Fireworks Mania News

Hey everyone!

It has been a while since I pushed any updated to the game. The reason - it is hard making games :)

Anyways, I'm getting closer and closer to be ready with the next big thing for Fireworks Mania, which is custom map support.
The update really contains a lot more stuff, as I wrote about in my Developer News Nov. 2022, but the main thing is really the custom map support.

Custom map support basically means that mod creators can create new maps for the game, which you can get from the workshop in the game.

As of this experimental release of this update however, it's only a selected few that can create maps, but when it comes out to all, all mod creators can get started making maps.

[h2]Experimental disclaimers[/h2]
There is a few things to be aware of.

If you have some feedback, issues, etc. the place to go is the "🎮-experimental" channel on my Discord server.

Remember to give constructive feedback to the map creators on the Discord in the "😘-feedback" channel. You find current map creators: Keltusar, Panini, Amnestey, Guanaco0403 etc. on the Discord too.

As you will see in the bottom of the workshop, it is a special experimental version of the workshop.

This means that you cannot login and all the normal mods are not in there. This also means that mods you have installed from the normal version of the game won't be included while you are on Experimental.

There are still a lot of known bugs that I'm trying to fix together with the map creating modders, so you will hopefully see some updates on this Experimental branch/beta over the coming weeks.

[h2]How to switch to Experimental?[/h2]
Watch this to see how you switch to the experimental branch.

- Enjoy!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/

[h2]What is [EXPERIMENTAL]?[/h2]
Developing a game is both a technical and creative challenge. Both takes time and multiple iterations to get "just right".

Because of that it is often a good idea to get feedback and help for testing from players.
This is what the EXPERIMENTAL branch is for. It is a way for me to put up an new version of the game to a specific EXPERIMENTAL branch on Steam, so only the players who active select to get this version gets it.

Smart, right?

So, if EXPERIMENTAL stuff is not for you, just stop reading and wait for an official update of the game.

If you want to help test out new stuff by providing feedback like bugs, ideas etc, (with the disclaimer of it being more buggy), you are welcome to switch.

Please post your feedback in the "🎮-experimental" channel on my Discord or in the Community section here on Steam.

Hey!

If you like Fireworks Mania consider nominating it in the "Labor of love" category.

If not, no worries, hope you have a great day anyway :)

Thanks in advance,
Laumania

Hey there!

Hope you are all ok out there in these crazy times!

Let me update you on some of the major things I have been and are working on lately.

New Years is peak season for Fireworks Mania, so I do what I can do get as much as I can ready for you guys before the holidays.

[h2]Custom Map support[/h2]
After I added mod support to the game last year, one of the big requests have been to enable support for custom maps, meaning mod creators can create full maps for the game.

I have been working on that exact feature for the last couple of months and are (as of writing) running a closed beta test with a handful mod creators.

There are still some bugs to fix and features to add, but it's coming a long nicely and should be ready for all of you before New Years.

[h2]Smarter mod handling[/h2]

Due to the Custom map support I had to refactor a lot of the code and completely change how the game loads maps and thereby also loads mods.
It wasn't easy and it took a while, but the result is awesome.

The handling of mods are now made in a smarter way, so only mods that have been changed are reloaded on map load. As a player this means the first time you load a map it takes more or less the same time as before, however on reload of the same or another map (as long as the game is running) it loads A LOT fast. Like a lot!

Me and the mod creators have used this for a while now and it seems pretty solid and stabile.
As always, there are still a few ways I would like to improve it - but they are mainly technical and not something you as a player feel or see directly.

The faster reloading of maps is the big news here for you guys.

[h2]Minor fixes and changes[/h2]

One of these minor, but important things, have been to update the "Map Selection UI" to now handle a dynamic amount of maps. Before it was fixed to hold the total of 4 maps in the game. Now the list of map is dynamic, which I have had some fun with. Still needs a little work, however, I see this as the v1 of the dynamic Map Selection, I plan to completely redo all this UI in the future, but for now, this is how it looks and works.

I also faced some issues with custom maps that ended up with me figuring out that there was a new version of "Enviro Sky" which is what I use for the Day/Night cycle in the game. I did a live stream about upgrading to it.

Besides that I have also found a new type of Steam key scam that I didn't see before.I made a video about it you can check out here.

That's it for this Developer News post :)

Subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to see video updates and live stream :)

- Enjoy!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/

To all who celebrates - 🎃🎃Happy Halloween 🎃🎃- to all others - Hello! 🤓

I would have loved to make a special little Halloween update, however, I haven't had time as I'm busy working on "Custom Map support" for a future update.

Luckily, we have mod support and a awesome Fireworks Mania mod community!



guanaco0403 have been busy making an REALLY awesome mod that adds a ton of Halloween decorations to both the Town and Ranch map.

You simply find the mod in the in-game workshop.
To make it easier to find you can filter mods to only see Halloween mods or search for "Halloween".



With the mod installed you will now have some detailed spooky decorations when you go into the Town or Ranch map.



You can always disable the mod or unsubscribe if you want the scary decorations to go away again.

If you run into trouble with this mod or the game in general, remember you can always ask for help in the Community section here on Steam or in my Discord. Either I or someone else from the community (most likely Keltusar :P) will help you out.

- Enjoy! 👻🎃🤓

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/

• Added "Wind effect" to all fireworks and various smoke in the game. The wind effect is very subtle and mainly affect smoke, but it adds a nice little touch to the game. It is dependent on the weather in the map, so the wind is a bit stronger in Ranch than in City and Town. For now the wind direction is always the same, but that might change in the future
  
• Added a "dev console" (opens via key '½', on my keyboard, but it's the one right above TAB and left to 1 key. The classic console key ;) ). This is primarily for modders and more advanced users, as it have various commands to change things in the game. However, for regular players it provides a quick way to see the log of the game, instead of having to look in the player.log. Type in 'help' to get started, what you might be mostly interested in are the commands prefixed with "fm-" as that is Fireworks Mania specific commands, for instance for playing a sound, respawn the player etc. More commands will be added over time
  
• Added feature to allow mods to have "StartupPrefab"(s). This means mod creators can now have logic run when map is loaded and also run in the background. I will create a video about this for mod creators on how to use this
  
• Added version number to loading scene and ingame menu, so its easier to see what version you are on
  

• Changed the sky and lighting of the environment in maps a little to make it look a bit better
  
• Changed the explosion effect of propane tanks to have a lot more smoke and a better looking effect (smoke just add a nice touch to the feeling of mayhem)
  
• Removed the (hopefully) last 4th of July decorations that I missed. Thanks JoGaming for letting me know
  

• Fixed spelling/gramma mistake in City billboard
  
• Fixed bug that have hunted me for a long time where fog color wouldn't update correctly as time of day changed
  
• Fixed throwing force UI getting stuck on screen if holding item was despawned
  
• Fixed missing ambient sound after Enviro Sky fix
  

• Upgraded to Unity v2021.3.9f1. As a regular player you don't have to care about this, but for more techy players, it might the interesting to know as upgrading the engine itself often comes with bug fixed and better performance for the game. The reason I haven't upgraded Unity version for a long time is due to a GPU/Particle bug, where particles would flicker and it looked awful. Unity fixed that now. I try to update Unity version as often as possible, as it gets harder and harder to do if you wait and long term we will miss out on new Unity features etc
  
• Upgraded various asset packages
  

• The glowing yellow box that indicates where a fuse is connected, is not so glowing in mods build with older version of the Mod Tools. I have tried to figure out how to fix this, but it haven't been possible so far, so we have to live with this for now. It works for all build-in fireworks and fireworks build with the new version of the Mod Tools
  

• Mod Tools have been updated too, see the changelog.
  

To follow along in the development of Fireworks Mania check out my YouTube channel

- Enjoy :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/