It's been nearly four months since the first release of The Moonstone Equation and since then development has not really stopped (or slowed down).

I've released a dozen updates packed full of fixes and new features that have transformed the game as it was at release into something even better.

I have you the community to thank for much of that progress. You've provided great feedback (and found some great bugs) and your enthusiasm has ensured I've had the drive to work every day.



Today I'm marking a change in pace for any future developments and updates for the Moonstone Equation with the release of the 'Complete Edition'

This update has the usual collection of small bug fixes and tweaks but more significantly it also includes 25 Steam Achievements! for you to find and unlock. From now on any updates will only contain minor additions and occasional bug fixes.



Is this the end?

Not really, it's just a change of pace. There's only one of me and I need to spend less time making the Moonstone Equation if I want to spend any time making anything new.

I'll always be checking the community hub, social media all my emails so you can still make sure I hear you if you have any ideas or issues. I'm also not totally ruling out more content in the future.


Thank you again for all your amazing support.

It's been a few months since the last update. With the worst of the bugs squashed in the early updates I moved onto some more significant content changes. These have obviously taken longer to implement but hopefully you'll find the wait has been worth it.

There are fixes, changes and additions across the whole game. It will all integrate with your existing saves but if you want the full experience then you might prefer to start a new game. The easy way to do this is through the 'factory reset' option in the PDA menu (esc) or the quicker and more direct way is to press 'n' twice on the very first loading screen (you'll see a little message if you've done it right).

Some of the changes will be obvious very quickly but others are in some very obscure places. Also, some of the new puzzle are intentional very hard (but fair).

In general it seems that most of you have enjoyed searching around and piecing the parts of the plot jigsaw together at your own pace and in your own way. My intention was always to try and reward curiosity but there was a common thread of people feeling a little lost for what to do next.

I've not added any additional hand-holding but I hope you'll find the plots and pieces that make up the fractured world-story a little easier to piece together and as such find it a little easier to choose what you might want to do next. There's still plenty of very obscure and hidden stuff for those of you that really want to get all the answers.

So, With all that out of the way it's on to the bullet points. in no particular order.

• More dialogue for almost all the characters. Some characters now have more than twice as much to talk about over the whole game.
  
• More collectibles (and more plot because of them)
  
• More post end-game content.
  
• More puzzles. Not block pushing and not obvious to 90% of players but they probably represent a good few more hours of gameplay if you can find them. The early ones are easy enough but they get pretty hard.
  
• More hidden but direct clues and information about the lore and meaning of the Moonstone Equation.
  
• Subtle but important changes to the ledge balance points when idle. No more standing in mid-air. (also no more pushing blocks from mid-air, sorry)
  
• Command history for terminals (just press 'up' and 'down' to step through previous commands.
  
• Improved terminal email client a little bit.
  
• Added the missing 'DigSite' terminal into the dig-site.
  
• Allowed executable to use extended 32Bit memory space (Upto 3GB) so out-of-memory crashes should not happen anymore.
  
• A few subtle level adjustments that you'd only notice if you know what to look for.
  
• A few other small bug fixes.

If you're interested, you can follow my development progress very directly by looking at my
Trello Board

Warning! That's a direct look at my development tasks and my contain some spoilers. As much as possible I'll try not to give too much away but you have been warned.

Another week and another Friday update. It's a pretty big one this week with lots of little fixes and a few much requested features.

• Doors that's you've been through before will now tell you where they go
  
• Special doors now indicate your progress in the special levels behind them.
  
• You can nolonger break your game by leaving the moon before picking up the sight stone
  
• Fixed a control issue while swimming and pressing jump at the bottom of pools
  
• Fixed lots of cases where chat dialogs didn't respond to input
  
• opening a computer terminal while far away from a chatty NPC now works as expected
  
• Hint dots under each level intro text are now correct in all cases
  
• completed door puzzles now show the correct state when you view them.
  
• Fixed lots of level exploits.

If you're interested, you can follow my development progress very directly by looking at my
Trello Board

Warning! That's a direct look at my development tasks and my contain some spoilers. As much as possible I'll try not to give too much away but you have been warned.

It's Friday update time again. I'm splitting my time between bugs and more long term feature development at the moment so this is quite a short list.

• Conecting to some terminals won't break everything anymore.
  
• Blocks can now jam doors open (instead of being forced through the floor)
  
• Emailing other characters should make a little more sense (though they still don't say much (one of the features I'm working on)

Thank you everyone.

Just a quick update to fix a few pretty serious camera issues introduced in the previous update along with a few other fun things.

• Camera won't get stuck and act wierd in some places anymore.
  
• Fixed a level exploit
  
• Fixed a few odd or missing tiles
  
• Lanterns activation and hint distances now match
  
• Added a bit more light to Specimen Tanks

Thank you everyone.

Another round of bug fixes and improvements. Mostly focusing on audio issues but there's a few other fun things too.

• Reverb for all levels is now correct (not just the default)
  
• Audio clipping issues (particularly on surround systems) should be fixed.
  
• Audio volume settings are now saved.
  
• Better camera tracking when falling
  
• 'Worm' mini game is now playable again.

Thank you everyone.

Another quick update to fix a small edge case bug in one of the levels and a bit of light.

• Corrected an issue in one of the levels where a Trigger Stone was not correctly detected
  
• Added some light to The Upper Waterworks
  
• Also fixed a missing tile in the same level.

Thanks everyone

Andy

This is just a quick update that fixes and small but fairly serious issue in the unlocking of some areas of the game world. I know this might sound vague so if you're really interested you can read the spoilers below.



If you'd used exactly the same number of trigger stones as you'd found then the interface door in The Lower Waterworks would disappear (or never show up), along with your trigger stone notes. This would obviously have stopped you completing the game if you'd already found and used all the trigger stones.

This is all fixed now.

Thank you everyone

Andy

Perhaps this version could be called 'the great escape' update as there are several significant fixes to levels (I had to add to the save file data just to fix some of these) so you shouldn't be getting stuck in odd places anymore.

• Added escape capability to MoonLab
  
• Removed random water block in Lower Waterworks
  
• Fixed incorrect block in Lower Waterworks
  
• Removed data block exploit in one of the levels
  
• Very significantly reduced the graphics memory footprint in all levels (should help stability)
  
• Added more memory allocations into pooling to reduce fragmentation issues (also to help stability)
  
• Electric doors now wait about 1 second before opening or closing just to make sure the signals have settled down.

Thank you so must to everyone that's sent me save files, crash dumps and links to images and streams of bugs. These have all been immensely helpful in tracking down some of these issues.

It looks like I'm starting to settle into a pattern of end-of-week updates and patches. Unless there's a really critical problem then this feels like a good update rate. See you again next week.

Thank you everyone

Andy

This one's a pretty serious one so it get's a different version number change. That middle number only changes if I add or change things to the save format. In this case I fixed things.

• Significant issue in the game saves is now fixed, if you've lost progress between past updates that should all be okay now.
  
• Journal entries (when to load the game) should be much more interesting (because they now work properly)
  
• Fixed an exploitable level. A few more to come.
  
• A few spelling issues fixed.
  
• D-Pad support everywhere.

Continuing with the work on achievements but also looking at some of the more subtle signs and feedback issues that a few people have pointed out.

Don't forget, if you're still having any issues (or just want to talk about things) you can post them up here and/or email me directly at support@moonstoneequation.com


Thankyou everyone

Andy