Hello!
After way too many delays (and some unfortunate news I'll be mentioning later in this post), the Leaderboard update is almost upon us.
I'm still doing some more polishing and testing, but in the meantime, here's a preview of the Leaderboard Challenge feature!
Bet you can't beat my score.
The way it works is simple: find someone with a high score, then tell 'em you can do better than that by hitting the "Challenge" button in the bottom right corner:
It's not too late to turn back.
Once you've hit OK, you'll start a run with their exact same settings, including their seed and unlocked weapons. You'll also see the score you have to beat in the corner of your screen, in case you forget:
Having second thoughts?
If you don't beat their score, you can either try again, or live with your failure and walk away in shame:
Told you.
But should you succeed, you'll feel pride and the sense of accomplishment. That is to say, you don't get anything at all. Maybe I could add an achievement?
Now that this feature has been properly shown off, I can get to that "unfortunate news" I mentioned earlier:
On launch, you won't be able to upload scores to the leaderboards with Mutators enabled.
Steam's Leaderboards normally allow for only 256 bytes of data to be stored; I use this to store information like the run seed and player level so that you can challenge other players and copy their run.
Mutator information is currently too large to squeeze within those 256 bytes. In the worst case scenario, a player could have 15 different mutators enabled, most of which have tweakable settings that also need to be stored.
However, there is a workaround: you can store additional data on the leaderboard in the form of a (hidden) Steam Workshop item. Sadly, this functionality is broken in the current version of GodotSteam, and the patch that would've fixed it was delayed due to the lead developer losing their progress on it.
I don't want this patch to be delayed any further due to circumstances outside of my control, so it will be shipping without Mutator support. Sorry to anyone looking forward to setting ridiculous high scores with a silly Mutator combo.
That being said, I will be exploring alternative ways to store Mutator data more efficiently, and also praying for the GodotSteam patch to come out.
On a lighter note, you might've noticed that my name on the Leaderboard is gold. This is an extra perk I'm adding to the Supporter Pack, which does absolutely nothing besides making you stick out. I hope you enjoy it.
As always, thanks for reading!
Zdann