Most of these things are improvements based on me watching a streamer for 4 hours and seeing several small things he misunderstood or so.
For this update I updated the engine from 4.20 to 4.21. Engine updates can always have unforeseen consequences, so please report everything strange to me!
- Fixed being able to get into Blue Ville before you are allowed and thereby ruining your savegame - Fixed possible fake solution at double door puzzle with wet sponges; it now only works with the Force Cube - Fixed fake solution in new lava region building where you could shoot the translocator through wooden boards instead of getting rid of them first (which uses a really cool new puzzle mechanism!) - Removed unnecessary jumppad and keycard reader in front of chapel and added another way to traverse back; this also prevents you from going back before you need to. - Fixed being able to get through blue boards in building under red crystal tower without stomping them. - Made farm gardener tell you "one seed" instead of "a seed", to make it less likely that someone again tries to carry all seeds into the juicer - yes I watched that one guy do that, and he didn't even complain. - Meth now also hurts you when you wear armor - Made cliffs next to Red Town gate easier to climb and less slippery - Moved the 3rd shortcut on the red crystal tower to be more obvious - Fixed a problem with the lava hole in the early desert region and made it a lot easier to access the secret; it's now really simple if you own at least a Force Cube and needs no more sick skills, just the right idea. - Added NPC comment when you steal Mr. Miracles halo - Made it more interesting how to deactivate the shield generator in the area where you get the stomp ability. - When you beat Rattle Hag, the remaining enemies will now get killed automatically (while you are forced to look up to not miss what is going on) - Keycard readers now spit out keycards, because too many people thought they had to leave the keycards in the reader and went to take a new one for every reader; this hopefully makes it clear that they can use them as often as they want to. - Lots of little details not worth writing novels about.
- Preventing 4 fake solutions in new volcano parts - Improved hinting regarding carrot-cousin puzzle - Fixed out of bounds in new lava region - Fixed: gun light now turns yellow when you have the ball - Added awesome lava effect to demon spawn points - Translocator ball less noisy - Fixed: Spawning with the translocator sets your velocity to zero so you can't preserve the velocity you got from a jumppad - Several small fixes - World is mostly Translocator-proof now; preventing out of bounds experiences. In a few places it's still possible, I'll fix this later. - Added lots of secrets in absurdly hard to find spots
- Added new part of volcano region and a completely new ability - Added new achievements for newly added progress - Removed one part of the first volcano area to solve a couple of problems; one of the hardest puzzles was made optional in that process; moved a "fallen hero" in that optional area to an easier to find spot; added lots of optional big coins - Improved effects when spawning force cube - Improved lava effects - Fixed problem when deleting savegame in menu - Fixed minute-display of save slot being wrong - Fixed that after stomp-destroying the cube the beam would be stuck in the air if it was attached to the cube - The buckle magnetic attract power was increased x4 - The guns now cast a light - Fixed the red crystal tower seasaw doing clonk sounds all the time - Changed the order in which you attach the force beam to surfaces; makes fly handling much easier - Added a hint for the electricity puzzle in the last volcano area before this update - Fixed savegame problems regarding the blue kings castle and the cutscene; your mom could get lost and if you quit the game at one particular moment you could get in a situation where you would break progress entirely - Fixed that the hint of the bronze2 guy near the purple crystal was confusing and misleading - Less enemy spawning in some areas that players complained about - Lots of small improvements - Updated Puzzle-Hint guide in Supraland Steam Hub - You can now toggle the HUD with f10 (for screenshot/video reasons)
Everytime the editor is autosaving I'm glad that the end of this project is not too far away anymore. In the beginning an autosave would take 3 seconds. Now its taking around 2 minutes and I'm angry everytime it happens.
That's what I get for not using level streaming but having everything in one file! Very early on I tried to use level streaming, but it brought a lot of unexpected problems that I couldn't cope with back then.
I'm rather amazed how much I could cope with up until now. I started as having no clue about programming and just being an artist. A friend was supposed to help me out with all programming tasks, but he barely had time and I was stuck. So I tried around with the Unreal Engine Blueprints and I figured out more and more stuff and I somehow could get everything done that I needed.
World Building
Today I finished another huge part of the world - I call it "Volcano Part 1" - and I was wondering how much time all the parts of the world actually took me to make them. So I took this topdown screenshot and drew in the regions and when I released them:
Actually I started work on the game in April 2017 for 2 months, then went back to Supraball in June 2017. In February 2018 I couldn't really be any more useful in Supraball and went fulltime with Supraland.
The new Volcano part will be released next week I guess. The puzzles are all there, and they are pretty unique and cool, but there are lots of little things left to do before I can release it.
My biggest worry is with the new MacGuffin, which will be the last one. It enables you to reach so many places, that were unreachable before, I have to at least prevent the worst out-of-bounds cases for now. Which requires me to check every little piece of the world again and maybe change things.
There will be out-of-bounds regions, as usual. The plan is to seal off the world properly when all areas are built and the main story is done. Then I will make sure, you cannot reach any places that you shouldn't be able to reach. You will in many places feel like you broke out of the map, but it will be intentional and you will be rewarded for it.
I won't be able to use all my puzzle ideas in the main storyline, so I decided to hide puzzle rooms everywhere in the world that will contain all the leftover puzzle ideas.
MacGuffins
I mentioned the new and also last MacGuffin. What does it do? The tutorial for it won't tell you. You'll have to figure it out on your own. :)
Originally I thought the game would be much easier and faster to get through. I thought it would be hard to get up to 10 hours of playtime. But right now the puzzle masters among the players already need 10 hours to get through and more average players need more like 15-20 hours. And this is without major backtracking. Getting to 100% will easily take twice as long. So I would expect a game that takes been 20-50 hours.
For that reason I cut out 3 entire MacGuffins because it will already be big enough and I will get to use those ideas sooner or later in Part 2 or whatever I'll be making.
Why do I keep saying MacGuffins? I realise most players have no idea what it means. I'm just making fun of typical "get this thing" structures of games.
The term MacGuffin is attributed to Alfred Hitchcock. In fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or another motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. So when Indiana Jones is after the holy grail, it's not really about the grail. It's about having a reason to show an adventure.
I'm just having fun by not hiding it, but calling it just that. Instead of letting you right into Blue Ville to solve the actual problem, I have you puzzle your way through the entire map for no really good reason.
Regrets
One of my worst decisions with the biggest consequences was giving you the triple jump early on. It made building the rest of the world much harder without adding real value. Because by putting the cube under you and using a triple jump, you can always reach all kinds of places I don't want you to get to. I always needed to build everything very widespread and tall to make absolutely sure you can't do things you shouldn't do. Most places would be much smaller if it wasn't for me trying to prevent the abuse of the triple jump.
The triple jump isn't really needed to make interesting puzzles; it's only cool in the beginning right after you get it. For the rest of the game it's not really necessary. Also the only jump'n'run like part of the game is in the beginning until you climbed the red crystal tower. After that it's much more puzzle focused. Most likely because I was bored by building that kind of stuff... even though I love parkouring with accurate first-person controls myself. But I found it much more interesting to introduce new puzzle mechanics over and over again.
The cliff meshes that I use aren't really making the job easier. They have so many steps in them that it's hard to build a wall, that makes it clear, without the shadow of a doubt, that you will not be able to climb it. You always see some steps in them that you could climb on. Except for the 2 meshes on the right, they are really steep. Next game I will definitely first get more properly steep cliff meshes.
- Added boy in the background of the main menu - Made one part of beam tutorial simpler so you have more time to execute a quick move - Fixed battery-sponge-puzzle where you get a hint for something only after you solved it - Fixed battery not getting out of socket sometimes - Added another puzzle before the newest area - 5 new achievements that you get during the normal story progression (if you are already past those points, you will not get them until you finish it again; sorry!) - Some detail improvements
- Fixed 3 more fake solutions in lava region - Added "back to main menu" button - Improved the collision of the weight button, so stuff doesn't roll off - Made throwing gold nuggets into the hole more satisfying, so they don't bounce back out - Added subtle hint in latest part - Several detail changes
- Added new area at the end with multiple new mechanisms that will not be explained; it might be way too hard to be fair, but I wait for your feedback!
- Strength upgrade is now mandatory to get out of Carrot Town Region; it's no longer optional to prevent design problems afterwards (because people would carry pickaxes through the entire map, which is no fun) - Prevent 2 fake solutions in lava region - Made acquiring the wooden crate easier in that lava region - Improved lighting in lots of indoor parts in the entire map (lightmaps also got bigger, so the game files will be bigger) - Enemy spawning timing changed; not all spawning at the same time but spread to up to a minute - Added more gold nugget NPC reactions to receiving wrong stuff in his crate - Fixed a way in Blue Ville to get over the castle wall before you are supposed to get there - Fixed red queen being in front of blue gate after the story twist - Changed "green slime" text to say "green acid" instead - Made sponges, wood crates and steel balls unwalkable because you could move upwards as far as you wanted due to a glitch
- Fixed enemy healthbars not working if they lose track of you and find you again - Enemy healthbars position higher and smaller if enemy is farer away - Demon-Bomb enemy doesn't hurt the player anymore when exploding, so you don't need to be afraid to mass stomp enemies and accidentally die - More hidden coins in facility - After beating rattle hag your view is forced up for a moment so you don't miss what's happening - Force beam instruction edited; not mentioning that it works with wood so you have to figure that out on your own - Fixed that small button that can only be pressed once was still highlighting like a usable object after using it - Adjustments to force beam tutorial texts - Fixed surfaces that were slippery for no reason - Changed text of NPC after you removed glow flies from their garden to be more helpful and less confusing - Fixed fake solution to optional puzzle behind purple crystal to get to black chest - Fixed 2 fake solutions in lava region - Fixed that jumppad inside of carrot was on by default, so you could skip a bunch of the normal progression - Less enemy respawning in carrot town - Changed appearance of lift-platform to contain wooden elements - Fixed door in blue castle going through a wall in an ugly way - Improved pipe traveling visuals - Replaced some sand with grass in carrot town - Made speechbubbles be less in the NPCs face when you are far away from them - Fixed bug where you could look through volcano region meshes when you were close to them - Fixed that you could switch the weapon while charging a ball in the gun
- Added interior of blue castle - Added first part of new Region - Added new beam mechanism for new puzzle type - Holy hall puzzle tweaked - Fixed speech bubble arrow visual problem - Countdown button reworked - Fix castle bridge fake solutions - Fixed problem with unlimited groupies - Fixed timing of "oops"-guy - Added force cube snapping point for puzzle in front of facility - Added hinting coins inside of facility - Fixed red king text problem - Added 2 more save slots (5 now) - Improved use-cursor hand symbol - Fixed ball exploit that let you get on top of everything - Added loading screen when clicking loading game slot - Made gardener NPCs static instead of roaming - Fixed mouse showing too early when starting the game - Lots of small changes everywhere
