Hey, everyone! Seth, the Bscotch Game Programmer here, coming to you LIVE in this patch breakdown. At least, it was live when I wrote it, which is now.
It's the first week of Levelhead early access, and we're blazing forth on the path toward a brighter future! A future where your goods will be delivered real good, on time, every time, most of the time. Our community has been pumping feedback into our brain lobes at what some would call an "unhealthy" rate, and we've been working our robot buns off to address the issues of the day.
Our current plan going forward is to have a patch drop every Wednesday throughout Early Access, and Patch 0.2.2 is the first of those patches. Every week, we'll try to have a good mix of bug fixes, new features, improvements, and polish wherever we can. Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback!
Now... On to the HIGHLIGHTS!
Fling your body!
This patch introduces a whole new item: the Flingo! Flingos are little electromagnetic nodes that GR-18 can latch onto with its grappler to fling itself across great distances. There's even a little bit of elasticity in there -- if you grapple from farther away, you'll get a bigger fling!
Flingos can be placed on paths so they can move about the level, and they can be activated and deactivated with switches, for supreme trolling I MEAN... LEVEL DESIGN.
Burn everything!
Our community pointed out that Burny Whirlers, though plenty whirly, [cur]could[/cur] be more burny. That's why we beefed up the number of available fire chains from one, to FOUR!
Anyone got barbecue sauce? These roasted GR-18's are super dry.
Where are those cannonballs COMING FROM?
One of the core problems with being shot by cannons, aside from the death part, is that you can see that cannonball coming from a mile away. But who wants to meet their imminent demise HEAD-ON? HAH! Certainly not me! In this patch, we took care of the problem of "knowing when your life will end" by allowing projectiles of all kinds (homing missiles, fireballs, steel, etc) to pass through Rifts.
What's coming through that Rift? Is it a package? A powerup? A key? NOPE IT'S A FIREBALL. Problem solved!
And some other stuff!
We fixed a whole suite of bugs, added accessibility settings (such as toning down weather and removing screen shake), improved boomboxes, and did some other things too. It's all listed in GREAT-ISH detail below, so... I'M OUT! Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next week!
Patch Notes: v0.2.1: Flingo Bingo
*Showing changes since v0.1.64. Want to see older patches? Check the full patchnotes. The full patchnotes link also includes credit to the community members who provided feedback that directly led to game improvements. Thanks, everyone!*
New Features
Campaign
- 3 new levels added to the end of the campaign: Flingo Swing, Fire Fall, and 4 Point Plunge.
- The campaign's main path is now thicker, to give a subtle bit of landmarking to your location.
New Item
- Introducing a new item: the Flingo! Flingos are little nodes that you can grapple to launch yourself in the direction of your grappler. Flingos can go onto paths, and they can be given switch IDs to be activated or deactivated.
Editor
- Sandstorms are now able to be unlocked as a weather option, by beating the new Flingo-based level "Fire Fall" in the campaign.
Settings
- You can now turn down the potency of weather effects. This should help for those players whose machines were slowing down during intense weather.
- Added "Vsync" option to the settings menu. Toggling this may improve performance on some machines.
- You can now turn off screen shake in the settings.
Gameplay
- Projectiles are now affected by Rifts.
Audio
- New sound effects for picking up the bug pieces in the campaign, as well as the bug display on the ending scoreboard in campaign levels.
- GR-18 now makes a sound when it goes into idle mode.
- GR-17 now has its own sound effects.
- Enemies now make subtle, unique sounds when injured but not defeated.
- There is now a sound effect when an item respawns after being thrown off a cliff.
UI
- The scoreboard on published levels now shows the top 3 spots for score and speed, so you get a better sense of where you rank, who you displaced, and by how much.
- When you are playing a published level, you will see its lookup code next to its name on the interface. You can also now copy its lookup code directly from the pause menu.
Improvements
Campaign
- Calculated Risk - Checkpoint added, burnywhirlers updated with double chains, and fewer dumb death zones.
- Vacrat Country - Focuses more on the skill of bouncing off vacrats to avoid spikes and less on spike deaths generally. One checkpoint added, overall difficulty considerably reduced.
- Ice Therapy - difficulty tuned down, additional checkpoint added.
- Mad Vacrat Nest - A checkpoint was moved a tiny amount to help players not stick themselves in an infinite death loop. also one coin was removed. DESIGN!
- That's an Incredible GR-18 - a block has been filled in
- Spikepop Experiment - The final row of spikechains have been rotated a few degrees to make completion of the level more likely
- Throw Rage - The switch IDs have been redone to make it not possible for players to fall and get stuck in the latter half of the level.
- Dune Doom Dream - The camera now gives the player slightly more time before the 2nd checkpoint, to reduce the likelihood of a death-by-camera checkpoint loop. The final camera path has been simplified somewhat, which makes the last part of the level somewhat faster.
- Sproing Time - The checkpoint has been moved further into the level to reduce repeat activities.
- Sproing Time - Spike column has been increased in height to stop players from getting fixated on jumping over it before getting the Tiptow power-up.
- Sproing Time - Players should no longer get stuck in the secret, and an additional checkpoint has been added to allow for a reset if you misplaced your box like a BAD GR-18!
- Switch Karma - The key switches are now locking, as originally intended. Also the key path has become exceptionally tricksy.
- Pow Pow Magic - The intro has been reworked to feel more epic, the final checkpoint is now infinite, and the level teaches you that you can grab power-ups with GR-18's tow cable.
UI
- Fully revamped the tower UI.
- Fully revamped the level renamer UI.
- Clickable text on Level Slugs (such as people's names and the Lookup Code link) will now change color when you hover over them, so you can tell they are clickable.
- Added more information to the level publishing confirmation window, to explain that the level will exit your workshop.
- Lookup codes are now displayed on the ending scoreboard of a level, and there is a button that you can click to copy the lookup code to your clipboard.
- Renamed "Watch List" as "Buddy List" to hopefully make it more clear that... it's just a list of your buddies.
Web
- Updated the save syncer such that it will only update your save file from the server's version, if that file has more playtime than your local file. This should prevent data loss of player saves.
- Update to change below -- Using the "Restart" button will not affect difficulty rating of a level only if you are in Speed Run Mode.
- Retries via the "Restart" button during gameplay will no longer affect level difficulty ratings. They will still count toward level playtime.
- When you copy a level Share Code, it now also comes with the level name and tags in your clipboard, so you can paste the information elsewhere like a Discord server. When you paste that same information back into the game, it will truncate what is in your clipboard and just grab the share code part, so everything should still work the way it used to in-game.
- You can now subscribe to 20 creators, up from 10.
Editor
- Added "Elite" tag for levels that required the most advanced techniques, exploits, or esoteric game knowledge to complete, such as Infinity Leaps and Super Jumps.
- Boombox music note selection is now a slider instead of a click arrow.
- Boomboxes now preserve the pitch you set when you change instruments.
- Burny Whirler overhaul! You can now have up to 4 fire chains on a single Burny Whirler. Also, when you have a Burny Whirler in the editor attached to a switch that is "off", you will still be able to see its fire chains at a reduced opacity.
- Previously, you had to take more than 3 seconds to beat your level in order to publish it. However, this didn't prevent anyone from making extremely short levels; they would just wait 3 seconds and then finish the level. This limit has been reduced to 0.25 seconds.
- Switch IDs can now go up to 127, up from 99. We will work on getting them higher, but this is what we've got for now!
- Switch ID display has been optimized in the editor, so if you have HUNDREDS of them in your level, you should see less of a slowdown.
- You can now add "Music Box" tags to your levels, and you can select "Musical" as an adjective.
Audio
- Tweaked some of the powerup sound effects. Nothing major.
- Updated some of the sound effects on the main menu.
Settings
- You can now choose between Fullscreen, Borderless Window, and Borderless Maximized. Some users that were experiencing stutters may find the stuttering is resolved by changing this setting.
Fixes
Web
- Fixed an issue that could cause save syncing to crash.
- Some players experienced data loss if they force-quit the game on their first playthrough. This should no longer occur.
- When you play a level via lookup code, the names of the creator, top score holder, and fastest player should now properly be retrieved from the web.
- If login fails due to a connection issue, you will get a human readable error message, instead of weird nonsense.
- If login fails, you will now be returned to the login method selection page, instead of being repeatedly slammed in the eye sockets by red text.
Gameplay
- When hanging from the ceiling in Tiptow mode, GR-18 will now trigger Prize Blocks and Dense Fog.
- The Tiptow powerup should now properly register wall sliding on Regret Gates.
- Enemies should be less stupid when walking across regret gate floors.
- If you were in the middle of grabbing a powerup or consumable while hitting a checkpoint, you would respawn at the checkpoint with the powerup on your back. Now, you will gain the powerup or consumable upon respawning.
- If you were in slow motion with the Waylay powerup, you would sometimes punch upwards even though you were standing on the ground. This should now be fixed.
- Balloogs on switches now store their states in checkpoints, so the balloogs won't start deflated if they were inflated when you touched the checkpoint.
- Balloogs that aren't attached to switches now have their on/off state tied to the stage timer, so they will always be in the same state when you hit the same time in the stage. Previously, ballogs tracked time on their own, and they restarted their timer with every checkpoint respawn, which would make them go out of sync with other level elements over time.
- Enemies can now go through portals that are either their same size or larger.
- While stealthed using Slurb Juice, your ghosts would cause a weird flicker. This has been fixed.
- Users who were experiencing stutters during gameplay due to hardware compatibility issues were unable to activate Sprinting as a result of the stutter. This should now be fixed.
- Popjaws will no longer go through teleporters when they are collapsed into their medallions.
- If you pass near a Jem and it begins chasing you, that Jem will no longer be deactivated by a switch.
Campaign
- The Steel projectile is now unlocked by default, so if players get the Lookcannon before the regular cannon they can properly set their projectiles.
Editor
- Opening up the path editor should no longer open the properties window for the item at the bottom-left-most corner of the game world (if you have one there).
UI
- Fixed an issue where the hitboxes of the bottom-left corner buttons in the pause menu would change to the incorrect size after going into the settings.
- The campaign percentage now floors instead of rounds, so you won't see 100% completion until you actually have 100% completion.
- When you set the top score or time and restart the level, the interface during gameplay will properly reflect your changes.
Localization
- In some languages, there was a missing space in the "Number of Players" dropdown menu in the tower. This has been fixed.
- Edited translations for Boombox music notes so that the text do not overflow out of the display space.
Crash
- The game would crash when you had a blopfush coming out of a prize block. Now it doesn't!
Controller
- Fixed an issue that may have been preventing some users from using Playstation 4 controllers and Switch Pro controllers.