Heartbound News

Well that went better than expected!

Despite numerous engine bugs and a whole lot of lost sleep, Heartbound now works in GMS 2.3. For many of you this means that it now runs at 60fps with a VERY small CPU cost again. On my machine currently it's running at 1.4% CPU and around 150MB of memory.

Going forward this also gives us a ton of other rad things like Mac build coming back, console releases, etc. Stay tuned for that in the future.

That being said there is still a ton of work ahead of us to finish the full update. Right now, things work correctly for you but the environments on the editor side are a complete mess. We have to go through every room in the game and manually update it all. It's gonna be a bit and take a lot of long nights. Until then you may see weird layering issues in-game. Please report these to us so we can fix them!

Thankfully it's not difficult, just time consuming.
We will get there and have it done as soon as possible.

While this is going on feel free to come ask questions on Discord or tune in to the Twitch development streams. Thanks for your patience and hope to see you there!

https://discord.gg/piratesoftware https://piratesoftware.live

Since August of 2020 we've received intermittent reports that Heartbound has been running slowly for some people. We could never track down what was causing this... until this week.

Due to a change in Windows any GMS game running at 60fps on a 60hz monitor will drop to 40-45fps. Heartbound has game logic tied to the FPS so that certain parts of the ARG can work. This means the game has been running at 3/4th speed for some of you for over a year. ːsteamthumbsdownː

That Windows update is now standard and everyone who updates is impacted by this. Thankfully, I found a solution but it's not a perfect one for now.

I've changed over to an alternative sync method for the game which brings it back to 60fps. However, if the refresh rate of your monitor is over 60hz it may run EVEN FASTER which makes the game nearly unplayable in the other direction. To fix this for those few users go into the "options.ini" file and change "AlternateSyncMethod=1" to "AlternateSyncMethod=0". For everyone else, things should run fine.

The other unfortunate side effect is that the game now runs at around 8x the CPU it did before. I hate this. It's going to make things rough for some of you on lower end machines and I really don't like that at all.

In order to fix this entire mess I need to update to Game Maker: Studio v2.3 and I've already started the process. The newer version of the engine has an immense amount of bugs and it's very difficult to work with so it may take some time.

While this is going on feel free to come ask questions on Discord or tune in to the Twitch development streams. Thanks for your patience and hope to see you there!

https://discord.gg/piratesoftware https://piratesoftware.live

As always you can watch us build the game live on Twitch.

Now that I've fully recovered from Covid19 things will be going much faster.
I may have an inhaler now but that just means I'm part cool robot.

Thanks for all the feedback and support.
You guys rock. ːHBHeartː

[h2]New Content[/h2]

• Rhode and Ferns storylines can now be fully completed.
  
• (PTBR language has some portions missing still. Sorry!)
  
• Something secret has been added to the game files.
  
• The Credits have been updated with tons of new names.
  
• Gizmo now has something to say in Lore's room.
  
• A frog now puts on a magic show... somewhere.
  
• A save point has been added in the deep woods in Animus.
  
• New talky animations have been added for Fern when she's wearing a flower crown.
  
• New talky animations have been added for Rhode.
  
• New talky animations have been added for Avocado.
  
• New talky animations have been added for Lore.
  
• Ants now have a talky animation and voice.
  
• A portion of Avocado's storyline is now accessible in ENUS language only.
  
• Avocado's yard is now accessible.
  
• The Lake is now accessible.
  
• The pocketwatch now goes haywire in the time room and Lores bedroom.
  
• The pocketwatch now has new art for painted variants.
  
• There is now a version number on the bottom left corner of the main menu.
  
• There is now a chapter name plate each time you choose a new world to explore.
  
• There are new wallpapers in the wallpaper folder in the games installation folder.
  
• The text engine now allows for multiple objects to speak at once.
  
• Violently shaking text has been added to the game.
  
• Patreon was smelly and has been permanently deleted. (We are looking into alternatives.)
  

[h2]Performance Upgrades[/h2]

• Speed holes were added to the text engine so it's faster now.
  
• Speed holes were also added to every talkable object so those are also faster.
  
• Texture pages in Animus are now properly structured to improve performance.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• In Animus, Lore will no longer talk about a TODO while discussing his past adventures.
  
• Jotunheim now properly resets if you finish The Tower as your first chapter.
  
• Fixed some tile placement issues in the Animus Mines.
  
• A massive amount of localization issues have been fixed across all languages.
  
• Save files will no longer become corrupted if you do chapters in an impossible order.
  
• There is now a proper delay after The Artifact speaks during Ferns scenes.
  
• Birds no longer crash the game when leaving the Time Room.
  
• The Time Room now has proper dialog and working switches.
  
• Wiggling text can now be skipped at any speed without breaking the wiggles.
  
• Rainbow text can now be skipped at any speed without breaking the rainbow.
  
• Leaving the bedroom with the Pocketwatch while not going to Animus now hides the Pocketwatch.
  
• All of the open world music in Animus has lower volume now.
  
• Ц and Щ now have their tails in the proper positions.
  
• The text engine no longer has overlapping hidden textboxes.
  
• The text box is now center aligned after a cutscene in the deep mines.
  
• Rhode now faces the correct direction during all conversations at home.
  
• Waiting around in Ferns house after telling her you need a minute then talking to Fern again no longer causes a softlock.
  

[h2]OST[/h2]

• 22 New songs were added to the OST bringing it to 94 total songs.
  

[h2]Bug Reporting[/h2]

• Please report any issues via DM on Discord to Thor#5264.
  
• Include a screenshot, it makes it much easier to fix!
  

[h2]Upcoming Content[/h2]

• The rest of Animus (Chapter 3) is being actively developed.
  
• Avocado's Storyline Arc is up next.
  

Sorry for the huge gap in updates!
You can read the full explanation as to why over on this blog post.
https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/567380/view/3460398821854294074

All that being said...
I'm back to work on Heartbound again and I hope you like this update!

As always you can watch us build the game live on Twitch.

Thanks for all the feedback and support.
You guys rock. ːHBHeartː

[h2]New Content[/h2]

• Fangamer has created a new Heartbound merch line.
  
• The Credits have been updated with tons of new names.
  
• You can now play through some of Fern and Rhodes storyline in ENUS only.
  
• Fern has completely updated talking and overworld sprite animations.
  
• Rhode has completely updated talking and overworld sprite animations.
  
• You can now choose The Tower or Animus as your first chapter.
  
• Animus will end after Fern/Rhode and send you back to world selection for now.
  
• The Tower can now end in a different way based on your choices.
  
• The camera in The Tower now works.
  
• A new secret puzzle has been added.
  
• Heartbound has been translated into Japanese.
  
• Tons of new stuff was added to the Patreon.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Emelio's tools no longer stick around when Emelio has them.
  
• Rhode is no longer a red block when she stands left/right.
  
• The text for Emelio's forge is far more attractive now.
  
• Fern's movements are better during her opening cutscene.
  
• Lore will now use Glowbringer runes during his breakdown if he's positive.
  
• All language text can now change colors regardless of localization.
  
• Text positioning on all dialog boxes has been fixed to remove border spacing issues.
  
• Text positioning on all dialog boxes now works when switching between languages.
  
• Tower Boss memory of the pool tileset has been fixed to match reality.
  
• Nekane no longer talks slowly on her side of the table.
  
• The door to Floor 0 now has a sound when you go through it.
  
• You can no longer repeat the intro to Misery/Mania in The Mines.
  
• Text in many localizations will no longer escape text boxes.
  
• Lore can no longer move during the intro to Fern/Rhode.
  

[h2]Design Changes[/h2]

• Preamble cutscene has been removed.
  
• You now get a key for drinking the water in The Tower.
  
• The door in the Mailshroom now uses a key to unlock.
  
• Terry's music now only plays when you get near him.
  
• Unplugging OScar now has future consequences.
  

[h2]Bug Reporting[/h2]

• Please report any issues via DM on Discord to Thor#5264.
  
• Include a screenshot, it makes it much easier to fix!
  

[h2]OST[/h2]

• New songs were added to the OST.
  

[h2]Upcoming Content[/h2]

• The rest of Animus (Chapter 3) is being actively developed.
  
• Fern/Rhode's resolution will be released next.
  

Wanted to give some updates on why things have been taking so long and what's in store for Heartbound very soon.


[h3]Reason For Delay[/h3]
Animus was set to be released by now. For the last several months I've been in and out of hospital with severe viral bronchitis. Lost around 70% lung function at one point and went into hypoxia and almost bit the big one. Thankfully, with treatment I've been doing much better. I ended up losing around 2.5 months of work and the stream was offline for over a month total. This is the most amount of work I've missed in 3 years so it's been pretty rough.

This image shows the days I have worked on heartbound live on stream. Any day without a green square is one I haven't streamed. Most of these are due to showing Heartbound off at conventions. However, in the last three months I've missed more days than the last three years of development. On the days I did stream I only managed 3-5 hours instead of my normal 8-10.




[h3]Japanese Localization[/h3]
Heartbound is currently being fully translated into Japanese. As with our other translations this takes a long time as every joke or pun needs to be changed to fit that culture. If it didn't fit culturally then the translation would be a pretty big failure. I'm really happy with how this is coming along and it's not a small undertaking.




[h3]Fern and Rhode[/h3]
Fern and Rhodes storylines are almost finished and ready to send over to the translators. The mini-game for Fern took a long while to set up due to my illness but I'm now working on Rhode's and it's going much faster. I hope you enjoy what I put together once it's finished.




[h3]Contact Us[/h3]
As always you can contact me or the other developers at any time over Discord, email, steam chat, or live on Twitch. I'm always available and Shaye/Stijn are available most of the time. If you're ever frustrated with the release schedule or want to know more about whats going on just hit us up.

Live Stream Discord Twitter