Todays update has lots of bug-fixes and quality of life improvements, I had delayed doing updates during the autumn seasonal sale so more to talk about than usual this week. For those of you who have just started playing I hope you are enjoying it, I typically do small updates at least once a week so if you encounter any issues or have suggestions let me know as theres generally quick turn around on that.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1914980/view/3464985397053869703
If you haven't yet seen the post for the upcoming free winter expansion then be sure to check that out in the link above. All level/theme expansions are free with Golfing in Aether but if you wish to support this kind of developement then please consider picking up the Deluxe Edition as its a big help :)
Game Requirements
Game requirements indicated on store page have been lowered for both minimum and recommended. Specifically, the memory requirements, which I have it now listed as 4 GB. Going with a total system value here and its working with the presumption windows will gobble up more than 2 of that. For Linux I’ve listed the minimum as 2GB. The game only uses around 1-1.5 GB even when running on highest settings loading all 9 islands.
I had it listed as 8GB previously as wanted to see how the expansions would work out first. According to the steam survey only 0.18% of users have less than 4GB so I’m not going to worry about it beyond this. This is really just so players using systems such as portables with 4GB can see they can run the game.
For installation size I’m keeping the 2GB install for future proofing, but the actual install size has dropped from 1.9 to around 1.7 GB. This was achieved through compression of uncommon color textures, which will not have a meaningful effect. A Linux install is only 1.4GB. Upcoming Winter assets are already in the game files so there won't be much of an increase as remaining levels get completed.
Out of Bounds and Rolling Behavior
I did a few tidy ups to out of bounds respawning and some connected quirks with ball roll behaviour on specific surfaces.
Firstly some ground surfaces around holes were being misread and causing the ball to roll greater than they should. Essentially the ball would roll over certain tiny sections and its was then no longer behaving physically correct and would appear to lose the friction slowing it down.
Another area I targeted was falling into water, I found the ball could still move quite freely so added a bit of resistance to slow it quicker. Exiting pipes has also been tweaked so the ball will read the ground surface more responsively and act accordingly. There were examples of it rolling too much so I’ve fixed this as well.
I also found some examples of the ball not rolling enough due to a miss match on the physical materials in a couple of levels and these have been fixed. They were pretty apparent after making the above changes.
Please share any feedback you have and do let me know if you find areas you feel things could be improved as it helps to have feedback to refine this.
Obstacle Determinism
Next up I looked at some bugs/behavior with obstacles determinism. Previously if you reset back to the start of the level, including using the undo feature these were always syncronised. However, if you undid your shot from say 4 back to 3, the obstacles were not undone correctly. I’ve fixed this and reworked the system behind it to run off a single time variable and be standardised where its declared so this will help a lot with future error prevention.
Game Menu Improvements
Another thing I’ve done is made a couple changes to the game menu, firstly pressing escape or B on a controller will be treated as having selected resume. Secondly player 1 during practice will get a dedicated option to restart the level. This will behave identically to the button on the scoreboard.
Note: You can just press backspace or back/select to reset back to the start of the level, it will cycle through each of the shots you’ve taken. So you do not have to restart the level via this game menu thing, but I’m adding it as the reset functionality isn’t immediately clear.
Single Joycon Support
I got my hands on a pair of Switch Joycons in the Black Friday sales to test out and build a configuration for which I have now done. So if you wish to play with a singular joycon, select “Left Joystick Only (Joycon)” from the gamepad settings menu for overall layout presents.
Essentially this will only use the left joystick for all actions, and the configuration is similar to the D-Pad only config. I did however find the process of connecting Joycons to Steam via Big Picture a bit involved at current as for whatever reason the triggers and some buttons didn't map correctly so you may have to set that up first. Essentially ZL and L should be mapped to triggers, for me at least, I found they weren't automatically mapped to anything at all.
So far I’ve personally tested Xbox controllers 360 through Series X/S, PS4 Dualshock, and PS5 Dualsense, Switch Pro, Joycons (in both dual and single), Steam Controller, and various RetroBit six button controllers (Megadrive and Saturn). You can have a different controller type per each local player and store configurations on each profile too, options for both glyphs and control preset are available for easy picking so it’s really easy to switch stuff around if need be.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether
Patch Notes
General
- Fixed a rare possibility to end up reset onto an out of bounds area. I’ve added a check so the ground surface you are being reset to must be valid, if it is not it will return you to the spawn. Through a chain of events I saw it was possible to get respawned in water, so this just clears up this rare event from being possible.
- Added a slight redesign of the slope in “Downhill from here”, specifically reduced two rows of the pinball-like obstacle at the edges and one from the middle. The point of this is to give the ball exit a greater roll speed so you more likely make it to the vertical windmill. By removing a single center post theres a greater chance of getting the hole in one.
- Fixed when restarting a level the reset steps from the previous level hadn’t been cleared so it was possible to reset out of bounds.
- Fixed when restarting a level planar reflections for water would stop working.
- Fixed various timing visual bugs when restarting a level.
- Fixed some issues where some reset steps weren’t correctly resetting various obstacles to the correct positions when in practice mode. E.g. reset to tee worked, but going from step 3 to 2 didn’t correctly handle the obstacle.
- Added new uniform system to handle mover reset stepping with the purpose of error prevention, this will handle both the various horizontal, vertical, and inverse variations.
Environment
- Fixed a ball bouncing over a flat hole (e.g. like in ‘Midhole Madness’ causing the ball to roll longer than it should). Essentially it was reading the surface of the pipe angle and the ball was being treated as if entering a pipe it shouldn’t stop in. Instead, there is a delay check for entering this state overriden by transitioning to a pipe hole state in which it will begin immediately.
- Added a bit more resistance from water when your ball lands in it, this will mean less time waiting for it to come to a stop.
- Fixed some pipes having a bit too much delay with detection of next physical surface during exiting, this would sometimes cause a delay on the ball knowing it was on ground again (and thus rolling a bit much).
- Added a revised mesh for the square hole areas you typically fall into off the edge of ledges, this is sloped better to avoid getting stopped in parts, which would disrupt the gameplay flow.
- Fixed some wall gaps on “Spin Cycle”.
- Fixed various issues with resetting during practice mode and how some obstacles were handled.
Interface
- Fixed a padding issue on the replay buttons.
- Fixed a glyphs issue with the session replay being incorrect.
- Added ability to exit game menu with the esc key or b button.
- Fixed an issue where switching glyph mode while in a session replay didn’t update the glyphs for the replay buttons.
- Fixed an issue where setting Glyphs keyboard only in the gamepad menu would cause some gamepad glyphs in that menu not to render correctly.
- Added dedicated ‘Restart Level’ button to the game menu when playing practice. While it is possible to reset the level just by pressing the backspace or back button to undo back to the tee, this offers an alternative method, and will behave as if restarting the level via the scoreboard.
- Added a single joycon config to the gamepad settings. Essentially this just picks the left joystick as the device for everything. Everything else should work as is, but I found the process of connecting a Joy Con to Steam a little more involved as by default triggers weren’t mapped correctly in big picture, so you may have to set that up first (this is nothing to do with, and outside this game though).
Discord Server
Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.