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Angeldust v3.4 release notes

Here's the list of changes in Angeldust v3.4:

Paint it black

Introducing: holo painter! This block allows you to set a color scheme that will be applied to any hero stepping on it. You can currently select eight unique color schemes:



Use this block to visually split groups of heroes into teams, or make them adhere to the dress code for your house, castle or other build. Players can revert to their regular outfit by activating the holo painter a second time.

Punching in the numbers

When placing a holo painter, holo charger, photon block or photon imitator you can now use the mouse scroll wheel, the right analog stick on a game controller, or on-screen buttons to select the desired numeric entry:



Be picky

Angeldust v3.4 brings two brand new building tools—the first being the 'block picker'. This pipette (or eye dropper tool) allows you to select a block and identify it. Switch to the block picker using the 'Q' key on the keyboard, or the left bumper button on a game controller.

'Use' the block picker to equip the selected block from your inventory. Neat:



You can also use the block picker to inspect building techniques used by other players. Hover over blocks and see how they interact.

Ze goggles, zey do nothing!

On top of to the block picker come the spiffy new goggles. And 'zey' certainly do something! Use the goggles to enable or disable a nifty cell targeting grid so see where you can and can not place or remove blocks:



The grid remains active until disabled by using the goggles a second time. When equipped, the goggles also hide the compass, in-game control hints and the hotbar will squeeze to half its size so you can more clearly look around.

Both the block picker and the goggles are available from the in-game item shop for a token amount of coins. So fork over your cash and get some nice building tools today!

Save me, save me, save me!

Because I just know that players are going to like the super cute, itty-bitty hotbar when using the goggles, you can now also permanently have a halved hotbar by setting the options menu 'text size' option to the new, lowest value of 'space-saving'.

The 'text size' option is available on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Range revolution

Angeldust v3.4 almost doubles the effective range of blocks, trees, your shovel and your axe. This makes building way more comfortable. Take a look at the almost silly range:



It might not be fully realistic (well, what is?), but it allows for a much more fun building experience. Combined with the block picker you can now just space out and build your dreams. Indirectly placing block by nudging them into empty spaces ('bridging') is also still possible.

Your targeting crosshair is now always visible to improve your pointing accuracy. This helps a lot. Try it. You'll like it!

Functional bunch

Conveyor belts have tiny arrows on them in Angeldust v3.4. The trampoline loses its metal frame and has a better animation. Surprisingly, I can now share the direction of conveyor belts in a static screenshot. Lo and behold (with cute hotbar):



Touch of gold

Hard to visualize, but the entire touchscreen control interface has been revamped. New icons for common functionality, context-aware buttons to help out with building and dedicated action buttons instead RSI-inducing tap-and-hold mechanics. It's pretty good!

"Developer of the game", I choose you!

Just like summoning your favorite, cutely-spelled, imaginary pet from a red-and-white ball, you can now choose which of your badges you want to show in-game and on the Angeldust website. Go to the 'Account details' page of PlayAngeldust.com and choose wisely:



Hole in my life

The ever prolific obi2002 reported that panels placed in between some girder blocks rendered with holes between them. This is now fixed, as evident in my very, very imaginative build here:



I'll sign for that!

Big news: the sign-in form now shows the forest in the background instead of the empty village. This adds a splash of color and recognizability to the sign-in form, which is the first thing that new players see. Mucho importante:



Quicker, smoother, better, faster

For Angeldust v3.4 I've optimized disk I/O a lot. Especially if you're playing with a regular HDD (instead of an SSD) and at higher view distances you should notice much better performance when moving between game world areas.

In addition to performance improvements Angeldust will now strike a better balance between showing distant areas and updating nearby blocks when building. This reduces building latency while also rendering distant things earlier so your world feels more complete.

Additional changes
  • Fix and optimize butterfly and firefly rendering
  • Improve background ground plane aesthetics
  • Tweak in-game displayed hero level resolution and range
  • Fix Android crashes related to device configuration changes
  • Support even more game controller models


Be social!

If you like Angeldust, please write a positive review on Steam! You can also stalk us everywhere. Thanks in advance:

Angeldust v3.3 release notes

Here's the list of changes in Angeldust v3.3:

Beam my baby

After years of fan requests, horizontal girder blocks are now available for building in Angeldust. And they're glorious:



You can buy girder blocks from the in-game shop just like any other block. Girder blocks come in all existing vertical column variants as well as three new designs for Angeldust v3.3!

Girder blocks will vertically snap to panel blocks so you can make new and interesting designs. Hopefully a bit more pleasing than this example screenshot:



The village walls have also been updated to include girder blocks as decoration:



Atmospheric lighting

To accentuate game world contours and depth Angeldust v3.3 features improved atmospheric light that simulates humidity and dampness. The results are stunning:



This new lighting model is enabled on all operating systems and devices at no performance cost.

Mr. Wonderful

When visiting the many wonders of Angeldust using the telecharger you will now see the wonder's name and its builder. Wonders are now rotated in sequential order and the total number of available wonders is shown:



These changes make wonders feel more, well, wonderful and allow you to easily send a friend request to wonder builders.

Photon imitator—create-a-creature

The photon imitator spawns a creature of your liking when triggered by a photon. You can spawn almost any type of creature that you've discovered in the game world to create a (petting) zoo, museum or battle arena.

The imitated, holographic creatures have a distinct yellow/white glow and will not be able to affect the game world. Outside of the village imitated creatures will interact and attack you when provoked, so be careful!

When an imitated creature is killed, it drops a photon ball. You can use this mechanic to build arenas where fighting is mandatory to progress. Imitated creatures do not give rewards or quest progress.

Photon counter—what's the count?

The photon counter counts the number of photon passing by it, from 0 up to 9. Then it wraps back to 0 while dropping a photon ball. Use the photon counter to create visual displays and 'loops' like in any programming language.

The game world village now includes a photon counter demo machine to illustrate some of its use cases.

More photon goodness

Photon balls no longer de-spawn when devices are nearby and vice-versa. Photon balls will now magnetize to conveyor belts so you can more easily build drop zones that trigger by photon ball:



Photon blocks will now always play a sound and spawn a spark shower when triggered by a photon so you know that a block got activated. If the desired effect doesn't take place there is a precondition not being met.

Tree's company

Angeldust v3.3 ships with oft-requested 'tree bark' blocks that you can use to create things looking like tree bark. Wow:



Hol' up!

Holo blocks, the photon injector and photon remover now make a very audible and satisfying 'click' sound when activated. This gives much better feedback of your in-game actions. Thanks to everyone suggesting this feature, it makes life much better.

What you see is what you get

The block construction interface now properly renders transparent and multilayered materials. So finally your in-hand water barrel looks like a water barrel. Why didn't I think of this earlier?



Launch time

Angeldust v3.3 includes a cute little 'launch trail' animation when heroes get launched into the air by springs, trampolines, photon blocks, creature attacks, Sky Walk and more. Here it's caught in all its glory on Angeldust Live!:



Angeldust PostFX for Windows

You might already know that you can download Angeldust PostFX for Windows to spice up your in-game graphics. Angeldust v3.3 is now fully compatible with the post-processing add-on, resulting in beautiful scenes everywhere.

View Firefly's livestreams on YouTube and Twitch to see it in action!

Security shame

Shortly after the release of Angeldust v3.3 I received a bug report about not being able to send the '%' character in private and friend chat messages. I instantly recognized this for the security issue it was (an uncontrolled format string attack). 20 minutes later I had patched the server to prevent player crashes.

Since then I've audited the entire Angeldust source code and put protections in place to prevent this kind of bug from ever resurfacing. The attack was limited to this one instance. As far as I can check in the log files no players other than a willing test subject have been affected by the issue.

The upcoming Angeldust v3.4 update will re-enable the '%' character in private and friend chat messages. Thanks to obi2002 and others for reporting the issue.

Additional changes
  • Fix world map hero sprite rendering artifacts
  • Improve 3D sprite rotational rendering accuracy
  • Polish particle shower effects
  • Don't render stray dust circles for empty photon blocks
  • Expand standalone game mode block collection
  • Hide chat strings when placing customized blocks
  • Add Android x86_64 ABI build
  • Add missing 'quest progress' sound on Android
  • Hide account age on website to improve player privacy
  • Support even more game controller models


Be social!

If you like Angeldust, please write a positive review on Steam! You can also stalk us everywhere. Thanks in advance:

Angeldust Live! #256 ZE GOGGLES!

Join Frank "Firefly" Lucas for the Angeldust badge lottery, tips, tricks and developer commentary:
YouTube—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbSb4GIn2FA
Twitch—https://www.twitch.tv/events/Yhn91RDvTWeBkf56o0y-4Q

App Store: https://appstore.com/angeldust
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.metagaming.angeldust
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/488440/
Itch.io: https://metagaming.itch.io/angeldust
Mac App Store: https://appstore.com/mac/angeldust

Official merchandise: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MetagamingBV/shop/recent
Soundtrack (OST): https://timbeek.bandcamp.com/album/angeldust-soundtrack

© Frank Lucas, Metagaming B.V.

Angeldust Live! #255 TAKE A BYTE!

Join Frank "Firefly" Lucas for the Angeldust badge lottery, tips, tricks and developer commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsEjcwphMU
https://www.twitch.tv/events/MqqZQP4dSM6KrFiNuSJJtg

App Store: https://appstore.com/angeldust
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.metagaming.angeldust
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/488440/
Itch.io: https://metagaming.itch.io/angeldust
Mac App Store: https://appstore.com/mac/angeldust

Official merchandise: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MetagamingBV/shop/recent
Soundtrack (OST): https://timbeek.bandcamp.com/album/angeldust-soundtrack

© Frank Lucas, Metagaming B.V.

Angeldust Live! #254 TO THE BEACH!

YouTube—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHXxyHYYNj4
Twitch—https://www.twitch.tv/angeldustlive/dashboard/events/WF1cmFiPSZiUzP7bnyfjDg