This patch addressed three bugs, added one minor feature, and one tweak to a level.
First of all, the bugs.
- A bug when switching or using different sound devices was fixed.
- It appears there were some oversights when optimizing audio playback before. The sound device was not changed properly for all threads, and some sound resources also got buffered and reused, but did not get their device changed properly either. Making some sounds disappear completely when changing audio devices. There were many cases like this, but some examples include the voice lines played when returning to the room, some UI sounds especially in the result screen, and the player boost and weapon sounds.
- One more similar bug, is that the 3D audio device settings only got set up for the default device, so all 3D sounds would disappear or get low volumes when another device was used. I am surprised this was not noticed and fixed before now, as it must have left some of the players with very empty sound space. However, the main player character sounds are not actually 3D, so it would not have been quite that obvious.
- There was another bug with the level select menu when using gamepads, where the preview hover view of a level would not activate at times. Leading to some strange visuals when using gamepad controls in that menu.
Feature
As for the minor new feature, it is a dark theme of the in game UI. As I was looking at the UI code for one of the bugs, and had considered selectable UI themes for SCB, I figured I wanted to give it a quick test here. By default it is turned off, but can be selected in the game options.
Level Tweak
Finally, the level tweak was to improve readability in Redeployment. One of the jumps down was easy to miss, as it didn’t really look like something was in that direction. Especially since there were other blocks looking more enticing to the side. We added some panels and two pickups to more clearly signal that there is a path here.
Some further logging was also added, so if bugs were to occur, we can get some more data on it.
If you have any issues with the game, don’t hesitate to let us know!
Enjoy the patch and thanks for playing!