Fireworks Mania News

[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]This was suppose to just be a small update to support the upcoming Mod Tool changes that enable a lot of Netcode stuff. Anyway, one thing lead to another and I ended up actually doing a bunch of things in here.

So please help test the stuff below and let me know if you find any issues.[/p][p][/p][p]### Added[/p][p]- Added a new "fm-host-windspeed" command to set the windspeed[/p][p]- Added UI to "Host" tab that list banned players, with the option to unban them again[/p][p]- Added confirmation UI when banning a player, including a text field to write a "reason". This reason will be shown to the banned player but also show up in the list of banned players, to make it easier for the host to remember why this player was banned[/p][p]- Added a new "consent" flow to allow players to allow or deny analytics data being collected. However, I would much appreciate if you allow it as it help me know how players are using the game, what errors happens etc. Also included acceptance of the mod.io terms in this new flow at game startup, to make it a little simpler for players, instead of having to accept the terms once you go to the Workshop the first time. The issue is you can get in so some situations where you start a game, but mods are not actually loaded because you haven't accepted the mod.io terms.[/p][p][/p][p]### Changed[/p][p]- Minor changes in game to support new Mod Tools version that support Netcode for Gameobject features, which have not worked from mods before. This change will allow modders to do network logic, which have not been possible before. Prepare yourself for a wave of new type of mods hitting the workshop![/p][p]- Updated translations from https://crowdin.com/project/fireworks-mania[/p][p]- Upgraded to Unity 6.2[/p][p]- Upgraded Netcode for Gameobjects to 2.5.0[/p][p]- Minor performance improvement on the Ultra quality setting, by lowering the shadow distance, as it was way to far where you couldn't see it anyway[/p][p]- Made the black background in popups less transparent, so its easier to read[/p][p][/p][p]### Fixed[/p][p]- Fixed bug where StartupPrefabs where spawned twice if the StartupPrefab was defined in a map mod[/p][p] [/p][p]YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord[/p][p]- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]Hey!

Its been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me 🤓[/p][p]Be aware that I mention things in this post that are coming soon (hopefully) and some that will come in the (bigger) "New Years" update later this year. This update is typically released around beginning of December.[/p][p] [/p][h2]Firing System[/h2][p]Good progress on the firing system, where I'm trying to figure out how this should all work.[/p][p][/p][p]I'm playing around with different ideas to try and find something that is simple enough to use, so it's not annoying, but advanced enough to build sick stuff!
I won't go into too many details, as things are changing a lot, but join my live stream (see link in bottom of the post here) to see what's currently going on.
Anyway, here are some screenshots to get you through the weekend 🤓🥳[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The awake player might notice a new effect in these screenshots... I give you a moment, what is the different?[/p][p][/p][p]Dynamic Depth of field! [/p][p]Its something I wanted to add for a long time and some weeks ago took the time. A little side-quest from the main focus of the firing system. It dynamically change depending on what you look at. Most might not even notice it, but it adds a nice "depth" and niceness to the game, I think. You can disable it in settings if you don't want it.[/p][p]This will be part of the "New Years" update later in the year that also contains the firing system.[/p][p][/p][h2]Rebindable keys[/h2][p]... and another little side-quest - this came out from a feature needed on the firing system though.[/p][p][/p][p]As we talked about in the Discord and on the live stream, people wanted to be able to use the physical keys on the keyboard to fire stuff. Instead of starting to hardcode some keys again, I though that now was the time to start looking into the rebindable keys feature, as it was on the Roadmap already.[/p][p]This feature however isn't isolated to only rebinding the keys, in the same go I also need/want to restructure the "action maps" in the game, which is basically how various controls are grouped together in a meaningful way. So far, all was under the same more or less, but the game outgrew that long time ago. It's an internal thing, so all you guys see are rebindable controls, but underneath, its a much bigger change. In general it works, but there are some bugs that came from this I need to have solved.[/p][p]This will also be part of the "New Years" update later in the year.[/p][p][/p][h2]Network code in mods[/h2][p]Yet another side-quest, however, this has a long history to it. [/p][p]Fireworks Mania might look like a simple game on the surface, however, its really complex under the hood.[/p][p]Without boring you with too many details, one of the parts that make it complex is the fact that it supports mods and have multiplayer.[/p][p]As you know, this have worked for a while, however, there are some limitations on what modders can do, as they cannot use any of the "multiplayer/network" stuff, that they need to build real multiplayer mods.[/p][p]Over 2 years I (and Guanaco and Keltusar) have been in dialog with Unity on this topic, however, this summer they said that it was too niche for them to look into right now. We were on our own to get it to work. They might come with a solution down the road, who knows, however if we wanted it to work now, we had to figure it out our self.[/p][p]Again, without going into too many details - this is freaking advanced stuff - so I was kind of pushing it ahead of me. However, on the other hand I also knew how important this is for modders like Guanaco, Panini etc. that create a lot of custom scripts and logic.[/p][p]About a week ago, Guanaco had made a proof of concept in a simple setup on how this in theory could work in the game and the Mod Tools. So I took his proof of concept and after a few days I have something that looks like its freaking working![/p][p]We are still testing and it's not everything we want that works yet, but the majority of it we seem to have found a solution for.[/p][p]It's super technical so you don't wanna know, but Guanaco is currently looking into if he can get some of his mod working, that have never worked in the new multiplayer version.[/p][p][/p][p]The car mod is one of the things he is looking into - not fully working - but he get there eventually I'm sure 🕺[/p][p][/p][p]This update, which is an update to the game and to the Mod Tools, I plan to release as soon as we find its ready enough. So this will be out (unless we run into a real showstopper) before the "New Years" update.[/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]No public updates pushed since last Developer News.[/p][p] [/p][p] YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord [/p][p][/p][p]- Enjoy![/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p]

[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]