Hey!
Its been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me 🤓
As mentioned in the last Developer News, I have put out an "alpha" version of the "Firing System" on a Steam beta, so the ones of you who want, can help test it and give feedback.
On purpose this beta branch is private and you need a code to access it. All can access it if they have the code, but I only want player that really want try it out and are aware that its early on. Therefore, I'm making it a little bit hard to find, to avoid players getting into it without knowing what they do. If you wanna try it out, look at the pinned messages in the experimental channel on my Discord and you will find the code. A few have already tested it and provided some really useful feedback. I also already managed to implement a few of the things. However, there are more on the todo just from the feedback I have gotten, but as you will see later in this post, I have been very busy adding a lot of other things to the game too :) Anyhow, some of the feedback I got was that it would be nice if you could set the individual digits on the timing, as it makes it faster. Yes, its also suggested to just be able to type the time in, but one thing at the time.
So this is how it looks right now, when you edit the module/cue/time on a piece of firework.
The dynamic UI for showing these information looks like this now.
Furthermore, it was also suggested that you should be able to play from a specific module/cue/time, to avoid having to sit through the entire show every time. So added a button for that.
There are many more things you guys suggested that are really good, that I will look into. 🤓
Be aware that the Firing System alpha/beta and the Experimental stuff explained below, are two different tracks and won't be released at the same time.
Firing System will be much longer until done and released to all, than the changes below.
In March I have managed to complete a lot of different "minor" things, that are really major.
Some are things that have bugged myself for a long time and some are features you guys have asked for for a long time.
I hope to be able to push all the stuff mentioned below (currently on the Experimental beta) during April 🤓
This is an example of a "minor" things, that is big deal really. Both the Spawn Tool and Physics Tool are now "multiplayer-enabled" in lack of better word. You can now see what others are about to spawn and what other players are grabbing with the Physics Tool.
Furthermore, the Physics Tool logic have been changed, so objects you grab interact with the physics of other objects in the game. Its been like this all the time for the host and in single player. However, prior to this, if you grabbed an object as a client, it could feel a bit "stiff", as the object would not interact with physics of other objects. It does now and it feel much better.
As part of upgrading the Spawn and Physics Tool, some changes have also been made, so the placeholder object and the object you grab with the Physics Tool now move more smoothly.
The ability to fly in the game, is something that have been very requested. Its there now. I'm still not sure if we should change it to a "drone" mode, or we should have both, as drone mode would also be nice to have.
However, we have fly-mode now, to easier get around but even more, to get some nice cinematic shots of the world and fireworks - it's really awesome to be able to see things some another angle.
Sometimes, you want to play more realistic where flying around with smoke flares in your hand might not fit in, so its of cause possible to turn fly-mode off in the host settings.
You get into and out of the fly-mode by double press the jump key - happy flying 🎆
Blueprints now include information about what mods are used as part of the blueprint. We can use this for various things in the future, however, for now, its used to let you know what mods you miss in your current session to be able load the blueprint completely.
So when you load a blueprint, it will try and load it all, but if you don't have all the mods loaded you will get a popup like below to let you know that you are not seeing all the items in the blueprint, due to some mods missing.
For now, you then have to restart the game session and enable the missing mods, if you want the blueprint to load properly.
Another annoying thing we have had for a while, is that it was very hard to know from which mod an item in the Inventory came from. This is useful if you find something you really like, so you know what mod it's from to enable in other session or share with the community or similar.
However, it's also useful if an item is not working, so you can see who the creator is, to be able to reach out and let them know what issues you have encountered.
This is now made much easier, as the details panel in the Inventory is now finally populated as it was really intended from the start.
I know you would never do this on purpose, but sometimes it can happen that a lot of fireworks goes off in one go... 😇 ... or you for other reasons run a bit low on the FPS.
To try and help in these situations, I have made some new logic that tries to keep the FPS to a somewhat decent level, by disabling various things if the FPS gets in the lower end.
I'm still playing around with this and tweak it, but in some situations, it do help a lot on keeping the FPS away from the 1 FPS state.
However, I can't do magic, so it's not bulletproof and won't help all and not in all scenarios, however, I do what I can 🤓
There are much more, actually a lot more, minor things that have been done since the last public release. You can see all the changelogs below. If you are curious you can even switch to the Experimental beta in Steam if you wanna give it a try, right now.
If you do this, please share your experience in the comments to this post, or the Discord in the Experimental channel. I would really like to hear what you think, especially if you find any bugs, I really wanna know, so I can fix it before this goes out to all 🤓
That's it for now - need to get back to work 🤓
I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News.
YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Discord
- Enjoy!