Zofia News

The new year has definitely been bringing in some new challenges. I intended on having some of the new levels out but I've ran into some interesting issues.

[h2]The Airship[/h2]

I have some transition maps where you can pilot the airship. The idea being, some of these areas are quite far from each other so you can have a generally more 'adventurous' open section where you can go through a lot of vertical space but also new enemies.


(This area is still a work in progress)

This has introduced a lot of unanticipated problems where the airship starts becoming a liability to deal with, which isn't really what I intended.

I suspect there will be some major revisions with the airship, but it may go down to just putting it out there and seeing how it goes or what people think.

[h2]The Grapplehook[/h2]

The grapplehook is a little quirky to mess with - I have tweaked it in the past to go faster, have more dramatic swing, or allow super jumps, but if it goes too far it can actually hinder the utility of it.

That being said, an unintended effect is that it's become a precision tool, where sometimes you end up needing to make very accurate shots on small wooden targets. This is alright, but on gamepads (especially on splitscreen) this makes some grapplehook areas way more difficult than intended.


(Not the final icon... probably)

The solution will be some sort of light auto-target that aims the grapplehook at wood if its relatively near your center cone of vision. This might only activate if you're using a gamepad, but that might require more testing.

[h2]The Main Menu[/h2]

I built the main menu awhile ago now, and its in need of an overhaul. Specifically, I hope to include more host options, better options, and some additional buttons for ease of use.



Not exactly exciting, but definitely a thing.


[h2]Character Editor[/h2]

I don't actually get a lot of feedback on the character editor, but one of the things that has been bothering me is you can't select your starting skills, only your attributes, and you have no options on starting gear.



I'm actually currently unsure if the end result will be a point-buy, choosing a background to determine skills/attributes, or another system entirely.

Regardless, the character editor is also in need of some updates, so I hope to expand that here soon as well.

Let me know your thoughts on any of these.

Minor patch:

Additions:
- Player can now bounce off of walls again. The wall has to be on your left or right side and must be relatively vertical
- Player can now slide on the ground again (This is still a work in progress)
- Player can kick enemies while sliding (This is also a work in progress)
- Player can now 'pillar jump' if they press the jump button in mid-air and are above a stone or icy surface, as pillar jumps can be harder to pull off on gamepads or certain combat circumstances so this should make it easier
- Updated some armor sets for the otter characters (still incomplete)
- Added some animations to actions that did not previously have any (Vaulting, wall bouncing, certain types of magic charge)
- Saved characters can be seen on the main menu after a slot is selected

Changes:
- Metal/Cloth magic can now 'overcharge' the armor shield higher than your current armor level. At some point this will put you into higher weight classes but for now it can be used as a buff

Fixes:
- Fixed some animation issues with kicking and sliding, as well as enemies falling animation
- Fixed enemy drops where sometimes an enemy drop would correctly trigger but award no item
- Fixed some collision issues on certain objects
- Game will now save correctly if you're piloting the airship and trigger a game save
- Fixed the door transition in the underground HUB area
- Various minor map adjustments

This should fix some of the online issues people have been seeing:

- Character race and equipment should be synced significantly better now, there are still some situations to test but so far I have not run into the issues players have reported

- Fixed some issues where some animations were not playing correctly online. There are still some that are not playing across all clients correctly (Such as the Ave flying animation), but I am still working on that

- Fixed an issue where the player's name would sometimes be incorrect when playing online

Mostly random fixes from issues brought up, but also some incomplete additions:

Additions:
- 'Shield' system in place that gives you a small pool of extra HP based on your armor stats (Incomplete, probably not balanced)
- Shield now negates most elemental effects if it is active
- You can now charge your 'shield' with metal or cloth objects (Incomplete)
- Enemies now emit a blue spark when they drop an item
- If an enemy drops silver, it will now automatically be distributed to the player
- Added attribute icons (Incomplete)
- Spectres now have blight 'dust' in their sight area
- Checkpoints heal the player slightly when they first touch it
- Wards now have a brief 'destruction' animation (Incomplete)

Fixes:
- Frozen Fort: Changed main hall slightly to get rid of the gaps in the roof, as well as moved the blight zones as they extended further than they appeared
- Frozen Fort: added a description box if you attempt to use the elevator switches
- Frozen Fort: Fixed the rock collision for the large ground rocks
- Frozen Fort: Planks for the old hall are now moveable/attackable
- Prologue: Fixed a blight zone
- All maps: Fixed a small camera issue with joining players
- Cliffside: Made the 'main path' easier to access
- Cliffside: Fixed roof collision
- Cliffside: Removed some temp props
- PVP: Various magic types should now properly damage other players (Incomplete)
- Block sound is correct again
- Wood magic now works at the correct angle again
- Wood magic is no longer poisonous
- EXP bars in UI work correctly now
- Removed footstep 'smoke' as it caused graphical issues
- Fixed load screen text that was misleading
- Players can now use air magic on each other
- Sentries are now destroyed if the area boss is destroyed
- Certain enemies should no longer gain HP is they take a significant amount of fall damage
- Skills will now display much smaller text on level up
- UI should no longer show multiple equipped items of the same type
- Fixed an FOV and Sensitivity issue where the settings would get defaulted and saved over on certain map transitions

Known issues (Still working on):
- When playing online, clients may see others as the default Race or wearing the wrong equipment
- Some doors/elevators/object animations look low quality (jittery) while playing online
- Level lives sometimes do not show up immediately when joining another player online
- Some particle effects do not play for clients online
- Getting stuck with arrows sometimes inhibits movement when playing online (Until the arrow despawns)
- Some animations are not playing correctly when playing online
- Some actions are occasionally jittery when playing online

Quick fixes:

- Fixed an issue where you could find disembodied heads in the Frozen Fort
- Fixed an issue where using a gamepad on the map select screen would take you to the wrong map
- Fixed an issue where some lamps were floating

There are more reported bugs that I want to address but as they're a bit elusive, they'll have to be rolled into the next update.