Greetings, Hard Chip players!
I hope you're all snug in your chairs (or lab benches!) and enjoying well-deserved holiday cheer. Spread joy, fun, and a little bit of techy mischief too! I've had an incredible year building and refining Hard Chip, and I couldn't have done it without your relentless enthusiasm and feedback. Thank you so much for that!
So take a break, recharge your batteries, and enjoy the festivities with friends and family. See you around the server, and may your circuits stay cool and your yield always be 100%!
Stay warm and game on!
Let's cover what changed from 0.1.6.61 to 0.1.6.65:
1. NEW Delayed FET Deactivation
Totally floating FETs (both channel and gate here)
Though HC reduces reality, problems and ways to solve them in HC and reality are close. One reduction was HC's CMOS (or FET) keeps its last ON/OFF state when the gate floats.
This wasn't an issue for puzzles and ways to solve them, but it was a neat trick you could exploit in some specific use cases. And it was somehow confusing.
Now FETs with a floating gate will switch OFF after 100 ticks to simulate a slowly discharging gate. Note: HC won't follow real-world use cases for CMOS with floating gate as those react to the surrounding charges and switch erratically.
Changelog:
- NEW Mos delayed deactivation on floating gate;
2. UPDATED Invisible code cleaning and admin tools
Online scores are used here!
Obviously, not all changes relate to something that is immediately visible. But still needs to be done, mainly because it translates to free time for working on something else. Two time-consumers were
Building, packaging, and releasing all 3 builds (demo, main and playtest).
Online score validation
I'm not sure those are interesting, so I won't enter too much into the details. However, the result is a faster release process and a quicker verification and revalidation process of the online score.
Scores are crucial for the player's trust; players must know that the scores they see are legit and feel they are in control to achieve (or not) those scores too. So work will continue to be spent on that front.
The score can now be recalculated in under 2 hours before it was 8 hours. The process is less error-prone, too, as more parts were automatized.
I still have work to do on that front, but hey, that's cool (at least for me!)
Changelog:
- MI Admin tool faster validation;
- MI Splitting into projects, main/demo/admin, tests are back, and server too. Mainly files moving around;
- MI Depot files updated for splitted release process;
- MI Admin tools ++ (revalidation, orphan score/submission, sync scores/submissions, statistics, comparers and bests);
Quality Of Life, Bug, and Crash fixes list
Release is still recent, naturally, those past weeks were focused on fixes and improvements.
Changelog:
- GRD 16-64bit Adder, hard grades;
- PERF Ctrl A Large optim;
- PERF sub 1s on large block selection;
- NEW Experiment 200% ui scale (not very useable atm);
- UX Focus text input on add readout menu showing up;
- UX no slots switch action from the library and a limited set of tutos have slots enable;
- UX Replacing historic Shift to Ctrl to build AND select/delete/ up;
- MI wrong key binding in help;
- FIX Moving input/outputs in between steps take 2;
- FIX crash on selected block indicator;
- FIX shifting channel pad exploit;
- FIX Moving input on pause exploit;
- FIX overlapping Helper in Tuto;
- FIX Correct interact binding for terminals;
- FIX Terminals texture getting truncated;
Looking Ahead
I intend to return to a creative place now. There is still the random validation and other improvements to be made, but it's time to do new stuff!
Your feedback, suggestions, and comments are not just important; they're the lifeblood of this game. We value your input and encourage you to join our Discord server to share your thoughts and ideas!
Thank you for playing Hard Chip, and stay tuned for more updates and new features!