Vecter News

My dumb ass, in the last update (0.4.4.6) made a few changes to the way the game gets the leader-board information from the server, so that it's updated in real time, or as close to it as possible.

This introduced frame drops when its trying to reach the server to see if there are any updates, as it waited for the server to reply before it continued. That was bad design on my side.

I fixed it now so there should be no more frame drops, hopefully.

I've also made a change so that if you're at max shields, and you loose a shield and are trying to pick up a new shield while the animation of the old one hasn't finished, now it will let you do so. Before you could not have a new shield until the animation of the old one had finished.

I can't begin to really express how sad I am to make this announcement, but... EGX 2020 has been cancelled.

This is especially hard on me since I've been working on this arcade machine for the better part of the year to show off to people at this event, and have them try out the game and play together with them (That's why it has two sets of controls, because I wanted to play alongside you guys for a few days) but now it's just sitting in my house collecting dust.

Just today I made a change to it and added a high score screen to it so it displays bits of information on a loop.



I also wanted to launch Vecter out of Early access and make some extra announcements during EGX regarding Vecter and future plans, but now that's all a bit out of whack... I really don't know what I'm going to do next. I'll write another update once I figure it out.

Damn pandemic...

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why it was cancelled, and it's very reasonable. We can't risk people's lives just for a 4-day event, but that doesn't make it any easier to take unfortunately...

As Vecter is moving into its beta phase in about two weeks (17th of July), the little updater that could is quickly becoming obsolete on steam.

The launcher was created to keep the game updated across all stores without me having to submit new versions to each store which becomes very time-consuming. However, Steam has proven itself over the years EXCELLENT in terms of pushing updates for games. Usually when I push an update, it's available to download for steam users withing a couple of minutes.

Seeing this, the launcher was a little bit pointless on there. It has its uses on platforms like GameJolt and itch but on here... not really. The second problem with it: as I'm quickly approaching the porting phase where I wish to bring Vecter to as many platforms as possible, that would require creating a launcher for each platform and then figuring out separate solutions for things like Switch, Xbox, Android, etc. where launchers are completely impossible. I was realising that it was quickly turning into a burden rather than something that was making my life easier.

After voting on it on discord, the community and I have decided to remove the launcher from the Steam version of the game.



A sad day for sure, as the launcher was and still is an amazing asset for keeping the game updated on platform where updating can't be easily automated like on steam.

So, from yesterday going forward, Vecter on steam launches straight into the game and no longer requires the launcher at all.

HOWEVER! I needed to ensure that people playing and submitting scores to leader-boards are all running on the same version, to make sure the scores are submitted on the same track since track generation may change with every new version.

So now, if you are running a version of Vecter that is not compatible with the servers, your scores WILL NOT be uploaded to the server and you will get this annoying message in-game:



It appears everywhere, and you cannot get rid of it, as I highly encourage you to always be on the latest version :)

Okay, that's it for now, Thanks for playing! Be sure to comment, like, subscribe, follow, add to wishlist, favourite, hit the bell icon, give a thumbs up, buy the dlc, request a vita port and stay hydrated.

Hi Everyone!

Been a minute. It's been crazy for me these past couple of weeks...

The first week was completely lost to Satisfactory. Excellent game but it robbed me of 67 hours of my life! Still I really needed the break do to all the political tensions going on...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/526870/Satisfactory/
The second week has been working on a new options menu for Vecter, applying and getting ready for a new job, and starting the process to buy an apartment so my wife and I no longer have to move every couple of years when the landloard decides to raise the rent sky-high.

So here's a brakedown of what's happening in the immediate future:

1. Update 0.4.3.0 is out with a new, redesigned options menu! Right now it doesn't contain any extra options but don't worry, the ones you've requested are coming shortly. I just wanted to make the menu work first and kick it out the door before adding yet more stuff.


2. We're going (I'm going?) back to the micro-updates model that we used to have a few months ago (Small, frequent updates for those of you who ware not around back then). The reason for this is because I got a new job and won't have as much time to work on big Vecter updates, so better to just provide small things here and there and keep everyone happy

3. As mentioned above, I got a new job! Which is great as this whole pandemic and furlough situation was sucking my bank account dry. This is excellent news for Vecter as well since that means I'll have development funds again and will maybe be able to afford that plugin that will allow me to do YouTube Streaming. I start my new job on Monday and Vecter will go back to being my hobby again as opposed to full-time distraction from the world burning up.

4. For the options menu, I've made two Patreon posts showing how it was built pretty much from nothing to something! You can find the two posts here: Part 1, Part 2

5. Just a reminder that the Steam Summer Sale is on and the donation pack is 40% discounted if you are curious/interested in getting it but don't want to spend the full price for it.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1219990/Vecter__Donation_Pack/

Just wanted to compile all the changes that have happened since the 9.4.0.0 update so they are clear and documented.

- Controller input fixed, controllers work again as intended
- Speed Demon issue with the ship looking broken has been resolved
- Non-menu texts (Scoreboard, Song Name, tv displays) now have their own colour in the colour picker. This is to prevent some users getting a black text in the scoreboard so they couldn't see their score
- Fixed shoot and boost not working on controllers
- Fixed a couple of coding bugs which would make crashing a bit strange...
- Fixed the camera issue on first load after the update that a few people have reported
- fixed a few more coding bugs that were generating errors in the log
- Traffic velocity on the X and Y axis has been limited. What this means is that a ship won't suddenly change direction at 10000 km/h and smack you into orbit without any chance of defending yourself
- Reflection bug where random lines would appear in reflections has been fixed (as far as I can tell)
- Combo score no longer appears in front of the colour picker (again)
- Track reset timer now lives in the top right corner-ish position when it's visible and adapts with screen ratio.
- Palmtrees won't disappear before being off-screen anymore
- Coding bugs fixed which should reduce framedrops
- Not all the pillars move in late-game anymore, only 1 in 5 making your life a little easier (hopefully)
- The palm now merge into up to groups of 5 in order to attempt to save some resources and improve framerates
- Scraping the back edge of a jump pad should now make you jump and not loose a life
- When changing colours it should no longer bring up the background if it's turned off and it should no longer dismiss the youtube video
- Two environment backgrounds should no longer appear at the same time on top of eachother
- The donation achievement will no longer be given without reason and it will be turned off for those who got it by mistake.
- Next and previous song buttons now work for youtube videos too if you are playing a playlist
- If you copy a youtube playlist and you have selected a specific video to start from in youtube (i.e. not the first video in the list) It SHOULD start from that video in the game as well
- Game should no longer error out if you're trying to play a private youtube playlist, it will just ignore it since it doesn't have access to it
- Optimized cityscape to have all the buildings in a row merged into one object to, hopefully increase performance
- Fixed bug where afterburner wings and backplate would not be totally black, but some other random-ish colour
- Fixed bug where afterburner animation would trigger for all ships in multiplayer
- Options and colour picker menu disabled in multiplayer pause menu because it doesn't fit on the screen.
- Hopefully fixed the slow-mo audio Hyper was experiencing
- Dissolve effect fixed on mountains and palm trees
- Extra logging when ship dies / crashes for future troubleshooting
- Fixed mountains being no tall enough
- The pillar generation has been changed to:
- Reduce the number of pillars overall
- Dynamically change how many pillars are generated semi-frequently
- The big wall has been altered to contain a wider gap but harder to destroy slightly
(both of the above were done to improve performance a bit)
- The backgrounds city and palm trees have been optimized a bit more
- Some other minor performance optimizations
- Cityscape no longer uses palm tree colour
- Palm trees and cities no longer appear briefly before being generated.
- Fixes to the big wall cause it was not behaving.
- Potential fix to ship being stuck on death
- Speheres should now hit you in hardcore
- Mountains and palm trees and buildings should no longer overlap