Welcome to 2024!!! You thought I'd finally left? Nah, Steven the Sperm forever, baby! If STS was an actual child, it'd be in kindergarten or first grade by now, and much like that theoretical child, STS has been getting better and better over the years! So for this update, I figured I'd keep that development up by adding some pretty sweet quality of life improvements to the game's more system-level stuff.
CHANGELOG
Major Changes
- PAUSING! You can now pause the game using ESC on keyboard or Menu on controller! From there, you'll see a menu which lets you resume from being paused, restart the stage, go back to the title screen, or quit the game. A new related feature and a useful note:
- A new "Back" button has been added, which behaves like ESC did in previous versions. On keyboard it's set to Backspace, on controller it's set to Back (obviously lol)... if you press it during a stage, you'll be asked if you want to return to the title screen. Hitting it again or selecting the green check mark will then take you there. You can also press either Back or Menu on Options, Extras, or the High Scores screen to return to the Title Screen, and pressing either button there will quit the game.
- Using the Restart Stage pause option, you can now choose to replay a stage from the beginning without having to turn checkpoints off. In previous versions, if you had checkpoints on, got one, then decided you wanted to try the stage fresh, you would've had to toggle the checkpoints option to delete the data. Now you don't have to! This also means that if you complete a stage and get an unsatisfactory time, you can just pause, reset, and try again!
- YOU CAN NOW NAVIGATE THE MENUS WITHOUT THE MOUSE! With this update, STS has complete controller support! ...unless you wanna change the volume, but eeeeehhhhhh...
- New volume change display, and the game will save and load your set volume between sessions! Pressing + or - to raise or lower the volume respectively now shows you the volume level on the bottom of the screen in a retro TV fashion, and the game will actually save this value to be loaded next time you start the game. Also, you can no longer set control keys to the volume buttons.
Minor Changes
- There are now control hints over the navigation buttons which tell you what key uses it. This explains the shortcuts for buttons such as the green back and blue forward arrow. You can disable these hints on the Options screen under 'Controls'.
- The mouse cursor will now always hide when any key/button is pressed. The option to change this has been removed to simplify things, because now that you can navigate the menus with the keys/controller, the mouse isn't as necessary.
- Pressing right no longer submits buttons (like when you complete a level). This was a legacy feature from an earlier version when I thought I was being fancy and revolutionary, but really it just meant that you'd accidentally skip stuff while fidgeting around, which really sucked. So now it's fixed!
- Flashing text will now appear to tell you what to do in a certain spot. Being vague to avoid spoilers. This makes the part more fair, but also more exciting and fun.
- You can now revisit the screen which displays when you complete all the game's main challenges. I've also reverted its behavior back to earlier versions, where the game closes completely before displaying it. This makes it more suspenseful and surprising versus just popping in. If you don't know what I'm talking about - there's still more for you to discover!
- Added a drop shadow to the ingame mouse cursor.
Bugfixes
- Stage 4 will now load your checkpoint correctly. This was a pretty nasty bug... the game would load which sections you've completed incorrectly, and if you redid a section, you wouldn't be able to beat the level. Things load correctly now.
- Fixed the dash not working if you use it immediately as a stage loads. Previously, if you were mashing the dash button as a stage starts, you'd hear the dash sound and expend the meter, but Steven wouldn't move. This update fixes that issue.
- You can no longer enable a certain mode before its unlocked. I can't believe it man. Before this update, if you hadn't unlocked the mode but clicked where the button for it is, it would turn on.
- The "Achievements" 3D text now properly spins when visiting the screen in the Extras menu.
- The object that creates a white fade effect in certain cutscenes is now hidden. I'm out here playtesting the menu controls, and I just see this random white square in the top left corner... oops.
Phew, that was quite a bit! This update took about 3 days of constant work... it was worth it though! I graduated college early so this is basically my job now. Hope you existing players love the additions and fixes, and hope you new players have an even better time starting out than everybody else did!!! ...oh, uh, yeah, not that your start was any less awesome, "everybody else"...
...since you're actually reading the changelog, here's a little unused graphic, just for fun:
I was thinking I'd show that in the top right corner whenever the game saves your data, but I figured it'd be more distracting than helpful. Steven with a 5¼ inch floppy... reminds me, I haven't been doing the sex joke thing in these lately.
See y'all later! As usual, let me know if you encounter any bugs or have any comments.
EDIT: Shadow update on April 1st - fixed the cursor not working after completing the game and going back to the title screen.