Level select UI Updates:
- Fixed an issue with the difficulty indicator which had malfunctioned due to a prior update. Now it’s fixed and more thoroughly tested.
- Resolved a problem where hovering over a level, releasing, and then re-hovering at a specific timing could cause incorrect UI elements to display.
- Corrected a bug that caused leaderboards to display incorrectly for levels that have not been cleared.
Mouse visibility:
I added a small mouse trail in the game when the mouse is visible. This is a countermeasure to a rare issue where some players were unable to see the OS mouse while in full screen. I have only heard and seen of two such cases, so it seems really rare. Though, as it is a pretty tough issue for such players, I wanted to add something simple which can indicate the mouse position even if you don’t see the actual mouse, as it should at least help a bit.
(In case people wonder why we use the OS mouse, it’s because it has the best responsiveness. If we sample the mouse and render it as part of the game graphics, it will likely be one frame behind. Which is why we have not been doing these things before.)
Currently this mouse trail is not configurable, but I will try to add some settings related to this next weekend/soon.
Settings issue on game reset:
Addressed an issue where settings from a previous session would incorrectly reapply after restarting the game with different challenge mode settings. The settings will now persist correctly in all cases as I make sure to save the settings file after the reset has applied its changes.
Wallrun restart boost fix:
Improved the reliability of the boosted wallrun start from wall slide state, which previously could at very specific circumstances fail and revert to a wall slide immediately. The chance of this was usually quite low, but quite frustrating when it happened.
I did a previous attempt to fix this without having time to investigate properly which sadly didn’t resolve it completely. This time a more thorough investigation to understand the full extent of it.
The details are a bit involved, but here is the full rundown for those who are interested. If you have too low velocity in a given frame during a horizontal wallrun, it will end and go into the slide state. Which is how it usually should be, except when starting from this slide state. This only became an issue if you had just the right slide velocity and pushed the right directions, as then the velocity impulse you get from starting the boost would be just enough to cancel out the slide speed and land you at almost zero velocity for the first few frames of the wallrun. This then would make the wallrun exist right away.
I have now made it so that it recognizes that you are starting from this slide state with a boost, which then gives you a leniency time to build up velocity before the velocity check kicks in.
With this fix I have never been able to recreate the bug.
Minor achievement unlock criteria change:
The achievement for collecting all the story logs was set up for the 24 logs of the original game, and didn’t account for the logs you could get from defiance. Meaning players could get a strange and misleading achievement notification when going through the game. It is now updated to reflect this correctly. (This was intentional back in the days when Defiance was not free).
Voice Over Playback Adjustment:
Finally I did another attempt at fixing the voice over when returning to the room. There still seemed to be some players who mid session changed to an alternative sound device and then were unable to hear the VO in the room. But they seemed to be able to hear the VO when manually triggering it from the log window in the room. So I made an attempt to trigger the sound differently now to see if it might help. But as I am unable to reproduce the issue on any of my PCs, I will have to make assumptions and test things this way without knowing for sure. I’m sorry if it were to cause any issues for anyone.
Level Tweak:
- The defiance level Expectations got a little bit of clutter removed at the start, which distracted from teaching the power wires setup for the generators.
- The defiance level Chains got a small addition and optional section at the sniper dodge area, aimed at trying to give another hint at the ability to dodge the snipers. We have other areas in other levels intended to teach this mechanic, but as players are never required to use it before here, a good portion of players can get a bit stuck on this part. Having this new area right next to where this mechanic is needed I hope will help this a little bit further.
That’s it for this time. Hope you enjoy it!ːdeboostː