Update Summary:
This update focuses on Cutscenes, Revamping Curses and Performance Improvements.
We’ve reworked some of the loading systems to pre-load more assets before starting a run. This will hopefully address some players getting stutter and long load times on run start. If issues persist we will explore some recently added Godot tools for prepacking shader compilation (which is likely the culprit).
Cutscenes will now play at the end of each run, with each Absurdity Level getting its own unique story content. The Demo will contain Cutscenes from Chapter 10, 11 and 1 (the story is not told in sequential order) with the other chapters will be locked off for the full game.
We’ve reworked curses to make them more “predictable” with new UI and narrowing down the options pool during a run.
Future Plans:
We’ll be expanding curses and upgrades in the Next Update to increase the “risk/reward” design of their interactions.
Our intention is to make Upgrades stronger but Curses will directly counter/block certain builds. The added “predictability” of Curses will mean the player is making an educated guess when choosing Normal/Hard difficulty options with Curses (with harder difficulty options made more tempting to pick by better rewards).
Kill The Music Demo Change Log 0.45
Major Changes:
Added Cutscenes to end of each Absurdity Level
Added Cutscene Menu for rewatching unlocked Cutscenes
Set Hard Difficulty to always have a Curse
Set run to pick 2 to 3 Curses at the start of the run and curses during the run will be picked from these options (instead of all curses)
Added prompt and UI during Round Start to display possible curses
Added prompt and UI during Character Select to display Absurdity Info: Enemy Stats, Song List and Curse List.
Improvements to load times by pre-loading more assets before run start.
Minor Changes:
Polished Upgrade Descriptions for Clarity
Rebalanced Absurdity 1 to be easier
Returned Beat Leeway for “Good” Hits to be easier while maintaining difficulty for “Perfect” Hits
Set Fragment Upgrade Option to scale amount up according to Absurdity Level
Lowered Unlock Requirements for Unlockable Upgrades
Improved tracking and effective range of Bass Vortex Upgrade
Bug Fixes:
Absurdity Level 3 Easy Difficulty was incorrectly set to more health than Normal or Hard Difficulty.
Known Issues:
When stacking Solo Stat Upgrades (like Solo Atk Up and Solo Def Up they will sometimes not stack and only one or the other will activate, should be both)
Curses uses the term “Med” and Round Start uses term “Normal” to refer to difficulty (inconsistent)
Solo Def Up and Solo Attack Up description text don’t specify that that upgrade enables the boost when soloing with that specific instrument (indicated by the portrait when selecting upgrade) (unclear)
Boss Curses don’t pick from the curse run pool but from all curses (making it too unpredictable)
Drum "Firing Rate +2/+3" Upgrade in Tutorial will sometimes fail to be gained after selecting.
Hot Fix v0.45b: Absurdity 2 Round 9 Hard Difficulty had it's Kill Quota set to 5 (instead of 65) and if it spawned as a Kill Quota + Timer Room, the quota value would be automatically lowered by -10 resulting in a -5 Kill Quota Room, freezing the game.