Fireworks Mania News

[p]Hey!

Its been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me 🤓
[/p][p]Good progress this month! Not on what I was originally planning, but good progress anyway 😂
[/p][h2]4th of July & Summer Sale[/h2][p]July was, surprisingly 😅, the month of 4th of July, which is a big deal for Fireworks Mania.[/p][p]It is the second biggest time of year for the game, only topped by New Years.

This year Fireworks Mania was part of the Summer Sale on Steam, which runs over 4th of July. I was lucky enough to also get a Daily Deal spot right after the Summer Sale followed by yet another 2 weeks sale. So more or less 4 weeks on sale - so if you didn't get a copy on sale it's your own fault 🤓
(No worries, there will be sale again at some point).

This was a big success and a lot of new people have bought the game, resulting in a lot of positive reviews - which means a lot to me!
The game is now "Overwhelmingly Positive" in both RECENT and ALL reviews 🕺



Thanks again to all who bought the game, either recently or years ago 🙏🎇🎆[/p][p][/p][h2]Firing system[/h2][p]This month I have actually worked on the upcoming firing system.

However, much of the time has actually been spend on talking with people in the community about ideas how this could work from a players point of view, combined with my own vision for how I want it to end up in its final state.

To give an example of what I mean, I have been back and forth on if the interaction with the Firing Controller, should be like an "in game" interface or it should be regular UI.

So what do I mean by that.

In general, I'm really a fan of having things be "physical" things in the game world. So like, if you need to press a button, there is a "physical" button in the game world you have to press, instead of a UI with a button you press with the mouse. [/p][p]
The reason is that I think it feels better somehow and it translate better to be played with a controller too or in VR if you have things physically in the game world.
However, there are drawbacks to this approach too, which I will get back to in a bit.

As an example, my first attempt here, I created a "Firing Controller" that had buttons you needed to look at and press to for instance fire of "cue 1".
[/p][p][/p][p]This have that ingame feeling (right now it doesn't, as the button don't move, make sound or any feedback, but lets imaging that there for now). One of the problems though, is that you are looking down while pressing, meaning you are not looking at what's shooting off.
Another issue might be that it might not be easy to make an "interface" this way, when things get a little more complex, where you maybe have a waveform from a song and you wanna place markers at a specific time.

Another approach is to have regular UI as we know it from like the Inventory, menu's etc.
This could work in a way where you walk up to the firing controller and press E to use it and a UI shows, where you can do stuff.[/p][p]A simple simple mockup could be something like this:
[/p][p]Making it like this, I think it will be easier to have a more advanced interface, as the firing controller system evolves with more features, like a waveform, markers etc.

However, this have the same challenges as the other, by having a huge dark UI blocking your view when you press the "Cue 1" button to fire it off.

To solve that problem, I could make it so the buttons Cue 1, 2, 3 etc. was bound to NUM1, NUM2, NUM3 etc. on the keyboard, so you had physical keys to press. That would solve the problem for both approaches... but what if you have more than one Firing Controller spawned then? What if there are multiple players in the game, what happens when one player press NUM1?

Anyway, this was a very very very short and simplified version of the thoughts I'm thinking these days.[/p][p]The goal is to find a solution to this that makes you guys say "Yes, of cause it should be made like that" - however that's typically also the hardest solution to come up with.

Please share your thoughts and ideas of how this would work in the perfect world - I'm listening 👂[/p][p][/p][p]That's all for now 🤓[/p][p][/p][h2]Change log[/h2][p]I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News.[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink] [/p][p] YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord [/p][p][/p][p]- Enjoy![/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p]

[p]### Changed[/p][p]- Removed the 4th of July decoration for 2025[/p][p]- Changed MainMenu background video[/p][p] [/p][p] YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord [/p][p][/p][p]- Enjoy![/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]If you have been following along in the Update History, specifically what I have been pushing to the EXPERIMENTAL beta, you will know that I got a little sidetracked while working on the firing system. [/p][p]That resulted in me spending some time updating and optimizing the code around mortars, which is a good thing in a long run - even though I should have been further with the firing system by now - but hey, that's how it is 🤓

[/p][p][/p][p]### Changed[/p][p]- Improved performance of playing sounds on impact as it in some cases had a huge performance downside[/p][p]- Improved performance of "other objects" shooting out of mortars[/p][p]- Refactored various scripts and logic in relation to Mortars. In general a big performance boost, but logic around how "other items" is put into a mortar have been changed. Once you loaded in a shell that fits the mortar, so it's loaded properly, you can put more items/objects into the mortar. However, it have to be something you spawn and the size of the object that to roughly fit the size of the mortar. In general it should work pretty much as before, just perform better and mortars being easier to work with in relation to physics. NOTE TO MOD CREATORS THAT HAVE CREATED MORTARS: I will post a video shortly, showing what you need to do to your mortars to optimize them. Your mortars should work fine in this version, but to really get the performance boost, you need to remove some colliders, which I will show in that video. Keep an eye on my YT channel :)[/p][p]- Shells now dynamically follow the mortar during the "load into mortar" animation[/p][p]- Changed the UI text showing info about the object you look at, so the font does not auto size anymore. It looked weird in some cases of mortars and shells as they can have long names. Now it does not jump up and down in font size[/p][p]- Optimized the "PickUp" logic to work more stable[/p][p]- Updated translations from https://crowdin.com/project/fireworks-mania[/p][p][/p][p]### Fixed[/p][p]- Fixed bug where mortars loaded with shell and other objects would not fire after ignition, if it was loaded from a blueprint[/p][p]- Fixed background videos not playing on SteamDeck[/p][p] [/p][p] YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord [/p][p][/p][p]- Enjoy![/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]NOTE: This version is only available on the EXPERIMENTAL beta. You need to manually switch to it in Steam.
Right Click on Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Betas -> "Experimental" in dropdown.
To go back to the normal version, change it to "None".[/p][p][/p][p]I think the new mortar implementation is now ready, let me know if you find any issues.
Please test loading and saving with blueprints, test that your old blueprints that include mortars still work.[/p][p]
### Changed[/p][p]- Improved performance of playing sounds on impact as it in some cases had a huge performance downside[/p][p]- Improved performance of "other objects" shooting out of mortars[/p][p][/p][p]### Fixed[/p][p]- Fixed bug where mortars loaded with shell and other objects would not fire after ignition, if it was loaded from a blueprint[/p][p] [/p][p]YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord[/p][p]- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]NOTE: This version is only available on the EXPERIMENTAL betas. You need to manually switch to it in Steam.
Right Click on Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Betas -> "Experimental" in dropdown. To go back to the normal version, change it to "None".[/p][p][/p][p]As mentioned previously, I got a bit sidetracked while working on the upcoming firing system.
So I ended up making some pretty major changes to how the mortar/shell system work.
As a player it will work very much like before, but it should performance better and work more solid now.[/p][p][/p][p]IMPORTANT NOTE: The major performance benefits will not work for mortars coming from mods, until the mod have been updated. I already worked with Amnestey to get all his mortars updated, however, he can not release that version to the workshop until this version is released.
So here on EXPERIMENTAL, Amnesteys and other modders mortars should still work, but perform more or less as they use to.
[/p][p]For the above reason, it will also be a bit hard for you guys to test things are working - I know, sorry.[/p][p]However, I just wanted you guys to have a chance to test the version out, see if things work as they use to, or better, in the cases mentioned in the changelog below. [/p][p]
### Changed[/p][p]- Refactored various scripts and logic in relation to Mortars. In general a big performance boost, but logic around how "other items" is put into a mortar have been changed. Once you loaded in a shell that fits the mortar, so it's loaded properly, you can put more items/objects into the mortar. However, it have to be something you spawn and the size of the object that to roughly fit the size of the mortar. In general it should work pretty much as before, just perform better and mortars being easier to work with in relation to physics. NOTE TO MOD CREATORS THAT HAVE CREATED MORTARS: I will post a video shortly, showing what you need to do to your mortars to optimize them. Your mortars should work fine in this version, but to really get the performance boost, you need to remove some colliders, which I will show in that video. Keep an eye on my YT channel :)[/p][p]- Shells now dynamically follow the mortar during the "load into mortar" animation[/p][p]- Changed the UI text showing info about the object you look at, so the font does not auto size anymore. It looked weird in some cases of mortars and shells as they can have long names. Now it does not jump up and down in font size[/p][p]- Optimized the "PickUp" logic to work more stable[/p][p]- Updated translations from https://crowdin.com/project/fireworks-mania[/p][p][/p][p]### Fixed[/p][p]- Fixed background videos not playing on SteamDeck[/p][p] [/p][p]YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord[/p][p]- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]