This update is a very special one, because we start to see some of the game's story unfold, told through some short cutscenes and dialogue.
Headlining this update are two short cutscenes to bring the world of Celestial Golf to life.
The first cutscene plays when the game launches, and explains how the sport was first invented in the 1970s. (Did you know that Celestial Golf is partly based on a true story?)
The second cutscene plays after completing Hole 7 (after the ball goes into the sun), adding a unique twist to the story.
The story was never going to be a major focus (after all, it's a golf game), but I wanted to add some light narrative to glue the game together beyond just "go to the next hole".
Story
Added a new "feature enabled" (and sometimes "disabled") popup which appears during certain scripted story moments. These popups are integrated into the story and explain why certain gameplay features are being added or removed.
Rewrote a lot of the dialogue and some tutorials, to flow better with the cutscenes and feature popups. (For example, the alien character now discusses the orbital driver, which is the mechanism used to hit the ball in space.)
Renamed tutorial "manipulating apsides" to "manipulating orbits".
Gameplay
Reset to the initial shot power after each shot. This is because if you make a big hit, you don't necessarily want to do another big hit right after.
Earth's ocean now glows red if the ball is predicted to splash into the water. This is intended to help distinguish between the land and water. On Hole 4, the pacific ocean glows green to indicate that it is the goal.
Earth: Lowered air resistance, and increased the angle at which the ball skims (instead of sinking). These changes make Hole 5 significantly easier. (Players were continuously reporting frustration with sinking in the water on this hole, and data showed a significant number of players stopped here. Hopefully this makes the level a breezy interlude, and not a difficult challenge.)
To compensate for the above, Hole 5 has had all three pars lowered, so it is now harder to get those stars.
Visuals
Replaced the Sun image with a new 3D render. It includes a new animated halo effect.
Hole select screen: planets now have realistic lighting and atmospheres.
Holes 4 and 7: do not show the flag. (It was confusing, as these holes have a large target rather than a small hole.)
Hole 3: added a lock icon to indicate that the hole is locked, until the orbit condition is completed. The hole no longer attracts the ball while in the lock state.
Sound effects
Added a bunch of new sound effects:
Ticking when adjusting the power.
Orbital driver "hit" sound (when hitting ball in space).
Orbital driver "warmup" when paused in space.
Error, if not allowed to hit the ball.
Pause/unpause "whoosh".
Camera mode change.
Feature enabled/disabled.
Focus change.
Target set/clear.
And several existing sound effects were replaced:
A large whack when hitting the ball from the ground above a certain power level. (This was actually present in very old builds of the game, but a bug has been preventing this sound from playing for... checks notes... ten months!?)
New "beep" sound when hovering items in the main menu.
New "burn" sound when the ball goes into the sun.
Bug fixes
Fixed erroneously drawing a long straight trajectory line from the ball to another planet, if changing the focus away from the ball's current body.
Fixed dotted lines sometimes being drawn from the wrong event node.
Fixed a rare condition after quitting back to the main menu, where the menu would become unresponsive.
Dialogue: Clicking the portrait now advances the dialogue.
Misc
Replaced the Credits dialog box with a proper movie-like scrolling credits scene. This includes lots of new names of all the people who've helped make the game so far. Thankyou to everyone listed!
Updated Godot engine to 4.7.2, Steam SDK to 1.65 and GodotSteam to 4.21.