Greetings all,

v0.34
Today v0.34 of ZONERS goes live and with it we officially reach the end of Phase 1 of Early Access development. This is a smaller patch focused on animating the training mode character (Dum-E), adding two new advanced tutorial missions and tweaking/fixing a few gameplay and other issues.

Dum-E will become fully unlockable and playable at some point in the future, complete with a very unique gimmick that you can't see in the training mode! But you'll have to wait for this, as their gimmick is effected by the other characters... ooo the mystery!

UPDATED ROADMAP
So with Phase 1 complete, it's time to update the road map to better reflect the current status of the game and goals going forward. If you take a look at the image below, you'll see a number of things have been moved around, combined and even added.

As always, these are subject to change. Currently the only thing taken away from v1.0 is the Trials, which I am now aiming to add after launch, provided there is enough demand. In this same vein, it is quite possible 1 or 2 of those extra characters in Phase 3 get pushed to post launch too. We will have to see how fast development goes on the remaining tasks.

For now, the focus is on adding new ways to play with Stage Variants, a special 2v2 mode & New Match types, as well as generally improving the other aspects of what's in the game to make everything as intuitive and clear as possible.

INCREASED PRICE DELAY
It's a constant point of deliberation in my own mind whether the price should actually go up as the game becomes more feature rich and complete. Looking at the state of the game, I've decided the price of the game will NOT be going up until the end of Phase 2. At this point, the game will be really quite polished, with a lot of fun to be had, and the final Phase being some pretty hefty additions that round the entire package out. I feel like this is a fair tradeoff.

Well I best get cracking on with Phase 2. As mentioned in previous posts, this isn't going to be such a long dev time to get complete relative to both the content and personal issues I had during Phase 1. But do expect the same undulations in terms of larger patches and smaller ones as I work to increase the game's options and modes of play, and make the whole thing from start to finish feel extremely polished.

Peace & Love
Paris

V0.34 Patch Notes

ADDITIONS

• Dum-E's Idle, Move, Melee, Shoot, Super, Hyper, Hit, Stun, Wallstun, Quick Recover, Electric & Daze animations added
• Added Parry & Clash Advanced Tutorials
• Added Disable Melees & Disable Projectiles options to custom match settings

FIXES & CHANGES
GAMEPLAY

• Fixed bug with Ringressa's projectile where dashing through it would cause it to get removed instantly
• Ringressa projectile laser now has a fading effect after completing so it doesn't instantly visually disappear
• Ringressa projectile laser now updates visual distance properly depending on whats its path & calculates this in a more optimised manner
• Fixed bug where when exiting a match during Crabhammers' Hyper move the ball gravity would not be reset
• Dum-E base moveset Super move adjusted to have narrower spread, faster projectile speeds and shooter life span, making it more similar to a shotgun
• Drawing in a Clash no longer stuns both players, it just knocks them back
• Fixed issue where any situation with a ball gravity modifier would not account for pauses/slow downs in game speed
• Fixed bug in main tutorial where holding the Super move before releasing it would trigger multiple "ticks"
• Fixed crash in Ball Aura Advanced Tutorial when ball hit the projectiles
• Fixed bug where currently selected Advanced tutorial rank requirements were dependent on the one you started with if you chose "Next Training" at the end
• Fixed crash at start of King boss match
• Fixed and improved darken background accessibility setting and updated the default value. Your profiles will need to be remade after this patch
• Improved & optimised desaturate background accessibility setting

MENUS

• In the custom match settings screen, moved the Disable Supers and Disable Hypers buttons to the Player category
• Fixed bug on advance tutorial select when holding the analogue in a direction that would stop the cursor from moving

MISC

• Updated the way character draw angles are handled when going from a moving to a idle state