Changelog
Happy new years! This update goes back and reworks the base game of oath, so that QoL features added in the free DLC are also present in the base build as well, when you don't have the DLC installed!
Story Unlock Revamp v2
A lot of players don't find the majority of the games content - with them stopping once they reach the end of the 'story', and not investigating further to unlock the bulk of the actual games content....
Originally, the unlock for this was very obscure, with lots of digging around needed to find - this was when this content was still relatively small and seen as a bonus and not the bulk of the game. With the prior update to the base game, this was changed so that if you try play the story again, it now unlocks!
However, I've seen that even this didn't really work... a lot of players would just go "oh well, that's it!" - not helped by the button being named "home". I also assumed players would see the vast amount of unfound achievements and consider there more to the game than the 15 minutes of the story button, but nonetheless apparently not....
To help more players actually play majority of the game, two new changes have been made:
Home is now renamed to Epilogue - this should clear some confusion and also guide you naturally to the new content, with the obvious assumption that it continues on the story. The button will still change name after full completion, but at that point, it no longer needs to be called epilogue either!
Epilogue now unlocks as soon as you finish the story - no more vague "maybe you missed something..." - a little immersion breaking of a message too in hindsight. The game will auto-unlock the epilogue, but also still trigger the additions of the previous update, meaning that the 2nd run will kick you out early and give you the achievement. It is also still possible to unlock the epilogue through the secret route in your first playthrough, and the secret route is still needed for all achievements.
Achievement Changes
Two of the achievements have been reported as buggy, which have been fixed prior in patches - but only applying to the DLC build. This has been backported to the base game so one of the two achievements should now properly work no matter the build you play, and the other achievement has been removed entirely.
Why? Well, the achievement in question was Oracle - which required you to visit each of the 40 or so artist rooms. Doing so is a bit tedious and really doesn't need an achievement, I prefer it now as a fully optional thing to do which unlocks things like the bonus music game-wide and just the fun of finding artists you care about or want to visit instead of being forced to go to all of them - increasingly frustrating if you accidentally missed one and now have to figure out which. Also, with the update of more rooms later in development, it was weird how only half of all rooms counted to the achievement, so now it's just more uniform with it being a fully optional thing untied to any achievements.
New QoL Changes
There's been some major changes to both the base game and the DLC with this update:
Better item pickups: Before, no matter the version you played on, items in the world would stay present after picking them up. This was due to restrictions in how the maps worked, but this has been solved during work on emerald and backported to oath. Things such as the vinyl record or the diamond ring will now disappear on pickup as if you had actually... picked them up!
The scuba suit seller has also been moved slightly to be better visible to the player.
Graphics adjustments and additions: A bunch of slightly broken graphics have been fixed - from things 1 pixel off, the wrong colour, or with other errors. The diamond ring item mentioned above has also been changed to have a new sprite to better fit it being... a ring, as well as had the wall moved so it's easier to spot as somewhere you can go to. A small animation has also been added to the elevators and train rides as well, and the star above the key in the story has been made red to better indicate to players that there's something new here. The art menu screen has also been fixed.
QoL Changes from DLC
Some changes have been made to the base game, majority coming from the DLC:
Improved base game graphics:
every single room and map from the base game has been revisited and slightly updated, mainly with some shading updates. The main cities also have a little bit extra detail - not too much that it's unrecognizable, but enough to polish up some edges!!
Bumping into walls is more obvious - you won't do a walking animation if you are walking into a solid object, and a "bump" sound effect will play.
Fixed menu (aimed at steam deck):
While playing on steam deck, I noticed the settings menu seems to scale slightly differently to desktop. To fix this, the buttons in the settings menu are now slightly smaller, with a redundant option removed in order to both declutter and fix this issue
Graphics Overhaul
As mentioned, the graphics of the game have been overhauled in a couple areas to breathe new life into as many aspects as possible:
Animated tiles: A lot, and I mean a lot of the games graphics are now animated. The best example of this is when swimming underwater, all the coral will move in the water around you! Smaller examples include the flames of torches now actually moving like fire, water and shorelines rippling, and grass and posters moving in the wind. I feel this adds a lot more life to the game! This was in the DLC before, but now is present in the base game
Updated textbox: one of the main characters has a new textbox to help distinguish when you (the player) are talking/thinking versus when they are talking to you. A small change but should help out for any confusions
Updated level of detail: mentioned slightly above (coming from the original post about it in the DLC) but the base game has been considerably changed graphically. There's now more detail present in all areas of the game, with new sprites, and shading added to make the earlier areas consistent with the graphical style of the later ones.
Thank you for playing my game! I'll do my best to continuously update and improve the game if anything such as missed bugs get found or large QoL features can be added.
PLEASE NOTE: Uninstalling the DLC will not work correctly due to how the game files are set up - with DLC files overriding the base game files to save your disc space, uninstalling the DLC through steam will remove all the new files, but keep any overwritten ones! To truly go back to the base game (while unadvised), you need to fully uninstall the game as well as remove the DLC checkmark. Swapping back and forth might cause unintended bugs as well, so it's not advised.
PLEASE REPORT ANY BUGS IN THE DISUCSSIONS TAB! With this big of a rework to a lot of vital parts of the game, there may be some bugs introduced or missed - if you get any errors that cause a crash or other bugs, please post it in the discussion tab with a copy of the error message if you can! This will help me patch out any unintended stuff super quick!
Known bug(?): mentioned with the paragraph above, DLC files stay even when playing base game once you remove the DLC - I'm unsure if the latest update installs some of these DLC files incorrectly or if its purely due to me downgrading my build. I'm currently testing this but if you have never installed the DLC but now have a new-looking main menu, please report it as a bug!