Two days after the big one, a patch. Most of it came from watching people play the last build.
Mac players: please try again
If you played the demo on a Mac through Steam this past week, it ran at about 20 frames per second, and that was our bug, not your machine. The Steam overlay helper we ship for Windows was also running on Mac, where the overlay has never worked, and it was costing more than half the frame rate. It is off on Mac now. On the same MacBook the demo went from 22 fps to 165. If it felt sluggish before, it will not now.
The opening
- The game starts in fullscreen on first launch. Leaving fullscreen is remembered.
- The tutorial no longer snaps from step to step. Cards dim and fade between steps, the check mark holds a beat, and panels open a moment after the card that introduces them.
- When the tutorial ends, PORTIA names your next world and its price instead of going quiet. Buying Venus points you at Earth. Buying Earth points you at Seed Life.
- The tutorial explains that stars drifting into the Sun feed it, and that catching them yourself pays more. It used to teach you to click the Sun and leave it at that.
- The beam step says how long to hold, shows a charge ring at your cursor that turns gold when a release will fire, and its asteroid now spawns where you can see it on smaller screens.
Also
- The color question and both Reignite prompts share the title screen's corner brackets.
- Windows: the overlay now runs without a forced full repaint every frame. On integrated graphics it made little difference, so if the demo runs in the 30s on a low-end laptop, that is the machine, and a reduced-effects option is on the list for launch.
- Windows builds are code-signed and Mac builds are notarized, so neither platform should warn you about the download anymore.
Thank you to everyone who has played and to the two people who told us the opening felt like whiplash. It did. Steam Next Fest is October 19 to 26.