BAWK BAWK UPDATE 1.5

Patch Notes for version 1.5
Release date: 2023/12/12

Howdy Heroes,

We’ve been working hard alongside our composer therealchrisnorton to make sure the Music update and Mobile release makes a big splash! Our focus for this patch was to bring a unique soundtrack to the game, improving the player’s experience and optimisation to make sure it runs as smooth as possible. We are happy to welcome you to the Music and Mobile update!

[h2]Mobile Mad[/h2]
Play On The Go - Bawk Bawk’s mobile release on Android and iOS will be right around the corner! Soon enough you’ll be Bawking at a moment's notice!

[h2]Masterful Music[/h2]
Stop, Look, LISTEN - Now Bawk Bawk is jam packed with new awesome music composed by @therealchrisnorton! Be sure to play with the sound on and the music pumping, treat your ears to a delightful feast. Even Rascal has his own theme to help you know when the chase is on!

[h2]Player Experience[/h2]
First Impressions Matter - We’ve updated the tutorial to give players a better first experience, while also covering more of the core mechanics.
Navigation Nation - Improved navigation based on player feedback. The post game screen is now a lot easier to navigate and the chilli meter now makes it even easier to switch the tempo of gameplay. You now have the ability to change Clucky’s equipment from both the post game and level select screens so you can adjust your outfit on the fly.
My Clucky Senses Are Tingling - Clucky now senses which direction she should turn to find Rascal when he moves out of sight. Clucky can now also sense when a fox is close behind her.
Cheers, Big Ears - A shout-out system is in the game, providing positive reinforcement for completing tutorials as well as highlighting daring dodges and clutch saves.
Second Chances - The new Close Call system gives you more time to react to a collision that would have proved fatal. Use this time to move, dash, or bawk your way to safety. But watch out! The dodge timer drains rapidly during close calls and if you take too long to react, your run will still be over.

[h2]Hot Stuff[/h2]
Super Scary - Fire scarecrows now bounce around while they spin so watch out for these spinning nightmares!
Hex Walled - A new challenge approaches in the form of a new bonus level, it’s like walled only hexed.

[h2]Optimisation Override[/h2]
Staying Positive - Removed all negative scales in bawk bawk that were used to flip objects and used mirrored animation/assets instead to increase gpu instancing performance.
Too Many Triangles - Added LODs for the cylindrical world and some heavy hitting obstacles reducing the total polys by up to 40% in some cases.
Quality Assurance - Reduced the texture quality of the “alright” and “not bad” quality settings, allowing for less overhead on low-end devices.

[h2]The Nitty Gritty[/h2]
[h3]Music and Sound Adjustments[/h3]

Added new songs for each area, two songs for the menu and one song for Rascal.
Added new countdown sounds unique to each area.
Added new sound effects for bawk and dash recharge.
Added sound effects to all menus.
Music now fades out during load transition.
Music is paused when you pause.
Sounds should appear more like they are in a constant environment.
Obstacle sounds can now be played at various pitches to reduce the same sound stacking effect.
Added new sound effects for some actions.
Frogs now play sounds appropriate to their size.
Adjusted the volume of many sounds.
Reduced the amount of donkey and cow sounds and they should now play at the correct time.
Dogs that run should now bark.
Music dips on passing a goal.
Lava area should now sound more echoey.

[h3]Rascal Adjustments[/h3]

Rascal music now plays when rascal spawns.
When caught you gain the eggs Rascal stole and an egg combo shield.
Rascal now dashes when Clucky boosts near him.
Rascal now moves faster when behind clucky.
Rascal will now appear in front of you and leave a dirt trail leading into his boost. The dirt trail destroys surrounding obstacles.
Rascal’s item bag colour now changes based on the reward you get for catching them.
Rascal no longer impacts the level's random seed and won’t change the level’s structure when present.
Rascal’s chase should last exactly one minute.
Rascal’s icon and “catch/caught/escaped” text are now smaller.
Fixed a bug where the stunned icon stayed active during Rascal’s initial burst of speed.
Fixed a bug where both “catch” and “caught” remained on the screen during Rascal’s chase.
Fixed a bug Rascal didn’t spawn after completing a tutorial.
Rascals starting speed and max rotation speed has been reduced as well as changes directions less often.
Three star Rascal’s dash regen has been increased from 1s to 2s.

[h3]Initial Player Experience[/h3]

Updated and added new tutorials and training to increase clarity and added more systems to protect you, making it easier to succeed.
The game will initially load you into the tutorial on first play.
Input hints have been added to show the correct buttons to press for all control schemes. They now last forever on tutorial levels or appear on start or pause in other levels.
Missions should not pop up in tutorials.
Rascal icon and item icon shouldn’t appear on tutorial level’s pause or post game screen.
Now uses the space key glyph.

[h3]UI UX[/h3]

The chilli metre on the post game screen has been simplified to only show the chilli you are currently on.
Adjusted UI navigation to be more intuitive across the whole game. You can also now directly adjust the chilli on the post game screen without having to bring up the modal.
Added new UI shortcuts, you can now get to the options, missions and equipment select from the world, level and trial select screens.
The shop and equipment button have been separated and will now take you directly to the selected screen with quick access to each other except when changing equipment from the post game screen.
There are no longer duplicate egg counters on the pause screen.
Transitions in the menu are now snappier.
Wesley now prefers to show items first instead of cannon tickets.
Compliments and shoutouts now appear on the side of the screen when Clucky does cool actions. Current shoutouts include Dash Break when dashing through a dashable obstacle, Clutch when keeping an egg combo alive when it’s just about to run out, Close Call when surviving a close call and Combo Up or Rainbow Combo when increasing an egg combo.
Now top scores should appear before relative scores.
Added new nouns and adjectives for player names.
Cannon button now shows a star required pop up if you attempt to enable it without any star collected for the level.
Changed the star and rainbow celebrations effects to match the new sounds better.
Added credits screen in options.
The post game screen now has some unskippable parts.
When the player owns no items the items equipment overlay shows a message to direct them on how to get their feathers on some.
Now going to shop from in-game passes through area and level select.
The back button is now hidden when selecting equipment.
Cannon icons are now standardised.
Adjusted options layout to be more familiar and group similar options.
Each notch in the canvas scale option now increases size by 10% instead of 25% and more notches are present.
Adjusted some options names.

[h3]Player Adjustments[/h3]

Players now get Close Calls where if the run would be ended but the player has bawk or dash available, time is stopped for a duration based on their remaining time-slow bar, giving the player extra time to react to the danger.
Jump/Dash/Bawk input buffers are now longer and use real or in game time whichever is smaller.
Bawk now takes 3s to recover, up from 1s.
Bawk now takes 60s to recharge, up from 40s.
Boosts now give 2s of invulnerability, up from 1s.
Player feet hitbox is now smaller to reduce floating near bridges or getting muddy walking beside mud.
Camera should adjust itself when landing on floating islands.
Camera should tilt towards the ground less when falling.
Added Clucky dirt boost tunnelling and emerge sounds. Particles have been adjusted to match.
The player now starts higher up in the air when the cannon ends and is invulnerable for longer.
After boosts and cannons the player resets coyote time and has reduced gravity for a small period of time.
Some Invulnerability effects now weakly bounce you off water or dirt. A wing icon appears on the shield status display when this would occur.
Water bounce now gives a small Invulnerability.
Score save data now contain the game version they were achieved on, as well as other stats such as the highest egg combo achieved.

[h3]Item Adjustments[/h3]

Party Hat, Hand Bag and High Heels - Star Power now gives egg combo shield.
Guitar - Reduced boost shield from 100% to 30%.
Super Hair - Reduced bawk distance from 100% to 40%. Reduced bawk size from 50% to 30%.
Cowboy Boots and Toolbelt Reduced bawk charges from +2 to +1.
FPS glasses Reduced bawk charges from +3 to +2.

[h3]Level Adjustments[/h3]

Added a new bonus level Hex Walled.
Foxes no longer start behind reeds in the Fast Foxes level.
Cow blocks are now longer.
Multiblock fences now only have two eggs.
Rolling hay now only has two eggs.
Pop up sprinklers now rotate both ways.
Cows now rotate around poles both ways.
Fire scarecrows now move in infinity signs and are a little more scary overall.
Fixed Forest spelling for bonus levels.
Stoney Swamps is now called Soggy Swamps.
Trampolines now have boost lines and use the boost icon.
Corn camera zoom hitbox is slightly smaller.
Corn pathways are slightly bigger.
Lava steps are more central, move slower and are guaranteed to have some up and some down nearby.
Vultures now have an additional collider for their neck.
Blocks and obstacles that move or rotate should now be more consistently the same when playing on various view distances.
Dirt boosts now have a bigger hitbox.
Hay Boosts are now wider.

[h3]Mission Adjustments[/h3]

Mission items only select items that are available.
Added dash X dashables mission.
Added collect X egg combo mission.
Added complete X daily missions, mission.
Now get 6 daily missions + 2 rascal missions + 3 complete daily missions each day.
Adjusted mission requirements and rewards.
Fixed a bug with missions which caused expired items or level requirements.
Missions now only notify on 50% and 100% complete.
Removed complete X one star runs and replaced some with complete X three star runs.

[h3]Performance[/h3]

Reduced quality on low and medium to allow better performance.
Reduced fog and camera clipping plane distances.
Increased performance when loading scenes.
Quality options are now applied on start up.
The world cylinder is no longer solid and only shows the faces needed.
LODs have been added for the world cylinder, clouds and some animals.
Music files are now streamed, saving memory.
Reduced memory and CPU overhead for audio.
Adjusted sound load type to save performance.
Adjusted animation culling for some obstacles.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

Fixed a bug where player movement wasn’t based on the controller joystick x axis displacement percentage and was always full left, no movement or full right.
Fixed a bug where controller players could decelerate faster than keyboard players.
Fixed a bug where the item icon shadow image was visible when no item icon was present on pause and post game screen.
Fixed some bugs that occurred when the player was given free bawk and dash charges.
Fixed some bugs with colour changing obstacles.
Fixed some bugs with closing popups and navigating behind them.
Fixed some bugs when switching from full game to demo.
Fixed a bug where Rascal’s icon still showed on the cannon button when it wasn’t needed.
Fixed a bug where the Magnet didn’t work for some time after tutorial levels.
Fixed a bug where the Magnet caused Rascal to collect eggs from further away.
Now dirt boost duration and invulnerable time is scaled with boost power and boost invulnerable time.
Dirt boost particles on the ground should appear less when under water.
Fixed a bug where some music wasn’t stopping when it should.
Fixed a bug where the egg combo sound was playing on death.
Fixed a bug where you couldn’t navigate to the chilli metre when the next level button wasn’t present.
Fixed a bug where golden eggs weren’t reset correctly on restart.
Fixed a bug where music didn’t play when you restarted too fast.
Fixed a bug where you could select buttons during the post game screen animation.
Fixed some issues that occurred when playing on a controller when a touch screen was also present.
Fixed a bug where some options were present when the device they adjusted wasn’t connected.
Fixed a bug where some distance calculations were causing errors during loading.
Fixed a bug that occurred when loading into some levels.
Fixed a bug that occurred when dashing.
Fixed a bug where some sounds weren’t being stopped on death.
Fixed a bug where you couldn’t navigate to the back button in trial select.
Fixed a bug which identified the incorrect control scheme as the current.
Fixed a bug where dirt boost particles continued to spawn after death.
Fixed a bug where you needed a mouse to use keyboard navigation.