Mitts 0.1.2219

Everything since the last Steam build (0.1.2204) — a big one, mostly a deep pass on how bots move, protect the puck, and pass, plus new language support and menu reorganization.

New: Spanish language support

• Mitts now supports Spanish as its first translated language, with a new Language dropdown in Options → Gameplay. More languages are planned — this is the foundation.

New: Passing drill; Practice split into Tutorial and Drills

• A new Passing drill — ten feeds with varied depth, distance, width, and a moving receiver you have to lead, occasionally forcing a saucer over a board in the lane.
• The old combined "Practice" menu is now two rows — Tutorial and Drills — so the ordered course and the standalone skill drills (Penalty Shots, Shot Accuracy, Passing) don't compete for the same list.

Options menu reorganized

• Options now has six focused tabs — Gameplay, Camera, Video, Audio, Controls, and Accessibility — instead of settings being crammed into a few catch-all tabs. Several settings moved to where you'd actually look for them (HUD Scale, colorblind and comfort options now live under Accessibility).

Bots: puck carrying and positioning finally look natural

A cluster of fixes across this whole patch, all chasing the same goal: bots moving and handling the puck like a real player instead of a robot.

• Fixed bots spinning almost all the way around just to shield the puck from a defender on their hip — protecting the puck is now a reach across the body, not a full pivot, so carriers stay square to the play instead of getting stranded skating sideways or backward.
• Fixed bots continuing to shield the puck against a defender they'd already beaten and left behind — a carrier driving at the net now squares up and attacks once the man is beaten, instead of staying turned side-on protecting against a stick that's no longer a threat.
• Fixed visibly jerky, stair-stepping bot blades during puck battles, receptions, and pokes — blade aim now tracks smoothly every tick instead of updating only a dozen or so times a second.
• Fixed the last of the off-puck blade jitter — the real cause was bots flip-flopping between two nearly-tied positioning spots several times a second. Bots now commit to a spot and hold it until the play genuinely changes, instead of chasing noise-level differences back and forth.
• Bots — both carrying the puck and off it, covering a man or staging for a pass — now account for their own momentum when arriving somewhere, so a bot drifting sideways toward a spot gets onto it cleanly instead of orbiting past it.
• Fixed bots colliding with each other on breakout-to-rush transitions, and removed a jittery puck-dangle animation that read as nervous twitching rather than a natural carry.
• New: bots now use a genuine fake-then-cut deke against a patient defender who won't commit, and can beat a bearing-down defender with a well-timed brake check, not just a sidestep. Easy-tier bots skip all of this and carry the puck naively, so a newcomer's poke-check still works like it should.

Bots: smarter in the offensive zone

• Fixed bots getting pinned in the zone and skating themselves into a dead-angle corner near the goal line, doing nothing — bots now read real scoring danger across the ice and work the puck toward the slot instead of parking somewhere merely "safe."
• Fixed bots occasionally reading a phantom open shot at a goalie already sealed against the near post from a sharp angle.
• Bots now think a move ahead, recognizing that cutting past a defender opens a much better shot on the very next step.
• Behind-the-net play is smarter — bots route around the net frame instead of trying to skate or shoot through it, and will walk the puck out around either post when trapped back there.

Bots: passing is more honest

• Bots now account for a defender skating stride-for-stride with the intended receiver, not just one standing in the passing lane.
• Fixed bots passing into a lane a forechecker was actively closing during the wind-up — and fixed a defender skating fast through a lane reading as if it were wide open.
• Saucer passes now use real flight physics instead of fixed distance rules, opening up soft saucer flips over a stick in the lane.
• Pass risk now scales honestly with distance and the passer's own hands — a short clean feed connects almost every time, a long stretch pass carries real risk.
• Bots now recognize when a teammate is still turning and hasn't settled onto a heading — a pass to them is treated as the riskier play it actually is, so bots wait a beat instead of firing at where the receiver used to be headed.
• Fixed bots occasionally throwing passes far too soft and getting picked off, and fixed bots occasionally carrying the puck offside on a pass thrown right at the blue line.

Bots: one-timers actually fire now

• Fixed bot one-timers essentially never actually happening — a bug in how the game tracked a bot's stance after catching a feed was silently canceling the wind-up almost every time. Bots now properly load and rip a one-timer off a feed, with their stance and blade settling onto the live pass's line.

Bots: better chases and coverage

• Fixed bots taking bad angles chasing down loose pucks, especially on longer races like a rimmed puck or a cross-ice dump.
• Fixed bots occasionally standing off to the side of the man they were supposed to be covering instead of sealing the lane to the net.
• Defensive bots on an odd-man rush now genuinely read whether to take the shooter or the pass, instead of always retreating straight back and conceding a cross-ice feed by default.

Pucks & boards

• Fixed a rare case where a puck sliding hard along the boards could tunnel through the wall and escape the rink.
• Board friction is more realistic — a hard rim-around keeps more of its speed per corner instead of bleeding off unrealistically fast.

Fixes

• Fixed bot attribute builds silently resetting to all-medium after returning to the lobby.
• Fixed camera zoom occasionally carrying over strangely into the next period if the intermission was short or skipped.
• Fixed a missed shot or pass in a practice drill leaving the puck spinning and sliding into the next rep instead of resetting cleanly.
• Cleaned up the Penalty Shots drill's puck staging and results presentation.

Performance

• Reduced per-frame overhead in bot decision-making and cosmetic skater animation — invisible to gameplay, but it means more headroom for busy scenes with a full lobby of bots.