oath: there is a you that remains News

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

Happy new years! This update goes back and reworks the base game of oath, so that QoL features added in the free DLC are also present in the base build as well, when you don't have the DLC installed!



[h2]Story Unlock Revamp v2[/h2]

A lot of players don't find the majority of the games content - with them stopping once they reach the end of the 'story', and not investigating further to unlock the bulk of the actual games content....

Originally, the unlock for this was very obscure, with lots of digging around needed to find - this was when this content was still relatively small and seen as a bonus and not the bulk of the game. With the prior update to the base game, this was changed so that if you try play the story again, it now unlocks!

However, I've seen that even this didn't really work... a lot of players would just go "oh well, that's it!" - not helped by the button being named "home". I also assumed players would see the vast amount of unfound achievements and consider there more to the game than the 15 minutes of the story button, but nonetheless apparently not....

To help more players actually play majority of the game, two new changes have been made:

• Home is now renamed to Epilogue - this should clear some confusion and also guide you naturally to the new content, with the obvious assumption that it continues on the story. The button will still change name after full completion, but at that point, it no longer needs to be called epilogue either!
  
  
• Epilogue now unlocks as soon as you finish the story - no more vague "maybe you missed something..." - a little immersion breaking of a message too in hindsight. The game will auto-unlock the epilogue, but also still trigger the additions of the previous update, meaning that the 2nd run will kick you out early and give you the achievement. It is also still possible to unlock the epilogue through the secret route in your first playthrough, and the secret route is still needed for all achievements.
  

[h2]Achievement Changes[/h2]

Two of the achievements have been reported as buggy, which have been fixed prior in patches - but only applying to the DLC build. This has been backported to the base game so one of the two achievements should now properly work no matter the build you play, and the other achievement has been removed entirely.

Why? Well, the achievement in question was Oracle - which required you to visit each of the 40 or so artist rooms. Doing so is a bit tedious and really doesn't need an achievement, I prefer it now as a fully optional thing to do which unlocks things like the bonus music game-wide and just the fun of finding artists you care about or want to visit instead of being forced to go to all of them - increasingly frustrating if you accidentally missed one and now have to figure out which. Also, with the update of more rooms later in development, it was weird how only half of all rooms counted to the achievement, so now it's just more uniform with it being a fully optional thing untied to any achievements.



New QoL Changes

There's been some major changes to both the base game and the DLC with this update:

• Better item pickups: Before, no matter the version you played on, items in the world would stay present after picking them up. This was due to restrictions in how the maps worked, but this has been solved during work on emerald and backported to oath. Things such as the vinyl record or the diamond ring will now disappear on pickup as if you had actually... picked them up! The shells in the DLC have also been given this, meaning they should be easier to keep track of as they'll disappear if you grab them.
  
  
• Graphics adjustments and additions: A bunch of slightly broken graphics have been fixed - from things 1 pixel off, the wrong colour, or with other errors. The diamond ring item mentioned above has also been changed to have a new sprite to better fit it being... a ring, as well as had the wall moved so it's easier to spot as somewhere you can go to. A small animation has also been added to the elevators and train rides as well, and the star above the key in the story has been made red to better indicate to players that there's something new here. The art menu screen has also been fixed.
  

This patch overhauls the entire games graphics!
Animations have been added to sprites, allowing the world to feel more alive than before.
Plantlife, water and other elements will all now be animated!

Hi!
This patch aims to fix some slight bugs players might've been experiencing in relation to some achievements, as well as reduce lag!

- lag when transitioning between areas in the DLC overworld has been massively reduced! I came across some new tech while making a different project, and it worked here so it's been implemented!

- The "Oracle" achievement has been made easier to get. Some users report it not unlocking even once visiting all rooms. There seems to have been no error code-wise, I'm assuming players must've accidentally missed a room - however, I've decided to make the achievement slightly more lax. It'll unlock just shy of all rooms, which should hopefully alleviate edge cases where you miss just one or two!

- One of the ending achievements / areas was apparently bugged - even after going through a segment near the end of the game, returning here incorrectly did not reset the room back to normal for unknown reasons (it worked in earlier builds!) The fix implemented forces a reset to this variable, and should solve this issue. If you revisit this area in game now, your next visit should be reset to normal! Hopefully!! This will make getting some achievements easier and potentially be unintentionally soft locked away.

Thanks for the support as always, I'm working hard on emerald right now! I hope you enjoy it when it releases!

This update brings a lot of QoL features and changes!

• Improved base game graphics:
  every single room and map from the base game has been revisited and slightly updated, mainly with some shading updates. The main cities also have a little bit extra detail - not too much that it's unrecognizable, but enough to polish up some edges!!
  
  
• Updated movement system:
  did you find it annoying how you had to move 2 tiles back to interact with something you missed? Now, you don't walk right away when you select a direction - one tap in a direction makes you face that way, with holding down making you walk! This should make interactions and positioning a lot easier. Also, bumping into walls is more obvious - you won't do a walking animation if you are walking into a solid object, and a "bump" sound effect will play.
  
  
• Slight inventory:
  While i'm generally against adding a fleshed out inventory to the game as it goes against the aims of the DLC, I do understand the concerns of not being able to keep track of everything. A new function has been added for the DLC, where once you pick up your first coin, the amount of coins you have is now shown on the top left! Coins are the only major item that can actually leave your inventory, so that's why only coins are tracked at the moment. If there's enough support for it however, I'm open to adding little icons showcasing what items you're holding as well sometime down the line.
  
  
• Fixed menu (aimed at steam deck):
  While playing on steam deck, I noticed the settings menu seems to scale slightly differently to desktop. To fix this, the buttons in the settings menu are now slightly smaller, with a redundant option removed in order to both declutter and fix this issue
  
  
• Map Zoom and Performance (steam deck):
  Another requested feature was adding some sort of map - I considered a couple ways of doing this, but ended up with a keybind integration! Holding down "M" on your keyboard will zoom out the map, letting you get a clearer view of where you are and the things around you.
  Please note that zooming out on the map means more things are being rendered at once, and this can effect your performance.
  For controller input, right bumper toggles a zoomout, with left a zoom in - this left bumper can be used on devices like the steam deck if you want to see a performance boost too.
  Do note that zoom in/out is locked to the DLC 'anew' map + outside only!! (while I can add it to the base game maps, I don't feel it's really needed there due to the smaller map sizes - but let me know!)
  
  
• Bugfixes and other misc fixes: Fixed a couple bugs I found while playing, including a few incorrect collision and interactions. If you find any more bugs please report them in the discussions tab or to email! Thank you!
  

This patch aims to fix some slight bugs present in the release build of the DLC.
It also aims to fix a bug with controller where options on the main menu were skipped!

Additional changes have been made to stop players from accidentally locking themselves out of 100% achievements by triggering a 1 time event then not getting the achievement. This event can now be re-triggered incase of not getting the achievement prior to this patch, and from this patch forward will force give you the achievement as well as a failsafe.