Lambda Enigma News

[h2]General[/h2]

• Cleaned up some old, unnused assets.
  
• Stubbed out the maze puzzle box's infrastructure since it's not ready yet. At the moment, when the maze puzzle box is unlocked by solving its related tutorial computer puzzles, the player may click the lock to open it, but it simply remains empty.
  

[h2]Workbench[/h2]

• Added a new "Sliding Gears" tablet puzzle.
  
• Several improvements and some bug fixes regarding tablet puzzle side effects' behavior and handling.
  
• Fixed a bug when the player tries to change puzzles or leave the workbench if the current puzzle has just loaded and its tablet's screen is not fully on yet.
  

[h2]Workbench[/h2]

• Added 3 new gear tablet puzzles.
  
• Some small text updates to existing gear tablet puzzles.
  
• Improved the final gear tablet puzzle so that the coding part is a bit easier.
  
• Fixed a visual bug in gear machines whereby some external rods did not have the cloud effect, if an adjacent cell also contained an external rod.
  
• Changed the side effect delineator character that is displayed in tablet puzzles from '#' to '@' to avoid ambiguity with the comment character in languages like Python.
  

[h2]Computer[/h2]

• Added a new computer tutorial gear puzzle named "Actuator Attachment Module".
  

[h2]Graphics[/h2]

• Major performance improvement for Realistic Lighting when the desk lamp's spotlight moves to follow the mouse cursor.
  
• Major improvement to the reflection on the inside of workbench puzzles.
  

[h2]Workbench[/h2]

• Added a new workbench tutorial gear puzzle to teach the player that 2 flat gears can share the same rod.
  
• Improved one of the workbench tutorial gear puzzles by removing an unintended solution and also making it much less congested.
  
• Improved two of the tutorial gear puzzles to avoid unintended solutions.
  
• Rearranged some of the workbench tutorial gear puzzles for better progression of difficulty and sequential correlation.
  
• Improved the HUD so that it no longer interacts with the mouse at all, allowing objects to be grabbed directly through it.
  
• Fixed a bug that permitted (although not functionally) flat gears to be facing across a cell in which another flat gear was facing in an orthogonal direction, which visually clip through each other and obviously cannot work.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the cell cursor (greenish region) to jump to other cells while the player is orbiting with the camera. Now it feels more stable and can be used more as a visual reference tool.
  
• Fixed a bug in the second laser tablet puzzle that allowed any executable solution to yield the correct rotation, rather than the player having to determine the correct side effects.
  
• Fixed a bug in one case that allowed the HUD and navigation controls to be temporarily accessible to the player when they shouldn't be, during the transition from one unsolved puzzle to another unsolved puzzle in a different puzzle box.
  
• Fixed a rare bug whereby the drag extents would be ignored, allowing parts to be dragged much too far around the workbench.
  
• Fixed a visual bug related to opening a puzzle box to extract a puzzle that would sometimes cause the puzzle container to clip through the puzzle's parts that were already laid out on the workbench as it was being animated into position.
  
• Fixed a rare visual bug that would sometimes cause the drag restriction indicator (blueish region) from the previous puzzle to show by default in the subsequent puzzle until the player changed it themselves.
  
• Fixed a rare visual bug in which some laser puzzles would very slightly stick out of the front of the laser puzzle box while inside of it.
  
• Fixed a rare visual bug that caused some laser puzzles to briefly appear to be clipping through the laser puzzle box while being animated into it.
  
• Fixed a visual bug in which the solution gear appears slightly off of its rod, floating in front of it.
  

[h2]General[/h2]
Some updates and improvements to the Credits screen.
Small improvements to the final game screen.

[h2]Video[/h2]

• Additional stability for video playback to ensure that videos always play for their full duration.
  

[h2]Computer[/h2]

• Fixed the texture of the bottom dial so that it no longer looks smudged or cut off on some monitors.
  
• Improved the style of both dials' labels so that they look more natural. Now they are part of the old, worn out dials, rather than simply looking like bright white decals.
  

[h2]Workbench[/h2]

• Improved the active cell (greenish box) behavior so that its movement is now always restricted to the current drag restriction region (blueish box), better indicating to the player how drag restriction regions work.
  
• Players can now drag objects out of the drag restricted region (blueish box) onto the workbench, even while a drag restriction hot key is down, but only if they move the cursor entirely outside of the puzzle grid; otherwise, drag movement remains restricted to the blueish box.
  
• Players can now drag objects from the workbench into the puzzle grid, targeting the closest cell under the mouse, and causing the current drag restriction region (blueish box) to move to the new target cell, if required. This new feature has the following restrictions and behavior:
  
  1. After an object is dragged from the workbench into the puzzle grid in this way, all of the standard drag restrictions and behaviors apply again; i.e., the object cannot be dragged outside of the current restriction region (blueish box), except to drag it back onto the workbench (see previous feature).
     
  2. The cell closest to the mouse pointer that is also closest to the camera is always the implicit target. Therefore, ambiguous scenarios in which cells are behind the cell in which the mouse is currently over, with respect to the current camera orientation, are not reachable with this feature. The player must use the drag restriction hot keys or reorient the camera to reach them.
     
  3. If the player is holding down any axis restriction hot key, then this feature is disabled. While a hot key is down, the assumption is that the player's intention is to drag the object into the current drag restriction region, not to change it. Also, this gives the player the choice of which behavior they want to use while dragging an object into the puzzle grid from the workbench; i.e., to respect the restriction or to change it.
     
• Selecting an object that's already in a puzzle grid cell will now move the current drag restriction region to encompass it, if required.
  
  • Only if the player isn't currently holding down any drag restriction hot key, due to the standard assumption that the player's intention is to keep the current drag restriction when they're holding a hot key down.
    
• Increased the opacity of the drag restriction vignette so it's more obvious, especially with realistic lighting enabled.
  
• Moved the mouse and drag restriction HUD elements to the bottom center of the screen, spaced apart based on a percentage of the screen's width, so that they are now much more visible and useful to the player.
  
  • Players didn't seem to be noticing or using them when they were in the top left and bottom left corners of the screen.
    
• Improved the drag restriction HUD so that the X and Z axes dynamically rotate along with the current camera's yaw.
  
• Renamed the drag restriction HUD label from "Drag Restriction" to "Drag/Flip Restrictions", to be more accurate, because it also restricts flipping objects while the hot keys are down.
  
• Added a blueish glow (matching the drag restriction vignette) to the drag axis HUD whenever an axis becomes enabled, to catch the player's attention when a puzzle is loaded.
  
  • The glow also fades in, per drag axis, when its corresponding hot key is pressed, and it fades out slowly when it's released. This should indicate to the player that they must hold the key down to retain its effect.
    
• Fixed deflector flip behavior so that it always changes in 90° increments around its restricted axis, rather than what seemed like arbitrary rotations to the player.
  
• Improved deflector stripes that show flip axis restrictions so they are more obvious. The white color was too close to the texture, so now it's blue and it has additional arrows at the edges indicating the rotation axis.
  
• Renamed the Move, Rotate and MoveAndRotate side effects to Drag, Flip and DragAndFlip respectively, to match the same operations that the player can do with the mouse, so that players can anticipate what a side effect may do before actually running the code.
  
• Fixed a bug in tablet puzzles so that when failure scenarios that aren't syntax related execute their side effects, then if the player chooses (I)nspect or (R)etry, all side effects are reset.
  
  • Also added a small delay after transitioning from the tablet camera to the workbench camera, so that the camera stops moving for a bit before the side effects are animated, giving the player more of an opportunity to not miss it.
    
• Fixed a bug that allowed a short rod to be placed in a motor socket in which a battery is already connected, if the short rod is first added to the motor cell and then flipped to the battery's side.
  
• Fixed the unpacking animation of puzzle boxes so that the machine parts and laser switch always unpack before the container, so that they no longer appear to be clipping through the container.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes would cause 3D objects laid out on the workbench to clip into the puzzle's container. It was just a visual glitch, but it looks much better now that the objects are properly laid out.
  
  • I also improved the layout algorithm in general. Objects are more tightly packed to the right now, ensuring that more of them are in view to the player by default.
    
• Reduced the size of inter-cellular (a.k.a. "short") rods in gear puzzles so that it's much more obvious to the player that a flat gear fully takes up the space on the end of the rod that it's on.
  
  • Players were often confused why they couldn't place a bevel gear on the end of a short rod that already contained a flat gear. It should be much more obvious now.
    

[h2]General[/h2]

• Improved the "Dave Sexton Presents" logo so that if the player's system meets the minimum recommended integrated GPU specs, then realistic lighting is at least enabled for the logo animation, even if the player's system won't support realistic lighting in general during actual gameplay.
  
  • I've tested this on a lower-end laptop, with an integrated GPU, and despite realistic lighting not being an option during gameplay because my laptop definitely cannot handle it, it works perfectly fine on just this one real-time 3D logo scene, since it's extremely simple compared to the actual game. And it looks much better with realistic lighting enabled.
    
• When the player opens a padlock by clicking on an unlocked puzzle box, that state is now saved as part of their progress file rather than the application assuming that the player had already opened the padlock and simply loading the game in that state.
  
  • This fixes an issue whereby a player progresses past the unlocking of a padlock, while over at the computer terminal solving computer puzzles, but they do not return to the workbench and open the padlock themselves before closing the game. When the player restarted the game later on, there was no known state of whether the player had already opened the padlock themselves, and since their saved progress indicated that they were already past that point, the game simply opened the padlock for them. With this update, when a player restarts the game without having opened an unlocked padlock themselves, the padlock now remains closed (yet still unlocked). The player must manually open each padlock themselves, once per padlock, after the game unlocks it based on their progress, whether the player restarts the game or not. So now players are guaranteed to hear the pleasant success sound of the padlock unlocking and they'll have the satisfaction of opening it themselves, whereas before they would often miss both.
    
• Added a "Thanks for playing!" message and a small message about new puzzles and storylines to come at the end of the Credits.
  

[h2]Graphics[/h2]

• Major performance optimization for when realisitic lighting is enabled and the player is using the mouse to orbit or zoom the camera.
  
• Improved the computer's progress panel pixel shader to hopefully make it readable on ultra high definition monitors, based on beta tester feedback.
  
• Improved the "Dave Sexton Presents" logo screen by replacing the hyper gear 3D object with a much nicer looking 3D puzzle piece.
  

[h2]Sound[/h2]

• Fixed a bug that caused the music volume to jump to the maximum when the game is started, if the volume in the sound settings file is currently "0" and yet the "IsMuted" setting is false somehow.
  
• Fixed the volume settings sliders so that they can be dragged to unmute, rather than the player having to click the unmute button themselves before being able to drag the slider.
  
• Fixed other volume settings-related inconsistencies.
  

[h2]Computer[/h2]

• Added more computer screens to advance the story after all of the workbench tablet puzzles are completed.
  
• Added new computer puzzles to the end of the game that teach the player more syntax, which will be expanded into more puzzles and probably also new workbench puzzles in the future.
  
• Added more tutorial computer puzzles that allow the player to exercise what they've learned as they progress, rather than throwing them into new concepts one after another.
  
• The player's work-in-progress code for computer and tablet puzzles is now saved periodically as the player is editing their code, so that when leaving and returning to the computer or tablet, or after closing the game and restarting it, the player's code is automatically restored for the current puzzle.
  
• Updated the system status and scan screens to include more accurate numbers that do actually, subtly, indicate the player's overall progress and contextual progress.
  
• A single, insignificant space character now appears on both sides of the +, -,
• and / operators in function definitions, making them much easier to read and understand.
  
  
  
  • To beta testers, it looked like expressions containing binary operators were all one long term, which caused them to basically ignore them completely due to their apparent complexity, thus missing the entire point of the function.
    
• Improved some error messages to be more helpful to the player.
  
• Improved the code editor so that when code is pasted it automatically scrolls to the bottom of the pasted code, if scrolling is required to bring it into view.
  
• Fixed some fatal crashes related to pasting code.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause the game to hang when the computer attempts to write a line that doesn't fit on the screen horizontally, and it has no obvious whitespace at which to wrap it.
  
  
  
  • This issue did not occur in practice, but technically it was possible, so now it's fixed.
    
• Improved computer puzzles so that when a puzzle begins with a parameter name and an arrow already added for the player, and the player deletes all of the code in their guess, leaving only whitespace, and then the player runs the puzzle to receive their error message about code being required, the game now automatically restores the original parameter name and arrow when the player chooses to (R)etry, so they no longer must (E)xit first and then return to the computer to reset the puzzle.
  
  
  
  • This didn't seem necessary to me since the error message exxcplicitly shows the player already, but it uses a generic parameter name "x", which may confuse players (especially non-programmers) because they may not know yet that the parameter name can be anything that they want. By simply restroing the original parameter name for them, it helps them out in the tutorial puzzles.
    

[h2]Workbench[/h2]

• Added more workbench tutorial and tablet puzzles!
  
• Flat gears and bevel gears that aren't on a short rod are no longer powered, even if they are properly positioned next to an adjacent powered gear.
  
  
  
  • This fixes some unintended solutions to puzzles whereby gears could just be spinning in the air and not actually connected to the power pipeline.
    
• When a particular cell has a failure in it because of a rotation conflict, such as two bevel gears twisting the center rod in two different directions, the parts associated with the conflict are now highlighted in red for the player.
  
• The 4th non-tutorial gear puzzle has been replaced with a similar, but better puzzle.
  
• The 2nd non-tutorial gear puzzle allowed some unintended solutions, which are now impossible.
  
• Added a simpler introductory flat gear puzzle to illustrate how they can stack along the same edge of adjacent cells.
  
• Removed the blueish glow from the tablet's frame when it has focus. It was unnecessary and a bit distracting.
  
• Improved the workbench tablet so that when navigating to its fullscreen view, it automatically gets keyboard focus as well.
  
• Fixed tablet puzzles so they no longer give the player the option to (E)xit, which crashes the game and frankly has no useful purpose at the moment anyway. To leave the tablet view, it's best if the player simply clicks the navigation button on the tablet's frame, for now.
  
• Improved tablet puzzles so that when the player solves the puzzle, it gives them the option to (R)eset and play the coding puzzle again.
  
  
  
  • Reset also undoes all of the side effects that applied to the workbench puzzle, but doesn't change anything that the player themselves had done.
    
  • The purpose of this feature is for when there are multiple ways to get a successful computer puzzle output, but the side effects on the workbench puzzle are incorrect, which would cause the player to be permanently stuck without the ability to reset and retry the coding puzzle to get the correct side effects.
    
• Added a new "#Activate" side effect for tablet puzzles, which can be interpreted by puzzles in various ways.
  

[h2]Credits[/h2]

• Added a special thanks to beta testers in the credits.
  
• Slight improvements to the appearance of the credits screen: modified color scheme, spacing, and some header text.
  
• Enabled automatic scrolling of the credits when the mouse cursor isn't over it.
  
• Credited Paint.NET as a tool that I've used during development (to edit some in-game images and textures).
  

[h2]General[/h2]

• Several small bug fixes across various areas of the game.