Heartless & Dreadful : Return By 72 Hours News

Hello again, Happy Hollow Weiner, if that's still a thing in your timezone.

Did you know that if you play the game on Halloween, there will be some funny pumpkins around the missions? No? Aw. Well, I guess you do now.



Did you also know... There's a Trello now to track bugs and feature requests? You didn't know again? Oh well. Well, now you know... again.

https://trello.com/b/suviZn7g/known-issues-and-bug-tracking

There's an update that's been pushed to the beta branch. With that update, the level making SDK is basically complete.

All that is left for me is to write the documentation and upload a test level to the workshop to make sure the upload/download process works as intended.

There will probably be an announcement on the forums or here for you players to try downloading stuff from the workshop, just to make sure it works for everyone and not just me, because you know. When you make games, they can do weird things on other computers that are not yours. Maybe software is just haunted that way... (How topical.)

Regarding the trello and bug reports, If you did find a new spicy bug, I'll add it to the list.

If it already exists, well, you can leave a comment saying you encountered it too. In fact, if you found how to reproduce the "Unable to reproduce" or "Needs proof" bugs, please do report them there. Thank you!

Here's the changelog for the build in the Beta branch for now.

Changelog:
- SDK - Added support for custom NPCs.
- SDK - Added support for events via the dialogue, enemies, bosses.
- SDK - Is overall complete.
- General - Camera is no longer tied to the framerate. You may need to re-calibrate your mouse sensetivity setting to adjust.
- General - Camera collision - has been improved. There's still a few small cases where it *can* get out of bounds, but those cases are a lot rarer now.
- General - Vehicle - The drift meter is now longer and recharges faster.
- General - Gamepad can no longer interact with the "?" prompt if the player is in combat. This is done to avoid the player accidentally triggering something instead of jumping, as on the gamepad, jump counts as a "confirmation" button. It still works the same on mouse and keyboard.
- Huntress Tower Of Blood - Fixed a few buttons working incorrectly on the gamepad.
- UI - Added a button that allows you to restart from the checkpoint.
- General - Fixed a bug that set your Reset position in air (the position that you would get teleported to if you fell either out of bounds, or into a pit.) if the player was in air while encountering a combat arena, possibly causing a soft lock depending on where it got saved. (It now reverts to a specified position in the arena if the player is indeed mid-air when encountering a combat arena.)
- Fixed an issue where if you hit the pause menu and entered a teleporter (That had a black overlay effect) on the SAME FRAME would cause a softlock.
- Post-Game - the invisible shop has now been fixed.
- Post-Game - fixed an issue where the collectibles wouldn't save if you exited post-game via the story/epilogue exit.
- Collectibles menu - the nonexistent mission 13 has been corrected, now the counter properly counts up to 12, and the rest is post-game unlockables.
- Game completed menu - A certain text no longer makes a button noise.
- UI - Graphics settings - AS Filtering now says Anisotropic Filtering to make more sense.

Known issues:
- See Trello. It's the first tab.

This update has been pushed to the Beta channel, since SDK is still in progress and is very unstable, the update will be pushed to the main channel once the SDK will be ready to use.
To test this update, please refer to changing to Beta channel over here in order to recieve less stable updates: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1701890/view/6042200176425827844

Most of the Quality Of Life suggestions came from fellow players, mainly Nordanix, thank you for putting time and effort into suggestions and bug reports, they are always appreciated!
(More will come in the future patches.)

Changelog:
- Training - The training specific UI is no longer overlapping with the items menu.
- Training - The training specific UI's toggles now have a proper visible checkmark.
- Training - "Infinite CT/Sinner" incorrect checkmark sprite has been fixed.
- 3 fall drop system for platforming, reduced the drop amount in code by one to make it work more as expected.
- Health Collectibles had their color ramp shifted to be more green-ish rather than yellow-ish.
- Charged shot from D.Magnum now properly cancels Looping animations/moves.
- Fixed enemies not being killed by the death plane in the must style mode if the style is was below SSS.
- You should be less likely to outrun some of the orbs that are being magnetized to the main character now.
- You can no longer control or hear playable character after beating the credits fight.
- Extras — Added the ability to scroll text.
- Fixed the infinite Chaos Trigger if you activated Chaos Trigger while being at max health in the boost mode. Now it drains HP as expected even when your health is maxed out.
- SDK Level Completer prefab no longer overrides the level completion prefabs in the main game, allowing you to finish the stage as expected.
- Beating Easy/Normal/Hard now properly shows the correct list of difficulties unlocked.
- Game completion text no longer looks weird. (The font changing based on the locale has been disabled for that text.)
- Leaving the Custom Levels tab now works properly.
- Collectible list now refreshes every time you open it, showing more up to date information.
- You can no longer interact with the invisible main menu during cutscenes via gamepad.
- Brain MSG in the pause menu now only gets highlight when triggering a new message.
- Huntress no longer gets punted into the orbit if you were to start the dialogue and hold the jump button to enable her flight.
- Grenade Launcher’s counter now only shows up when Grenade Launcher is currently selected ranged weapon.
- Mission 11 — Now has a skip ride option. (Only active after beating the game at least once.)

- Known issues -
- Collectible List Is wrong due to some IDs not being set up properly. It's in progress.
- Total Result Won’t Show Ranks Properly
- Input Display for Controller: It works, however the gamepad detection is a little iffy thus making it a bit unreliable, looking into improving gamepad detection. (Works fine for xinput seemingly.)

SDK Status: Same as before, still a few things to add and to write the documentation. Some of these bugs have been nagging my brain so I've decided to fix them first. Stuff's still coming.

This update has been pushed to the Beta channel, since SDK is still in progress and is very unstable, the update will be pushed to the main channel once the SDK will be ready to use.
To test this update, please refer to changing to Beta channel over here in order to recieve less stable updates:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1701890/view/6042200176425827844

Most of the Quality Of Life suggestions came from fellow players, mainly Nordanix, thank you for putting time and effort into suggestions and bug reports, they are always appreciated!
(More will come in the future patches.)

Changelog:
- D.Magnum - Charged Shot - No longer stores the charge when pressing the pause menu.
- Boost - Dropkick - Reduced the internal cooldown from 2 seconds to half a second.
- UI - Replaced Char. with Character as there was plenty of space.
- UI - Upgrades Menu - Buy move buttons are now a bit easier to see and understand when the button is selected.
- UI - Movelist - No longer shows Items tab from the Upgrades menu.
- UI - Now the game actually asks if you want to Quit the mission instead of just immidiately booting you into the menu.
- UI - Now when completing the level with the gamepad, you can't accidentally exit the game by moving the active button into an invisible UI element.
- General - Removed the debug command that played the "combat finished" effect when pressing 6 on the keyboard.
- Achievements - Fixed some incorrect names from the earlier versions of the game. An oversight, for sure.
- Main Menu - Added a button to load custom scenes created from the SDK once the save file is loaded.
- Tutorial, Loading screen text, Mission 5, Post-Game - Fixed minor grammar spellings.
- Mission 01 and Mission 11 - Improved Occulusion Culling to increase performance + fix some of the objects turning invisible.
- Mission 03 - Fixed a possible soft lock, if player entered a combat arena and then entered another combat arena while the previous one was active.
- Mission 09 - Fixed a possible soft lock in one of the Arenas if entered on the left side.
- Mission 11 - Pests will now shoot regardless of the difficulty.
- Mission 12 - Arena - Added missing collision around the edges of the arena.
- Video hints - Fixed the pulley hint and the hoop hint having incorrect text in the hint.
- Post-Game - No longer plays Orb Pickup sound whenever Post-Game is loaded.
- Post-Game - The fade-in effect no longer flashes, thus making the transition from loading screen to the level smoother.
- Training mode - If the enemy somehow dies (such as enemy exploding itself) the Training mode will now spawn the same enemy.
- Training mode - Added a toggle to enable infinite Chaos Trigger.
- Training mode - Added a toggle to enable infinite Sinner energy.

Additional work on the SDK, what remains is as follows:
- To Add Boss support.
- To Add NPC dialogue support.
- To Add Duo Boss support
- To Add Checkpoint system to work in the SDK created levels.
- To Add Rail grind support.

While there is a package you can technically try to install in the game's folder now, I would NOT advise you to do it until I provide proper instructions. Trust me, you'll hate it without some kind of documentation.

Note: 🥴 workshop stuff smells.

There's stuff in progress, so the update is taking longer than all the smaller ones. That is for the best anyhow as Steam heavily prefers "bigger" updates for marketing, So anyhow, one of those being the ability to create custom missions and share them around with other people via the workshop.

What will it allow you to? Well, exactly what it says. Create custom missions for the game via the Unity editor. I've already experimented with a few things, and it exports and loads within the game just fine.

While the tools are a bit different compared to what I use in the game, they are quite similiar. In addition, I wrote a couple of editor scripts to make it a lot simpler to use and understand.



Here's some things from the editor for you to check out. Here you can see the basics for the Mission Configuration, it will allow you to pick the image, music, combat music, and basic stuff like that. Score for ranking as well, and likely the difficulty override. But we'll see.


Some of the so called objects you could use will allow you to customize specifics, although not all of them. Still, support for triggers and other stuff like combat arenas and all


SDK Will also have a basic scene with most of the things you could utilize to make a custom mission. Most of it will contain the same objects that are available in the game's campaign.


Since SDK is in huge work in progress meaning some things may be unstable and will require additional testing. The SDK scripts SHOULD NOT affect anything in the main game as far as I know, but who knows, the update will be pushed to main only once it's completed.

For now, if you want to give it a try, it has been pushed on the beta channel. But as mentioned below, the SDK is not available for public use, yet. I'd need to write some kind of tutorial/documentation, and well, finish it first. But do be aware, stuff is coming.

Changelog:
Claws - Comet and Comet Reversal recieved different particle effects.
Vs Knight - Now also has the teleportation preparation effect, giving the player a bit more time to prepare.
Vs Knight - The smash attack now also has the teleportation preparation effect, giving the player a bit more time to prepare.
Vs Knight - Teleportation has been slowed down just a tiny bit for the effect above to work better.
Upgrades menu - Updated Comet and Comet Reversal preview.
Upgrades menu - Updated video recordings for Sinner mode demonstration.
Realm Of The Rogue - Updated the boss music once again, but this time it's just minor changes to the track itself, not a total redo.
Code change - Added functions for future Steam Workshop support.
Code change - A barebones SDK now for Custom Mission making now exists within code, but is not usable for people yet as it needs a TON more work. I am just posting previews to let you all know what's going on here.

Changelog:
Upgrade menu - Most video previews have been updated with up to date animations, the videos have also been recompressed to reduce their size on the disc.
Quickfixed - Boss 02, Lil Dee O Jay not activating his projectils and overall breaking. That was on me.


Note:
Since there's an occasional chance of an oversight, I am making a separate channel for testing updates a day before they are being pushed to main. I'd rather not cause an occasional inconvenience to players.

This one update goes to live, since it contains no code changes beside the quickfix.

If you wish to access it the Beta channel, you'll be able to do it via the settings menu.



Click on properties.



In Beta participations Pick beta_one_update_ahead_usually branch in the , and your game will be recieving less stable updates for testing.

I appreciate everyone's help in catching some of the bugs, and I do understand the frustrations whenever they seem to not be fully fixed or get a new issue, so this channel will be used for extra testing on the client outside of the Editor, where I usually do tests myself to ensure the updates ship without any new bugs.

Maybe it is a bit radical and, but I do really strive to improve the game, and I feel like that's a better way of doing it.

After tests (usually a day), the updates will be pushed to main. The reason why this is happening is also because there was an issue with the last patch, the hotfix for this issue has been pushed out by now, by the way.

(Here's hope no one else experienced it.)