BA DA BING, BA DA BOOM
And just like that, we've got ourselves another Pupdate. This week has been rather hectic, let me tell ya. The power line attached to the house (as I work from home, yay!) came down, my internet went out (making updates hard to push), it's been a wild ride. In fact, the internet went down Monday night, so last weeks update was pushed over my cell phone! So, let's hop into this week's changelog, and then we can discuss New Game+ some more!
Ephemeral Tale 1.4.7 Changelog
- Lowered default “Enemy Toughness” modifier from 6 to 5
- Updated several battle sound effects & animations
- Very, very small performance performance improvements
- Added a sound effect cue to indicate a file has been saved (Thanks, Leo!)
- Adjusted the visual prompts for recovering at the Fire and after deaths (Thanks, fmoo!)
- Added visual prompts to a few of the more abstract puzzles
- Slight tweaks to social buttons
- Changes to dialogue in the Caverns zone to better present the gameplay loop to new players
- Fixed a bug where controller inputs could repeat infinitely on the menu
The changes this week are almost entirely due to feedback from you guys, gameplay videos (yes, those really do help!), and refund (sad-face) data. For example, someone this week put in their refund report that they felt the level scaling felt uneven, and that RNG caused certain areas to feel locked out. While I wish they had come to me directly with this so I could work on the specific issues they had, this is still great information to have, and will certainly help me as I move towards future balancing changes.
Last week, Design Doc put out a compelling video about New Game+ (linked above). One of the points they made was that New Game+ locking out content can be frustrating for players, and I tend to agree with that expression. So while New Game+ will still have the new mechanics (as discussed in prior Pupdates), it will no longer have exclusive content. That content will become available to all players with the release of Major Update #3. The reality is that Ephemeral Tale is a shorter experience anyway (I mean, it quite literally means short story), so having more side content available for players (like yourself) to enjoy isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.
One thing I'm toying with at this particular moment in time is changing up how the Jelly rooms work. For those not in the know, there is a chance whenever you kill a rare mob (each zone has a specific one tied to it), that they'll drop a Jelly of sorts. This consumable item opens up a portal in a random location in the dungeon (for example, Jelly acquired in the Forest will only up a portal in the Forest), and that leads to a loot room of sorts. I've been toying with the idea of replacing these Jelly rooms entirely with a set location in the dungeons that would open up, and these would serve as challenge rooms. Go in, fight a bunch of dangerous stuff, collect a bunch of cool loot, get out. That may be something I work on this week, as I feel it would help tighten up that specific part of the game.
I said last week that we'd talk about Major Update #3 this week-- first, I'd like to apologize for the update taking longer than usual. We had about a month to month-and-a-half gap between Major Update #1 and #2, but we're nearing a two month gap between #2 and #3. You see, while I dabble in coding, I'm merely a dabbler-- the performance overhaul bit of the patch is being handled by a professional. That's been delayed due to their work load being increased immensely from COVID-19 (as their day job is web-based). As the final dungeon changes have been rolled out over the past few weeks (well, most of them), it felt like it would be flip-floppy of me to push just New Game+ as the major update, considering that I've publicly stated that the performance overhaul was part of the patch. On the other hand, if that overhaul is delayed for too much longer, I'll be put into a situation where I have to release it in that form, and push the performance overhaul to a future patch. I don't want to do that, but we'll see what happens in the next week or two, and I'll keep you guys updated.
Lastly, thanks to reports from a few of you guys that Ephemeral Tale was flagging their anti-virus software, I got in touch with the guys over at Avast and we've gotten Ephemeral Tale on their white list. If any of you continue to have issues in this regard, please contact me so that I can reach out to the right folks and get that sorted out! In the mean time, you can safely add the game to your personal white lists-- Valve likes to keep us developers in check as far as "is it safe to download from Steam?" goes. Whew-- We'll talk more next week (bunches of fixes in the pipe for that one), same pup-time, same pup-place!
Stay safe and have fun,
-- Ryan