Shattered Pixel Dungeon News

Hey Dungeoneers, as promised here's v3.2.4! This is hopefully the last patch with major technical improvements following v3.2, but it's a doozy.

In addition to more mobile improvements, there's also a just recently finished overhaul to the title screen background!

Note that both of the big new things in this update are likely to have a few quirks. If something seems out of place please let me know! I do expect to do one or two more patches after v3.2.4 to fix any minor issues that crop up.

Here is a full list of changes:

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[h3]New Title Screen Background![/h3] Shattered Pixel Dungeon has a new title screen background, with art by Aleksandar Komitov!

This new background is meant to both extend the classis archs, and tie the title screens more directly to the region splash arts! It features randomly selected floating fully rendered chunks of dungeon in front of an arch back-layer.

Currently the background most strongly ties into the sewers region, but we have plans to add more variants in the future, one for each dungeon region!

[h3]Mobile Status Bar and True Fullscreen![/h3] Shattered now renders in true fullscreen on most mobile devices!

The status bar at the top of the in-game UI has been modified to work around small and medium sized hole punches and rounded corners on modern displays! This includes the dynamic island on modern iPhones. Thanks to these adjustments it's now possible for the UI to move up and for the game to display in true fullscreen during gameplay! Devices with larger cutouts like full-sized notches will unfortunately still have a dark bar on the top, as there isn't room for the UI.

This also comes with a few other benefits for all mobile players. The XP bar has been moved and is now much more visible, and the hero buff bar now supports two rows, rather than compressing as heavily when there are many buffs at once.

[h3]v3.2.4 Beta Tweaks[/h3]
During v3.2.4's short beta I got a lot of good feedback about the new UI, and have made the following tweaks to address feedback before full release:

- The HP bar can now shrink and/or reposition slightly if it would otherwise be cut off by a display cutout. The HP bar should shrink by about 20% at most.
- Adjusted buff bar layout logic to reduce cases of top row getting slightly cut off by display cutouts on Android.
- The menu pane on the right will now move to the left if there is room to do so and it would otherwise be cut off by a display cutout.
- Slightly increased the permissiveness for what cutouts the game will try to render into. This should let the game render in true fullscreen on some devices with hole punches that it couldn't previously.
- Improved how buff bar layout handles iOS dynamic island at smaller scale values.
- Renamed the 'fullscreen' setting to 'hide navigation bar' or 'hide gesture bar' on mobile.

(For the best viewing experience, please read the original copy of this post on Shatteredpixel.com)

Hey Dungeoneers, I’m still releasing patches for v3.2, and as a rare surprise, this one’s big enough to get a little blog post!


In this blog post I'm going to go over what I've been doing in v3.2's patches, and what's coming in v3.2.4 in particular!

[h2]New Title Background Art![/h2]
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Shattered has gotten some new title graphics recently, but that isn't the only thing Aleks and I have been working on. v3.2.4 will include a new background for the title screen as well!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The new title screen makes use of several layers of fully rendered chunks of dungeon, floating in front of a classic arch layer (also now fully rendered). It's meant to both extend the classis archs, and tie the title screens more directly to the region splash arts. This first release has objects that relate mostly to the sewers, but we have plans for new object sets for each of the other regions too!

This new title background will go everywhere the current archs go, and should react well to various screen sizes, from mobile portrait to ultrawide desktop displays. It has a lot of moving parts (both literally and in terms of code), and so I expect I'll be making little tweaks and refinements to it after launch. Let me know what you think!

[h2]New Title Background Art![/h2]
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I'm modernizing various aspects of Shattered on mobile phones (now that I've dropped support for Android 4.0-4.4), and so I've been changing up how Shattered handles display cutouts (notches, hole punches, etc.) to let users play the game in true fullscreen! Currently the game just sticks black bars at the top, and the in-game UI looks like this:



For most of the game's interfaces this is fairly easy, just keep the title lower and extend the background to the top. The in-game UI doesn't really have a background though. If I let the UI render up into display cutouts, it sorta works in some cases, but falls apart with larger cutouts like the iphone dynamic island:



There isn't room to make this work on displays with larger notches (they'll still have a black bar, sorry!), but most modern hole punches leave a decent bit of room above and around, which has led me to this changed up UI for mobile users:



A few elements have been moved around here:

• The XP bar has been moved to under the hero portrait, which both gives it a bit more screen space and lets the entire UI move a couple of pixels up.
  
• The version info has been moved to the top and the menu buttons brought down a bit, this prevents them from being cut off on rounded display corners.
  
• The boss HP bar and hero level have moved out of the way a bit, which gives the buff bar enough space to exist on two rows. It now dynamically skips spots that are obscured behind display cutouts.
  

This now lets Shattered render the UI all the way to the top on the majority of mobile devices! Here's how that looks with cutouts of varying size: (Galaxy S24, Pixel 9, and iPhone 16)



This leads to a nice big fullscreen display for the majority of mobile phones! In lots of cases, with a black backdrop, the hole punch is hardly noticeable, even big ones like the dynamic island. Here's a typical earlygame scene on an iPhone 16 Plus:



I expect this change will take some getting used to, given that the majority of users have been used to a black bar for years. There are also literally hundreds of different phones with slightly varying cutout sizes, so I'm sure there will be a few hiccups here for some users as well. If you run into issues or otherwise have feedback on this change then please let me know!

Update (September 15th):

Hey folks, v3.2.4 is now releasing publicly, and I've made one significant change in response to feedback. Users had a very strong preference for no part of the UI touching cutouts at all, even just small segments of the health bar. Based on that, I've made some adjustments to the changes mentioned above, the most significant of which is to the health bar. The health bar can now shrink or move slightly to the left to avoid display cutouts. Here's how that looks, on a Galaxy S24:



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There is no new text to be translated in v3.2.4 and the changes are pretty specific, so I expect the beta is going to be short, probably just a day or two. I do expect to do one or two more patches after v3.2.4 to fix any minor issues that crop up. Once all that's done I'll finally start moving on to v3.3 and a new city quest!

If you'd like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered's development (such as announcements for every patch release), you can:
- Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter
- Follow me on Mastodon
- Follow me on Bluesky

You can discuss this Blog Post here on the Steam Community, or on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community.

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.2.3, with more tech improvements and modernizations for mobile users!

This patch follows up on the previous one with some bug fixes, responses to feedback, and support for true edge-to-edge fullscreen on most game interfaces!

I expect to be releasing one more major patch for v3.2 with further improvements, plus whatever else is needed for handling tech fixes. There might be a little visual improvement coming in that patch that everyone can appreciate as well..

Here is a full list of changes:

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[h3]Mobile Layout Changes[/h3]
- Shattered now renders in true edge-to-edge fullscreen on Android 9+ and iOS devices, with transparent navigation bars and rendering into display cutout regions!
- All in-game interfaces have been adjusted to better handle true mobile fullscreen, including better insets on various UI elements at display corners.
- Currently the in-game screen makes use of a solid dark bar at the top to handle display cutouts. This is temporary and that UI will be made true fullscreen soon for people with smaller display cutouts (e.g. hole punches).
- Re-added some orientation control on Android in the form of a 'force landscape' setting. This setting may need to be removed in future Android versions.
- Re-enabled 'fullscreen' setting on iOS (i.e. it can be turned off again), which now lightly raises UI elements to help prevent gesture mistaps.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
Fixed the following bugs:
Caused by v3.2.2:
- Windowed mode on desktop always defaulting to 1920x1080, instead of last window size
- Various rare Android crashes caused by internal library updates
- Fullscreen being incorrectly forced off on some older Android devices.

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon has been patched to v3.2.2!

This is the first of those 'technical improvements' patches I mentioned previously. Several changes have been made to modernize some aspects of Shattered Pixel Dungeon on Android, as well as a few smaller changes on iOS and internal changes on other platforms.

One more change that I'm delaying for another patch is adjustments to screen layout logic to better support hole punches and small notches. No promises, but I'd like to let devices with smaller cutouts (like hole punches) play the game in true fullscreen. This may also extend to iOS users and the compact dynamic island.

Here is a full list of changes:

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Misc. Changes Android Changes:
- Removed landscape/portrait setting, game now uses system orientation instead. This is more consistent with the iOS version, and will be required in the future by Google anyway.
- 'Fullscreen' (hiding the nav bar or gesture bar) now defaults to on, and is forced on if no nav or gesture bar is present.
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon now requires Android 5.0+, up from 4.0+.
- Fully removed Power Saver setting, which was already hidden for Android 4.4+ devices anyway.
- Sharing Gameplay Data now requires Android 6.0+, up from 4.1+.
- Updated various Google Play libraries.

Other Changes:
- 'Fullscreen' (drawing over the home indicator) is now always on for iOS users, as iOS 26 is about to always auto-hide the home indicator anyway.
- Updated various internal code libraries.
- Desktop JAR build now requires Java 11+, up from 8+.
- Slightly adjusted the visuals at the end of the prison region.

Bugfixes
Fixed the following bugs:
Caused by v3.2.1:
- Text resolution on mac retina displays being reduced to 0.25x from 0.5x instead of increased to 1x (sorry!)
- Thrown clubs and hammers giving hero extra turns in rare cases
- Rare crash bugs

Caused by v3.2.0:
- Potential exploits relating to explosive curse and thrown weapons
- Liquid metal stating upgrades increase cost by 33% when it is actually 35%
- Hero rarely dodging while affected by stone glyph.
- Minor textual errors

Existed prior to v3.2.0:
- Upgrade window not accounting for metamorphed runic transference talent
- Keyboard on iOS not showing return key on multiline text windows
- UI layout issues with long custom seeds
- On-equip ID talents not setting items to be ready to be IDed by Oblivion Shard
- 'Taking the Mick' badge not unlocking if the final boss was killed via explosive curse
- Shield of Light not applying to skeleton bone explosion
- Paralysis resist not functioning correctly over multiple applications of paralysis
- Transmogrified statues not always clearing their journal landmark entry on death

Hey Dungeoneers, here's the first patch for v3.2!

This patch focuses on some bug fixes and balance improvements following the release of v3.2.0. As I mentioned before, there will be come technical changes coming later, which mean that this is the last patch that supports Android 4.0-4.4 and Java 8-10. If you're unsure if that change applies to you, check the in-game changes screen, which will notify you if support for your device is ending.

Here's the full list of changes in v3.2.1:
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Thrown Weapon Changes
Thrown weapons are doing very well overall since the changes in v3.2.0! In general balance is working well and thrown weapons are competitive with same-tier melee weapons. While they're still a lot less popular, people are actually upgrading thrown weapons now, which means I can make some changes based on balance data!

Buffs:
- Throwing Clubs and Hammers have a new upside: they can now be picked up from the ground instantly!
- Kunai base durability up to 8 from 5.
- Kunai damage scaling up to 1-3 from 1-2. (this is actually a bug fix but I'm listing it here for clarity)
- Force Cube base damage back up to 5-25 from 5-20.

Nerfs:
- Bolas cripple duration down to 5 from 10.
- Heavy Boomerang damage scaling down to 1-3 from 1-4.
- Heavy Boomerang circle back delay up to 4 from 3. This should make them a bit less spammable.

Lastly, I've received quite a few complaints relating to the nerfs to shurikens, tomahawks, and the shared upgrades talent in v3.2.0. I made these nerfs pre-emptively because I expected these three would benefit massively from upgraded thrown weapons having more quantity. Unfortunately that looks to be correct; all three of these are still doing quite well and there is no room to restore some of their previous power.

Misc. Changes
I've made some changes to two of the new Battlemage staff on-hit effects, as they didn't end up as powerful as I wanted:
- Fireblast on-hit damage scaling increased to 2-4 from 1-2
- Blast Wave on-hit base damage up to 8-12 from 6-12
- Blast Wave on-hit damage scaling up to 2-3 from 1-2
- Blast Wave knockback at sides of explosion up very slightly, which should make it a bit easier to knock enemies to the side and into walls.

And one other change:
- 'Enchanting' vfx now follows the hero as they move

Bugfixes
Fixed the following bugs:
Caused by v3.2.0:
- Free guiding light cooldown debuff stating that the cooldown is 100 turns, not 50
- New hit/miss icons not working correctly with circling back boomerangs
- Rare crash on launch bugs on iOS (hopefully)

Existed prior to v3.2.0:
- Liquid Agility evasion buff ending after enemies take their turn, instead of after the hero takes their turn.
- Game text rendering at 1/2 resolution on mac retina displays
- Revive via unblessed ankh resetting Duelist's weapon charge
- Scroll empower buff overriding itself with weaker values in some cases
- Noisemaker bombs being collectable after activation in some cases
- Camera follow on enemies working when they aren't visible
- Some specific Chinese characters not rendering on iOS and Desktop