Hey everyone,
Dropping a hefty patch size wise this time (around 63mb). There's a metric ton of fixes, many of which are all thanks to bug reporting by the key art creator who created the gorgeous character hyper move portraits and most of the titlescreen art.
Improved Bonus Games
But that's not all, we've got revamped versions of all 3 bonus games, They are SO much more fun now. Totally worth unlocking them for freeplay in the Academy. They pay for themselves quite literally!
Secret Tips
I've added a bunch of Pro tips to certain screen transitions. These often bring up secret techniques or mechanics the game doesn't teach in the tutorial. There's 23 of them, so get reading. But if you're done with them and don't want to press 'A' to proceed anymore, you can turn these off in the options menu.
Just go to Options -> Game -> set 'Show Tips' to off
Pause Screen Move Sets
Now when you pause the game, in most circumstances, you'll be shown the pausing player's move set! Along with the move name, input and a short animation of it in use, you'll also get a brief description of how it works. Super useful when you're getting used to a new character's quirks, especially when you've gathered friends together :)
Actually, most of the bulk of this patch download size wise is from this, as all the little move animations had to be image sequences to avoid platform compatibility issues and poor quality later down the line. I think it was worth it though as they go a long way to making the game more understandable.
You can see what this looks like in the video linked below.
Twitter Post With Video of New Pausescreen Movesets
Conclusions
As I said, there is TONS of fixes as well. Some of these are pretty major, so have a read through the patch notes if you're curious.
My list of things left before v1.0 keeps slowly shrinking. A lot of the remaining elements are quite time consuming, but I'm determined to get them done.
If you encounter any bugs or crashes please let me know so I can fix them!! Every time someone shares one in detail, I often track it down and fix it.
I think next I might finally get round to adding in the new intro sequence I've had the assets for for a while. This will also mean I can update my splashscreen logos to better reflect the person I am today and the goals I have. It'll be personally satisfying as well as really making that intro POP. First impressions amirite? Haha.
Well until next time amigos,
Peace & Love,
Paris x
ZONERS v0.45 Patch Notes
ADDITIONS
- Character moveset information is now visible when pausing the game. The information displayed will be dependent on which player paused the game. These have move names, a simple explanation and an accompanying animation
- One of 23 game tips are now displayed in some screen transitions. These tips mostly cover gameplay and some tell you things the game didn't tell you before! The game will wait for your input before carrying on. You can turn these off completely in the options menu.
FIXES & CHANGES
GAMEPLAY
- Bonus Games (All) - Current combo is displayed on holofield and not just in the top right
- Ring Rally - Targets now move constantly, and gets faster every 5 hits
- Ring Rally - New objects added to the back of your side of the court that slows the ball and drop its power level when the ball bounces into it
- Ring Rally - Scoring revised from (20*combo) for normal and (20*combo)+200 for bonus to (50*combo) for normal and (100*combo) for bonus
- Ring Rally - Attempted to fix issue where the ball could hit the ring target multiple times in one collision when it hit the edge from sharp up or down angles
- Sphere Smasher - You now get double points when hyper state balls blow up the bubbles
- Sphere Smasher - Bubble reset timers reduced from 10 seconds to 9 seconds
- Target Takedown - Changed combo system to be hitting consecutive targets within a time limit. This time limit is represented by a draining meter on the field and gets shorter the higher the combo.
- Target Takedown - Bonus coloured targets now only give 2x points rather than 3x
- Target Takedown - Base points per target changed from 5 to 10
- Target Takedown - Added 4 new types of target waves and changed the wave randomisation to a bag system rather than pure rng
- Target Takedown - Changed the explosive target sprites to a bomb like sprite and the target sprites to... targets!
- Target Takedown - Explosive targets no longer count towards a wave clear
- Target Takedown - Fixed issue where some projectiles like Gluup's would get stuck bouncing on the Projectile Bouncers in some instances
- Urnest - Fixed crash that could trigger when Urnest's Super connects with a hitbox that has just finished hitting a ball
- Urnest - Fixed bug on The Clawcade when possessing the ball with Urnest's Hyper move and touching a stage hazard bumper would cause it to get stuck
- Rhapsody - All notes in her projectile can now hit targets in the Target Takedown bonus game
- Rhapsody - Fixed issue where characters that were in the daze state from Rhapsody's Super when instant replay starts would still be stunned afterwards
- Crabhammers - Fixed issue where Crabhammers' Hyper move mech would still be visible after an instant replay
- Crabhammers - When using Crabhammers' Hyper move and the ball was at 0 speed, the ball will now fall towards the Player rather than getting stuck bouncing up and down vertically
- Crabhammers - Hyper move active portion reduced from 8 seconds down to 6 seconds
- Fixed issue where players or AI would move during instant replay match transitions
- Attempted to fix issue where ball would move whilst still in the reset state after a Zone Break
- Attempted to fix issue where round wouldn't start and player would be softlocked
MENUS
- Changed the default starting position when entering the Academy Career menu to be on the Zoners Cup
- Fixed loading of bonus games from the free play bonus games menu
- Fixed issue where Target Takedown and Sphere Smasher were the wrong way round on the Bonus screen menu
- Removed highscore display during character select in bonus free play menu that was showing cup highscore
- Fixed issue where bonus game name wouldn't display when loading bonus game from free play bonus game menu
- Stopped issue where quickly entering and exiting the bonus games menu in the Academy could cause the looping sound of Sock spinning to stack up and never end
- Fixed issue where exiting career menu when Puppet hadn't returned to original position and re-entering would cause unintended behaviour
- Fixed bar tab menu when going back from zoners cup registration to career general menu
- Fixed issue where some menus wouldn't let you back out correctly under certain circumstances
MISC
- Fixed major issue where data wasn't being saved
- Added Dum-E Hyper Move key art and animation
- Added new energy strike effect when performing hyper moves
- Fixed issue where SFX volume affects music and sfx
- Fixed issue where match intro music would be affected by sfx volume rather than music volume
- Fixed issue where ball clash sound wouldn't be stopped if instant replay was ended during clash
- Stage specific sfx are now effected by the SFX volume
- Fixed issue where the holofield graphic for a Clash would be scaled incorrectly for one player
- Attemped to fix bug where sometimes music wouldn't play between rounds/matches until a Hyper move or Zone Break happened