Hi all,
After an incredibly busy yet wonderful festive period, I'm happy to finally be able to deploy the December update for Cult of PiN. This update features a number of QoL updates, bug fixes and the last of the core features I wanted to get in before release: Ritual Upgrades.
I can also announce the second table has been completely reworked and ready for release (this table doesn't feature in the demo but hopefully goes some way to explain what I've been up to for the last 6 weeks, besides the changes in this update) and I am now moving onto reworking the third table - once all four tables are complete I think this game is finally cooked and ready to release, so this is likely the last major update to the demo so that I can focus on getting it over the line. There will of course be bug fixes, balance changes and other smaller tweaks that I'll keep releasing as I go but I really want to get my head down and give my full attention to the table designs.
You can see a preview of the new second table at the bottom of this post, so might as well read the patch notes as you scroll:
v0.9.42 Changes:
Ritual Upgrades - The Bonus Table now allows you to upgrade a Ritual. The upgrades are as follows:
Tempest:
+1: Summons two pillars every second, and can now hit Blockers, healing them.
+2: Summons an additional pillar every time a ball hits a bumper. Damage x2.
+3: Summons a constant barrage of pillars, between 5 and 10 per second.
Inferno:
+1: Damage frequency increase by 100%, Heals blockers in range
+2: Bumpers destroyed by any form of burning now explode. Damage x2.
+3: Doubles Radius. Damage x2.
Sparks:
+1: Hits now Chain to the next nearest bumper. Heals Blockers in range.
+2: Targets the nearest two Bumpers. Damage x2.
+3: Hit all bumpers in range. Damage x2.
(Note that Multiball and Ball Rituals do not have upgrades as of now - these are still WIP)
Each upgrade level of a Ritual also reduces the mission count required to trigger it by one.
Added a simple Blocker to the Bonus Table, which is removed after one hit, or after activating the Bonus Bumper.
Increased spawn rate of Bonus letter Tentacles on the board.
Inferno and Sparks Rituals no longer end when starting a new Ball
Gameplay:
Boss Tentacles - From Act II onwards, some of the Boss Bumper tentacles are now made of stone, and are not removed on hit
Ritual Icons - Missions now show the icons of any Rituals which are dependent on it being completed
Slow-motion effect added after Bonus Table ends and after Blessing/Curse screen is closed
Physics pass - more work has gone into reducing ball bumping when rolling onto flippers, reducing cases of the ball stopping completely when colliding with walls and flippers, better ball launch trajectory from flippers, and a number of other smaller tweaks
Reduced Physics CPU usage throughout, with focussed instances of high calculations configured in place of a generalist approach.
New Taskbar Icon and Favicon (and Discord icon)
Bug Fixes:
Tutorial Save Data - Fix for replaying the tutorial accidentally wiping all save data (oops..)
Fix for slow-mo reducing nudge velocity
Fix for Bonus Table reward panel not selecting an initial option, soft-locking the game when using a controller
Fix for being unable to select and sell a second glyph from the shop screen when using a controller
Better collision detection, preventing Balls from travelling through bumpers if frame rate stutters
Removed residual dual-flipper input, causing issues with flipper input on some devices
Fix for single-bumper (hit three times) lights sometimes blinking/flashing even after one or more hits
There will likely be a lot of balancing needed around the new Ritual Upgrades feature, so there may be smaller updates in the near future! In the meantime, thanks for reading and as promised, here's a sneak peek of the second table, The Cult of Bone:
Happy Flipping,
Kenny