Patch #4 - More skating, Intel GPU support (beta), UI improvements
Changes / Improvements Luna's visual apperance has been improved: legs/knees Backtracking between levels has been removed, it would need a lot more changes to level design to really make it fun/good Skate shoes are now available on the first level. Have fun exploring more areas o
Changes / Improvements
- Luna's visual apperance has been improved:legs/knees
- Backtracking between levels has been removed, it would need a lot more changes to level design to really make it fun/good
- Skate shoes are now available on the first level. Have fun exploring more areas of Crystalline Expanse!
- The game now saves on every checkpoint. The checkpoints are still where you respawn when "dying" in-game.
- Right shoulder button (R1) now also jumps as well as directional jump
- Map has been removed from the in-game menu - on gamepad: SELECT button and on keyboard: TAB key
- In the map, L1 / R1 zoom as well as jump and action button (like before)
- Cutscene 3 has been removed (the one between Crystalline Fold and Decadent Fields, where one previously got the skate shoes)
- Some empty crystal boxes have been removed, in future patches we will remove all of the empty ones
Bug fixes
- When menus would not render more than 30 FPS, loading screen would some times stall / lock up (when running video recording software for instance)
- Keyboard input has been much improved, this caused buggy selections in menus
- ESC or "right button" on gamepad now goes back in menus
New Features
- The game now runs on Intel GPUs! They are not fast though, but you can play it in 320 x 240 on a HD4000 for instance, and scale up. With anti aliasing turned on, it's still fun and playable in 60 FPS. Just a little blurry... Down the line we might look at reducing the graphical workload to support higher resolutions.
- Hardware detection: Now the game tries to guess resolution, upscaling factor and anti-aliasing. You can still change everything yourself in the options menu of course.
- Joystick setup has been improved to include D-Pad and the right analog stick. This is for future game mechanics!
- CONTROLS available in the main menu where you see which buttons do what.
- New camera distances available in options: "really close" and "far"
- Adaptive zoom added to "camera distance" in options menu. This is a dynamic zoom which smoothly moves the camera in / out depending on speed.
- Left shoulder button cycles between the available zoom levels: really close, close, normal, far, adaptive
- You can now use D-Pad in all menus
- Error handling has been more streamlined, all debug info is now written to the same file.
- Exit menu in the in-game menu has been improved to make it harder to exit by mistake without getting to save the game first. You can still save standing anywhere, but if you don't you will continue at the last visited checkpoint.
Audio
- Music and sound effects volume/gain available in the in-game menu
- Sound FX in main menu when moving around / selecting
- Cutscenes have been re-mastered and improved, mainly voice volume has been adjusted.
What is next?
We are of course continuing work on this game, and now since we are done with the Intel support, we are going to work on time attack with leaderboards for the regular levels (and certain checkpoints). We also have an idea to visit certain checkpoints in a certain order, but we'll start with regular leaderboards for completing each level. This means that we will have a countdown where Luna stands still to allow for the level to load completely and the player to react to the start of the race. This might not be in patch #5 though, that one is likely a smaller one with even more menu / UI and game play tuning.
Mac support is another focus area that we will start looking at.
As always, ideas & suggestions are welcome!