Greetings Coiners,

In today's update, we have some bug fixes, level tweaks, balancing, and small improvements. We hope you enjoy these enhancements.

Cheers.


Rebalanced:

• Classic Level 32
  
  
• Classic Level 5
  
  
• Zen Level 31
  
  
• Zen Level 32

Bugfixes:

• Arcade Rebuy-in price for Coiner/Casino corrected

Changes:

• Buy-in screen: Browsing levels with controller shoulder buttons
  
  
• Colored icons for specials where applicable
  
  
• Changed camera positions on some of the machines for a better default view
  
  
• Improved the visibility of the Jackpot spin counter Wheels 'n Fortunes.

Welcome back Players!

We are thrilled to announce that Pixel Arcade is progressing rapidly in development and will soon be available as a demo on Steam! After years of dedicated research the initial roadmap can finally be shared full of innovative features that aim to redefine your VR competitive VR gaming experience.

• Steam Next Fest Demo: Join us on October 14th, 2024, for the exclusive demo release during Steam Next Fest. Experience a curated level complete with exclusive Steam inventory unlocks and a potential achievement.
  
• Feedback: Your feedback is crucial. After playing the demo, we invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions on the feedback channel in the discord
  
• Visual Effects Update: We will refine and enhance visual effects as development continues. The Particles, textures, models and colours will change over the run up to the multiplayer update.
  
• Soundtrack Development: A new, captivating soundtrack is in the works to elevate the game's atmosphere.

• Hub Extension, expect more portals taking you to new gameplay experiences and environments
  
• Multiplayer mode to compete cooperatively or race and sabotage players routes
  
• Anticipate a free levels post launch with new environments and boost pads to experience, expanding your gameplay experience.
  
• New Gameplay Mechanics: Get ready for exciting additions like binary grenades and the ultimate competitive 6-player race mode.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2603560/Pixel_Arcade/

• Remade tutorial level to include some more gameplay details.
  
• Added various new SFX to interactable objects and ambient objects.
  
• Added new music track to Derelict Hotel level.
  
• Added NPC markers to the Compass UI.
  
• Added an indicator to the UI for NPCs that are off-screen and alerted/suspicious.
  
• Added an indicator to the UI for a clearer sign on what is and isn't a restricted/hostile area.
  
• Fatigue bar will now pulsate when above 75%.
  
• Made CorpID logs (text pop-ups on the left side of screen) slightly bigger and more logs are colored. Many players are missing information that shows up here.
  
• Small color palette change to menus.
  
• Added new Bench Vise weapon to Derelict Hotel level.
  
• Added 2 weapons - 2-Piece Toaster and 4-Piece Toaster, both found in the Derelict Hotel level.
  
• Slight hand IK adjustments to 2-handed blunt weapons.
  
• Slight adjustment to space out the save system between frames. Instead of trying to save a lot of information in 1 frame - resulting in the game freezing for a second - I spaced it out over 4 frames, resulting in a small stutter as it saves but at least it won't look like the game crashed/about to crash. I can change this back if needed.

• Fixed some issues with the Player character stats not being properly set when saving/loading.
  Stats should now properly save and set when loading different saves with different characters. e.g. if you had a character that was Male on your Quicksave but a Female character on your Autosave, both saves will correctly represent the respective Player character.
  
• Fixed crouch speed not setting properly when loading a save where the player character was crouching.
  
• Fixed some Keypads not working properly.
  
• Fixed some issues with the Pocket system and made it work with the save system; everything should now save and load properly, including the currently equipped weapon.
  
• Fixed an Intuition skill check with the Skulls leader.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Player character couldn't move if an NPC opened a door as the player character was lockpicking it.
  
• Fixed a water puddle in the Mass Abode building not rendering correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where lower frame rates could cause the lockpick pointer to behave erratically at the smallest mouse movements. This in turn I think made it much easier to lockpick, so I'll be updating this in the future depending on player feedback.
  
• Fixed an issue where talking when/while resting and starting a dialogue would make the player character unable to move.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing the walk button while resting would make the player character slide around the floor.
  
• Fixed an issue where starting a dialogue with slow walk speed and then ending the dialogue would cause the player character to move at the normal speed while playing the slow walk animation.
  
• Fixed some unintended behaviour during Jackson's dialogue sequence
  
• Fixed some sounds that weren't properly routed through volume channels, meaning pausing the game or changing the volume wouldn't affect these sounds.
  
• Fixed some desynchronization between the NPC's physics puppet rig and Navmesh pathfinding when jumping over obstacles or holes,

I've updated the demo 28 times but I'll just keep track of the bigger, more substantial updates like the previous one and this one - demo update 2. It will be the last big one before the game releases!

Thanks for the support

This patch addresses the recent downtime due to issues with the Steam Cloud and includes a couple of additions and fixes to the game.

• Fixed a major issue with steam cloud url format causing loading issues.
  
• All save files on load are converted to the new url format. (http://cloud-3.steamusercontent.com/ -> https://steamusercontent-a.akamaihd.net/)
  
• Old cache files will load even with these new urls so we don't have to redownload everything and waste space on storage.

• Added player color to typing indicator below chat
  
• Added component_hotkey_state_change console command/ misc setting. nolt/1828
  
• Hand Select Mode working for Lua (player.chooseInHand / player.chooseInHandOrCancel)
  
• Changed chooseInHand so it is now a feature of HandZone, instead of Player.
  
  This makes more sense from a game perspective, and will now work with hotseat, won't mess up if the player for instance changes their seat. Instead of setting a callback when you start the hand select mode you provide a label, and when a player ends hand select mode this event will fire:
  onPlayerHandChoice(player_colour, label, chosen_objects, confirmed)
• Made magnify zoom slightly larger.
  
• Added a console command magnify_zoom_size to control this size.
  
• Added this settings to the misc UI settings menu.
  
• Fixed alt zoom not working on hand objects when they are not on screen.

In this update, we've fixed a bug with the stars discrepancy between the game and the map in some cases.

Fixed another rare bug.

- Fixed bug where if your controlled lifeform was destroyed at the exact frame that the binary fission even screen finished its animation, it would not switch to another lifeform and instead become stuck requiring restarting the level.
Now instead of switching to another lifeform when destroyed in that situation, your controlled lifeform will become invulnerable once you activate the fission event.
- Fixed bug with Constant Fission Energy perk where fission energy would keep increasing past the maximum.

• Fixed table dice collision and dice rolling physics on the table.
  
• Great improvement into battle level visual quality and FPS.
  
• Fixed the high amount of energy consumption from main menu.
  
• Angel Of Fury -> Ability and Kinesis cost nerf
  
• Volcano -> Chance to damage nerf
  
• And 9 brand new cards!

New patch (0.1.44) is out :)

## New
New keywords:
- **Sunlight X**: A slot on the board has light. Characters on that slot have +X/X.
- **Sunbathing**: Activate ability if my slot has Sunlight.

New characters:
- Demon Sprite: 2/2 Level 3 Evil Demon. Aura: I have +1/1 for each hp you are below 30.
- Two faced demon. 2/5 Level 4 Evil Demon. Aura: ALL characters have +3/1.
- Sunflower. 1/4 Level 4 Neutral Plant. Entrance: Give my adjacent slots Sunlight 2 for the fight. Sunbathing: Also give the slots behind me Sunlight 2 for the fight.
- Apollo: 6/4 Level 5 Good Holy Angel. Ranged. When you sell an Angel, cast God Rays. Entrance: Give my row Sunlight 2 for the fight.

New Sunbathing abilities (added in addition to their current ability):
- Sprout: Sunbathing: Double my Bloom.
- Cursed Rose: Sunbathing: Give your characters that I hit with Blizzard +1/0.
- Yellowbark: Sunbathing: Increase my buff by +0/1.
- Woman in the Moon: Sunbathing: Double my buff.

New:
- New item: Firefly. 1/1 Level 5. 4 gold, 1 mana. Entrance: Give my slot Sunlight 5.
- New 1v1 queue
- For @MooMalow: Added a "Pick Random treasure" button (top left) and "Buy random" and "move random" shortcut buttons ;)
- New setting for custom lobbies "Hero Same": All players will get the same hero selection. The 1v1 queue and tournament use this setting.
- When reconnecting to a game, on the title screen you are given the option to leave the game instead of joining (in case of a bugged lobby).
- Renamed Treant -> Plant

## Balance
Heroes:
- Scheherazade: Give +2/2 -> +1/1.
- Amateur: has 3 -> 4 choices
- Broonie, Leprechaun: Double buff on level 4 -> 5
- Cheshire Cat: Base buff +2/2 -> +1/1. Increased by +1/1 -> +2/2 for each roll.
- Demeter: 0 -> -2 hp.
- Phantom: -1 -> -3 hp.
- Pig Entrepreneur: 1x3 -> 1x2 attack
- Queen of Hearts: +0 -> +1 hp.
- Wayward Sisters: +1 -> +2 hp.

Characters:
- Cursed Rose: 0 -> 1 mana cost
- Romeo/Juliet: Buff based on starting -> current stats. Buff Juliet/Romeo only in the same row.
- Young Fluff: 4/2 -> 3/1

- Captain Hook: 10/10 -> 8/8
- Fluff Fluff: 6/4 -> 3/1

- Portal Wardrobe now cannot summon Consti anymore.
- Purple Fluff: 8/6 -> 5/4

- Archdemon added: Aura: Your Demons have +1/1 for each time you took damage this game.
- The Wise Merlin: 0 -> 1 mana and added "Every 2 spells you cast, increase my Boost by +1/1."

Treasures:
- Mana Stone renamed to Sun Stone and added "Your last slot has Sunlight 2."
- Mage Gloves: Moved to chaos.

Fixes:
- Fixed in-lobby matchmaking so facing opponents A-B-A doesn't happen.
- Limited Golden Fluff to 100 characters in your shop as it lead to very slow shops.
- Fixed a mismatch where Portal Wardrobe would summon something wrong in the backend (could summon level 5 units on 4.2)
- Fixed already picked quest characters appearing from: Golden Fluff, Lizard Recruiter
- Fixed quest characters appearing twice in a shop.
- Fixed Mycroft not getting stats on level up
- Fixed Arthur not buffing Purple Fluff.
- Fixed Hero Mask + Meta Mimic leading to crash.
- Fixed Symbol of Unity + Broonie/Leprechaun

Hi everyone,
Here is a quickfix for a nasty bug.

• Fixed a bug about talent stones sometimes doesn't work when entering the dungeon. Usually after visiting some of the base facilities.

This is a just a quick message confirming that the release date for Relentless Frontier early access is July 24th. We announced the shifting of the date over a week ago, but very cleverly forgot to mention it on Steam.

The reason for the delay is the usual stuff, we found a few (non flammable) bugs that were serious enough to warrant another week of polish and testing to make sure Relentless Frontier is fit for release. And the good news is that it is! The issues found have been fixed and we're very much in the final stages of being ready to share this with you all. There will be a proper release day new post with all the juicy details so I'll leave it at that.

On behalf of the Relentless Frontier team,

Cheers,

BB