Helllooooo Hatchlings! After a long ardueus fight with bugs and many many battles with those distrubing Disconnect Forces, we have won the war! Welcome my friends, to Version 0.85 of Tirsy's Tale! In this update, we have many optimization improvements and graphical changes as well as the full upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.4 which drastically reduces the load times in the game and any lag that comes from the terrain itself.
As mentioned previously in version 0.70-0.80, we have fully fleshed out the Path of the Dragon and Dragon Temple maps as well as implemented a brand new area only accessible through the Dragon Temple's portal room (of of several to come!) where you can hang out with Tirsy's companions and play fun minigames against them. In addition to that there are 2 new boss fights found before reaching the Dragon Temple via Star Shard gates like the boss battles before.
As for the two previously mentioned Chronicles levels, "The Void Pass" and "Ancestor Melon", both of these are still in the works roughly half finished. The sudden decision to upgrade to UE5.4 sidelined these levels a little bit but they are coming soon too! The game should also now fully support Japanese, German, and Russian languages!
Change Log
Changed all texture sizes to about half of what they were before. 4k was never needed on anything in the game and was causing unneeded lag for many. With the adjustments I saw a 60 fps improvement during testing, so I'm hopeful that those with the worst fps previously can now experience the game in smooth performance!
The upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.4 took quite some time to put into place due to the sheer amount of errors it caused. One of the worst errors was the statue puzzle in the Syra Meadows, which is unfortunately now gone for now due to the assets being corrupted and deleting themselves from the files. I will remake it but it will take some time so the temporary fix is just a free pass through the level. You can still explore it of course. It is quite a beauitful level too!
Full controller support has been added to the game, so you should now be able to use your controller for the menus and stuff too!
The settings menu has been fixed and audio and keybind settings will now save completely and properly affect the audio in the game. No more blaring audio when you have turned the sliders down!
The Mud King boss fight is now live! You can find the Mud King within the Tempest Valley underground, after collecting 30 Star Shards in the level. He fights with a large club and earth based skills. Beware of falling stones!
The Ravine Tortoise boss fight is now live! You can find the Ravine King in the Ketek Canyon underground after collecting 30 Star Shards in the level. While tanky, he is quite slow, and his shell isn't as hard as it may seem, especially not from stones pushed down onto him from the rockcliffs.
The Japanese, German, and Russian language packs have been fully implemented into the game as well now, further expanding the array of languages that Tirsy's Tale can be played in! (A Russian Chippy is quite funny sounding!)
Collider optimization pass 1 has been completed. With this, many of the objects that were falling through the ground or clipping Tirsy have been fixed and will no longer do that. There may be a few yet, but most are fixed.
Changes to the Swimming system have now made it impossible to jump while swimming which prevents the previous bug of losing the swimming status because of the falling status taking precendence. As such, swimming now functions as it was always intended! (There is still a slight issue with clipping into the ground currently when going back onto land but continuing forward will pop Tirsy back above ground.)
Changes to the gliding system has fixed the sudden huge boost into the air Tirsy used to get. This should prevent any unwanted pesky exploration of space! Dragons aren't meant for space sillies!! Tirsy will now fall after gliding for a period of time (as it was always intended). The flight time will increase in each level due to her gliding experience going up of course!
Changes to various lights in the game's levels have drastically improved performance issues caused by overlapping scene lights. This lead to about a 15 fps improvement for me during testing.
The sleep to save system has been completely overhauled and it functioning as intended. YES, that means you can now properly save and LOAD the game back to the very level you saved it in in the same place you saved it. Wonderful that we've finally managed to get that working! There is only one save file but it will show as "Auto Save" or "Manual Save". They share the same info, but I liked having the layout so kept it as such. Saving to and Loading from either one will result in the same. As well, it will now properly display the correct region as well as the time and date it was saved! This should be great news for many lol.
Adjustments to the Level Codes visibility at the start or end of each level has been made to make those more visually pleasure and capturing. Too many people were unable to find them easily so I needed to make them easier to find heh.
NPC ccommunications have been improved, so there should be less stuttering when the camera changes during dialogue.
Massive improvements to the rendering of objects using Nanite, leading to the biggest performance improvement yet! This has made the areas more cluttered with objects such as the Tempest Valley much more stable and there should no longer be any problems rendering objects there or in other effected areas.
Added new borders for Photomode accessible by F11. These should add some sweetness or spice to your screenshots and give the world of Reqweki further representation!
Dev mode tags should no longer appear ingame in any circumstance. There was a problem with packaging previously that kept making the game in dev mode. This problem has since been resolved.
5 New Collectibles can be found within the Path of the Dragon. These will all also be displayed proudly in the Dragon Temple along with the rest of your hoard of collectibles!
2 new Easter Eggs can be found throughout the levels. I look forward to seeing who can find them first!
Who said a shield on fire was a bad idea? Not that guy!
Removal of the Barkling, Bone Drake, and Spider creatures had to occur due to severe corruption in their files. The levels that had these have had their spawns replaced with other creatures of a similar type.
Tirsy can now use her AOE abilities and healing dome ability after discovering their tablets in the wild. You may also discover a secret or two, so be on the lookout for those ability tablets!
Keybinds for the 5 elements have been updated and will now properly work when set to a key or button on a controller. By default these are 1-5 on the keyboard and the D-pad directions on a controller.
Keybinds now save properly and maintain even after loading the game.
Updated sky lighting to fix the weird flickering that would occur in the Ulgar Swamp. No more day to night to day to night rapid flickering. We don't control time.....THAT much heheh.
Added a new Spirit named "Lurka" has been added to the game. She is a small bunny that is found lurking near a certain melon at the Tower of Amagrodahn. While carefully sneaking, she can be quite loud! So be listening for her when you get near, or you will miss her smallness in the bushes nearby!
Reqweki Nights, a celebration with the Companions along the Tempest Valley beach can now take place by random chance. Some players may see all of the companions gathering on the beach for a fun new scene! (This can also be triggered in the Dragon Temple for those who don't experience it ingame before then)
Smoulder's Smoke can be seen in the Tempest Valley by all those who don't see the above celebration. This symbolizes something under the surface is taking place, but what is going on down there?! Smoulder might know, if you can find him!
Tirsy's dash attack has been fixed and should be working properly now. This will let her charge forward using her horns as a ram to attack hostile creatures with!
You may now sometimes see meteors falling in the night levels. This symbolizes many of the signs the companions believe in throughout the journey. Maybe you can be the one to uncover their many secrets....or maybe even discover where they landed!
The Hop, Skip, Jump, minigame can now be played in the Dragon Temple and in the Nikish Depths level with Ippa.
You can now Cook with Chippy at the Windweaver Cove. Gather ingredients, help Chippy start the fire, get a stone slab, and cook for your friends!
Various "failsafes" were put in place in water ares or gliding areas, that not all players could get out of, to aid them and provide an alternate way through those parts without taking away from the challenge of the obstacles.
And lastly, There have been 4 new customization options and the customization system should now flow better than before and maintain even through saves and loading the game. You can now be an angelic themed Tirsy! With a beautiful glistening color, bright blue sparkling eyes, a gold halo, and a redesign of her wings to be angel wings in appearance, you can now be the best Aura Dragon you've always wanted to be! This also comes with a mini Plumpey that will follow Tirsy's every move! We've worked really hard on this design, so we hope everyone enjoys the new options!
With that, that's all for now. Thank you all for sticking with us for this long and we will continue down this road to make Tirsy's Tale into one of the funnest and most loved little gems out there! Until the next update, happy hunting. And remember, be the Dragon YOU always wanted to be!