Golfing In Aether News

For this update Japanese Localization has been added as well as several quality of life improvements.


Localization for Japanese includes all in-game texts, store pages, and achievements.

When playing by using the in-game quick chat these messages are all translated automatically (players see these messages in their local language) so you can play and communicate with players at a basic level without the language barrier.


Another feature is the on-screen keyboard when using this localization supports hiragana and katakana.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3684558162504860650

Steam recently announced changes to how controller support is listed on the store page specifcally to list support for DualShock and DualSense.

There was already support for these controllers and you may of noticed the option to set the glyphs ingame but as part of this update we've added the ability to automatically detect and set the glyphs for them when Steam Input is enabled. When controllers are disconnected the game menu will appear with a 'controller disconnect' warning.


Its now possible to have controller vibration with various settings to adjust how it behaves. Firstly you can set it to be either 'On' with full surface feedback, or can limit it to just impacts and hits, such as bouncing off a wall. You also have the option to disable it.

We've set impacts only enabled by default - as this will work with the widest range of devices. Official controller types for the various consoles tend to have much better vibration than third parties or 'officially licensed' copies - to the point where having full surface feedback can be rather unpleasent and annoying. We've also given an intensity setting you can adjust as well.


As part of this update is a change to layout of the main menu and placement of online functions. Previously there was a general new game menu and then a join game menu but we've instead moved all online functionaliy behind the online button. This lets us have a clear dedicated offline section of the game, centalize online multiplayer to one spot and also offer us more space to implement additional functions in the future.


The online menu has buttons to either join sessions, or create a public or invite only session.

To create a custom session you select a base permissions type, and then press custom session on the next menu or after selecting which preset initially. The idea is you can go through the standard menu flow and only have to customize the final result if you wish.

The overall thought process behind these changes is to make things more straight forward for either playing offline with say singleplayer or local play, or when you specifically want to play online. Overall the same options are available and you can customize as you could previously could in the custom sessions menu.


Another small change is we've hid the third button on the customization menu for now (until such feature is implemented) and also when selecting no headware option you'll see a faint X rather than purely empty box.


This has been given some tweaks so the code is displayed to you in a 111-111-1111 format and when you go to enter it will automatically handling the seperation. The point of this being to make it easier to read as much easier to keep track of 3 to 4 number blocks than a ten number block.


A new option to game and accessibility settings is to adjust the scaling of the overall UI independent of regular DPI scaling. This lets you effectively zoom in the UI so it fills your screen, something that can be very useful when playing on a small screen such as a handheld device.

It also just makes everything a bit bigger if you have trouble reading the text and the default scale.




You'll find two new achievements - "Seasonal" for playing a session in each of the three seasonal themes, and "Levelling Up" for reaching Level 3 or 18,000 XP.

Both these achivements have had existing stat tracking so you may find yourself mid way through progress or even completed right away.

The reason behind these two is we can look at overall playerbase figures to get a good sense of feature utilization. All of this including existing achivements paints a picture of what players are using as a whole, where to focus our energy and any improvements we may need to make so players understand features.

We've expanded the deluxe edition with two additional ball options - firstly for the Sports Balls we added a baseball, and for the seasonal halloween content we added a Vampire ball (which goes pretty well with various hats). Also in the deluxe edition is a new hat the Capotain.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2138970/Golfing_In_Aether__Deluxe_Edition_Upgrade/

If you already have the Deluxe Edition, then you will get these new items automatically at no additional cost.

Note there will be a halloween event later this month so do keep an eye out for halloween ball items you can unlock in-game via that (these are different to the deluxe edition).


Check the full notes below for all the changes made, if you are aware of any issues then please let me know so they may be hotfixed.


A halloween event will be available sometime next week so keep an eye out for that!

Also as part of the 1.6.x series we are migrating Golfing in Aether to Unreal Engine 5.3 and also releasing a new free expansion sometime in November. We'll do seperate news posts about those nearer the time.

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

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added support for Japanese localization. This includes custom on screen keyboard support. Please share any feedback you may have.
  
• Fixed an issue where if you played a practice level with split screen enabled, then via the game menu selected ‘retry’, after the restart the other split screen players wouldn’t function correctly.
  
• Added controller vibration support.
  
• Fixed an issue where if an initial player were to time out in shared input the second player wouldn’t get correct camera until pressing camera button.
  
• Fixed a camera delay for the Level Sequence for "Around the Bend'.
  
• Added 'Vampire' and 'Baseball' balls as well as the Capotain hat to the Deluxe Edition DLC.

[h2]Platform[/h2]

• Added store page translation in Japanese.
  
• Added achievement translation in Japanese.
  
• Fixed some achievement global progress values.
  
• Added new achievement “Seasonal” for playing a session of each of the three seasonal themes.
  
• Added new achievement “Levelling Up” for reaching level 3 or 18,000 XP.
  
• Added some Steam Input API support to track disconnects and specific glyphs. We already have built in input remapping and support for various glyphs this change will just hook it up to Steam when enabled. Disconnects for player 1 will pause the game where applicable.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Added LOD models for falling leaves and petals.
  
• Added support for falling leaves and petals in ES3.1 mode.
  
• Fixed a physical surface inconsistency with Autumn and Winter themes.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed potential issue where if you held the Thumbstick navigation while pressing ready up on the choose players menu it could be possible to hear ongoing navigation sounds.
  
• Added change to ‘Text contrast’ to instead name it “High Contrast” and give the options as “on” or “off” rather than the previous “medium” or “high” to make things clearer.
  
• Added change to ‘Highlight color’ and instead named it accent color. This is because its used in more than just highlighting.
  
• Added number prefix to level names in practice menu.
  
• Added small layout change to main menu to free up room for localization.
  
• Added new DPI setting for interface to replace previous DPI scaling. This is to solve the problem of ever increasing resolution handheld devices that still have small screens. With this setting enabled you’ll have the UI expand outwards to fill the screen, essentially remove the empty space. I’ve set a flag so if running a Steam Deck then by default this will get set enabled.
  
• Added significant improvements to UI scaling during split screen modes. Menus will now correctly factor in both vertical and horizontal minimum scaling, as well as auto hiding of HUD elements when absolutely necessary.
  
• Added additional options for configuring controller vibration. You have to option to set it to full surface feedback, hits and impacts only, or off. There is also a setting for intensity.
  
• Added additional prompt when naming a local profile that it cannot contain invalid characters (due to file names e.g. !
• @ etc.). This is existing behaviour as it wouldn’t allow you save previously, but now there is a message saying specifically why it won’t save.
  
• Fixed navigation and gamepad behaviour with enter invite code prompt.
  
• Fixed a potential issue relating to the animation for the flashing timer (< 30 seconds) on the HUD.
  
• Added a credits/legal menu accessible via settings menu from the main menu.
  
• Added improvement to the format of 10 digit invite codes. Codes will now be displayed and entered in 123-123-1234 format (- spacing) to make entry easier (you don’t have to type the -).
  
• Added improvements to how the holeout animations are played in various split screen modes, previously I felt they would be a bit small so I’ve cropped the edges and zoomed where appropriate.
  
• Fixed a navigation issue with returning to practice menu after entering a leaderboard.
  
• Fixed pressing back on a invite code entry being treated as entering a code.
  
• Added additional option to set glyphs to “Auto” in the gamepad and local settings menus. When set to this it will try pull the glyphs from Steam Input. You can set to any other value to override as you wish.
  
• Added improved handling of the level title at start of session where it will be hidden immediately should you open the game menu to prevent an overlap.
  
• Added a tweak so the 'waiting for players' menu does not occur when playing an exclusively offline session.
  
• Fixed D-Pad navigation of the achievements menu not working correctly.
  
• Fixed various minor navigation issues.

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

For this weeks update I've implemented a couple quality of life improvements as well as fixes to any reported issues.


With this additional feature you can now invite players who aren't on your friends list to private or friends only sessions. The way this works is via generating an invite code which will be a unique 10 digit code that is only valid for that session. You can share this outside the game via any means you want, and then players will be able to enter that code on the join game menu to reach your session.

An example where this could be useful is perhaps if you were to have a clan or group you play with, but don't have every member you want to invite on your friends list. So rather than have an open session you can still create a private one but just share this code with whoever you want.

In terms of security the invite code is only created when you request it. The number itself is 10 digits and unique, plus only valid to that session. This means if you end the session and create a new one you'll need to generate a fresh code. You can press the invite code button again within the same session and it will display the code previously given to you.


This is whats used by gamepads when creating a local player profile or naming your multiplayer session. What I've changed is build in support for more characters for localization in a future update, I've also made some of the buttons more pronounced and use more recognisable symbols so its easier to tell what does what.


Check the full notes below for all the changes made, if you are aware of any issues then please let me know so they may be hotfixed.

One thing I specifically fixed this update after it was reported earlier today was an issue with the shared input mode not working correctly. This has all been fixed and I've corrected a few other minor things while testing it.

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

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added ability to create an invite code you may share with other players as an additional method of joining. The point of this is so you can have a private or friends only session but allow someone not on your friends to join if given the code. Invite codes are only generated upon request and unique to that specific session.
  
• Fixed an issue relating to shared input mode with hotseat mode. Other local shared input players were not getting loaded in correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where mouse and keyboard inputs were not loading seamlessly with other shared input players.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Added improvements to lighting in ES3.1 for winter theme in order to make more consistent with appearance as found in the full DX12/Vulkan render.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

Fixed potential to open accessibility menu and a different menu at the same time with gamepad (if pressing multiple buttons).

• Added improved onscreen keyboard for create player and server names.
  
• Fixed the local player settings (via game menu) not allowing gamepad navigation to reach zoom out button for remapping due to an incorrect column span.
  
• Fixed some text strings.

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

This weeks update features a couple of quality of life improvements such additional mesh quality levels for snow, and an additional cloud layer effect. I've also included bug-fixes to anything found or reported during the past week.


I wanted to start out with something that could work well with lower settings first. Essentially it adds an additional light layer of clouds like seen in the background that will render in front of the islands for addditional effect. Depending on the lighting conditons and current level theme it will adjust accordingly.

This is intentionally minimal, you may not always notice it and will fade away as your camera comes within proximity of it. This will get tweaked over time and may be combined with additonal effects.


The snow found on wall meshes has gotten an additional quality level thats better poly count optimized for low and medium settings. This will give a performance boost when playing the winter theme on low end devices, with greater gains while playing with other islands active.

Each of the low and high versions of the models have their own LOD models for when seen in the distance like on other islands.


Check the full notes below for all the changes made, if you are aware of any issues then please let me know so they may be hotfixed.

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

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added change to how system save games are saved, moved from asynchronous to immediate. Because the amount of data in this file is tiny it can get it out the way before saving profile data would save at the same time (which is more of an issue for some low end systems).
  
• Fixed an issue where ES3.1 brightness settings wouldn’t always apply correctly.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Added improvements to levels ‘All Tee’d up’ and ‘Stroke of Luck’ to add more visual detail to back sides of levels and optimize overall triangle counts.
  
• Fixed camera on Law of reflection not being smooth.
  
• Added improvements to flag raising detection radius to give more room for ball speed.
  
• Fixed a clipping rock on ‘Now where do I go’.
  
• Fixed a small wall gap on ‘Tee Time’.
  
• Fixed hats appearing a bit overly shiny on lower settings on non-windows platforms.
  
• Added additional mesh quality level for level snow which will be used for low and medium settings.
  
• Added additional light cloud layer that will render in front of distant other islands.
  
• Added version of the snow covered fence for lower quality settings.
  
• Added tweaks to some wall models that were had lod models with excessive spacing that stood out.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed Q and F1 keys not having consistent appearance in dark mode.

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

This is a large quality of life update with various improvements and several bug-fixes. I put off doing multiple updates while the summer sale was active so there's a lot of changes in this one.


First up is I've reworked all the island models for every level to both give better visual quality and also bring some performance gains.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1914980/announcements/detail/3663164071049247637

Specifically what I did was expand on the 3D baking I was able to do with the complex wall models in the 1.5.8 update and apply this to the island meshes themselves. This was a very time consuming process as while some models are re-used, there is still 48 unique island meshes to rework. These are also very large and very complex models, so getting them to bake properly took quite a bit of work. Additionally the grass on the island's rocks is now generated from the baked data rather than general vertex normal information which removes some blurry artifacts in places.

There are two models for each island now, a high quality which is identical poly to before but with the baking on top - so looks really good, and a lower poly also with the baking. The lower poly looks better than it did previously but at the cost of some visual quality, though for low-end hardware this helps for performance.


For view distance when set to low, and other islands set to enabled, only the local island group will be rendered. In a standard session this will be either hole 1-4, 5-8 or hole 9. The idea is that you can still see some islands but culling a few to save on performance.

With foliage settings there will also be an affect on the quality of the island mesh itself as described above. When set to Low or Medium the lower quality mesh will be used, else the regular poly will get used. When testing on a Ryzen 3200G without a dedicated GPU in the levels I tested there was a 3-5 FPS gain on average, with greater gains when playing with other islands present.


You can now delete local profiles on the select profiles menu. Only player 1 can do this, and the menu can be accessed by entering the edit profiles menu via Y gamepad button (or onscreen button) as before. When there you will see ability to delete the profile in addition to the apply changes.

Local profiles only store the name, customization, and any controller settings for local players, so if they are deleted even on accident (would be hard to do...) nothing really important is lost. There is of course a prompt asking if you are sure you want to delete the specific profile beyond the button press.


A leaderboardless version of the scoreboard has been added which will be picked automatically by default when in local play. This is because leaderboards only work for player 1, so I've put more focus on immediate scores and progression instead.


If you would like this either disabled or perhaps enabled always, you can find a setting under game settings and set it based on your preference. I know not everyone likes leaderboards so if you want to just hide them then this will do exactly that.

Note that when leaderboards are hidden you will still submit a score to the leaderboards as before, its just the displaying of them on the scoreboard thats hidden.


I've made some changes to the backend of the HUD to better cache information and only re-render parts when needed. This will help with performance on very low end hardware where CPU may be a bottleneck area (which is very hard to achieve in this game).

Specifically I've tweaked the player widget and current hole info widgets at the top of the screen. I've also tweaked the player names that float above other players in the game world as-well.


I tidied up the graphs that handle some of the corrective dampening that is applied onto the ball in specific situations. There are no drastic changes here but a couple of improvements have been made such as to specifically fix balls stopping too suddenly at the base of a ramp, and in cases rolling a little too much.


A lot of play testing was done given all the features in this update so numerous minor or behavioural issues were caught and fixed. You can see the full list in the notes below.

Hotseat / competitive mode was tested a lot in particular to really refine various little things that stood out. Examples include inconsistencies with remote players holing out vs the host, remote players ball's not being angled identical at the start of the round, fixes to the reset to checkpoints, and a bunch of camera related refinements.

As this is a very large update despite me including lots of fixes to various elements theres always a chance I've either missed something or a new issue will show up somewhere thats slipped through testing so do let me know if you encounter anything so I can get it hotfixed.

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

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added setting of field of view to 75 down from 90 when playing for the first time on a steam deck. This is a local system setting, which you can override / change at any time from game settings. The reason for the lower FOV is it will help with seeing things better. This will not have any effect on anyone who has already played the game as it is purely the default setting.
  
• Added mechanic for deleting local profiles, it was already possible to edit them.
  
• Fixed updating some graphics settings such as ‘other islands’ not immediately resulting in changes.
  
• Added backend changes to how the level sequence stage is executed, specifically it is now created on the fly based on the level index rather than performing a lookup for an existing reference. This can help with loading reliability by removing a potential point of failure where a reference in the chain may not be replicated in time.
  
• Fixed an issue with creating a session, proceeding to complete or end that session, then creating a new session in the active session, which would lead to an incorrect sync of joinable information in the steam lobby. I’ve exposed more information to -log from the connecting / joining process to make this easier to debug in future.
  
• Fixed an instance where a couple of graphics settings wouldn’t immediately be saved. This is specifically settings such as ‘Other Islands’ which is tied to the players profile as an accessibility setting. All specifically system settings were saving fine.
  
• Fixed a potential issue where it was possible for a remote player to launch their ball during a competitive match during a latency period.
  
• Fixed an issue in hotseat mode where if a remote player were to holeout it would immediately proceed to the next player, end their turn rather have the short delay showing them in the hole as it would be for the host. This could also be a of cause of the power meter to be visible when moving.
  
• Fixed an issue in hotseat mode where if a player you were spectating were to enter a hole (that isn’t the cup) and then on your turn you were to enter that same hole the camera’s initial position was incorrect.
  
• Added a tidy up of some of the ball rolling behaviour by simplifying the backend graph. A couple of improvements have also been made to specifically fix balls stopping too suddenly at the base of a ramp, and in cases rolling a little too much.
  
• Fixed a potential issue where if you created a custom session, picked custom levels, but didn’t choose any custom levels, while it did pick levels it wasn’t identical behaviour to default. Instead when custom is picked but no levels chosen earlier on in the process the session will just go with default levels.
  
• Fixed an instance where resetting in a session to checkpoint (a pipe) the velocity was not being set correctly.
  
• Added improvement to spectating another player exiting a pipe to help with camera seamlessness.
  
• Fixed a potential failure that could occur with the hotseat player order when a remote player establishes themselves as first in order, then proceeds to disconnect during state where player order is determined. Players will be actively checked during this stage.
  
• Fixed when a remote hotseat player is first in turn order for holes other than the first they had an incorrect initial rotation.
  

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Added a performance setting to other islands being rendered via the view distance setting. When set to low only the local island group will be rendered. In a standard session this will be either hole 1-4, 5-8 or hole 9. The idea is that you can still see some islands but culling a few to save on performance.
  
• Added additional mesh quality level as part of the foliage setting. When set to low an even lower poly set of models will be used for a few things such as the cherry branches. This does reduce the poly of the higher poly models a little further (about 25%) at loss of some quality. This will specifically help very low end hardware.
  
• Fixed normal of some rotators, particularly vertical windmills when seen in distance as part of a LOD island.
  
• Fixed the appearance of a hole mesh on boneyard which had a minor gap.
  
• Fixed alignment of a pipe and ground piece on around the bend.
  
• Fixed appearance of some movers seen on LOD islands. Some inversed types weren’t moving the correct direction.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added option to delete a local player profile on the choose players menu. This option will only appear when player 1 selects edit profile on a local profile. After pressing delete an on-screen prompt will appear confirming if you really want to delete this local profile. It should be noted that local profiles only store things like their name, customization, and any controls/accessibility settings. There is no progression or stats for local profiles.
  
• Fixed an issue where status updates for the bottom glyphs of the shared input menu could be set while in non-shared state.
  
• Fixed an issue where editing a local profile and then creating a new profile would begin with that player names set rather than blank.
  
• Fixed various instances of create new profile not starting blank if that specific player had previously created a profile in that menu session.
  
• Fixed an issue where after saving edited profile changes the ‘edit profile’ button prompt was no longer visible until you reselected the profile or selected another that could be edited.
  
• Fixed an issue where if you change the customization to an existing local profile, then edit the local profile and save changes the customization changes you had just made are not reflected in the interface.
  
• Added contextual string to distinguish between initially creating and saving an edited local profile.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to enter editing local profile before having pressed a to join.
  
• Added improved caching to player name widget which will offer a small performance gain on very low end hardware.
  
• Added improved caching to the HUD. Most of the values will do render updates based on value changes. This will help very low end hardware by freeing up a few ms of rendering.
  
• Fixed a small navigation history issue relating to selecting ‘custom’ on the theme select menu, exiting from the custom menu – which will take you to the root new game menu, and then re-navigating to the select theme menu where the previous state was shown.
  
• Fixed Thumbstick navigation on the theme select menu when creating a full session.
  
• Fixed an instance where two navigation sounds would play while using the d-pad when opening the ingame menu.
  
• Fixed a couple of instances where holding down the navigation and pressing back in a menu could still result in active sounds.
  
• Fixed navigation sounds able to be triggered on the scoreboard (when no navigation was possible).
  
• Fixed an instance where a session on the session browser would only indicate ‘in lobby’ or ‘hole 1 of 9’.
  
• Added a leaderboardless version of the scoreboard which will be picked automatically by default for local play. Via game settings you can specifify to also either have it always disabled or enabled based on preference.
  
• Added improvement to player name behaviour in hotseat. When it is your turn, the floating name above your ball will disappear immediately vs fade out – but other players names will fade appear as before.
  
• Fixed an relating to session identifiers which could sometimes lead to a session replacing another on the session list.

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

A small hotfix to fix a reported issue relating to save-game loading that could occur for new players.

I found some odd behavior at engine level when it comes to storing some settings where specific files required weren't being created properly so have temporarily made a manual work-around to bypass the engine function for now.

If you encounter any issues then please let me know either in the steam discussion forums, discord or via the support email :)

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

[h2]General[/h2]

• Fixed a save-game loading issue that could occur for new players.
  
• Added a custom mechanism for saving game user settings reliably to get around an issue in this version of the engine.

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