The aim of this update was to address the much needed improvements to the hints system we added in V1.5 a few weeks ago. We have taken your feedback and made many changes to when the hints are displayed, their visibility, and animation. The end result is something we are much happier with.
Another addition in this update is a system we are calling seasonal effects. This adds a few visual changes to the game that are only available at certain times of year. We currently have two effects that are active during the months of October (fiery Halloween theme), and December (snow theme). During these months, the in-game background colors will change and particle affects will be created on screen.
Patch Notes
Hint Changes
Hints now show for the last 10 pixels of an image (instead of 5).
Hints now ping every 2 seconds (instead of 3).
New rolling hint animation.
The hint’s now have a minimum size on screen. This makes it easier to see when zoomed out.
New hint sprite. The new sprite is surrounded with a white outline to make it visible in dark areas.
New sprite mode that shows the last 5 pixels of the selected color.
The hint setting is now a slider instead of a toggle button. this is to accommodate the additional hint mode.
Seasonal Effects
New setting to toggle seasonal effects on and off.
New effect that is active during October.
New effect that is active during December.
Halloween DLC Announcement
On Friday we announced Coloring Pixel’s next DLC. The Halloween Pack includes 20 new spooky Halloween themed images. It launches on 19th October at 13:00 PST/20:00 GMT/21:00 BST and will be available for $1, £0.79 or your regional equivalent.
As some of you will know, earlier this year Steam added a "Steam is learning about this game" feature to their store. It is a restriction that new games are listed with this at launch, including Coloring Pixels. While active, Steam restricts some features for the title until they can verify that it is genuine game.
Because of this, Coloring Pixels has the following some of the following limitations applied:
Trading cards will not be available;
Achievements won't contribute to global achievement count, and cannot be shown in a Steam Profile's Achievement Showcase;
Items cannot be shown in a Steam Profile's Item Showcase or Trade Showcase;
The game itself won't contribute to an account's game library count, and cannot be shown in a Steam Profile's Game Collector Showcase.
Additionally, Coloring Pixels has a maximum limit of 100 Achievements.
Later today we will be launching our 2nd DLC pack, the Farm book. We had originally planned to include 21 new achievements for the book (one for each of the 20 levels and one for completing the book. Unfortunately, because of Steam's new restrictions on new games we will only release one Achievement for today's DLC pack. The achievement will be for completing the book.
If the restriction is removed from Coloring Pixels we will add the additional 20 achievements to the game as soon as possible. We are attempting to contact Steam to see if there is anything we (the devs) or you the community can do to help the game.
We apologise to those who were expecting to receive a full 21 Achievements for today's pack. We hope that we can rectify the issue quickly and we thank you for all for the continued support you have shown us for Coloring Pixels.
Night Mode - New option available in the setting menu. When active, the game switches to a much darker theme making it easier to play at night.
Hint - New option available in the settings menu. When active a small effect will highlight the last 5 pixels on a level. This is designed to make it easier to locate the last few pixels in larger images. We will continue to improve this feature in future updates.
In-game Progress - You can now check the percentage complete for an image by holding tab when loaded.
New Cursor - A new pixelated mouse cursor has been added to the game.
Bug Fixes and Misc
Farm DLC Support - Added support for Friday’s DLC.
Color Cycling Adjustment - Cycling through the color palette (using Q and E) now moves the scroll bar to highlight the selected color. Previously you could cycle outside of the visible palette of colors resulting in gamers not knowing which color is selected.
Touch Control Bug Fix - Fixed a bug where (when using touch controls) switching colors would change the color of the last selected pixel.
Unfinished DLC Access Fix - Fixed a bug where some users could access some work in progress DLC.
Steam disabled bug - It was possible to launch the game from outside of Steam. If this happens, the game will now restart within Steam. This ensures that all DLCs are accounted for and achievements are tracked correctly.
Known Bugs
Touch control bug - When using touch controls, selecting a new color will sometimes change the color of the last selected pixel.
Farm Book DLC Announcement!
Announcing Coloring Pixel’s second DLC! The Farm pack will contain 20 images, themed around farming, animals, crops, and lush countryside. The DLC will cost $1, £0.79 or your regional equivalent and will launch on 28th September 21:00 GMT/13:00 PDT.
Apologies for the confusion over the weekend. We recently posted saying the 1.4 update was available for all users, and it turns out we forgot to press the button >.<
By the time we realised that we had not in fact made the update live, we were away over the weekend and couldn't fix it until we came back.
We really are sorry for the confusion and inconvenience. It should now be live (we hope).
This week we have focused on implementing new accessibility features. We hope that these features will enable more people to enjoy our game.
New Features
Zoom keyboard controls - You can now zoom in and out of an image by pressing "-", "=", "keypad +" and "keypad -".
Pan smoothing - Panning around levels is now faster and is much smoother.
Rebindable keys - Keys can now be rebound in the Unity launcher.
Eraser key bind - When selecting numbers with the number keys, you can select the number 00 to equip the eraser.
Keyboard color select improvements - When you are selecting colors with the number keys, you can now hold shift and a single digit to immediately select that number. This greatly speeds up the process of selecting single digit numbers. This also works with the new eraser keybind (shift + 0).
Keyboard color cycling - You can now cycle through colours with Q + E. Q selects the color to the left and inversely, E selects the color to the right.
Version number - The game's version number (in this case v1.3.0) is now listed in the settings screen.
RPG book support - The RPG book has been added. This includes support for the additional book and a screen that links to the store page if the DLC is not owned.
Pixel lock - New options in the settings menu (default is off). When enabled, completed pixels can not be overwritten.
Bug Fixes and Misc
Hide button save - The feature that hides the images and names of uncompleted images now saves. This option no longer needs to be checked each time the game launches.
Autosave corruption bug - We became aware of a bug that corrupts save files if the autosave function is interrupted. To fix this, when the autosave is triggered, a backup save is produced that the game will automatically revert to if the first is corrupt. If this bug is encountered, the level select for the image will still show that an error has occurred. Now however, when the "OPEN" button is selected, the backup save file will be used instead and will take the place of the original corrupt save file. You should be able to continue normally after that. To further this the autosave has been reduced from every 10 seconds to every 30.
Click misalignment - You could previously click through the top of the UI element at the bottom of the screen.
Achievement icon improvements - The image for Book 3 Image 10's completion has been replaced with one that looks more like the finished product.
Keyboard color select timer - When selecting a color using the keyboard, the time the box stays awake is reduced from 4 seconds to 3.
Settings toggle button - New images are used for the toggle buttons in the settings menu.
Known Bugs
We are aware of a bug where some users can't see most of the main menu buttons. This is due to the game being unable to access some key level files. We are working on a permanent solution. In the mean time, please try launching the game with administrator privileges or installing the game in a different directory. Apploagies if this affects you.
RPG Book DLC
The RPG book DLC is being released today; this includes 20 new levels to complete. The book releases at 13:00 PDT/20:00 GMT. https://store.steampowered.com/app/928100/Coloring_Pixels__RPG_Book/ Support for the DLC and its accompanying achievements will release earlier in the day to give us a chance to do some last minute assurance testing before it launches.
It's time for an update! We have some new features, some bug fixes, and optimisations for you. Enjoy!
New Features
Keyboard controls - The most commonly requested feature is to add more keyboard controls. We have added the ability to select colors using the number keys on your keyboard. The system works in a similar way to a TV remote; you can select one number such as "3" and after a few seconds, the 3rd color will be selected. Alternatively, you can quickly select two numbers such as "4" and "2", which will immediately switch to the 42nd color. You can quickly select smaller numbers such as "3" by selecting "0" followed by "3". When you start selecting numbers, a small UI element will appear in the bottom right corner, this will let you know which buttons you have pressed as well as inform you if the number you have entered is valid. (Green = valid, red = invalid).
Restart button - Another common request is the ability to restart the progress of an image. We heard you and now you can. Click on the small bin icon in the bottom left to delete the save (don't worry you will be prompted with an "are you sure message" in case you hit it by accident).
Eraser - You can now use the new eraser tool to remove the color from a cell. Click on the eraser icon in the bottom left to begin erasing and select any color to return to normal.
Hidden images and titles on level select - A few members of the community requested the ability to hide the images and titles of incomplete levels on the book select screen. The idea being, that you won't know what the end image will be until you complete it. We created a new setting that does just this. We found this a surprisingly fun addition, as it makes completing levels much more satisfying. The setting will be off by default but we recommend you try it.
Bug fixes and optimisation
Smaller file size - We have optimised the game to make the size on disk much smaller. From approximately 400mb to 150mb.
Music optimisation - We have optimised the music further. Although still not perfect, there will be fewer lag spikes caused by loading music assets.
Color select scroll buttons bug - The buttons either side of the color palette would cause the scrollbar to judder when reaching the edge of the palette. This has been fixed.
32-bit Windows support - We honestly thought we already had this, but we do now.
It's a DLC (downloadable content)! It's our first of many planned themed DLC books that we wish to release. It will add an extra book to your Coloring Pixels game that will contain 20 new levels to complete. This book contains various medieval, fantasy, and role playing game stylised images.
Why (and how much)?
Unfortunately, we need an income to continue developing! We don't want Coloring Pixels to break the bank, that's why we are pricing this DLC at the lowest allowed by Steam. At launch, we intend to charge 1$ (or your regional equivalent) for the book. The DLC is completaly optional and the base game will remain free, so no need to worry about that.
Anything else?
We have improved our encoding algorithms! The colors in this book will be ordered by the number of pixels that need to be colored. The most common color will be number 1 and all of the least common colors will be towards the end of the list. Its a small thing but we have found an ordered color palette is much better. We can't change the pre-existing levels to reflect these improvements but we will use this improvement for books to come.
When?
The RPG book will release on Steam on Friday 7th September 2018 at 1:00pm PDT!