Zofia News

Quick fixes:

- Fixed a sound issue where player hit sounds would also default to male
- Fixed an issue with the cliffside trees where the LOD was set incorrectly, making them have pop-in issues
- Fixed an enemy issue where the wind-up for an attack was way too short

Sorry - This isn't the new levels update :(

Changes and Additions:
- Additions to Cliffside Art
- Aves now have wings
- Flying/Swimming is now slightly impacted by how much armor you are wearing (~+10% movement for minimal armor, ~-10% movement for overloaded)
- Character Editor now has a 'generate name' option to randomly select a character name (Characters will be labeled as 'No Name' if the save was made before this)
- Save titles are now a little simplified and show the character's name and level
- Fixed some UI issues by adding backdrops for better contrast
- Falling into a 'death zone' now causes ~45 HP of damage and not an immediate life loss
- Most enemies will have HP bars now
- Default magic used on enemies should be the 'magic air push' ability
- Added magic tab to menu (still incomplete)
- Possessed Armors can no longer hit each other
- Possessed Armors track the player significantly better
- Possessed Armor's side attack now covers much more area
- Possessed Armor's will now change their leg stance when in combat
- Ghosts will heal enemy targets if their blight magic hits an enemy
- Rock magic sounds have been updated
- Some weapons and armors have been retextured and/or remodeled
- Some weapons and armors should now have the correct UI icon
- Knives now use the correct stab motions (and are ~50% faster for it)
- Removed some unfinished art from a few levels

Fixes:
- Fixed an issue in the Labyrinthian Caves where a blight magic section was sticking through the floor and causing damage where it was not supposed to
- Aves can now fly again, Dex is the base stat for flight
- Fixed an issue where you could hit 'continue' on a new save
- Deleting a save file now deletes the associated splitscreen player as well
- HUD will now properly disappear on death
- Player's equipped weapon should now disappear on death
- If a player dies, and is out of lives, the chat window should now correctly state the player has died and will not respawn
- Fixed some animation issues with flying and blocking
- Fixed some texture issues on several maps where an incorrect or temp texture was being used
- Fixed some lighting issues
- Fixed an issue where unequipping all your armor would unequip the grapplehook as well
- Fixed an issue where when playing online, your character's hair change to the default hair style
- Fixed an issue where your character's hair may be the incorrect color when spawning
- Fixed an issue where you may die twice when falling into death zones
- Decreased gunship's rate of fire by ~50%
- Decreased player's 'invincibility' window after immediately taking damage

Versus Fixes and Changes:
- Kill count is now much more correct
- Kills by magic should be correct now
- Kills by kicking players off of ledges should now track
- Player suicides should now count as a -1 kill
- Fixed an issue where knocking a player into a death zone counted as two kills

In making progress for the next few areas, there are a few things that I realized needed some attention and I got sidetracked on, so I feel I should talk about them a bit:

(All these are works in progress, of course)

- Enemy Health Bars



Some of the new areas introduce regenerating enemies and some pretty tanky enemies, which makes it harder to judge how well a combat encounter is going when you don't know the enemies HP.

There's more that can be done here, as it would be neat to highlight enemies resistances or if they have immunity to a certain damage type, but this starts getting cluttered way too quickly and leaves a lot to be desired.

- Weapon Attacks



Some of the weapons have had their attacks updated, which notably has doubled the knife/dagger's attack speed.

You likely have also noticed that heavy attacks for most weapons is the 'air slice', but this will be getting updated for many weapons to something more appropriate for the weapon/element/damage type.

- Magic Changes



If you played some of the much earlier betas, you might recall some of the magic worked differently for some elements.

Well I am adding a tab within the inventory so that when you learn a new magic spell or element, it can be changed to something else.

This will give you the option of, for example, using the ice pillar magic on snowy surfaces, or swapping it to the original ice spikes if that's what you prefer.

On that note, the default 'spell' when you use magic directly on enemies will now be the air push:



There are some animation/AI changes that are still in progress, but we'll talk more about those when the update is released, which is hopefully 'soon'.

The primary focus for the next update is just more content - More enemies, more equipment, and more levels.

This is another 'block' of levels much like Frozen Fort -> Labyrinthian Caves -> Cliffside, and is also another block of three levels and this chain will be started from talking to Mercie at the Hub. The other levels given by NPCs are in blocks or two or singular, somehow these ended up being the ones with three.

For now I'm just going to talk about the new levels:
(These are all unfinished so you can expect some changes)


The Fallen City of Cassard is an oceanside castle. Somehow we ended with a few city-like levels, and while that's great and all, they tend to be very dense. They take longer to make than other levels and can be more methodical/time consuming to explore.

For that reason, this level is ending up a little more split, with a greater focus on getting closer to the large danger-portal and enemies.

Cassard was also originally very key focused, with many hidden keys to unlock specific doors or switches to proceed. Zofia has (mostly) moved away from key-focused missions as they can get messy and/or problematic with multiplayer, as players could take critical keys and disconnect or bring keys from their save in. Both of those are 'solvable', but bring issues of their own, so...

That may be something I revisit later.


You can see an earlier version of the Gilded City as the versus map (Or if you played one of the early betas)

This area is intended to have a lot of underwater sections/combat - Though I don't think underwater gameplay is where it needs to be at, so that will likely get nailed down better before the underwater side gets much further along.

Underwater areas were originally more common, with them being shortcuts and secrets primarily for otter players to utilize. This caused a lot of players to attempt swimming them anyways and drowning, or getting lost with the bluish haze and underwater effects, which is not fun.



The last area is the Atlas Manor. This was originally much different but a lot of elements for it were taken and used in the prologue instead. The new intent for this level is to have a single 'boss' style enemy with much more platforming. I realize giant floating rock islands are kind of a fantasy trope, but so far it works pretty well...

Hopefully there will be more to show soon!

This is actually a little sooner than expected as I found a couple of issues that warranted a quicker patch, so here is an additional patch for the base game:

Changes/Fixes:

- Use/Jump button should now both work in dialogue menus
- (Potentially) Fixed an issue where settings in split-screen would sometimes not save
- Fixed a terrain issue in the prologue where you could fall through the ground
- Fixed a debug option that allowed you to skip the prologue
- Fixed a menu option that allowed you to 'Return To Hub' immediately starting the game, skipping the prologue
- Fixed some texture/model issues in the Gilded City Arena
- Adjusted difficulty scaling for co-op, 2-4 players should see sometimes additional enemies and harder enemies (Only currently some enemy types, this is still being worked on)
- Fixed ghosts not being able to hit you at close range
- Altered parts of Labyrinthian Caves to have sections of blight
- Altered some enemy spawns and item placement within Labyrinthian Caves
- Grapplehooks now have the correct range underwater
- Altered Hub backdrop as it was very empty looking
- Temporarily removed the 'regenerating armor' enemy from having a chance of spawning as they could be a problem without certain environmental hazards nearby (stronger possessed armors will spawn instead)

Additions:

- Added difficulty options, they can be found within the Hub
- Added a teleporter to the Hub
- Added Sentry enemies to the Cliffside map
- Added additional travel routes to Gilded City Arena
- Possessed Armors have had their drop rate adjusted so that each armor piece has a 4% chance of drop, and a much higher chance to drop silver
- Added an additional weapon that can be found in the Labyrinthian Caves level