🎉 Patch Notes #33 – Lunar New Year Update 🧧🐍

Happy Chinese New Year, Zookeepers! 🐯✨
As we celebrate the Year of the Snake, this festive patch introduces exciting updates and important fixes to enhance your zoo management experience. Thank you for your continued support—here’s what’s new!

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## 🎨 **Design Updates**
- 🛠 **Contextual Hints:** Fixed naming issues with contextual hints.
- 🛠 **Horror System Parameters:** Adjusted and verified parameters for the horror system.
- 🛠 **Butcher Table:** Made food slicing mechanics more intuitive.
- 🛠 **Localization:** Reviewed and corrected auxiliary action labels for accuracy.
- 🛠 **Cutscenes:** Added the ability to skip phrases in Lily’s dialogues.
- 🛠 **Doctor Screamer Logic:** Reworked the logic for Doctor’s appearances to improve pacing.
- 🛠 **Horror System Polish:** Polished horror system mechanics for enhanced immersion.
- 🛠 **Boss Fight Timer:** Removed the timer for healing a fallen boss.
- 🛠 **Steam Deck FPS Options:** Added the ability to adjust FPS settings on Steam Deck.

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## 🐛 **Bug Fixes**
- 🐾 **Boss Fights:** Fixed an issue where animals remained scared while the boss was incapacitated.
- 🐾 **Menu Background:** Resolved a bug where the menu background disappeared after completing the game.
- 🐾 **Splash Screen:** Fixed a bug preventing the first splash screen from being skipped if left uninterrupted.
- 🐾 **In-Game Menu:** Addressed an issue where the in-game menu wouldn’t close when opened alongside the PDA.
- 🐾 **Stress System Fixes:**
- Stress levels now reset properly after triggering top screamers.
- Resolved an issue where stress from the first completed enclosure persisted as a minimum level.
- Fixed a bug where stress didn’t reset after switching enclosures.
- 🐾 **Vetgun and Cart:** Fixed issues with pushing the cart while holding the vet gun.
- 🐾 **Doctor Screamer Sounds:** Added sounds for a more immersive Doctor screamer experience.

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🐍 **Celebrate the Year of the Snake with us!** 🧧
Your feedback continues to shape the future of Zoochosis. Thank you for being part of this journey—we hope you enjoy this festive update and all the improvements it brings! 🎇🎆

This update is mainly focused on making various things (like replaying and seeing objectives) easier.

• Added a feature to allow resetting the unfinished missions to the initial state, which allows replaying the game without losing access to missions.
  
• It is possible to reset the unfinished missions including videos and tutorials (for the full experience) or only reset the missions (for speedrunning).
  
• It is also possible to restore the finished missions to everything that has been unlocked.
  
• The feature can be found at "Options/Game/Progress control".
  
• Please note that replaying missions currently not unlocked from other lists will still change the point count for the unlocked missions list!

• Added a "Show objectives" feature in mission preview.
  
• Slightly increased the visibility of a light switch in one of the first extraction missions.
  
• Added the ability to move while aiming.
  
• Added automatic night vision control (can be disabled by turning off the "Options/Game/Enable auto night vision" setting).

The creation of a new game within dodge em is Mixed bag!
Mixed bag offers small mini games that may or may not make you angry or happy.
as said above, These new games are available for beta tester and will be "hopefully" working at launch.

ːsteamhappyː

● Speedrun timer wasn't stopping after game completion

Major Update (Includes V0.35A - *V0.35J*)

-Added:
-Sidemap_16 (Open world map)
-Group System
-Icon for MMF Launcher (Missile Minefield)
-Icon for MMF-1A
-Evolution Survival Encyclopedia (Available in the pause menu)
-Fertilizer
-Icon For CrudeOilBarrel
-Model For CrudeOilBarrel
-Industrial Workbench
-Oil Power Generator
-Rocket Launch Site
-Rocket
-Satellites
-Animals that are being ridden can deal damage (Yes I know long overdue)
-An Ammo selector that you can bring up by pressing 'R' while holding a weapon
-Text Chat
-Sidemap_16 Has The new foliage system discussed previously
-Tamed Animals Now Save
-All players in the world now save. (Previusly anyone who connected didn't save)
-Flying animals (Functional works, no visible wing models yet)


Changed:
-Made star lifespan longer on the Central Island Map (Sidemap_5)
-Revamped Crop Plots, you now need to take care of your plants
-Animals No longer use food once tamed (For Testing)

Testing:
-Different method to how the parent planet appears in the night sky
-Animals No longer use food once tamed (For Testing)
-Anti-Infantry Mortar with Volumetric Explosion
-Armor Penetration simulations
-Larger Ships: Trawlers, Destroyers, Armed tugs, etc.
-Ship Upgrades
-Submarines

Group System Details:
-Can invite and kick players if you are promoted to a leader.
-Leader can promote other players to co-leader and demote them (More ranks might come soon)
-Radars with IFF can distinguish between group targets and enemy group targets (All other groups are treated as an enemy as there is no ally function yet)

Fixed:
-Major Performance Issues
-Raft Saving 10-20 times for each raft (this caused 20 rafts to spawn when loading back in)

Hi everyone,

Thank you once again for all your support and for the lovely reviews you wrote for the game! I hope this update can improve your experience with various QoL features.

If you encounter any issues while playing the game, don't hesitate to reach out to me at "gardentrills@gmail.com" to report it!

New Features: Improved Map
- Map zooming!
- You can now teleport to a street directly from the HUB's map by clicking on the passionflower icon.
- Blooming score is explained on the map.
- Waypoints are clearer.
- Birdhouses that stay open indefinitely are indicated with a specific icon on the map (you can farm seeds using these).

Other New Features
- Quests will ping you when their conditions have been fulfilled and their descriptions will update (indicating that you need to talk to a specific bird to complete it and get your reward).
- Hide UI key, if you want to take a screenshot without the HUD getting in the way!
- Propeller hat now spins as you move around.

Improvements
- Improved popup menu button clarity.
- Improved vertical range for watering cans.

Bugfixes
- Fixing floating objects.
- Various bugfixes.

• Fixed seance items not spawning on Insane difficulty
  
• Fixed seance item and demon symbol not being interactable in Maria's case

On the last minute I decided to add another Achievement. Have fun!

Another year, another monthly Dev-Blog!

First off, Happy New Year to everyone!



Let’s start with the 2 big announcement:





The reason the price increase happens one month earlier is due to Steam’s 30-day cooldown period before applying discounts after a price hike.


Finally, the first beta for 1.0 will launch early of February. As usual, it’ll include placeholder bosses and unfinished graphics, along with the A-rank world.



The biggest addition in 1.0 is the A-rank world, completing the game’s core content.

A-rank marks a significant step up in difficulty compared to B-rank, serving as the ultimate challenge. I want players to *feel* this escalation.

I’m debating whether A-rank should require reaching Infinity in Survivors Mode to ensure mastery, but worry it might exclude too many players. Feedback is welcome!
Thank you for the numerous feedback about it, It is clear Reaching infinity is not a good requirements,
I believe now, having the player complete 20 challenges is a much better requirements (about half of the non-hardmode challenge in the game)

A-rank introduces a new enemy variant: Corrupted Enemies. rare and powerful variants of non-elites enemies, being a great source of danger, but also of reward.



It also unlocks the final zone:







Cards repeatedly ignored in selections will have their drop rates reduced. For example, skipping a card three times lowers its spawn chance, making desired cards more likely to appear.



The above changes will debut in the next beta. Other 1.0 goals include:

• Improved Equipment Crafting UX/UI
  
  Overhauling the confusing modifier system (especially Knight Pendant crafting) based on player feedback.
  
  
• Run Looping
  
  
  Post-B-rank, players can loop completed runs. Mechanics TBD.
  
  
• Custom Runs
  
  
  A post-launch possibility: runs with player-defined settings/parameters.
  
  
• Add a Tutorial menu in the Encyclopedia for revisiting guides in-game.
  
• Better Gamepad/Steam Deck menu navigation.
  
• Bestiary-completion achievements (unlocking cards/artifacts).
  
• The usual new cards, equipment, challenges, and soul-shop upgrades.

With March 7 approaching, some features may be postponed.



After the 0.10 update boosted sales, Steam offered a Daily Deal front-page promotion too valuable to pass up.



Daily Deals offer massive exposure for any game, especially critical for a solo developer like me. Passing up this promotional opportunity alongside the 1.0 release simply wasn’t an option.

Steam lets developers schedule Daily Deals up to 6 months after approval. I chose the farthest date (early March) assuming the 6-month window would give me enough time to complete and polish everything for 1.0.

Unfortunately, the second half of 2024 hit hard. Shortly after the 0.10 update, personal matters left me sidelined for months
(though it did push me toward a healthier lifestyle, which I’m grateful for).

By October, I was back on track… only to face four back-to-back illnesses and a week-long CPU issue during my only healthy stretch in November/December. Being bedridden piled delays atop delays.

This means February will be a crunch month, with some features delayed to post-launch.

However, I'm still very glad to the state of the game at the moment, and I also know that a perfect game is one that is never released, I initially never hoped for the game to reach this state when I initially started to work on it 3 years ago.



I’ll continue updating Rogue: Genesia post-launch, albeit at a slower pace. Ideas include:

• Weekly Challenges
  Procedurally generated challenges that refresh every **Monday**, tied to the date, with leaderboard support. Designed to boost the game’s **long-term longevity**.
  
  
• Talent Loadouts
  Save and swap talent configurations—similar to Equipment Loadouts.
  
  
• Card Pinning (QoL
  Pin cards in the Encyclopedia to highlight them during selection.
  
  
• Boss-Specific Equipment
  Unique gear tied to defeating bosses.
  
  
• Cursor Menu Rework
  Revamp one of the game’s oldest menus for better customization and in-game visual previews.
  
  
• Manual Melee Avatar
  A dynamic, high-skill avatar focused on melee combat—similar to Gunslinger but using default weapons.
  A rough prototype of the avatar can be download from this mod I've made

• Fixed character presets getting overwritten if the player was missing the player.sav file (Character presets should now function as intended)
  
  
• Fixed character armor randomization not working with presets
  
  
• Changed mega rocket crosshair to not use a check mark icon
  
  
• Lower rocket physics explosion force to ragdoll limbs
  
  
• Fixed spawn points at battlefield map
  
  
• Fixed graphics settings not applying
  
  
• Fixed screen resolution artifacts when switching levels
  
  
• Fixed bug with assist points being added to players that performed the kill
  
  
• Chat box will text hint will now display the player's assigned keyboard key instead of "T"
  
  
• Tweaks to interaction text to show the player's assigned keyboard key instead of "Use"
  
  
• Updated certain Fishing widgets
  
  
• Updates to Score UI (visual/optimization)