The road to version 1.100 continues. To think that I just released the beta about 2 weeks ago, and even more so, online was started to be developed over a month. Time sure is flying by quickly, but that just makes it more remarkable at just how much progress has been made and soon the game will be online!
As you may have read from the last quick update, all characters are now available on the beta, which means that online is getting closer to being complete. But you guys are going to have to hang on tight for just a bit longer as there is more to the next major update. There is so much that I want to do for version 1.100 that I needed to stop for the time being to figure out what is the next step before the major release. I will take this time to outline my thoughts and plans for the upcoming big update and show you guys what to expect.
Online Mode
We're first going to talk about online and how that is progressing. As mentioned, I released the beta 2 weeks ago and have gotten some good feedback from it. Many changes were made to the game to suit the online experience, especially the characters. As I figured, not everything about the characters that worked offline would translate to an online experience. Many changes had to be made to the character's abilities. But since I was going to do that anyway to balance them out, I figured this was a good time as any. I have written the changes made to the characters in their own announcements but for ease of access, here are all the changes summarized:
Reimu
Bomb
Her orbs have been decreased from 16 to 14 and are summoned in a circular pattern.
Sakuya
Desperation
Increased cost from 2 points per step to 5 points per step.
Desperation max lowered from 500 to 300.
Slow down changed from 20fps to 15fps.
In online mode, when activating slow down, game immediately slows down instead of gradually.
You can no longer stop the slow down after activation.
Remilia
Projectile
Trail pattern has been changed.
Cost of using projectile has been lowered from 250 to 145.
Bomb
Commanding the bats to transform into bullets, the number of bullets have been changed from 4 to 3 per bat.
Cirno
Desperation
Cirno's desperation can now be disabled by having the ball hit the wall, but the wall will lose an extra 50 points in addition to whatever strength it had.
Daiyousei
Projectile
Every individual projectile may now target the closest opponent to their proximity. This means that the bullets won't target the same opponent as a group as often as before.
Bomb
Dai will now stop the ball every time she teleports, even if its off screen.
Nitori
Desperation
Size of bubbles have been halved to make it easier to pop.
Ball resets touches when destroying bubbles.
Fixed Reimu's desperation being ineffective.
Fixed Marisa's bomb and desperation being ineffective.
Fixed Remilia's bomb and desperation being ineffective.
Cirno's desperation will prevent ball from bouncing, destroying bubbles in its path.
Youmu's bomb can destroy all the bubbles.
Yuugi's bomb can destroy the bubbles.
Aya's bomb and desperation can blow away and destroy all the bubbles respectively.
Suika's bomb can destroy the bubbles and fixed the issue of the mini Suika's not damaging the bubbles.
Suika
Desperation
Destroying the mist manually will now disperse items from the center of the player's side.
Ran
Projectile
Two extra denser rings of danmaku can be emitted when the star explodes at full size.
The ball will now explode the star when it touches it.
Bomb
Ball no longer cancels the dispersion but activates it.
Projectile collection now lasts twice as long as before. This means that you will have more time to to collect more projectiles or have the ball activate it.
When Ran starts dispensing, she no longer collects any further projectiles.
You now get two points per projectile collected rather than one. This means that the dispersion now lasts longer than before.
Chen
Bomb
You can now shoot while using bomb but will unleash the built up projectiles.
Desperation
You can now hit the ball in this state.
And now that the characters have been set up for online, all that is left is to wrap things up, right? Not quite yet. There's still a to-do list that I have to go through. Most are minor things like making the alt palettes available online (if you tried switching colors for your character, it may not have been seen by the other player) along with some more major things like adding 2v2. And while some changes are exclusive to the online functionality, others are linked to version 1.100 in general, so let us get to that.
Version 1.100
This is going to be a big update. Unlike before where the updates were gradually building the game, this one is going to updated many elements all at once. It's not a complete overhaul of the game, but it will surely have very noticeable changes to the current presentation. I have mentioned this before but the majority of the time spent in developing this game for the past 2 years was in the gameplay department. Everything else, down to the menus, was done in a relatively short amount of time. That's why there are many inconsistencies with many aspects of the game and this next version is going to fix that up.
I'm still going through the game to see what is needing update but have made a general list of the changes I want to make. I'll let you guys in on what to expect for this major update:
New menu designs: As I already explained, some menus are inconsistent. I'll be working on improving the navigation of the menus to make them more streamlined and consistent.
Thank you fairies: To those who bought the game and requested a fairy, it has not been forgotten, and version 1.100 will finally see them appear!
CPU opponent update: This will be an update to the AI of the computer controlled opponents during single player. It has been using the same basic AI for so long that it's time for an update. This might be the most labor intensive of the tasks due to needing to account for every character's abilities, so it may take a while, and may even need further updates later on, which I'll let you guys know in future announcements.
Redraw graphics: Lots of graphics need work such as the cutscene graphics, which is one of the aspects that was done in haste due to the deadline of the time (they don't even have backgrounds). I want to go back and fix them up. There are also other graphics that need fixing such as some character sprites.
More modes and access to the campaign mini games: I will be adding more game modes, including the arcade mode I have been wanting to add for a while now. I'm also planning on adding fresh new mini-games as well and giving you guys access to the mini games in the campaign in a separate menu.
Extras and secrets: Expect a few more surprises on the way.
Gameplay will be more or less the same, which you can get a glimpse of in the beta. You can experience the changes to the players as well as any gameplay changes as the base game has not been changed since the last update. If you own a copy of the game, follow the instructions in this announcement:
Also of note, the beta won't be around for long. It will remain for the next 1 - 2 weeks but won't be updated any further, and will be removed right around the time the next version comes out.
That is all the information I have for the upcoming version 1.100. Look forward to seeing all the changes. Keep an eye on the Compact Youmu channel as I will be uploading a special video announcing v1.100, as well as here in the Steam store page and the Twitter profile where I post constant updates to the game.
And thank you so much for all your support.