Golfing In Aether News

Last week in the Season 1 Development Roadmap post I said I'd share some development screenshots and talk a bit more about what the in development expansion will include. Today I can show off both the overall Autumn season and two of the levels, there is also a teaser video at the end of this post showing parts of the levels being played.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/
Please note that this is all in development and not due to release till later this month so some things could well change in between now and then. One thing that won't change is that this is a completely FREE 'DLC'. While it will have its own store page for promotion, again, it will be free.


Okay, so what is the season? Well the season is effectively akin to a theme or a reskin of levels to match the actual seasonal appearence of autumn. This includes not just new textures, but also several new or significantly changed models.


This will work in the same way for the later Winter expansion, and the idea of this is you get at least a visual experience more fitting to the conditions around specific seasonal holidays. I deliberately don't restrict levels as a whole to each theme as I want to continuously add to a global level pool that can be picked each time you play.


From a gameplay perspective you will be able to choose the season when you start a session, this includes both custom and presets. I don't yet have the menu made for it, but you'll have a 3 way selection similar to what you find on the join menu as an extra step. Your choice will not effect the preset category e.g. Casual or Competitive etc. so you won't need to be in a custom match to specifically choose the season.

[hr][/hr]

The first new level is a mid game level featuring pinball-esc obstacles you have to navigate your ball into with a loosely random chance of where you'll exit. This will mean the difference between hole in one, a shortcut or the long route around the vertical windmill.


Once you do reach the final part of the level you have one last challenge to navigate and thats getting around the corner while avoding falling into the pond that has no wall stopping you.

[hr][/hr]

A late game level that easily covers the largest area in the game so far with gameplay being taken across three seperate islands. Traversing the islands is done by rails, specifically I had the idea of the ball rolling across the spacing of the third rail.


To start with you have to navigate a windmill obstacle thats blocking your path, this is mixed with reflecting around a couple corners. Your exit from this section will determine which rail you take, whether its the outer rail to the hole-in-one, or the shorter one to the central island where you have to navigate your way to the next rail which will take you to the final island where the hole is.

[hr][/hr]

If you've read this far then heres a very quick teaser trailer showing off of the mechanics found in the new levels actually in action.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
I'll likely do another development update in a weeks time to show more progress being made, but what do you think so far? Please let me know in the coments :)


Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

Now that any significant launch fixes are out of the way I wanted to share the development roadmap for the coming season. This will focus on the major stuff I've got pre-planned. If you have suggestions for other stuff by all means share them as I'm sure there will room for other quality-of-life updates beyond whats discussed here :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

This will be a free DLC that will be more than just a map pack. The notable addition will be the game will be able to played in an autumn theme with likely some seasonal specific decorations added as well. This will be another session setting you get to pick when starting the game. Along with this seasonal theme will be the addition of lots of new levels playable in all seasonal themes. I have no screenshots to show off yet as I only started work on it this week. I will maybe do a development post in a week or so to show how its progressing :)

I just want to reiterate that this will be free, and not a paid addon. I fully intend to make it a DLC in the steam store as this helps with promotion, but it will be free. I know some of you like to look at packages added to steam in advance of release, so want to be extra clear on that. I actually have no plans for any paid addons for the remainder of this season. If you wish to support the game then please consider writing a review, and/or just let your friends know about the game.


This is something I’m actively working on but will be second to the expansion development. The game was built around native Linux support in mind with its choice of engine and any plugins used. There is a handful of things I need to tidy up and fix at this stage, but overall it is working and progressing along nicely.

[h2]Why not proton?[/h2]
While proton works for lots of games, I found it not to work flawlessly with Golfing in Aether, identifying a few issues. I also like to be in control of my own support rather than rely on others. If proton does end up working then great, that'll be two ways you play the game on Linux.

[h2]Steamdeck?[/h2]
Once Linux support is added then the game should play just fine on Steamdeck. There is full controller support and is quite suited for it. I did do a compatibility post on the forums here, but until I put out this Linux build (or proton improvements happen) the game isn't playable yet.


This hasn’t yet been actively requested but it is something I want to look into as other games have it. Initially as you know, I focused on Split Screen play where everyone uses their own controller. There is a 'hotseat' mode, which also works during online play, but this is more of game mode than a means of sharing controllers.

This shared controller mode will just mean when playing hotseat if you only have one controller you can optionally pass the pad instead. I will be looking at extending the number of local player numbers in this mode, perhaps to 8 or even more.

I have nothing to show off at this time and no set release date. However I wish this to be in the game for upcoming holidays.


This will be similar in feature to the autumn expansion except will feature a winter theme. I have nothing really to say about this as I likely won’t begin work on this till sometime in November. But in short, expect a new winter theme and more levels.


Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

This update contains a mix of fixes, various quality of life additions, and some tidy ups in the direction of supporting post launch content coming this season. There are also a bunch of items from my quality-of-life list that I hadn't got done prior to launch ticked off.

The size of the update is mostly due to a one-time moving of files around and clearing up some references. Normally updates wont be anywhere near this big.

If any of you have feedback, suggestions, or ideas about the game I’m always happy to hear them :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]General[/h2]

• Fixed a delay timer potentially interfering with camera reset in practice mode.
  
• Fixed ability to fight the yaw while focusing flag and an instance where it may become stuck if you mashed buttons and reset camera.
  
• Added tweaks to scoring of levels. I’ve adjusted the timing value to have a 2.5 second offset, which will mean net 10XP difference. This is to bring some later game levels into a more ideal difficulty for achieving S Ranks. The early levels I’ve so far not experienced any issues with. Always open to feedback on the levels however.
  
• Added change to waiting for players menu by showing the preset image and icon rather than a picture of the first level. This helps players joining see easier what kind of session they are in and is consistent with the join menu behavior, plus that first level picture was often incorrect as it only shows the base version and isn’t correct for hard etc.
  
• Added independent graphics quality settings to the system save game when running in ES3.1. This means that while stuff like display and frame rate settings will be shared, the quality and some of advanced settings will be only to that specific mode.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed a couple minor wall gaps on ‘See you on the other side’
  
• Added a tidy up by reducing number of materials for track pieces. This won’t affect performance in a meaningful way but will help with error prevention.
  
• Added internal changes to future support additional ground types. No new ground types are currently included.
  
• Fixed a wall gap on spin city.
  
• Fixed a wall on ‘Getting Tee’d off’ out of alignment.
  
• Added improved round corner and round end cap wall meshes. These were earlier made meshes and compared to other wall meshes I simply felt quality could be better. A positive side effect of this rework will see triangle count of these meshes be reduced by around 25%.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed an issue with displaying XP level after reaching level 5 in the scoreboard.
  
• Fixed an element pressable that shouldn’t be (and has no effect) on the stat menu. The container for holeouts had visual pressable feedback when it shouldn’t, it also has no reason to have this.
  
• Added to stats menu a stat that specifically shows how many levels excluding difficulty variations you’ve played. This is same progress as the ‘Around the World’ achievement.
  
• Added time to be displayed as part of the holeout animation when in a race session.
  
• Added dedicated graphics settings menu for when running in the ES3.1 performance mode. Given most graphical features don’t work or are simply disabled in this mode you will find less options here compared to normal. However, if your goal is to tweak to get more performance then only showing actually valid options is a huge help. Essentially this mode is low/med in terms of regular DX12 features. Shadows are supported, if you disable these via the settings you will get further performance improvements.
  
• Fixed some container text strings being incorrect on the graphics menu.
  

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

Small update with a mixture of fixes and some tweaking of the scoring values based on feedback. I’d already made some animations for ‘Eagle’ and ‘Double Bogey’ and so on but just forgotten about them. But after it was brought to my attention I got those fixed up and implemented fully. I would like to make additional animations so theres more variation for all existing categories at some point, it’s on the list of things to get done just not top of the priority list.

If any of you have feedback, suggestions, or ideas about the game I’m always happy to hear them :) Updates for Golfing in Aether should slow down in a day or so to hopefully something more weekly, being launch day I didn’t want to sit on fixes or easy to implement feedback.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added tweaked XP values for Eagle. Normally XP values are 200 for Par, 350 for Birdie and 500 for Hole In One. For Par 4 courses, Birdie is now worth 300 and Eagle 400. Any number of bogeys are still worth 100 XP.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added animations for Eagle, Double and Tripple bogey. The double and triple reuse the same animation just with text changed.
  
• Added improvements to the back-end of how animations are selected. In order to implement this I figured I’d mays well do some tidying up in the process. This will help with error prevention.
  
• Fixed an issue where the score was always described as ‘birdie’ in small text on the XP screen.
  
• Fixed XP screen showing incorrect item unlocks. This was a visual issue only.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

Small update containing fixes to a couple minor issues found or reported. If you have encountered any other problems, then please let me know :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added 2 second cooldown for using quick chat.
  
• Fixed an issue where searching for quickchat messages could cause problems for the regular message picking.
  
• Fixed Eclectic achievement progress popping up when no progress had actually been made. This is supposed to pop up on the last round only usually. The achievement does refresh every end-of-round as a ‘just-in-case’ way of making sure everything is kept up to date.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed some quick-chat messages getting cut-off due to a long player name.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.