Hello Hunters!
Friday's build
We spent this month rebuilding how the map gets generated, and it was the most argued-about decision of the month by a distance. Three disciplines at once: design writing the rules, engineering refactoring the old system out from under them, and tech art making the visuals update themselves off the generated data instead of being placed by hand.
The rules came out in two kinds, and that split is where the arguments were. Some exist for balance. Others exist only so the shape of the map is interesting to walk through. Those two pull against each other constantly.
What came out the other end is an internal tool where we build generation profiles and tune them. The honest one-line version of what changes for you: runs stop looking like each other.
Fixed
The softlock that lived in your save is gone, and we confirmed it internally.
Four map events in the Norte were freezing runs: the Amulet Craftsman, the Trickster's Room, coming back to the map after the Pisadeira, and the transition out of the first map. They looked like four bugs. They were one.
Text running off the edge of the screen.
Still open
Shadows from Beyond makes every card on the board attack at random once it has been played. Closing the game clears it. Starting a new run does not.
Dev note
That last line is the most useful sentence in this post.
When something breaks, what we need to know is not what broke. It is where the broken thing is living, and you can tell that from your side without opening a file. Cleared by a new run, it was in the run. Survives a new run but dies when you quit, it is in memory. Survives quitting, it is written into your save.
Shadows from Beyond is the middle one. That fact alone told us to stop looking at the card and look at what happens when the scene changes underneath it. We found the trigger the same day.
So when you report something, those two answers beat a paragraph of description. And if you can attach the log, it lives here:
C:\\Users\\YOUR_USER\\AppData\\LocalLow\\DefaultCompany\\Obscurium\\Player.log
Bug form:
https://forms.gle/FbZzCZeez63a2Qiw9
August 28
New build, patch notes with it. How the map generation actually works is a post of its own, coming in September.
One question, and it is the one we need most: on your first run Friday, tell us whether the map felt different or whether it just felt new. Those are not the same thing, and we need to know which one we got.
And there is one more thing coming. It is one where your opinion actually counts, so I am putting the details up in our Discord next week. https://discord.gg/DxmcfhVga2
See you in the dark,
The Wild Pepper Games team