City Map Improvements, Menu Features & New World Interactions

Beta v0.32.1

As we approach the 2nd Phase of Beta where we open up invites publicly, we’re temporarily feature locking the game so we can focus on bug fixing and polish for a week or two. Once the next wave of invites are done, we’ll wait for feedback and start working on the next set of content.

World

• Updated collision in most areas.

• The City map has been vastly improved around the cliff area and more trees & flora have been added.

• Transitions between maps now save the players horizontal or vertical location (depending on the direction of the transition) so they appear in the correct relative location when appearing in the new map.

Cutscenes & Dialogue

• Added many new dialogues to objects around the City map.

• Added difficulty choices as part of a dialogue selection after the tutorial.

Menu

• Added item descriptions to the inventory page.

• Added descriptions for all key items.

• Splash screen text has been updated to give permission for players to record and stream videos of Nocturne.

• Added a controls screen upon starting a new game that lists the controls.

• Items in the inventory page are now sorted by type first, then alphabetically.

• Items in the equipment page are sorted alphabetically within each slot.

• New items now have the text “new” displayed to indicate they are new.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed a possible softlock in the Waiting Room.

• Optimized audio load times by around 20%.

• It’s no longer possible to obtain the item “nothing”.

• Fixed a softlock that would occur if you died during combat, selected retry, then completed the song on the next attempt.

• Getting below 50 health during the tutorial now heals you back to full.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

Beta Release: Tutorial & Park Map Update

Beta v0.31.0

This update added a tutorial for teaching players the main mechanics of combat. There’s no music for the tutorial yet, and the beatmaps are temporary, but the main flow of the tutorial is complete.

This version also moves us from Alpha to Beta as we invite our first few players to test the game. This shift signifies a change in the type of updates the game will receive moving forwards. We’ve mostly left the mechanical phase of development and are now focusing on additional content. More maps, more combat, more cutscenes!

Maps

• Large improvements to the Park map that include more trees and flora.

Audio

• Added lots of new sound effects.

• Created a system for ambient sounds.

Combat

• Battles can now have multiple beatmaps with dialogue between them.

• Battles can repeat individual beatmaps if the player fails them.

• Added a tutorial comprised of multiple beatmaps and dialogue that teaches the player the basic mechanics of combat.

• Health is now fully recovered at the end of combat.

• Added Easy Mode.

• Removed the Beetle encounter.

• Added the Firefly encounter with new music and beatmaps.

Cutscenes & Dialogue

• Updated portraits for all characters.

• Extended the Return to Welcome Center cutscene to add a sequence for opening the gate and giving the player a new item.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Adjusted the collision system, including updating the player’s collision box size.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

New Park Map, Opening Cutscene & Polish

Alpha v0.29.3

We updated the Park map substantially. There’s lots more to explore here now. It’s not final yet but it’s getting closer every update. The gameplay flow from start to end is getting pretty close to how it’ll be for the Beta, we’re just missing the finalized combat encounters for the City and Park areas, plus the finished Tutorial encounter.

World

• Player movement speed has been increased from 1.25 to 1.5 pixels per frame.

• Placeholder events in the Welcome Center hallway have been removed.

• You can no longer re-enter the Welcome Center after leaving.

• Updated the Park map to the latest design (still not final).

• Added a save point near the Park bridge.

• Updated the Angel’s sprite and animations.

• Added new items to the Park map.

Cutscenes & Dialogue

• Added the game’s opening cutscene.

• Added expression portraits for all the characters (some still as draft versions).

• The Welcome Center building now changes prior to the cutscene where you return there.

• Recreated the Meeting Kimothy cutscene at a new location.

• Added a few new cutscenes for attempting to enter Satoru’s area at different points in the story.

• Added a new interaction for the bridge corruption.

• Added an animated arrow to indicate when the dialogue line has ended and the player can progress.

• Improved the readability of the dialogue fonts to prevent blurring.

Combat

• Moved the combo text below the protagonist.

• Added a number value for health below the health bar.

• Added “Evade” mechanics which are now distinct from Blocking. Evade occurs when you hit all the notes prior to an attack. Blocking now only occurs when you reduce damage to zero as a result of an ability.

• Added Kimothy’s sprite into the Tutorial battle and updated the related cutscene.

• Removed XP and leveling from the game.

Music & Audio

• Enabled the SFX slider.

Devtools

• Renamed “Cheat Menu” to “Debug Tools”.

• Improved cutscene, item, song and character creation tools.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue that would always cause the game to soft-lock if the player walked around a specific area for over 27 hours.

• Increased the base min/max time to encounter for each area from 5-20 up to 13-25 (seconds).

• Fixed a physics bug that would cause the camera to stutter very slightly every 60 frames. This results in much smoother camera movement.

++ many minor bug fixes and adjustments.

New Map, New Art and Items in Chests

Alpha v0.27.2

We’ve finally replaced the city map with a new one that has all the layering and collision functional. This map contains lots of new art you’ve never seen before and we’ve started to put items in chests you can find around the map.

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World

• Updated the City map with a new layout. This map is still unfinished but takes one more step towards the final version.

• Added full collision and layering to all tiles on the map.

• Added chests around the map that contain items.

• Save points now have art and glow upon approaching.

• Adjusted the scale of some objects in the hospital to match the new player sprite.

Cutscenes

• Updated the flow for speaking to the Angel. If you already have the Bottle of Soda before starting a conversation they no longer ask you to get refreshments.

Menu

• Added credits to the main menu.

Dev Tools

• Created backend tooling to help quickly create pixel perfect collisions and add new maps.

• Revamped how interactables are detected to be more efficient, flexible, and less error prone.

Functional Equipment, Passive & Active Combat Effects, SFX, New Sprites, New Cutscenes

Alpha v0.26.2

Equipment

• Added 12 new equipment to the game and removed all test equipment. You can obtain all the equipment by interacting (E) with the last door on the left of the waiting room.

• Added 5 equipment effects which provide passive or active bonuses in combat. Each equipment in the game has a combination of raw stats and effects.

• Added an active effect called “Delete” which can be activated in combat by pressing the Active Effect key (SPACE).

• Drastically rebalanced all stats, equipment, damage and effects. Previous values were for testing. New values reflect the desired impact of everything moving forward.

• Equipment now has full descriptions of their effects shown on the right hand side while hovering over the equipment in the equipment page.

Audio & Music

• Added sound effects.

• Sound effects have positional audio and dynamically adjust volume by player distance.

• Sound effects can be randomly pitch shifted to add variation.

World

• Updated Protagonist and Kimothy’s sprites to the new art style.

• Added idle blinking animations to Protagonist and Kimothy’s sprite.

• Footstep SFX are synced to the frames where the character steps on the ground and changes depending on which ground type they are walking on.

Cutscenes

• Added two new cutscenes: “Meeting Kimothy” and “Return to Welcome Center”.

• Improved cutscenes to allow more flexibility in character and camera movement.

• Improved dialogue boxes to allow for greater customization and to allow special features for specific characters. (Example: Kimothy is locked to only speaking in lowercase)

• Increased the default size of character portraits to 64x64 (previously 32x32) and portraits can now change to show different emotions based on the dialogue text.

Combat

• Added a combat log. A detailed report of each battle is now saved to a text file found in your Nocturne folder. C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Pracy Studios\Nocturne\Combat Logs

• Attacks no longer occur at a fixed timing interval. They now occur after every X notes are played. X is determined by the enemies speed value.

• Enemies always deal one final attack at the end of a song.

• Added an early draft of the combat tutorial that happens during the Meeting Kimothy cutscene.

Engine

• Upgraded Unity from 2017.4 to 2018.2

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed a bug which allowed the stretcher (the long middle section of a hold note) to move vertically up the screen.

• Fixed the black vertical lines appearing while moving around outside.

Equipment, New Game Screen & Test Maps

Alpha v0.22.1

New Game

• Updated the flow of starting a new game. Now the character naming screen is a separate menu and requires less button presses to navigate through.

Equipment

• Completely removed the talents system from the game and replaced it with an equipment system. This also includes the removal of Energy.

• Added five test equipment items which can be automatically added to your inventory by talking to the last door on the left in the hospital waiting room.

• Each item has a specific slot which it can be equipped in.

• Added Armour to game, which reduces damage taken from attacks.

• Equipment gives a bonus to health and armour, while also providing effects in combat.

• Passive combat effects for items are currently not functional.

• Items have tooltips but are currently not displayed in the menu yet.

Maps

• Added the City Park map to the game. Like the previous map, this is a low quality version added so we can begin to script cutscenes and events while we wait for the final art to be completed.

New Battle, Auto Latency & Test Map.

Alpha v0.21.2

Menus

• Added a new auto-calibration feature that gets the player to follow a series of instruction, then calculates the latency value automatically. You can still manually adjust the value after.

Combat

• Added a new battle; the Beetle. This replaces the current random encounter song with something much shorter. The old mantis song can still be played by interacting with the top right door in the waiting room. You will need to enable random encounters to fight the beetle. First turn on debug mode with F1. Then in the menu you’ll see a “Cheat Menu” which allows you to enable random encounters.

• The second door on the right in the waiting room now starts a metronome test combat.

• The Combo text has been moved below the health bar and now just displays the current number.

• The accuracy text now appears above each individual column. It displays the accuracy of the last note hit from that column, then floats upwards while fading out.

• The accuracy text for “Perfect” has been changed to “Epic”.

• Removed pixel perfect rounding on note positions. This prevents the notes from stuttering while traveling down the columns.

• The note hit effect is now played at the end of a hold note.

• Hold notes now snap to the hitbar while being played.

• Improved the visuals of hold notes.

• When a hold note is being played and the end reaches the hitbar, it will now automatically act as if the key was released.

Maps

• Added a test map of the city area. You can access it through the door after the hallway. The map art is unfinished and has only been added so we can begin work on cutscenes and other features. There is no collision in this map.

Leveling, Character Status, New Font, Background Music & Analytics

Alpha 0.19.1

Music

• Implemented a background music system.

• Anytime a gameplay scene is loaded, the game will try to play it’s theme.

• When entering combat the music will fade out, then pause. When returning to gameplay, it will fade back in.

• The “Music Volume” option in the Audio Settings menu now adjusts the background music volume

Analytics

• Set up Unity Analytics, allowing us to store data about events in the game. For example, we can track how much health players lose in specific fights, how often they die and what part of a song they die. This will make it easier to balance the game because we can detect where players are getting stuck.

• Added “Play Time” to the player’s save data. Any time they are not in the main menu, this value adds each second that passes, including when in the pause menu.

Fonts

• Created the new “Softsquare” textmeshpro font, changed all text in the game to the new font, and adjusted some text to fix issues that arose from the change in font.

Leveling

• Each combat victory rewards 50 XP to the player. This includes glitches.

• Once XP reaches the player’s level * 100, the player gains a level.

• Max HP now starts at 100 and increases by 5 each time the player levels up.

• The player now starts with 0 energy and is given 1 additional max energy each time they level up.

Menus

• Created a Status page in the RPG menu

• The player’s health is now displayed, both current and max with a horizontal health bar below it as a representation of the percentage.

• The player’s level is now displayed with the player’s current XP progress just below. Including a bar which represents the percentage of the player’s progress towards the next level.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Reduced the frequency of random encounters.

• Random battles are now disabled by default (temporarily).

• Fixed a missing line change with sprite shaking and flashing that caused the player sprite to vanish to another position.

• Added debug info about the next random encounter to the bottom left of gameplay when in debug mode. The 1st number is the current number seconds walked since the last encounter. The 2nd number is the number of seconds to walk before the next encounter will start. The 3rd and 4th numbers are the min and max values used to randomly generate the 2nd number.

• Battles are now added to the number of battles done in an area even if random battles are disabled.

• The player’s current HP is now part of the save file so that it’s saved between plays.

• Retrying a battle now resets the player’s HP to what it was at the start of the battle.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Opening Sequence & Random Encounters

Alpha 0.18.1

New Game

• “New Game” in the main menu now opens a page where you can type your character’s name.

• Dialogue said by the player character now shows the name they specified instead of “Protagonist”.

• Added some text that appears at the start of a new game.

Cutscenes

• Updated dialogue with the angel, including dividing it into two scenes and requiring a bottle of soda to continue.

• Updated various interaction dialogue.

Items

• “Bottle of Pop” is now “Bottle of Soda”.

Text Fields

• Added Text Fields, which allows player typing and saves information typed for later use.

Random Encounters

• Whenever the player is walking, the number of seconds that they are walking are recorded. Walking without changing position, such as when walking into a wall, is not counted towards this.

• The Encounter manager has a list of each area in the game containing the name of each enemy that can be encountered in that area.

• At the start of gameplay (and after each encounter) the game decides a random number of seconds of walking the player must do before an encounter starts. This number is set between a min and max.

• Each encounter within the same area decreases the chance of another encounter in that area. So the longer the player remains in the same area, the less common encounters become.

• Save data keeps track of how many encounters the player has had against each enemy. When a random encounter is selected it weights the enemy selection in favour of the least encountered enemies. This means players are more likely to experience a larger variety of enemies, instead of the same ones over and over.

Combat

• Character health is no longer reset to full on start of combat. Health is now fully recovered when using save points.

• Hold notes no longer miss if you keep holding down the key after the hold note ends.

• The test combat song’s hard version no longer uses any experimental effects

Menus

• Added a new menu button visible during debug mode called “Cheat Menu”. This opens up a sub menu where you can toggle god mode and random encounters on/off.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed issue with the player sprite in combat being in the wrong position sometimes.

• Fixed an issue where the player could start a new game without naming the protagonist.

• Fixed issue with plant dialogue using the wrong name.

• Fixed an issue where glitches would stay despite being beaten.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Glitch Effects and Refactoring

Alpha 0.17.1

Most of this week involved refactoring, which is a programming speak for “we changed a bunch of old code to work better”.

Glitches

• Added column movement to the example glitch. This is the first of many effects that can occur during a glitch.

Refactoring

• The core systems prefab now uses a simple script that activates it’s children only if necessary and destroys itself if a core system already exists. This removes the need for every script in the package all doing that function individually.

• Drastically simplified scene transitions. With combat being part of the core systems and overlaying on normal gameplay, having multiple scenes open at once is never necessary.

• Simplified song initialization.

• The player is now created and removed from the game when necessary rather than just being in the scene by default.

• The combat manager now handles all UI elements for combat instead of having a separate script for some elements.

• Note positions in combat (and latency config) now use the current measure instead of approximate measure.

• Toggling and moving columns in combat have been merged into one function.

• Button groups now find their own canvas group if it exists.

• Buttons now must have a button group and no longer have a static current button.

• Cutscene camera movement has been simplified.

• Simplified sections of the scripts for menu buttons, combat, combat notes/columns, the main game controller, the data system, debug objects, and more.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• The end of a held note is no longer worth any points or counted towards combos. If you let go too early, it will still count as a miss. If you release at the proper time it will act as before, just without rewarding the player.

• Held notes are now auto-released once they pass the strum bar.

• Fixed some issues with notes not being reset properly upon quitting or retrying combat.

• Fixed an issue with combat trying to continue attacks outside of combat if the player leaves combat just as an attack starts.

• Columns now save their starting position and properly reset to it upon starting/retrying a song.

• Fixed an issue that caused going back to the main menu to lock up the game if you hadn’t encountered any combat.

• Fixed an issue with the combat game over screen where it was set to inactive (and thus unusable) at the start of combat.

• Notes are now simply destroyed at the start of combat to ensure that no effects or art changes or anything from the previous song carry over. This should fix all errors with notes moving faster than they should, being too tall/repeating, etc.

• Fixed issue where combat dialogue appeared on top of the combat pause menu and game over screen.

• Fixed issue where combat became slow-mo. This was because a missed glitch note set the pitch to lower than 1.

• Fixed an issue where saving would always set the saved scene as the main menu causing “Continue” to simply reload the main menu.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Combat Bugs Fixes

Alpha v0.16.1

In the previous update, combat was changed considerably to allow us to implement the glitch system as an overlay of the main game rather than having to use its own scene. This involved a large number of adjustments and changes around the system so that combat was loaded, unloaded and reloaded smoothly and properly.

As expected, this also caused tons of bugs. This update fixed some of the larger ones. Though I’m sure there are many more. If you’d like to focus your bug-finding efforts, combat should be the main focus of this version.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed a bug that allowed the combat screen to remain loaded upon quitting and starting a new game.

• Fixed a bug that upon selecting “Retry” in combat, it would skip back to the previous song position and duplicate notes.

• Fixed a bug that allowed notes to persist across multiple attempts.

• Fixed a bug where the rhythm columns would overlay on top of the pause menu.

New Mechanic: Glitches

Alpha v0.16.0

Glitches

Added the Glitch system. Glitches are intractable objects around the world that can be fixed by playing a short song. There’s a placeholder glitch represented as a purple block. Interacting with it will start a test glitch sequence.

Glitches differ from regular combat in a few ways.

• No music is played during the glitch sequence. Instead, each note hit will play a sound, creating a short melody as the player hits each note.

• Glitches are only 10-20 seconds long.

• Getting a Miss or Bad will play a pitch shifted version of the note.

• No talents are in effect.

• There are no attacks in a glitch, meaning you take no damage and health is not used.

• The player must hit every single note to pass.

• An overlay of the rhythm columns appear wherever the player is standing.

• More extreme visual effects are used during glitch sequences. The columns may shift around, appear and disappear, become partially hidden, etc.

• Pausing is disabled in glitches.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue that caused missed notes to be counted twice.

• Fixed an issue where choices were being shown even when they weren’t choices you could make.

• Slowed down the speed at which you can navigate menu buttons when holding down the key.

• Fixed an issue that caused item names to persist on the inventory screen once removed (such as when starting a new game).

• Fixed an issue that caused save data to be reset upon pausing the game.

• Fixed an issue where notes moving fast enough would not be counted as misses.

• The difficulty setting is now defaulted to Normal.

• The left column of the main menu and pause menu now loop vertically. If you press up on the top button it moves to the bottom button and vice versa.

• Fixed an issue where the sliders in the gameplay and audio settings menus were being rounded down a value on loading the menu, causing the handle to start in the wrong position.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Menu Updates

Alpha v0.15.0

This is a small update for the menus based on feedback and bugs discovered in the previous build.

Menus

• The old pause menu, now only being used for combat, has been removed from the menu system and made a part of the combat scene, just like the game over screen. This fixes a previous issue with the combat menu not functioning correctly.

• The main menu is now part of the RPG menu system, which is now a more overall menu system.

• Play Game has been separated into two options.

  • The “Continue” option loads the latest save. This is disabled/grey if there are no valid saves to load.

  • The “New Game” option will load a new save and start the game from the beginning. This will not overwrite previous saves until the player saves at a save point.

• The Options menu has been reintegrated into the main menu thanks to it being a part of the overall RPG menu system now. This makes options available from the main menu once again.

• Added the “Submit Feedback” button above Data. It works the same as it did in the old pause menu.

• Added a dark transparent background to the RPG menu.

• You can no longer pause during a cutscene or dialogue.

• Implemented the Memories page in the RPG menu.

  • Memories are not a feature that will be available in the demo but has been added to the menu in preparation for implementation.

  • Added Ether as a collectible resource. Ether is used as part of the unavailable memories system.

  • The contextual info on the top right now displays the player’s current Ether in the memories page.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed collision gaps in Welcome Center waiting room and hallway that allowed you to clip out of bounds.

• Removed the auto-filled inventory in debug mode.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

RPG Menu

Alpha v0.14.0

This update includes the first version of an RPG menu system. As a result we have removed mouse control from the game. So don't worry when the main menu doesn't respond to your mouse. The game settings have all been moved to the in-game RPG menu.

Menu Controls
Open/Close: Esc or Tab
Navigating: WSAD or Arrow Keys
Selecting/Deselecting/Forward: E or Enter
Back: Q or Backspace

Known Bugs

• The combat pause menu options are no longer functional. Press ESC to close the combat pause menu.

Menus

• The gameplay pause menu has been replaced with an RPG menu system.

• Removed mouse control from the game.

• Status, Memories and Data just show “Under Construction” notices for now.

• Quit works the same as quitting from the old pause menu.

• Implemented a contextual info box on the top right.

• Added a contextual help text system on the top left.

  • Added help text for most of the left column categories.

• The inventory button will display a list of all items the player has in their inventory, with the quantity of that item displayed in parentheses. To test this properly, turn on debug mode (F1) then open the RPG menu and go to inventory. You will see example items.

• You can scroll through elements in the inventory and talents, and the scrollbar movement is tied to each menu.

• Completely implemented the Talents page of the RPG Menu. None of them currently have any effect, but they have descriptions and upgrades. They each have an energy and upgrade cost of 1.

  • Clicking on a talent will toggle whether it is being used or not, refunding or taking energy where necessary. If the player has no energy, it will not do anything. If they toggle it off and have an upgrade selected, the upgrade will also be toggled off and it’s energy will be refunded as well.

  • Clicking on an upgrade will try to toggle it on or off in the same way as talents. If another upgrade for the same talent is already selected, it will deselect that one and select the new one. If the talent isn’t even being used, it will try to toggle the talent on, then the upgrade taking energy for both.

  • Added currently used talents and current/total energy to the save file.

  • The contextual info at the top right shows the current/total energy.

  • The help text box at the top left shows the info about the currently selected upgrade.

• Completely implemented the options page of the RPG Menu.

• All sub-menu cursor positions are saved and left column’s current selection is saved.

• The Settings option in the main menu is now disabled for now.

• Custom buttons now only allow one button to be clicked per frame, preventing buttons in submenus from being clicked upon loading into a submenu.

• Implemented a custom slider system for simpler and more versatile options sliders.

• Implemented a custom scrollbar system for better flexibility and customization.

Note Pausing, Save Points and Camera Improvements

Alpha v0.13.0

This update comes a little delayed because some of our team have been away recently. I'm happy to say this build is far more stable than the last.

Combat

• Added a note pausing effect. We can set an interval at which all notes will stop moving and how many intervals they will stay paused. Notes adjust their spawn times accordingly so that they still reach the hit zone at the correct time.

• The current combo and note accuracy are now displayed just below the protagonist instead of on the right side.

Save Data

• The game no longer automatically saves.

• Created a save point system.

• Added a placeholder save point that's a yellow box in the Hallway of the Welcome Center.

Cutscenes

• Implemented camera movement during cutscenes.

• Updated the recording tool to also record camera movement for ease of creating cutscenes.

• Added a different version of dialogue text that's slightly larger and centered in the text box. This text is now used for system messages such as "Game Saved" and "Obtained X Item"

Menus

• Expanded the audio settings menu with Sound Effects, Music and Combat Music Sliders. Currently the game has no sound effects or music so the only setting that is testable is combat music.

Debug Tools

• "Erase Save Data" is now shown on the bottom right of the main menu when not in debug mode and is replaced with "Erase All Data" when in debug mode. This erases all save data and game settings.

• Moved the Map Tester and data erasure buttons to the bottom left. This also fixes the issue of the data erasure button being hard to click since it was being blocked by the help text.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• The column flare now correctly skips to the full frame upon press.

• The player can no longer pause during the combat game over screen.

• Fixed an issue where the game over screen was not intractable due to an element of the cutscene system blocking it.

• Note effects are now reset after combat to prevent their effects from lingering on subsequent encounters.

• If the player pauses while hit, the player's flashing and shaking effects will now properly freeze instead of continuing to animate.

• Notes the player did not attempt to hit are now correctly recorded as a miss.

• The "Erase Save Data" now actually works.

• Fixed an issue with the camera returning to the player's position that caused to sometimes lock up.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

New Room, Combat Animations, New Art, Cutscene Work

Alpha v0.12.0

This build has a few known bugs, some are quite game breaking, but hey that's Alpha for you.

Known Bugs & Workarounds

• When playing the combat test, the enemy attacks will not work the second time you play the song. You have to reset your save file to play the song for the "first time" again. To do this, quit to the main menu and press F1, you'll see an option for "Erase All Game Data". Click this button and restart the game. Warning: This also erases all your settings, such as difficulty and latency calibration.

• The menu that appears on death cannot be interacted with. You'll have to press Esc and select to quit.

• There's a place you can clip out of bounds. Have fun with that one!

Combat

We've moved the combat test location. To test combat you need to interact with the top right door in the waiting room. Shown in the image below.

Added new column art and column flare animations.

• The enemy now has a glyph below them.

• When the enemy attacks, the slash will now be displayed.

  • When the slash reaches it’s peak (frame 3), the player sprite will block and the block effect will play. It will play a success or failed block effect depending on whether or not the player has missed any notes.

  • Once the block effect is finished, the enemy and player will go back to their normal sprites.

  • Implemented damage numbers. When the player takes damage, the number will appear at the top right and float up, fading away. If they successfully block then it will instead say “Blocked!”

  • The player sprite now shakes left and right for half a second when hit.

  • The player sprite now flashes for half a second when hit.

• Implemented a note death animation for when you successfully hit a note.

World

• Added a new Welcome Center room; the Hallway.

• Implemented a script that allows doors to be unlocked.

• The locked door in the hospital waiting room is now unlocked when the player interacts with it while holding the keypass.

Cutscenes

• Implemented character movement during cutscenes.

• Added in a test for movement in cutscenes so you can check it out. In the waiting room, go to the locked door on the top left and interact with it.

• Created a character recording script to record player movement and play it back for ease of creating cutscenes.

Menus

• Added a splash screen to the start of the game that tells the player not to record gameplay. Clicking any key or the left mouse button will continue to the main menu.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue where save files wouldn’t load because the game thought they were from an older version.

• Fixed an issue where the game would always end up loading the oldest possible valid file instead of the most recent.

• Fixed an issue with the dialogue box not going away for certain cutscene actions.

• Fixed an issue where holding a held note, then letting go too early would change the top part to the wrong sprite.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Difficulty Modes, Cutscene Functionality with Dialogue Upgrades

Alpha v0.11.0

Menus

• Added difficulty options. Currently it slides between Normal and Hard.

• Combat will now check the difficulty and play the appropriate version of the song.

Cutscenes

• Completely revamped the dialogue system. Instead of simply being dialogue with some other features integrated, it is now a full-blown scene system that’s much more expandable.

• Added the ability for Combat to happen as part of a cutscene.

• The dialogue system can now parse text in-between square brackets as variables. So when we put [RhythmColumn1] it would replace that with the keybind for RhythmColumn1.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• The steam overlay should now properly pause the game during combat as well.

• The game no longer automatically freezes when not in focus.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Save System Improvement, Menu Improvements

Alpha 0.10.1

Save System

• Saves are no longer stored in folders named after the current version, instead simply saving into a “Saves” folder.

• After creating a save file, the game now checks if there are more than 10 backup saves and if there are it deletes the oldest backup save.

Menus

• Added a button to submit feedback to the pause menu. It opens a web browser to the google feedback form.

• The “Settings” button has been removed from the pause menu while in Combat.

• Added an “Erase All Saves” button to the debug menu (press F1 on the main menu) which will erase the saves folder and create a new one, then reload the new save.

• The Audio Settings sub-menu can now be accessed.

• Moved Latency Calibration to the Audio Settings.

• Added new BPM options to the Latency Calibration and made 30 BPM the default option.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue where you could bind the same key to multiple keybinds.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.

Combat Dialogue, Settings Expansion, Steamworks Integration

Alpha 0.10.0

Dialogue

• Implemented dialogue in combat.

Menus

• Changed the sub-menu setup. There are now multiple sub-menus that house the options.

• Implemented a help text system. When you hover certain settings, the menu will display text describing what that option does.

• Video Settings

  • Added an option to switch between Windowed and Fullscreen mode.

  • Added an option to choose your aspect ratio. This doesn’t actually change anything, except what resolution options are given to you below that.

  • Added a resolution option that displays all resolutions their computer supports for the aspect ratio setting they’ve chosen. Keep in mind that the game is not set up to support all those aspect ratio yet. Resolutions in 16:9 will display properly, but other aspect ratios will just cut off parts of the screen currently.

• Gameplay Settings

  • Moved the keybinding options and latency configuration settings into this menu.

  • Added a note speed option with a slider.

  • Added a text speed option with a slider.

• Audio Settings: None of these are implemented, just an unusable button currently.

Steamworks Integration

• Set up depots and build settings on steamworks and made it easier to quickly upload builds to steam.

• Added an invisible pause state that pauses the game’s functionality and time without displaying anything on top of the gameplay.

• Set it up so that opening the steam overlay will invisibly pause the game, pausing functionality and time without displaying anything on top of the gameplay.

Notable Bugs & Adjustments

• Fixed an issue that was causing buttons to be activated twice quickly whenever the player clicked one with the mouse button.

• Fixed several issues with held notes that caused their mid-sections to not work properly in certain cases, especially during note speed changes.

• The main menu banner now displays the current version.

++ many minor bugs and adjustments.