Firstly as usual thanks for your continued support it is much appreciated, as always if you have any issues, or suggestions, or if you just want to talk you can contact us here, or on our Twitter @Jolt_Game.
This month’s update is our largest since release, we have continued to squash those bugs while adding lots of new and interesting features. Unlike last month this update went to plan as the hurdles of adding newer ‘family’s had already been done. If you are like us and not overly fond of reading there is a tl;dr at the bottom…for clarity.
New Stuff
We have added another class/family of robots for your to play, by default the first is already unlocked for you, there are 3 ‘heads’ in this class with various different appendages, as before you will need to race the AI in order to unlock these parts…although we have added a void mode which will also help there.
As mentioned above we have added a whole bunch of new void modes, we have noticed that many of you are not utilising It for its purpose, so we will better explain what each mode does in a future post, and hopefully try and explain how to use the void. For clarity in this update we have added;
Void Double Jolt – Doubles the recharge speed of all Active Joltable Robots, which is great as it speeds them up, but it also increases the chance of burning out.
Void Time Delay – Quite simple it slows the time down(by half actually), this means that all active robots need to time their jumps and jolts better while it is active, of course once it deactivates it returns back to normal which has resulted in a few accidental deaths during testing…which Is great!
Void Life Steal – This one was an interesting one to get working, it is also a fairly rare void mode due to its nature. Activating this will allow you, at random to take control of another players robot, this forces the other player into the void and you back into the game…you can then choose to try and win, thus gaining the score for winning or you can take revenge by simply killing the robot meaning you will still come out on top of the character you stole…fun with friends this one!
Void Minify – Again, fairly self-explanatory it reduces the physical size of the robot resulting in the robot seemingly moving faster and forcing you to focus on the race more.
Void Glue – This was the last one which was added so although it has undergone testing we are unsure on if it is too overpowered. It is a glue like substance which spawns at the players feet, this stops ANY movement on the horizontal axis, you can jump (10 times will free you, or you can wait for the timer on the void to end) , or you can Jolt and that will move you in that direction. It is very useful on vertical paths, upon using it the robots end up falling to their doom unless the person is quick enough to spot it, let us know if you feel this is too overpowered and we shall tweak it.
Void Part Collector - As mentioned earlier this void mode will only activate if Player One is dead, this is due to the part data being held for Player One. If Player One manages to enter in the correct combination then a part at random from the pool of parts will be unlocked, if the AI or another player manages to do it quicker then no part is unlocked, this is a very rare void mode.
We have also managed to slap in a new level, we have called this Jungle Heat. It is vastly different to the other levels and has a bunch of new features. Firstly there is a swinging platform around the central point of the level, if you miss the swing you will fall into the grinder below, there is also a bunch of boulders which fall from above, these are intended to slow you down, you can jump over or Jolt through them. If you land on top of them you partially stuck rolling with the boulder until you fall back off it, the rest of the level as the same as before, minus the obvious lava death below.
Ghost AI
We have sneakily added in a way to allow you to finish a race without needing to do the full race yourself. As a scenario, you have just started racing, you get the famous call ‘FOOD IS READY’ or the alternative ping of the microwave we all know and love, you are now able to select pause, select ghost ai, this will then change your character to AI allowing you to finish the race. This is quite useful when you don’t wish to stop a game forcibly pausing it and forcing your friends to wait while you quickly run to the toilet, on the plus side if the robot then loses, you can blame the AI it’s a win win!
The Ghost AI, like much of the game is under active development though, so if you do spot anything which doesn’t seem quite right, please let us know!
We have also revamped the way the time trial/single player works, previously we used the single player mode to allow you to train and find the quickest way around the levels…which is ideal but sadly wasn’t really used by us, nor anyone else. So as a rethink we came up with a Time Attack/Time Trial like system. It’s quite simple, you start the level as usual and run around as fast as possible, once you reach the starting line again your round is over and the times are calculated, if you are then fast enough you may have earned a bronze, silver or gold medal. It would be really good to see how fast you are all getting around these levels, it will allow us to better adjust them if you do manage to seriously beat the gold, or it’ll allow the developers some bragging rights as they can still get around the levels the fastest.
For those of you who don’t use controllers we have also added P and J as Jolt buttons, to test and play we all use controllers, although after a day without one E is far too close to WASD to utilise it for the Jolt so we have allowed your other hand to do some of the work. In the final version we are aiming to rebind the controls, or at least allow you to do it. So if you are struggling with keyboard, attempt it with a controller and see if it feels smoother.
We think that’s everything new that has been added…if you spot anything else which is new please let us know ːsteammockingː
Bug Fixes
- Resolved an issue whereby 2 AI with the same name, parts etc could happen.
- Fixed an AI blocking issue in Humdinger
- Updated the mini level to use the correct level assets (it was using the old, not actually ever been seen before by anyone apart from developers assets)
- Resolved a checkpoint issue on Echo Mountain
- Resolved a checkpoint issue on drippy drains, the keen will notice the shortcut at the end of the level is now gone, this was due to single player and the fact we could utilise it to win within seconds.
- Resolved an issue with the void whereby it wasn’t resetting.
- Fixed some paintwork issues with all the robots
- Tweaked some textures slightly to help alleviate some graphical issues.
- Resolved a respawn issue on Cold Out. If you hit checkpoint 12, checkpoint 12 was not known to the spawning system, resulting in you spawning at (0,0,0) or in the landscape as the case was.
- Resolved a null ref on the character select screen, you wouldn’t have noticed anything but it was spamming logs up a fair bit if you cycled through all of the characters.
- Bug whereby you couldn’t pause if it was just the AI left, you could skip and then continue the round and pause/exit but that shouldn’t be required
- Part unlocked was showing above the press A menu (we also removed the border from part unlocked)
- Conveyor in the tutorial level wasn’t working
- Minor text issues depending on resolution of screen
tl;dr
More Robots, another level, improved single player, more void modes, Ghost Ai mode, less bugs.