First of all, we're moving our versioning to a more "standard" way of versioning: Instead of counting up from 56 to 57, we call the current version 0.5.7. This makes it easier to distinguish between bugfix releases, minor releases and major release and also give you a bit of an idea how close (or far ;-) ) we are from 1.0.0. We'll go 0.6.0 when we finally have multiplayer fully implemented.
For anyone using an AMD GPU, we have awesome news: While the crash bug in Level 1, which is now a confirmed Unity bug, is not fixed in the engine, yet, Marek provided a workaround. So this should no longer happen. V0.5.7 is available in the default and beta branch, we'll keep beta-no-gpu-skinning and beta-r54b-unity535 as safe fallbacks a little longer and then finally move one with just two branches (default and beta).
The bug has been confirmed by Unity Technologies to be a Unity bug and they have a fix on the way but that will probably take a few weeks to land in a build. But fortunately, their description of the bug helped Marek aka zuzzu, the developer of PlayWay Water to provide a workaround. For any developers that may be using this: Here's a link to the patch.
And, we're currently four guys working fulltime on the game - Samuel and I are now also supported by Hrishi and Adrien. Adrien (game-designer) inspired and implemented much improved mechanics for the "head orb tracks" in Level 3, and Hrishi (artist) suggested to make Levels 1 and 2 darker and created a more sunset-like skybox which we all think looks much better (and also makes the orbs easier to see). And Ben Baures (aka Nebsterlicious) now helps with some of the texts - the store texts have already been updated a little and will be getting a more major update shortly.
Currently, development has slowed down a little bit because ... GAMESCOM!!!!!! If you are visiting this huge and crazy event, make sure to also visit our booth at Hall 10, C/10. Preparing this has been hell ... but also a lot of fun. We'll have a more detailed announcement shortly.
And as usual ... for the full release notes, see below:
- Much improved the tracks with the head orb mechanic (thanks to Adrien :-) ). The Bassline in Level 3 is now the 3rd track again (instead of the last) and we basically start with a simple "triangle" (left hand, head, right hand) with no movement. Then, incrementally we add some head movement to this. As your hands are "bound" to their positions, it's fairly easy to handle this. We then add a little bit of variety both to the head movement, and eventually to the hands. Then comes the old bassline part that doesn't give you any head orbs and is fairly easy to play. The Hihat is now Track 4 and builds on this mechanic. At the end of the level, which also marks the end of Stage 1 of the game (Levels 1-3), we literally make you jump :-)
- Moved Levels 1 and 2 into more of an "evening / sunset atmosphere" to make the orbs more visible. It also looks nicer. This was suggested and implemented by Hrishi.
- Removed "The Lab Renderer" ... it's a great idea, and a good implementation - for projects that use this right from the start. Porting an existing project has been more trouble than it was worth (we actually didn't see significant performance improvements through The Lab Renderer - we did see performance improvements by going from Unity 5.3 to 5.4, and also from some of the other improvements we have applied).
- Updated PlayWay Water to 2.0 Beta 3
- Did a lot of testing together with Marek, the developer of PlayWay Water to isolate the AMD crash issue; finally received confirmation from Unity that it's a Unity bug and a potential work around which seems to work. The actual fix will land in Unity probably a few weeks from now but the workaround seems to be stable, so we have it in this version.
- Updated Holodance-Logo
- Updated to Unity 5.4 RC3
- Changed versioning ... the current version would be "Release 57", we moved this to 0.5.7