Closed Beta Patch 0.2.17
CLOSED BETA UPDATE 0.2.17
We are slowly regaining functionality after going to PAX and interacting with like a billion of y’all, and then recovering from the various diseases you were kind enough to share. This isn’t what we meant by Gone Viral, dammit! We’re all hunkered down (as are many of y’all - stay safe!) - coding away, making the magic happen, and keeping a concerned eye on our toilet paper sitch. Our steam price will likely have an option to pay with those precious, precious rolls. Huh, dibs on the term “Buttcoin”.
Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah - big stuff:
Abacus got sexy and speedy! He’s much prettier with like, colors and a snazzy mohawk. And we’re iterating the crap out of his gameplay - he’s gotten a stat and physics overhaul to make him fast but fragile, filling his role as the agile assassin. High level goal: he should require a skilled player to handle his uniquely zippy gameplay. Deets below…
Feedback fest! PAX rocked - hundreds of y’all got to play for the first time. Of those hundreds, ten of y’all even beat level 3 and signed “The Poster Of Awesomeness” (respect). And we wrote down about a million notes between talking with y’all, sitting over shoulders, hanging out on dozens of streams, and keeping up with #beta-feedback. You will find a ton of polish based on all that - be it room tweaks, UI polish, quality of life issues, or straight bug fixes. Yes, we occasionally do have an actual bug. And by “we”, I mean @da_gaffer. Jerk.
Twitch, take the wheel! Streamers from the get-go have requested control over how important twitch votes are compared to the NPC Fans. Two camps formed: purists who want Twitch to have SOME impact but either want the run variance that comes with Fan Mood (Twitch is always Sadistic) or to have achievements/completion be under similar conditions to non-streamed play. Camp two is formed of folks who say “Screw purity, LET TWITCH F ME UP!” and then usually descend into gibbering madness.
So, you can now control the weighting with a handy slider. Set it based on your level of faith in the compassionate humanity of your Twitch viewers, however ill-placed that faith might be.
A @Gaffer side note - as I added/tested the slider, I dug into a lot of the base math and found some cases where Twitch votes could get overrun by the NPCs in unintended ways. Over the last few months, we’ve tuned Twitch votes to have more weight a few times - but it felt to us (and you in general I think) that sometimes Twitch votes were indeed counted but they felt less impactful than we wanted. That’s all cleaned up in this patch (knock on wood) - now the math works more as intended. But DO let us know if it “feels” right by default. We’d love folks to test the crap out of polling in the next week in general in streams whether tiny or big.
I’ll keep an eye on the feel of the Polls when I’m on stream, and let us know in #beta-feedback if it’s over/under reactive - I’m primed to do quick updates to tune the feel to be solid. We appreciate the streaming - it’s tough to test in all cases of stream size/participation. Especially since when I am streaming, it’s mostly just to my cats. Should be good. If not, we’re on it like a bonnet.
Anyways enough yapping, enjoy!
Content: Abacus: Speed Demon!
Abacus has been tuned to be much faster/more agile. Why? Well, he was originally designed as a "hard mode" character, but by playing and watching streams, we felt like he was feeling like Decimus-but-missing-health-and-range-and-projectile-synergies. Yeah, harder. Nailed that. But not generally more FUN. Why? We think it was because he was tougher to play than Decimus (slower, short range, no health, can punch fast but for less damage) without anything that really made him better enough or more interesting - and he didn’t FEEL like the assassin he is supposed to be. He was good for playing for pride, but did we WANT to play him? Not clearly enough.
So now, we’re changing his focus a bit - playing more as a "skill” character. He’s much better than Decimus in some ways (he’s agile and totally zooms!) but trickier in others - he remains more fragile because he’s lacking hearts. And both of those vectors means it takes a really skilled player to use him well - even with his increased speed a first time noob would probably slam their face into a lot of pits getting used to his zippy ways. But you’re better than that, right?
Anyways, our early thoughts: we dig it from playing it here. His basic claw attacks are more interesting with the extra speed, and the Slashing Pounce he does fits his vibe. He feels less like a kinda-punishing-weaker-Decimus, but rather like he’s heading towards a very different playstyle with its own challenges. More to come - thoughts welcome as y’all beat on the beta with us. We enjoy both batting around general strategery of the goals of his class design or hearing details of other ways we can tweak his shiny metal butt to meet those goals/improve feel.
Checkin notes:
-- Multiple adjustments to make Abacus funner/faster with starting stats, physics settings, movement settings
-- New Abacus model and textures including a sexy mohawk.
Room cleanup pass:
-- Bouncy spikeball death room moved to levels 2-3 from levels 1-2 and lowered odds of spawning (from PAX observation & @ExtraCredits stream)
-- Fixed always-on spikeballs in Spike_Stacks_Std (from @ExtraCredits (Will) stream)
-- Removed blockers from around teleporter in Vault_Blockers (thanks @loginerror and @ExtraCredits (Will) )
-- Added another unlikely-to-be-consumable item to some common shops
-- Removed possible doors that might cause one to accidentally buy items in shops
-- Reduced probability of tiny shops spawning vs. medium or larger shops
-- Re-added Mutation shop to pool (comment on @ExtraCredits (Will)'s stream reminded me of this, too many consumable shops vs. persistent item shops)
-- Removed potential doors too near creatures in several rooms (from PAX observation)
-- Moved the camera oompa in the dash tutorial to not block the dash decal
-- Changed door locations to prevent you from dashing into spikes in Spike_Waves_Std room (thanks for the find on-stream @FederalGhosts)
-- Added a teleporter to the spikeball vault room
-- Cleaned up door positions for several vault rooms
Pool/spawn tweakin’
-- Removed Genetic Tinkering from pool of mutations applied by Genetic Surgeries (just not worth a heart container in 99% of cases) - from a Doug note from stream by https://www.twitch.tv/nubbinsinc. Note there is a tiny chance for the "Any Mutation" pool to appear in Genetic Surgeries, meaning they could still be in there from that pool, but it's much less likely now.
-- Added Painiac, Envy to standard Genetic Surgery mutation pool at low odds.
Twitch:
-- NPC/Stream voting improvements:
-- Settings slider allows streamer to set the relative weights of NPC vs. Twitch votes
-- Major math adjustments around the weighting of stream voting vs. NPC voting (in general letting Twitch be more impactful by default)
-- Edge cases of small/large streams better handled
-- Initial testing complete around Streaming Fan Slider
-- Slider settings named appropriately
-- Testing/feedback by like real streamers who aren’t us direly wanted. Slap the sherbert to us, Herbert!
Polish:
-- Removed crane camera from Tutorial Dash room that first time players at PAX kept dashing into for no obvious reason to us but so many of them did it that we're just going to remove it rather than judging. I blame @Doug, I guess.
-- Bulletproofed Main Menu HUD a bit while exploring crasher from @IrvineRando (thanks for logs!)
-- Carnage Item widget hides self when no carnage item is held
-- Added more cameras/propping to tutorial rooms
-- Fixed oddly indestructible tiles in Barrel_Stacks_Std
-- Fixed issue where occasionally some Poll options could display spurious alternate IDs (BOMB, BUFF, etc)
-- Cleaned up Dashmeter visuals
-- Tweaked text for Circling Death mutation
-- Monitors blow up more cleanly
-- Monitors are clearer/less alpha-y
-- Main screen can be blown up if visible
-- Invulnerable creatures can not become stuck at bottom of pits
-- Added materials for gambling machine in the MedBay
-- Adjusted placement of temp large webcam monitor to not clip with stage geo.
-- Fixed ability for spikeballs to occasionally spam too much damage in interpenetrating collisions with heavy creatures (from VOD from @ExtraCredits (Will))
-- Tweak to projectile spam prevention timing
-- Increased the harpoon range in the tutorial so that it can't fail to hit the enemies in the harpoon testing room sometimes
-- The tutorial pits now choose a consistent safe spot to teleport you to that won't get stuck on top of geo
-- Updated all of the options menus to warn you if you try to leave without accepting your changes
-- Hitting the menu button again if you are in an open menu does a "back" operation instead of fully closing the entire menu tree
-- Removed log spam around spawn redirectors affected by NPC mood
-- Firewalker dash trails now play a little cleaner with room teleporters (thanks @Marko420)
-- FTL dashes no longer double teleport when you hit a room teleporter (thanks @Outlaw)
-- Tanks are now affected by Small World Fan Event (from stream by https://www.twitch.tv/liisn - @Liisn)
-- Fixed an issue where flatscreens could destroyed before they are actually visible
-- Added a number of icons from IconMeister @Leo
-- Changed color of Mortar Enemy lob shot to yellow from blue in order to unify enemy bullet colors.
-- Removed SimpleBot spawning too early in Cycle_Arena
-- Removed null tiles from Tutorial Start Room
-- Slightly lowered the volume on the main explosion sound to help reduce an ugly "blatting" effect when multiple bombs go off at the same time
Developer Notes
-- [DEV] Cleaned up the bouncy tile prototype a bit
-- [DEV] Renamed Barrel_Stacks_Std to Spin_Stacks_Std
-- [DEV] Holding down Shift key while clicking new run button in PAX build will allow you to create a new run normally/skip the tutorial
-- [DEV] Changing the keybinding for entering dev mode
-- [DEV] Cheating devs are no longer immune to Biggest Fan movement (damn cheaters)
-- [DEV] Teleporter cooldown moved into the buff system
-- [DEV] Set up morph target test for armor on Abacus and future heroes.
-- [DEV] Set MM_HeroTest material to be compatible with morph targets.
We are slowly regaining functionality after going to PAX and interacting with like a billion of y’all, and then recovering from the various diseases you were kind enough to share. This isn’t what we meant by Gone Viral, dammit! We’re all hunkered down (as are many of y’all - stay safe!) - coding away, making the magic happen, and keeping a concerned eye on our toilet paper sitch. Our steam price will likely have an option to pay with those precious, precious rolls. Huh, dibs on the term “Buttcoin”.
Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah - big stuff:
Abacus got sexy and speedy! He’s much prettier with like, colors and a snazzy mohawk. And we’re iterating the crap out of his gameplay - he’s gotten a stat and physics overhaul to make him fast but fragile, filling his role as the agile assassin. High level goal: he should require a skilled player to handle his uniquely zippy gameplay. Deets below…
Feedback fest! PAX rocked - hundreds of y’all got to play for the first time. Of those hundreds, ten of y’all even beat level 3 and signed “The Poster Of Awesomeness” (respect). And we wrote down about a million notes between talking with y’all, sitting over shoulders, hanging out on dozens of streams, and keeping up with #beta-feedback. You will find a ton of polish based on all that - be it room tweaks, UI polish, quality of life issues, or straight bug fixes. Yes, we occasionally do have an actual bug. And by “we”, I mean @da_gaffer. Jerk.
Twitch, take the wheel! Streamers from the get-go have requested control over how important twitch votes are compared to the NPC Fans. Two camps formed: purists who want Twitch to have SOME impact but either want the run variance that comes with Fan Mood (Twitch is always Sadistic) or to have achievements/completion be under similar conditions to non-streamed play. Camp two is formed of folks who say “Screw purity, LET TWITCH F ME UP!” and then usually descend into gibbering madness.
So, you can now control the weighting with a handy slider. Set it based on your level of faith in the compassionate humanity of your Twitch viewers, however ill-placed that faith might be.
A @Gaffer side note - as I added/tested the slider, I dug into a lot of the base math and found some cases where Twitch votes could get overrun by the NPCs in unintended ways. Over the last few months, we’ve tuned Twitch votes to have more weight a few times - but it felt to us (and you in general I think) that sometimes Twitch votes were indeed counted but they felt less impactful than we wanted. That’s all cleaned up in this patch (knock on wood) - now the math works more as intended. But DO let us know if it “feels” right by default. We’d love folks to test the crap out of polling in the next week in general in streams whether tiny or big.
I’ll keep an eye on the feel of the Polls when I’m on stream, and let us know in #beta-feedback if it’s over/under reactive - I’m primed to do quick updates to tune the feel to be solid. We appreciate the streaming - it’s tough to test in all cases of stream size/participation. Especially since when I am streaming, it’s mostly just to my cats. Should be good. If not, we’re on it like a bonnet.
Anyways enough yapping, enjoy!
Content: Abacus: Speed Demon!
Abacus has been tuned to be much faster/more agile. Why? Well, he was originally designed as a "hard mode" character, but by playing and watching streams, we felt like he was feeling like Decimus-but-missing-health-and-range-and-projectile-synergies. Yeah, harder. Nailed that. But not generally more FUN. Why? We think it was because he was tougher to play than Decimus (slower, short range, no health, can punch fast but for less damage) without anything that really made him better enough or more interesting - and he didn’t FEEL like the assassin he is supposed to be. He was good for playing for pride, but did we WANT to play him? Not clearly enough.
So now, we’re changing his focus a bit - playing more as a "skill” character. He’s much better than Decimus in some ways (he’s agile and totally zooms!) but trickier in others - he remains more fragile because he’s lacking hearts. And both of those vectors means it takes a really skilled player to use him well - even with his increased speed a first time noob would probably slam their face into a lot of pits getting used to his zippy ways. But you’re better than that, right?
Anyways, our early thoughts: we dig it from playing it here. His basic claw attacks are more interesting with the extra speed, and the Slashing Pounce he does fits his vibe. He feels less like a kinda-punishing-weaker-Decimus, but rather like he’s heading towards a very different playstyle with its own challenges. More to come - thoughts welcome as y’all beat on the beta with us. We enjoy both batting around general strategery of the goals of his class design or hearing details of other ways we can tweak his shiny metal butt to meet those goals/improve feel.
Checkin notes:
-- Multiple adjustments to make Abacus funner/faster with starting stats, physics settings, movement settings
-- New Abacus model and textures including a sexy mohawk.
Room cleanup pass:
-- Bouncy spikeball death room moved to levels 2-3 from levels 1-2 and lowered odds of spawning (from PAX observation & @ExtraCredits stream)
-- Fixed always-on spikeballs in Spike_Stacks_Std (from @ExtraCredits (Will) stream)
-- Removed blockers from around teleporter in Vault_Blockers (thanks @loginerror and @ExtraCredits (Will) )
-- Added another unlikely-to-be-consumable item to some common shops
-- Removed possible doors that might cause one to accidentally buy items in shops
-- Reduced probability of tiny shops spawning vs. medium or larger shops
-- Re-added Mutation shop to pool (comment on @ExtraCredits (Will)'s stream reminded me of this, too many consumable shops vs. persistent item shops)
-- Removed potential doors too near creatures in several rooms (from PAX observation)
-- Moved the camera oompa in the dash tutorial to not block the dash decal
-- Changed door locations to prevent you from dashing into spikes in Spike_Waves_Std room (thanks for the find on-stream @FederalGhosts)
-- Added a teleporter to the spikeball vault room
-- Cleaned up door positions for several vault rooms
Pool/spawn tweakin’
-- Removed Genetic Tinkering from pool of mutations applied by Genetic Surgeries (just not worth a heart container in 99% of cases) - from a Doug note from stream by https://www.twitch.tv/nubbinsinc. Note there is a tiny chance for the "Any Mutation" pool to appear in Genetic Surgeries, meaning they could still be in there from that pool, but it's much less likely now.
-- Added Painiac, Envy to standard Genetic Surgery mutation pool at low odds.
Twitch:
-- NPC/Stream voting improvements:
-- Settings slider allows streamer to set the relative weights of NPC vs. Twitch votes
-- Major math adjustments around the weighting of stream voting vs. NPC voting (in general letting Twitch be more impactful by default)
-- Edge cases of small/large streams better handled
-- Initial testing complete around Streaming Fan Slider
-- Slider settings named appropriately
-- Testing/feedback by like real streamers who aren’t us direly wanted. Slap the sherbert to us, Herbert!
Polish:
-- Removed crane camera from Tutorial Dash room that first time players at PAX kept dashing into for no obvious reason to us but so many of them did it that we're just going to remove it rather than judging. I blame @Doug, I guess.
-- Bulletproofed Main Menu HUD a bit while exploring crasher from @IrvineRando (thanks for logs!)
-- Carnage Item widget hides self when no carnage item is held
-- Added more cameras/propping to tutorial rooms
-- Fixed oddly indestructible tiles in Barrel_Stacks_Std
-- Fixed issue where occasionally some Poll options could display spurious alternate IDs (BOMB, BUFF, etc)
-- Cleaned up Dashmeter visuals
-- Tweaked text for Circling Death mutation
-- Monitors blow up more cleanly
-- Monitors are clearer/less alpha-y
-- Main screen can be blown up if visible
-- Invulnerable creatures can not become stuck at bottom of pits
-- Added materials for gambling machine in the MedBay
-- Adjusted placement of temp large webcam monitor to not clip with stage geo.
-- Fixed ability for spikeballs to occasionally spam too much damage in interpenetrating collisions with heavy creatures (from VOD from @ExtraCredits (Will))
-- Tweak to projectile spam prevention timing
-- Increased the harpoon range in the tutorial so that it can't fail to hit the enemies in the harpoon testing room sometimes
-- The tutorial pits now choose a consistent safe spot to teleport you to that won't get stuck on top of geo
-- Updated all of the options menus to warn you if you try to leave without accepting your changes
-- Hitting the menu button again if you are in an open menu does a "back" operation instead of fully closing the entire menu tree
-- Removed log spam around spawn redirectors affected by NPC mood
-- Firewalker dash trails now play a little cleaner with room teleporters (thanks @Marko420)
-- FTL dashes no longer double teleport when you hit a room teleporter (thanks @Outlaw)
-- Tanks are now affected by Small World Fan Event (from stream by https://www.twitch.tv/liisn - @Liisn)
-- Fixed an issue where flatscreens could destroyed before they are actually visible
-- Added a number of icons from IconMeister @Leo
-- Changed color of Mortar Enemy lob shot to yellow from blue in order to unify enemy bullet colors.
-- Removed SimpleBot spawning too early in Cycle_Arena
-- Removed null tiles from Tutorial Start Room
-- Slightly lowered the volume on the main explosion sound to help reduce an ugly "blatting" effect when multiple bombs go off at the same time
Developer Notes
-- [DEV] Cleaned up the bouncy tile prototype a bit
-- [DEV] Renamed Barrel_Stacks_Std to Spin_Stacks_Std
-- [DEV] Holding down Shift key while clicking new run button in PAX build will allow you to create a new run normally/skip the tutorial
-- [DEV] Changing the keybinding for entering dev mode
-- [DEV] Cheating devs are no longer immune to Biggest Fan movement (damn cheaters)
-- [DEV] Teleporter cooldown moved into the buff system
-- [DEV] Set up morph target test for armor on Abacus and future heroes.
-- [DEV] Set MM_HeroTest material to be compatible with morph targets.