Release Notes: Feb 17, 2025

Video

• Additional stability for video playback to ensure that videos always play for their full duration.

Computer

• Fixed the texture of the bottom dial so that it no longer looks smudged or cut off on some monitors.
• Improved the style of both dials' labels so that they look more natural. Now they are part of the old, worn out dials, rather than simply looking like bright white decals.

Workbench

• Improved the active cell (greenish box) behavior so that its movement is now always restricted to the current drag restriction region (blueish box), better indicating to the player how drag restriction regions work.
• Players can now drag objects out of the drag restricted region (blueish box) onto the workbench, even while a drag restriction hot key is down, but only if they move the cursor entirely outside of the puzzle grid; otherwise, drag movement remains restricted to the blueish box.
• Players can now drag objects from the workbench into the puzzle grid, targeting the closest cell under the mouse, and causing the current drag restriction region (blueish box) to move to the new target cell, if required. This new feature has the following restrictions and behavior:
  1. After an object is dragged from the workbench into the puzzle grid in this way, all of the standard drag restrictions and behaviors apply again; i.e., the object cannot be dragged outside of the current restriction region (blueish box), except to drag it back onto the workbench (see previous feature).
  2. The cell closest to the mouse pointer that is also closest to the camera is always the implicit target. Therefore, ambiguous scenarios in which cells are behind the cell in which the mouse is currently over, with respect to the current camera orientation, are not reachable with this feature. The player must use the drag restriction hot keys or reorient the camera to reach them.
  3. If the player is holding down any axis restriction hot key, then this feature is disabled. While a hot key is down, the assumption is that the player's intention is to drag the object into the current drag restriction region, not to change it. Also, this gives the player the choice of which behavior they want to use while dragging an object into the puzzle grid from the workbench; i.e., to respect the restriction or to change it.
• Selecting an object that's already in a puzzle grid cell will now move the current drag restriction region to encompass it, if required.
  • Only if the player isn't currently holding down any drag restriction hot key, due to the standard assumption that the player's intention is to keep the current drag restriction when they're holding a hot key down.

• Increased the opacity of the drag restriction vignette so it's more obvious, especially with realistic lighting enabled.
  
• Moved the mouse and drag restriction HUD elements to the bottom center of the screen, spaced apart based on a percentage of the screen's width, so that they are now much more visible and useful to the player.
  • Players didn't seem to be noticing or using them when they were in the top left and bottom left corners of the screen.

• Improved the drag restriction HUD so that the X and Z axes dynamically rotate along with the current camera's yaw.
  
• Renamed the drag restriction HUD label from "Drag Restriction" to "Drag/Flip Restrictions", to be more accurate, because it also restricts flipping objects while the hot keys are down.
  
• Added a blueish glow (matching the drag restriction vignette) to the drag axis HUD whenever an axis becomes enabled, to catch the player's attention when a puzzle is loaded.
  • The glow also fades in, per drag axis, when its corresponding hot key is pressed, and it fades out slowly when it's released. This should indicate to the player that they must hold the key down to retain its effect.

• Fixed deflector flip behavior so that it always changes in 90° increments around its restricted axis, rather than what seemed like arbitrary rotations to the player.
  
• Improved deflector stripes that show flip axis restrictions so they are more obvious. The white color was too close to the texture, so now it's blue and it has additional arrows at the edges indicating the rotation axis.
  
• Renamed the Move, Rotate and MoveAndRotate side effects to Drag, Flip and DragAndFlip respectively, to match the same operations that the player can do with the mouse, so that players can anticipate what a side effect may do before actually running the code.
  
• Fixed a bug in tablet puzzles so that when failure scenarios that aren't syntax related execute their side effects, then if the player chooses (I)nspect or (R)etry, all side effects are reset.
  • Also added a small delay after transitioning from the tablet camera to the workbench camera, so that the camera stops moving for a bit before the side effects are animated, giving the player more of an opportunity to not miss it.

• Fixed a bug that allowed a short rod to be placed in a motor socket in which a battery is already connected, if the short rod is first added to the motor cell and then flipped to the battery's side.
  
• Fixed the unpacking animation of puzzle boxes so that the machine parts and laser switch always unpack before the container, so that they no longer appear to be clipping through the container.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes would cause 3D objects laid out on the workbench to clip into the puzzle's container. It was just a visual glitch, but it looks much better now that the objects are properly laid out.
  • I also improved the layout algorithm in general. Objects are more tightly packed to the right now, ensuring that more of them are in view to the player by default.

• Reduced the size of inter-cellular (a.k.a. "short") rods in gear puzzles so that it's much more obvious to the player that a flat gear fully takes up the space on the end of the rod that it's on.
  • Players were often confused why they couldn't place a bevel gear on the end of a short rod that already contained a flat gear. It should be much more obvious now.

General

• Improved the "Dave Sexton Presents" logo so that if the player's system meets the minimum recommended integrated GPU specs, then realistic lighting is at least enabled for the logo animation, even if the player's system won't support realistic lighting in general during actual gameplay.
  • I've tested this on a lower-end laptop, with an integrated GPU, and despite realistic lighting not being an option during gameplay because my laptop definitely cannot handle it, it works perfectly fine on just this one real-time 3D logo scene, since it's extremely simple compared to the actual game. And it looks much better with realistic lighting enabled.

• When the player opens a padlock by clicking on an unlocked puzzle box, that state is now saved as part of their progress file rather than the application assuming that the player had already opened the padlock and simply loading the game in that state.
  • This fixes an issue whereby a player progresses past the unlocking of a padlock, while over at the computer terminal solving computer puzzles, but they do not return to the workbench and open the padlock themselves before closing the game. When the player restarted the game later on, there was no known state of whether the player had already opened the padlock themselves, and since their saved progress indicated that they were already past that point, the game simply opened the padlock for them. With this update, when a player restarts the game without having opened an unlocked padlock themselves, the padlock now remains closed (yet still unlocked). The player must manually open each padlock themselves, once per padlock, after the game unlocks it based on their progress, whether the player restarts the game or not. So now players are guaranteed to hear the pleasant success sound of the padlock unlocking and they'll have the satisfaction of opening it themselves, whereas before they would often miss both.

• Added a "Thanks for playing!" message and a small message about new puzzles and storylines to come at the end of the Credits.