Hey all,
I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who's taken the time to leave a review earlier this week for Katanaut <3 If you've been enjoying Katanaut and want to help support the game, I'd really appreciate a review on Steam. It goes a long way for a solo developer like me and helps massively with visibility on Steam, so more people can find out about the game!
This patch is a pretty massive one. The biggest change is a complete renderer swap from Vulkan over to OpenGL. I basically tore out the rendering backend and replaced it, with the goal of getting smoother and more consistent performance across the board, especially on older machines and Steam Deck. I saw a lot of comments across Reddit, along with some feedback and reviews that the game was struggling a bit on old PC's. This is my trying my best to accommodate those folks... and I hope to hone in on it more.
You should see fewer hitches, fewer weird performance drops, and more stable framerates in general. However this is all at the cost of having that little ugly loading bar when you first boot up the game... I was trying my best to avoid this, but it needed to be done. This change touches a huge amount of the game though, so if anything looks strange or runs worse after updating, please let me know.
There are also two menus people have been asking for for a while that are finally here.
The pause menu now has a Combos tab where you can look through every secret combo you've discovered. It will ONLY show once you buy the items required for that combo from the specialist. The Keeper also now has a Notes tab at the home base where you can go back through every note and boss note you've collected.
Thank you as always for playing, sending reports, and giving me feedback. It helps a ton.
Core:
- Game startup now prepares common effects and gameplay content behind a new progress bar, helping runs play more smoothly with fewer first-use stutters and less crashes.
- The pause menu now has a Combos tab listing every secret combo in the game, each shown as its item icons with an arrow between them. Combos reveal themselves as you own the items, so a piece you have never owned stays locked behind a chained padlock. Own both halves, even in different runs, and the combo, its damage and its description are yours for good. Owned pieces are marked with a golden border, and you can highlight either icon to see that item's own description. Holding up or down runs through the list faster the longer you hold it.
- The Keeper menu now has a Notes tab where you can browse every note and boss note you have found, with the full text shown beside it.
- Note text in the Keeper menu now always displays at a fixed comfortable size.
- Added a Hitstop option to the Accessibility settings, allowing standard combat hitstops to be turned on or off.
- Unbanning an item now asks for confirmation first, so you no longer lose the crystals you spent by accident.
- Katana skills are no longer sold back once bought. Pressing an owned skill now freely turns it off or on instead, and owned skills show a golden halo around their border. The katana border on the HUD and leaderboards now reflects the skills you actually have turned on. The Reset All button no longer removes skills either, it just turns off everything on that katana.
- You can now buy as many katana skills as you can afford. The 25 limit only counts skills you have turned on, and skills only work in a connected chain from your katana's anchor.
- After pressing Reset All in the Katana skills, the camera now jumps straight to your katana's starting node, which glows and sparks so you know exactly where to begin turning your skills back on.
- The katana skill web now streams tiny energy sparks between your active skills, and the starting node's beacon burns brighter in orange and gold.
- The enemies in the training room menu now display correctly, including all of the newer enemies that were missing from it.
Balance:
- Fast-fall landings no longer briefly lock player movement after impact.
- Snaggers no longer resurrect after death... for now >:)
Bugs:
- Fixed a bug related to Avarice Engine boss fight where play was capable for temporarily getting stuck in the ground.
- Fixed a bug related to extreme lage when touching red pulsing wall veins, applied fix to all other "damage areas" in the game.
- Down + Jump now reliably activates the downward ground smash after dropping through two-way platforms or while clinging to a wall, without triggering a double jump or wall jump first.
I am exhausted, and going to go get pizza and call it a night.
Happy hunting! See you soon.
- Eugene | Solo dev