Beef Cat Ultra News

[p]Hi all,[/p][p][/p][p]Just a little patch here to start the week off. Some refinements here and there. This is really a partner patch to 2.1. Have fun in Beeflandia![/p][p][/p][p]-Kyle[/p][p][/p][h2]v2.3[/h2]

• [p]fixed sign post issues for several more items (late game weapons not triggering sign posts correctly)[/p]
• [p]the new Shadows Toggle in the settings menu now saves between play sessions properly[/p]

[p]Hey all,[/p][p][/p][p]In my quest to make Beef Cat Ultra run better in the Endless stages on lower powered laptops I have conjured up another performance patch. This one is another great step towards even the largest and most chaotic stages remaining smooth on even the lowest end of devices.[/p][p]The new Shadows toggle in the settings menu will turn off the game-wide drop shadow effect. This is a demanding visual effect and turning it off results in a large spike in fps. Testing on my own PC which does not have performance issues ever saw Endless stages double in frame rate from approximately 1000fps to 2000fps. On a lower end non-gaming laptop with a 2.2ghz processor, this meant a laggy experience in the massive endless stages is now flawlessly buttery.[/p][p]On a lower end device that struggles to run Endless stages, this toggle alone should ideally translate into almost double the frame rate at the expense of losing drop shadows.[/p][p]Other general code clean up and map clean up was done to further help those stages run the best they can.[/p][h2]v2.2[/h2]

• [p]Added Shadows toggle to Settings menu[/p]
• [p]Added "On" and "Off" Text to both the Fullscreen and Shadows boxes in the Settings menu[/p]
• [p]General map and performance enhancements[/p]

[p]Hey all,[/p][p][/p][p]I have a small update for Beef Cat Ultra today. I cleaned up a bug with signpost based items and implemented some performance improvements in areas the game processes a lot of information (the world map and endless stages). This is going to be the first of a couple similar patches. [/p][p][/p][p]-Kyle[/p][p][/p][h2]v2.1.0[/h2]

• [p]Improved performance in World Map[/p]
• [p]Improved performance in all 4 endless mode stages[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where choice signs wouldn't break after grabbing certain pickups[/p]

[p][/p][p]Beef Cat Ultra released last year on September 23rd 2024. And it has been an excellent year. Out of the gate Beef Cat Ultra reached a smaller audience than we anticipated - such is game development. But we did a handful of polish patches and released the large Remix update for Steam users adding endless endgame content for diehard players.[/p][p]In late December I cold-emailed an indie game publisher and said "hey I think you should publish my game for consoles" but in a slightly more professional way. And when I woke up the next morning I was surprised to see a return email from them saying "we agree, let's talk" exactly as casually as that. A few short months later, Beef Cat Ultra released for the Nintendo Switch consoles, Playstation 4/5, and Xbox One and Series consoles.[/p][p]In the months since, we've been quiet on Beef Cat Ultra while we worked on other projects and tried some new things out. But I've been logging every bit of feedback for the game across all platforms and finished a gargantuan Anniversary Patch late last week. This was a holistic look at every thing in the game. Stage design, assets, code - anything that could be looked at was looked at. And a LOT was tweaked.[/p][p]Let's get into some monster patch notes:[/p][h2]Beef Cat Ultra v2.0 Patch Notes[/h2][h3]Early Game Balancing and Onboarding[/h3]

• [p]Beef Cat Survives: Removed a chest from near the starting point, replaced some trees with grassy fenced areas.[/p]
• [p]Gauntlet Legacy: Moved the first gate closer to the start of the stage so that is shares a screen with the first key, moved a couple early stage enemy spawners, added a bridge over the large body of water to give players another path in a congested space.[/p]
• [p]Collectathon: Added extra gemmies to the stage, only requires about 90% of gems for stage clear.[/p]
• [p]Funky Lake Stages: visual improvements to create more landmark type spaces in the environment to help with understanding the layout better.[/p]
• [p]Broken Forest: changed player starting location, added gemmies, only requires about 90% of gems for stage clear, added an additional path to prevent players getting trapped in the late stage congestion.[/p]

[h3]General Balancing[/h3]

• [p]Beef Cat base HP 10 -> 12[/p]
• [p]iFrames 10 -> 12[/p]
• [p]Froggie base HP 15 -> 18[/p]
• [p]Badish HP 10 -> 7[/p]
• [p]Fox HP 6 -> 4[/p]
• [p]Artibloke HP 20 -> 14[/p]
• [p]Big Boss Badish HP 500 -> 400[/p]
• [p]Friend Monster HP 650 -> 450[/p]
• [p]Added new pickups to all 3 main Metal Mountain stages[/p]
• [p]All shops base cost adjusted and cost curve reduced[/p]

[h3]Visual Changes[/h3]

• [p]A new title screen![/p]
• [p]World Map has less tile bloat which makes the room instance less of a load on the engine[/p]
• [p]Tile tweaks to every single stage to increase visual variety[/p]
• [p]World region text pop up text smaller and color change, added drop shadow, to improve legibility[/p]

[h3]Quality of Life Changes[/h3]

• [p]Added a kill counter to Survive stages that had Steam Achievements tied to a specific kill count[/p]
• [p]Pressing Tab (Select on a controller) while in a stage opens audio settings[/p]
• [p]Trap signs now spawn world appropriate enemies[/p]

[p][/p][p]Itemizing out the little changes to every single stage would make this a sprawling changelog that I do not want to type. So, please enjoy that being reduced to "tweaks to every single stage" for my sanity.[/p][p][/p][p]As long as new players are finding Beef Cat Ultra, I'll keep tweaking and improving it. Even as we prepare to launch the Steam page for our next project (the page is currently under review and I was hoping it would be live in time for this update but oh well). If you've played the game, leave a review - it helps us! If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. Help us make more games by supporting us! We appreciate everyone a ton - whether you hopped in totally in the dark or are a good friend who picked up a copy.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you,[/p][p]Kyle[/p]

[p]Next Tuesday Marks the 1-Year Anniversary of Beef Cat Ultra![/p][p]This has been such a fun game to develop and release, and then subsequently work on again for the console release. Things have been quiet here while other projects took our attention but just in time for the 1 Year Anniversary, a massive sweeping 2.0 patch is dropping for Beef Cat Ultra![/p][p][/p][p]Let me set the stage on what to expect:[/p][p]No new content! This is important to get out of the way to manage expectations. But every single stage, item, enemy - everything has been revisited. Visual stage improvements, sweeping balancing and difficulty curve adjusting, loads of quality of life changes. If you are a longtime player, you'll appreciate some clean up and polish. The goal here though is to polish the game really nice for new players.[/p][p]The start of the game has been made much more accessible in how the difficulty is doled out and new modes are introduced. It's not that the game is easier, the starting stages are just designed a little smarter to help communicate objectives without explicit guidance. The kind of stuff that's only possible as a game dev gits gud so to speak and I've learned a lot the past year.[/p][p]More legible text in areas, a more on-brand title screen, kill counters in stages with achievements tied to kill counts, traps that spawn world appropriate hazards, less spongey enemies, less punishing iFrames, a less dramatic final world difficulty spike. No joke, every single inch of the game has been evaluated with a year's worth of feedback taken into consideration.[/p][p]This 2.0 Anniversary Patch is a celebration for this project, our first console release, and our largest release to date. Marketing a game is hard and we know we have an audience still to find and making sure the experience is as smooth as possible is what we want.[/p][p][/p][p]For those that have been here since the start, thank you. Seriously. We are so excited that anyone played our game to be honest. If you have not left a review, please help us out and drop one. Or share the game with a friend. We want to continue making Beef Cat Ultra the best game it can be.[/p][p]The 2.0 Anniversary Patch launches next Tuesday. September 23rd.[/p][p]And for folks wondering what's next in our collection - stay tuned for our next videogame release later this year.[/p][p][/p][p]-Kyle[/p]