Welcome to Hours After Midnight v0.3.29a patch.
List of changes:
- Added Tooltips.
- Added Hardmode.
- Update for Gamemodes.
- Update for Leaderboard/Scoring system.
- Update for Chest/Ability reward UI.
- Update for Pause UI/UX.
- Various bug fixes, qol and stability improvements.
This is also our first patch on Steam so welcome everyone :)
Tooltips
Some of the UI improvements we've made in this update include the introduction of Tooltips.
Now you can hover over Items, Abilities, Buffs or some of the Options Settings and they will display additional information.
This improvement is especially good for Abilities and Items because now instead of pausing the game to look at the statistics of your rewards, you can just hover over the icons on the fly.
As for the Options Settings, right now only a few - the most confusing ones have tooltips but in the future updates more options will include the additional explanations.
Chest/Ability Reward UI Update.
This is another major update of this Patch. It improves the UI of the Reward selection process.
The previous version of the UI tried to show both the currently owned rewards and the new ones to choose from at the same time. It was prepared for our initial vision of this system which was to allow for much more than just selecting the new stuff.
However, after the first wave of play tests we've received enough feedback to decide to change the idea a little bit and evolve it into something better. Thanks to that decision the UI is simpler, more intuitive and is utilizing the screen space in a more optimal way.
While switching tabs gave us a possibility to keep both windows (possessed items/abilities and the ones to choose from) in the same place seemed to be quite convenient, the switching itself was not as such. After the changes, the user experience has improved greatly as it's still possible to compare things, but without having to take additional steps to do so.
Pause UI/UX
Among the UI/UX improvements, there were also some improvements to the Pause menu. This one is not as impactful as other changes but is still worth to mention as it hopefully improves the readability of the Player Statistics.
Adam: On a personal note, this specific UI element proved to be more challenging for me than the others, mainly because of so many possibilities for putting the rewards and stats information, while at the same time keeping the layout in a way it wouldn't make the player feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. Another idea was to create additional panels to help separate character information, but these could quickly become problematic while increasing the overall complexity. The current layout seems to be the best of all ideas so far, but it doesn't mean it can't be further improved in future updates.
Map Levels Update
Until recently, the game introduced only one objective-based level, which included all of the monsters and mini-boss the demo has to offer. While the gameplay itself was already very well balanced, the map was quite difficult for novices, as they could be easily wiped out in the first minutes of the game.
With the current knowledge and feedback in mind, we decided to implement additional 3 map levels that would allow the player not only to have more content to play through, but also to have an easier start. They also have an additional description which makes an introduction to the game lore.
The maps go as follows:
- Cemetery Outskirts - 10 minutes trial and does not include the hardest enemies.
- Cemetery Main Road - 15 minutes time trial with fewer Elite enemies and a new monster.
- Deep Forest - 17 minutes time trial with fewer Elite and Champion enemies and a new monster.
- Haunted Graveyard - 20 minutes trial that has everything including the mini-boss.
Leaderboard & Scoring
Although the full leaderboard system is still a work in progress, some of its features are already finished, and now each map level contains your personal best score. The score is available while selecting the map you want to play.
The score is calculated based on various factors such as how long you survived, how rare items your character had, how many enemies have been defeated, etc.
Hardmode
We've added an extra option you can select for any map level.
When Hardmode is enabled, it reduces health regeneration effects by 50%, removes the Rebirth ability from the rewards pool and disables the Reviving mechanics.
When enabled it also increases the amount of final scores you get per run.
We plan to make this game mode more rewarding in the future, when more content will be added to the game.
Fixes, QoL and Improvements
Many small things have been fixed or improved in this patch. Among those changes, you can find things such as:
- First startup localization fixes - The game now handles language selection better.
- First-time video settings - The game now evaluates the capabilities of the device and can automatically enable or disable options such as High-Quality Rendering which was previously always disabled. Most modern devices and especially Desktops can run this game just fine so you will most likely find those options Enabled most of the time.
- Small adjustments to enemy sprites - Some color adjustments and small visual tweaks were made to enemies in the hope of making them blend less with the environment.
- Fixed an issue with drawing Hero icons across multiple UI panels.
- Due to the addition of the Hardmode option, the game mode option panel is now always visible regardless of starting single-player or multiplayer mode.
- Fixed an issue with floating projectiles once the enemy gets killed and Gore is Enabled.
- Improved FX of panic modifier to make it more noticeable.
- There is now a small delay once the game is over so that the final player death animation is now visible in singleplayer.
- Along with the scoring system update, more info is now drawn on the Game Completion screen, such as Total Damage Dealt.
That's it for this patch!