A.N.N.E News

Hello, friends and survivors of this slow-motion adventure we are all in together.

I was hoping to release this update much sooner but I have been pretty busy with life and some of the issues took a while to fix, and some for dumb reasons... Nonetheless learning programming with someone else's code is challenging. But I have some help from my buddy David so things are moving forward. This is the return of the Linux and Mac builds using my new Linux machine, so I hope that these builds will run well since I do not have time to test these two SKUs.

I will make sure to go around the forums to look for issues I may have overlooked and do my best to get these fixed ASAP. You will find a list of most of the changes below. Also, I believe that the old version of Unity I use is creating Mac builds for a Mac OS that Steam will no longer support... So I will most likely have to resort to having Linux and Mac builds on my website directly... ;_; To be continued...

For the upcoming update, I am considering sharing a special save game that would load into an enclosed playground area with most of the gear unlocked and all kinds of enemies and physics objects to play with... Let me know what you guys think. Might be something fun to do while waiting for chapter 3!

I also asked the folks at Valve to set my project back to Early Access I am unsure of how it came out of EralyAccess, but it was an accident/mishap on my part.


Cheers,
Mo




Patch 00.20.2024 details

fixes/changes list

global

- changed sound FX when collecting core fragments
- changed the title screen song
- added a new music track for the beginning of W1
- lowered default main volume
- Fixed a bug where the player's weapon would not shoot if collecting an item before collecting the weapon.
- Replaced all videos with black placeholder video. To reduce the size of the game and get some speed
- Made some quick adjustments to "support" wide 21:9 | 43:18 displays.
- Set the game to display a resolution dialogue when launching. 1280*720 recommended. Unless you want to laugh, experiment or simply have no choice.
I set Unity to only allow 1280 x 720 but apparently, it doesn't care about these build settings @_@.

HUD

- The core level is now displayed properly when acquiring an additional core level. It might not work in every language since Google Translate modified caps... Will fix it eventually).
- Made the button display window bigger
* Note that the cursor got smaller. Will be made 200% bigger in the next update.

Prologue

- removed some enemies inside the enemy's carrier ship that would spam the screen with bullets.
* noticed that the ship's grab function was disabled during the prologue. Will look into enabling it back, while keeping the tutorial for it later in the game.

W1

- Made some LD modifications at the start of W1 ; better flow and a more logical item placement. Now rewarding clever players early on since the idea with rusty keys is that you must save them as much as possible for later in the game ;]

- Added a new ambiance with a new song from Tomoharu Yamashita (first composer, aka Miyamo). This new-but-old track matches the mood better and the previous track will start once the player has gotten the ship back.

- Fixed a bug where the player's weapon would not shoot if collecting an item before collecting the first weapon.

- Fixed a bug where it was impossible to repair the ship.

- Polished a few environment sprites and tiles.

We were pretty much off this summer but we are picking up steam now. Unfortunately, this fix is for PC only as Unity cloud builds no longer support our old Unity version.

I have to figure out how I will build the Mac and Linux version.

Stay tuned

cheers,

Mo and the team

A critical bug causing the player's ship to take damage while a boss was respawning has been fixed. It was supposed to be included in the previous update but a small value was changed or reverted unintentionally. NB: More bosses may need this feature activated in the future.

Cheers.

Hi everyone,

sorry for the delay in releasing this new update however We are all pretty busy with life. This update includes tons of ld and gameplay tweaks and new content. Although the important bug was affecting the game globally, this update includes mostly improvements for the Chapter 2 content. here is a quick changelog of the significant changes:


Major bug fixed: Boss reset.

- Bosses and enemies would not reset fast enough on respawn, sometimes causing the bosses to reappear on the player ship causing an instant kill at the start of a boss. This would make dying and retrying against certain bosses a real unfair pain in the buns.


World 2

- Did a big level design rework in the Windmill village.
- Did a few level design tweaks in multiple areas, but more to come.
- moved the slime boss
- added a new laser golem boss
- added a new mid-boss
- Did a few sprite art polish
- Switched two songs around for the exterior and interior world themes.


Bosses and enemies

- Slime boss has been redone entirely
- added laser golem boss
- reworked the Destroyer ship as a mid-boss
- added a new enemy type at the entrance of the mine depot


Gameplay

- Enemy forcefields can be destroyed by pushing an enemy or object into them with the player's push blast ability. previously only possible with the ship.
- Falling platforms have been fine
-tweaked to give a bit more time to jump off.


Player 

- tweaked player running smoke fx
- player x climbing speed raised from 3 to 4.
- player grenades have a bigger radius and a slight attack power boost
- Shotgun bullet range increased


Audio
- Added 2 new tracks and 




Upcoming fixes:

- Fix to an ambient sounds bug where their volume stays at 0 following ambient change.
- Reactivate the "on-world arrival" HUD showing world map player location info and the name of the current area.
- General enemies and weapons balancing, some stuff seems pretty off and needs some more testing/code review/investigation in order to figure out if the stats match my original design/equations. 
- Missing so many sounds :( Plus the ambient turning off bug is not helping.
- the player ship laser should not go through force field.


Chapter 3 is still in the works but chapter 2 still needs some more adjustments. I still have to give some love to the laser general boss fight at the end of world 2, some level design corrections and then I will be dedicated to chapter 3.

Thank you for your continued support and Have a great summer!

Mo

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hi all, Sorry for the delay. Here are the Linux and Mac builds. There's been some cleaning up behind the scenes and I hope there won't be any issues with launching the game. Thanks!