. And that’s because of the hard work the team is putting in. And it’s not just hard work but a lot of work. This patch includes the following:

• Updated Character Models, Skins and Animations,
  
• Updated Particle Effects,
  
• Reworked Magic Projectiles,
  
• Numerous Bug Fixes, and
  
• Further UI Improvements.
  

[h2]Updated Characters[/h2]
Every character has now had a full face lift! The gnomes are prettier, the hedgehogs spikier, trolls scarier, goblins greener. You get the idea. With the new models came new skins, smoothing out all those early aspects that are best not remembered. It wouldn’t be enough if we stopped there. We’ve also added a slew of new animations to every character to really bring out their personalities. On top of that, there’s a hive a new dragons waiting to be discovered.

[h2]Updated Particle Effects[/h2]
Fire! Let there be fire! And along with it plenty of smoke. We’ve updated the look of fire magic and all its components. Goblins and warriors have also had their particle effects updated. The other magic and character effects are also in the works, so come version 1.0 everything will be sparkling. It may require some extra special effects to truly make everything sparkle… and isn’t it oh so pretty when everything glitters!

[h2]Reworked Magic Projectiles[/h2]
Dragons, mages and even you the player have had the magic reworked. This improves the base functionality of magic and makes sure everything is more cohesive in its appearance. Overall magic just works better for everyone, like it’s… magic?

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
Even after all this time things don’t always work. Yeah it’s awkward, but it’s also a normal part of game development. Which is part of the reason why we’re in Early Access - not so we can ship bugs, but so we can show you that we’re working on them. And working on them we are. This patch pushes numerous solutions to some of the most common problems. Magic wasn’t affecting characters or the player properly, it does now. Spawner buttons are no longer troublesome. You can’t teleport through the terrain. We’ve sorted most if not all rendering issues. Animations aren’t weird any longer. It’s been a good thorough clearing of the bug backlist and the game is better for it.

[h2]Further UI Improvements[/h2]
Once more we’ve been working on the UI in an effort to improve its efficiency, readability and in order to prepare it for localization. Currently we’re planning on launching with Japanese support, though that’s only for the UI. We don’t have any plans to localize the little voice over we currently have. Who knows, maybe that and more languages will be supported in the future. We’re always open to that, as we are a multilingual team - we speak English, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and Spanish.

That’s it for this update, but stay tuned cause there’s more on the way for A Giant Problem! But for that we need your feedback. Please be sure to reach out to us on the Steam Forums, on our Discord or via our support email.

The game is getting cleaner, tighter, and better. And that’s because of the hard work the team is putting in. And it’s not just hard work but a lot of work. This patch includes the following:

• Reworked Physics Layer,
  
• Repair Fixes,
  
• Reworked Shadow Magic,
  
• Additional End Conditions and Updated Level End Conditions,
  
• Updated Characters,
  
• Map Polishes,
  
• Polished Magic, and
  
• Further UI Improvements.
  

This is all about optimization, bug hunting, and polish. By making sure that everything is a distinct layer and the correct layer, we ensure that every action has the appropriate reaction. The things we want to trigger when you throw a goblin are exactly those - and not say the UI. No one would enjoy it if you ended up changing the game settings because an errant troll collided with a button. Hence why we took the time to rework all of this and smooth everything out. And if we missed anything we’ll sort it in a future patch.

[h2]Repairs[/h2]
Part of the physics rework was sorting the repair system. Making sure all the correct things were being hit when that hammer was swung. Now it should work without issue. All you need to do is swing that giant hammer at the remains of a wall or house to build it back up. 

[h2]Shadow Magic[/h2]
For a while now dragons have been spitting at the players. It’s something we initially just called goop. But… well… no one likes being vomited on. So we changed it to shadow magic. And with time we’ve developed it further. Not just so it has an all new look, but so you the player can make use of its powers as well. What it does is a surprise.

[h2]End Conditions[/h2]
It was all well and good for Early Access to have some basic end conditions in the campaign - like kill 500 goblins, or survive for 12 minutes, or score 800000000 points. But for a campaign not so much. As much as we love numbers going up it, it makes for a very boring campaign. That’s why we’ve created a slew of additional end conditions to bring much need variation to the missions, and these have been implemented to the already released levels.

[h2]Characters[/h2]
Good or bad our characters are the life of this game. They’re practically everything you interact with. So of course they needed a good polish. In this case it means we’ve got new models, rigs, art, and animations for the Gnomes, Hedgehog and Warriors. With more characters coming soon. Their AI is not quite final as some bugs still need to be worked out, but for the most part it’s all there.

[h2]Maps[/h2]
Every map has had a once over. There’s more life and pop to all of them. Now the lava on The Cauldron is dangerous. In all the maps just look phenomenal. So much so that if you don’t believe us then you’ll just have to see them for yourselves.

[h2]Magic Polish[/h2]
All of the magic is getting visual improvements. Some has been mentioned in the bit about Shadow Magic, but just to reassure you we aren’t forgetting Fire and Ice. They’ve got updated looks, with additional particle effects and shader work coming in the next update beyond what we’ve done in this one.

[h2]Further UI Improvements[/h2]
Like always we’re making changes big and small to our UI. Which is surprising given it’s a game that was meant to have as little as possible. Either way, we’ve streamlined the Credits, taken out the progression system for the moment (more on that in a future post), added some additional features like resetting your save and in general just tried to make for a smoother experience.

All in all there’s a lot that went into this update - things big and small. Just the campaign itself and all the systems involved in that is worth dev diary of its own. But we won’t burden you with that for now. So that’s it for this update. And as always, we have more in store for A Giant Problem. But for that we need your feedback. Please be sure to reach out to us on the Steam Forums, on our Discord or via our support email.

This is just a small but vital fix to our UI and UX. Instead of going back to Level Select, you can now press the "Next Level" button and the game will automatically load the next level. It quite literally does what it says it does.

Enjoy.

Well that was a lot of work. It’s been a while since our last patch, but we know it was worth the wait. Why? Cause this one has so much in it, including:

• Campaign and Campaign Systems,
  
• Overhauled Wave System,
  
• Updated Character AI,
  
• Ally Spawners,
  
• Level Polish,
  
• More Shaders,
  
• Updated Club Sounds,
  
• UI Improvements, and
  
• Unity updated to version 2019.4 LTS.
  

[h2]Campaign and Campaign Systems[/h2]
The beginning of A Giant Problems’ campaign is in. The first four maps are available. But the levels aren’t fully tuned. Nor is the story complete. This being early access this should be no surprise. To get more feedback on this we are planning on launching special playtests later this month. More on that in a future blog post.

[h2]Overhauled Wave System[/h2]
To build out the campaign and even to enable an Endless mode in the future we’ve changed how we call and deploy enemies. This gives us more control to fine tune the levels of the campaign, adjust the difficulty, and create variation to the encounters.

[h2]Characters With More Character[/h2]
Everyone is getting smarter. Or at least more reactive. The enemies and allies all have new behaviors, and those they already did have been fine tuned. This is in part to create additional reactions between them, as well as with you. They are by no means complete as playtesting and your feedback will inevitably show us changes that need to be made.

[h2]Ally Spawners[/h2]
What’s the point of having gnomes and hedgehogs if there isn’t a way to create them in-game. That’s why we have our lovely little ally spawners. With a press of a button, a new ally arises ready to fight. There is a cost of course - mana. The introduction of these adds to your arsenal to make holding off the invaders all the easier.

[h2]Level Polish[/h2]
We wouldn’t be going for gold if it didn’t also mean making sure everything looks the best. This is more than just visual improvements. It includes functional ones for things like the water making items sink, the lava does the same, out-of-bounds setting limits to the player teleport. But it’s also a lot of pretting up of each map through more props, more particle effects, more decals, new textures. Just more.

[h2]Shaders[/h2]
Speaking of more, we’re making much greater use of shaders to awesome effect. They’re helping spruce up levels, mechanics and more. Where we can we’re using them to make the game really pop.

[h2]The Club[/h2]
Swinging a giant baseball bat really should sound impactful. And now it does. So go out and hit something… like a goblin. But be careful when waving your arms about in VR, you could damage something or someone in the real world - even yourself.

[h2]UI Improvements[/h2]
We say it every time cause it’s true, but we’re always working on improving the user experience - especially when it comes to pressing buttons. Something we don’t want you spending too much time on anyways. But when you are we want that to be the best, most informative time pressing buttons possible. We’ve also got the UI rendering in front of everything else so it’ll no longer appear inside terrain or objects. This development is courtesy of the next change.

[h2]Unity Update[/h2]
We updated the version of Unity we’re using to 2019.4 LTS. This brought changes to the render pipelines which have enabled more shaders on our part and the aforementioned UI improvements with rendering. It provides us some additional benefits as developers and will help in porting the game to other platforms.

All in all there’s a lot that went into this update - things big and small. Just the campaign itself and all the systems involved in that is worth dev diary of its own. But we won’t burden you with that for now. So that’s it for this update. And as always, we have more in store for A Giant Problem. But for that we need your feedback. Please be sure to reach out to us on the Steam Forums, on our Discord or via our support email.

[h2]We’re looking forward to 2021 and here’s why![/h2]

We made it through, and we launched it into Early Access on April Fool’s Day in the midst of the pandemic and the restrictions they put here in place in Finland. For us that meant no movement outside of the capital region, closing of schools, and other limits. It sucked, but we got through it alive and with a game going out.

We’ve been dedicated to improving what we’ve made and adding to it to the point we’ve put out 8 patches of various sizes. Those patches have steadily improved the game, added content and increased the features that make you feel like a giant. So overall the team is quite happy with the progress we’ve made on A Giant Problem. That is of course because we know what’s coming. And we’re happy to finally tell you all about it.

[h2]The New Roadmap[/h2]

As you can see from the updated map what we’re planning on delivering has changed. Most notably, there will be a campaign! And we’re excited about that, cause who doesn’t love a good story and want some reasoning behind what’s happening. We’re still delivering eight maps, more magic, more enemies and varieties, allies, upgrades, and the repair hammer.

To date the game has been more of a rogue-lite, in that each play session is a run and upon losing you have to start all over. The addition of a campaign changes this. Namely the game no longer becomes about staving off loss, rather you’re trying to achieve goals which generally feels a lot better. At the same time we will be refining the rogue-lite aspects and putting them out as a new Endless Mode. It also means we get to provide a story and lore, explanations for why you are doing what you’re doing. A vital thing for us as a company because all involved want to be making games with a story

Together the campaign and endless mode will offer a lot, and to players with different likes. And we want this game to be both appealing and fun. Fun is different for different people, which is why both modes will be available from the start once we reach 1.0. Our major focus in this updated roadmap and for version 1.0 is about making a fun and playable game. That’s why certain features are currently out of scope - they’re nice, but not necessities to achieving the goal of a fun and playable game.

[h2]Change of Scope[/h2]

If you compare our roadmap for 2020 with that for 2021 you’ll see some features or plans have changed. That’s an inevitable part of game development. We’ve had a lot of ideas for this game. Many we’ve tested and found them simply not fun, or too complex to implement successfully. Others didn’t fit with the pillars of the game, which have always been:

1. Make the Player Feel Powerful,
   
2. Family Friendly,
   
3. Keep It Simple.
   

We’re going to deliver all of this and more. That’s our plan for what we will accomplish this year, so we hope you’re with us for the rest of the journey as we continue to add to and improve A Giant Problem, and grow our community.