Hey Devotees!
We're back again with another round of bug squashing and duck pleasing fixes.
Hotfix #3 tackles two of the biggest pain points since the last Hotfix, The dreaded cloud save desyncs and that quacky experience bug that prevented you from finishing the final obelisk and of course the game! Plus a handful of other quality of life improvements while we were duck deep in the code.
🎸 A New Song Joins The Boombox!
The amazingly talented Kaminari recorded a beautiful acoustic fingerstyle guitar arrangement of our main theme.
We were absolutely blown away by it, so naturally, we did the only sensible thing... we slid into his DMs...
Kaminari's stellar cover is now officially part of the All Hail The Orb Boombox!
Thank you so much, Kaminari, for letting us bring your incredible work into our game.
You can check out the video here.
Now, Before we jump into the bug fixes, our developer Ginger has a few words.....or rather, perform a public grovel....So here he is, on his knees, in front of all of you......grovelling.....
🙇 A Begging from the Developer...
"Look, I'm going to be straight with you all. Some of these bugs were entirely my fault, and some of you have lost saves over the past week because of how I originally built the cloud save system. I cannot bring those saves back, and for that, I am genuinely, truly, deeply sorry! The new system should prevent this from ever happening again, but that sadly doesn't undo the damage already done. If you were one of the players affected, please accept my sincerest apologies, and a virtual duck of your choice....Quack!"
Okay, with that display out of the way, let's get into the fixes!
☁️ The Big Fixes: Cloud Saves & Softlocks
Cloud Save Overhaul: We've completely rebuilt how the game saves your data to the Steam Cloud. Going forward, your saves should stay perfectly in sync and you shouldn't see anymore broken saves like you have been......we hope. Important Note: This fix prevents future save damage, but unfortunately we cannot recover or fix any saves that are already lost or broken. If this did happen to you, we are so very sorry. (Just reread Ginger's grovelling above.)
The Experience Softlock: You know that frustrating bug where the game would crash upon opening a chest, completely softlocking your ability to finish the game? Yeah, so....we couldn't actually figure out what in the quacks was causing the crash itself, but we did figure out what the crash was breaking, This is now hopefully fixed, the game may still crash, but it should no longer softlock you......wings and webbed feet crossed!
⚒️ Performance: That damn Chasm.....
The Chasm Performance: We've squeezed out another round of performance improvements, this time focusing solely on the chasm area. At this point we've optimised, re-optimised and reeeeee-optimised this place so many damn times, that the ducks have gotten bloody whiplash. Hopefully this latest batch is the one that finally makes the chasm not tank your frames as badly as it did before. While not perfect, it should be better.....If it's not.....I guess you'll see us again soon.
🍄 Mushroom Grotto Improvements
Mushrooms Now Stay Put: Previously, Mushrooms sitting in your inventory would just vanish when you quit the game... Turns out Fyodor was using them in his herbal teas??? Anyway, we've had a talk to him, and his now promised us that he will no longer take any mushrooms he didn't personally harvest! So your inventory remains with you.
Smarter "Collect All" Harvesting: The "Collect All" button in the Mushroom Grotto use to harvest every single fully grown mushroom, regardless of whether it was done spreading its spores or not. Now, it only harvests mushrooms that have fully used up all their spores and can't spread anymore. This means more mushrooms overall, less micromanagement (yay!) and happier shroom farmers...Trust us, its better this way!
🦆 Quality of Life.....the Ducks, not yours...clearly.
Master Portal Transition Toggle: If you turned off the Master Portal transition animation, the ducks would venture in and toggle it back on while you were away and out of the game....This was exhausting and annoying them, So we told them its completely fine to leave it on while you are away. So it "should" remain toggled on each time you load back into the game.
🐛 What's Coming Next...
We're still chipping away at the remaining bugs, balancing issues & Quality of Life improvements, We've been reading every single piece of feedback you send our way, and we truly do thank you for that, it helps us know how we can improve our game and make it better for everyone that plays it. There are still a few lingering issues that we are aware of and we are destroying them one by one.
🙏 A Final Note From The Team...
We released All Hail The Orb, only 9 days ago, and we are already on Hotfix #3, We have been working non stop to try and make things right and correct our mistakes, and it has been a lot!
We want to thank you all for sticking with us through all this blunder! To everyone who's been patient, who's reported bugs, who's left a kind review, or who's just kept playing despite the chaos... thank you.... Truly.
But for now, the whole team is going to be taking a well deserved break!
LeGingerDev & N7_Maxxi have been working tirelessly over the past 9 days to ensure we do right by those who decided to buy and play our very first game, and we thank you but now its time for us to take a deep breath and have a few days to ourselves to relax and unwind. This doesn't mean we are leaving the game as it is, it just means there won't be any updates for at least the next week or so.
N7_Maxxi will still be around to gather feedback, list down bugs, and help the community with any burning questions or issues, if need be!