Vecter News

So by now you've probably noticed there track has been taken over by pine trees all over the damn place... in every mode, on every seed, apart from Casual and Training (because casual and training don't upload anything to the internet)



You may, or may not, have also noticed this stupid thing in the main menu:



Well... I want to play a game, and you're all invited. I want to see how many trees we can all collect, world-wide, by Christmas day (25 Dec 2020, 00:00 UTC).

Basically I'm in need of Christmas trees. I like them, they are the best, I can never have enough, and I'm enslaving asking you kindly to help me get as many as possible. So, how high can we get that number before Santa comes-a-knocking?

Before getting into new features I just want to take a minute and... unwind. There was a bug affecting track generation in the game for the past 6 months. It didn't happen often, but when it did happen it was completely unknown as to how and WHY. Sometimes, the procedural level generator would just decide to... generate a different level instead of the one it's supposed to. Well I finally figured out why, and fixed it! You can read all about it here if you like (it's pretty detailed and I wanted an excuse to plug my Patreon every now and again).





A member of the community generously donated a song for Vecter called space cocaine and through a poll on the Vecter Discord server it was voted to be added to the base game.



However, this song is a bit more explicit in nature and I know there are some really young Vecter players out there as people have sent me messages to tell me how much their young daughter / cousin / brother enjoy this game. So, in the interest of keeping Vecter safe for everyone there is now a "Enable Explicit Content" option in the options menu that you need to turn on if you want to listen to the new song.



I've added a new camera view to the game (The 5th one now) which is also the default camera for new players. It's a little more dynamic and gives a better sense of speed and movement for the player. You can see it in action in this video where I'm stalking someone else in Top Dog to watch them as they play.

Creepy

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



- You can now navigate in the colour picker menu between the different elements using PageUp / PageDown on your keyboard when you don't have the element list selected
- The song Space Cocaine, generously donated by @The Blue Devil 2.0 has been added to the game as an Explicit song due to its more mature content
- A toggle in the options menu called "Enable Explicit Content" has been added. Space Cocaine will only be available if you turn this toggle one. Very young children play this game so it's best to have it this way. This toggle right now basically will not load any song that has the word "explicit" in its filename
- Guns have been made significantly more useful... Still will melt your score tho'
- New camera mode added and has been set as the default for the new players. For the rest of you, just press C till you get to it, or press 5. Whatever works for you
- Game no longer clears ram every 10 minutes when someone picks up an extra life, it will now clean its RAM only if it reaches more than 2GB of allocated memory, or when a new run starts. This is an attempt to combat an issue reported by @Eva Ryan where the game would freeze sometimes when picking up an extra life
- Increased minimum system requirements in Steam from 2GB or RAM to 4GB of RAM because I didn't realize that Windows 10 64bit, by default, requires 2GB or RAM just so it itself can run, thus leaving no extra RAM for the game. Sad but true
- Option menu slider and navigation sensitivity increased when holding down a direction key (I.E. it cycles through the options faster when you hold down a button, and it increases / decreases volume, bloom intesity, etc faster)
- Main menu elements are no longer drawn on top of the options menu because the main menu is no longer drawn at all when the options menu is visible
- Tutorial text no longer overlays on top of Play Youtube prompt in the options menu
- Tutorial text will now update in real time to reflect which dash mode you selected
- Fixed a bug in casual where max speed could never be achieved
- Fixed level generation so it no longer creates different levels SOMETIMES
- Fixed a bug where if the game would go in offline mode for any reason it would never go online again.

I get it, you don't want to move your MP3 files, it uses storage space, here you go. Instructions on how to set the feature up can be found in the Game Main Menu -> User Guide -> Everything about music section.

I'll say this again tho': Vecter has a limit of 1000 mp3s that it can load, So if your music folder(s) contain more than 1000 mp3s, it will load the first 1000 that it finds.

Now here's some patch notes:

- Sun has been fixed, he sits back in his place
- a tweak to the YouTube code I added last update so it works better
- Added the ability for moders to start experimenting with how to create custom tracks, in case anyone decides to create a level editor for community-made levels. Documentation here: http://vecter.online/VecterCustomLevels.md. This feature will be expanded upon going forward.
- Added toggle in options menu to turn Music Volume and Pitch changes with ship bonus score and speed On or Off
- Added slider in options menu to change the global bloom intensity
- You can now map any folder on your PC to be used as a music folder in Vecter. Here's how to do it (Everything about music section): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907056224
- The tutorial prompts in speed demon have been modified to only show relevant information to that game mode
- Made improvements to the layout of the tutorial text so they overlap less with other texts in-game (like the distance tracker or the song details text)

[h3]Disclaimer: This is functionality very much still in development and may cause bugs / issues. If you don't want to put up with that, scroll to the bottom to see how to turn off multiplayer and not have any problems.[/h3]

What fresh hell is this? you may be asking yourself. Well... I'm bored... And when I'm bored things happen. Game gets updated, features get added, stuff gets done.

Over the past few weeks there has been a lockdown in the UK: No going outside unless for essentials, no cinemas, no theatres, no karting, nothing... So I've been EXTRA bored. I started working on NetCode. Three weeks later:





This is/will be a big change and it will happen pretty slow, but right now I'm eager to make it happen. It will happen in a few phases which are not clearly defined yet since it all depends on how I feel about the various things I need to implement.

So instead of making promises I won't keep (throws shade), I'll just tell you what I have so far. Welcome to Phase 1!

Phase 1 is kind of like a tech demo, a proof of concept if you will. You will be able to see other people in-game, and they'll be able to see you, but that's it. There is no organized races around the multiplayer aspect of the game yet, and you can't affect each other's worlds, you can just see each other.



Each seed basically is its own game-world. So if you play TopDog, you'll be able to see everyone playing TopDog, if you're playing Hardcore, you'll see everyone playing hardcore, if you play seed 1234567890 you'll see everyone playing seed 1234567890.

That last bit is important, because you can basically tell your friends "Let's play seed x" and you'll all see each other in seed X, making it a semi-private game. Yes people can crash your party right now, but it's a feature that exists.



If there are other people playing at the same time, on the same seed, you will be able to see how far ahead they are via the bottom part of the score tracker. This is a helpful tool to help you find each other (or run away from each other).

Training and casual do not have the multiplayer feature, as they are different for everyone every time they load up, so it would be pointless to have it as all players would be on completely different tracks and would never meet each other.



You can, of course, turn off multiplayer completely if it's something you don't fancy. It's on by default but you can just switch it off and not bother with it again. This is a different setting from the shadows so you can combine them however you wish: Shadows + Multiplayer, Just Shadows, Just Multiplayer, None of them and feel completely alone. Up to you!

You can read a bit more in-depth on the tech behind it here. Some requirements for multiplayer are:

• An internet connection (derp)
  
• A router compatible with UPnP with the UPnP feature turned on
  
• If you don't have a UPnP compatible router you need to open ports 40200-40300 and set up port forwarding from those ports to your PC
  
• Vecter whitelisted on your PC's firewall since it needs access to the internet to play on the internet
  

And finally, the patch notes before I get hanged:

• Multiplayer Phase 1 - Server code, client code, net code, UPnP, Christ Himself
  
• Multiplayer toggle in the options menu, to easily turn it off. It's on by default.
  
• Added multiplayer name and ship colour entries to the colour picker so you can customize what others look like
  
• Fixed bug in linux when race wouldn't start because of the lack of youtube support
  
• Fixed bug where the colour picker sliders would move lightning fast
  
• Fixed DS4 controller support
  
• Added Minecraft-style main menu quotes because I think it's cool. Feel free to leave comments with quoted to add if you like.
  
• In-game FPS will ne lowered to 10 if the game window looses focus (if you alt-tab) this is to make it use less resources when you're not playing it and save the environment! (or just save on your power bill)
  
• Fixed YouTube yet again because they keep changing the DAMN DATA STRUCTURE
  
• Fixed discord button in main menu
  
• I do not like cheaters -.-