It's been three weeks since the last patch, and OH DANG have we got a whopper. This patch brings a huge pile of UI, UX, accessibility, and polish updates. Let's get in there!


Keybinds. We have them. We have A LOT of them. We have so many that it started to cause problems, so we rebuilt the entire keybinding interface and the underlying code infrastructure. You know what that means? It means you can now rebind just about anything you want.



And you can even rebind your CONTROLLER buttons! REJOICE!

We're going to be doing some more work on the default Controller keybinds to make things work better in the editor and in multiplayer, so stay tuned for that in a not-too-distant patch. But whatever happens, you'll generally be able to rebind stuff to whatever you want anyways!


Colors! Some of us can see all of them, but some of us can only see... some of them. Since color can be used to convey a bunch of things in Levelhead, especially in puzzle levels, our colorblind friends have had an increasingly difficult time as we've added more color-heavy features.

We wanted to remedy that, so we added a Colorblind Assistance setting. This setting attaches icons to the major colors in the game, so you can easily distinguish colored Rifts, Arrows, and Hardlights. And we've baked those icons into Keys and their associated items, too.



If you have colorblindness and are having issues with other aspects of the game, please let us know via the feedbag, and we'll try to come up with a solution!


Time to UNBUCKLE YOUR SHOES, because this is going to be an incredibly smooth ride. We've updated several of the game's interfaces to be more obvious, intuitive, and take you where you need to go. OBSERVE!

Search Result Tips

If you did a search in Levelhead and there were no results, we used to just have an unhelpful message that said, "No results found." This applied even on lists like your own "Following" list, your Favorites, etc...

Now, if you have no results in one of these lists, we'll assume it's because you haven't engaged with that part of the game yet, so we provide you with a helpful link to show you where to go to get started on that thing. For example, if you aren't following anyone and you look at your "Following" list, we point you toward the Creator browser so you can find people to follow.



So smooth!

No More Manual Downloads!

Instead of needing to click "Download" on a level before you play it, you can now just... play it. As a result, all level cards will just have a "Play" button. WOW! But don't worry! If you do want to pre-download levels before you go on a long plane ride, for example, you can just turn on "Download Mode" in the settings!

Login Flow-verhaul!

Our previous login method was a bit too involved, and as a result, a significant proportion of our players never logged in. It's not because they didn't want to, it's just that we never really made it obvious how, where, or why to do it. So, to get more of our players involved in the community, we've rebuilt the game's login flow.

If you boot up the game and you haven't logged in, now you get the login page right away! We also updated the visuals of the Login page to be more "Levelhead-y" instead of Rumpus themed, because there was an extra layer of confusion. "What is Rumpus? Why am I logging into it?" So, overall, this new process should get far more people to log in, and those people should be a lot less confused.



Also, when you first log in, you now pick your alias and your avatar. Say goodbye to the swarms of new players stuck using the Generic Employee avatar!


We're continuing to tweak the Tower's algorithms to make sure there is a nice variety of content in the Featured list and not just a huge number of five-star levels. Right now, things are swinging around a bit while we work to find that "Sweet Spot," but it's getting closer all the time! The result is that the Tower's "Featured" list is starting to generate a decent amount of play. Since the Tower is increasingly being viewed as where you go for "Good Levels", We wanted to make sure it gets even more attention, so we've updated the Tower to just place you directly on the Featured page as soon as you enter.



From this page, you can go to the Tower Trial or play a Random playlist. Oh, and speaking of Random Playlists...


Our original thinking with the Random Playlist was to make it truly random, and only allow you to bracket levels by difficulty. But after some further iteration, we realized it would be more interesting if you could pick whatever filters you wanted, and generate a random playlist out of that!



Now, when you click the Random Playlist button, you'll get a random playlist that matches whatever your filters are in the Tower. Want a playlist of just "Short" levels tagged as "beginner-friendly"? Or perhaps a playlist of "Troll" levels? Now you've got it!


We have four colors of GR-18 available for multiplayer, so we thought, why don't we let people just pick one of those colors as their main GR-18 color? In the game's settings, you can now make your GR-18's face Blue, Fuchsia, Gold, or Green!



Plus, GR-18 has some new animations for throwing things downward, and there's even a new flipping animation while sprinting!




We're continuing to iterate on the mobile controls and features to make sure the game is ready for a solid beta test in the coming... time. Many of these features also require separate tutorial steps or mobile-specific instructions, so it has been a bit of an undertaking. But it's coming along!



We'll have more news about the mobile version soon, as well as information on how to get involved in being a beta tester for it!


I gotta get out of here! Want to know more? Read the full patch notes below, or just come into our community Discord and say hi!

See you next Wednesday!


See the full patchnotes.

Another week down and I don't even know what to say about this AMAZING Community! HMMMMMM.... JUSSTTTT ... LOOK BELOW!

As always, remember to click the level names to bookmark them for later on. HERE WE GO!

GR-18 descends into erupting volcano to rescue the package in SleepyDoof's fiery level Plunge Into Hot Inferno. GR-18: The Incombustible Robot (NOT REALLY, do not try this at home!)
Chalk your hands and get ready to scale walls in Steek Hutsy's soaring level Conventional Scenario. GR-18's hands, feet, and grappler coordination need to be on-point or you'll be STABBED BY A POINT. Check out Intuition's insane video of acing this climbing test.
In PureKnickers' ambitious level Welcome To Scrubb City!, GR-18 dawns its business suit. Profits and cost-savings are the only aim so get those Scrubbs workin' by any means necessary!


First-time diver GR-18 is learning important lessons in TalkGibberish's cavernous level GR-18, Use Adventure Gear!. Lesson 1: make sure you have all your gear. Lesson 2: ??? Lesson 3: PROFIT.


GR-18 gets to try all the flavors and toppings in GR-18, Jem, Zipper, Lizumi!? by levaXplay. Package delivery is just the cherry on the top!

• In Retro Banana Man NL's Kick Package, Gain Height! GR-18 has to trust its throwing arm to reach the heights of success!
• In VO2's 10 Second Sprint, GR-18 better HURRY UP, or deal will being off the table!
• In Sjosz's Beware Spike Block Shrine, GR-18 is carrying its team in this relay race!

There is only one happiness in life: to spread the love of this community! Happy Valentines Day!

This week GR-18 goes down memory lane, brings out its inner child and feels fireworks all around!

As always, remember to click the level names to bookmark them for later on. HERE WE GO!


Take a stroll in the garden with the adorable GR-18 in SleepyDoof's well-paced level Toggle Garden. GR-18's magical powers will open the path to love & peace (after killing some scrubs)!

Also, CHECK OUT the awesome FAN ART that we are in love with created by SleepyDoof.


GR-18 takes a path down memory lane, searching for long-lost package, in Spekio's wistful level Explore the Abandoned Home.


GR-18 exactly knows what the future holds in TalkGibberish's fiery level Flingo Mountain 3: Peak. All GR-18 needs to do is take the leap of faith and zip through to the love of its life: PACKAGE!


Msmiley has planned a great day for GR-18 in the E-rated level Spend That Jem, GR-18! GR-18's favorite part is the slide which brings joy to its inner ROBOT-BABY!


Watch the after-effects of a broken heart in Wailer's heated level Devious BUDD-E! Help GR-18 get over the fiery pain by reuniting it with its true love: PACKAGE!

• Freact's Super Speed-Oh-Run! is an intense speedrun! GR-18 has its work cut out for it in this one!
• PureKnickers' Jem Haunt Heights will keep GR-18 on its toes. Quick reflexes and sprints are the workout of the day!
• Salmaster's Explore The Hot Forest will help GR-18 work on the long-distance running.

As we approach launch, we have to take a critical eye toward all the things that might scare off new players or keep them from getting involved in the community. We've started ripping up old systems that were getting in the way of that goal, and we started building new ones to make the new player experience smooth as butter. Let's take a look at just a few of the things that we've been working on this past week!

Mobile Updates

We are getting closer to begin some larger-scale testing of the mobile version of Levelhead. But before we do that, we have to make sure it's working PRECISELY AS INTENDED! So we're in the midst of beefing up some of the mobile controls, adding some extra layers of tutorial elements to teach players how to do advanced moves using the touchscreen, and getting the editor up to speed. The mobile version is feeling really good, though.... Once you get a hang of the touch controls, anyway!

Input Overhaul

Levelhead has a lot of inputs. A LOT. And these inputs are spread out over tons of interfaces. With the way our input system was set up in the past, things were just way too tangled, which kept us from allowing players to rebind their controller hotkeys. So this past week, we did a POWERFUL DETANGLING, and rebuilt the input system from the ground up.

Because of this, in the next patch, you'll be able to rebind controller inputs! Plus, this allowed us to add some more hotkeys where we previously couldn't -- like the path editor! Oh, and the whole system is now way more optimized. Wins all around!

Colorblind Mode?

We have a few items in the game that can only be distinguished by color, such as Hardlights and Keys. After seeing someone on a Twitch stream become unable to pass a section of a level because they couldn't see the color difference between various keys, we realized we needed to add something extra to help people out.



Keys now have icons associated with their colors, and key-related items use those same icons as well! Now, if there are places where you can't see the colors, you can use the icons instead. Hopefully that helps! Please give us feedback on how these work out for you, once we get them in the game!


Login flow

One of the issues we're working on solving is the fact that we actually don't do a very good job of onboarding new players and getting them involved in what we believe to be the core of the game: building and sharing levels, and playing community levels. Because it's possible to play as a guest without logging in, and because we never actually point players toward the login process or explain the benefits, our login rate is a lot lower than it should be.

So we're updating the login flow as part of our New Player Experience Overhaul, and once it's finished, it should get a lot more players onboarded properly and brought into the community! This is a huge update, though, so it'll take some thorough work and testing to get finished. But it's coming!

Next patch?

We aren't sure if we'll have a patch out next week, but we'll continue blazing forward on all of these updates. And if we hit a spot where we're able to deploy them, then we'll get them into your hands next Wednesday! If we don't make it in time, we'll at least have a developer blog so you aren't left in the dark.

NOW EXCUSE ME I HAVE TO GET BACK TO PROGRAMMING!


Want to stay tuned with updates in CLOSE TO REAL TIME? Check out our patch notes page to see changes to the game, even before they have hit Steam!

And if you want to get the changes a little earlier than the rest of the folks on Steam, hop into our Discord, where we've got information on getting into the Beta branch.

You can't stop me from spreading the awesomeness of this community, FRIYAY has arrived! This week we have spectacular fireworks, the feeling of being on cloud 9 and the GOAT FederGR-18.

As always, remember to click the level names to bookmark them for later on. HERE WE GO!
TalkGibberish is at his creative best in the level Around Hardlight. Simple HOPS, SKIPS & JUMPS is all that is required to get through this one! A perfect example of simplicity being the ultimate sophistication!
Espurrator's creative level Watch Spike Chainer Swing! makes use of the Hawk-Eye system to keep the game fair! All GR-18 needs to do is put on its headband, grab the tennis racquet to replay the point and move the spike across the court!


Call on your Spidey Powers in SchuhBaum's precarious level Tiptow Oasis. GR-18 will have to climb a lot of walls and jump through fire to survive this one!


In Spekio's spooky music level Trouble From The Deep, GR-18 takes on the graveyard shift! Being alert in all directions (especially below) is the key to making this delivery.


GR-18 is following up on a lead by Dearg Doom in the Scrubb facility Machine Gear GR-18. This will be the front page expose of the sweatshop in tomorrow's ROBOT TIMES!

• SleepyDoof's Toasty Desert has spectacular fireworks. Sit back and enjoy the show!
• CJ5Boss's Sky Zone has the feeling of being on cloud 9. Enjoy while the feeling lasts!
• Dnin's Whizblade Mayhem is like doing 10 sets of 100-meter sprints, progressively gets harder!
• DustierDolphin's Super Package Mastery: Climb has a gorgeous view at the top! Climbing this Everest is the hard part!

Hey, Levelheads! This week we have some WEIRD AND WILD stuff coming down the game development... er... tube? We took another look at Exposure bucks, wiggled some colors around, and began our work on updating the New Player Experience. Read on!




We've been quietly working on a suite of Presentations for the campaign that give Levelhead a greater sense of story, more worldly context, and, of course, more dumb jokes. FIVE of these presentations are now available in the Bureau of Shipping's training program, covering everything from what *L.E.V.E.L. * stands for to why all those Bug parts are floating around out there.

We also knew that just one voice wasn't going to be enough for these presentations, so we contacted Aimee Smith about playing the role of M.A.Y.A., the Bureau of Shipping's Artificial Intelligence. She wowed us with her exuberance and fantastic Aussie accent to such an extent that we rewrote a chunk of the presentations to give her more words to say. You can take a sneak peak with this SUPER SECRET YOUTUBE VIDEO.

Follow Aimee on twitter, and JUST HOLD YOUR HORSES for the remaining 13 presentations, which we'll have finished up in time for the 1.0!


Our vision for the Tower was that it would be a place where you could go to find good levels, and where good levels could get the appreciation -- and players -- they deserve. However, there are a couple aspects of the Tower that have put some roadblocks in that path. So this patch, we started to address those issues.

New Front Page!

The first thing you'll probably notice in the Tower Library is the new front page of "Featured" levels!



Featured levels are levels that have a high level of player engagement -- meaning, people tend to enjoy them and stick around -- but a low number of players for how good the level is. In other words, these are the levels that a lot of people should probably see and play, but not many have yet. As a Featured level gets more players, it will slide down the Featured list over time, making room for other great, but underplayed, levels. The "Featured" section is compatible with all other search filters, so you can, for example, find all Featured "Kaizo" or "Beginner-Friendly" tagged levels, or find Featured "Adventure" difficulty levels. Whatever you want, we have a Featured list for it!

One caveat, though, is that this list won't be churning too fast at the moment. But we anticipate that at launch, this thing will be churning LIKE A HOT TUB WITH JETS ON!

Our intent with the Featured list is to build up the reputation of the Tower as the place where you should be able to just pop in and find some really good stuff that you might not have seen before. We don't want it to be the case that when a level graduates from the Marketing Department, that it just slides into obscurity if it's a really good level. Hopefully, this Featured list does that!

However, having a great bunch of levels in the Tower doesn't necessarily mean people will go there. Because there's one other issue we had to solve...

Exposure bucks... IN THE TOWER?

The Marketing Department is a nice tool. It gives you a way to see all the great new levels, and it gives you a way to get your levels seen and played, via the Exposure Bucks system. However, the Marketing Department has, to date, been essentially a black hole of player attention and playtime. Because the only way to get Exposure Bucks was the Marketing Department, players would tend to feel like they were missing out if they played levels in the Tower. Sure, the Tower Trial is cool, but if you spend an hour running it, that's a bunch of Exposure Bucks you just missed out on! And yeah, you can sort and filter the Tower to find the precise kinds of levels you want, but why would you, if you can't get exposure bucks there?

So we stepped back and asked... What would happen if you did get exposure bucks by playing levels in the Tower? The more we thought about it, the more sense it made. The purpose of exposure bucks is to allow you to trade your playtime on other people's levels with playtime on your own levels. It seems that this change will continue to meet that purpose!

So now, you will earn exposure bucks in the tower! This means you can enjoy the new "Featured" front page and play tons of great Tower levels, or any other kinds of levels you want, and get those exposure bucks anyways!



For now, the Tower will net you exposure bucks at half the rate of Marketing Department levels, because we do want the Marketing Department to still be front and center. Still, it's possible that even if the Tower earned Exposure Bucks at the normal rate, the Marketing Department would still be where most people spend their time. But most importantly, this is an experiment, so we'll be keeping an eye on the impact of this change and adjusting if need be!


As we approach the end of Early Access, we want to make sure our trailers and gameplay footage really POP! So we took another look at GR-18 to find some spots where we could polish up the feel and movement animations, and we noticed a few things that could definitely be improved. So we now have a new animation for falling while sprinting!



We're also working on an entirely new animation frame for kicking objects downward, and we're adding a new flip animation to Sprinting. Because it's just not fair that GR-18 stops doing flips just because he's running fast. But... those will have to wait until next time!


Vacrats are yellow now!



Well, the small ones, anyway. The big ones are... intimidating.


We're buckling down to fully revamp and build up the New Player Experience, so that when the game launches, new players are more effectively onboarded. The current game does a good job of dropping players into the campaign, but it doesn't do much else. Our goal with the next update is to get more players logging in, publishing levels, and playing other people's levels, because that's where the core experience of the game is, and that's where it gets really interesting. We have a lot of work to do to get there, so it's unclear whether we'll have a patch next week, but if not, we'll have a dev blog with progress updates!

In the meantime, enjoy some PIPING HOT PATCH NOTES!



See the full patchnotes.

New Features

Training

• The first 5 presentations are now available for players to view on the Training path- The Workshop, Maya, Bugs, Flapjacks, and the Tiptow. The rest of the presentations will be added for the 1.0 launch.

Credits

• You can now summon the game's Credits page through the "Data" tab of the Settings page off the main menu.

Improvements

Mobile

• Swapped the location of the jump & grab buttons on touchscreen controls, to make it far less likely that you accidentally "slide" out the home menu on Android and then press it.
  
• Reduced the maximum zoom-out in the editor on mobile, to compensate for the screen being quite tiny.
  
• Touchscreen controls should now default to be larger.

Web

• Removed the Bookmarks tab in Notifications. (thanks to TimConceivable)

UI

• You can now drag level cards in your workshop by clicking on their titles, instead of that weird crosshair thing in the bottom right corner -- which has been DESTROYED.
  
• Steam is now the first option on the Login page.
  
• You can no longer favorite your own levels, because... come on.

Visuals

• All of GR-18's variants now have the new sprint-falling frame.
  
• Vacsteaks are now recolored.
  
• There were too many gray things in the game, so Vacrats have had a visual update to be... YELLOW! Except for the large ones, which are something else.
  
• Updated GR-18's falling sprint frame.

Editor

• There is now a heart icon for the Sign. (thanks to Crushnoil Varkzapee)
  
• When you first entered the Editor, the camera would always start centered on GR-18. This would get weird if GR-18 was close to the edge of the level, because the camera would start with much of the screen being nothingness. The camera will now start inset into the level's area more in these scenarios.
  
• You can now horizontally flip the icons on Signs.

Training

• Break Grumble and Grin will no longer murder players who bop a particular vacrat in the thorn maze.
  
• Deliver the Package has been lightly updated.
  
• Thorn Cloud Delivery has been lightly updated.
  
• Package Jump Temple has been lightly updated.
  
• Mad Vacrat's boss fight music no longer stops randomly after the boss is defeated.
  
• Storm of Regret's goal no longer tricks you into leaping to your death sometimes, and it has been renamed to Flapjack Encounter.
  
• Pressure Point is now more beautiful and less annoying.
  
• Be Sneaky GR-18 has been lightly updated for better Tiptow teaching.
  
• Too Hot, Too Bad's final couple of fireballs are now swinging instead of twirling.
  
• Dang Sky Wiggler is now prettier, includes a GR-17, and teaches players how to push against the wiiiiind.
  
• GR-18 in the Machine is now enjoyable as a 2-player experience, and has an On-Time Delivery benchmark of 37s instead of 50.
  
• Howl of the Lizumi has been thoroughly updated to tell more of a story and have more secrets.
  
• The Way is Through has been updated to be, y'know, better.
  
• The initial Training path has been updated to be almost completely linear, to be less overwhelming to newer players.

Gameplay

• When you die, if your respawn location is on-screen and there is no camera anchor controlling the camera, the camera will no longer snap to your respawn spot. Instead, it will slide to that location. This should make respawns less jarring near respawn locations.

Tower

• The Tower's Library page has been updated. The "Hidden Gems" category has been replaced with a category called "Featured," which is now the default category of the Tower. Featured levels are levels that are Spicy but have few players for how spicy they are. This creates a self-balancing "Curated Front Page" of the tower: as featured levels get played more, they move down the list, making room for other spicy levels to get plays. In addition, the default time frame in the Tower is "All Time," instead of "Past Month." We believe that in conjunction with the change to the Tower now giving exposure bucks, this should begin to alleviate the issue of high-quality levels feeling like they get lost after graduating to the Tower.
  
• If you have under 2 hours of total gameplay, the Tower will default to showing you levels in the "Adventure" difficulty category.

Economy

• You now earn Exposure Bucks by playing any player-made levels (other than your own), even if they are in the Tower. Playing levels in the Tower will generate exposure bucks at half the rate of playing levels in the Marketing Department.

Fixes

UI

• Fixed the message when you quit a Random playlist from inside the level, to be the same message you see when quitting the random playlist from inside the playlist view.
  
• Fixed a leftover localization tag at the top of the Marketing Department.
  
• Updated the text of the Quit Playlist confirmation if the playlist is random, to inform you that you will probably never be able to replay it.
  
• Removed the "Favorite" button on your own levels from other interfaces.
  
• Fixed a weird black rectangle thing that was present in the backdrop of the Downloads and Creator Browser pages.
  
• Fixed the background vignette position in the Profiles page.
  
• While in the editor, the Joystick scroll speed would be faster if you were zoomed out, making it very difficult to pick words in the name combobulator. This is because scroll speed was attached to the width of the main view, instead of the width of the GUI. This has been fixed.

Editor

• When beginning to play in Cheese Mode, the camera would do a weird snapping thing. This has been fixed!
  
• Pressing "Play" in the Editor will now reliably kill all of your camera momentum from the Editor. (thanks to DNin)
  
• Fixed the 1-pixel gaps on the top and bottom of the right-side Editor Grid Ruler.
  
• In some cases, multiple players dragging Editor items using multiselect would case one anothers' non-contiguous box highlights to disappear. This should no longer occur.
  
• If you clicked to select a dropdown menu item in the Editor, the Grid Ruler would display a distance even though that makes no sense. Now it won't! (thanks to TalkGibberish)

Training

• You can now Warp to Presentation nodes in the Training overworld.
  
• The Training presentations should no longer get out of sync with the audio at lower frame rates.
  
• It no longer rains inside on Deliver the Package, GR-18! (thanks to TimConceivable)
  
• Dang Sky Wiggler's cables have been angled to avoid newbies mistaking them for ground tiles (thanks to TimConceivable)
  
• An assortment of punctuation has been added to the Presentations for proper grammar.
  
• Tiny white dots should no longer be visible in any presentations.
  
• The Workshop Presentation now uses the correct anatomical terminology for optic nerve (thanks to TheViralMelon)
  
• Presentations that come earlier in the campaign will be retroctively marked as "viewed" if you have beaten the level that comes after them.
  
• There should no longer be a hitch when the VEND-R bots open their mouths.
  
• The Rumpus spinner will no longer be displayed while you are on the Training overworld.

Audio

• Jingleboxes will now definitely not cause the music to stutter during gameplay.
  
• The main menu music will no longer play during the credits on the settings page.
  
• Audited and fixed some of the code around changing pitch and volume of music, which may alleviate the rapid vibrating/crackling sound of music after a Jinglebox plays.

Web

• Fixed an issue where players couldn't load levels.
  
• Device speed and level FPS telemetry will now only be sent by fully compiled versions of the game, for consistency.
  
• Some levels would report that they had failed to load, even if they actually succeeded. This has been fixed.
  
• If a level download failed, you would be forever trapped on the loading page. This will no longer be the case.
  
• Favorites Generated and Likes Generated should once again be displayed in your profile, now that we have fixed how they are counted.
  
• Further refined the random level finder to make it more reliable.
  
• The first time you searched for random levels in the Tower in each session, you would get the same levels. This has been fixed.

Gameplay

• When under the effect of Dbot and punching with the Waylay, you would pass right through Cromblers and Lizumis. You should now bounce off of both of them, and Lizumis will now be successfully punched in this scenario. (thanks to Crushnoil Varkzapee)
  
• Fixed an issue with Keys using too small of a hitbox collision check when hitting doors and switches. (thanks to TalkGibberish)
  
• If a bomb was parked on top of an item, it used to throw the item vertically. At some point, that broke. Well, now it's fixed, and bombs will once again throw items vertically if the item is close enough to the bomb! (thanks to Intuition?!)
  
• Blopfush had a 75px wide hitbox, making them larger than a grid space. This prevented them from spawning out of an enemy generator that was in a 1x1 space. This should now be fixed. (thanks to Spekio)
  
• Battery lightning now should always draw in front of Charge Switches.

Telemetry

• Fixed some Telemetry reporting about device speeds & optimization.

Another week bites the dust as the Levelhead community surges forward with its AWESOMENESS!This week GR-18 dabbles its grappler in gambling, pole vaulting & Reality TV.

As always, remember to click the level names to bookmark them for later on. HERE WE GO!


Are you willing to take a chance on your survival for all the possible gems & fame? If you chose option HECK YES, then get ready for the barrage of enemies and obstacles in CJ5Boss's gigantic level Escape From Boss Land. No GAIN without PAIN!


GR-18 becomes the knight in shining armor to free the blopfush in distress! GR-18 gets to diffuse the hardlight spell in TalkGibberish's noble level Blopfush Fear Hardlight. GR-18, the robot Prince Charming!


GR-18 hitches a ride in the bullet-proof vehicle that deflects fire missiles to recover the package in Espurrator suave level It's Bumper Train!. (Is GR-18 the James Bond of robots?)


Spekio has invented a better way to pole vault for GR-18 in the lofty level Trigger Blast Heights. All GR-18 has to do is hit the right angle and fly through the air! (Is GR-18 the Sergey Bubka of robots?)


GR-18 has to use the elements around it to survive and win the package in SleepDoof's gritty level The Keycard To Victory!. GR-18 has to make some alliances against enemies to get to the top. WILL GR-18 SURVIVE TILL THE END?!

• Check out all the community streaming activities by hopping into our Discord, be sure to look into Levelhead video channel for announcements!
• Dearg Doom's Desert Tank Patrol reminds me of an Army parade displaying its mighty tanks!
• MeiDerMon's GR-18 Does Spider Music uses Boomboxes exceptionally well to create a tribute to Undertale song!
• Lettuce Dragon's 1 Place 1 Machine. has a handy calculator you can use on all your counting problems!

Hey, Levelheads! As I noted last week in the patch notes blog post, we're shifting to a new patching philosophy where we'll just try to put out a patch on Wednesdays whenever the game is stable. So even if we don't have any HUGE new feature, we think it's still worth it to get bug fixes, general improvements, and optimizations deployed to our players.

This week we have just a few small updates coming down the pipe. Let's take a quick look!


Eye Switches are a fantastic tool for building level logic, but they always had a bit of a shortcoming in multiplayer -- they couldn't answer whether all players were present. So if you want it to be the case that a door will only open if every player approaches it, you couldn't. Until now, that is!



We've added the "All" setting to Eye Switches now, so you can beef up your multiplayer levels. Enjoy!


We're iterating on some of the earlier campaign levels to make them flashier, more engaging, and do a better job of teaching new players how the game works. We'll be continuing to refine these over the coming months, so by the time launch comes, many of these will have changed YET AGAIN!



But if you want a fun peek into the iterative side of development, we'd recommend popping into the campaign now and then and take a look at how those early levels are shaping up. It's pretty cool to see!


You can give a hardlight a color, but you couldn't see that color when it was inactive. Well, NOW YOU CAN!




Levelhead is set to run at a capped 60 fps (for a variety of reasons), but our players have been reporting that even when they are well above 60 fps, they are getting slightly variable outcomes in some physics operations. Usually these tiny variances don't matter, but in some cases, they matter a lot, like if an object hits a Bumper 1 pixel offset from normal, which causes a 45 degree change in direction from the normal.

This patch introduces smoothing to the physics engine when the game is running above 55fps. We'll be working on updating this concept to try to smooth out these variations over time at lower frame rates, too, but if you are running at a high frame rate, you should see much more consistent results in just about every game mechanic!


That's all for our patch this week! If you want the full list of changes, check them out below. We'll see you next week, either with a patch or a developer blog!



See the full patchnotes.

New Features

Editor

• You can now set Eye Switches to "All," which will require that all active players be at the Eye Switch.

Improvements

Training

• Deliver the Package, GR-18! has a little less zoom early on, a new sprint instruction card, an arrow to direct new players to drop between platforms at the beginning, and a speedbump.
  
• Be Sneaky GR-18 now has instructions for ceiling grappling, and a sprint available at the final jump.
  
• Brittle Rock Discovery's recent camera addition has been removed.
  
• Bop Jump no longer allows newbies to fall back through the entry drop and soft-lock themselves. Silly newbies.
  
• The path around Package Jump Temple is now properly fat.
  
• Players can no longer soft-lock themselves in Package Jump Temple by throwing their package incorrectly at the end.
  
• (In Development) Wait What!? has been updated based on feedback. Most importantly, the barrel shot should no longer be FPS-dependent.
  
• The word "Hold" on the Instruction cards should now be localized into all languages.
  
• Package Jump Challenge is now Package Jump Temple, and lives in the mainline of the campaign.
  
• The Sticker Pack VEND-R now has more unlocks in it, taken from the Handle With Care VEND-R.
  
• Be Sneaky GR-18 has been slightly updated to be friendlier.
  
• Deliver the Package GR-18 has been overhauled to better onboard newbies.
  
• Break, Grumble, and Grin's initial puzzle is now more enjoyable.
  
• Bop Jump has been updated slightly to be friendlier.
  
• Too Hot, Too Bad has an additional checkpoint.
  
• Mad Vacrat Nest now has spikeblocks instead of spikes under the final boss.
  
• Storm of Regret's big flapjack drop no longer lets the player jump into the ceiling.
  
• Brittle Rock Discovery now has a camera for extra focus during package jumping.
  
• Swoopadoop Gulch's upper bug piece has been brought down two tiles, and its upper checkpoint made repeatable.
  
• Bomb Traveler now has a piece of armor in it.
  
• An Unusual Time's coin trails should no longer be whacky.
  
• Dangerous Friend how has a checkpoint.
  
• Dune Doom Dream has an additional intro checkpoint, and one sawblade's distance has been reduced by a tile.

Web

• Audited and fixed up some issues in the Workshop Cloud Syncer that might result in duplicated levels under edge cases.
  
• Newly-created notifications from this version onward will expire after 2 weeks.
  
• Added instructions on where to go to unlink an account from Rumpus on the user management page.

Optimization

• If the game was running above 60fps, there could still be tiny fluctuations in how long a frame took (from 16.2 ms up to 17.5 ms). This would mean that even if the game should be running totally consistently, you may see slightly inconsistent results in certain physics operations. Now, as long as your frame time is under 18ms (about 55fps), the game will lock the frame rate at 60fps, so you should see much more consistent results at that threshold. If you drop below 55fps, consistency will remain unchanged from before.

Editor

• Editor Snapshot image filenames will now be named based on local time, not UTC.
  
• While dragging items around, the Ruler now shows how far you have dragged the item. While placing, it shows how many tiles you have placed. (thanks to TalkGibberish)

Gameplay

• Inactive Hardlights now have their nodes colored to match the active version. (thanks to TalkGibberish)

Fixes

UI

• Fixed some issues with the Editor having 1-pixel gaps in its borders, caused by a change in Game Maker's rectangle drawing functions.

Gameplay

• Baddie Eyeswitches were detecting in an area 1 pixel too wide, causing them to incorrectly detect enemies just beyond solid spaces. This has been fixed. (thanks to TalkGibberish)
  
• If you restored at a checkpoint and there was a camera anchor active at the time you touched the checkpoint, the camera would revert to its position at the time you activated the checkpoint. This could lead to scenarios where the camera would repeatedly "settle" to its final location every time you respawned at the checkpoint. Now, if you restore at a checkpoint to a time when there was a camera anchor active, the camera will first try to just immediately settle on its anchor destination, so you don't get whiplash every time. If the camera immediately going to its destination would kill the player (due to being offscreen), then it will default to the old behavior.

Editor

• Fixed a memory leak in the editor.
  
• Dragging an individual item underneath an item that requires solids will now properly destroy that item. (thanks to TimConceivable)

Localization

• Updated tagging of localized strings in campaign presentations so they appear sequentially to the translators.

Xbox

• Fixed an issue on Xbox where, if a level failed to load in the Notifications page, it may attempt to repeatedly reload nonstop until the heat death of the universe.

Another week down and another crazy round of AMESOMENESS from our community! This week GR-18 showed its multiple personalities and confirmed why it is the BEST of the lot!

As always, remember to click the level names to bookmark them for later on. HERE WE GO!



Put your thinking hats on to escape the level Zipper Escape Room. Tobvet has created a perfect cinematic experience by using the camera zoom to reveal one clue at a time! GR-18 will need to deploy all the senses and wit to escape this one.


Spekio has equipped GR-18 with only one potential drill in the level The Dig. GR-18 has to get to the bottom of this hidden cave to find the precious package!


In TalkGibberish's enthralling level Just Jump Jaunt, GR-18 has to call on the powers of Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible to rock climb its way to the end.


In Pingas lightning level Fast Package Training Panic!, GR-18 has to put on its track spikes to race with the package! WHO WILL WIN????
SchuhBaum has transformed the level Ripcord Missile Training as a perfect training simulation for Bureau of Shipping. GR-18 has to one-shot the enemy while flying to pass this mission.

• SleepyDoof's level Colossal Keep is perfect for exploring, fighting dangerous bosses and HAVING FUN!
• WaddlesTNT's level Tree Storm-1 is perfect for GR-18 to practice its throwing skills and fight FIRE.
• Espurrator's level Crombler Crunch Cavern is perfect for working on timing & PATIENCE!

Hello, Levelheads! Prepare your jackets for a BIG PATCH. This patch is largely focused around a new editor tool, a smidgeon of bug fixes, and quality of life updates. Let's get right into it!


The BIG ONE for patch 0.65 is MULTISELECT. This gives you the ability to select rather large chunks of items or backgrounds in the Editor, and then do stuff with them!



We wanted to make sure the Multiselect tool was as flexible as possible. To that end, you can select non-contiguous spaces. You can select any shape you want, and you can cut chunks out of the selection you've made!



Oh, and it works in multiplayer, too.



Once you have something selected, you can delete it...



Move it somewhere else...



Or even copy and paste it!



Or, if you want to get really weird, you can use multiselected backgrounds to punch holes in environment tiles. Why? I don't know! Make an abstract maze or something!



Note: This gif is not sped up.

Multiselect has been on our board as a desired feature since day 1, and we've always looked at it as a feature that's required before we fully launch Levelhead into 1.0. We knew that it was going to take weeks of refactoring in the Editor, UX testing, interface updates, and optimizations to make it possible, so it always kind of slipped down the list of to-dos. But we finally took the time to get it done, and I think you will agree, it was worth the work.


We've also added some nice little quality of life features to the editor. For advanced users, we added an optional Grid Ruler that you can now enable in the Editor settings. This ruler lets you see the grid coordinates of any position in the level, so never again will you have to ask: "Is this the middle of the level?" Oh, and you can use it to measure stuff!



We've also done a full rebuild of the Path Editor system back-end. With the way the Path Editor was previously constructed, it was its own thing, which meant that editing paths and items had to be done separately. Well, I'm happy to say that after the rebuild, that is no longer the case!

Now, you can grab a path node and have the item that's locked to the node come with it! Oooooh!



Now that the Path Editor has been rebuilt, it should be far easier to make updates to it in the future... which is nice.


The Marketing Department has been a big success in terms of giving players a powerful mechanism to ensure that they get their levels played. People play levels to earn Exposure Bucks, which they can then use to boost their own levels up the charts (until they graduate). It creates a pretty cool and straightforward "market of play," which has worked out fantastically.

Now, we want to see what more we can do with this system. For starters, we're going to remove the Exposure Bucks cap. Before now, you could only accumulate 10,000 exposure bucks at a time, which represents roughly 3 hours of playing other people's levels, give or take. Our original thinking was that we wanted to push people to spend their exposure bucks and not hoard them, and having a cap means you have to put those exposure bucks into something before you can get any more.

However, getting to the front page of the Marketing Department may demand 20,000 or 30,000 exposure bucks (at the moment). Having a cap of 10,000 means that, even if you "save up" and dunk them all into your level when you first publish it, your next move is to now go back into the marketing department and play a bunch more. In other words, you can't "batch" your activities very well, because of the cap. What if you want to play levels Monday through Friday after work, and use your weekends for building? The cap prevents you from doing that effectively.

So we're removing the cap. Now you can save up as many exposure bucks as you want! This lets you publish your level with the amount of exposure bucks you would like it to have, right out of the gate. However, we are still keeping the maximum per-tip amount at 10,000 (for now), because we feel this is a nice break point for tip decisions, and it will also save players from accidentally spending a jillion exposure bucks all at once.

Lifting the cap also introduces some new, interesting questions. Questions like, "What if you could get exposure bucks in other ways?" For example, what if, when your level graduated, you got a little kickback of Exposure Bucks to put toward your next level? What if you got a little pile of exposure bucks for completing the day's Tower Trial?

When we had the cap in place, we couldn't consider these kinds of features, because if someone was capped out, we just couldn't give them any more exposure bucks. Now, we have the option to look into these other methods. SO WE JUST MIGHT!


Let's talk about PROJECT MANAGEMENT!

Over the past 8 months we've experimented with a variety of patching schedules. Weekly, bi-weekly, tri-weekly, and... penta-weekly? We've learned a lot from each of these timetables, and each one has its pros and cons. Going forward, though, we don't want to use ANY of these. At least, not consistently. Because the answer to the question, "How long does it take to develop a patch?" Can only be answered by a followup question: "What's in the patch?"

Some features need 4 weeks of development, while others need 4 hours. We've found that setting a specific timeline on our patching schedule is a bit weird, and forces us to change our development priorities just to "get something out" by a specific deadline.

When we were on a weekly schedule, we would routinely start work on a big feature for a day or two, then drop it to "cram in" some stuff on Monday and Tuesday, so we would have something to deliver on Wednesday. Then, we'd pick up the big feature for another day or two, and drop it again. This "pick up and drop" approach makes it take much longer to get a feature done, makes it more likely the feature will get abandoned, and makes it more likely that we end up with errors.

On the other hand, a one-week patch cycle is perfect if all we want to do is introduce a couple lightweight features, quality of life improvements, bug fixes, or visual updates.

So, going forward, we're going to be doing things a little more... ad-hoc. Our development priorities right now are to finalize the feature set of the game that we want to have before launch, in an order that makes sense. Some of those features might take some time, while others are quite small.

So instead of setting a specific, repeating patch cycle, we will be treating Wednesdays as potential patch days every week, but we'll only release a patch on a given week if it makes sense to do so, given the state of the game that week. If a feature needs another week, we'll give it another week. Having said that, our goal is to get patches out as frequently as possible, provided they have been tested and are stable.

If we don't have a patch to deploy in a given week, we'll instead post a developer blog that talks about what we're working on, and give a sense of how long that might take, so you won't be in the dark!

So... when is the next patch? It might be next Wednesday! Or it might not. Either way, you'll hear from us in a week!


Our priorities right now are reorienting toward finalizing the game's features to get ready for the 1.0 patch. With that, we have an actual roadmap of the things that need to happen to get us there! Here it is, as we know it.

• Finalize console-specific features and technical requirements.
  
• Finish final features and content of the campaign (which will be revealed at 1.0)
  
• Build an in-game UI to look at your Rumpus Perks (achievements).
  
• Update our moderation tools to prepare for the large volume of players post-launch.
  
• Review and finalize the new player experience.
  
• Update the mobile version of Levelhead to ensure the experience is top quality and matches player expectations.
  
• Add a CREDITS PAGE!
  
• Launch? (Question mark because some other things might still have to come first).

Those are just the game features, but as you might imagine, there are also a lot of business things to do behind the scenes. We're pretty pumped to be able to count the remaining features on TWO HANDS, though each of these things is pretty big, so the timeline is still up in the air. We'll have more progress reports as time passes.

Want to see the TINIEST DETAILS of today's patch notes? CHECK IT OUT BELOW!


See the full patchnotes.