Well would you look at that?
We done gone and updated Endlight... again!
I was playing through Endlight on HARD which is a very very different ballgame. You have less shields, there are less hoops, you need more hoops, and you move faster. I die all the time ... it's brilliant! I'm currently twittering about this on BlueSky.
💭💭💭
Thanks to the Unstuck Guarantee I made it to Season 7 Episode 3 "Slalom Sweet" ... when I encountered... a bug! A bug that's not possible. A bug that can't exist. A bug that I couldn't have missed considering I playtested each level (all 600+ of them) multiple times over the years. I tried to reproduce the bug and ... after many attempts ... did it once more. Shattered I spent the rest of the month inside an empty cardboard box, unable to urinate.
🩳🩳🩳
What stopped me from killing myself? I knew that's what the bug wanted. Leaving my dignity behind I opened Unity and after many ... many ... attempts was finally able to duplicate the bug within the editor. No error messages of course, younger me fixed all of those.
🚬🚬🚬
This level was tested 2 years ago, and GPUs have grown much faster since then. Combine that with the faster movement of playing on Hard, AND the extra performance newer versions of Unity provide, AND the large gaps between walls that "Slalom Sweet" features (filled with sweet obstacles inbetween), AND some unlucky RNG ... then you have the perfect storm of conditions that sometimes allows the player to briefly touch the end of the tunnel, a situation that should never happen and the cause of the bug. Obvious, really.
🔍🔍🔍
My initial fix was convoluted and touched a lot of code, meaning I would have to retest 600+ levels (at least 60 hours). After thinking about things for a few days, and going through the code I discovered I had ALREADY created a fix that handles cases somewhat similar to this. I rolled back my changes and made a very isolated 2 line tweak to that fix (a fix of a fix). That tweak would only impact a handful of levels, and those were easily testable. After doing that I played through the first 4 Seasons again (7+ hours), and tested some random levels because I'm not an idiot. And man-o-man let me tell you, this game is balls out strange.
🤯🤯🤯
While I was it I ...
- tweaked some of the Sweet & Sour levels - they were great, but now they're great
- tweaked the faster movement of playing on Hard - it was sometimes unfair especially on the surreal Tunnel Hunt tributes
- fixed a few spelling errors - not that you'll have time to read anything
- it's taking all of my might to stop myself from making Season 21 (it's half complete)
- every single one of these updates makes it to the optimized Steam Deck Linux build, which Valve has yet to verify
- in Toronto they're turning our waterfront into a giant airport
And don't worry, all of this will make it to the console version. Assuming the console version makes it to consoles of course!
🏀🏀🏀
We have to pray just to make it today - MC Hammer